While the GOP gathers in tropical storm-plagued Tampa to Do That Thing They Do, this week’s new DVD selections feature a rallying cry against the status quo and an overblown, flag-waving spectacle based on a board game that, all things considered, is still pretty fun to watch.
HIGH: #ReGeneration (Virgil Films; $19.99, DVD)
Who’s Responsible: Written and directed by Phillip Montgomery; narrated (and produced) by Ryan Gosling; appearances by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Talib Kweli.
What It’s All About: The film’s marketing suggests it’s a documentary about the Occupy movement, but it’s got a more ambitious agenda than that. #ReGeneration feels less interested in the economic roots of the protests than in the cultural underpinnings of Occupy (mass media manipulation, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, corporatization, the crumbling educational infrastructure, our interactions with computer and TV screens instead of each other). Interview subjects include activists, intellectuals, high school students, the founder of Adbusters magazine, and just plain folks who feel somewhat helpless about their ability to change the world.
Why It’s Schmancy: Packing such ambitious subject matter into 81 minutes leads to a certain lack of focus, but the movie ultimately stands as a rallying cry for the new “Me Generation” to rediscover a sense of community and to fight back against being turned into wage-slave drones controlled by shadowy figures on high. It’s also probably one of the few documentaries you’ll ever see that features critiques of the media from both the legendarily leftist Chomsky and Libertarian Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson.
Why You Should Buy It: The bonus features are relatively meager, but the deleted scenes include more thoughts from the late Zinn (A People’s History of the United States), some interesting interviews with Japanese teens and…
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Also in Friday morning’s briefs round up, Edinburgh and NY Asian Film Festival set their lineups with Disney’s Brave headed to Scotland, Kick-Ass alum bid for a return to the sequel, while Universal torpedoes a rival Battleship.
11th New York Asian Film Festival Sets Slate
Fifty feature films and three programs of shorts including 20 North American and one U.S. premiere are on tap for the event hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Subway Cinema June 29th – July 15th in New York. The North American debut of Vulgaria about a “hapless movie producer trying to get his skin flick off the ground, who will do anything to finance it, including auctioning off visitation rights to the daughter he adores and sucking up to gangsters” will open the event.
Around the ‘net…
Dark Knight Rises and Hunger Games Win Golden Trailer Awards
The Dark Knight Rises won “Best in Show” at the 13th Golden Trailer Awards. The movie also snagged the Best Summer Trailer for 2012, while Snow White and the Huntsman took the award for Best Action trailer, Deadline reports.http://pmcmovieline.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=157463&action=edit&message=1
Disney’s Brave Set for Edinburgh Film Festival
The latest Disney animation is set in a mythical Sottish Highlands. The 66th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival will feature 121 new films from 52 countries, including 19 world premieres. Other highlights incude 7 Days in Havana with Benicio Del Toro and thriller Killer Joe from Exorcist director William Friedkin, which will open the event running June 20th – July 1st in the Scottish capital, BBC reports.
Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz Close in on Kick-Ass 2
Original cast members Aaron Johnson and Chloe Moretz are close to making deals to return for the sequel. The 2010 original cost $28 million…
“Even though the media exhibit enormous sophistication and historical perspective in a thousand different ways — not that I can think of a specific example right now — they are far too often bedazzled by the sheer novelty of a story. If you watch cable news, for example, you know all too well that if there are two child kidnappings in the same month, the first one gets far more attention than the second. This same law applies to box-office bombs. With Battleship, the fascination with Hollywood flop sweat had already worn off. When I asked a veteran showbiz reporter why his publication had spent so little time covering the demise of Battleship, he joked: ‘I guess we all had the same reaction — didn’t we just write that story already?’” [LAT]
Don’t let the overseas Battleship hype fool you: “Allen’s Rome-set pic, consisting of four non-intersecting vignettes, one of which starring Roberto Benigni — making a rare appearance in a film not directed by himself — pulled more alone than the total weekend gross of the five titles that follow it in Italy’s weekend box office chart: Battleship, Titanic 3D, Street Dance 2, Mirror Mirror and The Intouchables, which together totaled $3.54 million this weekend. ‘The combined effect of Allen and Benigni proved to be huge magnet,’ said one Italo exhibber.” Related: I am totally calling my next band Italo Exhibber. [Variety
Universal and Hasbro’s $200 million-plus Battleship has emerged overseas, prompting one Germany-based critic to gas up his flamethrower and go to town: “This thing is an Asylum movie with hundreds of millions of dollars of gloss on it. And much like that hallowed studio, Battleship also feels free to snake ideas from other flicks. In fact, all of its ideas come from somewhere else. Its alien design steals from Halo and Power Rangers as well as a highly recognizable character from Green Lantern. The plot tricks come straight from ID4 (including a “Welcome to Earth”-style line for Rihanna (who, no kidding, is one of the few actually trying hard to deliver a real performance)). By the time they copy Transformers, Terminator and Predator, it’s sad. When they copy Titanic and Space Cowboys, it’s downright depressing.” Can’t wait! [Film School Rejects]
Full Story »A new batch of Battleship stills show singer-turned-actress Rihanna in Navy gear manning all manner of combat machinery as the resident weapons specialist in Taylor Kitsch’s crew. But can her feature debut in Peter Berg’s summer blockbuster counteract the criticism she’s getting from reuniting, at least professionally, with Chris Brown?
The stills (below, via Universal and Digital Spy) hit the web at a conspicuous time for Rihanna, who was assaulted in 2009 by then-boyfriend Brown. After a three-year split, during which time Brown was sentenced to domestic violence counseling and community service and ordered to stay away from Rihanna by restraining order, the two collaborated on a pair of songs released this week.
According to producer The-Dream, who oversaw the “Birthday Cake” remix featuring Brown, the move was Rihanna’s idea. “The true thing really is to forgive,” he explained to Billboard Magazine. “And … you want to believe in people.”
Some celeb-watchers take the reunion as more than just a professional expression of forgiveness. “The message couldn’t have been clearer to the world,” writes Hollywood Life’s Bonnie Fuller. “We’re a couple again and we’re saying it in the strongest way that we know how — through our music.”
That seems like a bit of a stretch, but whatever the relationship, many fans who supported Rihanna as she bounced back from the public fallout of the 2009 incident are understandably upset that the 24-year-old would unite on any front with her former attacker.
Enter Battleship. Over a year after the assault, Rihanna was cast as Petty Officer Raikes in Universal’s naval actioner. She’d been looking to break into film already, telling MTV in 2008 that she was…
Full Story »This ain’t your father’s Battleship! Check that: this isn’t even your Battleship. The first trailer for the Universal production of Battleship has debuted online, and it promises a whole lot of ridiculous and nonsensical Michael Bay-y action. No fooling: Battleship looks like an amalgam of Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and the last hour of Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Thrust in the middle of this insanity is Friday Night Lights star Taylor Kitsch, and while he was somewhat muted in the cool trailer for John Carter, he gets to run the full gamut of over-the-top emotions in Battleship. Check out his seven best faces from the trailer ahead.
Directed by Peter Berg, Battleship also stars Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgard, the lovely Brooklyn Decker and Rihanna. It sinks into theaters on May 18, 2012. Watch the full trailer below.
VERDICT: D4.
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