Getting Schooled (2017)

In 1983, a group of stereotypical teens are in detention on the weekend with a wheelchair-bound teacher.  Soon, they start getting picked-off one by one in varying levels of violence and blood.

The writing team of Chuck Norfolk, Steven Scott Norfolk, and Tim Norfolk have written a film that wants to be an 80s movie and gets some of the true 80s feelings and vibes, but they also use a lot of more current way for characters to act.  Directed by Chuck Norfolk, the film feels like what a full-grown filmmaker thinks the general public wants to see about the 80s.  It’s less John Hughes homage and more caricature of the 80s through a 2010s teen’s eyes.  The film has some things that work, but the attempt at rendering the 80s feels force and like something without much thought put into it.  The film uses a lot of clichés from other films without thinking if they fit in here, thinking if it looks like what we think the 80s were like, it will work.  However, the 80s represented here do not feel right; they don’t feel like the 80s of many other films, or even the 80s this reviewer remembers.  The characters in this setting feel mostly like caricatures with one feeling a bit less like so, but looking more like she would belong in this decade or the 2000s.

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An Interview with Staci Layne Wilson [WiHM 2017]

Staci Layne Wilson is well known for her film reviews, interviews (on camera and in writing), her writing, and now producing and directing.  Her interests are varied, but she clearly has a preference for horror as seen in her films such as the trippy triptych The Key to Annabel Lee, the sexy Fetish Factory, etc.  Her knowledge of the genre and Hollywood’s inner workings is wide and she uses it well in her creations.

Her trivia on IMDB is rather telling: “Has worn Freddy Krueger’s hero claw, George Romero’s glasses, and the original Hannibal Lecter mask.”

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Working Class (2011) [San Diego Film Week 2017]

Using A Tale of Two Cities, this documentary tells the story of Mike Giant in San Francisco and Mike Maxwell in San Diego who are both artists and friends who connected through tattoos the first put on the second.  Throughout the film, their lives are paralleled and compared until it eventually brings them together.

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Country: Portraits of an American Sound (2015)

This documentary made in 2015 and released in early 2017 explores how the image of country singer is developed through photography and has been since the very start of the music genre.  Through interviews with photographers, artists, singers, and musicians, the history of country music is explored and the emphasis on how image can help make or break an artist’s popularity are explained as well as the process behind some memorable photographs done by various photographers, some specializing in country portraits and other specialized in portraits.

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An Interview with Tara Price [WiHM 2017]

Tara Price hails from New England and has her toes in a few different waters.  She acts, produces, writes, and directs.  For her directorial debut, Earworm, she dips in comedy and horror.  She also wrote the horror short Another Grace and Johnny Adventure: Zombie Island in which she stars as Grace.

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