this months film is...

 

Transamerica (Duncan Tucker, 2005)

 

cheapest place to buy the film (£3.39): http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/1001137/Tra...ica/Product.htm

 

Feel free to watch it and join in on discussion of the film in this thread.

 

(for info on the buzzjack film club go here: http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=123079 )

 

 

Anyone feel free to start the discussion once they have watched it. If you wanted feel free to write your own review/response on the film to help discussion.

 

Read forward with caution if you have not watched it yet, as they may be spoilers in this thread.

 

 

to help start discussion here are two alternative views to the film:

 

 

"Transamerica" Transsexual Tale Misses Opportunity to Inform and Educate Viewers

 

Transamerica - 1 Star (Terrible)

 

There are easier films to review than productions involving alternative life styles, and Transamerica is an example. I purposely saw this film and reviewed it because I am interested in relationship films much more than I am into action flicks, heavy drama, disaster films and science fiction.

 

Having just reviewed "Boys Don't Cry" I approached Transamerica with some trepidation as Boys Don't Cry involves a runaway transgendered teen with R-rated violence, including sexuality, language, drug usage, an intensely brutal rape scene and murder (kind of the "complete family package" for Hollywood filmmakers).

 

With a laser beam on sensationalism and the cash register, Hollywood filmmakers would like us to believe that it is impossible to tell a good story with significant meaning without using intensely brutal rape scenes, sexuality, language, drug usage and murder (and sometimes making it seem like cool behavior by some very screwed up people).

 

Unlike Boys Don't Cry, Transamerica does involve an extended family in the throes of survival and change. Transamerica chronicles a typical American family.

 

Transamerica is about a pre-operative male-to-female transsexual named Bree who takes an unexpected journey from Los Angeles to New York when she learns that she fathered a son earlier in life. He is now a teenage runaway who is in jail after hustling on the streets of the Big Apple. Did I say that this is a typical American family? Well, not quite.

 

Bree wants sex change surgery but her psychiatrist will not approve the action until Bree comes to terms with the unknown son Toby. Bree gets custody of Toby but does not disclose her relationship to him. Toby wants to ditch her and hitchhike to Los Angeles; Bree, of course, will drive him there, hence the title Transamerica.

 

In the course of their cross-country trip, Bree's identity becomes known and both Bree and Toby end up at Bree's parents' home in Los Angeles. Bree's mother is delighted to learn she has a grandson and still angry about Bree's becoming a transsexual.

 

All of this too-close-to-family comfort is pretty nasty and, of course, this film could not be made without the usual R-rated sexual content, nudity, language and drug use. At least there is no intensely brutal rape scene and murder.

 

Felicity Huffman is cast in the role of Bree and Kevin Zegers is Toby; the rest are bit players in a difficult presentation. Toby apparently ends up living with his grandparents in their upscale environment, and Bree gets on with her sex change.

 

Felicity Huffman is an accomplished, award-winning actress who carries this film along despite a somewhat dubious script by Duncan Tucker who also doubles as Transamerica's director. Tucker won two lesser screenplay awards for his writing; apparently this was his first screenplay that made it to the big screen.

 

I feel Tucker does not use his forum to give a meaningful message about the subject. I ask myself, "Am I a better person for having seen this film?" The short answer is no.

 

Tucker missed an opportunity to give his viewers more knowledge and understanding about people struggling with transsexualism. Becoming a transsexual strikes me as a mighty tough road to hoe, realizing that you will alienate more people along the way than you could possibly know.

 

It is one thing to make a comedy or romantic comedy with no other purpose than to entertain viewers, it is quite another to tackle a difficult, controversial subject without assuming some responsibility for making its presentation a positive, productive impact upon viewers. To do less is to consider Hollywood entertaining but useless.

 

At least Huffman does her part. Huffman, a much more attractive woman than she thinks she is, turns the role of Bree into a Best Actress Oscar nomination, wins the Golden Globe as Best Actress and picks up another 11 lesser Best Actress awards.

 

Huffman plays Lynette Scavo on ABC's hit drama Desperate Housewives. Huffman also has 4 Golden Globe nominations as Best Actress in a TV Series and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in Desperate Housewives.

 

She had a really difficult role in Transamerica as a woman playing a man who is seeking a sex change. Perhaps she was clever enough to realize this was her chance at an Oscar, but I doubt it.

 

Transamerica earned a lot more acclaim than many filmgoers thought it would considering the subject matter and middle America's disdain for any deviation from the norm.

 

The film generated only $8.7 million at the box office but has since generated another $20 million in video rentals. At its height in week 14, Transamerica was on 656 screens and earned $1.4 million during its best week. The first week of its video rentals Transamerica generated $4.3 million in revenue. Perhaps folks just did not want to be seen publicly at this flick.

 

Pulling in $28.7 million at this point in time, someone has to be watching Transamerica besides the transgendered and transsexual communities. It is too bad that they will walk away seeing a good performance by Felicity Huffman and be no more informed and educated about transsexualism.

 

With a better script, I believe Huffman would have walked away with an Oscar for her role.

 

I gave Transamerica a "terrible" rating because I left the theater no smarter or better informed than when I walked in. Duncan Tucker gets added to my personal list of writer/directors who fall short by taking on too much in moviemaking.

 

Tucker joins my not-so-exclusive club of fellow writer/directors who have fallen short, including Kimberly Peirce (terrible rating) for Boys Don't Cry, Vanessa Parise (average rating) for Kiss the Bride, Peter Weir (average rating) for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Nancy Myers (average rating) for Something's Gotta Give, Thomas Bezucha (average rating) for The Family Stone, Michael McGowan (average rating) for Saint Ralph, Jared Hess (terrible rating) for Napoleon Dynamite, Robert Rodriguez (terrible rating) for Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and Paul Thomas Anderson (terrible rating) for Punch-Drunk Love.

 

Is there someone who can actually make a movie more than an entertainment piece without so much of the R factor that will actually enlighten us on transgender and transsexual issues?

 

Copyright © 2007 Ed Bagley

 

http://ezinearticles.com/?Transamerica-Tra...s&id=423163

 

 

"Transamerica" is "Brokeback Mountain"'s little sister, though not as universally tragic as the cowboy film. It plays out with deep compassion but with little insight into the particulars of its subject — a transwoman who's discovered she has a 17-year-old son from when she was in guy mode. It's as if writer-director Duncan Tucker had a great gimmicky idea for a conflict movie, did some research into transgenderism, and let the rest of it slide.

 

The movie is constructed as a road movie with a difference. Bree (Felicity Huffman) is a week away from sex-reassignment surgery when she hears that (A) she has a son and (B) he's in jail in New York. She bails him out, and he turns out to be a drug-snorting hustler named Toby (Kevin Zegers) who wants to go to L.A. to be a gay-porn star. Transamerica comes awfully close to saying: See, this kid shares this t*****'s genes, of course he's a f***ed-up fag. (There's a moment when Toby stands in front of a mirror holding Bree's nightgown in front of him, perhaps indicating 'Like father/mother, like son/possibly daughter.')

 

I stopped believing in the movie's idea of transgender fairly early, when the fuddy Bree doesn't even know what 'GG' means — it has to be defined for her and, presumably, for the well-meaning but clueless indie audience who haven't run across the transcommunity's slang for 'genetic girl.' (The newer trans term for non-transpeople, "cisgendered," seems well beyond this movie.) Bree's counselor (Elizabeth Peña) at one point arranges for her to stay at the house of a post-op transwoman who's throwing a full-out trans party. That's about as close as the movie comes to portraying the transgendered as anything but timid victims. It's unfair to hang a lot of expectations on one character, but Bree is very much in the mold of the transwoman Kim in the British comedy Different for Girls, who was so prim and respectable (to make up for all the t***** psychos and/or sluts in movies) she was dead boring.

 

Felicity Huffman at least gives Bree some spark and acid. Her Bree (née Stanley) seems to have come through a lot to reach even the shaky place of self-acceptance she's at, and the movie ruthlessly dismantles that. She's forced to reunite with her family — her horrid mother (Fionnula Flanagan), her easy-going dad (Burt Young), her alcoholic sister (Carrie Preston). She loses her hormone pills when her car is stolen. About the only break she gets is when a friendly Indian named Calvin (Graham Greene, effortlessly injecting much-needed serenity into his few minutes of the movie) lets her and Toby crash at his house. Calvin isn't the only Indian reference in the script, either — Tucker works in more Indian call-outs than in any film since mid-period Oliver Stone. What it has to do with transgender is for others to guess at.

 

Transamerica is comfort food for a comfortable audience, with the TV-familiar Huffman (however vulnerable her performance) reassuring viewers that she's really a real woman underneath that unflattering make-up and harsh lighting (there's only one scene, with Bree reclining poolside with Toby, where the camera softens and allows her some delicacy). As a rambling indie ride, it's often enjoyable; the performances keep it buoyant. But transgender is still a fairly new subject for movies, at least in non-exploitative form, and it's still in the play-it-safe area occupied by other well-meaning films like Normal and Soldier's Girl. It doesn't risk the tangle of real-life emotions and flaws, like the documentary Southern Comfort (not the Walter Hill actioner).

 

It's good, I guess, that a compassionate movie about a transwoman was made at all, and seen by more people than would've bothered with it if it hadn't gotten Oscar nominations. One day the trans community will have its "Brokeback Mountain," a wounding piece of art that goes deeper than an agenda or good intentions. That's for tomorrow, perhaps; right now it's still yesterday.

 

http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=12...mp;reviewer=416

Yes, So glad this was chosen. Picked by me :)

people who I PM'd, dont bother downloading that megaupload link, apparently it's been dubbed in French.

Im going to sound so stupid but, What is the difference between;

 

Torrent and Download?

How do the ones that always look the worst end up winning :(

This gives me an idea for a Book Club :D :magic:

This gives me an idea for a Book Club :D :magic:

Which would most certainly fail hard!

I have, ahem, acquired this.

Im going to sound so stupid but, What is the difference between;

 

Torrent and Download?

 

nothing, it's either download it via a torrent, or not, torrent is just a method of downloading, some people just don't seem to like torrents which is why i gave two options.

Which would most certainly fail hard!

 

i'd take poart tbh, but yes, it would fail hard. this seems to have got a lot more attention this month, i hope for more success.

I've just bought this from Play so hopefully it will be here in the next couple of days and I'll watch it at the weekend. :thumbs:

How do the ones that always look the worst end up winning :(

I don't know but don't blame me.

Just waiting for play to get stock in until I can watch. Hopefully be some time next week.

These online stores will be wondering why demand is up on all these films we choose!

The two reviews you've posted both seem incredibly negative... is it not better to replace one of them with a positive one?

 

And i haven't watched this quite yet. SOON~

The two reviews you've posted both seem incredibly negative... is it not better to replace one of them with a positive one?

 

And i haven't watched this quite yet. SOON~

 

i'll be honest i only skimmed the second one, but it was marked as fresh on rotten tomatoes, i think i was in a rush.

 

it seems it's quite unanimous that it missed an oppotunity to send out a message about transgender.

i'll be honest i only skimmed the second one, but it was marked as fresh on rotten tomatoes, i think i was in a rush.

 

it seems it's quite unanimous that it missed an oppotunity to send out a message about transgender.

 

just because its main character is transgender means it has to send out some sort of message? that's also a massive generalization, it got plenty of acclaim and felicity huffman won like 12 different awards for her performance and was nominated for even more.

 

i thought it was a pretty positive movie, especially in terms of transgender issues. the script isn't perfect and it has its faults but i thought it was pretty incredible nonetheless. that first review is literally terrible. not only is it poorly written in general, but the writer seems to have placed some sort of role on this movie as THE movie to inform viewers of transgender experiences, as if the one presented is simply not possible because it's a mostly light hearted movie that focuses more on family connections than bree's struggle with her transgender identity (of which there really isn't any, she struggles more with people misunderstanding her). it's his fault for being ignorant to transgender issues; if he really is that curious, go watch a documentary. it sounds like he wanted some sort of horror story like boys don't cry again, which is BEAUTIFUL, but such a different film.

 

ALL THAT BEING SAID, i'd give it like an 8/10. it can be a bit...disjointed sometimes i suppose, the acting isn't perfect mainly because the script needed tweaking. i'll have to rewatch. i just remember finding it incredibly beautiful and felicity huffman gives the performance of a lifetime.

 

edit; looking over this, i look really stupidly angry. i'm not. i just get ~ intense ~ when it comes to transgender issues.

just because its main character is transgender means it has to send out some sort of message? that's also a massive generalization, it got plenty of acclaim and felicity huffman won like 12 different awards for her performance and was nominated for even more.

 

thats what the reviews say, i havent even watched it yet.

that's what a couple of reviews say

*cough*