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BIRDEMIC: SHOCK & TERROR released on DVD and Blu-ray today
02.22.2011
02:32 pm
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Last year, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim co-hosted a special screening of director James “The Master of the Romantic Thriller”™ Nguyen’s “so bad it’s good” feature film, Birdemic: Shock and Terror at Los Angeles’s beloved art house, Cinefamily. After a positively mind-melting 90-minutes had elapsed, Heidecker stood before the audience, microphone in hand, silently surveying the psychic damage the film had caused before asking: “Don’t you all just feel like total assholes for sitting through that?”

Cue 200 people laughing and nodding in vigorous agreement.

But, hey, you can’t exactly get this kind of entertainment just anywhere, all right? How many Plan Nine from Outer Space-type winners should the human race be allowed?

Birdemic: Shock and Terror “tackles topical issues of global warming, avian flu, world peace, organic living, sexual promiscuity and lavatory access.” You, know, all the big issues. Director James Nguyen, a 42-year-old Vietnamese refugee, wrote, cast and shot the film over four years, diverting money saved from his career as a software salesperson in Silicon Valley toward making his Hollywood dream come true. Nguyen’s dream might be Roger Ebert’s worst nightmare, of course, but I don’t think that the director was really thinking much about how the critics would react to his film (It’s hard to tell what he was really thinking).

In a recent interview about the film, co-star Whitney Moore had this to say when asked about people who assume Birdemic was “faked”:

I have spoken with people who believe that Birdemic was faked, and I always ask those people if they have met James Nguyen. If they have, and they still believe that he is some mastermind of irony and comic timing who can make a movie like Birdemic intentionally, then there is nothing I can say to change their mind. Nor would I.

In any case, it’s out today on DVD and Blu-ray from our friends at Severin Films and now you can see for yourself the film that’s seen “midnight movie” fans across the county get very… well, very perplexed, let’s just say… WARNING: Do not try to watch Birdemic: Shock and Terror alone. Not because it’s too scary or anything, but because it must be seen with others, others who, like you, yourself, should be stoned into complete oblivion for this dubious cinematic treat.  I think anyone who watches Birdemic: Shock and Terror by their lonesome would just be too pathetic. So don’t do it.

UPDATE: There will be a special midnight screening of Birdemic: Shock And Terror at Cinefamily, here in Los Angeles this Friday (1st anniv. screening, director & cast in person!)

Here’s one of my, er, um, “favorite” scenes from Birdemic: Shock and Terror... “Where’s Becky?”
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.22.2011
02:32 pm
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