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Fight Club exposed at local high school after video posted on YouTube

April 10th, 2008 by Scott Marks

FIGHT CLUB Fall Fashion Catalog
FIGHT CLUB Fall Fashion Catalog

The first rule of Fight Club is you do not post videos of Fight Club on YouTube.

Life imitated art in La Vernia, Texas where a bunch of rascally high school students fought hard to earn their fifteen minutes of fame. Their no-nonsense superintendent Dr. Tom Harvey really came down hard on the boys. “We don’t think this is entertainment or funny,” Dr. Harvey admonished. Why you I oughta…

You mean there’s nothing funny about a group of teens assembling in the bathroom to literally beat the crap out of each other because they saw it in a movie? C’mon! Let the kids have their macho fun. Besides, now that football season is over, how else are young American males supposed going to their brutish hostility?

As reported on WOAI-TV, “Dr. Harvey first heard rumors about these secret fights two weeks ago, but learned they were real after watching them at youtube.com. ‘Criminal complaints will be filed, we will not have it or tolerate it at our school,’” said the good doctor undoubtedly wagging a scolding finger. This guy must be a riot around the water cooler.

Calling it their fight club, these students are mimicking the 1999 David Fincher movie that starred Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. After seeing the video clips on youtube.com, Dr. Harey got a hold of La Vernia Police Chief Bobby Hyatt (no small feat when you consider how ticklish he is) and the high school’s liaison officer.

“My school officer, when she watched the thing, she could tell me every kid who was involved and she knew the voices and these kids actually called each other by names, so you knew who was involved with it,” said Chief Hyatt.

I’m warning you wise guy kids, watch your step or Chief Hyatt will put you on double secret probation.



Photos:
Fight Club stills and Fall Fashion Catalog

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Focus Features announces release date of Coen Brothers’ BURN AFTER READING

March 3rd, 2008 by Scott Marks

Brad Pitt in BURN AFTER READING

Focus Features today announced that it will open Burn After Reading, the new film written, produced and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, Academy Award-winning directors of this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner No Country for Old Men, domestically nationwide on Friday, September 12th.

How’s this for a blockbuster cast: George Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand (how’d she get the gig?), Brad Pitt, and Tilda Swinton all star in this dark spy comedy currently in post-production.

In the film, John Malkovich plays an ousted CIA official whose memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise D.C. gym employees intent on exploiting their find. Ms. Swinton, this year’s Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Michael Clayton, plays the wife of Mr. Malkovich’s character. Burn After Reading also stars Richard Jenkins, who previously starred for the Coens in The Man Who Wasn’t There.

The director of photography is Academy Award nominee Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men). BAFTA Award nominee Mary Zophres is the costume designer, marking her eighth consecutive feature with the Coens. Jess Gonchor, production designer on No Country, encores in that capacity.

Am I the only one in the world that finds the Coens’ sense of humor labored and sophomoric? Runny canker sores bring more chuckles than anything in Raising Arizona and as much as people try to explain the brilliance of Fargo, with the exception of Steve Buscemi, I’m not laughing.

Even when they try and play it straight the Coens can’t help inserting humor where it doesn’t belong,   i. e. the mariachi band alarm clock in No Country. And as Dave Kehr so brilliantly observed, No Country “is a film that invites you to laugh at the choice of linoleum floor tile in a sheriff’s station even as the sheriff is being strangled on top of it.”

Let’s hope the humor in Burn After Reading leans more in the direction of the KKK musical number in O Brother Where Art Though as opposed to anything in Intolerable Cruelty or The Ladykillers.

As Variety points out, No Country “enjoyed a 67% surge in business over the weekend as it nearly doubled its theater count in the wake of the Oscar victory.” The Oscar win, coupled with the lighter comedic tone of Burn After Reading, convinced Focus Features to bypass the art house circuit and release  the film wide at a multiplex near you.

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