VIDEODRONE

By only

Tuesday July 3, 2007

SPECIAL FREEDOM EDITION
It’s an unusually bad week for new DVD releases. Instead of wasting your time talking about the first season of Eureka, we decided to spend this week’s edition of Videodrone celebrating the Fourth of July. We’re feeling super patriotic after Canada Day, but we’re a little burnt out on Canada. So here–in no particular order–are our all-time favourite All-American movies. Hate it or love it.


Easy Rider (1969)
This is the movie credited with starting the independent film-making revolution of the ’60s and ’70s in Hollywood. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda are two freedom searching outlaws who sell some coke and take off to explore America on their red white and blue motorcycles. Jack Nicholson hitches a ride for a while, and completely steals the show. There are jump cuts, shocking acts of violence, and a sequence where the guys drop acid during Mardi Gras in New Orleans that is quite possibly the best trip scene ever shot. Easy Rider is rich in irony and marked a much darker and dangerous vision of the world than was being vibed by the flower children of the time. The film enthusiastically depicts the internal and external alienation of people looking for a freedom that never really existed, in a world where “freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose.” An absolute must.


An American Tail (1986)
The American dream has evolved so drastically over the past century. What was once the land of hard work and golden opportunity has slowly turned into the land American Idol idealism and gilded Vegas dreams. Leave it to a kid’s cartoon from the ’80s to show us what it used to be all about. Telling the story of the Mousekewitz family, their emigration from Russia to New York, and the epic battle of Mouse vs. Cat, the film is a true animated classic. Filled with memorable tunes about streets being paved with cheese and pale moonlight, after watching this film you can honestly say that they really don’t make them like they used to. Computer animation and The Lion King came along, and cartoons have been ruined ever since. If you haven’t seen this movie since you were a kid, make a point of checking it out again. It’s easy to forget how inspirational the American dream used to be.


Bob Roberts (1992)
Possibly one of the best satires about American Politics ever made, or to at least equal to about two hundred Bulworth s. Shot as a documentary, the film follows the rise Bob Roberts (Tim Robbins), a true Conservative Republican who runs for senator. The trick is that Roberts appropriates the peace, love and left-wing happiness of the ’60s generation, and completely inverts their meaning and intentions. He rides a motorcycle, sings folk songs about the struggle and talks about true American values. Except he is a total Harper. Look for a really young Jack Black as a fanatical supporter.


All the President’s Men (1976)
One can only fantasise about a time when the media and investigative journalists had enough power to unseat a president. Compared with the shit Bush has been pulling for his entire life, Slippery Dick comes off as a lavishly decorated Boy Scout. This film tells the story of how two handsome, regular old Washington Post journalists essentially got Richard Nixon to resign because his ass was about to get impeached. The names Woodward and Bernstein will forever live on as shining examples of what can be done if the press decide to wield their power with moral authority, and this film will always remind us that shit was a lot more fun when cigarettes were good for you and Google Earth didn’t exist.