This movie features the collaborative directorial efforts of four new filmmakers, each of whom directs a segment of this comedy. It’s New Year’s Eve at the Mon Signor Hotel, a former grand old Hollywood hotel, now fallen upon hard times. Often using physical comedy and sight gags, this movie chronicles the slapstick misadventures of Ted, the Bellhop. He’s on his first night on the job, when he’s asked to help out a coven of witches in the Honeymoon Suite. Things only get worse when he delivers ice to the wrong room and ends up in a domestic argument at a really bad time. Next, he foolishly agrees to watch a gangster’s kids for him while he’s away. Finally, he finishes off the night refereeing a ghastly wager. –IMDb
Allison Anders (born November 16, 1954) is an American film and television director. Anders has directed many independent films, on which she frequently collaborates with fellow UCLA film school graduate Kurt Voss.
According to an article in Creative a series of adventures that often ended in jails and foster homes—experiences she credits with giving her raw inspiration for her cinematic portraits of rural Americans." At eighteen, she moved to England, then returned to Los Angeles to raise her first child. She attended the UCLA School of Theater Film and Television and was granted a Nicholl Fellowship by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her screenplay “Lost Highway” (unrelated to the David Lynch film of the same title) also earned her a Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award.
Her first film effort co-written and co-directed by Kurt Voss and Dean Lent was the punk music-heavy Border Radio, which was nominated for Best Feature of 1989 by the Independent Feature Project… read more
The director of such quirky, low-key films as In the Soup (1992) and 13 Moons (2002), filmmaker Alexandre Rockwell has had an uncanny penchant for making the most of the small, quiet moments that other filmmakers might gloss over in favor of meatier drama. As a result, Rockwell’s ability to craft complex, multi-dimensional characters — warts and all — gained him a dedicated following in the world of independent filmmaking. A native of Massachusetts and the grandson of animators Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker, Rockwell spent most of his teenage years making short films in the suburbs of Boston. Instead of college, Rockwell chose instead to go to Paris and work with his grandfather. Later studying filmmaking at the Cinemateque Francois, the aspiring director had already crafted a number of short films by the early ‘80s and was able to display his work at both Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art and New York City’s Association of Independent Video and Film… read more
The man behind some of the most innovative, creative, and visually inventive action films of the late ‘90s and early 2000s, director Robert Rodriguez is the epitome of the do-it-yourself attitude and a renaissance man of cinema. Directing, shooting, and editing nearly every one of his films, Rodriguez’s energetic and self-immersing approach to filmmaking has resulted in some of the most stylish and exciting action films in modern cinema.
Born June 20, 1968 into a large family that included ten siblings, Rodriguez was never lacking in inspiration due to the antics of his brothers and sisters and became fascinated with cartooning and filmmaking at an early age. Prompted to jump behind the camera after becoming enamored by John Carpenter’s Escape From New York at age 12, the fledgling director’s brothers and sisters served as a capable cast and crew, and with his father’s Super-8 camera in hand, Rodriguez took his first steps toward auteurhood. Shocked by the cost of developing… read more
Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of Tony Tarantino, an actor and amateur musician who was born in Queens, New York, and Connie McHugh, a nurse. Tarantino’s father is Italian American and his mother is of Irish and Cherokee ancestry. He was raised by his mother, as his parents separated before his birth. When he was two years old, he moved to Torrance, California and later to the Harbor City neighborhood where he went to Fleming Junior High School in Lomita and took drama classes. He attended Narbonne High School in Harbor City for his freshman year before dropping out of school at age 15, to attend an acting class full time at the James Best Theater Company in Toluca Lake.
At age 22 he worked at the Video Archives, a now-defunct video rental store in Manhattan Beach where he and fellow movie enthusiasts, including Roger Avary, discussed cinema and customer video recommendations at length. He paid close attention to the types of films people liked to rent and… read more
First two sequences are close to unwatchable... after that we fare much better, the Rodriguez and Tarantino episodes are entertaining. Such a mixed bag.
Not the best movie but enjoyable. Directed by Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino, each directing one separate "episode". Sometimes the acting seems over the top.
outside of the so-so parts 3 & 4 from rodriguez and tarantino, the only explanation i can make for parts 1 & 2 was that someone felt bad for Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell and decided… read review