Posts Tagged ‘counterculture’

Short Take: Amusing and apropos, but lacking in substance

Director: Bruce Robinson

Screenwriter: Bruce Robinson; Hunter S. Thompson (novel)

Cast: Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart, Giovanni Ribisi, Amber Heard, Michael Rispoli, Richard Jenkins

Length: 2h

Synopsis: American journalist/aspiring novelist Paul Kemp (Depp) is desperate for a job, so he takes one at a small fledgling newspaper in Puerto Rico as an odd job reporter and amateur horoscopes writer. The decade is the 1950s and the island of Puerto Rico is in political flux, with locals constantly protesting about one issue or another and big wigs working to capitalize on hotel properties and U.S. government contracts. One such big wig, named Sanderson (Eckhart), stumbles upon Kemp and decides he’s the man with the suitably buttery words needed for a PR campaign needed to sell the proposition of building several new island resorts. Kemp accepts the offer, but a complication arises by the name of Chenault (Heard), Sanderson’s mistress. Meanwhile, Kemp struggles to focus on assignments for the bogus paper, seemingly incapable of averting his attention from booze, his roommate Sala’s (Rispoli) insanitary nightlife, or Chenault’s under-table flirtations. Such distractions consequently lead to problems with Sanderson, but more importantly they serve to actually awaken Kemp to bigger problems within and about his surroundings, as well as his own life.

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9 - Produced by Tim Burton

Director: Shane Acker (9 (2005; short))

Screenplay: Pamela Pettler

Story: Shane Acker

Cast: Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, Crispin Glover

Length: 1h 20m

Synopsis: Thanks to mankind’s technological ambitions the world is now ruled by the machines it created. Man himself has long been extinct, and all that is left of actual life can be found in a small group of mechanical dolls that are the creations of the very scientist who helped spawn the race of machines that led to man’s demise. The goal of the living dolls becomes clear: survive at any cost and keep life alive. Read the rest of this entry »