4 Film Favorites: Coming of Age Films (DVD)(4FF)
MEAN GIRLS - Raised in the African bush country by her zoologist
parents, Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) thinks she knows about
"survival of the fittest." But the law of the jungle takes on a
whole new meaning when the home-schooled 15-year old enters
public high school for the first time and falls prey to the
psychological warfare and unwritten social rules that teenage
girls face today. CLUELESS - Jane Austen might never have
imagined that her 1816 novel Emma could be turned into a fresh
and satirical look at ultra-rich teenagers in a Beverly Hills
high school. Cher(Alicia Silverstone) and Dionne (Stacey Dash),
both named after "great singers of the past that now do
infomercials," are pampered upper-class girls who care less about
getting good grades than wearing the right clothes and being as
popular as possible. But Cher, who lives with her tough yet
warm-hearted lawyer dad (Dan Hedaya) and hunky, sensitive
stepbrother (Paul Rudd), also has an innate urge to help those
less fortunate - like the two introverted teachers she brings
together ("negotiating" herself improved grades in the process)
and new friend Tai (Brittany Murphy), who starts out a geek and
ends up a Cher prodigy. Cher also possesses her own sensitive
side, and she is looking for the perfect boyfriend, whom she ends
up finding where she least expected. ALMOST FAMOUS - Writer and
director Cameron Crowe's experiences as a teenage rock journalist
- he was a regular contributor to Rolling Stone while still in
high school - inspired this coming-of-age story about a
15-year-old boy hitting the road with an up-and-coming rock band
in the early 1970s. Elaine Miller (Frances McDormand) is a
bright, loving, but strict single parent whose distrust of rock
music and fears about drug use have helped to drive a wedge
between herself and her two children, Anita (Zooey Deschanel) and
William (Patrick Fugit). Anita rebels by dropping out of school
and becoming a stewardess, but William makes something of his
love of rock & roll by writing album reviews for a local
underground newspaper. William's work attracts the attention of
Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman), editor of renegade rock
magazine Creem, who takes William under his wing and gives him
his first professional writing assignment - covering a Black
Sabbath concert. While William is unable to score an interview
with the headliners, the opening act, Stillwater, are more than
happy to chat with a reporter, even if he's still too young to
drive, and William's piece on the group in Creem gains him a new
admirer in Ben Fong-Torres (Terry Chen), an editor at Rolling
Stone. Torres offers William an assignment for a 3,000-word cover
story on Stillwater, and over the objections of his mother (whose
parting words are "Don't use drugs!"), and after some stern
advice from Bangs (who says under no circumstance s should he
become friends with a band he's covering), Williams joins
Stillwater on tour, where he becomes friendly with guitarist
Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) and singer Jeff Bebe (Jason Lee).
William also becomes enamored of Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), a
groupie traveling with the band who is no older than William, but
is deeply involved with Russell. Lester Bangs and Ben
Fong-Torres, incidentally, were real-life rock writers Crowe
worked with closely during his days as a journalist. Almost
Famous' original score was composed by Nancy Wilson of Heart (who
is also Crowe's wife). ELECTION - Reese Witherspoon (Legally
Blonde) is Tracy Flick, a straight "A" go-getter who's determined
to be president of Carver High's student body. But when popular
teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick, The Producers)
observes the zealous political locomotive that is Tracy, he
decides to derail her obsessive overachieving by recruiting an
sition candidate (Chris Klein, American Pie) - with
disastrous results! Here's a smart, witty and hilarious jab at
high school politics helmed by award-winning director Alexander
Payne (Sideways).
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