Tag Archives: Film

Film The Glow Vs. Fist Of Fury – Bruce Leroy And Bruce Lee Battle For Hollywood Shaolin Supremacy

by Dynast Amir
November 7, 2011 - 2:56 pm

In the 80’s And 90’s Tinseltown was overly saturated with a bunch of corny ass karate movies. Chinese martial arts was being exploited like a F list actress on a Hollywood “casting couch.” You had “American Ninja,” “Three Little Ninjas” and “Gymkata” just to name a few. OK, I have to admit that I own two copies of “Gymkata” On DVD, don’t ask me how the plots were all the same. Spoiled suburban white kid from Mulberry somehow gets enrolled in the three day accelerated Shaolin Master Kung Fu Program, they champion The Snake, The Dragon, The Crane, The Panther, and The Tiger which is administered by the old Asian sensei who is for some reason on his death bed and can only garner enough strength to teach the young disciple these moves that took the master years to master. These newly initiated Kung Fu Masters now travel to uncharted and hazardous lands that even the most proficient shaolin monk of old couldn’t navigate. They annihilate all obstacles in their path and in the grand finale they crush the head nemesis that is a fingernail away from destroying the planet and for some odd reason the ancient monks couldn’t accomplish this feat so they had to enlist the one who knows the “ancient way of the tiger” from Mulberry because the prophecy said so.

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Film Fall of Night: Film Short Review

by Barbie Brady
November 7, 2011 - 2:41 pm

Fall of Night is a story of four roommates who have lived together for fifteen years, and one of those roommates is M. Night Shyamalan.

This charming short is either a letter of scorn for the critically slain M. Night Shyamalan, or an open plea for him to get back to the essentials that made him. Writers, Steven Haas and Ross Raventos have captured the essence of what it might be like to be regular people sharing a home with an eccentric like M. Night.

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Film Something Big is Going Down… “Margin Call” (Film Review)

by Ariel Maccarone
October 25, 2011 - 8:26 am

The rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement has forced popular confrontation of the meaning of phrases like “these are hard times.” Unless you’ve spent time with a talkative grandparent who was alive during the Depression, not many of us understand what it means to wait in a soup line or to know a man who has killed himself after losing his life savings overnight. Recently released film “Margin Call” starring Kevin Spacey and Demi Moore effectively rams home these concepts for audiences in a way recent generations have yet to fully internalize.

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Film Violent Women in Film: Part Du

by Ariel Maccarone
October 24, 2011 - 11:27 am

Sex and violence sell. They are brands of identity just like the 1984 Ray Bans you sport alongside your trending saddle shoes and skinny jeans. It is the world we live in, and none of us will be able to drastically change it anytime soon. We can, however, begin to understand the culture that influences how we see one another and ourselves.

Today’s lesson: the relationship between violence and women as illustrated by upcoming horror film, “Julia X.” We touched upon “Julia X” in our recent article “Ladies Fight Back (and Win)” but the film is so dynamic that it warrants its own story. To refresh your memory, “Julia X” tells the story of a man and a woman who meet on an online dating site, which leads to an in-person encounter filled with an unexpected slew of macabre acts. In order to get the bottom of this film’s importance, we kidnapped its lead actor, Valerie Azlynn, and took our minds for a drive (no rope or duck tape required).

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Film Ladies Fight Back (and Win)

by Ariel Maccarone
October 18, 2011 - 11:50 am

Let us paint you a picture: end of the world; fires; floods; violence; no wifi. What do you do? You find a partner with whom to navigate the madness. Now imagine your options are say… Barak Obama, Bruce Willis and Angelina Jolie. Obviously you choose Bruce Willis. If you’ve been raised in the West (and we don’t mean Santa Monica) you do. Consider that the guy did a series of “Die Hard” films and maintains a composure surpassing that of Sylvester Stallone and any of these “Twilight” vampire kids. Bruce Willis is a “man’s man.” A “man’s man” is a survivor because he dominates his environment. So, what’s a woman’s woman then?

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Film “MONEYBALL” vs. “HE GOT GAME” and “THE DAMNED UNITED”

by Ariel Maccarone
September 30, 2011 - 5:50 pm

 

We are a nation of voyeurs. Ingrained in us is a deep-seeded obsession with celebrity, the hero and the underdog. We love to watch individuals rise. We love to taste their fall even more. And so is born the genre of sport-dramas.

“Moneyball” starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman opened last weekend. We’ve given it a week in theaters. And? What have the People to say?

As a filmmaker, if you’ve got a subject that’s been done a hundred times over (as with most sport-dramas), you’ve got a challenge on your hands. If you take that on, you better deliver. There are some films, however, that have hit it spot on. In order to illustrate, we offer a comparison of three films: “He Got Game,” “Moneyball,” and “The Damned United.”

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Film Is “Drive” Epic? (Film Review)

by admin
September 21, 2011 - 9:51 am

If you’ve given up on film being an art—which I know you have, even with the release of films like “Blue Valentine” (starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) and “Hannah” (starring Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett)—you must see “Drive” starring Ryan Gosling again, Carey Mulligan and Albert Brooks. We’re not kidding. If you don’t see this, your friends will negate your whole view on film, and we all know how important peer approval is, right?

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Film “Contagion” Kills it at the Box Office: Film Review

by Ariel Maccarone
September 20, 2011 - 9:20 am

As a kid, I’d walk home from school with my little brother and imagine what I’d do if giant waves (as tall as mountains) suddenly appeared. It was intriguing just to wonder what my reaction would be.

Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s thriller “Contagion” plays on this idea by suggesting how the present day world might react were we ever confronted with a disease as horrific as the Bubonic Plague.

The film opens with Gwyenth Paltrow’s character, a Minnesota woman (an excellent choice to ram the idea close to home for audiences) traveling overseas for business and, upon returning, becomes violently ill from a mysterious disease. Suddenly, worldwide, various people start coming down with the same symptoms and dying. There seems to be no cure, and this thing starts spreading into the tens of millions faster than you can say, “We’re f*cked.”

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Film What Lies Beneath: “Circumstance” Film Review

by Ariel Maccarone
September 9, 2011 - 9:13 am

Islamic fundamentalism, embodied by current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s claims that “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your [the U.S.] country,” takes a beating in writer/director Maryam Keshavarz’s new film, “Circumstance.” “Circumstance” tells the story of two young women escaping the Puritanism of their Iranian society by indulging in the underground youth culture of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. Although the women’s blossoming romantic relationship claims the forefront of the story, the film is not about homosexuality, but a raw probing of the repression of sexuality and cultural freedom as a whole in contemporary Iran.

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Film Lock Up Your Daughters! The Media is Coming: Film Review of “Miss Representation”

by Ariel Maccarone
September 8, 2011 - 7:46 am

We go to movies to be entertained, and as icing on the cake, maybe gain some insight into our crazy, confusing day-to-day lives. A documentary has to really stretch itself to catch our eye. Fortunately, one such documentary, “Miss Representation,” caught the eye of DJ Tina T, and motivated her to hold a private screening at Red Bull’s headquarters in Santa Monica this past Wednesday, August 30. “Representation” cleverly grabs hold of our attention, and redirects it toward the toxic media culture in which we’ve raised our daughters, and how much a role we play in creating that world.

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