Screen Time is back on the blog as it will be every Friday, but this week, there's not a whole lot doing. Of the three most prominent movies opening in the Triangle this weekend, all of them, from what I can tell, are content driven. (Even if Rob Zombie defines “content” as a race against time for producing bloody cadavers.) I’m predicting style to be downplayed, and storylines (or lack thereof) to take center stage in the following three movies, so for this week’s Screen Time I thought it might be fruitful to examine these stories and then let the readers decide what movies look interesting. (If any; I personally am looking at a weekend of cinematic boredom. But that’s just an opinion, isn’t it?).
"Taking Woodstock" (opening at the Chelsea, directed by Ang Lee): An interior designer from NYC (Demetri Martin) is staying on his parents farm in upstate New York in 1969 when an opportunity presents itself to earn some extra money for the failing family business. That opportunity just happens to entail renting the farm out to a group of hippies who want to have a little music festival, that will turn in to a huge music festival, that will become the defining event of the 60’s counter-culture and that will, ultimately, go down in history simply as “Woodstock.” Some shit goes wrong along the way, however, including the not-exactly-agreed-upon removal of the fencing which prevented entry fees from being collected, resulting in, according to some conflicting accounts, massive financial loss for anyone involved in the concert. Expect Ang Lee's movie to be a starry-eyed celebration of everything so great about the concert (the music and expansive cultural tolerance) at the same time that it white washes or foolishly accepts everything imbecilic about it (the use of non-innocuous drugs and mystical, infantile guruism.)
"The Final Destination" (Wide release, directed by David Ellis - the genius best known for his work “Snakes on a Plane”): Premonition of death, predictable flying objects, collapsing escalator, death, death, death, death cheated, death catches up, at least one boy and one girl ultimately cheat death and, it is implied, make babies in celebration.
"Halloween II" (Wide Release, directed by Rob Zombie): Big man, axe, blood, broken glass, blood, screaming girl, disembowelment, blood.
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