Jason KingNowhere ($15-)
November 21st 2008 22:56
Nowhere ($15-)
This is one of my all time fave films - it is totally insane and even though it's filmed in the 90's it is totally an 80's film. Morgan - you would LOVE this.
Because I am being lazy and my computer keeps passing out (I freak when I do anything important that it will freeze or reboot and I will lose everything - I HATE YOU BILL GATES) the majority of this information comes direct from the director himself on his homepage. This film is seriously on acid and no one but Greg Araki could achieve such hallucinogenic film making.
Nowhere revolves around the zany, polymorphously perverse lives of the young, beautiful and doomed drifting through the sunbaked inferno known as L.A. The movie is the grand finale of writer/director Gregg Araki's "Teen Apocalypse" Trilogy, which began with Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation.
The acting is sensational and the script is pure GOLD. The sets are so visual with messages evreywhere that they will blow your mind. This film will not be for everyone - remember it is totally insane! The scenes with Heather Graham and Ryan Phillipe have me crying with laughter every time I see them - all they do through out the entire film is have sex wherever they are. In a car, in the lounge room and up against a wall at a party - it is pure hormonal lustful craving. James Duvall is one of the biggest under utilised actors who disappeared - I have loved him in everything he has ever done but since Independance Day he disapeared off the planet. Even though he has done 43 films since Nowhere most of them have been obscure films. Notably - he was Frank in Donnie Darko - the crazed rabbit.
Like a "Beverly Hills 90210" episode on acid, Nowhere follows an interwoven network of libidinous teens as they hurtle through youthful doubt and insecurity, the highs and lows of adolescent love, S&M, hallucinogenics, carjackings, murder and alien abductions. Saturated with color, in love with pop culture, Nowhere portrays the 18 year old experience in the late 20th century with a distinctly subjective style that calls to mind the heyday of John Hughes teen angst epics like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. Yet for all its careening action and ricochet changes in tone, Nowhere never loses sight of the emotionally aching teens at the heart of its story.
Nowhere's ensemble cast of well-known faces and up-and-coming stars includes James Duval (The Doom Generation, Independence Day), Rachel True (The Craft), Christina Applegate (Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead, "Married With Children"), Kathleen Robertson ("Beverly Hills 90210"), Debi Mazar (Batman Forever, Goodfellas), Chiara Mastroianni (Ready To Wear), Heather Graham (Swingers, Drugstore Cowboy), and Jaason Simmons ("Baywatch"). Guest stars include Beverly D'Angelo (National Lampoon's Vacation), John Ritter (Sling Blade, "Three's Company"), Charlotte Rae ("The Facts of Life"), Christopher Knight and Eve Plumb ("The Brady Bunch"), Shannen Doherty ("Beverly Hills 90210," Heathers), Traci Lords ("Melrose Place," Cry-Baby) and Rose McGowan (The Doom Generation). The film was written, directed and edited by Gregg Araki, and produced by Gregg Araki for Desperate Pictures, Andrea Sperling for Blurco, and Why Not Productions (France). Financed by U.G.C. and Why Not Productions, Nowhere shot in Los Angeles for six weeks in Summer 1995. Arturo Smith was director of photography. Nowhere is a Fine Line Features release.
Nowhere completes the film cycle that Araki began with 1994's Totally F***ed Up, a realistic, bracing picture of a close-knit group of gay and lesbian teens that was named as one of the year's 10 best films by the Los Angeles Times. Araki's follow-up feature, The Doom Generation was acclaimed for its daring and original portrait of sexual evolution and metamorphosis. Now, with Nowhere, Araki concludes the trilogy with what is arguably his most accessible film to date: a multi-racial, pan-sexual, wild and woolly ensemble piece about adolescent turmoil and the eternal quest for love.
"To me, of the trilogy, Nowhere is definitely the most ambitious," Gregg Araki says of his teeming teen canvas. "I wanted to portray the world from a messed-up 18 year old's perspective, a world within which anything can happen. When you're that age, everything is life or death, everything is hyper-accentuated. The film attempts to capture these extreme highs and lows," he remarks about the picture's pronounced shifts in tone, from comedy to crisis, from manic to melancholy.
Nowhere takes place during a typically action-packed day in the life of 18 year old Dark Smith (James Duval) and his circle of friends and acquaintances. Dark desperately wants an emotional commitment from his girlfriend Mel (Rachel True) who, though she cares for him deeply, can no more promise fidelity to him than she can to her purple-haired girlfriend Lucifer (Kathleen Robertson). Mel will knock on Dark's bedroom window at just about any time of the day or night, except when he needs her most. With Mel not exactly reliable, Dark has begun to fantasize about other people, like the angelic Montgomery (Nathan Bexton) as well as the dangerous dominatrix duo of Kriss (Chiara Mastroianni) and Kozy (Debi Mazar).
Not that Dark's pulchritudinous pals don't have problems, too. His best friend Cowboy (Guillermo Diaz) can't locate his boyfriend and bandmate Bart (Jeremy Jordan), who has been getting deeper into the drugs peddled by Handjob (Alan Boyce). Metal-mouthed Dingbat (Christina Applegate) has an unrequited crush on Ducky (Scott Caan), who in turn is stuck on Alyssa (Jordan Ladd), who would rather saddle up with narcissistic biker Elvis (Thyme Lewis). There are, however, two happy couples: Mel's dewy little brother Zero (Joshua Gibran Mayweather) and his girlfriend Zoe (Mena Suvari); and the forever-bonking Lilith (Heather Graham) and Shad (Ryan Phillippe), who is Alyssa's twin brother.
Dark and his friends spend their time doing lots of typical teenage things: having sex, hanging out, roller-blading, playing kick-the-can, taking hallucinogenic drugs, getting brainwashed by evil televangelists, and, in Dark's case, witnessing three annoying Valley girls being vaporized by a big green Alien. The multi-character structure of Nowhere derives from shows like "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Melrose Place," but as Araki notes, "my sensibility is a bit different than Aaron Spelling's."
Nowhere definitely has its share of fun in the California sun, but things can turn ugly in the blink of an eye, without the tidiness of foreshadowing. The meeting of Egg (Sarah Lassez) and the Teen Idol (Jaason Simmons of "Baywatch") seems at first like a storybook romance, but the tale ends quite differently. And certainly, the giant free-for-all that is Jujyfruit's (Gibby Haynes) party doesn't conclude the way Dark had anticipated. But for Dark, there is at least a glimpse, however fleeting, of hope.
"Of the three Teen Apocalypse films," Araki believes, "Nowhere is definitely the brightest and most 'pop'."
Indeed, Nowhere is confidently steeped in the visual and aural code of pop culture. "I'm very much a product of this culture," the writer/director affirms. "And I find pop culture exciting. I like the fact that it's constantly changing, that it's like a living, breathing thing." In the Nowhere universe, lovers intertwine like the famous Annie Leibovitz photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono; violence erupts with the color and fury of a comic book.
Popular culture also influenced Nowhere's casting, particularly its cameos. Actors like Eve Plumb and Christopher Knight ("Jan" and "Peter" from "The Brady Bunch"), John Ritter ("Three's Company") Charlotte Rae ("The Facts of Life") and Shannen Doherty ("Beverly Hills 90210") are embedded in the collective consciousness, thanks to their television roles. Araki comments, "These faces all occupy space in your psyche -- like it or not, they're part of your life. I wanted the cameos to reinforce the movie's hallucinogenic quality, like when you're asleep and the Brady Bunch appear in your dream." Other cameos, like Traci Lords ("Melrose Place," Cry-Baby), John Enos III ("Melrose Place") and Gibby Haynes (singer for alterna-rock titans The Butthole Surfers) play gleefully against type.
Araki is also vastly pleased with Nowhere's primary cast of nineteen actors. "It's exciting to have all these great young actors coming together, and everyone was terrific to work with." For the final installment of the trilogy, he has once again cast James Duval in the pivotal role, this time as the sensitive, guileless Dark. "Jimmy embodies a sort of openness. He has a sincerity about him and that's why these three films have been sort of built around his persona. He's an Everyteen, looking for love in a chaotic world."
"At its core, Nowhere is basically a sweet, romantic movie," Gregg Araki concludes. "It's about what it really feels like to be confused, to be in love, to watch your girlfriend leave the party with some other guy. It's about totally genuine and sincere feelings -- and the movie's world is stylized to express those feelings in a very visual way."
I can't find the trailer online but I did find one of the raunchy scenes between Heather Graham and Ryan Phillipe. This will give you an idea of how insane it is.
It is in your best interest to watch this if you can find it at your dvd store. Worth $15-
This is one of my all time fave films - it is totally insane and even though it's filmed in the 90's it is totally an 80's film. Morgan - you would LOVE this.
Because I am being lazy and my computer keeps passing out (I freak when I do anything important that it will freeze or reboot and I will lose everything - I HATE YOU BILL GATES) the majority of this information comes direct from the director himself on his homepage. This film is seriously on acid and no one but Greg Araki could achieve such hallucinogenic film making.
Nowhere revolves around the zany, polymorphously perverse lives of the young, beautiful and doomed drifting through the sunbaked inferno known as L.A. The movie is the grand finale of writer/director Gregg Araki's "Teen Apocalypse" Trilogy, which began with Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation.
The acting is sensational and the script is pure GOLD. The sets are so visual with messages evreywhere that they will blow your mind. This film will not be for everyone - remember it is totally insane! The scenes with Heather Graham and Ryan Phillipe have me crying with laughter every time I see them - all they do through out the entire film is have sex wherever they are. In a car, in the lounge room and up against a wall at a party - it is pure hormonal lustful craving. James Duvall is one of the biggest under utilised actors who disappeared - I have loved him in everything he has ever done but since Independance Day he disapeared off the planet. Even though he has done 43 films since Nowhere most of them have been obscure films. Notably - he was Frank in Donnie Darko - the crazed rabbit.
Like a "Beverly Hills 90210" episode on acid, Nowhere follows an interwoven network of libidinous teens as they hurtle through youthful doubt and insecurity, the highs and lows of adolescent love, S&M, hallucinogenics, carjackings, murder and alien abductions. Saturated with color, in love with pop culture, Nowhere portrays the 18 year old experience in the late 20th century with a distinctly subjective style that calls to mind the heyday of John Hughes teen angst epics like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. Yet for all its careening action and ricochet changes in tone, Nowhere never loses sight of the emotionally aching teens at the heart of its story.
Nowhere's ensemble cast of well-known faces and up-and-coming stars includes James Duval (The Doom Generation, Independence Day), Rachel True (The Craft), Christina Applegate (Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead, "Married With Children"), Kathleen Robertson ("Beverly Hills 90210"), Debi Mazar (Batman Forever, Goodfellas), Chiara Mastroianni (Ready To Wear), Heather Graham (Swingers, Drugstore Cowboy), and Jaason Simmons ("Baywatch"). Guest stars include Beverly D'Angelo (National Lampoon's Vacation), John Ritter (Sling Blade, "Three's Company"), Charlotte Rae ("The Facts of Life"), Christopher Knight and Eve Plumb ("The Brady Bunch"), Shannen Doherty ("Beverly Hills 90210," Heathers), Traci Lords ("Melrose Place," Cry-Baby) and Rose McGowan (The Doom Generation). The film was written, directed and edited by Gregg Araki, and produced by Gregg Araki for Desperate Pictures, Andrea Sperling for Blurco, and Why Not Productions (France). Financed by U.G.C. and Why Not Productions, Nowhere shot in Los Angeles for six weeks in Summer 1995. Arturo Smith was director of photography. Nowhere is a Fine Line Features release.
Nowhere completes the film cycle that Araki began with 1994's Totally F***ed Up, a realistic, bracing picture of a close-knit group of gay and lesbian teens that was named as one of the year's 10 best films by the Los Angeles Times. Araki's follow-up feature, The Doom Generation was acclaimed for its daring and original portrait of sexual evolution and metamorphosis. Now, with Nowhere, Araki concludes the trilogy with what is arguably his most accessible film to date: a multi-racial, pan-sexual, wild and woolly ensemble piece about adolescent turmoil and the eternal quest for love.
"To me, of the trilogy, Nowhere is definitely the most ambitious," Gregg Araki says of his teeming teen canvas. "I wanted to portray the world from a messed-up 18 year old's perspective, a world within which anything can happen. When you're that age, everything is life or death, everything is hyper-accentuated. The film attempts to capture these extreme highs and lows," he remarks about the picture's pronounced shifts in tone, from comedy to crisis, from manic to melancholy.
Nowhere takes place during a typically action-packed day in the life of 18 year old Dark Smith (James Duval) and his circle of friends and acquaintances. Dark desperately wants an emotional commitment from his girlfriend Mel (Rachel True) who, though she cares for him deeply, can no more promise fidelity to him than she can to her purple-haired girlfriend Lucifer (Kathleen Robertson). Mel will knock on Dark's bedroom window at just about any time of the day or night, except when he needs her most. With Mel not exactly reliable, Dark has begun to fantasize about other people, like the angelic Montgomery (Nathan Bexton) as well as the dangerous dominatrix duo of Kriss (Chiara Mastroianni) and Kozy (Debi Mazar).
Not that Dark's pulchritudinous pals don't have problems, too. His best friend Cowboy (Guillermo Diaz) can't locate his boyfriend and bandmate Bart (Jeremy Jordan), who has been getting deeper into the drugs peddled by Handjob (Alan Boyce). Metal-mouthed Dingbat (Christina Applegate) has an unrequited crush on Ducky (Scott Caan), who in turn is stuck on Alyssa (Jordan Ladd), who would rather saddle up with narcissistic biker Elvis (Thyme Lewis). There are, however, two happy couples: Mel's dewy little brother Zero (Joshua Gibran Mayweather) and his girlfriend Zoe (Mena Suvari); and the forever-bonking Lilith (Heather Graham) and Shad (Ryan Phillippe), who is Alyssa's twin brother.
Dark and his friends spend their time doing lots of typical teenage things: having sex, hanging out, roller-blading, playing kick-the-can, taking hallucinogenic drugs, getting brainwashed by evil televangelists, and, in Dark's case, witnessing three annoying Valley girls being vaporized by a big green Alien. The multi-character structure of Nowhere derives from shows like "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Melrose Place," but as Araki notes, "my sensibility is a bit different than Aaron Spelling's."
Nowhere definitely has its share of fun in the California sun, but things can turn ugly in the blink of an eye, without the tidiness of foreshadowing. The meeting of Egg (Sarah Lassez) and the Teen Idol (Jaason Simmons of "Baywatch") seems at first like a storybook romance, but the tale ends quite differently. And certainly, the giant free-for-all that is Jujyfruit's (Gibby Haynes) party doesn't conclude the way Dark had anticipated. But for Dark, there is at least a glimpse, however fleeting, of hope.
"Of the three Teen Apocalypse films," Araki believes, "Nowhere is definitely the brightest and most 'pop'."
Indeed, Nowhere is confidently steeped in the visual and aural code of pop culture. "I'm very much a product of this culture," the writer/director affirms. "And I find pop culture exciting. I like the fact that it's constantly changing, that it's like a living, breathing thing." In the Nowhere universe, lovers intertwine like the famous Annie Leibovitz photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono; violence erupts with the color and fury of a comic book.
Popular culture also influenced Nowhere's casting, particularly its cameos. Actors like Eve Plumb and Christopher Knight ("Jan" and "Peter" from "The Brady Bunch"), John Ritter ("Three's Company") Charlotte Rae ("The Facts of Life") and Shannen Doherty ("Beverly Hills 90210") are embedded in the collective consciousness, thanks to their television roles. Araki comments, "These faces all occupy space in your psyche -- like it or not, they're part of your life. I wanted the cameos to reinforce the movie's hallucinogenic quality, like when you're asleep and the Brady Bunch appear in your dream." Other cameos, like Traci Lords ("Melrose Place," Cry-Baby), John Enos III ("Melrose Place") and Gibby Haynes (singer for alterna-rock titans The Butthole Surfers) play gleefully against type.
Araki is also vastly pleased with Nowhere's primary cast of nineteen actors. "It's exciting to have all these great young actors coming together, and everyone was terrific to work with." For the final installment of the trilogy, he has once again cast James Duval in the pivotal role, this time as the sensitive, guileless Dark. "Jimmy embodies a sort of openness. He has a sincerity about him and that's why these three films have been sort of built around his persona. He's an Everyteen, looking for love in a chaotic world."
"At its core, Nowhere is basically a sweet, romantic movie," Gregg Araki concludes. "It's about what it really feels like to be confused, to be in love, to watch your girlfriend leave the party with some other guy. It's about totally genuine and sincere feelings -- and the movie's world is stylized to express those feelings in a very visual way."
I can't find the trailer online but I did find one of the raunchy scenes between Heather Graham and Ryan Phillipe. This will give you an idea of how insane it is.
It is in your best interest to watch this if you can find it at your dvd store. Worth $15-
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Comment by Morgan Bell
Deep Pencil
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ok im gunna have to track this down, it sounds amazing!
a stylised teen apocalypse?
im there!
Comment by Jason King
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Salty Popcorn
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It's heaps of fun and I would even recommend abusing passion pop while watching.
Comment by Cibbuano
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If I see it, I'll remember to pick it up...!