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Sunday 10 November 2013
'Videodrome' Review
By adamjq
Posted at 22:55
Reviews
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Videodrome (1983)
‘Videodrome’ marked, what I believe to be a transition in David Cronnenberg’s career, a step which brought about a lot more artistic freedom and confidence and a chance to challenge the audience’s thinking rather than just feeding them generic horror fodder. ‘Videodrome’ follows Max Renn (James Woods), a director a small public broadcasting network who broadcast outlandish material, designed to satisfy the carnal and primitive instincts in the public by showing programmes with soft core porn and violence as part of their content. In his search for new material, Renn comes across a programme called Videodrome thought to be broadcasting out somewhere in the Philippines. Videodrome broadcasts nothing but violent acts – rape, torture, murder with no obvious motive or reason. Intrigued, Renn attempts to track down more on Videodrome, this leads him into an undercover world where corporations are manipulating people through broadcasts. Renn sheds off his old thinking and becomes a rebel against everything TV orientated, he sets out to destroy the corporation and in the end transcend out of bodily existence to the next level in being.
Confused? Yeah well this is a Cronnenberg movie so what did you expect. For everything you don’t get about ‘Videodrome’, there is enough there to keep your brain ticking over. The great thing about Cronnenberg is how he recognizes and deals with issues well ahead of his time. Sue TV wasn’t a new concept at the time, neither was the idea of subliminal messaging or manipulation but Cronnenberg explores concepts of interaction with TV, how desires to be part of something can blur our reality of where we truly are. Look at reality TV, as big now as ever, it gives the audience chance to be part of a TV show, which in the end offers no real reward. Sure Big Brother may carry some element of a game show where there is the possibility of a cash prize but really the whole show is about degrading yourself almost to the point of torture but yet people clamber over themselves to be part of it. The radio show host in ‘Videodrome’, Nicki Brand, looking to satisfy her desire for sado masochsim looks to be a part of the Videodrome show, why? It’s just being bloody tortured and raped! But this is partly what Cronnenberg is challenging here, people’s desire have gone beyond sex and love, and the only way to be satisfied is to part of TV. The imagery, produced by special effects maestro Rick Baker, in ‘Videodrome’ is paramount to the story and the concept, there are several scenes where Renn morphs into his TV, he pulls video cassettes out of his stomach and there are times where you are not sure what is represented on TV is just on TV and what is meant to be reality. This further emphasises the idea that we are becoming reliant on TV to shape out lives, part of our cognitive make up is based on us watching TV, this has to be true, the amount of times I quote films during conversation or mimic a character from a film only gores to show how influenced I am by films, everyone of my generation has to be influenced by films or TV to some extent.
‘Videodrome’ is a brave step in film making terms for Cronnenberg. It is made more of imagery than of literal connotations, something which a large majority of the cinema going audience would find hard to swallow but without taking this step, Cronnenberg probably wouldn’t have made ‘Naked Lunch’, ‘Existenz’ or even ‘The Fly’. A thought provoking, challenging film.
Saturday 9 November 2013
'The Crazies' Review
By Unknown
Posted at 04:16
Reviews
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The Crazies (1973)
In Evans City, Pennsylvania, a virus in the nearby water supply infects
a small town with a mysterious illness. The government come in and put the town
in quarantine and under martial law whilst they attempt to restore order,
needless to say some of the locals are none to happy about this. ‘The Crazies’
of the film refer to the affects of the virus on the inhabitants of the town,
the illness sends them somewhat, you guessed it, crazy attacking family members
and causing all sorts of havoc.
‘The Crazies’ is almost like another zombie film, a virus sweeps across
part of America infecting it’s inhabitants and people try to escape the virus
and return to some sort of normality. Where it differs is that ‘The Crazies’ is
not as subtle in it’s social commenting that can be found in ‘Night of the
Living Dead’ and ‘Dawn of the Dead’. ‘The Crazies’ is like an all out attack on
the government’s handling of situations and the in-humane way they treat
situations where their proposed outcome far outweighs that of the few people
affected. Parallels can be drawn with several situations at this time in
America where the government has mishandled situations – the Warren commission
investigating Kennedy’s assignation, Watergate, even the investigation into pornography
as a harmful medium under Nixon’s term was criticised for government
mishandling. America was a imbalanced state during the seventies, still coming
to terms with Vietnam and mishandling of situations as mentioned above, ‘The
Crazies’ goes on to reflect this.
Filmed on a low budget, Romero was still a relative newcomer to film
making at this point and it would take the next few years before he finally
perfected his style in ‘Dawn of the Dead’ but the rawness of ‘The Crazies’ is
half it’s appeal, it almost feels like you are watching a docu-drama and this
only heightens the tension of the film.
www.derangedindustries.co.uk
@derangedtvcrew
Sheffield Graffiti Kingdom DVD Launch
By Unknown
Posted at 03:52
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Sheffield Graffiti Kingdom DVD on Sale now!
After a hugely successful and drunken launch night, the sale of Theo Garvey's "Sheffield Graffiti Kingdom" is now on!
A feature length documentary on the Sheffield graffiti culture, featuring interviews with writers from past and present talking about their experiences, where their influences came from and how they did what they did.
Never have all the local writers been together in one place to speak about their experiences.
The DVD is available in local shops in Sheffield - Spaceman and Balance or via the Deranged Industries website:
info@derangedindustries.co.uk
@derangedtvcrew
After a hugely successful and drunken launch night, the sale of Theo Garvey's "Sheffield Graffiti Kingdom" is now on!
A feature length documentary on the Sheffield graffiti culture, featuring interviews with writers from past and present talking about their experiences, where their influences came from and how they did what they did.
Never have all the local writers been together in one place to speak about their experiences.
The DVD is available in local shops in Sheffield - Spaceman and Balance or via the Deranged Industries website:
info@derangedindustries.co.uk
@derangedtvcrew
Thursday 7 November 2013
Sheffield Graffiti Kingdom Trailer
By adamjq
Posted at 01:25
No comments
Before the general release of the feature documentary, we bring you the trailer to Sheffield Graffiti Kingdom. Enjoy and don't forget to share it with your friends!