Catching up

Let's get the TV out of the way first:

nip/tuck

s5, e20

Katee Sackhoff is naked in a funny scene, and she's sexy, but you can't really see anything. My advice is that it's not really worth a download if you're only looking for nudity.

 

I watched four movies yesterday. One of them was a complete dud called Los Angeles. It looks like it was improvised by the actors and shot with a home camcorder, but it is (to the best of my knowledge), the best film which stars both Dick van Patten and Sticky Fingaz. It has no nudity, so avoid at all costs.

 

Extreme Movie

Extreme Movie is a genre-spoof comedy and, given that premise, it probably should be marketed under a different name. I started out with a bad taste in my mouth from having watched the immeasurably awful Disaster Movie plus Date Movie and Epic Movie, and I naturally assumed that this was from the same creative team. As it turns out, I was wrong. Extreme Movie covers the same territory as those unfunny wastes of time, but it is from a completely different group, the people who created Not Another Teen Movie, which is quite watchable.

Extreme Movie spoofs the most popular "coming of age" films, and is presented in skit format, but the skits are loosely interconnected with the thin premise that all of the characters are in high school together, so there are some central characters, and a minor character from a previous skit will occasionally appear later in a cameo in another skit, when such an appearance is good for a laugh of recognition. Like Not Another Teen Movie, it ends with a rousing musical number.

The humor is hit and miss, and I suppose there are probably more misses, but there is also some very funny material, so you have to wonder why the film's creators would want to create an association with the awful films mentioned above.

There are two good nude scenes:

In the first, Heather Hogan makes a sexy topless internet video for her boyfriend, but things go wrong.

The second is the musical number featuring topless appearances by Christina Derosa (brunette) and Cristin Michele (blond). They both look good with their clothes off, and Derosa does a good spoof of Broadway-style singing. Also featured in the number is Dan, from The Dan Band, as "Gigundocock."

 

Palo Alto, CA

2007

Four college freshmen, friends in a suburban high school, return to their home town for their first Thanksgiving as college guys. They pull a prank together, then separate for the night to have their own adventures. The tone of the film shifts, often in unpredictable steps, from comedy to drama to sentimental romance.

There are some things to critique in this movie, and I will do that in a bit, but in the long run those criticisms are not very important for two reasons:

(1) Overall, I enjoyed the movie very much, and there are many positives. To wit:

• The four story lines are interesting, and the editing is slick, so the individual adventures are interwoven seamlessly and cleverly into a clear narrative.
• There are poignant moments, and good laughs.
• The performances are almost uniformly excellent, The director even pulled a good performance out of Tom Arnold!
• The musical score works perfectly.
• I enjoyed the complex characters, and the writer/director packed a tremendous amount of character development into a short film that takes place on a single night.

(2) The guy who directed and co-wrote this film was only 21 years old at the time! What is particularly impressive about that is that he managed to get a lot of character development accomplished without saying anything - with uncomfortable silences, facial expressions, and other elements of visual storytelling. This movie is as professionally presented as any big-budget studio film which covers the same territory. This kid has it.

Having noted that, I should be fair to you readers and note that the film is not without its faults.

(1) There is a gratuitous lesbian scene which is completely unbelievable within the story line. Wait! Am I listing that under bad things? Perhaps I should expand the point by saying that this was one of several examples where the authors weren't sure how to make major shifts from reality to fantasy and/or from drama to comedy. In this case, I just didn't buy into the undeveloped female characters, who came out of left field to use their girl/girl action to seduce one of our heroes and his little brother. It wasn't at all clear why they would do such a thing, and as a result they didn't seem like real characters, but objectified male fantasies. In fact, I originally thought it was supposed to be a fantasy sequence, and that the brothers would awake from a drunken dream. I was later surprised to see that it all really happened.

(2) Far too many dramatic developments happen in one night, and for too many coincidences are used to advance the plot. This bothered me at first, but I am withdrawing my objection. I eventually realized that it was all done in the interest of developing four stories simultaneously. Given my opinion that the film succeeded in telling all four stories economically, I have no choice but to concede that the contrived plotting is an example of necessary artistic license.

(3) This territory and these characters are very familiar to those who have seen a lot of movies. It's not an intensely personal film, but a generic coming-of-age story. You can probably determine from my comments that Palo Alto, Ca is not the kind of film you would expect from a guy who is young enough to be in school. It has neither the usual negatives nor the usual positives of youthful indie filmmaking. It's mostly "feel good"; it does not attack any "big ideas" intensely; it is not so personal as to be uncommercial; and there are no lesbian cowboys eating pudding. It's more like a Cameron Crowe movie.

One thing surprises me - the lack of a theatrical release. It seems like a studio film - slick and professional in every way. The authors seem to understand the youthful target audience, and I can see where this would be a good date movie. Palo Alto, Ca is not just a precocious work from a youngster. It is a winner that is capable of connecting to mainstream suburban audiences. Oh, well. Irrespective of the logic behind the lack of theatrical distribution, I think you will see excellent movies from Brad Leong for many years to come.

 

Nudity:

It's Christine Derosa again! As of yesterday, I had never heard of her. Today we are seeing her topless in two different movies!

Here girl/girl accomplice is Hailey Bright

 

... Around

2008

The lead character in this story is a college student who  comes from a poor household in New Jersey and screws up his financial aid situation. As a result, he ends up putting himself through film school by working odd jobs, milking multiple credit cards, and sleeping in the nooks and crannies of New York, essentially living as a homeless person.

This film is an exceptional effort from a very young man who has lived a life very much like (although not precisely the same as) the one assigned to his lead character. Although the film is intensely personal, it doesn't stray into typical indie territory. There are no anti-corporate riffs, no quixotic solutions to world hunger, and no gay junkies dying of AIDS. In fact, the film ridicules those kinds of indie films and the pretentious people found in New York film schools. This particular movie has no particular axes to grind nor windmills to tilt at. The script consists of a guy telling a fictionalized version of his own life, sharing the places he's been and the people he's met. Of course, that could be a recipe for disaster if the filmmaker were extremely egocentric or if his life were extremely boring, but in this case neither is true. David Spaltro has led a unique life, has met many colorful characters, and has maintained a down-to-earth sense of humor about himself and the world.

Atypically for low-budget movie makers, Spaltro managed to come up with a spectacularly good sound track. He pulled it off with a bit of street-smart ingenuity. He, the struggling filmmaker, contacted many struggling musicians and songwriters and asked them if they'd like to go along for the ride on his film. Many of them agreed enthusiastically (and economically) because they need the exposure. As a result, ... Around is scored as well as any Hollywood film. the songs are both affecting and appropriate for the context in which they are used. The only difference between this sound track and that of a big-budget movie is that the songs are simply good, rather than good and familiar.

Although the writer/director is about the same age as the guy who directed Palo Alto, Ca, and although both films are excellent, they cannot be compared. There is no contrivance at all in ... Around. The lead character has some successes and finds a measure of happiness, but he also fails in his major relationships with the two important women in his life, his mother and his girlfriend. Some of that failure is his fault. Some is theirs. Most of it happens just because they are human beings and have a hard time sorting things out, like the rest of us. Because all of the characters and situations ring true-to-life, you may find some of the plot twists disappointing if you are accustomed to the usual Hollywood formulas. The characters in this film almost never do what we hope they will do. We'd love to see the lead and his kinda-sorta girlfriend work things out better because they are both good people and they seem to need each other, but they are also real human beings and therefore their lives just don't mesh together as conveniently as they might if they were scripted for Kate Hudson. There is also a long-time homeless guy we are rooting for. He shepherds our hero through the rough times on the streets, and we'd love to see him rescued from his life by some kind of Hollywood miracle because he's a decent and obviously intelligent man. Not gonna happen. We just have to accept that his life is what it is, and is probably not going to change.

In fact, we don't even know if our hero's life will change. He gets his film made, but after that ... ? Oh, hell, we don't even know if the real-life filmmaker's life will change after having told his story successfully. Since there are more than dozen reviews of ... Around listed at IMDb and since they are almost uniformly positive, it's safe to say that Mr. Spaltro got a good film made, and he did so by maxxing out more than a dozen credit cards. Unfortunately, his ending is ambiguous. So far, there's no theatrical deal and no DVD. Because the film has been screened at some minor festivals and because the director has actively been distributing screeners, this may be the only film in the IMDb database with more reviews (15 as I write this) than votes (9).

Will anyone besides film critics ever see the film? Will Spaltro ever be able to pay off those credit card balances?

Stay tuned.

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There is no real nudity. Molly Ryman poses naked for an art class, but her naughty bits stay covered by the magic of camera angles, arms, and elbows.