BOOK RELEASE: THE HAWAI'I MOVIE AND TELEVISION BOOK

The Hawai'i Movie and Television Book: Celebrating 100 Years of Film Production Throughout the Hawaiian Islands.

 

Aloha 24 X 100

 

Just in time for the holidays, Honolulu’s Mutual Publishing has released The Hawai'i Movie and Television Book: Celebrating 100 Years of Film Production Throughout the Hawaiian Islands, co-authored by this publication's prolific writer Ed Rampell.

The handsome, four-color 216-page volume celebrates 100 years of filmmaking throughout the Hawaiian Islands with the focus on Hollywood feature films and television production since 1995, when Rampell co-authored Made In Paradise: Hollywood’s Films of Hawaii and The South Seas.

 

The Hawai'i Movie and Television Book includes: The screen images of Polynesians and Asians; how South Seas Cinema more than any other film genre is obsessed with the theme of Utopia; where films/TV shows were shot on location in the Hawaiian Islands; a history of the present day Hawai’i Film/TV Industry; and iconic Hawai‘i crime fighters as portrayed on screen. Rampell also places in historic context and reevaluates important movies such as 1995’s Waterworld and 1998’s Godzilla, revealing how they are motion picture parables of global warming and nuclear testing.

 

The films and television programs are covered in detail, heavily illustrated with archival and contemporary photographs. A valuable reference for film aficionados, a treasure trove of memorabilia for Hawai‘i movie fans, and an important document of Hollywood’s cinematic history with Hawai‘i. Film trivia enthusiasts will have a blast and discover where to go to see the Island locations where popular productions such as From Here to Eternity, Jurassic Parkand The Descendants were made.

 

Hollywood directors brought their own unique vision of paradise to the screen which receives special treatment in a chapter on the South Sea film genre. There is also coverage of films about Hawaiian life made by Native Hawaiians and other local filmmakers.

 

Los Angeles-based film historian Ed Rampell, who formerly lived in Hawaii, Tahiti, Samoa and Micronesia, where he covered the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific and Hawaiian Sovereignty movements for ABC’s “20/20”, Radio Australia, Radio New Zealand, Honolulu Weekly, etc., is now one of L.A.’s most prolific reviewers, covering film/theater/opera for JEstherEntertainment.com, as well as HollywoodProgressive.com, Legends and Legacies, The Daily Dissident, People’s World and The Progressive Magazine.

 

Rampell previously co-authored Made In Paradise: Hollywood’s Films of Hawaii and The South Seas and Pearl Harbor In The Movies with Luis I. Reyes, who also co-wrote Hispanics in Hollywood. Rampell is also a co-founder of the South Seas Cinema Society, an Oahu-based fan club/film society.  

For more information about The Hawai'i Movie and Television Book: Celebrating 100 Years of Film Production Throughout the Hawaiian Islands,including a rave review by Honolulu’s top entertainment reporter, or to order copies  see Hawai'i Movie Book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

FILM REVIEW: NEW YEAR'S EVE

A scene from New Year's Eve.

Should all films be so rotten

By Don Simpson

Valentine’s Day is a cruel and bitter reminder that film critics do not wield much influence — at least in certain realms of cinema — because even though Valentine’s Day is scoring a lowly 18% on Rotten Tomatoes it went on to gross $214,976,776 and New Line Cinema deemed it worthy of a sequel (an extremely loose concept of a sequel at that). What does this say about film criticism and their relationship to film audiences? Not much. People were going to see trash like Valentine’s Day no matter what critics said about it, just as people are also going to see New Year’s Eve regardless of my review.

Fans of Valentine’s Day — whomever those poor suckers are — will probably scream that a highfalutin critic such as myself is inherently biased against films like New Year’s Eve; and, admittedly, I did enter the screening of New Year’s Eve assured that I would hate it. Considering my excruciatingly low opinion of Valentine’s Day, I figured that the odds were somewhat in favor of New Year’s Eve being a little bit better… But… Heavens to Murgatroyd! It turns out that New Year’s Eve is a mindless clusterfuck of ridiculousness!

Thanks to the relentless barrage of characters (most with fleeting roles that would normally be described as cameos) and no narrative to speak of (people are in love, people are dying, people are having babies, the ball at Times Square is stuck, blah blah blah…), writing a brief synopsis of New Year’s Eve is impossible. As with Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve relies so much on Hollywood stereotypes and tropes that anyone can flawlessly determine how each character’s storyline will end within minutes of their introduction. New Year’s Eve serves two purposes: to showcase a menagerie of Hollywood stars as if mere mannequins on a conveyor belt and to provide a few forced opportunities for Jon Bon Jovi to sing a few songs on screen.

It is quite fitting that Hollywood still churns out thoughtless, assembly line holiday films like Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, since it is Hollywood that created the myths behind these holidays in the first place. The situations and dialogue (more like mindless dribble) found within Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve are by no means realistic — trust me, this stuff only happens in the movies. I am not a trained psychiatrist, but I suspect that the reason so many people get depressed during holidays like Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve is because they cannot live up to the unrealistic expectations set by Hollywood. I will leave you with one question: Why do people watch these films if, in the end, these films are just going to make them feel like shit?