Brooklyn Indie House

Its subject is TV game show game show. If you feel that the current psychological and gladiatorial wranglings on Big Brother and Survivor are flagging already, Series is just the film to perk your jaded prurience. In the latest series, the star attraction is reigning champion Dawn Brooke Smith, hardbitten, pregnant loner who takes on five new combatants in her Connecticut hometown.

Besides, they have no control over the cameras representation of them. In the Darwinian logic of the boxoffice, the ruling principle tends to be the survival of the fattest rather than of the fittest which is why the 135m Pearl Harbor see review opposite, bloated colossus of allAmerican idiocy, will no doubt thrash all comers. Even so, the weeks interesting film stands every chance of holding its own if Pearl Harbor is lumbering, peabrained rex, then Daniel Minahans lowbudget satire Series 7 The Contenders is smart, vicious velociraptor, leaner, faster and incomparably more entertaining.

Minahans film is opportunism in the best sense, as witty in its ofthemoment sensationseeking as the exploitation quickies that Roger Corman used to make. In this respect, the Contenders show seems less extreme than the current Big Brother, in which prospective contestants advertise themselves to camera as sassy, like fictional characters in search of drama. And what is anyones incentive to survive one series if they must then repeat their ordeal in the next?

Its subject is TV game show game show. If you feel that the current psychological and gladiatorial wranglings on Big Brother and Survivor are flagging already, Series is just the film to perk your jaded prurience. Among them are Britney esque teen Merritt Wever whose protective parents turn gungho bloodthirsty at the drop of gunbelt middleaged Catholic nurse Connie Marylouise Burke and Jeff Glenn Fitzgerald, sensitive artist with testicular cancer.

And what is anyones incentive to survive one series if they must then repeat their ordeal in the next? The pure absurdism gives Series an existential spin it points out that we all try to control our fates, to live like champs, yet are always subject to the possibility that someone with madder agenda might ruin everything our plans. In fact, the film has plenty to say about televisions effect on the way we see others and ourselves.

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