Magazine Tagged Articles at Cinematical

This will no doubt be an illegal movie forever. After seeing it at the UC Theater in the summer of '82, I recently found a copy on a bootleg VHS for $1 at a Friends of the Library sale, still burned with the Sundance Channel bug. In today's cinema, much is made of the nostalgia value of the 1980s soundtrack: a famous example being Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels" during Donnie Darko's opening. You can have your MTV, though, since URGH! A Music War was the soundtrack to my 1980s. Hey, what a surprise, no Duran Duran, no INXS, no Soft Cell covering a Gloria Jones soul classic and convincing a history-impaired generation that they wrote it. And yet it's clear why this film failed.

As a business scheme URGH seems, in 2008 hindsight, a uniquely quick way to burn a fortune. The film documents second-wave punk and New Wave bands playing from LA to London, editing them together without any particular zeitgeisty event like a music festival. So: play it a little under a real kiss-of-death title, and then wait to be deafened by the wails of bands, managers and lawyers zooming in to fight over the non-existant money. The Police were the headliners, opening and closing the film. They wrap up the film, too; you can see drummer Miles Copeland wearing an URGH! T-shirt. Is this perhaps all he was paid for this film? There are mostly cinematic performances here, and we see how much was lost by the fact that the Industry couldn't figure out a way to use their talents in the movies. Here's a key to the best of the show, omitting slurs of forgotten bands who perished long years ago.

Well, it's not like feminist icon Germaine Greer would be the first person who was angry about their big screen representation. Judging by Greer's comments in the U.K. newspaper The Guardian, it proves that after all these years, she hasn't lost her ability to talk tough. The center of the scuffle is the film version of Richard Neville's memoir, Hippie Hippie Shake. The book recounts his time as editor and regular contributor of the counter-culture publication Oz Magazine, a magazine that ran from 1963 to 1973. She originally declined to participate in Neville's book, which was first published back in 2005, and now she seems to be equally unhappy with the film adaptation. Greer wrote in her piece to The Guardian, "You used to have to die before assorted hacks started munching your remains and modelling a new version of you out of their own excreta." Taking it a step further, she goes on to take a shot at Neville, saying he was "one of the least talented people on the London scene in the 60's" -- ouch.

The film is being directed by Beeban Kidron (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) and was adapted by Billy Elliot scribe Lee Hall. Back in May, Monika confirmed that Sienna Miller and Cillian Murphy had signed on for lead roles. Playing Greer in the film is model-turned-actress Emily Booth, and in talking about the film Greer doesn't let Booth off the hook either, saying that the actress should get "an honest job." Shooting for Hippie Hippie Shake is set to start this September, and in the end, Greer might have ended up giving the film a little free publicity -- I'll admit I'm now curious to see what all the fuss is about.

Most teen house parties don't end in a police siege, or at least the ones that I went to. But that is exactly what happened in Westchester County, New York in May 2004; a complaint about noise and underage drinking at a house party turned into a three-hour standoff between police and almost forty teenagers barricaded in a suburban home. It's a strange story about a group of teens that decided to just turn off the lights and not answer the door rather than deal with reality of the cops on the front lawn. The real-life event is the basis of the teen drama The Siege of Fulton Ave. and The Hollywood Reporter has announced that George Tillman Jr. (Men of Honor) has signed on to direct.

The film is based on a New York Magazine article Standoff at Rye by David Amsden that provided a hour-by-hour account that luckily ended with only infuriated parents and relatively light criminal charges being laid. Jeff Roda wrote a script and the film is being producer in part by State Street, who were behind the Barbershop franchise, and by Contrafilm who also produced the new Jim Carrey thriller The Number 23. There is no word of any casting choices yet, but if the film stays true to the original events it's going to have to be a pretty sizable list.