Archive for October 3rd, 2009

Short Take: A very solid tale of self discovery

Director: Drew Barrymore (debut)

Screenwriter: Shauna Cross (screenplay and novel)

Cast: Ellen Page (Juno), Drew Barrymore (He’s Just Not That Into You), Marcia Gay Harden (The Mist, Mystic River), Juliette Lewis (Starsky and Hutch), Kristen Wiig (Extract, Adventureland), Daniel Stern (Bushwhacked)

Length: 1h 51m

Synopsis: Bliss (Page), a 17 year old high school girl living in rural Texas, is just trying to get through life  as uneventfully as possible, enduring the normal adolescent growing pains that everyone old enough to have had them knows stink. While normally trying to please her mother (Harden) and her obsession with beauty pageants, she one day becomes intrigued by the sport of roller derby. Supported by her ever-faithful best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat) she secretly earns a spot on a derby team in Austin, sneaking away at night to practice with 30 year old tough girls called Maggie Mayhem (Wiig), Smashley Simpson (Barrymore), and Iron Maven (Lewis). Her only obstacle becomes keeping these two lives separate, which proves more difficult than she had anticipated. Read the rest of this entry »

Short Take: It's exactly what you'd want it to be.

Director: Robert Fleischer

Screenwriters: Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland), Emma Stone (The Rocker, Superbad), Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine)

Length: 1h 20m

Synopsis: The world as we once knew it is over. The vast majority of people on earth have become zombies, leaving a remaining select few to wander about trying to survive. A teenage boy – referred to by his home town, Columbus, Ohio (Eisenberg) – gets picked up by a zombie-killing professional (Tallahassee) and the two destine to travel west across the U.S. in search of a zombie-free locale. On their way they encounter two girl con artists named Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin), and the two pairs henceforth oscillate between being trusting and distrusting of each other as they travel together. Zombies, as the common enemy, might prove to be the only thing the four have in common. Read the rest of this entry »