Screenscene

Friday, January 29, 1999

Screenscene

"Tinseltown"

Starring Arye Gross and Tom Wood

Directed by Tony Spiridakis

Bland acting, bland directing and a script that simply begs the
question, "Why?" These are not the components of a brilliant film,
and unfortunately, Tony Spiridakis’ new film "Tinseltown" is one
worth skipping at the multiplex.

The film attempts to be a comedic look at the dirty inner
workings of Hollywood, but ends up falling flat on its face and
being more annoying and boring than humorous.

The film follows the lives of two men recently arrived in
Hollywood – writer Tiger (Wood) and his idea man Max (Gross) – who
are about ready to call it quits because they are homeless and
broke. They soon discover that Cliff (Ron Perlman),however, the man
who kindly gives them temporary shelter, is actually the serial
killer who is terrorizing Los Angeles. Instead of turning him in,
they decide to capitalize on the situation as a career move by
working with Cliff to create a brilliant film project about the
real life of a serial killer. Sounds hilarious, right?

The script badly wants to be a witty black comedy, but the
premise is awkwardly unfunny at best, and the jokes throughout
provoke more groans and grimaces than laughs. The final third of
the film, intended as a surprising and comedic twist in Tiger and
Max’s quest to get their film produced, comes across as both
uncomfortable and completely unfunny and is probably the
appropriate time to run out of the theater and demand your eight
bucks back.

The cast is unspectacular, and you can’t help but feel sorry for
them and wonder how they got trapped into making this lackluster
project. As the pesky idea man Max (Gross) succeeds in being both
pathetic and unfunny. Kristy Swanson plays an icily determined USC
film student, but her performance lacks any sort of bitchy edge
that could have made her character stand out.

"Tinseltown" could have been a witty indictment of the lengths
people will go to in order to succeed in Hollywood. Aiding a serial
killer is hardly the stuff of which brilliant comedies are made,
and this is one film that leaves you asking how the movie got made
and why you wasted your time seeing it.

Ricky Herzog

Rating:1

"Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane"

Starring Dan Leis and Joe Carnahan

Directed by Joe Carnahan

Made for only $7300, "Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane" marks the
film debut of writer, director and star Carnahan. The story
revolves around Bob (Leis) and Sid (Carnahan), a pair of
fast-talking, though unfortunately broke, used car salesmen. Their
only chance for salvation comes when shifty car broker Ray (James
Salter) makes them an offer they can’t refuse: sit on a mysterious
Pontiac LeMans for two days and collect a quarter million dollars
for their trouble.

What they don’t know, though, is that this car is at the center
of an intricate conspiracy of murder and massacre, stretching all
the way from their car lot to the depths of South America.

The story is fast and furious, full of unexpected plot twists
and gratuitous camera tricks, but it’s also muddled and chaotic.
The movie has a nasty habit of repeating every plot point three or
four times. Ken Rudolph is wasted as an FBI agent whose main job is
to explain things that even the dullest viewer will have already
understood.

At times, Carnahan tries too hard to imitate the casual carnage
of "El Mariachi" or the unpolished banter of "Clerks." Random title
cards divide the film into chapters, in exactly the same way they
did in "Clerks."

Also, when Bob and Sid disagree over whether or not Johnny Cash
was ever a prison bitch, you can almost hear that film’s Dante and
Randall pondering the ethics of destroying the unfinished Death
Star. Even so, most of the humor works well; the scene where an
excitable motel owner tries to get rid of the FBI agents who have
just discovered a dismembered body in his dumpster is quite
funny.

For the most part, the actors are competent and believable.
Carnahan and Leis bring a sense of frustrated sleaziness to their
roles, although one quickly gets tired of watching them scream at
each other. Just about every character speaks a mile a minute,
constantly spouting one-liners and obscenities. The writing is
usually witty enough to sustain this sort of dialogue, but there
are lulls where you’ll find yourself wishing that these guys would
just stop whining and get on with the story.

The only quiet character is the taciturn Mr.Reich (Hugh
McChord), the stone cold killer pulling the strings in this
operation. With his commanding presence and Teutonic goon sneer,
McChord is by far the most interesting actor to watch. His final
monologue, a grisly list of all his "activities," constitutes one
of the film’s major high points.

Ultimately, neither the splattervision antics nor the
smart-mouthed dialogue can disguise the fact that the movie doesn’t
seem to go anywhere. The visual effects are little more than
distracting eye-candy, as if the director threw them in merely
because he thought they would look cool.

If you are willing to overlook these annoyances, however, the
film does contain scattered moments of brilliance: it manages to
keep a creepy, edgy atmosphere throughout and the grand finale is
rather original. Despite all its flaws, "Blood, Guts, Bullets and
Octane" is still a promising first effort.

Michael Rosen-Molina

Rating: 6

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