DEAD CAT BOUNCE (2010, OpenFilm, feature short, runtime: 40 mins., director: Daric Gates):

What if you were mysteriously given the key to fame, fortune, and riches with zero accountability to anyone, including your boss?

UNBREAKING UP (2009, Inmoo.com, short, duration: 13:31, director: Boris Kievsky, watch the trailer here):

We’ve all been there before: manipulative, agonizing, hair-tearing relationships. We all have our share of battle scars, don’t we?

Happens every day. Kids getting shipwrecked in the City of Angels, rocketfueled by a pipe dream which sometimes doesn’t pan out as planned.

Alone, isolated, and with the thinnest of networks, these youngsters do what they can to survive, but oftentimes it’s not pretty. They borrow, beg, and scrape — sometimes even stealing it — and it oftentimes leads them straight into the clutches of the shady types who abuse their good intentions and lead them down the path of no return.

Matthew Vaughn has really come a long way in this biz.

As Guy Ritche‘s one-time go-to producer, with notable titles under his belt like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, followed by the uproariously hilarious Snatch, Kick-Ass marks the Londoner’s second foray into the wild and woolly arena of Hollywood shooting.

Take a few moments to recall the way you felt when you saw 1976′s classic Taxi Driver, a film about the slow ravages of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder/PTSD.

If you’re anything like most viewers, Robert DeNiro‘s deeply disturbing portrayal of demobilized Vietnam soldier Travis Bickle likely shook you to your core. Taxi Driver was avant-garde filmmaking at its best, in synch with its era and innovative in style. Audiences had never watched films like it before, as Hollywood boldly forged out into decidedly more experimental fare likely induced by the copious mounds of hallucinogenic drugs both studio executives and A-List directors were snorting, freebasing, and injecting to keep on top of the workload.

If Kathryn Bigelow‘s 2010 Oscar-winning film, The Hurt Locker, ever had a prequel, Aron Gaudet‘s The Way We Get By (TWWGB) would certainly be it.

Picture The Hurt Locker‘s Sargeants James, Sanborn, and Bomb Specialist Eldridge boarding a 747 for their transatlantic, transcontinental, ass-haul back to Baghdad. Orders are that they’re shipping out from Bangor, Maine — a New England lobster burg nestled somewhere along the Atlantic coast. Most of the soldiers have never even heard of the place, let alone seen the insides of the town’s suburban “international” airport.

A long time ago, on an island just off the west coast of France, a trio of road-weary yet wise cineastes — Chris Jones, Andrew Zinnes, and Genevieve Jolliffe — cracked open a warm bottle of bargain bubbly, unbagged a loaf of day-old Wonder Bread, and twisted the cap off a jar of crunchy peanut butter. It was truly a momentous occasion for a feast; for they would soon be signing the founding charter of their new independent filmmaking collective. They would dub themselves Guerilla Film Makers.

DATELINE: July 27, 2010
Chez PMD-For-Hire HQ
Social commentary films last night and did I find three beauties for ya!

So I was “flipping” through my PDF copy of Filmmaker Magazine’s Summer 2010 edition last night and happened across this gem of a find on p26, “The Super 8: Eight Things That Will Keep You In The Know” about an 11-episode social commentary video site called FUTURESTATES.