Towelhead, 2hr 4m, MPAA Rated: Not For Anyone

Sep 21, 2008 11:26

Well, another week has gone by.  Things are definitely starting to pick up.  My two Spanish classes are going well.  One has a shockingly miniscule homework load and one is nearly impossible to keep up with.  Regardless, I like both of my Spanish teachers, especially Chaves (Composition and Conversation in Spanish II aka Semester 6), who is a middle aged man for Peru and one of the most enjoyable professors because he is so happy and enthusiastic about even the most dull subjects that the class picks up on some of his enthusiasm as well.  My other Spanish professor, Iffland, tends to ramble for long periods of time but he definitely knows what he's talking about and the book we're reading (El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escrita by Gabriel García Márquez) is interesting enough.  García Márquez is definitely one of my favorite hispanic authors, though I thoroughly enjoy the poetry of Neruda as well.

Screenwriting is going well so far.  I'm not 100% concrete on my first screenplay idea, but I'm working on it.  It's very interesting so far to see what people come up with and refreshing to see that they're avoiding many of the typical student screenplay stereotypes (suicide is the main one).  I've been watching a lot of really great short films to jog my mind (which I'll talk about later), but so far I haven't come up with a really catchy, great idea... but I'm working on it!  Film Industry class is interesting.  However, I'm supposed to interview a foley editor for class on Monday, but as many people as I've tried contacting- none will call me back!  Maybe someone will come through at the last minute.  People are so skeptical of being interviewed.

Finally, Linguistics class is going well.  Right now we're learning about phonology, which means I have to memorize and comprehend the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)- no simple task.  One of our homework assignments was to translate this long passage from one of Woody Allen's books from the IPA to English.  It looks like an entirely different language and it's stort of like solving a puzzle, but fun nonetheless.

There's nothing else going on that's really interesting.  On Tuesday I'm skipping orchestra because renouned author Dennis Lehane is speaking about his new book at Coolidge Corner, and that's clearly much more exciting.  Luckily tickets were only $5.

So anyways, it's been a triple-feature weekend for me (don't worry- I don't spend as much money on movies as you'd think- I have memberships at three different theaters in town, and I'm a film major, so it's justified).  I went to see My Best Friend's Girl on Friday, and then the Manhattan Short Film Festival Finalists and Towelhead yesterday, so here are my thoughts on these movies:

MY BEST FRIEND'S GIRL, rated R, starring Dane Cook and Kate Hudson

My Best Friend's Girl is the typical "man paid to date a girl, man falls in love with her, girl finds out he was paid to date her, girl breaks up with man, man tries to win girl back" movie, following a long line of classic romantic comedies such as 10 Things I Hate About You, Hitch, and Failure to Launch.  Tank (Dane Cook) makes a living being paid by men to date women that have broken up with them.  His job is to act so horribly on a series of dates that the girl will go crawling back to her former boyfriend and try to give that a second shot (good theory- probably wouldn't work as well in real life).  It is pretty funny to see what he comes up with to deter these women; one of the best examples is when he takes a bible-beating woman to "Cheesus Christ," a pizza parlour that serves pizzas in the shape of a cross.  However, this can get quite inappropriate and ridiculous.  One day his best friend hires him to date his ex-girlfriend so she'll crawling back to him, but Alexis (Kate Hudson) doesn't fall for any of his awful tricks and they fall in love... until she finds out that he was hired.  And so goes the movie.  Very predictable, but an interesting twist on an overdone situation.

Though I enjoyed My Best Friend's Girl, I highly UNrecommend (that's the new word of the day) the film to anyone sensitive to male humor.  This movie is filled to the brim with awkward sexual jokes and male humor stuff.  The whole time I was actually thinking about how amazed I am at what they're doing and saying in movies these days- how have movies gotten so dirty in just the last five years or so??? All I ever hear is about the strictness of the MPAA, but then movies like this come out and I'm amazed that half of the things made it through screening with only an R rating.  Needless to say, the movie does do a decent job of synthesizing male humor and female romantic comedy inclinations, whereas many current movies have been very polar in this aspect (ie. Superbad is clearly a guy movie, 27 Dresses is clearly a girl movie... this movie will appeal to both guys and girls).  It's definitely a "young" flick- I can't see this movie appealing to anyone over the age of 35.  The one disappointing thing was Alex Baldwin's character- way too inappropriate to be believable.  The main appeal of the movie might just be that it was filmed in Boston, so you get to see a lot of my beloved city, but aside from the screenwriting and casting, there isn't anything extraordinary about this movie.

GRADE: B-  Somewhat original, frequently hilarious, but often too over the edge.

MANHATTAN SHORT FILM FESTIVAL, NR

It was fascinating to see the variety presented at this Film Festival- featuring movies from across the world on a huge variety of topics.  Anyways, I don't want to get too into it, because I'm probably the only one who reads this blog that will ever see it, but these were the most creative ideas:

1.  "Rachel" - This film definitely had a shocking twist ending.  Rachel, a young (early 20's) pregnant woman, goes to meet the adoptive parents of her baby for the first time.  She seems to be the sweetest most innocent girl, claiming that she was raped and didn't feel like should could keep the baby, but that her boyfriend was being supportive and that they were engaged.  The new parents are overjoyed and emotional and decide to give her some cash though she insists they don't have to.  Rachel goes back to her car and a girl sits up in the back seat.  Rachel hands the cash back to the girl and then takes a fake pregnant belly out of under her shirt, while looking for directions to the next person's house so she can con them into giving her money for a fake open adoption as well.  Apparenlty based on a real story, this woman conned 8 families or something before she was caught and jailed.

2.  "Ripple" - A man drives along an English highway, travelling to his girlfriend's home in the country to meet her parents for the first time.  There's a long exposition, but the first important part is that the man runs out of gas late at night and must stop at a non-self-service gas station.  After the man serves him, he realizes his wallet was stolen.  The gas station man runs to call the police, but the guy drives off because nothing good could come of the situation.  On his way, a giant dog suddenly jumps out of the dark and the man hits and kills the dog.  However, it's late at night so he can't do anything about it.  He keeps driving, not realizing that hitting the dog broke a pipe off the bottom of his engine.  Soon his engine dies, in the middle of the night.  Outside, in the middle of nowhere, the man starts hearing noises and gets worried.  He grabs some sort of tool out of his car and holds it like a baseball bat.  Suddenly, a chicken jumps at his face (why? I don't know.  chickens don't usually do that but anyways...).  The man freaks out (rightfully so) and hits and kills the chicken with the tool.  Suddenly a older man drives up and offers to help the young man.  Just before he pops the hood, the young man sees that the old man's hands are covered in blood and he freaks out and tries to steal the old man's car to get away, thinking that the old man had murdered someone or something.  However, the old man has the keys and tries to call the police on the young man.  The young man pleads to him, explaining that he won't tell anyone what the old man has done if he'll let him go.  The old man explains that someone hit his dog and that was the dogs blood (oops) and that the dog was in the back of the car.  The young man, however, tries to get away again before the police come.  The old man tries to jump him and hold him there, but the young man falls back on the old man, accidentally hitting the old man's head on his bumper and slicing half his face off.  1st stolen gas, 2nd dead dog, 3rd dead chicken, 4th severely injured possibly dead man.  The young man panicks and drives away in the old man's car.  When he arrives at the girlfriend's house, the girlfriend and mother come out.  "Why are you driving Dad's car?  Where is he?  Is he okay?"  Oh no.  Young man accidentally kills his girlfriend's dog and father.  And that's the ripple effect.

There were many other creative plots, including a game that determined whether you lived or died, a young serial killer killing parents who give their kids up for adoption, etc. etc.  Overall I was really impressed with the writing, but not so impressed with the production values.  The stories were really amazing but they weren't filmed incredibly well, though the acting was excellent.

GRADE: B+

TOWELHEAD, rated R, starring Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Tori Spelling and many unrecognizable names

The only redeeming thing about this film was Aaron Eckhart's performance... as a pedofile rapist.  So basically it was impossible to like him.  Impossible to like the movie.  Impossible to like the characters, their decisions, or their situations.  The movie follows a 13 year old daughter of a Lebonese immigrant who must live up to his strict, conservative ideals after her mother ships her away to live with him in Dallas, Texas.  On the very first day she is there, he beats her for wearing inappropriate clothes around the house (her pajamas).  The girl soon gets in way over her head after she decides to babysit for the neighbor (Aaron Eckhart).  One day, she and the little boy find his dad's stack of adult magazines and they begin to look through them, but he comes home and catches them.  Though he should be angry, he instead has a semi-seductive tone with her.  Later, he goes over to her house to get something.  When she turns around he grabs her and rapes her.  This graphic scene shows every second of the rape.  He doesn't seem to realize what he's done until he sees the blood all over his hands, at which point he runs out of the house, shocked by his own action.  The young girl meets a black boy at school that she wants to date.  However, her father tells her she man never see the boy again because it would ruin her reputation.  However, the young girl decides to start having sex with the black boy.

What I was wondering at the end of all of this is when will these characters learn from their mistakes???  After Aaron Eckhart's character rapes the girl the first time, he rapes her again days or weeks later, but this time she pretends she wants to have sex with him, even though she doesn't.  She voluntarily goes out with him when her dad and his wife are gone to get drunk.  When someone finally asks her why she pretended to want to have sex with him (she even did a striptease- seriously) she said that's what she thought she should do.  The girl does everything that could possibly make her dad mad without trying (ie. bringing tampons, condoms, and dirty magazines into the house, having sex with her black boyfriend, having sex with the neighbor, etc.) and by the end of the movie you feel sorry for her because she's such a victim of her situation, but at the same time, what on earth was she thinking???  The only characters that seemed to be consistent and well-developed were Aaron Eckhart's and Tori Spelling's, but it's possible that it's just because they are good actors.  Otherwise, the characters are going around doing and saying things that are inconsistent from day to day.  An abusive father isn't suddenly going to feel sorry for his daughter after yelling at her for an hour over her black boyfriend when he finds out the neighbor raped her.  That isn't consistent character development.

Regardless of all the technical storytelling and filmmaking things I was disappointed by that I could get into, my main disappointment was just how completely tasteless the movie was.  The director/writer certain bit off WAY more than he could chew: Middle East/U.S. cultural differences, the Gulf War, interracial relationships, teenage sex, rape, abusive parents, etc. and it was just done in a really tacky way.  Many people left the theater because it was so offensive and disturbingly predicable (not that there is any case in which rape isn't disturbing but this film couldn't pull it off).

And of course, to make matters worse, the young little neighbor had this white little kitten named Snowball that he carried around all the time.  What happens to the kitten?  The mean parent runs over the kitten in his car and then keeps it frozen in his freezer for weeks before bothering to return it to the family so they'll know what happens.  The movie was bad enough as it was- killing the little kid's adorable, beloved kitten was just the icing on the world's most disgusting cake.

GRADE: D-  HIGHLY Unrecommended (there we go again with that word).  Like I said, the only good thing about this movie is Aaron Eckhart's performance... but he's a rapist.  So not really any reason to see it... Ever.

towelhead, screenwriting, spanish, manhattan short film festival, film industry, linguistics, my best friend's girl, homework, dennis lehane

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