Confusions Of An Unmarried Couple
Directed by Brett Butler and Jason Butler
Written by Brett Butler
Starring Brett Butler, Naomi Johnson
2007

After spending several months of living on his brother’s couch, Dan finally builds up the courage and intoxication to finally confront his ex-girlfriend Lisa (ex-fiancee, current fiancee, what the fuck is she?) about catching her sleeping with another woman, maybe patching things up, or at the very least getting his Pretty In Pink soundtrack LP back. He treks over to her apartment and the pair spend the rest of the afternoon bickering, arguing, and smoking a joint before getting right back into it, still not quite aware that they are absolutely perfect for each other.

The Butler brothers, Brett and Jason (no relation to the comedienne or that visitor from Charleston), have been quietly churning out low-budget comedies north of the border for several years now. With their latest release, Confusions Of An Unmarried Couple, they are about to take the slice-of-life, no-holds-barred, offensive-as-all-hell-comedy world by storm.

Tales From The Farm
Volume One Of The Essex Country Trilogy
Written and Drawn by Jeff Lemire
Top Shelf Productions
Cover Price $9.95; Available Now

When Lester’s mother dies and he is orphaned, Lester’s uncle reluctantly brings him to his farm in the small county of Essex in Ontario, Canada. Uncle Ken doesn’t really know how to deal with kids, Lester doesn’t know his uncle all that well, and their relationship becomes strained and distant almost from day one. While in town getting gas, Lester pops into the store to pick up a new comic book. It is there that Lester meets Jimmy, a ex-hockey player who was injured in the NHL and has been written off as being “slow” and “different.” Jimmy and Lester soon become friends, and the pair of them set off on superhero adventures fighting an alien invasion and picking up games of hockey on a frozen pond. Ken, however, is not too fond of their friendship, and while he is determined to keep the two apart, Lester is all the more determined to keep the relationship going.

We all have memories, however distant or distorted from the really real truth, of when we were ten years old. It is a strange and bittersweet time when we begin to realize there is a lot more out there than just the backyard and math homework, where childhood rests and balances on a branch in our favorite climbing tree and can be blown off by just about anything. For Jeff Lemire‘s Lester, he has tapped into a cross-section of all those things that can close the final chapter on childhood before hurtling into those dangerous and often overlooked tween years.

Alien Siege (2005)
Directed by Robert Stadd
Written by Bill Lundy, Paul Salamoff, Robert Stadd, Ian Valentine
Starring Brad Johnson, Erin Ross, Lilas Lane, Carl Weathers, Nathan Anderson, Michael Cory Davis, Gregor Paslawsky
Image Entertainment

Governments around the world have entered into a shaky truce with an alien race called the Kulkus, who have demanded eight million humans to be given to them in order to save their race. In exchange for these souls, the Kulkus will provide highly evolved technology that will ensure the further advancement of the human race. In the United States, which must give up almost a million of their own citizens, the Kulkus have given the job of turning over the selected humans to the military, who have turned to martial law to keep the peace and process the selected.

But in the shadows, a resistance group who refuses to believe they are no longer the highest member of the universal food chain have been slowly building in numbers, and plan to stop the harvest of humans from advancing any further. When Dr. Stephen Chase’s daughter is chosen by lottery to be turned over to the aliens, he becomes the newest member of the resistance, and his involvement with studying Kulku technology may just be the key the resistance needs to finally strike back!

Shamelessly ripping off V: The Final Battle and Independence Day, and that is just for starters, Robert Stadd‘s made-for-television movie is a thoroughly enjoyable slice of sci-fi pie that knows exactly the demographic it is aiming for (if you perked up a little with the V name-drop, congratulations, you are the target) and hits the bull’s eye pretty much dead center.

Midnight Eagle (2007)
Directed by Izuru Narushima
Screenplay by Yasuo Hasegawa and Kenzaburo Iida
Adapted From The Novel By Tetsuo Takashima
Starring Takao Osawa, Yuko Takeuchi, Hiroshi Tamaki, Eisaku Yoshida, Yoshihiko Hakamada, Nao Omori, Tatsuya Fuji

When a U.S. Bomber carrying a nuclear bomb crashes shortly after taking off from a military base in Japanese Alps at the northern tip of the country, the Japanese Prime Minister orders two sets of rangers to scale the mountain from different sides, hoping to reach the fallen aircraft as soon as possible, and without any leaks of information. The trip will take at the minimum two and half days.

Meanwhile, an ex-war photographer named Yuji, who was taking pictures of the night sky, captures a faint blip in the sky in one of his photos, unaware that it is the bomber falling out of the sky. He is hired by his long-time friend and recently fired journalist Ochiai to scale the mountain with him to discover just what fell. As the pair begin their accent through the blizzard conditions, it is only a matter of time before their paths cross with the Japanese rangers. And it is only a matter of time before they all cross paths with the enemy agents that are just as quickly making their way toward the bomb, with every intention of setting it off!

Based on the novel by acclaimed author Tetsuo Takashima, this action thriller from director Izuru Narushima is a staunchly anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons film that comes directly from the heart of a nation that knows all too well the horrors of such devastation. While American cinemas and DVD shelves have seen their fair share of films over the past few years dedicated to the perils of war from our own filmmakers, this is one of the first external movies in recent memory to make an international statement. And while films from our own shores definitely take a political slant on the matter to rally the base voters, Midnight Eagle strives to push past party lines in its message about the ravages of war (the opening scene takes place on a bombed out street “somewhere in the Middle East”) and as it makes a case in broad strokes for a call for worldwide nuclear disarming.

ChiSai: Karma – The Complete Collected Edition
Written by Bart A Thompson
Various Artists
Approbation Comics
Cover Price: $3.50; Available Now

A lone mystery man has been making the life of crime lord Jeno a living hell with a constant barrage on his henchmen and bank accounts. Jeno has searched through his entire payroll looking for the perpetrator, only to discover that this “man” is actually a woman by the name of Shy, a young trained assassin that used to be in his employ and had thought to be left for dead. Armed with a katana and retractable matching sais, and protected head to toe with bulletproof armor, Shy is out to destroy Jeno’s empire before finally facing him one last time.

But Shy’s life is not as simple as just striking with vengeance. She also has a caring boyfriend that tries every night to talk Shy out of going through with her plans, and a young daughter unaware of what her mommy does. It is Shy’s family that becomes Jeno’s targets when her identity is discovered. When they are kidnapped by Jeno’s lethal right-hand woman, Shy makes a desperate frontal assault on Jeno’s high rise to save them and finally plunge a blade through Jeno’s cold dead heart.