brothers of the head Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Recent Theatricals

Accepted -- Quick and painless late-teen college about a bunch of slackers who fabricate an entire university before things get nutty. Not awful, but not all that funny either (Extras: director/cast commentary, featurettes, music videos, deleted scenes, gag reel, etc.)

Brothers of the Head -- The creators of Lost in La Mancha go the mockumentary route with this story of conjoined-twin rock stars. Yeah, you heard me.

John Tucker Must Die -- Teen movies must stop: A bunch of girls get revenge on the campus womanizer. How nice. (Director's commentary, featurettes)

King Kong: Extended Edition -- Because Peter Jackson's remake wasn't already long enough, they added another 13 minutes back in. (Filmmaker commentary, 3-hour documentary, 38 MORE minutes of deleted scenes.) OK, I want this.

The Da Vinci Code -- Admit it; you were bored by it. (Ten featurettes.)

Catalog Picks

Forbidden Planet: Special Edition -- The classic sci-fi grand-daddy (which was based on The Tempest, dontchaknow) gets re-issued in a normal SE and a swanky LE that comes with a Robby the Robot toy! (Documentaries, deleted scenes, lost footage, random fun.)

The Green Mile: Special Edition -- Frank Darabont's second Stephen King adaptation (after The Shawshank Redemption) pales in comparison to the first, but the chemistry between Tom Hanks and Mike Duncan is still pretty effective. (Director commentary, deleted scenes, feature-length documentary, featurettes.)

Maniac Cop -- It's about a cop -- who's a maniac. It comes from Bill Lustig (Maniac) and Larry Cohen (The Stuff), plus it stars Tom Atkins, Richard Roundtree and Bruce Campbell. Not saying it's a good flick, but if you know these names you'll have fun with Maniac Cop. (Filmmaker commentary, featurette, interviews.)

Direct-to-Video

Raptor Island -- I've never seen it, but it stars Lorenzo Lamas & Stephen Bauer, was written by the guy who did Megalodon, and is about an island full of velociratpors. See it quick, before Raptor Island 2: Raptor Planet hits the Sci-Fi Channel!

Strangers With Candy -- Apparently it's got some kind of cult fanbase. I'll have to give SWC a whirl sometime, but everyone tells me to start with the series first. (Filmmaker commentary, 18 deleted scenes.)

The 60th (!) Edinburgh International Film Festival had its closing gala on Sunday night, and both audience and jury* awards were distributed. The biggest name scoring a trophy was Clerks II (mistitled Clerks 11 by Screen Daily -- innocent typo or glimpse of a very dark future?), which thumped Little Miss Sunshine in winning almost 80% of votes cast by the public, and taking home the Standard Life Audience Award (presented by none other than Sean Connery!). Jury awards, meanwhile, went to: Brothers of the Head, which just beat out the no-budget thriller London to Brighton for Best New British Film; Paul Andrew Williams (London to Brighton) for Best New Director; The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief, cinematographer Jake Clennell's "portrait of an Osaka night club with a staff of the city¹s top male escorts," which was named Best Documentary.

*The jury, by the way, was headed by John Hurt, and included such luminaries of film and criticism as ... Chrissie Hynde. I just thought you should know.

Quinceañera and Brothers of the Head -- two very different indie films, each directed by two directors, who happen to also be long-term gay partners -- opened in wide release last weekend. So LA Weekly's Chuck Wilson had a great idea: Why not get the directors of each film to see the other one, and then bring them all together to talk about their films and what it's like being gay partners making a movie together?

The answers to the latter question are pretty much what you'd expect: It's a lot like the experience of a straight couple making a film together -- shocking but true. Yes, gay couples and straight couples really aren't that different when it comes to the basic dynamics. Nonetheless, the interview was a clever idea, and the end result is pretty fun to read. As for which of the two films the directors would recommend you go see? Both, naturally.

When I'm in the mood to get good and depressed, I just take a look at the weekend box office numbers. There are few things more guaranteed to send me into the depths of despair than seeing how many people lined up to see the latest Tyler Perry flick or Adam Sandler comedy (and I use that term very loosely when applied to Sandler, who ranks just marginally below David Spade on my list of people I wish would never, ever make another movie). I swear, every time I see Sandler on the screen, I just want to hurt him -- and I'm a peace-loving, non-violent person under ordinary circumstances. I'm sure he's a perfectly nice person in real life, and he's probably a blast at parties, but I'd rather get my gums scraped without numbing medication than sit through his films. Perplexingly, though, his tend to do okay at the box office, so apparently a lot of people actually like him.

Sandler's latest effort, Click, about a man who buys a remote with the power to affect reality, dominated the top weekend box office slot, with an estimated take of $40 million. The film is going to need some good word-of-mouth to get past its budget of $70 million and into the black, but I expect it will make it over the hump. Jack Black vehicle Nacho Libre, in theaters for 10 days now, has raked in $52.7 million off a relatively small $35 million budget, already putting the flick in the black for Paramount and pretty much guaranteeing we'll be seeing more of Black in the future. For some reason, Black doesn't tend to irritate me nearly so much as Sandler, but neither do I find him particularly appealing. I think what it comes down to for me is that Sandler's roles often have this streak of meanness running through the surface comedy, which I really dislike. Black, on the other hand, tends to have this innocence and naivete about him that's just charming, even when he's running around in tights.

Because they thought it would be a cool thing to do with a movie about conjoined twin punk rockers, IFC has joined forces (oh, I slay me) with music television network Fuse (a corporate sibling under the Rainbow Media umbrella) to promote and distribute music mockumentary Brothers of the Head in the US. According to Variety, the film will be released next month, with substantial advertising support from Fuse. In addition to collaborating with IFC on the film's ad campaign, Fuse will also "dedicating 'substantial airtime' to content premieres, special promos and exclusive clips." (I was going to say "Wow, talk about a conflict of interests," but then I realized that MTV lives for this sort of thing, and we shouldn't expect anything less from Fuse.)

For those of you who missed Jette's SXSW review of the film back in March, it's a mockmentary with a somewhat serious tone (albeit with some laughs, particularly in its opening minutes), about conjoined twins who are transformed into the frontmen of a successful 1970s punk band; release is set for July 28.