On Demand Weekly

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: THE TENTS (Gravitas).

THE TENTS

By Sky McCarthy

Calling all fashion lovers! Fashion enthusiasts and pop culture devotees will delight in THE TENTS, directed by James Belzer. From 1994 to Spring of 2010, Bryant Park symbolized a vision of American creativity and brought together a culture of designers under pristine white tents in the middle of Manhattan. This documentary provides an inside look into one of New York City’s most iconic events – New York Fashion Week. From its humble and sporadic beginnings in vacant SoHo lofts to its current location at Lincoln Center, Fashion Week in New York has catapulted the American fashion industry to the forefront of the market.

THE TENTS will be enjoyed not just by lovers of clothes but by New York historians and people interested in the business of brand creation. Through interviews with top designers like Michael Kors, Donna Karan, Zac Posen and more, Belzer brings to life an industry known for its exclusivity. The director also makes the case that young designers who are rarely given a chance in other markets have been able to flourish under the guidance of the CFDA.

Today, New York Fashion Week is more than just the shows. THE TENTS goes beyond the runway to explore how the fashion industry has evolved in the U.S. While youthful looks and beauty reign supreme, it is usually the older clientele purchasing the couture styles. Modern designers must adapt their brand with ready-to-wear and sportswear lines to compete in larger markets.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: 2ND TAKE (Gravitas).

2ND TAKE

By Sky McCarthy

An emotionally damaged storage facility owner must come to terms with his troubled romantic past in 2ND TAKE. Tom Everett Scott (THAT THING YOU DO, "southland") plays Peter, a one-hit screenwriter who has decided to step out of the Hollywood spotlight in the wake of a personal tragedy. Spending his nights with prostitutes has rendered him incapable of true love, but when a beautiful, young actress-hopeful, Charlie (Sarah Jones, "Alcatraz" and "Sons of Anarchy") steps in to buy a unit, Peter is compelled to help.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: GNARR (Focus World).

GNARR

By Chris Claro

The kabuki theatre of American politics has long drawn performers from outside its world to perform on its stage – and, as anyone who’s watched the 7,000 Republican debates held over the last few months can attest, it most assuredly is a stage, so it’s only natural that personalities successful in other arenas would take a shot at running for office. Though writers and actors and folk singers have all made attempts to be elected – some successful, some not – it seems that comics are the ones who are truly drawn to the absurdity and irony of the political system.

In 1968, deadpan Smothers Brothers regular Pat Paulsen got himself on the presidential ballot in a few states and ran a campaign during one of the most tumultuous years in American history. More recently, Howard Stern made a semi-serious bid for governor of New York, dropping out only when he realized he’d be forced to disclose his earnings. And just this year, Stephen Colbert started his own super PAC and outpaced Jon Huntsman in the South Carolina primary.

Which brings us to Icelandic comic – yes, an Icelandic comic – Jon Gnarr. With a resume of sketch and standup, Gnarr decided he could run the city of Reykjavik more competently than the incumbent mayor and declared himself a candidate, feeling that his possession of a commercial driver’s license and his stint as an attendant in a mental hospital gave him the credentials. That seemingly impossible quest is the subject of GNARR, a new documentary directed by Gaukur Ulfarsson.

To face off against the “kleptocracy,” that had been running Reykjavik, Gnarr started the Best Party. Initially, he told the press he wanted the job of mayor so he could make a nice salary and use the city-owned summerhouse. He also promised to have a number of “broads” on his ticket and promised farmers a free night in a hotel room with one of their animals.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: SENNA (FilmBuff).

SENNA

By Chris Claro

You never know what you’ll get with a sports documentary. Some are overlong and didactic, like HOOP DREAMS or Ken Burns’ BASEBALL. Some, like MURDERBALL and DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, take you inside an unknown enclave of sports esoterica. Bud Greenspan’s series of Olympic docs offer viewers dizzyingly close-up views of the danger and precision of elite sports. And Leon Gast’s WHEN WE WERE KINGS brought Ali’s charisma and danger to a new generation.

Where Asif Kapadia’s SENNA excels – pardon the pun – is in showing how one sportsman, Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna, captivated and united his home country, even as he was derided by fellow drivers for his showmanship and selfishness on the track.

SENNA has all the hallmarks of a sports film, including an impossibly handsome, flawed hero at its center. Born of privilege outside Sao Paulo, Senna rose from go-cart racing to winning the F1 championship three times. Throughout his racing career, his fan base grew but he alienated his colleagues, none more so that Alain Prost, with whom Senna would have a rivalry that culminated in a controversial crash during the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: LOVELESS (FilmBuff).

LOVELESS
With this Peter Pan, it’s not his nose that grows when he is lying
By Adam Schartoff

Andrew (Andrew von Urtz) is a middle aged single New Yorker with a dead-end job. While never explained, the scenes at work could be out of the OFFICE SPACE handbook. Clearly this is an intelligent, reasonably good looking guy, who has never been especially ambitious about much in his life or, if so not for a long while. To take his mind off that, Andrew continues to try to bed a growing pool of age-inappropriate women while the perfect one, his on-again, off again girlfriend Joanna (Cindy Chastain) is right under his nose. Her only flaw seems to be that she adores Andrew.

While Andrew continuously tries to get his screenplay financed —a script that is never explored in this movie— the opportunity of a lifetime literally falls into his lap in the form of the gorgeous Ava (Genevieve Hudson-Price). They meet in a bar late one night after she gets into a brawl with another woman. Andrew pursues Ava for her obvious assets until finally he ends up in her bed. That bed, for better or worse, is in house that Ava shares with her endless supply of swarthy brothers and one painting of their Dad.

One of LOVELESS’s running gags is that all the siblings have an active relationship with the late beloved patriarch, constantly seeking his approval though he is long since deceased. Whether the late father approves or disapproves of Andrew is an ongoing issue which resolves itself with Ava commitment to being in Andrew’s movie and financing it with the family money. It turns out that dead Dad was a real estate mogul.

LOVELESS is the product of filmmaker Ramin Serry (2002’s MARYAM) who based his character, Andrew, on his real-life good friend, von Urtz. If there’s an essential problem with LOVELESS, a character study, it’s that its main character, while not holey unlikeable or unsympathetic, is hard to fathom.