Gas-s-s-s! (1971, Director: Roger Corman): The alternate title, “It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It” should give you a hint of what Corman and writer George Armitage (later to direct better stuff that he didn’t write, like Grosse Point Blank and Miami Blues) were trying to achieve. An extremely silly film which tries to make its political points with a big dumb sledgehammer, Gas-s-s-s! (sometimes called just Gas! and sometimes Gas-s-s-s without the exclamation point) is a mess on many levels, but ends up being somewhat enjoyable in spite of, or perhaps because of its utter zaniness.
An explosion at an American chemical weapons plant releases a gas that kills everyone over 25, leaving the young to rebuild the society. We follow a pair of hippies, Coel and Cilla, as they escape the crushing conservatism of Dallas and head west to New Mexico. Along the way, they meet up with two other couples (played by Ben Vereen, Cindy Williams, Bud Cort and Tally Coppola, whom you might know better as Talia Shire, or for you young ones, Jason Schwartzman’s mom). The six of them keep heading west seeking a place to settle. They run into some crazy characters along the way, including a fascist football team with its own marching band and cheerleaders, and a golf course taken over by a group of capitalist bikers. The “satire” is extremely broad and most of the time I felt like I was watching an episode of The Monkees. Except for the crazy dune buggy and golf cart chases, when it was more like The Banana Splits. And like those shows, I felt this was another crass attempt to cash in on the hippie craze. Except that by 1971, it was mostly played out.
The whole silly mess ends with a lightning bolt from God (who sounds like a Borscht-belt comedian), ending a battle between the football gang and the peaceful hippies who have taken over an Indian pueblo. But instead of striking them all dead (which would have been welcome by this point), all the characters who have died or disappeared throughout the film emerge from the explosion and the film ends in another psychedelic freakout party. Um, sure.
Part of the 8-film Roger Corman Collection, which can be had for about $4 per film. About right for this one, I think.
Buy The Roger Corman Collection from Amazon.ca
Buy The Roger Corman Collection from Amazon.com
(5/10)
Warner Brothers announces it will be issuing all new releases after May in Blu-ray format only.
The article actually states, “The studio hopes its decision will help end the format war.”
Wow. I’ve been preparing a blog post about the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD struggle, especially as it applies to independent and documentary films, many of which are filmed in high definition. To this point, however, none of these smaller films has been released in either high-definition format, ostensibly because of the high cost of trying to support both formats. Perhaps this decision by Warner will clear the way for some of the little guys to get their stuff out in higher resolution.
Now to work on my speech: “Honey, I need the PlayStation 3 for my film reviewing work.”
My wife and I are heading to New York City in a few weeks to enjoy a weekend of ballet, sightseeing, food, and, I hope, cinema. I haven’t been to the city since I was a small child and so I’ve been doing some online research to find out interesting places for a cinephile to go. While browsing the site of the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, I found the Pinewood Dialogues, an archive of podcasts featuring interviews with actors and directors that stretches all the way back to 1989.
Even if we don’t hike it out to Queens, this online treasure trove makes the online research worthwhile.
By the way, apart from Film Forum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where else should I consider spending some time on our all-too-brief weekend in the city?
New York Times technology columnist David Pogue writes about the frustrating experience of seeing a movie that seems completely different from the trailer that made you want to see it in the first place.
This is becoming more and more common as films are edited right up to the date of release, while marketing plans (including the trailer) must be prepared months in advance. I experienced this “trailer tease” most memorably with the Will Ferrell comedy Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Almost nothing we laughed at in the trailer was in the finished film. According to the IMDB site, there were so many discarded subplots and unused scenes that the filmmakers made an entire second film, Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie and included it on the second disc of Anchorman’s DVD release.
Can you think of any other examples of trailer teases that failed to deliver?
I’ve been reading Kevin Kelly’s True Films site for a while now. Kevin was the founding executive editor of Wired magazine and is a former editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He’s well-known for his incredibly useful Cool Tools weblog. So he’s a smart guy, and he loves documentaries. He’s also a generous guy, and has just announced that readers can download a free copy of the third edition of his True Films book in PDF format. The book contains 200 reviews of documentaries that have appeared on his site, and it’s free because there are some ads embedded in the PDF.
The book is available from Kevin’s site, but if his bandwidth runs out, comment here and I can host it as well.
Thanks to Kevin and Andre for the tip.
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