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* Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).
* White asterisk:
expanded format.
*
Blue asterisk: not mine.
No asterisk: it probably
sucks.
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OTHER CRAP:
Catch the deluxe
version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles,
here.
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Wilderness Survival for Girls
Wilderness Survival for Girls (2004) is a first effort from husband and
wife team Eli B. Despres and Kim Roberts. It was shot on digital with a $90K
budget, two locations, and a cast of four.
Three girls celebrate their High
School graduation by going to a remote high-altitude cabin in the Colorado
Rockies. The next night, a strange man shows up at their door. Evidently, he
has been squatting there for a long time, but his appearance reminds the girls
of a murder several years before. They must decide of this man is "the man"
and how much of a threat he is to them. Moreover, the man represents something
different to each of the three girls.
Kate (Ali Humuston) is the most worldly of the three girls. She is sexually
experienced, drinks, smokes, uses drugs, and tries to present a tough,
confident face to the world. Inside, she was a victim of sexual abuse, and she
desperately wants acceptance from the other two girls. Deb (Megan Henning)
wears glasses, is smart, and is a closet carpet-muncher with a huge crush on
Kate. Ruth (Jeanette Brox) is a mass of insecurity, is Deb's best friend, has
no sexual experience, even with herself, and is the type of person who wants
to be nice and make everyone happy.
I don't want to go further with plot developments because I am recommending
this indie film, and it is more about the
girls, their feelings about themselves, and their relationships with each
other than it is the suspense created by the man. The ensemble cast is perfect, and stays believable the entire film. Despres
and Roberts, who wrote, produced and directed, clearly met all of their
expectations in this film, and created a unique and rewarding take on the
shopworn "girls afraid in the woods" theme.
This is a C+, representing a superior accomplishment for a low budget indie
film.
The DVD commentary is also well above average, as the husband and wife team
talked about all aspects of making the film, including casting, acting,
lighting on the cheap, and the technical challenges presented by filming on
digital video. Incidentally, in the
commentary, Despres and Roberts state that there is a definite answer to the
mystery of whether the stranger
was guilty of murder or not, and that the evidence was in the film. I think I
know the answer, but would not bet big money on my opinion.
IMDb readers say 7.7 based on 20 votes.
It played a couple of festivals,
and garnered a best actress award for Jeanette Brox from the Los Angeles IFP
festival.
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Big Bad Wolf
I could write a review for this but I won't, I'll just tell you that this movie has a freaking HORNY Werewolf who likes to rape his females victims doggie style. Oh yes, you also have lines like, "Little pigs let me in!" and the werewolf telling a girl "Let's go to the
cabin to do some bestiality." In other words, if you like Horror
Comedies, WATCH THIS!
You also get T&A, so even better.
Only drawback was the make-up, The Wolf looks like the Wishmaster on Fur, but who cares?
He's the freakin' Big Bad Wolf, so he can look however he likes.
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Notes and collages
Perdita Durango
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Fur
One of the most interesting aspects of this 2006 biopic is that it
probably pissed off more people than it entertained. Fans of Diane Arbus
were infuriated by this movie, which they say totally misrepresented her
life and her work. The producers defend it by saying that as the title
insinuates, it was a highly fictionalized work just very loosely based on
her life. That appears to be an understatement.
Diane Arbus was a photographer who won high acclaim for her stark and
often bizarre black and white photographs of subjects that sometimes
included marginalized people such as New York's street people, and people
who are sometimes referred to as circus freaks, and for pictures that
captured the mundane with an unusual eye.
She took her own life in 1971, but the movie focuses on her early
years, and her work with the unusual people. In particular, it focused on
the relationship, which bloomed into romance, with Lionel, a man stricken
with hypertrichosis, which is uncontrolled growth of hair all over the
body. Unfortunately for those looking for accuracy, neither Lionel nor the
romance existed. In fact, almost everything in the movie is total fiction,
which is probably why one Arbus fan called it "total crap".
For those who are unaware of Arbus, the movie is a mildly interesting
drama that plods often, doesn't really seem to have a point, and is
probably most interesting to Nicole Kidman fans. I will say, though, that
Robert Downey Jr. did an outstanding job as Lionel; he was probably the
best thing about the movie.
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Lynne Marie Stetson |
Gwendolyn Bucci |
Nicole Kidman as Diane Arbus |
The real Diane Arbus |
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The Comedy Wire
Comments in yellow...
New York state assemblyman Felix Ortiz has strippers and strip club owners up in
arms over his proposal to make them pay for state permits or face fines. Ortiz
says the purpose of the permits is to make sure exotic dancers are of legal age,
legally documented, not being forced to perform, and are paying taxes on cash
they get for tips and lap dances. But several angry Manhattan exotic dancers
said they think the politicians are "just trying to make money off of us."
* Didn't the Supreme Court outlaw the Pole Tax?
A man in Middelburg, South Africa, is in court facing sexual offense charges
after he allegedly hired three strippers to perform at his son's 16th birthday
party. Prosecutors claim he allowed the teenage guests to drink alcohol and
touch the strippers, who at one point were allegedly completely naked.
* 16-year-old boys shouldn't be seeing and touching naked
women who aren't their teachers.
Sunday's News of The World carried a story by an anonymous "pal" of Lindsay
Lohan who said she was worried about how much coke Lindsay was snorting, and to
try to shock her into cleaning up, the pal sold the UK tabloid a series of cell
phone photos of Lohan and friends in a club's ladies' room, apparently doing
drugs. Lohan's lawyer Mike Heller refused to comment on the actual content of
the photos but offered this classic bit of spin: "This just goes to show how
hard it is to be Lindsay Lohan, who's even denied her privacy in the sacred
confines of a ladies' room stall, and then must fend off the slings and arrows
of false allegation."
* The sacred confines of a ladies' room stall are for
throwing up after chugging a fifth of Wild Turkey.
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