SMART PEOPLE starring Ellen Page and a cast of nobodies.
September 22, 2008
Dennis Quaid plays a college proffessor with an attitude problem, an overly bright disfunctional family and a large Wallmart Carrier bag full of emotional turmoil.
The Tiny, Ellen Page, his daughter, is a huge pain in the arse. The model teenager looking to get the perfect S.A.T score.
Its the first proper grown up hollywood role for Canadian Page, She doesn`t get to cut any mens balls off, get pregnant or show off her ass but she does get to say “FUCK” a lot.
She is more Dick Chaney than Dick head, constantly working on her school exams and unable to relax. Enter her fathers adopted brother, (Thomas Haden Church), a young middle aged well meaning drop out who seems to be a constant dissapointment to him moving into his house and life, disrupting the status quo, and befriending the professers stuck up daughter, Page.
>From the producers of “SIDEWAYS”, Smart People is another independent slow burner of a movie.
The story centres around the brooding relationship between the professor and doctor Sarah Jessica Rabbit out of “Shoes in the City”.
Hayden Church introduces young republican Page to smoking dope, getting drunk and having hedonistic fun. At one stage, in all sincerity, whilst drunk, Ellen asks a group of girls at the bar, “What`s it like being stupid ?”
The Christmas meal scene is funny but for a comedy its a bit short on laughs. Eventually, the family start to get their shit together and like each other more. But Page feels alienated as she has no peer group to fit in to.She helps her father get his constantly rejected book published by re titling it “You can`t read”. Sarah Jessica Shoes gets a bit pregnant.The professor learns his lesson and trys hard not to be so obnoxious. blah blah blah.
There`s a bloody huge explosion, buildings fall down, dinosaurs roam freely and the big fight scene with Jerry Springer is a blood fest.
Ok so I made that last paragraph up.
Dennis Quaid is good, Thomas Hayden Church is excellent, but Ellen Page`s first adult role seems underplayed. Probably because in every other film she has appeared in the last four years.
She has played smart talking, unhinged charecters.
Sarah Jessica Parker is ordinary. It goes on a bit to be honest and I like this sort of film, but this goes nowhere. Slowly.
The reviews for it have been patchy, and so is mine. I obviously only watched it for Ellen Page and to be honest I was a little dissapointed. but hey ho, roll on “WHIP IT” at christmas time.
The Tracey Fragments
September 22, 2008
Director Bruce Mc Donald
Staring Ellen Page and nobody else
“One day you fall for this boy, and he touches you with his fingers, and he burns holes in your skin with his mouth, and it hurts when you look at him. And it hurts when you don`t, and it feels like someones cut you open with a jagged piece of glass.”
The Tracey Fragments is just that. Fragments of Traceys life. Shown in cut ups, overlays and screen in screen visuals. Tracey, (Ellen Page) is riding a night bus, dressed only in a shower curtain, “Fifteen, just a normal girl who hates herself” .
The film is a brilliantly confused mish mash from Traceys psychotic addled memory, telling the story forwards, backwards and sideways.
She has lost her nine year old brother, Sonny, he has it seeded run away, or dissapeared.
” we looked for Sonny for two days but he never came back, I gotta find him and nobody can stop me ”
But you know from the opening ten minutes of lacerated madness that all is not what it seems.
Traceys memories mix easily with her increasingly bizarre fantasy world. A world of being Cool. Of being a rock star. A world of being innocent.
and Ellen Page gets to say the word “CUNT” loudly. three times.
Bullied at home by demented parents.
Bullied at school by everyone ,mainly for having small tits. Indeed the first half of the film seems wildly pre occupied with Traceys small tits. “Tits are crucial, girls at our school wear them like medals”
When a new boy arrives at her school Traceys fantasy world is thrown into overdrive. What is real ? What is just a product of Traceys imagination ? you decide.
There are some cracking scenes and visual set pieces. The dinner table barking child, The Tracey Zero Dreamscape, The pimp rape scene, The telephone Box. it`s all good.
The Tracey Fragments was filmed six months before Ellen Page started rehearsals for “JUNO” yet it has only just got an American Cinema release and will go straight to video in Europe. Repeated watching the film on video is probably the only way to fully appreciate and understand it, so bizarre is its nature.
The story, and there is one, gets more and more harrowing and sordid before you reach anywhere near any answers or conclusions.
Which ? if any of Traceys warped memories are factual and which fabrication.
Had it snowed or had it not ?. Did it matter ?
I won`t spoil the story by revealing too much, but even if I did it probably wouldn`t make too much sense written down in words.
There are a couple of good songs on the soundtrack, “Horses” by Patti Smith and “Rock n Roll”. Broken Social Scene score the film. There are no car crashes, no explosions but Tracey does get to say “FUCK” an awful lot.
The Conclusions I came too were it hadn`t snowed and Ellen Page looked fuckin` mint dressed only in a shower curtain.
DVD Reviews
June 20, 2008
Got a mate around and not having a TV (which he is addicted to) he said lets get a few ‘feel good’ DVDs from the library (free) and watch them after work.
So, tonight I’m going to introduce him to ‘Threads’ and ‘Love Object’, two really fucked up but important films.
Threads is a 1985 British movie written by the brilliant Barry Hines, but it’s not feel good. It is definitely feel bad. It’s the British anti nuclear war film made (amazingly) by the BBC and it’s really hardcore. Open mouthed stuff. Hollywood it is not. Small cute child playing with kitten - evaporated. Old grandmother doing her knitting - evaporated. The aftermath is even more horrifying. It made me cry.
It’s all shot in Sheffield, which still looks like it’s been hit by a holocaust. Desperate Housewives it aint. I don’t think my mate’s going to like it alot, but fuck him. I didn’t want to watch his choices. ‘American Pie - The Gangbang’ or the complete ‘Police Academy’ movie series on 26 DVDs.
Love Object is from the producers of ‘American Psycho’. It’s about obsession - but very weird obsession. A man falls in love with an anatomically accurate silicone sex doll and she comes between him and his girlfriend of the moment. Very, very dangerously weird and that’s coming from me.
Anyway, he will probably want to go to bed early or cut his chav wrists.
Hey Hoo.
‘Condemned’ Review (Just like on Film 2008, but Honest)
May 15, 2008
Got a bootleg of a seriously fucked up movie out this summer. It’s called ‘Condemned’. starring, amongst mainly a cast of motley Scottish punks with mohican hair cuts and too much eye liner, Bob Hoskins and Sean Pertwee. The sceanrio gets a bit copycat Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, Mad Max, with Scotland closed off forever (not a bad idea in itself) by a mad virus that killed everybody it seems except middle aged tatooed Siouxie and The Banshees fans. After 25 years of being quarantined Scotland is deemed dead by the worlds governments and forgotton about. We’d obviously got all their oil by then.
Then the virus resurfaces in London. Cue ‘Doomsday’ scenario, flood London, kill all 12 million inhabitants to contain the illness. Unless a crew of English tough guy soldiers can find a cure in jockland within 48 hours.
Lots of dead bodies, Mad Max tanks, expensive explosions, motorbike chases and a stupid dash to find Professor Malcolm McDowell (The monkey man out of Planet Of The Apes), who seems to hold the answer to every question posed to man since the dawn of time.
It’s a huge, expensive mess of a movie, which will no doubt do really well at the Box Office.
It also features medieval Knights of the Round Table and the steam train out of ‘Harry Potter and a Load Of Witches’
Eventually, beardy Monkey Man McDowell shows himself. He’s gone born again Baby Jesus crazy as a loon. As all this is happening London is being overrun by infected vomity types and time is running out. But of course there is a twist. Not a very good one, obviously, but before I tell you what it is, believe me I’m telling you for your own good. So you’re not tempted to see it when it comes out I’ll tell you the ending.
It features Gladiators. Not those poofy tarts appearing on Sky One for the dribbly satellite viewing brain deads out there, but full on mental Russell Crowe meets a hungry lion type.
It’s a very silly film for stupid people. Ending with Scottish punk Aston Martin car chase and a Police car carrering into a ravine to the tune of Frankie Goes To Hollywoods’ `Two Tribes`. Risible.
And the twist. The English Government wants to cull most of the over populated human race and doesn’t really want the cure anyway.
Cue end titles. Cue sick bag.
Bollocks. Utter Bollocks.
Jon Fat Beast.
Business Reviews
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