Sonyliving Video Film

Noobz The Movie
                    New video-game movie Noobz hits theaters this weekend, so make sure you’re absolutely anywhere else.  Pry open a manhole and spend the day pretending to be a plumber in the sewers if you have to: it will be more fun and have more in common with video gaming. We’re always excited to see new independent filmmaking, but this looks more painful than sitting on a joystick.

Filmmaker Blake Freeman (Gawd Bless America) writes, directs, and stars in this movie about competitive gaming, and based on these trailers, he’s no Ben Affleck. These clips do the exact opposite of what they’re meant to do: instead of making me want to see Noobz, they’ve proven invaluable at helping me compile a list of five reasons why this Dodgeball should be avoided:
1. Jason Mewes
Mewes is best known as Jay from Clerks, Jay from Mallrats, and Jay from everything else Kevin Smith could wedge him into. He’s made a career playing the archetypical stoner you knew in college, and unfortunately he’s still playing that same guy two decades later. Even though his character’s name is "Andy" in this picture and not Jay, he hasn’t learned anything new, and his brainless shtick, which used to be so funny, is now desperately depressing. Fully five percent of the trailer consists of him shouting “Bro!” in the most annoying possible way.

If you can make it to 0:35 without wanting to punch him, Captain Kirk wants you back on the bridge so Captain Adama can shoot you, you Vulcan robot.

2. Nerds and Women
Along with the trailers, this poster pretty much bludgeons you over the head with the second reason you should say ‘No’ to Noobz: it’s going to be yet another Revenge of the Nerds-meets-Dodgeball-style comedy that relies on the tired conceit that gamers are…awkward around women!  Huge chunks of the trailer are based on the gamers going to a strip club. Are you chortling to yourself about the zany madcappery that’s hinted at in these clips?  I didn’t think so.   Another scene has Blake warning a woman not to use her "vajayjay" to destroy his team’s gaming chemistry. That’s so 2007.
It looks like Moises Arias gets to play the asthmatic gamer geek most terrorized by the female of the species and, if the movie proves to be as predictable as I predict it will be, he’ll ultimately end up in the sack with a woman who’s either incredibly beautiful or incredibly freaky. Probably both. Arias, who played Juan Pablo in Nacho Libre, does have some comic chops though, so he could be the sole redeeming performance in Noobz. If he’s not, check him out in Toy’s House when it’s released.  He’s laugh-out-loud funny in that movie.
Another sophisticated sexual theme of this movie appears to be that fat women are funny. I’m afraid that’s pretty much it.  Chenese Lewis plays "Milkshake," a plus-sized stripper who apparently almost kills one of the gamers by sitting on him.  It’s an odd role for someone whose Wikipedia page describes her as a "positive body image advocate," a spokeswoman for the Binge Eating Disorder Assocation and past chairperson of the Love Your Body Committee

3. The Closeted Gay Stereotype:
Oh yeah, here’s another cutting-edge plot point to anticipate: one member of the gaming team, Oliver (Matt Shively) is sort of gay. You know this because in one of the trailers, Freeman’s character’s angry girlfriend curses him out for having a closeted gay friend and Jay later points out that Oliver is wearing lipstick.  Oliver also says "Put that in your pipe and suck it," instead of "smoke it." I don’t want to make to make too much of an assumption based on the trailer, but the actual gaming world has such real and terrible problems with homophobia that I’d hate to see a movie validate them for cheap laughs.
4. Zero Videogaming Knowledge
Noobz’s Facebook page claims that it’s “an indie film comedy that is the first realistic look at competitive gaming.” Which is weird, because an Amish preacher could probably demonstrate more knowledge than the stuff shown in the trailers.  The only gaming detail visible in any of the trailers is “you hold a controller”. And the poster doesn’t even get that right. The left thumb should be on the upper stick, or at least on the center of the D-pad.
There’s a passing mention of Frogger, but the only gameplay footage from the fictional Cyberbowl video gaming championship is based exclusively on Gears of War 3.  While it’s clearly a form of product placement, it’s a bizarre choice at that: Gears of War 3 isn’t a championship level game by any means (especially with the atrocious host-advantage issues in multiplayer).  The product really doesn’t benefit from the association.
More worrisome: there isn’t any knowing gaming humor in the trailers. (Remember Wreck-It Ralph ?)  Much of the movie seems to be road-trip scenes, which could just as easily be applied to nerds on their way to a mathematics Olympiad, or a Warhammer tournament, and when they finally arrive the scenes are based on the players being assholes to each other while holding joypads — rather than anything to do with actually playing the game.
5 Reasons to Avoid Noobz
I can’t tell you how much it pains me to see a screaming Casper Van Dien using up the last of his Starship Troopers credibility to play the competition’s hard-ass announcer.
He’s gone from a cult classic movie that featured a brain-sucking bug to a movie that looks like it just plain sucks.
Luke McKinney loves the real world, but only because it has movies and video games in it. He responds to every tweet.

No live music was played, but the Saturday afternoon premiere of Dave Grohl’s Sound City documentary — about the fabled-yet-scuzzy Van Nuys, CA recording studio of the same name where Nirvana, Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, Rick Springfield, Rage Against the Machine and Fear recorded landmark albums — felt like an all-star rock concert. Sound City Sundance Dave GrohlFans stood on street corners near the Marc theater, where the film debuted, offering to purchase tickets from anyone with a spare, and the musical artists who turned out to watch the documentary, included former Creedence Clearwater frontman John Fogerty, Grohl’s former Nirvana bandmates Krist Novoselic (pictured on the right) and Pat Smear, Springfield and Stevie Nicks, most or all of whom are expected to play with Grohl in a live show later tonight on Main Street in Park City.
Before the screening, Grohl called the film "the most important thing I’ve done artistically," and at the Q&A session that followed the movie, noted that the digital revolution, which transformed music industry (and essentially killed Sound City, which did things the analog way) enabled him to become a filmmaker  and tell the story of the recording studio’s rightful place in rock ‘n’ roll history. "I made a movie. It’s shocking, really," Grohl said. "Next, I’ll be flying your plane to Dulles."
Grohl and Sound City got an enthusiastic standing ovation at the end, and the people in the audience around me seemed to really be rocking out to a segment that has the surviving members of Nirvana playing with former Beatle Paul McCartney.  The part of the movie that rocked my world, however,  was when Grohl performed the gritty "The Man That Never Was," with Springfield.   Like a number of other performances, the song, which was co-written by Springfield, Grohl and others was recorded on Sound City’s fabled Neve console, which the Foo Fighter bought for his own 606 Studios when Sound City closed its doors as a commercial recording business in 2011. Grohl said these songs will be released on a Sound City album in March.
I especially loved it when, after the performance, Nevermind producer (and Garbage drummer) Butch Vig tells Springfield: "You got some darkness in you, boy!"
Springfield also turns out to have been an important part of the studio’s history and vice versa. He recorded his 1981 Working Class Dog there, which contained his breakthrough hit "Jessie’s Girl."  The success of that album was important to Sound City’s success.  Springfield was also managed by Sound City’s original owner and even met his wife, Barbara Porter, who was an assistant there.
I’m hoping that Springfield performs with Grohl on Main Street tonight, and that, as a result, Sundance sees a warp in the time-space continuum. See you on the other side.

Lawless is hitting DVD and Blu-ray next week, and we’ve got our hands on an exclusive behind-the-scenes featurette.The video clip trains its focus on Tom Hardy and Jessica Chastain, two of the most consistently impressive talents working today.That they shine amid a cast that includes Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce and a slew of character actors is a testament to that talent, and in fact it’s Pearce who leads the tributes to the pair in the featurette.Brooding from beneath the shade of a wide-brimmed hat, Hardy carves out a character using little more than minimalistic grunts. He plays Forrest, one of the infamous Bondurant brothers, a trio of generally good-natured moonshine brewers who become something of a local legend in ‘30s Virginia.Despite being seemingly indestructible, Hardy still manages to imbue Forrest with a rough-hewn sensitivity, in much the same way as Chastain finds tender depths beneath city girl Maggie’s sassy front.Watch Hardy and Chastain discuss their approach to their characters in the exclusive video below:Lawless is released on Blu-ray and DVD on 14 January 2013 by Momentum Pictures.