Not Quite Hollywood (2008)
As Australian cinema broke through to international audiences in the 1970s through respected art house films like Peter Weir's "Picnic At Hanging Rock," a new underground of low-budget exploitation filmmakers were turning out considerably less highbrow fare. Documentary filmmaker Mark Hartley explores this unbridled era of sex and violence, complete with clips from some of the scene's most outrageous flicks and interviews with the renegade filmmakers themselves.
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Best movie of this year hands down!
Redundant and unnecessary.
Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.
Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.
A quick-hits love letter to "Ozploitation" films, the stampede of cruddy cut-rate B movies bred by the Australian cultural craze of the 70s and 80s. It's well-produced, with loads of shiny transitions and a few familiar faces on the couch (Quentin Tarantino, unsurprisingly, is an energetic fan) but it's all cut together with the short attention span you might expect from an episode of VH-1's I Love the 80s. A bunch of talking heads, mostly non-celebrities, gushing about their favorite cinematic turds like a kid on a sugar rush. At least they're passionate about the subject. That whirlwind of mid-sentence breaks left me feeling dizzied and weary, though, with its constant, breakneck topic shifts, and eventually drained the premise dry. The clips can be very funny, in a "how did that get filmed" sense, but it's easy to get the impression that we're really seeing the only worthwhile shreds of these bombs, and by the end it was all starting to feel a bit boring and redundant. Still, true to the era, there's plenty of footage to fill a solid fifteen-minute devotion to gratuitous nudity, so it does have that going for it.
............................................................from Pasto,Colombia...Via: L.A. CA., CALI, COLOMBIA and ORLANDO, FL If you like Quentin Tarantino, you'll simply Love NOT QUITE Hollywood! There are many contributing/ participating narrators, but Tarantino has, by far, the most ON-SCREEN time. (Storyline Blurb doesn't even mention his crucial participation!) This extremely entertaining and informative low-budget documentary traces the revival of the Australian film industry, which all but died at the mid-30's Pacific onset of WWII, from its fledgling late 60's re-birth, through its multi-faceted heyday in the 70's and early 80's. Initially, NOT QUITE seemed determined to go the direction of a soft-core documentary, but this was only during the initial 20 to 25 minutes. In the early and mid-70's, the industry saw nudity and sex as an easy road to making big Aussie Dollars! Be forewarned, however... There's a LOT of frontal nudity and some mildly simulated sex during this opening segment! Throughout, CLIPS from SCORES of films appear, some from movies considered rather mainstream like MAD MAX and RAZORBACK, but the vast majority are from obscure cult classics like '78's PATRICK and '79's LONG WEEKEND, or totally unknown, never released in the U.S. or on DVD, titles like The CHAIN REACTION-'80 and MANGO TREE-'77. NOT QUITE is truly a veritable treasure trove of early Aussie Titles! I'm not the BIGGEST Tarantino fan on the planet, but most of his films are GREAT. On a personal level; he's one of my favorite famous people. Talk about not being affected by fame! He's a joy to watch! Despite being in his mid-40's, he's the same rather nerdy, little-kid-at-heart, goof-ball genius he was when he burst onto the entertainment scene nearly 25 years ago, God Bless him! A Must See for ALL "GENRE" and history of cinema Buffs! 9*.....ENJOY/DISFRUTELA!Any comments, questions or observations, in English o en Español, are most welcome! [email protected]
You can watch NOT QUITE Hollywood as an eye-opening history of a somewhat under-appreciated subgenre or as simply a "greatest hits" of mind-blowing genre film moments. You will quite literally lose track of all the boobs, explosions, car crashes, mutilations, exploding heads and insane stunts offered up here. (I wanted to immediately watch it again to see all the stuff I missed!) A fantastically entertaining documentary, highly recommended to fans of action, horror, or any kind of exploitation film.The film serves as a great starting point to research some fun flicks (I immediately sought out TURKEY SHOOT). But if you just want to watch a string of crazy, outrageous movie moments regardless of appreciating their context, go for it. You win either way.
Having grown up watching these films, it was a pleasure to watch Not Quite Hollywood. It was fast paced and fascinating, the stories were funny and interesting, not at all like the dry boring documentaries that are being put out lately. I would have liked to have seen certain movies mentioned like, Last Of The Knucklemen, The Night The Hunter, The Plumber and Mama's Gone A Hunting, but it covered many long lost gems. Many of these films are among Australia's Lost Films, lost because a certain Premier leased them all to a Panama based company. It is good to see that they are gradually trickling back, but in the meantime, we have this excellent documentary to remind of that we once had a thriving and vibrant film industry.