A tribute to graffiti art and the city where it all began. Blest, a 19-year-old graffiti writer, has just graduated from high school. With no ambition toward mainstream goals of work and family, he spends his time bombing the city with graffiti messages until he and his crew become the most wanted bombers by the corrupt NYPD Vandal Squad. He even attracts major media and gallery attention for his tags. As they fight with their spray cans and their tags, Blest meets a political activist, Alexandra. Soon after, Blest’s relationship with Buk 50 and the crew fragments as Blest ponders his position in life.
Tag: 2000s
In 1998, filmmaker Dan Reed and cameraman Jacek Petrycki traveled to the Drenica Valley as the civil war in Kosovo came to a head. They spent much of the year there, and The Valley documents the lives of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict, as well as the violence and brutality they confront on a daily basis. Dispensing with narration, The Valley allows its subjects to speak for themselves, giving a sense of how bitter the divide had become between Islamics and ethnic Albanians, and how cruel fate had been to those caught in the middle of the fighting, as women and children who’ve lost their families shiver in makeshift huts, and people discover the bullet-riddled bodies of their loved ones.
Set inside a “Quake” like video game, one of the game’s cannon-fodder grunts falls for the Lara Croft-inspired heroine and, in a constantly looping game level, tries time and again to catch her attention before she can “chain gun” him.
After an absence of years, Mara (15) moves into her hippy Dad’s shack in remote river country. Marooned in Harry’s world, Mara broods on her haughty artist mother who lives at the top of the valley. When Mara falls for Herringbone John, a tramp ‘waiting for death to come along and knock him on the head’, their encounter is a trip through the ecstasy and agony of romantic love. What Mara finds on the other side sets her free.
A sweet reminiscence about a family of four children and their RAF-veteran dad, who knows the timetable of every bus in London, but realizes his large family needs a car. He buys a Peugeot station wagon – license plate GFP831E, and the family sets off for annual holidays exploring every corner of Europe – “adopting local customs but never forgetting who won the war.” The narrator is one of the children who, as he ages, sees things he missed as a lad – the car no rocket, dad no speedster. As the years wear on, and the car sits in the driveway, dad keeps it ready for the next great summer holiday.
Rags to riches to rags comedy loosely based on the director Steve Burrows’ actual experiences while writing screenplays in Los Angeles. Burrows (aka “Milwaukee Steve”) finally makes it big as “The Crotch Fresh” commercial guy, but then can’t catch another break — not even when he auditions for a new Crotch Fresh commercial! He decides the only way to make a comeback as an actor is to fake his own death, then make a glorious return.
On New Year’s Eve, a young soldier is looking forward to going home but is given orders to escort a juvenile delinquent to a distant reformatory. He sets off with the child handcuffed to him.