On Demand Weekly

DOIN’ IT IN THE PARK - From The Blacktop To The Silver ScreenJune 14, 2013

DOIN' IT IN THE PARK

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: DOIN IT IN THE PARK', available to download at http://buy.doinitinthepark.com.

See the latest Independent Movie On Demand (IMOD) Trailers here...

DOIN' IT IN THE PARK

By T. Tara Turk

I got into basketball because of hormones and because of my mom. I’m not ashamed. My mom has always been a sports nut - she was a super fan/stan of the Dallas Cowboys for years and would keep me up on Monday nights SCREAMING. So when I was a pre-teen and I discovered basketball, hormones and the boys who played basketball, I may have become my mother’s daughter.

While I was busy fawning and screaming over the likes of Alonzo Mourning playing for Georgetown, unbeknownst to me there was a whole street ball thing happening in New York that I wouldn’t even hear of until I moved there. Every New Yorker and her visitors pass by the ball courts at West 4th Street in the Village with their crowded myriad group of ecclectic men, boys and sometimes girls - looking like street pirates, all vying for a spot in the next game. But there is a whole world behind that scene that NYC radio personality/former Rock Steady breakdancing crew member/street ball player and lover/documentarian Bobbito Garcia and Kevin Couliau tackles in his new doc DOIN' IT IN THE PARK.

Garcia hits a treasure trove of memories, rules (by borough naturally), beloved legends, new legends and grounds that would normally be lost forever. I myself, totally obliviously lived near one of the most famous street ball courts in Harlem on a 129th and Seventh Ave. These treasures pour straight from the source with many neighborhood legends talking about their progression of playing ball with socks and the wall, garbage cans lifted up to walls and finally, the courts in the neighborhood. And you can’t forget about the legendary games that the courts have witnessed! Some footage shows folks sitting on the top of buildings to watch some of the tournaments..some even with legends like Kareem Abdul Jabar. Ahh the days before video games.

The story telling is absolutely fascinating to any basketball lover as many of those courts have gone on to give the NBA some legends like Kenny Smith, Dr. J (my mom’s husband in her head), Kenny Anderson and many street legends that never got to the NBA because of, well, life, like Pee Wee Kirkland and Fly Williams. Garcia and Couliau travel from famous courts like the Ruckers up in Harlem to smaller courts like the ones on Riker’s Island, a place that can’t contain the dreams of some of the younger and older street ballers despite their incarceration.

And you can’t forget about the women!

Tags:

spike lee,

pee wee kirkland,

kenny smith,

kevin couliau,

donald byrd and the blackbyrds,

dr. j,

doin it in the park’,

CARTOON COLLEGE - Enroll Now And See It On DemandJune 12, 2013

CARTOON COLLEGE

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: CARTOON COLLEGE (FilmBuff).

See the latest Independent Movie On Demand (IMOD) Trailers here...

CARTOON COLLEGE

By Jonathan Baylis

Years ago, when I was exhibiting at an indie comics convention called the Small Press Expo (SPX), I met a cartoonist named Jen Vaughn who sold me hook, line, and sinker on a comic book about menstruation. This was perhaps not an obvious choice for me at first, but I enjoyed her engaging and sincere pitch so much that it was hard to resist. And it was a good comic! Turns out this cartoonist went to a school called CCS, The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT. CARTOON COLLEGE is a documentary about this school.

CARTOON COLLEGE features a snapshot into the lives of the working cartoonists who teach there, like James Sturm (who was working on his most recent graphic novel “The Market”), Steve Bissette (Swamp Thing, Tyrant) and Alec Longstreth (Basewood), but also up & coming student cartoonists like the above-mentioned Jen Vaughn, Katherine Roy, and Josh Rosen among many others. We bear witness to these students who have been called here to focus on their personal, lonely, time-consuming, difficult passion: cartooning.

The stories of these cartoonists are varied. Jen’s working two jobs to try to support the costs of the school. Her work is fun, earnest, and edgy in nature.

Jen Vaughn (CARTOON COLLEGE)

Jen - “I’m not going to send this to my mom.”

Blair Sterrett is a Morman who’s working on autobiographical comics with stories so close to his vest, that he’s brought to tears while drawing and talking about his work.

Blair Sterrett (CARTOON COLLEGE)

Blair - "I'm hoping autobiographical comics get easier with time. Maybe they don't."

Al B. Wesolowsky, a Boston University archaeology professor, is the oldest student ever at CCS, being in his 60s, living a life long dream of trying to create comics.

Al B. Wesolowsky (CARTOON COLLEGE)

Al - “I got the notice that I’d been accepted to my surprise. I thought my poor drawing skills would surely keep me out.”

All have personal and creative challenges that filmmakers Josh Melrod and Tara Wray compassionately capture, perhaps none more compelling than when their work gets critiqued by fellow students and teachers. Jen felt like she “had eight holes ripped” in her after one review.

Peppered in between the trials and tribulations of the students are thoughts from some of the greatest comics creators of our time. A real who’s who list of important artists dispensing their wisdom to the CCS students (and to the viewer, who might have only come into contact with one genre of comics: superheroes.) We meet Art Spiegelman (Maus) and his wife Francoise Mouly (Art Editor of the New Yorker), Chris Ware (Building Stories), Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics), Charles Burns (Black Hole), and the list goes on…

Paul Westover

Let’s face it. This movie was made for me.

Aaron Eckhart In The Conspiracy Thriller ERASEDJune 08, 2013

ERASED (Radius)

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: ERASED (Radius).

See the latest Independent Movie On Demand (IMOD) Trailers here...

ERASED

By Chris Claro

Few things are more satisfying than a good conspiracy thriller. The seventies saw plenty of them, from classics Pakula’s THE PARALLAX VIEW and Pollack’s THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR to the hokey claptrap of CAPRICORN ONE. In the eighties, CAPRICORN director Peter Hyams revisited the genre with THE STAR CHAMBER and Brian DePalma weighed in with the flawed but interesting BLOW OUT. In the 21st century, old hands Jonathan Demme and Steven Spielberg brought their skills to the conspiracy flick with THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and MINORITY REPORT.

The man-vs-mysterious-monolith effectiveness of those films was based on their tight scripts, crackling direction and charisma of their leading men – yes, even James Brolin. Now, director Philipp Stölzl has teamed up with Aaron Eckhart for their crack at the conspiracy genre with ERASED. Do they do their predecessors proud?

Eckhart is Ben Logan, a Belgium-based employee of one of those shadowy international cartels of which screenwriters are so fond. Logan’s job is one of those that seems to exist solely in movies such as this one (Remember Redford as Condor, whose job was to read novels in search of possible plots against the CIA?), doing something or other that involves security workarounds, eye scanners and pneumatic tubes filled with portentous documents.

Tags:

radius,

erased,

philipp stölzl,

Tim Roth’s BROKEN Opens On Ultra VOD June 2nd - DEMAND ITJune 02, 2013

BROKEN (Film Movement)

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: BROKEN (Film Movement), opens on Ultra VOD starting June 2nd & Theatrically and iTunes/VOD on July 19th.

See the latest Independent Movie On Demand (IMOD) Trailers here...

BROKEN

By Melissa Chesman

Notable British theatre director, Rufus Norris, chose an ambitious story to tell for his first feature film. BROKEN is based on Daniel Clay’s novel of the same name, which Mr. Clay wrote in tribute to Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

Understanding the origins going into the viewing (I went in blind) would most likely add dimension and turn any nagging feelings of bizzaro (to borrow a term) familiarity into appreciative nods to the many similarities between Lee’s iconic American novel and this modern English presentation.

BROKEN is primarily about main character, Skunk’s, loss of innocence. Skunk (Eloise Laurence), an 11-year-old tomboyish girl with an incredible moral compass, has type-one diabetes. Skunk, Archie (her solicitor father played with such warm composure by Tim Roth), and Skunk’s nanny, Kasia (Zana Marjanovic) must monitor Skunk’s blood sugar levels daily. Skunk never knew her mother, who left the family shortly after Skunk was born and Skunk’s older brother, Jed (Bill Milner), is typically more absorbed in his own teenage boy pursuits than being his sister’s keeper.

Skunk (Eloise Laurence) / BROKEN (Film Movement)

At first, the cul-de-sac where Skunk and her family reside resembles a could-be-anyone, anywhere English, middle-class existence. However, next door to Skunk is the appalling Oswald family, headed by Bob (Rory Kinnear), the hot-head widower father of three completely out of control and very slutty girls: Saskia, Susan and Sunrise. When Bob is convinced Susan slept with a boy, Bob threatens her into giving him a name. Susan falsely indicates Rick Buckley (Robert Emms), the simpleton only child of their other neighbors. In front of Skunk, who adores sweet-natured Rick, Bob surprise-beats Rick to a bloody pulp.

The havoc this brutal beating incident heaves on the three families of Skunk’s cul-de-sac sinks deeper, dirtier and darker as the movie continues, until one final tragic mess unfolds from which Skunk may or may not ever return.

Tags:

broken,

to kill a mockingbird,

mark o’rowe,

A BAND CALLED DEATH Takes The On Demand StageMay 23, 2013

Drafthouse Films

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: A BAND CALLED DEATH (Drafthouse Films), is available for digital download and VOD.

See the latest Independent Movie On Demand (IMOD) Trailers here...

A BAND CALLED DEATH

By T. Tara Turk

As a writer, every so often I read a truth that’s so much stranger than fiction, I almost get jealous I didn’t conjure it myself.

The rockumentary A BAND CALLED DEATH is so fantastical...

...that I wouldn’t have believed if it the filmmakers hadn’t presented such great evidence of this crazy story of a black pre-punk band made up of three brothers from Detroit and their 35 year comeback.

Let’s cover the parts of the story that aren’t so foreign to most of us, especially garage bands. Three brothers start jamming together. They create what they think is some of the best music that could come out of their veins. They find a studio to record. They almost get a deal. They don’t compromise though and the deal goes the way of the wind. Slowly they disband after trying several incarnations of the music they’ve created only to wind up with one brother walking away and the two remaining brothers forming a bar reggae band in New England.

Bob / A BAND CALLED DEATH (Drafthouse Films)

Got it? Good because there’s so much more that’s completely beyond belief.

The fact that Dannis, Bob and David Hackney were able to form a band playing pre punk in 1973, two years before anyone knew what a Ramone was, in the middle of Motown would be surprising to some but not to anyone who’s actually been raised in Detroit. Detroit is and has always been a renaissance city (even my high school is named Renaissance) that could host so many different art forms that it’s a wonder we don’t have music hall of fames, Detroit muse statues and a Mount Olympus of our own.

The fact that Clive Davis offered the band a deal in the mid 70s but David, the group’s leader and visionary, refused to change the band’s name no matter the circumstances is the stuff most hardcore rebel musicians dreams are made of.

Tags:

dannis,

motown,

a band called death,

punk,

david,

dream hampton,