The Runaways: The Man Behind the Girls

By cobwebsandstrange on 8/10/10 10:00pm
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Making biopics or even rendering history in documentary terms necessitates a filmmaker to leave at least some of the story out.

And in The Runaways, it seems as if the story’s been much condensed to fit into the traditional hour and some change length. Certainly, the group played more than a few gigs before heading of to Japan. In the movie it takes maybe fifteen minutes to get there. Time’s a tricky thing, it’s deceptive and can’t be real if displayed on film. Enough nitpicking, though, ‘cause the story here is pretty compelling.

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Trafic: Jacques Tati and His Obsession with Transportation (Part One)

By cobwebsandstrange on 8/10/10 2:20pm
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Let’s get some of this out of the way. Trafic is generally perceived as Jacques Tati’s filmic low point – we won’t count the 1974 Parade in this discussion seeing as it was initially shot for television and only subsequently released theatrically. Regardless, the banner of bummer being levied on the last of Tati’s Hulot films is kind of ridiculous. It’s merely an extension of earlier efforts. And while it had been twenty some odd years since the franchise was began, Trafic isn’t too far detached from earlier efforts.

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Assault on Precinct 13: John Carpenter's Early Exploitation

By cobwebsandstrange on 8/10/10 10:23am
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With just his second full length feature project, John Carpenter, who two years on would found the Halloween franchise, turned in Assault on Precinct 13, a work he wrote, directed, produced and acted in. Well, act might be too strong a word as Carpenter functioned as one of the gang members in the film, all of which had not speaking lines. Either way, Carpenter put in a great deal of work on this one.

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Mon Oncle: Modernity is a Mess (Part Two)

By cobwebsandstrange on 8/10/10 5:36am
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As up tight as Hulot’s nephew’s parents appear in Mon Oncle, the home that they’ve made for the boy is even more sterile and dead.

An gate attached to a buzzer is the only form of admittance. And whenever that bell rings, Madame Arpel flips a switch to turn on the dolphin fountain situated just in front of the house to impress gates. Oddly, though, it’s only left on for specific visitors and definitely not Hulot. He almost doesn’t count as a person. And with the way the Arpel’s speak of him, it would seem as if he isn’t.

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Play Time: Inside Buildings, Life's a Mess (Part One)

By cobwebsandstrange on 8/9/10 6:25pm
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With the international success following around Jacques Tati’s two previous films, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953) and Mon Oncle (1958), there shouldn’t have been too many problems leading up to the release of what should be considered the director’s masterpiece. Produced over a few years during the sixties and finally released in 1967, Play Time, from its inception was rife with troubles.

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Nostalgia Corner: Can't Hardly Wait

By msarko on 8/9/10 5:26pm
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Talk to anyone who was coming of age in the millennial period and they'll likely tell you about growing up in two distinct periods. The first half, which ranges from roughly 1996 to the first half of 2001, was a time of optimism, innovation and diversity, albeit alongside a certain dearth of cultural maturity. The second half was a dramatically different time, an era of economic collapse, war, conservative politics and fear. To be a teenager in these two periods was confusing and rocky, and it often feels like the youthful drive that characterized the first half gets overshadowed by the grim, almost pre-apocalyptic feel of the latter half. It's difficult to look at, for instance, the comedies of the late 1990's as anything but hopelessly unprepared for the trying days ahead. The flamboyant party kids of the memorable high school movie Can't Hardly Wait were doomed to grow up to be the disaffected, over-medicated and generally floundering 20-somethings that dominate today's independent film scene.



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Adventureland: Losers on Film

By cobwebsandstrange on 8/9/10 10:45am
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I’ve never seen Twilight or parts of its affiliated franchise. I probably won’t either. So, through the majority of Adventureland I sat around wondering two things. First, how the filmmakers paid for all the music that was used and who had conned Ryan Reynolds into being a part of the cast. Of course, after figuring out who Kristen Stewart was that last question isn’t really applicable.

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Pranksters Go Wild: Jackass 3-D

By dfunzy on 8/9/10 7:33am
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Trailer Review

There have been two wildly commercially successful "Jackass" movies. If the first one hadn't been commercially successful, "Jackass 2, " and now "Jackass 3D," would not have been made. These flicks are not somebody's artistic statement, unless that somebody is from a bizarro world. "Jackass-3D," is made to be more successful than the first two, because it was filmed in 3-D!

Quoting the hype, thus spate the producers, 'technologically advanced 3D cameras" were used to make the third flick in the series. In so many words, the producers are saying: Come and watch it, you idiots, and see stuff thrown at you from the screen. Why? Well, why not? What else was 3D made for? Seriously.

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Walking Tall: A Well Meaning Cop Gets His Ass Handed to Him

By cobwebsandstrange on 8/8/10 8:02pm
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There’s a wealth of B-movie actions flicks that supposedly informed the likes of Quentin Tarantino and his consort. Whether or not the various lists floating around the internet have been comprised with any sort of real reference guide remains to be seen. But that’s how I stumbled upon Walking Tall. No, it’s not the Dewey Cox storey and its’ not the 2004 version of the story, replete with muscle bound former wrestlers. But this 1974 action flick has a high enough gore quotient to make a must-see for at least a few weirdoes out there.

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Mon Oncle: Modernity is a Mess (Part One)

By cobwebsandstrange on 8/8/10 6:29pm
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There are those filmmakers that work in such heavy handed modes that viewers don’t really need to think about what’s going on so much as simply waiting for the next explosion or dick joke. Jacques Tati crafted a long, if not plentiful, career of doing pretty much the opposite. That’s not to figure his few films for conceptually difficult material. The director had a point of view and he expressed it with very little dialogue, but a lot of quick and quirky stunts meant to clue movie goers into his thought process.

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