20 September 2009

16 September 2009

Five Reasons To Watch Adventureland

1. It's written and directed by Superbad director Greg Mottola, who also wrote and directed The Daytrippers.
2. It's a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story.
3. It's about long hours, low pay, high times... and a giant-ass panda!
4. It has a great cast including Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Bill Hader, Martin Starr and Ryan Reynolds.
5. The 80s soundtrack, featuring "Modern Love" by David Bowie and "Satellite of Love" by Lou Reed, is also great.

15 September 2009

I Am Wonder Woman, Hear Me Roar

TV characters who've donned Wonder Woman costumes:

Miss Piggy transformed into "Wonder Pig" in order to fend off a giant chicken in a superhero themed episode of The Muppet Show, which featured a guest appearance by Lynda Carter (who played Wonder Woman in the 70s TV show Wonder Woman).

Comic book nerd Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) thought he was going to pass out when Summer Roberts (Rachel Bilson) put on a Wonder Woman costume as a Christmas Chrismukkah present for him in The OC.

After accidently killing the man he believed to be his father in a unicycle stunt gone wrong, Peter Griffin sported a Wonder Woman costume before heading to Ireland to try to find his real father in Family Guy.

Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) thought Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan (Emily Deschanel) looked wonderful when she dressed up as Wonder Woman for Halloween in Bones.

12 September 2009

Whip It Real Good

Five reasons I want to see the upcoming coming-of-age comedy Whip It:
1. It's about a rebellious Texan teenager who joins a roller derby team in order to escape the boredom of her small-town beauty pageant life.
2. Ellen Page plays the aforementioned rebellious Texan teenager, Bliss Cavendar.
3. It's the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore, who also appears in the film as Smashley Simpson.
4. It also features Kristen Wiig as Maggie Mayhem, Zoe Bell as Bloody Holly, Eve as Rosa Sparks and Juliette Lewis as Iron Maven.
5. It's written by L.A. Derby Doll Shauna "Maggie Mayhem" Cross.

11 September 2009

Five Word Film Review: District 9

Familiar subject matter imaginatively executed.

07 September 2009

Five Reasons To Watch (500) Days Of Summer

1. It's an impressive feature film directorial debut from music video director Marc Webb.
2. It's original and offbeat and features a great musical number!
3. It's not a love story. It's a story about love.
4. It has a great cast including Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel.
5. It's received mostly positive reviews from critics and is "Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes.

04 September 2009

Campus Capers

Three campus-based films:

Love and Other Catastrophes follows the romantic misadventures of a group of students at Melbourne University and focuses in particular on roommates Mia (Frances O'Connor) and Alice (Alice Garner) as they search for a third housemate. Mia’s fear of commitment has caused her to split from her girlfriend Danni (Radha Mitchell), while Alice has fallen for "the Warren Beatty of the campus" Ari (Matthew Dyktynski), and is being admired from afar by Michael (Matt Day), a shy medical student who is looking for a new place to live.

Adapted from the novel by Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys follows English professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas), a once successful novelist whose follow-up novel is seven years overdue. Over the course of one weekend Grady has to deal with his visiting editor Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr.), a potentially suicidal student named James Leer (Tobey Maguire), who’s shot a dog dead and stolen a valuable piece of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, and the news that the university chancellor (and his boss’s wife) Sara Gaskell (Frances McDormand) is pregnant with his child.

Adapted from the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, The Rules of Attraction chronicles the drug and alcohol fuelled days and nights of a group of students at a fictional New England liberal arts college named Camden College. Womanizing drug dealer Sean Bateman (James Van Der Beek) is in love with "virgin" Lauren Hynde (Shannyn Sossamon) but Lauren is saving herself for Victor Johnson (Kip Pardue), who is backpacking through Europe, while Lauren's bisexual ex-boyfriend Paul Denton (Ian Somerhalder) is infatuated with Sean.

28 August 2009

25 August 2009

Teenage Angst

Three films about angst-ridden adolescents:

Welcome to the Dollhouse follows Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo), an awkward and unpopular 11-year-old nicknamed "Wienerdog" by her classmates, who is tormented by bully Brandon McCarthy (Brendan Sexton III) at school and overshadowed by her nerdy college-bound brother Mark (Matthew Faber) and cute ballerina sister Missy (Daria Kalinina) at home.

Set in the small Swedish town of Åmål, Show Me Love (aka Fucking Åmål) tells the story of depressed teenager Agnes Ahlberg (Rebecka Liljeberg), an outsider with very few friends who has a crush on her classmate Elin Olsson (Alexandra Dahlström), who is bored with her small-town life and feels Åmål is so behind the times that something is out before it even gets there.

Adapted from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides follows Cecilia (Hanna Hall), Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook) and Therese Lisbon (Leslie Hayman), five teenage sisters whose story is told through the eyes of the neighbourhood boys who worship them, and watch as their lives disappear following the suicide of the youngest sister Cecilia.

22 August 2009

One For The Road

Three films about road trips:

Thelma & Louise tells the story of unhappily married housewife Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis) and diner waitress Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon), two friends from Arkansas who set off in Louise's 1966 Thunderbird convertible for a carefree weekend away to escape their small-town lives. However, their trip takes an unexpected turn when Louise shoots a would-be rapist (Timothy Carhart) and, convinced no one will believe their story, they hit the road and head towards Mexico, embarking on an impromptu cross-country crime spree along the way.

Little Miss Sunshine tells the story of unsuccessful motivational speaker Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear), his overworked wife Sheryl (Toni Collette), their 7-year-old beauty pageant-obsessed daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) and 15-year-old mute-by-choice son Dwayne (Paul Dano) who, along with Richard's heroin-snorting father Edwin (Alan Arkin) and Sheryl's suicidal brother Frank (Steve Carell), set off in a Volkswagen van on a cross-country road trip from Albuquerque to California so Olive can fulfil her dream of competing in the "Little Miss Sunshine" beauty pageant.

Transamerica follows Sabrina "Bree" Osbourne (Felicity Huffman), a pre-op male-to-female transsexual from Los Angeles who discovers she's the biological father of Toby Wilkins (Kevin Zegers), a 17-year-old street hustler who's the (unexpected) result of a sexual encounter Bree had in college when she was living as a man named Stanley Schupak. Bree's therapist Margaret (Elizabeth Peña) tells her she won’t sign off on her impending gender reassignment surgery until Bree confronts the issue, so she reluctantly flies to New York to meet Toby and as a result offers him a ride back to Los Angeles.

19 August 2009

12 August 2009

Drink From Me And Live Forever

With the release of the (much-hyped) Twilight sequel New Moon approaching, here are five fantastic fangtastic vampire-themed films:

The Lost Boys follows Sam and Michael Emerson (Corey Haim and Jason Patric), two brothers who move to the small coastal town of Santa Carla with their mother Lucy (Dianne Wiest), only to discover that not only is the town a haven for the undead, but Michael has been turned into a "half-vampire" after inadvertently drinking the blood of vampire gang leader David (Kiefer Sutherland).

Adapted from the novel by Anne Rice (who also wrote the screenplay), Interview with the Vampire follows Louis de Pointe du Lac (Brad Pitt), a 200-year-old vampire who, in modern-day San Francisco, tells his epic life story to journalist Daniel Malloy (Christian Slater), a story that begins just south of New Orleans in 1791 when Louis meets vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Tom Cruise).

From Dusk Till Dawn follows Seth and Richard Gecko (George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino), two bank robbing brothers who kidnap a former minister, Jacob Fuller (Harvey Keitel), and his two children Kate and Scott Fuller (Juliette Lewis and Ernest Liu) while on their way to Mexico to meet their contact Carlos (Cheech Marin), only to discover their intended rendezvous point is a vampire-infested bar.

Based on the cult graphic novel of the same name, 30 Days of Night follows Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett), a small-town sheriff who, along with his estranged wife Stella Oleson (Melissa George) and a small group of residents, must fight for survival against a gang of bloodthirsty vampires, led by Marlow (Danny Huston), as they attack the small Alaskan town of Barrow... a town which has just entered a period during winter when the sun doesn’t rise for a month.

Set in the Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg in 1982 and based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist (who also wrote the screenplay), Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) tells the story of Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), a lonely, bullied 12-year-old who finds happiness in the form of his equally lonely new neighbour Eli (Lina Leandersson). Eli is the same age as Oskar, but has been so "for a very long time".

10 August 2009

A Case Of The Mondays

The Narrator (Edward Norton) in Fight Club