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Post by mysterydriver on Sept 13, 2011 21:00:54 GMT -5
Random casting information on the next Resident Evil movie. Some, if not all, of this may have been divulged already.
~Actor Boris Kodjoe returns as "Luther West," a character that was introduced in RE: Afterlife.
~Despite his death in the first movie, actor Colin Salmon (played character James "One" Shade in the first flick) will be returning for this sequel. However, in what capacity remains to be seen.
It's rumored that the character "Ada Wong" (a Chinese secret agent) will make an appearance in the film.
~Sienna Guillory returns as "Jill Valentine".
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Post by Michael Coello on Sept 13, 2011 21:52:02 GMT -5
~Actor Boris Kodjoe returns as "Luther West," a character that was introduced in RE: Afterlife. (He'll probably die horribly, but I'm gonna be happy about something, dammit!!) The guy who got cut to pieces? While I admit it will probably be something stupid, he is an awesome actor. Though, the only guy who I would be excited in seeing come back from the first movie is Kaplan. Great, another character who can blend into the background of these movies. Plus, how can you add Ada but no Leon? Wonder why she wasn't in the 4th movie.. .... What do you mean that was the same actress?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2011 22:24:58 GMT -5
Yeah, if you went through half of the end credits of Afterlife, there was a scene involving her, which looks like Paul Anderson is using the storyline they used for Jill in the RE5 video game.
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Lick Ness Monster
Dennis Stamp
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Post by Lick Ness Monster on Sept 14, 2011 9:18:52 GMT -5
Highly enjoyed the last few reviews/bit of reaction to the RE film news. My heart goes out to everyone who has sat through the new Children of the Corn Part 976 what have you. I couldn't even make it past Part 2. At any rate, there's nothing quite like vitriol, particularly with the awesomeness personified that is this thread's poster base... Which will now be interrupted by a positive review for a movie that I never in a BILLION years would have been as good as it turned out to be. You know, when popping this DVD in, I wasn't expecting much. The summary - a guy goes around killing and molesting women - sounded like a good way to kill a couple hours without paying too much attention to what was going on. Imagine my surprise when the flick turned out to be good. Indeed, Eyes of a Stranger is one of the true unappreciated gems of the early '80s slasher boom period. It's not purely a slice-n-dice gore flick, and it's not an out-and-out serial killer creepfest, it's some sort of bizarre meld of the two that works really well and somehow comes across as being realistic to boot. At least as realistic as a film about a lascivious dude who calls women on the phone before groping and killing them can be. This movie is notable for one other thing - it's the only DVD I've seen whose sole selling point is the fact that JENNIFER JASON LEIGH (capitalized because it's mentioned no less than three times in the official back-of-the-box summary) is in it. Yup, the indie movie goddess who appears nude in countless arthouse flicks is in this movie, and according to the ever-accurate Wikipedia, it was her first film role. Who am I to doubt Wikipedia? It's a high-flyer of the highest order. Having seen Ms. Leigh in a grand total of two film roles ( Fast Times at Ridgemont High and eXistenZ) and familiar with her reputation as a dedicated "method" actor, I've got to say that she does a damn good job with this movie as a very unorthodox slasher heroine. More on that later. But, hell, everybody does. This one's got a very different feel from a lot of the crap that I review, so get ready for scatterbrained theater. This is yet another movie that wastes little time getting right to the point, but when you're an early '80s kinda-sorta slasher film with the budget of a Filet-o-Fish, I suppose there isn't much time to waste. A mad serial killer is on the loose in Miami, with the AFOREMENTIONED M.O. of calling his attractive female victims before the typical sexual assault/murder coup de grace. We immediately meet prominent local reporter Jane Harris (Lauren Tewes, who is excellent as a very likable non-teen, non-horny heroine). Jane is in charge of her little sister Tracy (ol' blue eyes herself Jennifer Jason), a perfectly normal teenage girl with the one tiny exception of being both deaf and blind. On a couple occasions throughout the movie, we're given some vague semblance of a clue as to just why Tracy has lost all auditory and optical functions. These flashbacks either aren't fleshed out very well or they're intentionally left mysterious; something about Jane driving Tracy to school during their school days, leading to the little girl version of Tracy being abducted and thus traumatized into her condition. It plays out a lot better on film than the convoluted way I put it, believe me. Anyway, the cute blonde above is your star victim of the movie - our first money sequence and our introduction to the psycho-killer. In a long, drawn-out and quite tense sequence, she is called, stalked, and terrified into calling her boyfriend over to her apartment. Eventually, we meet the killer, wearing a mask that looks eerily similar to Terry Funk's Chainsaw Charlie getup and brandishing a massive knife. After decapitating the boyfriend (spoiler alert), he really has some fun with the blonde, ripping off her blouse and fondling her massive breasts in an absolute masterpiece of a scene. Cinematic genius, even. All kidding aside, it's an admittedly hokey but far more realistic in tone approach to the slasher films that peppered the landscape at the time, and a pretty damn good way to kick off the horror aspect of this flick. The majority of the screen time in this flick is given to Tewes' Jane character, which works out very well. Being familiar with her only for The Love Boat, it's quite interesting to see that long-running series' Cruise Director in a very different type of role, and she seems up to the task. She is infinitely likable as a reporter who desperately wants the serial killer brought to justice, and is even given some solid emotional depth in the form of her guilt for Tracy's condition. Roughly halfway through the film, a few coincidences occur in the parking ramp of Jane's apartment building where she becomes convinced that someone who lives in her adjoining building is the killer. This being a serial killer film, her instincts are of course correct. There's some fascinating stuff where Jane attempts to convince her oblivious boyfriend of the guilt of the creepy staring guy across the street that serves to pad out the length of the film masterfully, along with another murder scene where our lust killer indulges in some more fantasy. Of course, this is a big positive, because the special effects work on this film is done by this man. Yup, I had no clue what to expect from this movie that I'd never heard of in my life before popping it in, but upon seeing "Makeup effects by Tom Savini" in the opening credits immediately knew I was in for a treat. For the uninitiated, Tom Savini is THE guy when it comes to horror movie makeup/gore work. If you're like me and you prefer a halfway decent practical effect to hokey CGI, Savini is God. His stuff looks like it actually might be real, as opposed to just looking like computer graphics, and his effects work on films such as Dawn of the Dead (O.G. 1978 version), Friday the 13th and The Burning is legendary. There aren't as many big set pieces here, but the murders in this scene are all memorable. That opening bit featuring the blonde with big tits? Lovingly recreated decapitation complete with a shot of the head in a fish tank. Greatness. As Jane enters the Nancy Drew investigative reporter mode, the killer becomes wise and begins targeting the comely anchorwoman - as well as her comely blind-and-deaf sister. I should also point out that he deduces this mystery after Jane CALLS him at home to tell him that she "knows what he's up to," and not soon afterward said killer hears Jane on the news and easily figures out that the person who just called is the angelic-voiced woman on TV. D'oh! Of course, I should also mention that John DiSanti, the man charged with playing the serial killer, does an absolutely fantastic job. I haven't seen this guy in any other films, but he's pitch perfect as a serial killer. For students of multiple murder lore, it's common knowledge that they're not the spectral boogeymen that they're portrayed to be in Hollywood films; they're often sniveling, cowardly men, and DiSanti fits this role to a tee. This guy is slimy, sleazy, and just downright evil, and the ending of this movie works perfectly due to our genuine dislike for him. The final act of the film is the perfectly telegraphed but still thrilling battle of wits between DiSanti (who goes by the name Stanley Herbert in the movie - is there a more perfect name for a sadistic lust murderer?) and Leigh, who finds herself alone in the apartment with the psycho. And yeah, we get nipple shots from the barely legal Leigh in the process. Both actors do a fantastic job in this sequence; DiSanti looks like he utterly enjoys tormenting and assaulting the helpless impaired girl, while Leigh somehow manages to be convincing in managing to fight back against her attacker. It's also very nice to see an '80s slasher film that doesn't have an open ending. Oh yeah, another spoiler alert. After watching the film and doing a little bit of research into it, I was a little surprised to find out that this film comes from the same production company that helmed the early Friday the 13th films. One of the writers, Ron Kurz, would later write Friday the 13th Part II and effectively be the first man to write Jason Voorhees, psychotic killer as the main villain of a horror film. Eyes of a Stranger has a very different feel from the F13 series; for starters, director Ken Wiederhorn gives this movie a more polished appearance, no doubt the result of the 18 gazillion dollars that the original Friday flick had pulled in the prior year ( Eyes of a Stranger was released in 1981, while F13 graced us with its presence in 1980). Apart from the surface differences, though, the tone is different. As opposed to "the Pepsi generation gets mutilated" (Sean Cunningham's words to describe Friday), this is a much more adult-friendly flick, a mid-30s heroine and some solid melodrama written in to the usual lean horror movie plot to go along with the teenage-focused horror movie staples of gratuitous nudity and elaborate death scenes. As a result, it may not be quite the horror movie lynchpin that Friday the 13th is, but it's almost as good, and certainly worthy of much more than the "in and out of theaters in two weeks" treatment it received back in 1981. *** 1/2 out of ****, highly recommended for slasher movie fans like myself and midly recommended for film fans at large.
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Post by DSR on Sept 15, 2011 3:12:55 GMT -5
Excellent review, as always, TR. If I wasn't broke and out of space on my DVD shelves, I'd be on Amazon right now ordering the hell out of EYES OF A STRANGER (and several other movies, too ).
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Post by 'Foretold' Joker on Sept 15, 2011 6:42:33 GMT -5
Just saw a new Trailer clip for The Thing. For those who have seen it (Not going to post as it is a little bit spoilery)
Is it me or is the bit of action they show something that in the original film would have been left ambiguous or not shown to create more paranoia.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2011 13:26:43 GMT -5
So tell me if I was wrong in screaming like a girl in public when I saw this
I went to wal mart yesterday with my husband and our "child" and while in the dvd section, i saw a 4 disc in 1 Final Destination collection DVD for 10 bucks.....I literally stopped breathing for a few seconds a marked out in public because of this DVD.....Getting it next week ;D
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Post by Michael Coello on Sept 15, 2011 13:33:13 GMT -5
So tell me if I was wrong in screaming like a girl in public when I saw this I went to wal mart yesterday with my husband and our "child" and while in the dvd section, i saw a 4 disc in 1 Final Destination collection DVD for 10 bucks.....I literally stopped breathing for a few seconds a marked out in public because of this DVD.....Getting it next week ;D I have the one that had the 4 Pre-Nolan Batman films. They're good to watch the movies, but they are usually pretty bare bones. I do like them cause it was 4 movies for 3 bucks each, so there's that. Also, "child"?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2011 13:39:17 GMT -5
Yeah, all it is, is just the DVD's distributed in a new pack and if you have the DVD's already, hands are, they're EXACTLY the same as what's in the 4-pack. I actually love the 4-pack deals though.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2011 14:40:38 GMT -5
A. I don't have anyt of the mopvies on DVD so this is a steal for me
and
B. What I mean by "child" is recently we found a lesbian friend around our age but shes pocket sized, so we just call her our child lol
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Post by GuyOfOwnage on Sept 15, 2011 16:48:24 GMT -5
Great review, TR. I picked this one up almost a year ago now and still haven't gotten around to it, but now, I'm definitely interested in giving it a go.
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andrew8798
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Post by andrew8798 on Sept 15, 2011 23:18:31 GMT -5
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Post by GuyOfOwnage on Sept 16, 2011 0:56:11 GMT -5
Wow, I must be really out of the loop, because I had no idea Cody was writing the Evil Dead remake. I don't know how to feel about that one.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2011 4:39:47 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm scared s***less of her writing it as well.
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Post by YellowJacketY2J on Sept 16, 2011 18:13:44 GMT -5
Great review, as always, TR. I'm going to hunt down a copy of Eyes of a Stranger, as it sounds really good.
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Post by DSR on Sept 18, 2011 5:25:44 GMT -5
Something was on TV, I watched it, here's a review:
THE RAGE: CARRIE 2 (1999) - While nowadays we rail against pointless reboots, let us not forget a time when people railed against pointless sequels. This one was directed by Katt Shea, who is NO Brian De Palma.
Emily Bergl stars as Rachel Lang, a girl with some problems. As a child, her mother was taken away from her and sent to an insane asylum. Since then, Rachel's been in foster care, living with some really white trash types. High school sucks. Well, it usually does, but I imagine it's worse in "Hollywood high school", where every stereotype is cranked up to 11. The football team is comprised almost entirely of arrogant boneheads, every popular girl is a shark smelling blood in the water, and there's always at least one obnoxious wisecracking nerd (this film's is played by Eddie Kaye Thomas, of AMERICAN PIE fame).
Rachel's only friend is a girl named Lisa (Mena Suvari, also of AMERICAN PIE fame). When we meet Lisa, she's super-excited to introduce her new boyfriend to Rachel, but insists on keeping the mystery going until lunchtime. Before lunch even rolls around, though, Lisa takes a swandive from the top of the school, killing herself.
As a result of the death of her best friend, Rachel winds up having to spend time with the school's guidance counselor, Sue Snell (Amy Irving). The same Sue Snell who tried to make amends with Carrie White to no avail back in the original flick. Sue sees signs during her meetings with Rachel that perhaps this girl has the same psychokinetic powers Carrie did and tries to investigate the girl's family history to find out why.
Clues to Lisa's motive for suicide become available, as the town sheriff finds a note in Lisa's locker, and Rachel discovers a picture Lisa took with her new beau while she's working at a photo development lab. Basically: Lisa's new boyfriend was a football star named Eric (Zachary Ty Bryan, from "Home Improvement). The guys on the football team have devised a game where each girl in school is worth points, and the guys earn those points by having sex with them. What the prize is for winning the most points at the end of the school year, we never learn. Not that it matters, anyway. When Eric told Lisa she wasn't as special to him as she thought she was, the girl became distraught and ended her life.
The film branches off in two directions at this point. 1.) By sheer luck, Rachel meets up with Jesse (Jason London, not to be confused with his brother Jeremy "MALLRATS" London), the only football player with a brain or class, they hit it off and rather quickly fall in love. 2.) The rest of the jocks terrorize Rachel to try to keep her from revealing what she knows about Lisa's death, Eric's high-powered-lawyer father gets him off scot-free, and the jocks and the popular girls plan their revenge on Rachel for all the trouble they think she caused. They pretend to buddy up to Rachel to make amends and welcome her to their clique, only so they can humiliate her at a party after a big game. Hmmm...big party, lots of teenagers, plan to humiliate an unpopular girl...why does this sound so familiar?
There are a number of reasons why this flick doesn't work, the main one being the characterization of Rachel. As a deadpan snarker, quasi-goth chick, Rachel is a lot more strong-willed than Carrie was in the first movie. At no point does Rachel come off afraid of anything besides her own power, whereas Carrie felt like she was afraid of absolutely everything. What's more, you get the feeling Rachel was more or less ignored by the popular kids until Lisa's death, while Carrie was treated like s*** by her peers from the start. And finally, not to diss Sissy Spacek, but in the original film, there were times when she looked as frumpy and homely as the other characters said she did. THE RAGE being a slicker, more modern production, Emily Bergl never looks anywhere below "pretty damn cute" so it's just bewildering to hear the popular girls call her ugly.
As mentioned, Rachel is a stronger character than Carrie, to the point where she doesn't feel like a victim of her school peers. Even when they try to keep her quiet about the Lisa/Eric connection, she has the option to go to the cops, she has knowledge to screw them all over, the girl could basically take care of these jerkwads without psychokinesis. She just doesn't, because...well, because then we wouldn't have a CARRIE sequel.
That's another problem with the flick: lazy writing. As mentioned, the high school and all of its students are practically parodying high school movies of the day. But aside from that, the plot of this picture is almost completely cut-and-pasted from the first flick.
There's also some really crummy special effects on display, and for some reason during Rachel's humiliation sequence, Piper Laurie's famous "They're all gonna laugh at you!" line plays (I guess in Rachel's head?) to a corny techno beat. I don't think it was the film's intent to cause me to laugh there, but I couldn't help it. THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP They're all gonna laugh at you! THUMP THUMP THUMP...
I did think Bergl and London were really good in the picture, in spite of the horrible script and direction and everything else they were given to work with. I'll give each of them a star for effort. 2 stars out of 5.
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andrew8798
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Post by andrew8798 on Sept 18, 2011 18:49:15 GMT -5
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Lick Ness Monster
Dennis Stamp
From the eerie, eerie depths of Lake Okabena
Posts: 4,874
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Post by Lick Ness Monster on Sept 19, 2011 9:57:50 GMT -5
Something was on TV, I watched it, here's a review: THE RAGE: CARRIE 2 (1999) - While nowadays we rail against pointless reboots, let us not forget a time when people railed against pointless sequels. This one was directed by Katt Shea, who is NO Brian De Palma. Emily Bergl stars as Rachel Lang, a girl with some problems. As a child, her mother was taken away from her and sent to an insane asylum. Since then, Rachel's been in foster care, living with some really white trash types. High school sucks. Well, it usually does, but I imagine it's worse in "Hollywood high school", where every stereotype is cranked up to 11. The football team is comprised almost entirely of arrogant boneheads, every popular girl is a shark smelling blood in the water, and there's always at least one obnoxious wisecracking nerd (this film's is played by Eddie Kaye Thomas, of AMERICAN PIE fame). Rachel's only friend is a girl named Lisa (Mena Suvari, also of AMERICAN PIE fame). When we meet Lisa, she's super-excited to introduce her new boyfriend to Rachel, but insists on keeping the mystery going until lunchtime. Before lunch even rolls around, though, Lisa takes a swandive from the top of the school, killing herself. As a result of the death of her best friend, Rachel winds up having to spend time with the school's guidance counselor, Sue Snell (Amy Irving). The same Sue Snell who tried to make amends with Carrie White to no avail back in the original flick. Sue sees signs during her meetings with Rachel that perhaps this girl has the same psychokinetic powers Carrie did and tries to investigate the girl's family history to find out why. Clues to Lisa's motive for suicide become available, as the town sheriff finds a note in Lisa's locker, and Rachel discovers a picture Lisa took with her new beau while she's working at a photo development lab. Basically: Lisa's new boyfriend was a football star named Eric (Zachary Ty Bryan, from "Home Improvement). The guys on the football team have devised a game where each girl in school is worth points, and the guys earn those points by having sex with them. What the prize is for winning the most points at the end of the school year, we never learn. Not that it matters, anyway. When Eric told Lisa she wasn't as special to him as she thought she was, the girl became distraught and ended her life. The film branches off in two directions at this point. 1.) By sheer luck, Rachel meets up with Jesse (Jason London, not to be confused with his brother Jeremy "MALLRATS" London), the only football player with a brain or class, they hit it off and rather quickly fall in love. 2.) The rest of the jocks terrorize Rachel to try to keep her from revealing what she knows about Lisa's death, Eric's high-powered-lawyer father gets him off scot-free, and the jocks and the popular girls plan their revenge on Rachel for all the trouble they think she caused. They pretend to buddy up to Rachel to make amends and welcome her to their clique, only so they can humiliate her at a party after a big game. Hmmm...big party, lots of teenagers, plan to humiliate an unpopular girl...why does this sound so familiar? There are a number of reasons why this flick doesn't work, the main one being the characterization of Rachel. As a deadpan snarker, quasi-goth chick, Rachel is a lot more strong-willed than Carrie was in the first movie. At no point does Rachel come off afraid of anything besides her own power, whereas Carrie felt like she was afraid of absolutely everything. What's more, you get the feeling Rachel was more or less ignored by the popular kids until Lisa's death, while Carrie was treated like s*** by her peers from the start. And finally, not to diss Sissy Spacek, but in the original film, there were times when she looked as frumpy and homely as the other characters said she did. THE RAGE being a slicker, more modern production, Emily Bergl never looks anywhere below "pretty damn cute" so it's just bewildering to hear the popular girls call her ugly. As mentioned, Rachel is a stronger character than Carrie, to the point where she doesn't feel like a victim of her school peers. Even when they try to keep her quiet about the Lisa/Eric connection, she has the option to go to the cops, she has knowledge to screw them all over, the girl could basically take care of these jerkwads without psychokinesis. She just doesn't, because...well, because then we wouldn't have a CARRIE sequel. That's another problem with the flick: lazy writing. As mentioned, the high school and all of its students are practically parodying high school movies of the day. But aside from that, the plot of this picture is almost completely cut-and-pasted from the first flick. There's also some really crummy special effects on display, and for some reason during Rachel's humiliation sequence, Piper Laurie's famous "They're all gonna laugh at you!" line plays (I guess in Rachel's head?) to a corny techno beat. I don't think it was the film's intent to cause me to laugh there, but I couldn't help it. THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP They're all gonna laugh at you! THUMP THUMP THUMP... I did think Bergl and London were really good in the picture, in spite of the horrible script and direction and everything else they were given to work with. I'll give each of them a star for effort. 2 stars out of 5. Christ, that movie was terrible. Even worse, I begged my older brother to take me to it when I was 16...then spent the rest of the afternoon apologizing for subjecting him to the horrors that film contains. And not the good kind. Major props on pointing out that techno-beat "All gonna laugh at you!" bit - I'd forgotten about that, but remember laughing quite heartily when that scene hit in theaters. Good stuff, and good review.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2011 12:48:23 GMT -5
Is that the main girl in the movie? Or did his wife convince him to give her the role, like she always does? *pipe bomb*
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Lick Ness Monster
Dennis Stamp
From the eerie, eerie depths of Lake Okabena
Posts: 4,874
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Post by Lick Ness Monster on Sept 19, 2011 19:31:51 GMT -5
Is that the main girl in the movie? Or did his wife convince him to give her the role, like she always does? *pipe bomb* I'm sure she'll show up in this flick at some point. Much like the changing of the seasons, it's unavoidable.
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