Posts Tagged ‘Hart Bochner’
Monday, May 6th, 2024
April 29, 1994
PCU fits nicely into my theory of the summer of ’94 – that it was a time when boomers were looking back while gen-xers were moving in – by sort of melding those two things. The first sound you hear in it is Mike Bloomfield at the Monterey Pop Festival saying something about “this is our generation, man,” and then a song sampling Jimi Hendrix’s voice over modern dance music. It seems to be saying “Look, this is like the ‘60s, only it’s the ’90s!,” and in fact comes from an album called if ’60s were ‘90s.
This is the directorial debut of DIE HARD’s Harry Ellis himself, Hart Bochner, but it’s written by two fresh-out-of-college twentysomethings, Adam Leff & Zak Penn. It’s probly meant to speak to young people, but its attitude is that almost all young people are brain dead idiots… all but a few wild and crazy guys brave enough to scoff at everyone else’s beliefs because they don’t personally care about that kind of stuff so people who do must be faking it.
All fraternity comedies are pretty much based on ANIMAL HOUSE, right? A canonical boomer classic. PCU follows the standard campus comedy storyline: a rowdy fraternity hated by the authorities is going to get kicked out of their building if they don’t raise a bunch of money fast, so they throw a big party. And the modern spin on it is yeah, you have your old idea of fraternities, but it’s different now, it’s harder to get away with that stuff. But we do what we can, on account of we are outrageous party animals like you wouldn’t believe. ’90s style! I have a Hammerbox poster in my dorm room, to name only one example. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Leff, Chris Young, David Spade, fraternities, George Clinton, Hart Bochner, Jeremy Piven, Jessica Walter, Jon Favreau, Kevin Thigpen, Megan Ward, Sarah Trigger, Zak Penn
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 73 Comments »
Tuesday, December 12th, 2023
The title URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT sounds like an escalation, because the legend has suddenly become plural, but I seem to remember this sequel coming out with a whimper. I thought I remembered respecting it a little more than others at the time, but in my review back then I seem to have thought it was pretty bad.
It starts on an airplane during a storm, which seems crazy enough for the series that you can probly guess it’s the ol’ “actually we’re watching a movie-within-a-movie” cold open fake out. The reveal is kind of cool, though: suddenly the pilot sees a Tom-Cruise-looking asshole in sunglasses staring into the cockpit from the outside – he’s the director of this student film (filmed on a set from PUSHING TIN). In an even more aggressive “you kids liked SCREAM, right? Check this out!” move than the first URBAN LEGEND, the story has moved to Alpine University Film School, where aspiring directors are in a cutthroat competition to win “the prestigious Hitchcock Award,” which they all talk about it like it’s a guaranteed Hollywood career because it has been a “springboard” for successful filmmakers in the past. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anson Mount, Anthony Anderson, Eva Mendes, Gina Matthews, Hart Bochner, Jacinda Barrett, Jennifer Morrison, Jessica Cauffiel, Joey Lawrence, John Ottman, Loretta Devine, Marco Hofschneider, Matthew Davis, meta-slashers, Michael Bacall, Paul Harris Boardman, Rebecca Gayheart, Scott Derrickson, Silvio Horta, slashers, whodunit slashers
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 6 Comments »
Friday, April 15th, 2016
Like THE RAGE, the 2013 remake of CARRIE is directed by a woman. This one comes courtesy of Kimberly Peirce of BOYS DON’T CRY and STOP-LOSS fame. The screenplay is credited to two men, Lawrence D. Cohen (GHOST STORY) and Robert Aguirre-Sacasa (THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN remake). The weird thing is that Cohen wrote the DePalma version, and this is his first credit in 9 years, so I don’t know if that means they started from an old-screenplay base. It kinda seems like it. It doesn’t do its own thing as much as I’d like. It’s not DePalma, but it’s not a drastically different take either, so I’m not sure how much the female perspective was able/allowed to add in this instance.
Part of the fun of a remake or re-adaptation is seeing who they have playing the different roles. There are some familiar actors in the leads here. Chloe Grace Moretz (TODAY YOU DIE) plays Carrie, and she’s the first actual teenager to ever play the character on screen. At 15 I believe she’s actually younger than Carrie was in the book, and there’s something to be said for authentic youthfulness in this role. Julianne Moore (ASSASSINS) is Margaret White, because of course she is. It would have to be her. Judy Greer, known for thankless roles in every major movie of the last few summers, actually gets things to do in the Betty Buckley role as the sympathetic gym teacher.
I was not familiar with the young actors playing the do-gooder couple of Sue and Tommy. Sue is Gabriella Wilde, a tall blond model who was in the Paul W.S. Anderson THREE MUSKETEERS, and Tommy is boyish Ansel Elgort, a rookie actor who has since been in the DIVERGENT series of trailers that seem to come out every few months, was the boy lead in THE FAULT IN OUR STARS and reportedly on the short list to play Young Han Solo in I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS: THE ADVENTURES OF ALL NEW HAN SOLO. Both actors won me over after initial skepticism. Meanie blood-dumper Chris Hargensen is played by Portia Doubleday, who I know from looking like Amanda Sieyfried on that tv show Mr. Robot. (She was also the surrogate date in HER, and her older sister Kaitlin plays Rhonda, the only major white character on Empire.) Chris’s bad boy boyfriend Billy Nolan (Travolta’s character) is Alex Russell, who I guess was in CHRONICLE and later Angelina Jolie’s UNBROKEN. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Russell, Ansel Elgort, Chloe Grace Moretz, Gabriella Wilde, Hart Bochner, Judy Greer, Julianne Moore, Kimberly Peirce, Lawrence D. Cohen, Portia Doubleday, remakes, Robert Aguirre-Sacasa, Stephen King
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 25 Comments »
Thursday, June 20th, 2013
SUPERGIRL is the story of Superman’s younger cousin Kara (Helen Slater), who lives in Argo, a small commune of (I guess) Krypton refugees encased in a glass sculpture under the water or in another dimension or in space or something, I don’t think it’s explained but maybe you gotta read the comics. The “city” is powered by two magic Faberge egg type deals, one of which Kara’s adult friend Peter O’Toole “borrows” for the day to use in an art project. It’s portrayed as eccentric envelope-pushing, like a teacher standing on a desk or a magic nanny taking the kids onto the roof to watch dancing, but in fact it’s incredible irresponsible behavior that very well could cause the death of the already endangered Kryptonian race. It’s even more inexcusable when he leaves this crucial component of the survival of his entire people with a kid, Kara, who uses it to play God and give life to a giant dragonfly. As kids do.
The dragonfly flies around and tears a hole in the roof and the magic ball gets sucked out into inner space, dooming the entire city to suffocate and die slowly.
Oopsie! Peter O’Toole, that rascal! Oh well, what are you gonna do? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brenda Vaccaro, David Ordell, DC Comics, Faye Dunaway, Hart Bochner, Helen Slater, Jeannot Szwarc, Jerry Goldsmith, Matt Frewer, Maureen Teefy, Mia Farrow, Peter Cook, Peter O'Toole, Simon Ward
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 40 Comments »
Friday, September 22nd, 2000
In 1995, those of you who were living in the free world first discovered a talented young group of filmmakers who seemed to come out of nowhere with the phenomenally popular crime movie The Usual Suspects. I don’t think anybody thought the movie was profound, but it was a fun novelty, obviously made by a couple of film school whiz kids. If something with this much attention to detail and audience manipulation is their first movie (well, not counting the god awful Public Access, which at the time had only played film festivals) – what will they be doing, say, five years from now?
Well let’s see. Director Bryan Singer made the nerd community feel cool for a while with his acclaimed movie version of X-Men. Script Writer Christopher McQuarrie, who actually won on Oscar award for Usual Suspects, made his directing debut with the halfway-there-to-great-Badass-picture Way of the Gun. And now editor/composer John Ottman is taking his shot by directing (and editing and composing) Urban Legends: Final Cut.
But I mean, that’s nothing to brag about. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Hart Bochner, John Ottman, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 14 Comments »
