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Tuesday April 12, 2011
The Graduates (2008)
Directed by Ryan Gielen, screenplay by Ryan Gielen. Starring Rob Bradford, Blake Merriman and Nick Vergara.
Four friends go to Senior Week in Ocean City, Maryland looking to get drunk and meet girls. I used to go to Ocean City every summer and my parents even owned a condo there for a while. Our summer vacations were never like this… they were actually fun and interesting. This movie was lame, unfunny and predictable. Nice seeing Ocean City, especially the “Old Pro” Prehistoric Mini Golf course that Mary beat me at on my last trip to the island. No surfing, but a few scenes at the beach.
1.5 out of 5 stars.
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Wednesday April 13, 2011
Blue Crush (2002)
Directed by John Stockwell, screenplay by Lizzy Weiss and John Stockwell from a magazine article by Susan Orlean. Starring Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriquez and Matthew Davis.
Three hotel maids in Hawaii have big dreams of surfing in the Pipe Masters championships. While watching, I scoffed at the character’s spoiled ways and sense of entitlement, the melodramatic plot and the predictability of everything, but when it was over I realized I’d actually enjoyed it. The surfing scenes are great and it gives you a good idea of how dangerous the sport is.
3 out of 5 stars.
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Thursday April 14, 2011
Bobby Z (2007)
Directed by John Herzfeld, screenplay by Bob Krakower and Allen Lawrence from a book by the great Don Winslow. Starring Paul Walker, Laurence Fishburne and Olivia Wilde.
Oops! No surfing (even though IMDb lists “Surfing” as one of its keywords. It also lists “Spit,” “Baseball Cap Worn Backwards” and “Premarital Sex”). Paul Walker plays a convict who has to fill in for a drug lord that is described as a surfer. They show him watching surfing on TV to get into character, but there’s not really any surfing. This film was fine, not awful and not great, but you can tell when you’re watching it that it’s missing a lot from the book. Also, for the book, The Death and Life of Bobby Z, Don Winslow had to research surfing which led to him writing The Dawn Patrol, so that’s cool.
2.5 out of 5 stars.
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