Archive for the 'Filmmaking' Category

Be Kind Rewind

Published
by
Chalupa
on February 26, 2008
in Comedy and Filmmaking
. 2 Comments

If you’re any fan of Jack Black, you should probably see this. If you’re a fan of Mos Def, you should probably see this. Lastly, if you even remotely liked Michel Gondry’s previous films, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party or The Science of Sleep, you should probably see this.

Be Kind Rewind was the one movie I had been looking forward to seeing so far in 2008. I’m glad to say it didn’t disappoint one bit. Mos Def, Mike, works for Danny Glover, Mr. Fletcher in his video store. The building is facing being condemned and torn down by the city to pave the way for improvements. The store doesn’t see that much business, but it’s definitely a big part of the community. Mr. Fletcher goes on a short trip to strategize how to make the store more money, to pay for the required improvements, and leaves just one instruction, “Keep Jerry Out.” Jerry, played by Jack Black, is a bit of a bumbling fool hell-bent on his conspiracy theories. One night while trying to sabotage the government Jerry becomes oddly magnetized and, without knowing, erases all the tapes in Mr. Fletcher’s store.

One customer, who happens to be close friends with Mr. Fletcher, demands she gets Ghostbusters by 7:00pm or she’s telling the boss. Hilarity ensues as Mike and Jerry try to come up with a copy of Ghostbusters to keep the problem on the “down low” until they can fix it.

Rated PG-13, I would say this is a movie the whole family can enjoy…and I actually mean it. I’m not talking about Bambi or one of those other silly movies for kids that I get roped into seeing during the holidays every once in a while. I’m sure all of you know how hilarious Jack Black is, but I also think it’s worth pointing out Mos Def. As a musician-gone-actor, I’ve been pretty impressed with his performances. Usually people in the entertainment business who try to diversify their talents don’t do so well. Remember when Michael Jordan tried to play baseball? Even if Mos Def hasn’t been in a particularly great film, I feel like he’s always done his part to the best of his abilities - just like Samuel L. Jackson.

I can’t recommend this film enough. Go out and see it today, if it’s in your area, or keep your eyes peeled for when it hits the shelves on DVD. I loved this movie.

3/5/08 - Here are some “sweded” fan movies a friend gave me a link to.

Rating: ★★★★★

Overnight

Published
by
Chalupa
on February 20, 2008
in Documentary, Filmmaking and Independent
. 0 Comments

I remember seeing Boondock Saints for the first time with my buddies back home. We had rented it from Blockbuster because it looked interesting. We were all blown away by the movie and loved it right from the start. We wondered why this little gem never came out way in the theater. We wondered why we had never heard of it. We wondered why this didn’t have fame like The Matrix. Overnight pretty much explains the lack of success Boondock Saints had. It sums it up in two words, Troy Duffy.

I don’t know many people from Boston, but they all seem to be similar. Loud, obnoxious, opinionated and talkative are words I would use to describe them. I know this doesn’t describe people from that area so please don’t misinterpret this as a stereotype. This is just my limited experience.  Maybe it’s an East Coast vs my Midwest childhood.  Troy Duffy, writer and director of Boondock Saints, embodies these qualities and several other unsavory ones. According to this documentary it looks like he single-handedly sunk his ship and drove friends and family away with his pride, attitude, lack-of-respect and sailor-vocabulary.

Throughout this film you see Duffy pretty much being a jerk to everyone. I can’t think of a single time he was nice to anybody. He immediately put down or made fun of just about everybody he came in contact with. Harvey Weinstein, one of the Weinstein brothers and co-founder of Miramax, found and made Duffy and unmade Duffy. It’s pretty sad. Duffy was given so many opportunities and, in my opinion, flushed them all away by not keeping his mouth shut.

There’s a quote at the end:

“No man is really changed by success. What happens is that success works on the man’s personality like a truth drug, bringing him out of the closet and revealing…what was always inside his head. - Albert Goldman”

That pretty much sums up the writer and director of Boondock Saints. It’s too bad he took down so many people with him.

Rating: ★★★½☆

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 15, 2007
in Censorship, Documentary, Filmmaking, Independent and Investigation
. 1 Comment

If you’ve ever wondered about film ratings, then you have to go pick up this documentary. Kirby Dick, writer and director, takes a giant stab at the monster called MPAA. Afterwards, he then submits his almost finished product for a rating and I’m sure you won’t be surprised at what happens.

Dick starts off by trying to find out exactly who is in charge of these ratings. So he hires some private detectives and they soon find out names and faces of everybody involved. He then goes on to discover how not training or guidelines are even set on how the movies should be rated. Dick also brings in many directors who have recieved NC-17 ratings on their films and discusses what exactly warranted the rating. Time after time again they point out how two movies can have almost identical content and have totally different ratings.

This movie was awesome. It pretty much backed up everything I’ve been thinking about the film industry’s rating system for the past 10 years. It also pointed out how I’ve noticed that violence is ok in American and sex is ok in Europe. One really interesting comment by Kevin Smith (one of my favorite directors of all time) talked about how violence is even worse than sex. He pointed out how violence towards women is so commonplace in the movies and yet we wonder why it’s such a problem in our world today. I don’t think movies make people do anything, however, they present ideas and ideals that are teaching the children of America. Something to think about.

So if you consider yourself a movie person you HAVE to rent this one. I don’t think you’ll be dissapointed.

An Evening with Kevin Smith

Published
by
Chalupa
on July 31, 2006
in Comedy, Documentary and Filmmaking
. 0 Comments

If you’re a fan of Kevin Smith, maker of Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Jersey Girl, then you’ll probably like this one. Back in 2001 Kevin went around to several colleges where he fielded questions from his fans. In fact, I was supposed to go to one of these with my buddy Perry, but I had to finish writing a program for a class I was taking. Another one of my friends, Tara, ended up going instead. The cool thing is that you can see Perry and Tara in several parts of the film.

If you’re unaware, Kevin’s movies are crass, rude, offensive, vulgar and include lots of swearing and homosexual content. If this kind of stuff greatly offends you, I’m pretty certain that you will not enjoy this documentary of sorts. However, if you do enjoy Smith’s humor you’ll be delighted to hear stories about his run-in with Tim Burton, his discussion with Jon Peters over a Superman script, the documentary he shot for Prince and many other stories.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Published
by
Chalupa
on June 26, 2006
in Based on a book, Based on a novel, Black Comedy, Buddy Comedy, Comedy, Film Noir, Filmmaking, Murder, Mystery, Neo Noir, New York, Suicide, Thriller and Twist
. 0 Comments

From the previews I was really looking forward to this movie, but I have to say I was pretty disappointed with it after actually seeing it. I really wanted to just turn it off while watching. I felt like it was giving me attention deficit disorder. The flow was choppy and hard to follow, the events just didn’t make sense, the lines were cheesy, etc. I then realized why the movie seemed so weird. They were trying to mimic a myster-detective-trashy-romance paperback series they reference throughout the movie. When I finally realized this, everything started to make sense. However, I still didn’t like the movie.

For starters, we have Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan as the three main characters in the film. Downey is a theif-actor who is job shadowing Kilmer. Kilmer is an actual private detective investigating some murders. Monaghan is Downey’s childhood/high school crush that randomly turns up and runs into Downey. The movie is narrated throughout by Downey as he re-tells this story with Kilmer interjecting a couple times. I will say the movie is clever, but it’s probably a little too clever for most people to follow. So much so that I really, really wanted to just turn it off. Luckily I have a rule that I need to just watch movies til they’re over because you never know how you might feel about it after the credits start to roll.

Some of the reason it’s hard to follow, in my opinion, is because the story is being narrated. And just like when some people tell a story, Downey would accidently leave a part out or have to re-tell something. So the story would backup or pause while the details were worked out. The story also jumped from one character to another, which isn’t bad in itself (Look at Pulp Fiction for example), but didn’t flow very well. Another problem I had is that things just weren’t making sense. I felt like I was watching a soap opera at times. This can be explained by the following-the-book-genre theory of mine. People would say weird things or have stupid ideas, crazy thoughts, do weird things, etc. Many of the situation just seemed contrived and not real. There were even several times where nudity was introduced. However, it didn’t have a point and it wasn’t really that American Pie/National Lampoon-esque either. You know - the kind that draws in the 13-20 yr old crowd.

If I didn’t think this movie was the way it is, I would say this is probably the worst movie I’ve seen in a long time. I’m sure there are many that would disagree with me on this one, so maybe you should give it a watch yourself and then put up a comment as to what you think.

Adaptation

Published
by
Chalupa
on July 21, 2004
in Based on a novel, Comedy, Drama, Filmmaking, Flowers and Satire
. 1 Comment

Here’s another one of those movies I’ve been meaning to watch for a couple years. I got the chance to pick it up for $10 and jumped on it. Bendog has been on me forever to watch it and I finally did. A couple people told me this was going to be so much like Being John Malkovich. It was, but it wasn’t. I think the cast did a great job on this. Especially Cage, Chris Cooper, and Meryl Streep. Also enjoyed seeing Ron Livingston, star of my favorite Office Space.

Cage did an excellent job playing two characters. He was his own twin brother. One was outgoing, and dangerous. The other was a nervous wreck who always worried about what others thought. As the movie progressed you see these twin brothers playing off of each other and empowering each other in ways they never imagined. It was pretty cool. The movie seemed almost a bit dull and boring. At one part a motivational speaker of sorts chews out one of the characters for thinking “real life” is boring, dull, lifeless, un-fulfilling, disappointing, safe, etc. By the end of the movie this character realizes what “real life” really is.

This made me think a little about how I view life sometimes. Yeah, life can be disappointing, threatening, and discouraging…but things are really what you make out of them. It sorta goes back to the cup being half empty or half full. Now I really get annoyed with this illustration, but there’s some good stuff in it. Nobody really makes you do much of anything. It’s all your choice. That annoying co-worker doesn’t piss you off, you choose to get worked up about them. Well, I was about to come up with a bunch of other examples, but I’m sure you can come up with whatever on your own. I know people that have had unbelievable amounts of hardship and I know some people that seem to have had to deal with none at all. It’s always interesting to see how these people act. Some people go through hard times and come out bitter while others don’t. Some people have no hard times and are bitter while others aren’t. It’s all a matter of how you perceive and react. It’s also usually not where you are that makes or breaks the situation but who you’re there with.