Released to take advantage of the current theatrical actioner THE PROTECTOR, BCI’s two-disc special edition of SPIRITED KILLER features Thai superstar Tony Jaa in an early performance. Well, maybe not performance, but a role which calls on him to kick a lot of people.

The villain of SPIRITED KILLER is Dr. Duang, the village’s “voodoo doctor.” As the film opens, he’s given a small group a potion he whipped up that he claims will give the drinker immortality. He lies; one woman dies shortly after downing a shot. So the others – including a guy in a way-cool Wrangler T-shirt – run to tell the chief, but Duang moves in super-fast-motion, so he kills them all. The villagers fight back by killing him, then fear they’ve “gone too far.”

Five years later, Duang pops back up from the dead, on the eve his old village is due to be visited by an intrepid band of Japanese students making a hike to check out their “ancient relics.” One of those students is played by the heavily eyebrowed Jaa, who at one point proclaims his desire to “horny sluts just begging to be nailed. Goddamn!” Another student is a guy in a mullet. The village and the students team up to kill Duang again. You know how it goes.

From the same team who brought you Jaa’s ONG BAK: THE THAI WARRIOR, SPIRITED KILLER is less Jackie Chan-like as that film. Instead, it’s more of a standard kung-fu flick of the golden Hong Kong ’70s era, with a strong supernatural element thrown in. So don’t go looking for Jaa to be jumping through hoops (literally). Instead, expect rounds of fight-to-the-death skirmishes, with the same three or four sound effects employed. And hey, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. This is exactly the kind of martial-arts flick I love to kick back with on the weekend. The fact you get a glimpse of some pre-star Jaa is simply icing.

This is best watched with English dubbing and English subtitles, because the dubbing is over-the-top and the subtitles don’t match up. BCI’s extras are actually pretty cool, including a nifty, lengthy featurette on Thai action cinema. That shit’s crazy, let’s put it that way. –Rod Lott

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Trojan Condoms wants you to have a free soundtrack for your next ill-advised one-night stand. So they’ve assembled “the sexiest play list possible” and thrown it up on eMusic for you to download in between all those online porn sessions. The 10 tracks include the acts Communique, Dirty on Purpose, Looker, The Oranges Band, Sarah Atereth, Jessica Vale, Selasee Atiase and exactly one I’ve actually heard of: Ted Leo & the Pharmacists. This is a great idea, because years later, when you’re picking up your kid for the weekend that resulted from a hole in the rubber, you’ll be able to link it to a song in your head. Special times.

Back about 10 years ago, we used to get good soundtrack compilations for every other movie, good or bad. Nowadays, they’re rare, with Hollywood looking for any excuse to co-opt the nü-metal or the gangsta rap. But this summer has given us two gems in the Various Artist category. First, MIAMI VICE. Though shorn of a Jan Hammer remake, the disc to Michael Mann’s film plays a lot like the disc to HEAT. In other words, ultra-moody, as tracks from Moby, Mogwai and Goldfrapp would attest. Two cuts don’t fit (go away, Emilio Estafan), but Nonpoint’s remake of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” is welcome. The other good OST is for SNAKES ON A PLANE. It’s chock full of emo bands I don’t care for (Fall Out Boy, The Academy Is…), but somehow everybody brings a delirious spirit to what ends up as a tremendously fun party album. It probably helps that the bad bands here are all remixed by good ones (i.e. The Baldwin Brothers). The Cobra Starship single “Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)” is catchy as hell, and there are some genuinely good offerings from the likes of Michael Franti & Spearhead and Cee-Lo Green that don’t fall into the guilty-pleasure category.

Theta Naught does the instrumental math-rock thing on SOUND WEAVE, and their music is crisp, free-flowing and intoxicating. But what kills it – and I mean kills it – is having poet Alex Caldiero speak his annoying words all over it. With his gruff voice and pretentious verse spoiling the good vibe, it’s akin to having your kids walk in on you during sex. Luckily, the album’s bonus disc is free of Beat wannabes, but you may not get that far to even notice.

The Gold Standard Labs label is known primarily (to me, at least) for issuing unlistenable noise. So needless to say, I was surprised to hear that Crime in Choir did not fall into that category, and furthermore, that their TRUMPERY METIER album was flat-out awesome. They play vocal-free prog rock filtered through a defiantly indie aesthetic, pulling in elements of jazz (dig those trumpets!). Give ‘er a listen. Or five.

Stone Jack Jones’ BLUEFOLK is an ambitious musical mix of gothic melancholy and rural rhythms that take a bit of acclimatizing from the listener. But in stunning tracks like “Bread” featuring guest vocalist Patty Griffin, we can hear the hard-edge of Jones’ life and the gritty beauty of his music. Though Jones’ voice is a little too one-note, the rich music makes up for this and gives each track a coherence that holds through the disc. It’s especially nice counterpointed to Griffin’s sweet sound. It’s in the realm of Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits, but doesn’t have quite the same storytelling power. –Mark Rose

About the band About’s BONGO: Uh, no. It’s straightforward pop mixed with annoying electronic sounds with each track sounding like a skipping and pitted CD. I don’t mind electronica, I don’t mind experimentalism, but I do mind gritting my teeth for30 minutes. When they pull it back a notch like on the track “Banddynamics,” there is a kernel of something worthwhile, but it’s usually surrounded by too much fuzz. –MR

I was expecting very little from Cats & Jammers’ WHOLE LOTTA GODDAMN, and I got a whole lot more. A whole lotta goddamn, in fact. This is peppy, slightly surreal über-pop that is just pure fun. An example track would be “Salvador Dali Lama” with its chorus of: “Salvador Dali Lama / Loosen the grip of this reality / Salvador Dali Lama / Taking a trip in your surreality.” Cynical, ironic, witty, punny, but not in a silly egghead way. Kind of The Arrogant Worms (“Women’s Tennis Obsession”) mixed with Space Cadet (“Closing Estelle’s Again”), a really strong release from this Chicago trio. –MR

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I’m no Nostradamus, but I knew Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin would depart this earth from something other than natural causes or disease. Still, his death struck me as shocking and far too soon.

Though I’m not a fan of his, I’m not a detractor, either. I can like the guy without liking his shows. One of the most entertaining mornings I’ve ever had was watching him try to defend himself live on the TODAY show after that incident where he held his infant son while feeding the croc; he was like a freaking cartoon. It was amazing; the man had his switch forever set to “on” and apparently owned one piece of clothing.

Certainly there was no one else like Steve Irwin. In his honor, I reprint our negative review of his one and only motion picture, THE CROCODILE HUNTER: COLLISION COURSE, which actually made some decent coin when MGM released in the summer of 2002. It’s not one I can recommend, even as a joke, but I’m reprinting it anyway.

* * *

In space, no one can hear you scream “Crikey!” But that’s where, in THE CROCODILE HUNTER: COLLISION COURSE’s opening moments, a U.S. satellite explodes, sending its beacon-equipped core crash-landing in Australia, where a crocodile promptly swallows it. CIA agents are deployed to retrieve it, unaware it’s in a croc’s belly, putting them on a collision course … with danger!

Meanwhile, Animal Planet host Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin and his equally masculine wife Terri – playing themselves because that’s all they can do – spend their day collecting all sorts of wildlife for zoo research. With all of his scenes framed TV-style and talking straight into the camera, Steve finds something, catches something and indulges himself in a five-minute, diarrhea-of-the-mouth treatise on the animal, whether it’s a wily snake, a venomous spider or hungry crocodile. His typical, hypercaffeinated shtick is peppered with such exclamations as “If you ever see a snake like this, DON’T MUCK WIT’ IT!”

The two “stories” converge briefly when the agents come upon the croc in Steve’s possession and he mistakes them for poachers, putting them all on a collision course … with laughter!

Actually, the movie puts you on a collision course … with sleep! It’s pretty dull, livened up only by the prospect of seeing Steve have his face penetrated with poison-dripping fangs, but alas, such blooper-worthy shenanigans never come to be. No mistake about it, this is simply an episode of his TV show with a pointless government-agent wraparound, putting me on a collision course with … aw, never mind. –Rod Lott

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What’s with the lack of activity here of late? The simple answer: I started a job two weeks ago. After six-and-a-half of freelance life working from home, circumstances forced me to return to the working world, where I have actually “talk” to these things called “people” and wear something called “pants.”*

The job – assistant editor of the Oklahoma Gazette, the state’s largest newsweekly – is fun and the hours are good; it’s coming home and working on freelance projects ’til the wee small hours of the morning that are killing me. Until 10 p.m. last night, I had a grand total of 40 minutes of free time all week long, which I spent watching PRISON BREAK. Until I can drop one of two mortgages, I’ll still have to slave away at night.

So hang in there during this tough transition.

*Pants joke accidentally stolen from Joel.

I’m not sure why audiences and critics were so harsh toward POSEIDON, Wolfgang Peterson’s remake of the inexplicably Oscar-winning 1972 disaster flick THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, as it’s a perfectly acceptable, escapist summer movie. A boat flips, people die. What more do you want?

Like Paul Gallico’s original 1969 novel, POSEIDON wastes precious little time getting the giant wave to tip that cruise ship upside down. I think it’s chapter 5 on your DVD player, and Peterson (director of the equally water-logged THE PERFECT STORM and DAS BOOT) milks the spectacle for all its worth. This causes the film to suffer in character development, with extremely simplified personalities that pretty much begin and end with the stars’ images; for example, Kurt Russell is basically playing Kurt Russell, with Josh Lucas doing Josh Lucas. And the rest of the cast includes Hot Daughter, Single Mom, Token Kid, Expendable Minority and Fussy Richard Dreyfuss – who, because he wears an earring – doubles as The Gay Guy.

Ultimately, as a special-effects action-adventure, that doesn’t matter. Nor does the fact that none of the characters share the same names or roles as the first film. You could put any mix of people in this concept and it would still work to some degree. That Russell still harbors nice-guy charisma and Emmy Rossum sports wet cleavage through the whole thing helps even more. It even has bite, with one person in particular meeting a gruesome death worthy of a slasher flick. Almost all the Latinos and blacks are taken out in one fell swoop; just seeing Andre Braugher in the role of the ship’s captain is an automatic death knell.

One thing the movie does very well is giving water a sense of real menace. It’s one thing to read about it; it’s another entirely to see people trapped in closed quarters with the water level rising. Claustrophobia is very real, and POSEIDON takes advantage of that.

So for a disposable thriller with good special effects, Snake Plissken and a little Fergie ass-shaking, POSEIDON will do you right for a night’s rental, even if Gallico’s novel will do you better.

Oh, and sorry, folks: No POSEIDON rape here. –Rod Lott

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