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blacksun_moh
Reviews
Bloodhound Gang: One Fierce Beer Run (2003)
A rather strange portrayal of life on the road.
I've watched my fair share of fly on the wall music documentaries most of them are of a fairly poor quality. Typically the content is 20 minutes worth of shaky cam action of lame practical jokes and artists talking complete and utter tripe to the camera padded out with live performances and their entire catalogue of music videos.
There are exceptions to this rule "A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica", "Don't Look Back In Anger" and "The Beatles Anthology" to name a few. This movie however is a different breed, all the previous titles truly are a testament to the time period they were filmed. For a great deal of people the 80's were Metallica and Guns 'n' Roses just as the 60's for a great deal of people were The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Hendrix and Dylan.
One Fierce Beer Run can't be ranked with these movies as The Bloodhound Gang are not the 90's or even the 00's. They're just a group of kids that made a few pretty cool songs and enjoyed a little success, this documentary was filmed while they were still up and coming and it's probably a good idea that they held off on the release because this DVD may well have limited their success.
Most of the time watching a documentary like the ones listed above you watch with a sense of wonder. You imagine how great it must have been in those stadiums, on those stages, singing those songs. After watching One Fierce Beer Coaster I was left with the overwhelming feeling of relief that this is not my life, anyone who has ever watched Jackass will have a pretty good idea of what life is like in The Bloodhound Gang.
That's not to say this is a bad DVD or that they are bad people. The reason I believe this is because this has to be the most truthful representation of what life is like touring. Most people believe that touring is a luxury life filled with glamour and excitement the reality is however quite different and that is what is shown here.
Long in depth discussions about the most mundane subjects you can imagine are shown in full detail, people are singled out for random bouts of victimization through nothing more than boredom. I'm struggling to not give out spoilers here so I'll just run of a list of incidents you can expect to see without naming anyone.
You can expect to see a ton of arguments. You can expect to see varying degrees of humiliation. You can expect to see plenty of drinking. You can even expect to see people revealing homosexual encounters...I kid you not.
If you want to know what life is really like touring for anyone selling less than Eminem and Madonna this is a good place to start. If anything this should be compulsory viewing for American Idol contestants.
If you really want to follow your dream this is the route you should have to take, this is what you do to earn your status. Jumping from singing in your shower to a stage on that kind of scale is a slap in the face to every hard working band out there living the reality rather than the made for TV fantasy.
Last Days (2005)
Don't really know what to think....
SPOILER WARNING....
Now i will be commenting on a few things in the film but whether or not they can be considered spoilers i will leave up to you, my own personal opinion is that a film must first have a plot before it can be spoiled in any way.
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Well i just finished watching this film 20 minutes ago so i'm writing this fairly fresh and still haven't completely formed an opinion of it, its probably best me writing these comments in this state of mind because most of you will probably be thinking the same thing.
I watched this film without reading any reviews seeing any ratings or hearing about it through word of mouth, after 2 minutes of seeing Micheal Pitt as "Blake" you will clearly see Kurt Cobain, 30 minutes later you will be slightly confused by just what the hell you are watching and for a time this movie will seem like a chore to watch and if i'm honest it just carry's on like that.
So why then did i give it 7 out of 10? Because roughly an hour into the film i was actually impressed by something, up until this point in the film all you see is a blonde skinny guy fumbling around looking like his half way to falling asleep or down a flight of stairs, this is pretty much what you have watched up to now. Then he starts playing guitar and singing, now i have been a Nirvana fan since i was 13 years old and that spans almost half my life time, this one scene reminded me why. Its a shame this is a movie site otherwise i could carry on with a review that could get me hired by rolling stone, but it isn't so i won't.
To sum up, if your looking for a source of entertainment please forgive me for the caps and DO NOT WATCH THIS. This is not a film you watch to be entertained in any form, if you watch this searching for something to give you a thrill or move you in anyway you will most likely be let down by it, an example of why this would be so? how about at one point in the film you are watching a TV showing a Boyz 2 Men video for the entire duration.
However, if you want to watch a film with some incredible acting, great direction and is a good deal different to anything else thats had a decent size release to it lately this might be for you.
It may also be worth it for Nirvana fans to check out. ;)
Ankle Biters (2002)
Midget vampires, now you've read that you don't need to see it.
The film is quite simply a life changing experience for until you have seen this film you can never, ever, ever truly say that you have seen a bad film. This film is an absolute must see otherwise you can never appreciate what the people on these message boards and i have witnessed.
The plot (for what its worth it does kind of have one) is just plain stupid, midget vampires trying to bring back tall vampires. And the script is so bad there are porn writers in Hollywood using it as toilet paper. And as for the camera work, direction and production i only need to tell you two things that actually happened in the film to give you some idea of how much effort and thought they put into this.
A scene with one of the midget vampires takes place in broad daylight, the film is set in Atlanta (it looks more like Texas to be honest with you) so needless to say thats its pretty damn sunny. And in order to create the illusion of one of the midget vampires jumping on a table they simply made him jump of it and played it backwards. They must have been pretty pleased with how this panned out because they used the exact same trick....as a matter of fact i believe it was even the exact same shot 3 times! For the amount of effort this thing must have taken i would say it doesn't even deserve to be rewarded with a spot on the worst 100 films of all time, but, i do believe that it is without doubt the worst film ever made. So with that in mind who are we to deprive this film of its place in history? Come on people get watching and voting, there can't be anything worse than this out there.