X Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Josh Brolin's 'X' To Appear at HollyShorts Film Festival
Filed under: Drama », Shorts », Exhibition », DIY/Filmmaking », Other Festivals »
After Goonies, it wasn't that Josh Brolin was completely gone. He just navigated his career under the spotlight. But these days, in the wake of films like No Country for Old Men, Planet Terror, and American Gangster, it is easy to forget about those older flicks like The Mod Squad and Hollow Man. Thank God! And now he's doing even more to impress us. The Hollywood Reporter posts that he's directed a short film that will have its premiere kicking off the HollyShorts Film Festival on August 7.The film, which is simply called X, focuses on an inmate who escapes from prison for noble means -- "to reunite with his daughter and search for her murdered mother's body in order to give her a proper burial." Vincent Riverside plays Jack, the inmate, while Brolin's two daughters, Eden Brolin and stepdaughter Eleanor Lambert, also star. The actor and now filmmaker says: "I'm proud of the stark nature of this film, how it explores the parent-child relationship, and appreciate the support of those willing to embrace my journey into filmmaking."
You readers out there in Los Angeles will have to comment come August and let us know what you think. Word from SXSW (where the short also screened with Brolin in attendance) was that the film was real good. I'm just bummed that its premiere will be after Toronto's Worldwide Short Film Festival, which means no X for me! Maybe next year ...
RvB's After Images: URGH! A Music War (1981)
Filed under: Music & Musicals », After Image »
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.
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