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etrenkamp
-Iron Man (Oct. '04 Draft)
-The Happening (1st Draft)
-I Am Legend (2006 - Akiva Goldsman)
-Halloween (2007 - 1st Draft)
-Watchmen (2006 - Alex Tse)
-Zombie Robot Ninja Pirate (2007 - 1st Draft)
-The Dark Knight (30 pages of casting sides)
Scripts I'm Looking For:
-Splinter Cell (Stuart Beattie draft)
-Sherlock Holmes and the Vengeance of Dracula
-Justice League of America
Reviews
Les anges exterminateurs (2006)
Boring
My girlfriend and I saw this at the IFC in NYC on Friday night. I went to film school, she studied French in college, we both loved Short Bus - we thought this would be fun date movie. Man, were we wrong.
As a film that's trying to be "art" it humorlessly apes just about every art film convention from the early days of Bergman to Wenders Wings of Desire. It is literally a shopping list of art film cliché's. That in itself would not be a crime if the film's treatment of these cliché's wasn't so boring. As well, the script is mediocre at best. Maybe this is due to a bad translation, but my girl, who speaks French, told me the translation was fairly accurate. And cinematagraphicaly, the film is just shot badly. Many shots are ackwardly framed and staged. It reminded me of Kevin Smith's Clerks, only at least Clerks had a strong story and clever script that over came it's tech limitations. This whole film just feels slightly less than mediocre on every level.
As for the story, the director wants us to believe that his doppleganger in the film is observing these woman play out their erotic fantasies because he doesn't understand female pleasure. But it's obvious that he enjoyed watching three girls get naked and screw each other. Just because he didn't touch them doesn't mean he didn't enjoy it egotistically. Yet the film never holds him accountable for this. He is presented as a victim of crazy actresses, an unsympathetic wife, a corrupt judicial system, and ultimately a victim of fate or divinity itself. The film seems to ask us to envy his power at getting these girls to kink it out in front of him at his beck and call and at the same time we are suppose to sympathize at what a good husband, artist, and father figure he is and how nobody understands what a victim he really is. It just doesn't work. Apparently, the events of the film are based on a real situation that happened to the film's director. This story sounds like something a philandering husband would tell his wife about being taken to a strip club. "No, dear, I didn't enjoy it all. I spent the whole time talking with the girls about Hobbes and Locke." Bullsh!t. Also, there is a lot of talk about taboos in the film. Apparently, the director's idea of taboo is having sex in a hotel room. Oh, how daring! Lastly, there are two fairly sexy sequences in the film. However, they are almost completely ruined by the film's score. Every time the girls start to get naked, this bizarre 80's horror film score comes on the soundtrack. This combined with the bad writing and staging just kills any feelings of arousal you may have. Throughout the screening people would just get up and leave. And when the final "tragic" moments of the film were played out the whole theatre was laughing at how bad it was. The only thing anyone was talking about as we filed out into the lobby was how much we wanted our money and time back.
The War on the War on Drugs (2002)
Sketch comedy that's actually funny
In the mold of The Groove Tube, The Kentucky Fried Movie, and Amazon Women on the Moon, The War on the War on Drugs is a funny and intelligently written movie that demonstrates why sketch comedy works so much better in the feature film format than on television. Although not every single sketch hits the mark, the majority do. Especially funny are Carrie Keranan in Cooking with Carrie, Brandon Sneider in the Know Your Dealer sketch, and Kenny Marshall as "Sissy Boy" in the Dr. Burke sketch.
I had almost forgotten how much fun the feature length sketch comedy movie could be, but after watching The War on the War on Drugs my appetite has been whetted for more of these kind of movies and I am definitely looking forward to seeing more upcoming films in this little known genre.
Rotten TV (2000)
Absolutely Brilliant
I remember watching this when it aired and expecting to see John Lydon whore himself out for 15 more minutes in the sun. I was shocked to find out that it was actually a really good show, sort of a rough precursor to Penn and Teller's Bullshit. Especially memorable was when he tried to get an interview with Neil Young, who refused because he "doesn't do interviews with people he doesn't know," at which point Lydon goes crazy, pointing out that Young wrote a song about him ("Hey, hey / My, my / This is a song about Johnny Rotten / He may be gone, but he's not forgotten"). It was just this genius blend of humor and socially relevant commentary attacking the pompousness that pervades all of rock and roll. It is no wonder that VH1 pulled it after 3 airings. I'd imagine this happened because Rotten was relentless in exposing the whole music industry, including MTV and it's subsidiaries, for being driven only by dollars and cynically pumping out product aimed at the the lowest common denominator, alienating VH1 from the pop icons it relies on for content. However, I would respect them more for showing all seven episodes or putting them out on video or selling them to someone like Trio to broadcast. If you ever get a chance, definitely check this out.