kaboom Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In the '90s, I adored exactly three parts of Hollywood: alternative music flicks like Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records, Gregg Araki, and David Lynch. The first always bled into the other two, Araki partaking in the musical joys of bands like The Jesus & Mary Chain and New Order, and Badalamenti creating his own unique world of music. But now the other two are combining. Sort of.

Remember how I posted a month ago about Araki's new film, Kaboom? Well, some images have finally popped up over at Quiet Earth, including the confused-faced Thomas Dekker above. There are also shots of Dekker in bed, and some looks of exasperation, but that's not the kicker -- it's the synopsis, which kicks off with "A hyper-stylized TWIN PEAKS for the Coachella Generation..." Yes, Araki's getting into a little small-town quirk.

Building on that whole all-too-brief sexual awakening description from last month, the movie is "a wild and sex-drenched horror-comedy thriller" about an ambisexual college freshman who trips on "some hallucinogenic cookies" and is "convinced he's witnessed the gruesome murder of an enigmatic Red Haired Girl who has been haunting his dreams." Is the girl in a room with a black and white floor and thick, red curtains?

What do you think about the idea of Araki getting a little Lynchian?

Bring on the Araki! After getting busy with candy-coated 3-ways in Splendor, Gregg Araki concocted a little yin and yang. First came the gritty drama of Mysterious Skin, which revealed a range we didn't know existed. Then came the exact opposite -- the ridiculous Anna Faris-starring stoner comedy Smiley Face. But now the cult director is heading back to the green sprouts of sexual exploration.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Araki is shooting his latest feature, Kaboom, and he's tapped Roxane Mesquida (Fat Girl), Thomas Dekker (Sarah Connor Chronicles), Kelly Lynch (Charlie's Angels), and Rooney Mara (Youth in Revolt) to star. Not much is being revealed at this time, but here's what I could find online. As THR notes, Kaboom will focus on "the sexual awakening of a group of college students." Araki started the feature last month, HELEN STELLaR is performing in a scene, and Ann Magnuson (Panic Room) has a cameo as "a rich Beverly Hills type who has weekly trysts with her hunky young gigolo, 'Thor' -- played by hunky young actor Chris Zylka."

I'm really curious about how this will play out. Will it have the weirdness of films like Doom Generation and Nowhere, or go for the brightly lit comedy of Splendor and Smiley Face? Over the last 10 years, Araki has displayed a whole different bag of cinematic talents, and as he heads back to the themes that made him famous, I can't help but wonder if it will play out in an old school way or be yet another Araki surprise. Thoughts? Predictions? Araki love?

Every Man for Himself, and God Against All
-- Original title, The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser

And that, in a nutshell, is the pitch for The Condemned -- except, in this case, God's an illegal entertainment start-up. Broadcast wildman and snake-oil salesman Ian Breckel (Robert Mammone) has an idea for the ultimate in pay-per-view: Spring 10 death row prisoners from various Third World hellhole jails, strap them with explosive ankle-cuffs, give them 30 hours to kill each other. Last person standing wins and earns their freedom, and the whole thing gets broadcast on the internet -- at $49.95 a viewer, and Breckel's shooting for Super Bowl ratings, with all the profit for him. The 10 include a monstrous British ex-army man (Vinnie Jones), a husband-and-wife desperado team (Manu Bennett and Dasi Ruz), a swift-and-slippery martial artist (Masa Yamaguchi) ... and a late addition to the roster, Jack Conrad (Steve Austin), an American pulled from a jail in El Salvador. Conrad won't say what he was doing in El Salvador, and he won't say what his life was like before he was there ... but Breckel likes the big palooka, and enters him into the competition.

Having explosive devices strapped to you might be the ultimate action-film expression of the terrors of existence -- don't we all feel, even a little bit, like God or whomever could flick the switch at any moment? Connoisseurs of the explosive body-jewelry-fight-to-the-death genre will have noted the similarities between The Condemned and 2000's Battle Royale, the cult Japanese film with a similar pitch -- only in Battle Royale, it's 30 school kids sent off to play kill-or-be-killed, and not 10 criminals. Also, in Battle Royale, the contestants are sacrificed in the name of social order and imposed conformity; in The Condemned, it's all about ratings and money. As I've noted before, if you really want to understand a culture, watch their bad entertainment; you can learn a lot more about Shakespeare's times from Titus Andronicus than A Winter's Tale.