by Cineleet on January 4, 2010
This is a guest post written by Greg Davies. Greg is known in social media circles as cGt2099, and runs the sites cGt2099.com, Social Blend. We’ve previously featured his talents on the post: Five Films about Australia better than ‘Australia’ and Before the Galaxy Far, Far Away: Influences on ‘Star Wars’
From the 1980’s air-raid siren singing of Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden to the deepest guttural growls of the darkest Black Metal, I listen to it all. I have been a metalhead since I was a kid, and the metal subculture has been a part of my life for many years. So, unsurprisingly, when something popular takes off on the internet that has some relation to any form of Metal, I am usually all over it.
But in recent weeks, the site MetalInjection.net decided to compile a list of the “best” movies about Metalheads. It hit the front page of Digg.com, and did very well at numerous other social news sites as well. Aside from the author’s inclusion of This Is Spinal Tap (a good quality and mandatory selection which I wholeheartedly agree with), the other five choices were pathetic lampoons of the depth and scope of the Metalhead subculture.
Do not get me wrong: I am a fan of MetalInjection.net, and have been for some time; it’s a great site… but this list? Abysmal! It should have been called “A List of Movies That Portray Metalheads as Cheesy Idiots”. Off the bat, the author declined to include documentaries, which was an inadequate decision seeing as there are so many fine documentary flicks out there about the Metal subculture. The Metal Injection listing included the predictable cheese ball comedies: Bill and Ted, Tenacious D, Beavis and Butthead, Wayne’s World, and Airheads.
In reply, I decided to come up with my own list… The REAL top 6(66) movies about Metalheads – and why you ought to see them:
by Cineleet on March 13, 2009
This is a guest post written by Regan Payne. Mr. Payne is president of Omnipresent Productions, a fully functioning production house in Vancouver, BC
I began hearing the cries and caterwauls several years ago. It’s a familiar sound to most, a high-pitched rhythm, lined with the sardonic shades of a half-conceived argument. Otherwise known as whining. And not just any old whining, no, the whining of that much-derided, multiplex malcontent: the cineaste. Every group of friends has one, that veritable fountain of nonplus theorizing about this, that, and anything film. I should know, I am this person amongst my unfortunate group of friends – though this particular grievance is not part of my usual repertoire, that consisting of the sacrilege of film remakes (God, please not Metropolis too! Or, Metropolis 2 for that matter, I don’t want to see either one) and the long lost art of actual film editing. [click to continue…]
by Cineleet on March 2, 2009
This is a guest post written by Greg Davies. Greg is known in social media circles as cGt2099, and runs the sites The-TrukstoP.com and WallabyDown.com. We’ve previously featured his inestimable talents on the post:
Before the Galaxy Far, Far Away: Influences on ‘Star Wars’
© Annie Leibovitz for Vogue
|
One of the most expected movies of 2008, Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, also turned out to be one of the most polarizing. When the film was finally released, it was subject to a wide range of reviews; from positive to neutral to negative… it was unmistakable that the movie would not be universally loved as the hype before release had many people believe. [click to continue…]
by Cineleet on January 28, 2009
 |
The 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder highlights an inconvenient Hollywood truth: Oscar loves mental disabilities. In the film, Ben Stiller’s action hero character, Tugg Speedman, wishing to expand beyond his stereotype, attempts to court Oscar sympathies by playing a mentally challenged farmhand. It ends up being a critical failure. This is because, as Tugg’s co-star Robert Downey, Jr warns him, “You never go full retard”. And he has a point. [click to continue…]
