A personal documentary disguised as expose, Justin Donais‘ glastonburykids tracks a few formative months in the lives of teenage troublemakers Lucas, Ben, Dan, Tom and Dylan — known around their lily-white, upper middle class Connecticut suburb as Dub G, short for “Gay Gangsters” (the “gay” part being presumably as much of a joke as “gangster”, although the film never delves’ into the boys’ sexual lives or preferences). Consciously “influenced” by Jackass, the teens rebel against their peers and parents, and the traditional concept of teen rebellion itself, by eschewing sex and partying and instead devoting their nights and weekends to videotaping themselves masterminding and following through with a series of stunts and pranks around the neighborhood — they call it their “anti-drug.”
…Read more
From its animated notebook-scrawl opening credits to a final scene in which two people finally, effortlessly unburden themselves of a MacGuffin and just decide to be together, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (based on the young adult novel by Rachel Cohn and David Leviathan) seems to have been packaged in the hopes that the lightning that made Juno an unignorable commodity a cultural phenomena will strike twice. Nick and Norah isn’t quite the assault to the teen romance genre that Juno was, and that’s both good and bad. Michael Cera’s Nick, Kat Denning’s Norah, and their assorted pals drift fluidly between irony-as-defense and taking both themselves, and the idea of love, very seriously. The result is a film that’s much more of a traditional teen romance, but also a more honest one.
…Read more
Nannette Burstein’s American Teen has become ubiquitous since its Sundance premiere, both on the festival circuit and, thanks to a poster carefully calibrated to target Gen X nostalgia, online. Its title suggests a wishful universality, but in fact, when looked at alongside two less-lauded films about American teens against which it screened here in Silver Spring, its document of five white high school seniors in a semi-rural suburb of Indiana seems as niche as it gets.
World premiering here on Friday before beginning a run on HBO Monday night, Hard Times at Douglas High is a fly-on-the-wall work of activism documenting a year in the life of an all-black Baltimore high school, as teachers, students and administrators struggle to comply with No Child Left Behind. Made by the directors of the seminal reality series An American Family, it makes visible the reverberations of blind bureaucracy on living and breathing institutions, making the home and personal lives of its students a spectre, but not a direct concern. Taking the inverse tactic, Going on 13’s intimate portrait of four girls passing through puberty (or, “puberey”, as one subject refers to it early on) over the course of four years in a barely middle-class Northern California community touches on the institutions that contain their lives only incidentally. Seen together in a single weekend, each of the three seem to say less about age than the variables of fate as played out through place and race.
…Read more
The New York Daily News reports that just days after Disney tried to shame Vanity Fair and photographer Annie Leibovitz for releasing a photo of tween Disney Channel sensation Miley Cyrus wrapped in a bed sheet, it’s been revealed that the company is selling Disney underwear in China via billboards that show adolescent models wearing even less. A Disney spokesman claimed the Chinese ad “has caught us totally by surprise” –– which seems about as credible as the suggestion that the company had no idea what was happening on Leibovitz’s set. The shock shouldn’t be that Disney is selling sex; the shock should be that Disney is not only feigning shock, but that they’ve turned feigning shock into a business model.
…Read more
UPDATE, 10/18 8AM: Hudgens’ rep told Access Hollywood that her client still has a job; Disney says they’re “still negotiating” with the entire HSM cast.
Because this is a blog generally devoted to movies, and not to the naked exploits of barely-legal, barely-famous starlets, we’ve stayed out of Vanessa Hudgens topless photo non-scandal. But OK! is running a story that I just can’t not comment on, because if nothing else, it seems like a soon-to-be classic example of what old media companies are doing wrong when it comes to the web.
A bit of background for the uninitiated: Hudgens starred in two High School Musical movies for the Disney Channel, along fellow tween heartthrobs Ashley Tisdale and (Hudgens’ real-life boyfriend) Zac Efron. Both movies were such enormous successes on cable, iTunes and DVD that Disney decided to bring the entire cast back for a third film, this time aimed at a theatrical release. Then, in September, relatively tame images of a naked Hudgens, allegedly meant for a boyfriend’s eyes only, were leaked to the internet. Now, OK! is reporting that, over a month after issuing what seemed like a non-judgmental statement in regards to Hudgens’ internet nakedness, “Disney has made up its mind about what to do next and that the 18-year-old actress will not be asked to board the boat for the third HSM film.”
If this is true, then I think Disney is making a big mistake, for three reasons. Details after the jump.
…Read more
Sylvie Moreau. What can I say? I guess I’m a little smitten (do people still say “smitten”?). She’s a talented actress (stage, TV and film), a writer, she’s very articulate…and has a French accent that makes me melt a little. At the Opening Night festivities, Dave and I hung out with Moreau and her escort for the festival, Francois Papineau (who is also an actor and Sylvie’s writing partner on the TV show Etats-humains - Human States). We caught up with them again after watching Moreau’s film, Familia. The character she plays is so complex that we spent most of the conversation focused on that role.
powered by ODEO
Starz Denver Film Festival, Spout podcast, Familia, Sylvie Moreau
