Focus/Refocus Is Coming!
This week we saw two previews of the upcoming Raging Stallion fall release Focus/Refocus--one was a "leaked" clip, the other was the official trailer at The Sword. Right from the start we should mention that we eagerly look forward to this ambitious big budget flick so we watched the clips with more than mere objective curiosity. That said we were very impressed, more so with the trailer than the controversial clip which has caused a stir among the press and blogosphere. More on that in a bit.
We already knew about the basic plot of Focus/Refocus before watching the trailer so we weren't really looking for spoiler info. You won't really find it here either although Cole Streets' character Joe looks like a fucked-up dude who is in a lot of trouble in the flick. The film-making style is definitely dark & edgy and it looks like the directors have injected some avant-gard visual techniques. Normally we pay attention to acting anyway but since this trailer doesn't feature any hardcore sex, getting a sampling of the acting was easy. From what we can tell David Taylor brings his previous experiences as soap actor to bear here with good results. Obviously the main character played by Cole Streets gets ample amounts of dialog too and he seems up to the task. Scott Tanner and Steve Cruz are also featured here and also appear very convincing. So, as far as we're concerned we're probably more enthused than before about seeing Focus/Refocus.
The other clip isn't something we recommend if you want to remain spoiler-free because it reveals the death (seemingly) of one of the characters. You've probably heard that the character death toll is high in this flick (although probably not as much as last year's To The Last Man) but it's the creepy manner in which this character is killed that's sparking erroneous comments that Focus/Refocus is a "snuff film", again like last year's TTLM.
First of all, not to get too gross or graphic but a snuff film is not a term to throw around lightly. It's literally a movie or footage of someone actually getting killed. A dramatization of death is NOT a snuff film. Let's get real guys. Sure, it's understandable if you have problems with violence in any movie, let alone a porn flick. You might also believe there's no place for it here in this genre. That said Raging Stallion is pretty upfront about the content of all its flicks so you do have a wonderful thing called choice. Also, Raging Stallion will no doubt give you the option of seeing a "sex scene" only version of Focus/Refocus. So perhaps it's more important to concentrate on some real issues instead of the fictional content of a porn flick.
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