David Bond wants you to get out. Get outside, that is. Soak up some sun! Frolic in a field! Meet some bugs! Hug a tree, if you're so inclined. He's armed with business cards, brochures, t-shirts, and a website. Yes, he's got the statistics to convince you why staying inside and staring at screens will kill you faster versus how being in Nature (capitalized, since it's a product now!) can help us all live longer. But in his wisdom and well-intentioned grandstanding (the actually two mesh quite well), he knows that nothing gets to viewers like a personal story. Project Wild Thing, a title better suited for a YouTube promo, is one of the best such efforts in a while. As Bond's quest topically stair-steps (upward...
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- 9/23/2014
- Screen Anarchy
The Selfish Giant | Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa | Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs | Ender's Game | Wolf Children | One Chance | Closed Circuit | Le Skylab | Muscle Shoals
The Selfish Giant (15)
(Clio Barnard, 2013, UK) Conner Chapman, Shaun Thomas, Sean Gilder. 91 mins
In the tradition of Kes, or Fish Tank, this offers a child's-eye view of poverty that's too strong for real-life kids of the same age. Despite the fairytale origins, miracles are in short supply in this Bradford suburb, where two drop-out mates scavenge for opportunities. But the balance between harsh realism and mythical lyricism is beautifully struck, and the two leads really are miraculous.
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (15)
(Jeff Tremaine, 2013, Us) Johnny Knoxville, Jackson Nicoll. 92 mins
Old-suited Knoxville and his "grandson" take to the road for Borat-style pranks.
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 (U)
(Cody Cameron, Kris Pearn, 2013, Us) Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Will Forte. 95 mins
Food/fauna surrealism part...
The Selfish Giant (15)
(Clio Barnard, 2013, UK) Conner Chapman, Shaun Thomas, Sean Gilder. 91 mins
In the tradition of Kes, or Fish Tank, this offers a child's-eye view of poverty that's too strong for real-life kids of the same age. Despite the fairytale origins, miracles are in short supply in this Bradford suburb, where two drop-out mates scavenge for opportunities. But the balance between harsh realism and mythical lyricism is beautifully struck, and the two leads really are miraculous.
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (15)
(Jeff Tremaine, 2013, Us) Johnny Knoxville, Jackson Nicoll. 92 mins
Old-suited Knoxville and his "grandson" take to the road for Borat-style pranks.
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 (U)
(Cody Cameron, Kris Pearn, 2013, Us) Bill Hader, Anna Faris, Will Forte. 95 mins
Food/fauna surrealism part...
- 10/26/2013
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
★★☆☆☆ Documentarian David Bond is the worried father of two young children. Like many kids raised in the city, his kids spend most of their day indoors and an inordinate amount of time in front of screens of one type or another. Inspired by a growing trepidation, the filmmaker appoints himself the 'Managing Director of Nature' and decides to market what the outdoors has to offer. The result is Project Wild Thing (2013), a kind of prog-doc both raising awareness of an issue and to some extent trying to solve it. Imagine a small-scale version of 2006's An Inconvenient Truth riffed upon by an English, middle-class Morgan Spurlock.
Bond seeks the advice of professionals in marketing as well as experts in psychology and social welfare. He quizzes school children, trying to encourage them to see something positive in going outside and communes with nature via an owl named 'Merlin'. Finally, we see...
Bond seeks the advice of professionals in marketing as well as experts in psychology and social welfare. He quizzes school children, trying to encourage them to see something positive in going outside and communes with nature via an owl named 'Merlin'. Finally, we see...
- 10/24/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
The documentary Project Wild Thing hopes to get kids off computers and embracing nature. But do protest films ever change anything – and who actually watches them?
What are you doing about global warming? Or fracking? Arab democracy? Diminishing bee populations? Nuclear energy? Gun control? Repression in Uganda? Russia? Burma? Increasingly, what we're doing about the world's problems seems to be watching documentaries on them – which does feel like doing something, while at the same time being very close to doing nothing. Now, at least, we can do nothing about more issues than ever before. The current cinema landscape is saturated with documentaries and fictionalised movies highlighting important political, humanitarian or environmental issues. That should be a good thing, but somehow, it doesn't always feel like it.
In the past month we've already had films on bees (More Than Honey), the internet and children (InRealLife), and climate change denial (Greedy Lying...
What are you doing about global warming? Or fracking? Arab democracy? Diminishing bee populations? Nuclear energy? Gun control? Repression in Uganda? Russia? Burma? Increasingly, what we're doing about the world's problems seems to be watching documentaries on them – which does feel like doing something, while at the same time being very close to doing nothing. Now, at least, we can do nothing about more issues than ever before. The current cinema landscape is saturated with documentaries and fictionalised movies highlighting important political, humanitarian or environmental issues. That should be a good thing, but somehow, it doesn't always feel like it.
In the past month we've already had films on bees (More Than Honey), the internet and children (InRealLife), and climate change denial (Greedy Lying...
- 10/17/2013
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
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