30 Beats Can’t be Beat
New 30 Beats is really hot. I wish I were in the actual movie and not just helping webcast the press event in NYC.
Our team brought a TriCaster 855, a MultiCorder, three teleprompters and 5 EX3’s each with a PC and VazztCast unitto the event.
I was part of the TriCaster WebCasting team that does so may press releases and streams them live over the web and sets of the VOD. But this picture and Total Recall are really, really worth seeing. It;s not out yet but I caught the previews for both pix.
Synopsis of 30 Beats: a chain of life-changing sexual encounters during a summer heat wave. 30 Beats follows ten characters drawn into a ring of love and desire, each one caught beyond his or her control in a chain reaction of seduction, impulses and self-discovery.
30 Beats: Press Event Webcast
The Bottom Line
This umpteenth variation on Schnitzler’s classic play La Ronde fails to arouse.
Director-screenwriter
Alexis Lloyd
Cast
Paz de la Huerta, Justin Kirk, Lee Pace, Condola Rashad, Thomas Sadowski, Jennifer Tilly
Alexis Lloyd’s film starring Paz de la Huerta follows ten New Yorkers as they engage in various sexual liaisons during a summer heatwave.
It’s definitely time for a moratorium on any new films or plays inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s classic La Ronde. This theatrical depiction of a sexual roundelay has served as the basis for innumerable loose adaptations since its 1920 premiere, the latest being writer-director Alexis Lloyd’s 30 Beats, following ten New Yorkers getting it on in a series of unmemorable vignettes. The film is mainly notable for its diverse and talented ensemble cast, including several performers who have gone on to greater prominence since it was shot several years ago.
Set during three days of a summer heat wave, the episodic storyline follows a series of characters as they progress from one fling to the next. It begins with an innocent young woman (Condola Rashad) enticing a sexually experienced anthropologist (Justin Kirk) to deflower her. Feeling guilty afterwards, he heads to a psychic (Jennifer Tilly) whose unorthodox treatment involves his rubbing his genitals with some kind of magic cream. She later fools around with a young bike messenger (Jason Day), who is obsessed with a facially scarred beauty (Paz de la Huerta), who tries to seduce her chiropractor (Lee Pace), who…you get the idea.
While the dramatic premise has certainly proved its durability throughout the decades, this cinematic variation falls short on almost every level. The pseudo-exoticism, from the eccentric characters to the kinky sexual activities on display, isn’t enough to compensate for the banal dialogue and contrived situations.
Hollywood Reporter Review of 30 Beats
Clearly aiming for high artistic ground, the film doesn’t even satisfy on an arousal level, with the discreet nudity and endless yakking not exactly proving a turn-on.
The performers are mainly adrift, with such normally terrific theater and TV veterans as Thomas Sadowski (The Newsroom), Pace (Pushing Daisies) and Kirk (Weeds) not making much of an impression in their brief roles.