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Gareth von Kallenbach (980 KP) rated Bravetown (2015) in Movies

Aug 6, 2019  
Bravetown (2015)
Bravetown (2015)
2015 | Romance
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Today’s movie selection is certainly a ‘heavy’ …. and by heavy I mean 1 half serious and 1 half inspirational. It’s one of those stories where the protagonist has been fighting an uphill battle most of their lives and in the end, being the catalyst for change in the lives of others ends up being that factor which changes their own life for the better.

 

‘Bravetown’ stars Lucas Till as Josh Harvest. A rising star and one of the best club DJ’s in the New York music scene. Night after night his music draws friends, crowds, promoters, and record producers looking to sign him. By day he sleeps and watches ‘Platoon’ when he’s not skipping school. Just as suddenly as the music starts spinning it all comes crashing down though when Josh overdoses one night and is raced to the hospital. After a confrontation with his mother (Maria Bello) and faced with the alternative choice of arrest and imprisonment,

Josh agrees to be sentenced to court ordered rehab and is sent from the mad streets of New York City to a small town in North Dakota to live with his father.

 

After the culture shock of going from the ‘city that never sleeps’ to a small town only known for their kids joining the military upon graduation right out of high school and going off to war (many of whom never return) subsides, Josh succumbs to his situation and settles in to his court appointed rehab with Alex (Josh Duhamel) a veteran who’se obsessed with soccer and has a dark past of his own. Sooner or later, everyone’s past catches up to them though .One night after his arrival, Josh’s reputation from New York catches up to him while attending a school dance. Dissatisfied with the music being played, Josh spins one set while the school’s dance team is performing on stage and then abruptly leaves. Unbeknownst to him, a member of the dance team recognized his music, recorded his set which they then used to win a competition.

After reluctantly agreeing to help them, the school’s last place dance team proceeds to win competition after competition and Josh and the dance team’s captain Mary (Kherington Payne). It soon becomes all to clear to Josh though that Mary’s grief is connected to his therapist’s past and that only by confronting it will Mary and Alex be able to come to terms and heal.

 

There a very few movies that did what this movie his done which is to touch on a subject that very few want to talk about or even acknowledge today in America. The knowledge that most of the people in this country who are sent off to war are young people from small towns or people from low income communities who either have no money to attend college after high school or have no other options for the future except to n the military. Now please don’t misunderstand me. I have nothing but the utmost respect for the men and women who serve and defend our nation and I come from a military family. However, for young people though in the present day …. many really have no other future to look forward too because of the high cost of university or college education. As part of the backstory, this film shines a light on that subject and does so in a respectful way. They way the ‘life in the big city’ merges to that in ‘small town america’ in the movie was done so in such a way that it seems like the two are right next door. As you are watching the film for the first time, the ‘culture shock’ is not so much a ‘shock’ itself but more like a record slowly spinning after the music is over.

 

Personally, I’m not a fan of any of the dancing shows and movies that have apparently captured the attention of everyone else over the last few years whether it’s ‘Dancing With The Stars’, ‘So You Think You Can Dance?’, ‘Step Up’, ‘Bring It On’, etc. But I freely admit that the dancing in this film was pretty GORRAM awesome and it impressed the heck out of me. The collection of actors and actresses assembled for this film was equally as awesome. Lucas Till (The X-Men Movies), Laura Dern (Jurassic Park), Josh Duhamel (Transformers), and Kherington Payne (True Blood, CSI, Glee) all brought their own serious brand of acting to this film and they don’t disappoint. There no war flashbacks, no car chases, and only one violent scene in the movie. All the action in the movie centers around the music and the brilliantly choreographed dancing. All the drama centers around the characters coming to terms with grief and lose. It’s better than many of the movies you find in theaters right now. Try to find ‘Bravetown’ between all the blockbusters that start hitting theaters in May. Trust me, it’s worth the view and if you can’t find it in theaters, order it online. I’m going this one 4 out of 5 stars. It clocks in at 112 minutes, but it’s worth it.
  
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Butch Vig recommended track Blitzkrieg Bop by Ramones in Leave Home by Ramones in Music (curated)

 
Leave Home by Ramones
Leave Home by Ramones
1977 | Rock
5.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite
Details

Blitzkrieg Bop by Ramones

(0 Ratings)

Track

"This was the first Ramones song I heard. I was nineteen or twenty years old and I’d read about them in New Yorker Magazine and alternative music magazines like Village Voice and Trouser Press. They were getting all this press but they weren’t getting any radio play in Wisconsin, so you had to wait until it came into the record store to hear it and I was smitten the first time I heard ‘Blitzkrieg Bop.’ I bought their record and it just floored me in its simplicity, two minutes or a minute and thirty renditions of songs that were verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, end of song. The songs were super precise and cut down to the bare bone, they were pop songs and had a very crude simplicity to the recordings. I think I went through three vinyl copies of their first record. I’d get up in the morning and play it twice before I’d go to the university and then I’d come back at night and just blast it non-stop. We’d have these punk rock party nights just listening to The Ramones album and ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ always set the tone for me, it’s an incredible song. We’d bring all our friends over, get kegs of beer, clear all the furniture out of our living room and jump up and down and slam-dance. The first Ramones record is the greatest punk rock record of all time, it inspired The Sex Pistols, it inspired everybody. A thousand punk rock bands were formed after they saw The Ramones, they were the first true originals to do that and I’m still a huge Ramones fan."

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Johnny Marr recommended Super Hits by The Four Tops in Music (curated)

 
Super Hits by The Four Tops
Super Hits by The Four Tops
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"""If I want to pick my favourite records then I have to pick something from Motown. When you have that kind of catalogue it can be hard pinpoint one act. In my case, it would have to be the Four Tops and therefore I have to pick a greatest hits album. I never had a problem considering the Four Tops as a band. As a little kid they were omnipresent if you were glued to the radio as I was. They were a constant fixture year-in, year-out. They would release incredible songs like 'It's The Same Old Song' or 'Reach Out I'll Be There'. On this album you get to line up all of these songs back-to-back as a complete body of work, or even like a single live performance. You can hear a darkness and, dare I say it, a rocking spirit that you won't get from The Supremes or from Smokey Robinson or even Stevie Wonder, mostly due to the presence of Levi Stubbs' voice. In addition, the music had to match his voice and his range of emotion that you wouldn't even get on a Marvin Gaye record. Not only were the songs powerful, but the arrangements and instrumentation and the performances meant that, as far as I am concerned, Four Tops rock like Led Zeppelin. What more do you need? It is a collection of incredible tunes. I bought this record when it came out and all my mates thought I was either really, really old-fashioned or a freak. I knew I wasn't old-fashioned but what was the alternative? The Boomtown fucking Rats?"""

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