Hounddog

DVD Release February 3, 2010
So you’ve heard all the talk, accusations and screaming about the film Hounddog (or as many spelling-impaired people are writing it: Houndog) screening at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival starring Dakota Fanning but haven’t seen the film. The big question on people’s mind is “Just how outrageous or explicit was that rape scene?”

So you can gauge my answer, keep in mind that although this is a movie & TV website, for the most part I’ve come at stories from the point of view of a parent when it’s appropriate. I do not want every movie release to be Rated G, but on the other hand it drives me insane when bloodless yet intense violence or overt sexuality is aimed at kids.

The scene in question did in fact make me queasy and was sickening, but that was due more to the event than to anything on screen that could be considered even remotely explicit in regards to what was shown of 12 year old Dakota on the screen. If memory serves it looked like it may have been shot in a way where the actor portraying the rapist may never even have been on top of her. I could be mistaken on that point, but that was my impression. There were shots of her feet, hands and of course her face, and the scene was very brief.

Later on I’ll get to what bothered me about the film that I haven’t heard people talking about much. On to the movie…
Hounddog takes place some time in the late 50’s or early 60’s in the rural south. Dakota Fanning plays Lewellen, a very precocious 12 year old. It seems that right from the start the goal of the film is to make viewers uncomfortable as it opens with a scene between her and a boy that looks a bit younger that is her best friend. They’re in the woods and she wants him to drop his pants and underwear for a peek in exchange for a kiss. She talks about wanting to kill her father, which led me to believe that there may have been some sexual abuse going on, but it’s never alluded to again.

When she gets back home to the run-down shack where she and her father live, he is hanging all over Robin Wright Penn (whose character name I don’t recall) and is apparently a new girlfriend. Lewellan is a huge Elvis fan and she loves to sing his hit song “Hounddog” in particular. What is unsettling about that is that when she sings and really gets into the song she tries to gyrate like Elvis in a very provacative manner, sometimes moving like a dancer from a strip club. Seeing an undeveloped 12 year old moving like that is just plain creepy.
The film kind of rambles along and we meet Lewellan’s grandmother (played by Piper Laurie), and some of the black folks in town including Charles, a (too?) wise old soul and fan of snakes, which he uses to create medicine. The very bad guy in the movie is a new milkman in his early 20’s, who comes by Lewellan’s house one day and happens to see her singing a bit of her favorite song with her trademark moves, except this time while lying on her bed. He is the one who eventually rapes Lewellan.
Hounddog suffers from something I’ve noticed in some other indie films: It’s boring and it’s too long. Although it’s filled with gorgeous scenery, the film just seems to go on and on and on. This was yet another hour and a half long movie that felt twice as long. The best thing about the film is Dakota Fanning’s performance. She really is amazing at the range and subtlety of emotion she can convey at such a young age. I only hope that she is one of the very few child actors who survives the transition to adulthood unscathed.

The other thing that bothered me that I alluded to above was that I’ve never seen a 12 year old wearing just underwear in a movie in so many scenes. There were also instances of her lifting her dress to carry fruit or to pull something she’d been carrying out of her underwear. I can only assume the point of that was to show that she was very un-self-conscious about her body, but this doesn’t jive with her constantly wanting to kiss her best friend. That indicates to me that she is starting to enter puberty which I would think comes with an increased sense of privacy.

Is the director saying Lewellan was inadvertantly asking for it through her behavior? I doubt that. Is she saying Lewellen should be allowed to act seductively without fear of being attacked? I don’t know. My answer is obviously that there can be no justification for taking advantage of a child, but that she should be told that certain ways of acting are inappropriate and there are people out there who will respond to that behavior without giving thought to what is right and what is wrong.
I really believe that director Deborah Kampmeier was earnestly trying to bring attention to the subject of sexual abuse of children, but I don’t think showing a 12 year old girl acting seductively and peppering the film with scenes of her in her underwear was the way to go about it.

the Hurt Locker

DVD Release : 01/12/2010

“The Hurt Locker,” directed by Kathryn Bigelow from a script by Mark Boal, is the best nondocumentary American feature made yet about the war in Iraq. This may sound like faint praise and also like a commercial death sentence, since movies about that war have not exactly galvanized audiences or risen to the level of art. The squad of well-meaning topical dramas that trudged across the screens in the fall of 2007 were at once hysterical and noncommittal, registering an anxious, high-minded ambivalence that was neither illuminating nor especially entertaining. And the public, perhaps sufficiently enervated and confused by reality, was not eager to see it recreated on screen.

The Hurt Locker is a riveting, suspenseful portrait of the courage under fire of the military�s most unrecognized heroes: the technicians of the bomb squad, who volunteer to challenge the odds and save lives in one of the world�s most dangerous places. Three members of the Army�s elite Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) squad battle insurgents and each other as they seek out and disarm a wave of roadside bombs on the streets of Baghdad -- in order to try and make the city a safer place for Iraqis and Americans alike. Their mission is clear - protect and save - but it�s anything but easy, for the margin of error on a war-zone bomb is zero. A thrilling and heart-thumping look at the effects of combat and danger on the human psyche, The Hurt Lockeris based on the first-hand observations of journalist and screenwriter Mark Boal, who was embedded with a special bomb unit in Iraq.

 

Not necessarily about the causes and consequences of the Iraq war, mind you. The filmmakers’ insistence on zooming in on and staying close to the moment-to-moment experiences of soldiers in the field is admirable in its way but a little evasive as well. “The Hurt Locker,” which takes place in 2004 (it was filmed mostly in Jordan), depicts men who risk their lives every day on the streets of Baghdad and in the desert beyond, and who are too stressed out, too busy, too preoccupied with the details of survival to reflect on larger questions about what they are doing there.

The filmmakers, perhaps out of loyalty to their characters, are similarly reticent. But within those limits, “The Hurt Locker” is a remarkable accomplishment. Ms. Bigelow, practicing a kind of hyperbolic realism, distills the psychological essence and moral complications of modern warfare into a series of brilliant, agonizing set pieces.

Her focus is on Delta Company, an Army unit whose job is to detect and defuse — or carefully detonate, if all else fails — the I.E.D.’s that seem to pop up everywhere, like mushrooms in the rain. Some of the devices are brutishly simple, others fiendishly elaborate, but each one lays the groundwork for a cruel and revealing test of character.

The Final Destination

On what should have been a fun-filled day at the races, Nick O�Bannon has a horrific premonition in which a bizarre sequence of events causes multiple race cars to crash, sending flaming debris... On what should have been a fun-filled day at the races, Nick O�Bannon has a horrific premonition in which a bizarre sequence of events causes multiple race cars to crash, sending flaming debris into the stands, brutally killing his friends and causing the upper deck of the stands to collapse on him. When he comes out of this grisly nightmare Nick panics, persuading his girlfriend, Lori, and their friends, Janet and Hunt, to leave� escaping seconds before Nick�s frightening vision becomes a terrible reality. Thinking they�ve cheated death, the group has a new lease on life, but unfortunately for Nick and Lori, it is only the beginning. As his premonitions continue and the crash survivors begin to die one-by-one -- in increasingly gruesome ways -- Nick must figure out how to cheat death once and for all before he, too, reaches his final destination. The film marks the latest in the highly popular Final Destination series, and its first 3D installment, giving horror fans an especially visceral thrill ride. --© Warner Bros

The Final Destination 4 Official Trailer - Click here for funny video clips

When the decision was made to produce a fourth Final Destination movie, there must have been conversations about whether the same formula would work without any reconfiguring. Audiences were pretty familiar with it by now: someone has a premonition that saves a bunch of people's lives; then Death comes back around to kill everyone anyway, in the order they'd have died in if they hadn't gotten away the first time. Someone must have asked, "Should we tweak the formula a little? Offer some kind of new angle or a surprising twist we haven't used before?"

That person, if he existed, was outvoted. The new film, senselessly called The Final Destination, follows the formula to the letter, without deviation. You might just as well stay home and watch one of the other three, where at least there will be some devilish wit and ironic humor in evidence. You'll get none of that here.

This time we're at a racetrack when Nick (Bobby Campo), a young man with no defining personality traits, has a vivid daydream about a horrific accident that kills him, his friends, and 50 others. Spooked, he gets out of there just before the real thing happens, saving his own life and the lives of his girlfriend, Lori (Shantel VanSanten), her best friend, Janet (Haley Webb), and Janet's preppy d-bag boyfriend Hunt (Nick Zano). A security guard (Mykelti Williamson) is also spared, along with a few tag-alongs.