May 29, 2013

Good Bye Filmzilla




Last night, Tim got a text from a friend expressing how bummed he was to hear Filmzilla had closed forever. Startled, Tim took to the internet and through some unexpectedly extensive digging, he discovered that yesterday as employees came into work, they were informed it was to be the last day for Filmzilla. There was no talk of closure, no rumors, no plan, just a notice to employees that they would be closed for ever at midnight that night. We discovered all of this at 11:15pm. Tim had to get up at 5:30 this morning and was already up too late, but we grabbed our coats and jumped into the van to scour the impeccably stocked shelves one last time.

Upon entering Filmzilla, we were greeted by a few groups of people waiting at the counter with stacks of movies to purchase and (to our surprise) rent. It was an even split of people who had never been through the door before, and people who were we were witnessing a place they loved be picked over by vultures. Appropriately, Clerks was playing on the TV behind the counter and when there were just 3 customers left the younger employee asked his manager if there were smoke detectors in the store. She told him she smoked in there all the time and he lit a cigarette purely to smoke inside while they were still open. As each customer was rang up they were asked if they had rented there before, but when it was our turn, we were met with "You've rented here before right?". I asked our clerk if we could have some of the empty DVD cases with the Filmzilla and Nicollet Village stickers on them, and she found some in the back for us.

Filmzilla was one of the last video rental stores in the Twin Cities that catered to a wide audience. There are still some specific language rental places, the county and city libraries, but nothing like the video stores we grew up with. Tim and I looked forward to, at least once a month, ordering take out from True Thai and while waiting for our order, venturing across the street to rent a stack of movies. It is something that we are going to miss, and likely something we won't find a substitute for.

Tim and I were the last customers in line, and the last customers to leave the store. We took photos of the outside of the place lit up one last time, and as we did the open sign was switched off, for the last time ever. It was a suddenly sad night, we're sorry to see Filmzilla go.




UPDATE: Investigate further, but I have heard rumors that they will be selling off their stock at the store until Friday this week. I can't find any evidence of this on the interwebs, but if you want hard to find DVDs at the lowest market price, head down there now!

May 7, 2013

The Greatest Night Ever.




With cinematic oddities, exploitation, voice overs, and so much more, Trailer Trash is a presentation of vintage trailers in 35mm glory! Audience participation, promises a unique blend of cult classics, karate masters, little lost dogs and laser blasts for each screening! We'll be at the 7:30 and 10 showings because (full disclosure) parts of the program are straight from our own collection! (We're so excited, every sentence of this blurb has ended in an exclamation point!)!

Trailer Trash @ MOA Theaters, May 9th 7:30 & 10:00, $7

May 5, 2013

Tape Freaks Movie Night



The other night we had a movie party, our guests picked the line up and they chose some amazing flicks. Here's a rundown:


Never Too Young To Die
Lance Stargrove (John Stamos) is your average college student/star gymnast who's dad (George Lazenby) is never around. Lucky for Stargrove, his father is killed during a secret mission, leaving him to discover his father's secret life, his spy partner Danja (Vanity) and his arch nemesis Velvet Von Ragner (Gene Simmons). Stargrove quickly fills his father's spy shoes with help from his science-minded gadget-building friend, falls in love with Danja and saves the water supply from Ragner's evil plot. The glorious soundtrack features, at minimum, 4 variants on the Stargrove Theme, each explicitly emphasizing the many facets of Stargrove's characters surroundings. Sadly for us, this movie's cries to be picked up as a series went unanswered, it's sequel could have been glorious.

Things to watch for: A theme song that will haunt you for years to come; the second most awkward love scene ever [see Ninja III for the first]; the inexplicable stage ”performance” of Ragner; Robert Enguland as a computer whiz; John Stamos definitely doing impressive gymnastics and not having a double do it; the worst fake beard ever to grace the silver screen; Gene Simmons as a hermaphrodite drag-queen gang-leader; a post apocalyptic gang living in a suburban 80s world; and every character asking for the “RAM-K”'s location over, and over, and over again.





Ninja III: The Domination
[Full disclosure, we don't know how Ninja II ended, so we were pretty surprised when...] Ninja III jumps into the action head first as most of the L.A. police force is slashed, dropped, drown, and ninja stared to death. The cops are on the scene responding to a out-of-the-clear-blue ninja-murder of a golfer and his entire golfing party. The cop-massacre ends when our ninja is filled with more bullets than I've ever seen a guy filled with on screen, and wanders into the desert to die. Luckily he runs into Christie, our plucky utilities worker/aerobics instructor; he gives Christie his sword, causing his spirit to possess her body. Christie reports most of this to the police, where she meets Officer Billy Secord, a tenacious cop who stalks her until she agrees jump into a serious relationship with him. One by one, Christie picks off the cops that didn't die while defending themselves during the cop-massacre, while slowly becoming aware of her “possession”. Honestly, this movie gets better and better at every turn... if your version of “better” involves fog machines and laser light shows.

Things to watch for: Epic fog-machine use at the flimsiest excuse; a cop that witnesses an attack against Christie, does nothing to help her as she fends off her attackers, and then “arrests” her for assault as a way to win her heart; the aforementioned wooing plot working; the grossest use of V-8 Juice in a sex seen; an arcade game scanning Christie with lasers, for a very long time, for no clear reason; the revelation that “only a ninja can kill a ninja”; attempts to jazzercise the ninja spirit away; a man who wears a sweater under all his tank tops... hold on, maybe that wasn't a sweater...