Film For the People, By the People--Basement Films sponsors round three of its Cinema Publicus series this Thursday, Nov. 16, at 8 p.m. Filmmakers, bring your short films (seven minutes max) on DVD, VHS or 16mm for an open-sheet screening at SolArts (712 Central SE) in downtown ABQ. Film watchers, bring your ... eyeballs, I guess. Come check out art/garbage/home movies/works-in-progress. You never know what you’ll get at these things. Admission is free, so get there early to claim your seat. For more info, log on to www.basementfilms.org.
Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Fast Food Nation isn’t the first film to make fictional fun of a popular nonfiction book. In 1972, Woody Allen turned the self-help sex manual Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask into a feature-length sketch comedy. In 2004, “SNL” grad Tina Fey used Rosalind Wiseman’s academic examination of teenage cliques, Queen Bees and Wannabes, as the source of her high school comedy Mean Girls. Now, Eric Schlosser’s best-selling nutritional analysis of the supersizing of America has been transformed into an ensemble drama/comedy.
Explicit sex drama finds humor, reality amid the fornication
By Devin D. O’Leary
Have you ever been to the movies with your parents and had to squirm your way through an explicit sex scene? Inevitably, you’re greeted with an indignant, post-film rant along the lines of, “Why do they have to show that? I don’t want to see that. What’s the point of exposing all that skin?” Sound familiar? Well, then you probably don’t want to take mom and dad to see John Cameron Mitchell’s conspicuously unrated Shortbus.
Television Without Pity by Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting
By Devin D. O’Leary
Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting are the founders of TelevisionWithoutPity.com, a TV review website known for its pithy weekly recaps. Recently, Quirk Books published the duo’s spin-off book Television Without Pity, helpfully subtitled 752 Things We Love to Hate (and Hate to Love) About TV.
