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Quint witnesses HOUNDDOG aka Dakota Fanning's Underwear: The Movie!!!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I avoided HOUNDDOG at Sundance this year. At first it was because I could see it a week later at the Santa Barbara Film Festival and that opened up a slot in my Sundance schedule to see a movie I couldn't see the next week. Then the word started coming out from the Sundance screenings that it was bad. Not just disappointing, not just pretty bad... but a trainwreck.
I knew Dakota Fanning was the star and that she got raped at some point in the movie. That's the buzz that has been coming from the movie since production. It has been called the Dakota Fanning Rape Movie more often than HOUNDDOG.
I expected the rape scene to be uncomfortable and hard to view, even after the filmmakers struck back at the criticism saying that the scene in question lasts all of 20 seconds and is shown mostly off camera. That is true, but I didn't expect to feel dirty watching the entire movie, where we get flashes of Fanning's underwear every other scene.
All of that would be okay if that was the intention... like Paul Schrader, how he likes to make you feel disgusting by the end of one of his films, to underline how horrible the events in the film are. But I think the filmmakers just didn't have a solid idea of what the hell they wanted to do.
I've said in the past that Fanning is a bit creepy, but I've never had anything less than total respect for her. She's incredibly smart and a great actress. Not just for her age, but for any age. She gets it. What's creepy is the maturity she conveys, an adult mind and ethic in a child's body. This movie, which should have been her best performance, is easily her worst.
There's nothing worse than seeing good actors trying to emote through a bad southern accent. We get a ton of that in this movie. Fanning herself, as well as David Morse as her dad and Robin Wright Penn. Piper Laurie is the only one who pulls it off as Fanning's overly protective religious grandmother... think of her as a slightly kinder version of her character from CARRIE.
The flick is set in the '50s, the deep south, and Fanning's character, Lewellen, has a roving father. There's also hints that he might do some bad things to her when he is home. In order to cope with her conflicting emotions about her father, Lewellen falls into the world of Rock N' Roll, specifically the music of Elvis. Which, as you can imagine, leads to some doubly uncomfortable hip gyrations when she performs Elvis wearing very little.
Lewellen has a friend, Afemo Omilami as Charles, a black dude who knows his snakes, spending his time making various venom antidotes and teaching Lewellen about the real roots of Rock N' Roll, including introducing her to Big Mama Thornton, the original singer of HOUNDDOG. In reality, this character is only in the movie to set up a few very telegraphed events for the end of the movie, including a break down scene with Fanning when she calls him a nigger and we get his speech on what a nigger really is.
This movie is trying to be really, really important and it just isn't. It's like writer/director Deborah Kampmeier knew she wanted to make a hard-hitting film that tackles these heavy topics... racism, child alienation and rape, but just didn't know how to do it. Everything is so surface and so cliche that you can't ever take the movie as seriously as it takes itself.
In fact, the movie isn't even entertainingly bad until the David Morse character randomly gets struck by lightning and spends the rest of the movie a mongoloid. No shit. And yes, it is funny. Sometimes they're going for the humor, most of the time they're not. I particularly like the part where Morse gives himself a hair cut because Fanning got one and he wants to be like her, giving him a shitty Prince Valiant cut for the last 40 minutes of the movie.
With all the talk, even if it is mostly negative, around this movie I'd be very surprised if it didn't get picked up eventually, but I will be surprised if it gets any sort of decent theatrical release. Expect to see this one on the Blockbuster shelves sooner or later.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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that's the first review i read that actually goes into the movie in any detail whatsoever. maybe i just missed the reviews, but i know a lot more now than i did before. you're right quint, she's a great actress, and i'd normally go out of my way to see whatever she's in. but a couple hours of her in underwear and gyrating hips? nah. not interested.
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i got nothin but FIRST?
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Chapter 27 should be boycotted but Hounddog shouldn't? That's the so-called progressive hollywood mentality at work. Fanning isn't even 13, I just don't see this as an expression of "ART". It's exploitation of a young child starlet.
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I could just about put up with her in War of the Worlds, but in Man on Fire, she just came off as a 50 year old trapped in a young girls body (insert Gary Glitter/Republican Senator joke here if needed).
No real interest in seeing this movie. -
Any movie that desperately needs to shock you in order to get you to see it, talk about it, and for better or worse, excited about it, is a movie that cannot stand on its own two legs.
Well written editorial, Quint. I enjoyed it. -
for the day when poor widdle Dakota wakes up one morning and realizes that she's never had a childhood and pretty much wasted her life living as Hollywood's own version of Jon-Benet Ramsey.
Expect a middle-life crisis, severe anorexia and fatal drug overdose at the age of 19 to subsequently follow... -
Don't see it at the theatres! Wait for the extended cut on DVD! ... What? Was that inappropriate? Neat.
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Because on that morning, she will wake up and realize that, and comfort herself by taking a nice long drive down the coast in her Ferrari.
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............ what? u expected something witty here?
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Sometime in the next ten years she will go batshit fucking loco. That's what child actors do. Except Christian Bale, I guess.
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Did go loco. He didn't even know Batman Begins was a movie.
Ah, if only we'd had GOTTA EAT when The Machinist came out... -
or as Roman Polanski calls it:PORN
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Feb 04, 2007 2:16:51 AM CST
The Elvis Presley estateshould sue...
by film_fanatic_in_the_original_black_and_w
for using the title of one of his songs for a film about pedophilia. Anyway, I thought it was "horndog" not "houndog".
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This sounds like Daughter of Monster's Ball.
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Feb 04, 2007 2:33:32 AM CST
"The stench of semen filled the air in the theater"
by allpowerfulwizardofoz
Still expecting to hear a comment like this from a review of the movie.
Sounds like total garbage. -
C ya at the Oscars!
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...a very nice word
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with the underwear hitting the floor hard, with defiance? Oscar for sound design for sure.
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Freddie Highmore. This kid has talent. I think he has the potential to go all the way. He seems grounded. too.
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They should have never used the rape scene as a marketing tool.
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The filmmakers didn't used it, as far as I know. They never said: "See the film in which we rape the most popular child actor these days!" Like always it was the audience, who started to talk about it.
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....."annoying as fuck screaming girl with buggy eyes".....how anyone can say she's a great actress is beyond me. She's basically the same person in every movie, which means she's like nails on a chalkboard.
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She still defends the movie if pressed, but doesn't list in on her resume. She also admits that marriage to Billy Bob Thorton was a huge mistake...
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...but do you assholes have to be so damn GLEEFUL about it?!? Jeez.
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"The Dakota Fanning Show." Spot-on. I wanted to wring the comedienne portraying Fanning's neck just about as much as I want to wring the real Fanning's neck.
If I want child sex, I'll go and see "Equus" in London, with Daniel Radcliffe (he's 17, and that ain't statuatory rape in the UK). -
"I'm just a cute, innocent little puppy, Dakota. I just know simple things, like 'ball', and 'good'... and RAPE."
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She's like TWELVE or something. HolyMarymudderaChrist, do we really NEED to go this route ?
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Theres a punk song that had a chorus of "He was a mongaloiod, a mongaloid. One chromosone too manyyyyy"
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They do.
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Dakota does not need to be exposed to a rape scene. Rapists should be killed on sight. Child services should keep a close eye on her. It's the parents fault on this. I think all people know that rape is wrong and does not need to be showcased. Movies need to be fun and entertaining not preachy.
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What, you don't think rape can be funny? I think rape can be funny. Picture Elmer Fudd raping Bugs Bunny. Hilarity!
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That last paragraph about the lightning, him being a Mongoloide, and the prince valiant haircut sounds hilarious.
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... and he is thinking this may be an opportunity to take back the "child actor" corner of the market, which he believed to be rightfully his. Then he lost all ability to look like a child and started speaking spanish.
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Was it because the victim was black? FOR SHAME!
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...Dude's doin' some good things....for RATINGS!
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Your "rape can be funny" comment with the following joke is a George Carlin bit. Just so everyone knows that Laz is not a sick fuck. Carlin, however, is on the fence.
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It got exactly what Quint was talking about: the creepy "adult mind and ethic in a child's body". And really funny.
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"Brilliant" he will say.
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He said Affleck should have played the part...
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BUT WHY WOULD ANYONE MAKE A MOVIE LIKE THIS? I mean come on, what the fuck?
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I blame Bush.
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having or causing a creeping sensation of the skin, as from establishing visual contact with Dakota Fanning: a creepy Dakota Fanning movie.
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Feb 04, 2007 11:58:24 PM CST
I just talked to some of the guys in the Roman P thread
by nutsackmemories
They'll be right over in a jiff! Bring Your Own Vaseline!
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...kinda thought everyone would pick up on the fact that it was a George Carlin bit on thier own. Or am I giving some of you too much credit? ...Oh, but I did rape an eskimo once. Zing!
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...the way they burst in on cue. Everything else sucked.
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This is another one of those deals where when it's over youy just want the two hours of your life back. Fanning is hard to watch from the get-go and child rape tends to have its revulsion built in. Unless of oourse it's, you know, tastefully done.
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yeah, there's a blast from the past for all of you who keep repeating someone else's jokes for decreasing comedic effect, ad nauseum.
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what a dumb question. Why would any film with rape to young people exist as a subject? I'm not saying this movie is good but if your going to discount this movie not because it's a bad movie but because it has distateful subject matter I guess American Psycho or Taxi Driver or Bastard Out of Carolina should have never existed. Why don't you guys actually concentrate onw hy this may be a bad movie rather than jumping on the dumb immoral train.
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Educate yourselves a little bit.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2007-01-23-fanning-hounddog_x.htm
"I know my mom would take me to see it," said Fanning, who turns 13 in February. "You have to prepare your children for things that happen in the world. Everything isn't rosy." -
What stimulating conversation we have here.
P.S. I hereby copyright the word 'child fucker'. -
I don't mind that this movie is being made. Hell, I'm all for exposing the masses to taboo, because most people are way too fucking uptight for thier own good. Case in point: "Some religious groups protested that having such a young actress in a rape scene was criminal." It's called fucking acting. It would be one thing if they went hardcore porno stylee with full frontal and penetration (how many people are going to bitch at me just for MENTIONING penetration of a 12 year old?), but the scene lasts all of a minute according to the sources. It's like going after "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" for having 'themes of beastiality'. Don't waste my fucking time, zealots. I didn't watch 'Passion of the Jesus' and I won't watch this, because neither subject holds ANY interest to me whatsoever, other than the obvious comedic value. Fuck'em all!
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that therapist (where's Sean Connery when you need him?) isn't daddy, it's a teen boy. What a twist! Are you sure this wasn't directed by M. Night?
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Damn, I really feel old. I thought she was still a little kid. Anyway, I can live without watching child rape on film...I'll pass on this one.
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supposedly provocative, and perverse = BO!!!
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And this guy is no prude by any means: http://filmfreakcentral.net/sundance/sd2007capsules.htm#hounddog
Deborah Kampmeier's Hounddog is even worse than its pre-emptive objectors assume it is. The film is offensive in precisely the way you think it's going to be but surprises you by becoming offensive on a whole new level. Everything in the film revolves around a scene where Dakota Fanning is raped, which, far from "gratuitous," is the film's entire raison d'être. Before The Rape, Hounddog plays like one big striptease leading up to it: in the very first scene, Fanning promises her playmate a kiss if he shows her his penis, and throughout the picture, Kampmeier has her prancing around in her panties, gyrating in her rendition of Elvis Presley's "Hounddog," and going swimming in an undershirt. Naysayers are calling the picture "a pedophile's dream," and though I maintain that you would have to be a pedophile of particularly low self-esteem to whack off to this, they do have a point. Up until The Rape, the film is just plain exploitive and cynical. It starts to seem like Kampmeier knows why we're here and is going to draw out our dread/anticipation past the breaking point before delivering "the goods." Then little Dakota gets popped. The scene is simultaneously cowardly, leering, and utterly tasteless: we see close-ups of her limbs flailing and her playmate staring on, fascinated and horrified. Her demonic rapist, who had been hiding in the shadows, grunts a couple of times, comes inside her, and very audibly zips up as she lies on the ground, bawling and defeated. The pre-rape portion of the film was sweating with sex, but all that heat dissipates out during and after the rape. As the film progresses, we begin to see--through a lot of heavy-handed and increasingly tedious phallic imagery involving snakes--that Kampmeier has been anti-sex and pro-rape all along. She dramatizes that age-old justification for sexual aggression: the bitch was asking for it. The bitch in this case, of course, being a twelve-year-old girl. Kampmeier sees rape as nothing short of baptismal--through her violation, Fanning learns to hate sex and regains her innocence; by the end of the film, she's cuddling a puppy while watching her family of Tennessee Williams rejects fool around with snakes and get bitten because they weren't raped as children. Fanning is counselled by a kindly Uncle Tom figure who tells her that snakes are animals to be respected and teaches her to sing "Hounddog" the way it was meant to be sung: like a spiritual without any of the sexual overtones that that damn white boy Elvis brought to it. Previously, she sang the song to unwittingly arouse her rapist into action; by the end of the film, she sings it to salve her torment. Kampmeier idealizes her black characters by making them completely asexual and suggests that rape provides a means by which women may experience the oppression that gives the Negroes their magical wisdom. Good gravy, have you had enough yet?! If only Sean Hannity and William Donahue were to actually watch and attempt to understand the film they are condemning, they would really have something to complain about.
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