First time director Ryan O'Nan gives us this heartwarming tale of a group rabbled together in the search of winning a battle of the bands contest in California on a roadtrip from New York via Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Mississippi.
O'Nan also wrote the screenplay and stars as Alex, a deadbeat musician who works in a dead-end job as an estate agent yet can not give up on his dream of being a successful singer-songwriter. After being dumped by his latest partner, Kyle (Jason Ritter - fine cameo) over creative differences; Alex writes songs of feeling and honesty, Kyle writes about sex crazed werewolves which he deems autobiographical.
After hearing one of his sets, Jim (Michael Weston) comes up with a plan for them to work together as a musical duo. Jim claims himself to be a musical revolutionary, and Alex can write the words for them to sing.
To get to that stage of the plan being hatched by Jim; we firstly though have to navigate a tough first act of meeting Alex. A depressed individual whose heart has been broken by Erin, a girl we never see but who wrote a letter to Alex explaining why they cannot be together. This heartbreak causes Alex to act somewhat sociopathically when we first meet him - he dresses as a musical moose playing for mentally handicapped children. When one child pretends to stab him with a fake knife, Alex punches said kid in the face numerous times. Then he throws a water dispenser in his estate agent office at a threatening colleague, probably breaking his neck.
This sort of unnerving behaviour is in stark contrast to the heart-tugging music Alex is obviously capable of, and the film could have gone into darker territory. Luckily the injection of Jim into the storyline, by punching Alex in the face, takes the film out of New York city and onto the highways and byways of America.
Reluctantly, the two of them proceed with their dual dream of performing winning music; the scene when they compose their first song in the car whilst recording it is one of magic thanks in part to the feeling of spontaneity elicited by the musical performance and the use of Jim's toy instruments (player pianos, toy trumpets, gazoos) mixed with the natural harmonies they create. This scene changes the film from a piece about a guy who feels sorry for himself into one that is confident in praising the value of sharing your dreams with like-minded people.
Once they get to the first gig, they attract the attention of Cassidy (Arielle Kebbel) a young entrepreneur but inexperienced tour manager who likes their alluring sound ('sounds like something Bowie would do when he was 6'); the connection between Alex and Cassidy is evident from the start and this blows into a romance until she runs off with the guys money.
This prompts the guys to break up and Alex to show up on his brother Brian's (Andrew McCarthy - yes he of Weekend at Bernie's/Mannequin) house looking for a place to stay. Whilst Brian is over-religious and deflecting onto his genius son Jackson, Alex rekindles his belief in himself as a musician when he composes a song with Jackson at bedtime.
The inevitable final act of reformation and reunion is handled with distinction and not overdone with sentimentality; a victory for sheer belief and resilience.
A film that could have been twee and off the cuff is instead one of freedom and creativity; both funny ('I like your sound like a mix of The Shins meets Sesame Street') and engaging. It follows in the footsteps of recent American independent road-movie films Easier With Practice (2010) and Passenger Side (2009) that are brilliantly acted, shot well (here by Gavin Kelly) and have kick-ass soundtracks.
The Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best is distributed by Signature Entertainment and is in cinemas across the UK on Friday 20th July
http://www.signature-entertainment.co.uk/
Showing posts with label road-trip movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label road-trip movie. Show all posts
Monday, 2 July 2012
Monday, 9 April 2012
Las acacias
Following in the footsteps of fellow Argentinian directors - Lisandro Alonso, Pablo Trapero - to garner critical acclaim with a debut feature (Las acacias won the Sutherland Award for Best First Film at the London Film Festival in 2011), Pablo Giorgelli's debut receives a home entertainment release today on DVD and Blu-Ray.
Giorgelli co-wrote the script with Salvador Roselli (who also authored Bombon el perro (2004)), tells the slight story of truck driver Ruben (German de Silva) who delivers lumber from Paraguay to Buenos Aires. He is informed by his boss he must transport a young mother Jacinta (Hebe Duarte) and her five month old son also.
Little is informed or given to us of the two actors pasts, so we are told details about them as they learn about each other. The film refuses to leave the confines of the truck cab, not allowing location photography to overshadow the human story being told here.
Giorgelli was given the gift of De Silva, a professional actor, who uses his presence and nobility (not to dissimilar to the same acacias' he transports), to tell you more when very little is said. Duarte is an untrained actor but her striking, alluring face makes you want to know more about her.
In the same vein as his contemporaries, in terms of physical restraint and keeping narrative clues close to his chest Giorgelli portrays the blossoming of a beautiful friendship taking place between two strangers; Ruben never got to know his son that was taken away from him, so the connection between the five month old child, allows us and him to see how good of a father he could become or could have been.
Neither flashy, nor boring the film is another creative exponent of the cinematic explosion occuring right now in Argentina and surrounding South American countries with so much good viable work being released and viewed - a willingness to put individuals first with universal storylines about loneliness, isolation, love and companionship.
Las Acacias is released on DVD by Verve Pictures on Monday 9th April
My thanks to Rabbit Publicity for the disc
Giorgelli co-wrote the script with Salvador Roselli (who also authored Bombon el perro (2004)), tells the slight story of truck driver Ruben (German de Silva) who delivers lumber from Paraguay to Buenos Aires. He is informed by his boss he must transport a young mother Jacinta (Hebe Duarte) and her five month old son also.
Little is informed or given to us of the two actors pasts, so we are told details about them as they learn about each other. The film refuses to leave the confines of the truck cab, not allowing location photography to overshadow the human story being told here.
Giorgelli was given the gift of De Silva, a professional actor, who uses his presence and nobility (not to dissimilar to the same acacias' he transports), to tell you more when very little is said. Duarte is an untrained actor but her striking, alluring face makes you want to know more about her.
In the same vein as his contemporaries, in terms of physical restraint and keeping narrative clues close to his chest Giorgelli portrays the blossoming of a beautiful friendship taking place between two strangers; Ruben never got to know his son that was taken away from him, so the connection between the five month old child, allows us and him to see how good of a father he could become or could have been.
Neither flashy, nor boring the film is another creative exponent of the cinematic explosion occuring right now in Argentina and surrounding South American countries with so much good viable work being released and viewed - a willingness to put individuals first with universal storylines about loneliness, isolation, love and companionship.
Las Acacias is released on DVD by Verve Pictures on Monday 9th April
My thanks to Rabbit Publicity for the disc
Monday, 26 March 2012
The Doom Generation
Released today on DVD is Gregg Araki's 1995 teenage road movie The Doom Generation starring Rose McGowan, James Duval and Jonathon Schaech.
Following in the footsteps of Natural Born Killers and Kalifornia, the film follows would be femme fatale Amy Blue (McGowan) with her doe-eyed boyfriend Jordan White (Duval), who get wound up with a psychopath Xavier Red (Schaech), who kills people and end up as accomplices on a road trip from hell across the Californian state highways.
Araki, is a huge film fan, but a director who in spite of his ability has never had the huge crossover hit, and watching this film you can see why. Araki sometimes has too many ideas going on at one time, or he has too many influences running through his head and the wish to embrace and appraise said influences sometimes does a disservice to the film as a whole.
Not to say it is bad for end of the millenium directors to have influences, yet Araki does join Tarantino and Eli Roth as directors who cut and paste films based on their film viewing without having a distinctive authorial voice. Whilst Tarantino has the uncanny ability to whip out five pages of memorable dialogue, this foregoes the lack of visual flair; and Roth falls back on the ability of shock and awe to enhance his failure to write good dialogue.
Araki has the ability to have his finger on the pulse of an ever-changing youth culture; when we first encounter Jordan and Amy it is whilst Jordan is in a moshpit and Amy is telling some guy to f off who asks her for some drugs.
Yet you never get the impression that these drifters are apparently drifting, or they will eventually drift back to normality once Xavier is out of their lives. Araki's penchant for a mixture of sexual exploration for the characters, combined with a healthy dose of gore does go hand in hand - in recent films post-Millenium, Araki has explored the notion of sexual politics in the youth culture from both hetero- and homosexual stances, as he did in Kaboom (2010).
This does not make the film Doom Generation, a bad one there are enough to keep you interested and it does have some great set pieces of violence in the vein of Stone's masterpiece, Natural Born Killers, yet it is very much a case of a director trying to do too much in a very short space of time. Whereas those killers were very violent and knew that they were inherently evil, these ones are a little too reflexive and unaware of their actions.
The Doom Generation is out today from Second Sight Films courtesy of Aim Publicity
Following in the footsteps of Natural Born Killers and Kalifornia, the film follows would be femme fatale Amy Blue (McGowan) with her doe-eyed boyfriend Jordan White (Duval), who get wound up with a psychopath Xavier Red (Schaech), who kills people and end up as accomplices on a road trip from hell across the Californian state highways.
Araki, is a huge film fan, but a director who in spite of his ability has never had the huge crossover hit, and watching this film you can see why. Araki sometimes has too many ideas going on at one time, or he has too many influences running through his head and the wish to embrace and appraise said influences sometimes does a disservice to the film as a whole.
Not to say it is bad for end of the millenium directors to have influences, yet Araki does join Tarantino and Eli Roth as directors who cut and paste films based on their film viewing without having a distinctive authorial voice. Whilst Tarantino has the uncanny ability to whip out five pages of memorable dialogue, this foregoes the lack of visual flair; and Roth falls back on the ability of shock and awe to enhance his failure to write good dialogue.
Araki has the ability to have his finger on the pulse of an ever-changing youth culture; when we first encounter Jordan and Amy it is whilst Jordan is in a moshpit and Amy is telling some guy to f off who asks her for some drugs.
Yet you never get the impression that these drifters are apparently drifting, or they will eventually drift back to normality once Xavier is out of their lives. Araki's penchant for a mixture of sexual exploration for the characters, combined with a healthy dose of gore does go hand in hand - in recent films post-Millenium, Araki has explored the notion of sexual politics in the youth culture from both hetero- and homosexual stances, as he did in Kaboom (2010).
This does not make the film Doom Generation, a bad one there are enough to keep you interested and it does have some great set pieces of violence in the vein of Stone's masterpiece, Natural Born Killers, yet it is very much a case of a director trying to do too much in a very short space of time. Whereas those killers were very violent and knew that they were inherently evil, these ones are a little too reflexive and unaware of their actions.
The Doom Generation is out today from Second Sight Films courtesy of Aim Publicity
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place
In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus. Kesey and the Pranksters intended to make a documentary about their trip, shooting footage on 16MM, but the film was never finished and the footage has remained virtually unseen.
Alex Gibney is most famous for his Oscar winning documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Client 9, his take on the end of Eliot Spitzer's governorship of New Jersey. Gibney is at times prolific yet his ability to be almost Winterbottom-esque to his output does not mean the quality of the material is diminished. Gibney is versatile - overtly political most of the time, he is not an angry documentarian like Michael Moore, nor attempts to be front and centre like his fellow American. Gibney remains firmly away from the camera, he chooses to use generic documentary conventions like voiceovers and interviews to tell the story.
For Magic Trip, all the material to tell the story has been assembled for some time. The problem has been one of synchronisation between the visuals and the audio track. For years, the tapes of film were put into a vault for decades until Gibney and his colleague, Alison Ellwood come to restore pride to the work, they were given unprecedented access to this raw footage by the Kesey family. They worked with the Film Foundation, HISTORY and the UCLA Film Archives to restore over 100 hours of film and audiotape, and have shaped an invaluable document of this extraordinary piece of American history.
The whole essence for the cross-country trip stems from a post-1963 funk that the author Ken Kesey has gotten himself into following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November of that year. The story goes that Kesey was in New York with friends to visit the forthcoming site of the World Fair in 1964 (archive footage of JFK phoning/dialling '1-9-6-4' is particularly poignant), and he hit upon the idea when driving in his Station Wagon and listening to news from Dallas of the President's death, Kesey fell upon an idea to drive cross country in a bus with friends and aim for the World Fair.
The film uses archive interviews with now older travellers reflecting upon their trip as they reminisce and view the footage for the first time in years. So instead of a narrator, Gibney uses the actual passengers to tell the story and paint the picture along with the masses of visual evidence. This is an engaging type of direction for this type of picture - instead of talking head interviews with people sat in a dark room, you have this alternative type of director's commentary going on that places you right in the action, making you feel a part of this alternative voyage of personal discovery across America.
Unlike other road trips that have characters who become crazy on the trip, a lot of them admit that they are not all there and are not helped by the doses of LSD they ingest on the journey.
The film apart from a solid documentary about the craziest bus ride it is also a potted history of the use of recreational drug use. The document also notes about how America is slowly changing and when they arrive in New Orleans, they note how music changes there, how the feminist movement began and how the Civil Rights movement was slowly beginning to rumble as Dr. Martin Luther King made his speech in Selma.
At times the comedy can be a little forced as the group having lived, driven and slept together for so long do struggle for entertainment purposes, Neal Cassady becomes the entertainment chair of the group and at times the joke falls on deaf ears.
Yet that criticism is itself a minor one, as the film is cleverly about more than the trip but about the creation of friendships and life-long bonds between people who may not ordinarily have been grouped together during a monumental change of the American landscape as music, society and politics were changing forever - with the spirit of Kerouac and the first people who headed out west in search of new frontiers as wind in their sails, or petrol in the bus perhaps.
This group decided to go and see the America they thought they knew, their document stands up as a vital part of the counter-culture Sixties.
The film is in cinemas from 18th November and will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray from 28th November and is distributed by Organic Marketing.
Alex Gibney is most famous for his Oscar winning documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Client 9, his take on the end of Eliot Spitzer's governorship of New Jersey. Gibney is at times prolific yet his ability to be almost Winterbottom-esque to his output does not mean the quality of the material is diminished. Gibney is versatile - overtly political most of the time, he is not an angry documentarian like Michael Moore, nor attempts to be front and centre like his fellow American. Gibney remains firmly away from the camera, he chooses to use generic documentary conventions like voiceovers and interviews to tell the story.
For Magic Trip, all the material to tell the story has been assembled for some time. The problem has been one of synchronisation between the visuals and the audio track. For years, the tapes of film were put into a vault for decades until Gibney and his colleague, Alison Ellwood come to restore pride to the work, they were given unprecedented access to this raw footage by the Kesey family. They worked with the Film Foundation, HISTORY and the UCLA Film Archives to restore over 100 hours of film and audiotape, and have shaped an invaluable document of this extraordinary piece of American history.
The whole essence for the cross-country trip stems from a post-1963 funk that the author Ken Kesey has gotten himself into following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November of that year. The story goes that Kesey was in New York with friends to visit the forthcoming site of the World Fair in 1964 (archive footage of JFK phoning/dialling '1-9-6-4' is particularly poignant), and he hit upon the idea when driving in his Station Wagon and listening to news from Dallas of the President's death, Kesey fell upon an idea to drive cross country in a bus with friends and aim for the World Fair.
The film uses archive interviews with now older travellers reflecting upon their trip as they reminisce and view the footage for the first time in years. So instead of a narrator, Gibney uses the actual passengers to tell the story and paint the picture along with the masses of visual evidence. This is an engaging type of direction for this type of picture - instead of talking head interviews with people sat in a dark room, you have this alternative type of director's commentary going on that places you right in the action, making you feel a part of this alternative voyage of personal discovery across America.
Unlike other road trips that have characters who become crazy on the trip, a lot of them admit that they are not all there and are not helped by the doses of LSD they ingest on the journey.
The film apart from a solid documentary about the craziest bus ride it is also a potted history of the use of recreational drug use. The document also notes about how America is slowly changing and when they arrive in New Orleans, they note how music changes there, how the feminist movement began and how the Civil Rights movement was slowly beginning to rumble as Dr. Martin Luther King made his speech in Selma.
At times the comedy can be a little forced as the group having lived, driven and slept together for so long do struggle for entertainment purposes, Neal Cassady becomes the entertainment chair of the group and at times the joke falls on deaf ears.
Yet that criticism is itself a minor one, as the film is cleverly about more than the trip but about the creation of friendships and life-long bonds between people who may not ordinarily have been grouped together during a monumental change of the American landscape as music, society and politics were changing forever - with the spirit of Kerouac and the first people who headed out west in search of new frontiers as wind in their sails, or petrol in the bus perhaps.
This group decided to go and see the America they thought they knew, their document stands up as a vital part of the counter-culture Sixties.
The film is in cinemas from 18th November and will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray from 28th November and is distributed by Organic Marketing.
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