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p.s. Hey. Welcome to the first day of my short away time. Here's a long lost and kind of behind-the-times post regarding the first films by Todd Solondz that you will perhaps enjoy and wish to speak to, with, or about. Thank you!
News
Life During Wartime is the title of Todd Solondz's new film, currently in the production stages. The new film was said by Solondz in an interview at this year's Cannes Film Festival to be a companion piece to Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse. It has also been described as "A Dark Comedy of Sexual Obsession." It will star Emma Thompson, Demi Moore, Chi McBride, Chane't Johnson, Paul Dano, Renee Taylor, Faye Dunaway, Dennis Franz and Hope Davis, with a budget of $4.5 million. It is expected to be released around early to mid 2008.
----Palindromes (2004)
Plot
A fable of innocence: thirteen-year-old Aviva Victor wants to be a 'mom'. She does all she can to make this happen, and comes very close to succeeding, but in the end her plan is thwarted by her sensible parents. So she runs away, still determined to get pregnant one way or another, but instead finds herself lost in another world, a less sensible one, perhaps, but one pregnant itself with all sorts of strange possibility. She takes a road trip from the suburbs of New Jersey, through Ohio to the plains of Kansas and back. Like so many trips, this one is round-trip, and it's hard to say in the end if she can ever be quite the same again, or if she can ever be anything but the same again.
Review
'Palindromes is Todd Solondz’s most difficult movie yet. It’s a Little Red Riding Hood story that’s as formally rigorous as a Godard film. ... his movie is a fascinating ethical Rubik’s cube, and it’s laced with comedy, but it’s a black comedy drenched in nihilism.'(cont.)
Review
'The weakest and most problematic of his films, Todd Solondz's Palindromes continues his thematic exploration of suburban anomie, again centering on the underdogs and socially oppressed. However, what was humanely touching in the coming-of-age tale, Welcome to the Doll House, Solondz's most commercial film, and impressive in scope and depth in Happiness, his best film artistically, has now become an intellectually gimmicky sensibility that fails to humanize his characters and connect with audiences on any level.' (cont.)
Clips
Trailer
"Nobody Jesus But You"
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Storytelling (2001)
Plot:
Storytelling follows two separate, unrelated stories of the angst, frustration, depression of the youth of today against two backdrops. In "Fiction", Vi is a hip college teenager who allows herself to be exploited and abused by any guy, including her writing professor, in order to get inspiration for her creative writing class. In "Non-fiction", Toby Oxman is a hapless loser/shoe salesman who wants to be a famous documentary filmmaker. For his first project, Toby explores the dysfunctional Livingston family, focusing mostly on the oldest son Scooby, an alienated, hates-the-world, ticking-time-bomb, bisexual, high school student with dreams of being famous.
Review
'With Storytelling, Solondz has pointedly crafted content that is openly racist, sexist, and insensitive to the disabled. Predictably, controversy has ensued. An entire plot line was excised, reportedly because of James Van Der Beek's discomfort with having played a homosexual. Further, a sex scene in the finished film that is obscured by a huge red rectangle represents both an act of censorship and a bizarre comment on our own prurience: There's never a doubt as to what act is being committed. It's hard to imagine any restorations making Storytelling as note-perfect as Dollhouse or as provocative as Happiness, but even in expurgated form it remains a lively, challenging work by a smart filmmaker.'(cont.)
Review
'While there are maybe two moments of genuinely clever humor, "Storytelling" is the work of a previously promising filmmaker who, having no new ideas, has morphed into a sniggering schoolboy intent upon being mean.' (cont.)
Trailer
Titles
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Happiness (1998)
Plot
When a young woman rejects her current overweight suitor in a restaurant, he unexpectedly places a curse on her. The film then moves on to her sisters. One is a happily married woman with a psychiatrist husband and three kids. Unfortunately the husband develops an unnatural fascination for his 11 year old son's male classmates, fantasizes about mass killing in a park, and masturbates to teen magazines. One of his patients has an unrequited fascination for the third sister. Meanwhile the apparently stable 40 year marriage of the sister's parents suddenly unravels when he decides he has had enough and wants to live a hermit's life in Florida.
Review
Jonathan Lethem: 'Solondz's art has something in common with the novels of William Gaddis, or the songs of Bob Dylan: Like those towering American artists, his vision is surpassingly caustic -- even, at times, vindictive. We can certainly yearn for magnificently accusatory artists like these to grow to find a greater sympathy in their work, a greater forgiveness. "Happiness" is so unrelenting that it may prompt such yearnings; I, for one, would be thrilled to see Solondz's heart open in his future work. But it would be a mistake to flinch from the greatness of "Happiness" in the meantime.'
Review
'Sartre's No Exit done over in suburban pastels, Todd Solondz's Happiness is not a subtle film. Solondz is, of course, entitled to his worldview, though it's a profoundly alienating one. Serious topics like child abuse and horrible personal pain probably shouldn't be used as a basis for humor as cheap as this movie's. In the current issue of Filmmaker, Solondz allows that he thought the film would be "unbearable if it were not funny." He's wrong. Because Happiness is funny, it becomes unbearable.'
Clips
Trailer
'What does cum mean?'
Park scene
End scene
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Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)
Plot
Seventh-grade is no fun. Especially for Dawn Weiner when everyone at school calls you 'Dog-Face' or 'Wiener-Dog.' Not to mention if your older brother is 'King of the Nerds' and your younger sister is a cutesy ballerina who gets you in trouble but is your parents' favorite. And that's just the beginning--her life seems to be falling apart when she faces rejection from the older guy in her brother's band that she has a crush on, her parents want to tear down her 'Special People's Club' clubhouse, and her sister is abducted.
Review
'Todd Solondz's faultless Sundance winner Welcome to the Dollhouse follows the travails of eleven-year-old Dawn Wiener, the pariah of junior high, who is forced to undergo a series of humiliations at the hands of her classmates, teachers and her family. But the greatest joys in Welcome to the Dollhouse are found in the small delineations of its script. It's The Simpsons as neo-realist tragedy.'
Review
'Welcome to the Dollhouse" owes as much to John Waters as it does "Kids." It's a low-budget, bad-Technicolor excursion into suburban lower-middle-class teenage junior- high-school girl angst. Being the first real film of this kind, it breaks quite a lot of ground before it degenerates into a ridiculous plot twist that doesn't work. Writer/Director Todd Solondz has fashioned a film that often fails in it's depiction of reality when plot is exposed.'
Clips
Trailer
The band rehearsal scene
The toilets scene
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p.s. Hey. Welcome to the first day of my short away time. Here's a long lost and kind of behind-the-times post regarding the first films by Todd Solondz that you will perhaps enjoy and wish to speak to, with, or about. Thank you!
