The Kickstarter campaign for a Veronica Mars movie, with the “we’re-in” stamp of approval from Kristen Bell and creator Rob Thomas, has as of this moment raised over $1.5 million dollars from just under 23,000 people, or a little over $66 per person, averaged out. This puts them over three-quarters of the way toward their goal of $2 million for a summer shoot, which they will likely pass less than 24 hours after first announcing the possible project. Mark your calendars with this date, because this represents a sea change (and not totally for the better) for studio-controlled niche projects. The only question is which big-name cult-appeal title gets the treatment next… Twin Peaks, perhaps?
Daily Archives: March 13, 2013
K-11
Nope, the directorial debut of Jules Stewart, the mother of Twilight star Kristen Stewart, isn’t a flash-forward sequel to James Belushi’s K-9, or the tale of an exponentially high mountain range. Instead, the bewildering K-11, at once intense and archly presented, is a careening updating (send-up? celebration?) of women-in-prison exploitation flicks like Caged Heat. In his Hollywood Reporter review from its Turin Film Festival premiere, Stephen Dalton characterized K-11 as feeling like “a deranged John Waters remake of The Shawshank Redemption,” but a Lee Daniels re-imagination of a gender-indiscriminate Girl, Interrupted might be another appropriate shorthand descriptor of the movie’s looniness.
A pulpy, psychologically hollow and emotionally indiscernible mélange of phony jailhouse intrigue and showy gender-politicking, with a bit of anal rape sprinkled in, Stewart’s film is too ridiculous to be taken seriously and not tightly scripted and purposefully tongue-in-cheek enough to track as parody (behold the photo above). For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its 15-city theatrical engagements, including the Laemmle NoHo 7 in Los Angeles, K-11 is also available day-and-date across VOD platforms. For more information, click here to visit its website. (Breaking Glass Pictures, unrated, 88 minutes)
The Kill Hole
The ghost of Christopher Dorner, the former Los Angeles police officer who held the imaginations of television news producers captive for a week several weeks ago when he went on a rampgage, shooting several cops and their family members as part of a twisted statement of grievance, hangs over The Kill Hole, a well meaning indie drama of post-traumatic stress disorder and ex-military account-settling. Despite a fairly convincing evocation of mood by writer-director Mischa Webley, this spare yet affected would-be thriller never ripens past the point of a wobbly character study. It’s a half-developed Polaroid, and as such an artful yet shrug-inducing time-whiler. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information, click here to visit the film’s website. (RBC Film Group, unrated, 92 minutes)