Welcome to The Best Movie You Never Saw, a column dedicated to examining films that have flown under the radar or gained traction throughout the years, earning them a place as a cult classic or underrated gem that was either before it’s time and/or has aged like a fine wine. This week we’ll be examining David Mamet’s Spartan, starring Val Kilmer, Derek Luke, William H. Macy, and Kristen Bell. The Story: Special Forces officer Bobby Scott is called in...
- 10/4/2013
- by Paul Shirey
- JoBlo.com
Spartan (David Mamet, 2004) was quite near the beginning of the artistic sequence that Mamet scholars would eventually call his "early crypto-fascist period"—certainly a good dozen years before his bizarre, Kaufmanesque wrestling matches with Tariq Ramadan, complete with veiled ringside girls, on Al-Jazeera. About the film itself, critics were brutal. One of them called it "unimaginably crude – the Pickup on South Street (1) of the so-called War on Terror." Another said, "watching this film makes me want to commit innocent but suspicious acts deserving of a good waterboarding in Guantanamo." Despite the down-beat & cryptic patriotism of the film, it was not a success. Warner Brothers, sifting through the testing data, eventually fingered its too mild anti-Arabian racism. Mamet was forced to move the idea to television where he re-conceived the material for the series The Unit, primarily, the cynics said, as a way to get singing gigs for his wife, Scottish folkstress Rebecca Pidgeon.
- 9/13/2011
- MUBI
Spartan (2004) You need to set your motherfucker to receive. Synopsis Val Kilmer plays Bobby Scott, a selection member for an elite and very secretive branch of the military. His methods are anything but traditional, but his results are definite. When he is called in to help the secret service search for the missing daughter of a high-ranking government official (you can just assume that official is the President, though it’s never openly said), Scott soon realizes there is anything but a standard kidnapping taking place. Why We Love It In a word: Mamet. The story behind Spartan could have been handled with the minimal amount of effort put into characters and dialogue, and it probably could have still worked given a decent director and fine actors. This being a David Mamet films, you know you’re getting more than anything typical especially in terms of dialogue. The lines in Spartan crack like a whip and give...
- 2/2/2011
- by Jeremy Kirk
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
It's Saturday, March 13, 2010, when Dread arrives to the snowy set of director Elise Robertson's horror feature Donner Pass. Penned by Scott Adams and executive produced by Mouncey Ferguson, who financed the film, the independent feature tells the story of an unlucky group of teens who, while on a ski trip in the mountains around Lake Tahoe, encounter George Donner, an entity with a taste for human flesh, and unfortunately for the group, it's for their own.
Setting foot into the remote mountain cabin that production has secured, and at present is being utilized as base-camp, I meet associate producer Duncan Ferguson, who fills us in on the status of Donner Pass, starring John (the voice of the Crypt Keeper) Kassir as 'Epstein', Adelaide (Power Rangers R.P.M.) Kane as 'Nicole', Desiree Hall as 'Kayley', and Antonio Trischitta as 'Brody', with the cast rounded out by up-and-comers Erik Stocklin...
Setting foot into the remote mountain cabin that production has secured, and at present is being utilized as base-camp, I meet associate producer Duncan Ferguson, who fills us in on the status of Donner Pass, starring John (the voice of the Crypt Keeper) Kassir as 'Epstein', Adelaide (Power Rangers R.P.M.) Kane as 'Nicole', Desiree Hall as 'Kayley', and Antonio Trischitta as 'Brody', with the cast rounded out by up-and-comers Erik Stocklin...
- 3/26/2010
- by SeanD.
- DreadCentral.com
Dread Central recently caught up with producer Jude S. Walko, who tipped us off to his upcoming horror feature Donner Pass, which is set to shoot in Los Angeles and its surrounding environs next month.
Directed by Elise Robertson from a script by Scott Adams, Donner Pass is set to star John (the voice of the Crypt Keeper) Kassir as ‘Epstein’, Adelaide (Power Rangers R.P.M.) Kane as ‘Nicole’, and Desiree Hall as ‘Kayley’, with the cast rounded out by up-and-comers Erik Stocklin and Colley Bailey and seasoned vets Thomas Kopache, Eric Pierpoint, Joel Stoffer, Russ Russo, and Kevin Kearns. Mouncey Ferguson III, who independently financed the film, serves as executive producer with Walko on board in the capacity of producer.
The story? “Over a long weekend,” Walko informed us of the flick’s narrative, “a group of angst-ridden teens are invited up to their friend's parents' remote cabin in Donner Pass,...
Directed by Elise Robertson from a script by Scott Adams, Donner Pass is set to star John (the voice of the Crypt Keeper) Kassir as ‘Epstein’, Adelaide (Power Rangers R.P.M.) Kane as ‘Nicole’, and Desiree Hall as ‘Kayley’, with the cast rounded out by up-and-comers Erik Stocklin and Colley Bailey and seasoned vets Thomas Kopache, Eric Pierpoint, Joel Stoffer, Russ Russo, and Kevin Kearns. Mouncey Ferguson III, who independently financed the film, serves as executive producer with Walko on board in the capacity of producer.
The story? “Over a long weekend,” Walko informed us of the flick’s narrative, “a group of angst-ridden teens are invited up to their friend's parents' remote cabin in Donner Pass,...
- 2/25/2010
- by SeanD.
- DreadCentral.com
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