Predict the #1 film for the weekend of December 4-6, 2009. The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus 1
Will Armored earn over or under 7 million for the weekend?

Bonus 2
Will Transylmania crack seven figures for the weekend?

Bonus 3 (TBD)
My brain has officially shut off for the night.

As a result: the third bonus up to you folks. Post any/all suggestions in the comments below.  Person with the winning submission wins half a point!

I’ll update the body of this post sometime tomorrow AM.

Jeanine: 7
Brian: 6.5
Rob: 2.5
Joe Webb: 2.5
Nick: 2
Juan: 1
Jackrabbit Slim: 1
James: 1
Filmman: .5
Marco Trevisiol: .5

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its release, Warner Home Video recently released a two-disc DVD of the Alfred Hitchcock classic North by Northwest. I have just concluded several hours of watching the film (for the umpteenth time) and the many extras (apparently the previous DVD release was fouled up with a flaw in the last act–the Amazon reviews are a litany of complaints about it, but a flaw in the Amazon review system doesn’t differentiate between releases).

Following the box-office disappointment of Vertigo, Hitchcock teamed with screenwriter Ernest Lehman to adapt the book The Wreck of the Mary Deare. Lehman couldn’t do anything with the book, and told Hitchcock so, but the director liked the writer enough to suggest they just scrap that idea, not tell MGM about it, and do something else. Hitchcock had always wanted to make a film that had a chase across the faces of Mount Rushmore (a possible title for the film was “The Man in Lincoln’s Nose”) and that’s where they started. Hitchcock would never make Mary Deare.

The film was a hit, and has grown in time to be acclaimed as one of the greatest Hitchcock made. It is certainly his most entertaining, and in many ways is the ultimate Hitchcock film, incorporating all of the elements that he is known for in one package: the wrong man (as well as the man who’s entire world is upended), the domineering mother, the icy blonde, the spectacular set piece, the McGuffin, and mischievous humor. It is also something of a valentine from Hitchcock to his adopted country, as the film’s motion, described in its title, from New York to Chicago to the frontier of South Dakota, is essentially American.

The film begins with the double wallop of an exquisite Saul Bass title design and a swirling Bernard Hermann score. The design shows diagonal lines which eventually morph into the buildings of Madison Avenue, but over the course of the film the carefully calibrated geometry will be undone, as the life of cosmopolitan man-about-town Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) will fray until he is hiding in an Indiana cornfield and hanging for his life off of Mount Rushmore. Through a case of mistaken identity, international spies take him for a federal agent, and he is thrust into something out of Lewis Carroll, where he meets a suave villain (James Mason), then a sexy but mysterious blonde (Eva Marie Saint) and his chased across the country.

Hitchcock does some amazing things in this film, perhaps none so bold as the iconic crop-duster scene, where Grant is left standing in a wide open space for about six minutes, an incredible amount of time for nothing to happen in a mainstream Hollywood film. First one car goes by, then another, as Grant waits hopefully to meet the man who we know doesn’t exist–George Kaplan. Finally another man appears, and Hitchcock frames the two men in a wide shot without a bit of sound, a scene abundant in both suspense and absurdity. Then, finally, the plane attacks, and we react as Grant does–this can’t be happening!

This scene, one of the most famous in Hitchcock’s career if not in cinema history, is indicative of how North by Northwest works–it is a series of preposterous plot advancements that glide past the audience because of how skillfully the direction is. Let’s face it–sending a man into a cornfield to be assassinated by a crop-duster is not exactly efficient (as is being loaded drunk into a sports car hoping for a fatal accident). Mason’s international spy ring could take some lessons from the mob, who believed in a simple two shots to the head. (Additionally, there are some lapses in geography: Long Island has no rocky cliffs, and no one, not even a dapper spy, lives on top of Mount Rushmore).

Aside from the crop-duster scene, there are others that bear scrutiny. The scene in which Grant approaches Mason at the art auction scene is an example of both disrupted expectations and the recurring theme of the orderly world turned anarchic. When Grant stalks across the room, bitter at being double-crossed by Saint, the audience could expect that Mason and his stooge, Martin Landau, would strike back. But because they are in a citadel of sophistication, their stand-off is done in hushed tones and sober politeness. Then, to escape their clutches, Grant realizes he must be escorted out by police, and sets about disrupting the proceedings until they are called. He does by breaking the rules of the auction, bidding below the established bid, or by absurdly low figures. It is again a touch of Lewis Carroll, unusual for a film that is meticulous in construction.

North by Northwest has been called by some the first James Bond film, in that it anticipated the template for those films with a multitude of iconic locations and pulse-pounding derring-do. But in reality it only captures the essence of Bond in the final act, because up until that time Grant’s Thornhill character is a passive hero, acted upon. It is only after he is informed that his behavior has endangered the life of Saint does he choose to be proactive, even breaking free of the government handler and going to the villain’s lair at the end of the picture.

A few tidbits: Hitchcock loved to use iconic locations and landmarks–he used the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur, and along with Mount Rushmore he sets a scene at the United Nations (where he was banned from filming, but surreptitiously shot an establishing scene from a camera hid in a carpet-cleaning truck). The suit that Grant wears through almost the whole film was voted by GQ magazine as the greatest in film history, though there is a dispute over who made it. There is also a funny mistake in the Mount Rushmore cafeteria scene, just before Saint shoots Grant. A boy, who obviously had been through a lot of takes, can be seen putting his fingers in his ears before the gun goes off.

Speaking of humor, it is a major reason why North by Northwest is so enduring. At one point a government operative, after learning of Thornhill’s predicament, says, “If this weren’t so sad it would be funny,” which is a nice summation of Hitchcock’s style. In so many of his films there are grim circumstances, but one can’t help but be amused. Grant, careening along the highway, an entire bottle of bourbon in him, sings from My Fair Lady (a part he would eventually turn down), he sneaks into a woman’s hospital room, and she is ready to scream, until she puts her glasses on and then asks him to stay, and of course the final shot, the vulgar joke of a train hurtling into a tunnel while Grant and Saint settle into their honeymoon bed. It is hard to imagine any other director besides Alfred Hitchcock getting away with something like that.

I don’t have kids, but if I did I would imagine that it can be sometimes brutal to have to take your kid to “family” films, as most of them seem to be punishment for adults, a recurring reminder that you should have used better birth control. Today I saw trailers for an Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel and Dwayne Johnson in The Tooth Fairy, either of which could be used as advertisements for vasectomies. But then there are films, which could be called “family” films, in that they are animated and appeal to children, that transcend being cartoons and delight all age groups. Most of them are made by Pixar, but now we can add the idiosyncratic genius Wes Anderson to the list.

Of course, Anderson is not an animator by trade. He is a cinematic miniaturist, a spinner of tales that exist in a whimsical world of his own making, set to a soundtrack from a playlist of a college radio station, with title cards that announce what is about to happen. Usually his films are about fathers and sons. This is all true in Fantastic Mr. Fox,  but in this case the source material is a children’s book by Roald Dahl. I haven’t read the book, but I have the feeling that what’s on screen is very little Dahl and a whole lot of Wes Anderson.

The title character is a fox who specializes, as most foxes do, in stealing poultry. When his Mrs. tells him he’s about to become a father, she makes him promise to find a less dangerous living. He becomes a newspaper columnist (I await the DVD so I can freeze-frame his columns, because they appear to be fully written) and his son, Ash, is an oddball who aspires to be a great athlete like his dad. When a cousin, Kristofferson, arrives (that name couldn’t be from Dahl), Ash finds out that he’s  outclassed in every way.

Meanwhile, Mr. Fox can’t resist heeding the call of his nature and with an opossum as a sidekick, endeavors to rob food from each of three human farmers nearby. One of them, Mr. Bean, is a vicious gun enthusiast who makes it his mission to retaliate, and drives the foxes, as well as all of the other woodland creatures, deep underground. As Bugs Bunny used to say, “This means war.”

This film is a constant delight, full of the eccentric details that populate Anderson films. This is apparent immediately, when we see at the opening the cover of Dahl’s book, but with the tell-tale label on the spine that indicates it’s a library book. The animation is old-fashioned stop-motion, so it’s not as slick as computer-generated stuff, but it reeks of charm. The “sets” are like dollhouses created by obsessive shut-ins, with bric-a-brac by the truckload. Would anyone beside Wes Anderson imagine that a fox would have a train set? He even invents rules for a sport played by animals, and gives us the Latin names for all of the creatures.

Beyond the whimsy, the script, written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach, packs both suspense and heart. The showdown between Fox and a drawling rat who seems to have seen West Side Story too many times is as gripping as anything I’ve seen this year (and Fox’s line after the fight: “Redemption, yes, but in the end he’s just a dead rat in a trash pail outside a Chinese restaurant” could have been written by Raymond Chandler). The heart comes from the love between Fox and his long-suffering wife. Helpfully, he psychoanalyzes himself and explains why he does the thing that he does, perhaps a first in animated film history (basically, it’s because he’s a wild animal). Then there’s the relationship between Fox and Ash, which to me is better than Kevin Costner asking his father if he wants a catch.

Normally I’m unimpressed by celebrity voice-actors in animated films, wondering why they went to all the trouble to basically get radio performances. But George Clooney as Mr. Fox is a perfect choice. His voice is recognizable enough that we can picture him, if not his actual face then at least the spirit of Clooney performances past, particularly Danny Ocean, while we watch Mr. Fox hatch a scheme. And I love his trademark, a whistle followed by a tsk-tsk sound, that may be imitated by many, unconsciously or not. Meryl Streep is fine as Mrs. Fox, although she has less to do, and Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzmann, Willem Dafoe, and particularly Michael Gambon as mean Mr. Bean fill out a wonderful cast.

As for whether this film works for kids, I can only judge by my fellow audience members who were knee-high or smaller. Most of them watched in rapt attention, and one tyke told his father that “this was my favorite movie ever.” Hear, hear, kid.

Ugh. We’re in the middle of a move, which has turned out to be somewhat more complicated than anticipated. Right now I’m pretty tired and feeling slightly overwhelmed, so I’m tired and a little cranky. If Openings this week is a little more curt and/or grumpy than usual, I hope everyone will understand.

The Beautiful Person
Director: Christophe Honoré (Dans Paris, Love Songs)
Personal Interest Factor: 4
Gotta love IFC: they acquire a film, decide to release it through their “Festival Direct” label, and then give it a web page like this: with a French poster, and a misprint of the movie’s (English) title in the “about” section. Obviously, they’re 100% behind this film!
Metacritic: not listed

Earth Days (trailer)
Director: Robert Stone
Personal Interest Factor: 3
The latest in a seemingly endless line of environmental documentaries.
Metacritic:

Fantastic Mr. Fox (trailer)
Director: Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited)
Personal Interest Factor: 10
I’ve been a huge fan of Wes Anderson since I saw Rushmore, and I’ll happily see any film of his no matter what. It doesn’t hurt that Fox looks absolutely terrific. Can’t wait.
Metacritic: 83

Ninja Assassin (trailer)
Director: James McTeigue (V for Vendetta)
Personal Interest Factor: 4
I was one of the few people who thought V for Vendetta was kinda hackish, so I can’t say I’m excited for McTeigue’s official followup. One of the more amusing pre-show featurettes I’ve seen in the last few months was for this movie. One of the filmmakers (Joel Silver?) explains that the reason for this is that they wanted to do a “real” ninja movie, so they hired the best stunt people with acrobatic training and whatnot to actually DO the things you see in the movie. This is followed a minute or so later by a shot of a guy in a wire harness. That’s good promotin’.
Metacritic: 34

Old Dogs (trailer)
Director: Walt Becker (Van Wilder, Buying the Cow, Wild Hogs)
Personal Interest Factor: 1
I’m frankly at a loss for words. I can only assume that Disney is finally releasing this because they realized that they no longer had anyh use for blackmail material on Bernie Mac. Frighteningly enough, this hypothesis implies that they have even worse on Robin Williams and John Travolta. On the other hand, it may also mean that Seth Green refused to pay up. Hard to say.
Metacritic: 21

Red Cliff (trailer)
Director: John Woo (Broken Arrow, Face/Off, Mission: Impossible II, Paycheck)
Personal Interest Factor: 5
I’ve never really considered myself a fan of Woo, but then again, I’ve seen very few of his movies. And as far as I know, even his biggest fans don’t really defend M:I II. So I’m willing to be convinced that I’ve simply seen the wrong films, although I’d also have to be convinced that there’s more to enjoy than some really awesomely choreographed violence.
Metacritic: 74

The Road (trailer)
Director: John Hillcoat (The Proposition)
Personal Interest Factor: 9
The Proposition was absolutely terrific, a film that gains in stature with repeated viewings over time, and it’s seemed like forever to get Hillcoat’s next film, thanks in no small part to the Weinstein’s usual release date roulette. Our own Joe Webb has reviewed the film for Gone Elsewhere.
Metacritic: 63

Welcome to the first installment of HAGEBOC 09! This year will run from Thanksgiving until the weekend of January 8-10.

Rules are essentially the same as previous contests, although the bonus questions will be a bit more competitive. Last week saw our first-ever Participation Bonus, which Jeanine won by enduring/reviewing New Moon for the blog. There will be similar challenges down the line, with options for non-GE authors so they may participate.

NOTE: There is NO TIME LIMIT for Participation Bonus questions. Keep that in mind if you start having a bad run and need a handful of points to get back in the game.

Glad to see Juan and Rob back in the fold along with our regulars. The Swede’s disappearance continues to confound and disappoint, but I’m still hopeful he’ll show up eventually.

Post any questions, suggestions for improvements, etc. in the comments below. Looking forward to another great contest and oh, THERE WILL BE PRIZES.

Let’s get started:
Predict the #1 film for the weekend of November 27-29, 2009. As always: remember that we are only tracking Friday-Sunday grosses.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus 1
Will New Moon drop over or under 64% in it’s second weekend?

Bonus 2
What film will open in third place?

Knowing that most of us will be pressed for time this week, we’re going to skip a Participation Bonus (kudos and thanks to Jeanine for her efforts in week one) and do something a little different:

Bonus 3
Predict Old Dogs‘ opening weekend gross. The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross wins 2 points. Runner-up gains 1 point.

Deadline is Wednesday November 25 at 12:00 pm (blog time).

Jeanine: 7
Joe Webb: 2.5
Brian: 1
Juan: 1
Jackrabbit Slim: 1
Rob: .5
Filmman: .5
Marco Trevisiol: .5
James: .5

Warning: spoilers contained within.  But if you’re a Twi-hard, you already know everything there is to know about the book/movie anyway (and probably saw the 12:01 showing early last Friday morning).  If you’re not, then I suggest you don’t bother unless you want an excuse to start cyber-stalking Robert Pattinson or Taylor Lautner.

I am a sucker for love story novels.  They’re a quick read when I’m bored.  I only read Twilight after the first movie came out (which I didn’t see right away) because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.  Sure, I got interested in the idea of the story.  But if I had a dime for every time I rolled my eyes because of bad dialogue or cheesy plot lines, then I’d be rich.

Before seeing New Moon (and only reading part of the book), I wrote the following summary.  And after seeing the movie, I can tell you it’s not all that different.

Edward leaves Bella. Bella has werewolf friend to protect her. She does dangerous things because it helps her “see” Edward in her mind. Edward’s sister has a vision of Bella diving off cliff and he thinks Bella’s dead, so he tries to commit vampire suicide (i.e. Romeo and Juliet rip off). Bella finds out and tries to save him, putting herself in danger and now he’s back to having to save her. They all end up happily back together again at the end.

The first question I should answer is which is better, Twilight or New Moon?  Twilight.  Bella is really not in much real danger at all this time around.  She’s just caught in a love triangle (or quadrangle if you include Mike).  Woe is her to be loved by three guys – [gag].  The second question is if someone hasn’t read the books, will they understand what’s going on?  Not really, especially if you haven’t seen Twilight.  I only read the beginning and the end of New Moon and I was still a little confused watching the film.  A movie that doesn’t stand on its own without the books is not a very good movie.  Of course, the book could have been just as confusing, which would make it a bad book.

What I couldn’t stand is that Bella, after being dumped by Edward, was in a constant state of depression for 5 months.  To show the passage of time, the camera spins around Bella staring out the window as the season moves from fall to winter.  Really, Bella spent the entire movie staring out a window, or on the ground.  There was very little eye-to-eye contact with anyone she talks to.  There is just nothing interesting about Bella in this movie at all.

I did laugh a little.  Like the time when Jacob tells Bella that he can’t just stop being a werewolf, “It’s not a lifestyle choice.  I was born this way.”  You don’t think that sounds like a conversation a gay teenager might have with their parents?  Or when Bella finds out that he’s a werewolf, one of his friends says, “I guess the wolf’s out of the bag.”  Dakota Fanning’s character looks like one of the kids out of Village of the Damned when she glares at Edward for a few seconds to cause him pain.  And I couldn’t help but think of Frost/Nixon watching Michael Sheen as the head Volturi vampire.

Then there’s Romeo & Juliet.  Edward and Bella are watching the movie in class at the beginning of the film.  So it’s no surprise that Edward wants to kill himself when he thinks that Bella is dead.  I guess I can’t say it’s an exact Romeo & Juliet rip off, because neither of them die and they don’t get married until the next film.  (Whoops, did I give away too much?)

Anyway, there just isn’t much going on in this film.  The dialogue is bad, and the story is very thin.  But the ladies love it because Taylor Lautner is buff, and Robert Pattinson is hot.  Now, where are my “super masochist bonus” points?

Precious has engendered a lot of punditry, both by film critics as well as those called upon to express opinions on all manner of social and cultural facets of American life. As such, it has been both wildly over-praised and unfairly vilified. I would never pretend to know how it fits in with the black experience, and frankly that doesn’t concern me. What interests me is was it a worthwhile experience watching it in a movie theater. For the most part, yes.

It is instructive that Oprah Winfrey signed on as an executive producer and endorsed it on her TV show. Oprah is the queen of daytime talk shows, and she is also the queen of good-intentioned, middlebrow entertainment, which is essentially what Precious is–an earnest tale of moral uplift with a sympathetic protagonist. At certain moments it is brilliantly moving, especially when focused on the two main performers, and at other times it wallows in a kind of self-satisfied Afterschool Specialness.

The story concerns the title character, an obese African American girl in Harlem in 1987. Played by Gabourey Sidibe, she would seem to have no hope. She is illiterate, although somehow gets good grades in school (albeit she is 16 and still in junior high). She is pregnant with her second child, both the result of rape by her father. Her daughter has Downs Syndrome, and is cruelly nicknamed “Mongo.” Her mother, scarily portrayed by Mo’Nique, is a lazy monster, telling Precious she is worthless, stupid and unloved, and there is nothing in the girl’s life to indicate otherwise.

Her school principal gets her transferred to an alternative school, where she meets a teacher, played by Paula Patton, who is like someone out of a fairy tale. Not only is she beautiful, patient, and dedicated, she’s even a lesbian! When Precious hears Patton and her partner talk she says “they talk like a TV station I don’t watch.” Precious also gets support from a caring welfare case-worker, unglamorously played by Mariah Carey, who more than makes up for Glitter (I wonder how she took the news that her character would have a slight mustache).

Thus this film is very pro-government, the kind that would play well in the Obama White House but might draw suspicion from a “tea party.” I share the opinion that the system can work sometimes, but I doubt it’s this rosy. Of course, any pencil-pushing bureaucrat would seem like an angel when contrasted with the brutality of Precious’ mother, a character that ranks right up there with Medea and Joan Crawford in the pantheon of bad mothers. The greatness of Mo’Nique’s performance is that though this woman is vile there is a human being there–she has no visible redeeming features, but she is human. In the climactic scene, the best scene in the film, Mo’Nique lays bare the psyche of her character, and it’s not a pretty sight. But it’s certainly believable, given all the tabloid stories about abusive mothers through the years.

As for Ms. Sidibe, well, she’s remarkable. A woman who had never acted professionally before gives such an assured performance. At the start her face is a mask of impenetrability, but over the course of the film her features soften, and when she can finally laugh it’s as though a weight has been lifted from the audience. It can’t have been an easy thing to play–her character faces so many setbacks that it’s almost too much to bear, especially a medical one near the end of the film that felt like piling on. But I never found a false note in Sidibe’s work. I sincerely hope that this is not a one-shot deal for her.

Where the film suffers is in the over-direction by Lee Daniels. He tries to busy things up a bit too much. Precious has many daydreams, and they don’t always work, especially one where she inserts herself into an Italian film (I think it was Two Women). A scene showing bits and pieces of speeches by great black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Shirley Chisholm seemed unnecessarily didactic, and I thought most of the scenes involving her classmates were like an updated version of Room 222.

There were some touches that were daring, and have created quite a fuss, particularly one in which Precious looks into the mirror and imagines her ideal self, and she sees a white girl. This has caused some consternation in the black press, and I can understand why. But I think the scene seems right, given that Precious hates herself as the film begins, and her walls are covered with posters of white stars like Stevie Nicks. It is also counterbalanced by a scene toward the end where Precious looks into a mirror and sees herself exactly as she is, which is also entirely appropriate.

I liked Precious, and give it a B, or three stars, whatever system you may choose. I wouldn’t call it one of the best of the year, although Oscar nominations for Sidibe and Mo’Nique will be well-deserved. But I think I was relieved to find that the film wasn’t simply a catalogue of ghetto misery.

The Twilight sequel opened with 80 million on Friday, shattering The Dark Knight’s record of 67 million a year ago. Astounding stuff.

Full disclosure – I haven’t read the novel.

The Road is a painfully bleak look at a world (or at least northeast USA) some 9 or 10 years after a widespread disaster. We are not privy to the actual details of what went down (I have not seen 2012 but I doubt the bombastic Mayan apocalypse was this movie’s precursor) but enough waste was laid to kill most nonhuman life by the time the viewer arrives on the wintry scene.

Have a (decade old) Coke and a smile!

A man (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) are heading south, but we don’t know what they hope to find when they get there – if ’south’ can be described as a destination. Perhaps warmth or remnants of civilized society exist somewhere closer to the equator. Armed with a couple backpacks, a stuffed animal, one gun and two bullets the father instructs his son on how to end them both should the worst happen. So very early on we are shown that every man is for himself in this ‘new’ world and we sense immediate danger and despair lurking all around - our two familiars scurry to hide in a forest as a group of men pass by on a truck and we very quickly find out why the man trusts no one. The helplessness and hopelessness on display is suffocating. Only the young boy has retained his innocence and some optimism. He wants to see the good in everyone no matter what his father says.

Along the road (whether it is one or many we aren’t sure) our duo finds little to be cheerful about. There are abandonded and wrecked vehicles, houses, superstores, and general infrastructure. It is a rare treat to find an empty car or truck cab to sleep in. As I said before it is winter and the clothes on their backs along with makeshift shoes don’t visibly seem to quell the cold nearly enough. The grey skies and frigid air are presented so vividly that many times I was glad to be comfortably inside and wearing a jacket.

The boy mentions his mother and part of her story (mostly the end of it) is told through flashbacks. One powerful series of flashbacks is bookended with the man and his wedding ring and it’s the only time I was momentarily taken out of the movie. Had Peter Jackson not spent 85% of the Lord of the Rings trilogy showing someone intently looking and a simple solid gold ring, it might not be ruined for every other director. Watching the man stare intently at his ring brought hobbits to mind and I mentally kicked myself for allowing it to go there. It’s certainly not director John Hillcoat’s fault for including the scene nor is it Viggo’s fault for starring in LOTR, but I am sure many people will make the quick connection which is unfortunate. The scene is powerfully heartbreaking and continues to enforce the depressed state of affairs unfolding before us.

The goal of the duo is as simple as it is unattainable: survival. It is not a concrete place they reach, but each minute and each day they are eking out some way to survive. They drift from place to place never staying too long even in environments that are ostensibly safe. Women and children are a rare “commodity” (I’ll leave it at that) in this time – so rare that when the boy is sure he has seen another boy he almost goes hysterical trying to track him down, while the man does his best to convince his son that there are no other young people around. The horrors perpitrated upon the “weakest” are really only touched upon visually without much explanation. I have read some comments about the deeper backstory of the atrocities mentioned in the book and think they were handled pretty well onscreen.

My only quarrel (other than the Lord of the Rings sequence, which was really my own doing) is with a few of the man’s actions and somewhat of a wrapped-up ending. There are two instances where I felt things the man does don’t jive with his character as it was presented to us earlier. At one point he leaves his son to swim out in the ocean (!) to a shipwreck (!) looking for, well, we don’t know. He comes back with a garbage back of something and it’s never referenced again. Shortly thereafter he confronts someone who has stolen from him and treats the thief with more extreme prejudice than I thought he was capable of (though he does try to atone for it later).

I was told that the ending of the novel is much more open-ended and on less sure footing than the movie. In the film we are fairly certain of the fate of the boy at least for the forseeable future, but the book apparently leaves it quite ambiguous. The gentleman I was watching it with (thanks, Rob!) stated that he thought they did as good of a job as they possibly could given the source material. And if the goal was to wrestle you to the ground in despair then bravo! (kidding) We are clearly seeing the lengths a father will go to save his son. He shields the boy’s eyes and ears from the horrors man commits against man and convinces him that they are the good guys – the ones to carry the fire that has been lost in the primal nature so many others have returned to.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (trailer)
Director: Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde, Invincible, Rescue Dawn)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
Obviously I’ll go see any Werner Herzog movie, but I have to admit that I’m more looking forward to My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, with Michael Shannon. It’s hard to be 100% excited for a movie starring either Nicolas Cage or Eva Mendes, much less both of them.
Metacritic: 69

The Blind Side (trailer)
Director: John Lee Hancock (The Rookie, The Alamo)
Personal Interest Factor: 4
I’m not thinking that this movie looks all that interesting. In fact, it looks like one of those movies where the trailer is a perfect 2-minute digest of the film itself. Woman meets kid, kid plays football, kid’s life is changed – and so is the woman’s! People cry. Fin.
Metacritic: 50

La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (trailer)
Director: Frederick Wiseman
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Pretty much as it sounds, a documentary about the Paris Opera Ballet.
Metacritic: not listed

The Messenger (trailer)
Director: Oren Moverman
Personal Interest Factor: 7
No, not a reissue of Luc Besson’s ill-fated Joan of Arc film. It’s a film starring Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson as officers in the Army’s Casualty Notification Service. Good reviews since it premiered in Venice.
Metacritic: 75

Planet 51 (trailer)
Director: Jorge Blanco
Personal Interest Factor: 3
I suppose the true genius of Pixar is that they make animated family movies that I actually want to see. It happens very rarely otherwise; off the top of my head, I only remember Monster House and a few stop-motions that fit that bill. That said, this doesn’t look as bad as most.
Metacritic: 39

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (trailer)
Director: Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass)
Personal Interest Factor: 1
As with most sequels, it’s tough to have much interest without seeing the original, especially when the sequel is by most accounts an inferior movie. Aside from that, funny story: I just now realized that there are two Weitz brothers. Chris did Golden Compass. Paul did In Good Company. They both did About a Boy. Fascinating. I’m not kidding – I never knew there was more than one Weitz. Just hadn’t been paying that much attention.
Metacritic: 45

Visual Acoustics (trailer)
Director: Eric Bricker
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Documentary about the career of Julius Shulman, “the world’s greatest architectural photographer.”
Metacritic: 67

Part eight of our discussion on the films of the 00’s, this time focusing on 2007. 2008 will run shortly after this and then we’ll tackle 2009 (and the decade as a whole) in the month of December.

1) Best of 2007?
2) Worst of 2007?
3) Most underrated?
4) Most underseen?
5) Most overrated?
6) Best performance(s) of the year?
7) Best single scene/sequence of the year?
8) One thing you could change about any single film in 2007 (Example: different cast, different director, different style, different release date, different studio).
9) Most memorable (good or bad) theatergoing experience of the year?
10) Most influential film/performance/style/director?

Obviously feel free to answer only the questions you’re interested in or to write/respond to something else entirely.

2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006

Predict the weekend gross of The Twilight Saga: New Moon.  The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

BONUS 1
Will Planet 51 gross over or under 7 million dollars?

BONUS 2
Will 2012 drop over or under 66%?

SUPER MASOCHIST BONUS:
Review New Moon for the blog and earn 2 extra points.

All points WILL BE CARRIED OVER to the main contest.

The deadline will be Thursday at noon EST. Nice and loose. Let’s get everybody back in the house with this one (Nick, Rob, Juan and God willing, Rhymerguy, etc) so we’re set for next week.

It was fifty years ago tomorrow that The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coup), the debut feature from François Truffaut, premiered in the United States. It was the first of what would be a five-film collaboration between Truffaut and actor Jean-Pierre Léaud that would cover twenty years in the life of Truffaut’s fictional alter-ego, Antoine Doinel. Along with Breathless, it is the signature film of the movement known as the French New Wave, but has transcended that label and become a classic in its own right. As I stop to consider the question, I realize it is my favorite French film, and would be in my top twenty or so of all time. A few years ago I received as a gift the Criterion boxed set of the Antoine Doinel films and yesterday popped The 400 Blows into my DVD player, watching the film for at least the third time.

Truffaut was only twenty-seven when he directed this film. He had been a critic, a disciple of Andre Bazin, and was among the daring young men who would leap from the pages of Cahier Du Cinema to the big screen, turning away from the silly romanticism of post-war French cinema and embracing the themes and style of a wide variety of other types of film, notably American B-pictures and Alfred Hitchcock. Though The 400 Blows is the quasi-autobiographical tale of a troubled boy searching for identity, the major subtext is a reverence for the image.

The title is a literal translation from the French, but it is meaningless to Americans, as the phrase is French slang that is roughly equivalent to “painting the town red” and has nothing to do with receiving a beating of any kind (the supplemental materials lists a few dozen alternate titles Truffaut considered, including The Vagabonds, Antoine Runs Away, or Down With School). Antoine is a thirteen-year-old boy in a largely loveless home. His mother is distracted and pays him little attention, more concerned with carrying on an extra-marital affair. His father, who is in reality his step-father, is a more likeable figure, but has no real connection to the boy. The autocratic school system is no succor, as the teachers are depicted as cruel brutes who inflict literature rather than teaching it (it is notable that Antoine’s love of Balzac comes not from school, but from his own intellectual curiosity).

Antoine is more interested in playing hooky with his friend, where they go to the movies or just hang out. He is in constant trouble for lying (most notably when he tells the teacher that his mother has died, a Freudian infraction if there ever was one) and then stealing a typewriter from his father’s office, which lands him in reform school. There is no snuggly reconciliation of family in this film (the next Doinel film, a short also on this disc, Antoine and Colette, reveals that Antoine is living on his own at the age of seventeen), but instead a search for identity that exists outside the boundaries of family. It is an anti-Hallmark card.

So on the one-hand we have something of a Dickensian journey of a young man, but on the other hand this is a film about the healing power of film. From the very first scene, when schoolboys pass around a forbidden photograph of a pin-up girl, the power of imagery is repeatedly explored. We see Antoine and his friend, René, going to a carnival where they ride “The Rotor,” a spinning contraption that is the same mechanism as the zoetrope. Other carnival patrons watch from above as those inside are spun around in a centrifuge. Truffaut, Hitchcock-like, gives himself a cameo as one of those being whirled. Then there are two instances where Antoine goes to the movies. In one of them, a rare enjoyable outing with his parents, they attend Jacques Rivette’s Paris Belongs to Us, a bit of cinematic log-rolling as Rivette was one of Truffaut’s New Wave cohorts. And finally there is the magical, brief scene in which young children watch a puppet show, and we see not the show, but the faces of the kids as they are transported by what they see.

The pleasures of this film are many. There is plenty of comedy, ranging from the Our Gang-ish scenes of a boy’s slapstick struggle with his leaking pen and composition book to the scene, lovingly lifted from Jean Vigo’s Zero de Conduite, where a gym teacher leads his charges on a run through the city, but he fails to notice that the boys drop off in dribs and drabs until there are only two boys left on the run. I especially liked the way Truffaut depicts Antoine as a boy who is growing up too fast, a kind of miniature adult. The shot of him lying back on his bed, smoking a cigarette while reading Balzac, is both funny and sad, and the way he shakes hands with René after being told by his father to say goodbye to him has a grim, fatalistic humor to it.

A lot of this has to do with Léaud, of course, who gives one of the most amazing juvenile performances in the history of film. The greatness of his work is best exemplified by the interview scene with the psychiatrist near the end of the film, where he discusses his dislike of his mother in frank, startling terms–we learn that his mother was talked out of an abortion by his grandmother, who actually raised him until he was eight. In this way the film ties into many of the American juvenile delinquent films of the fifties, but without the full-throated sensationalism. I never cease to marvel at the quick dart of the eyes and silly smile that Léaud gives when the psychiatrist asks him if he’s ever slept with a girl. It’s pure gold.

I learned for the first time that The 400 Blows was shot completely M.O.S. (without sound) and all of it was dubbed in later. Truffaut thought this was perfectly acceptable, as he was used to seeing American films dubbed into French, and because he was operating on a shoestring it allowed him to work without heavy and expensive sound equipment (he shot the film on the streets of Paris). Truffaut, in what was new then but is commonplace these days, would have the sound from one scene overlapping after a cut to another scene, as he figured the human ear could track the transition.

Then finally there is the closing shot, one of the most iconic in film history, a zoom to a freeze-frame, the first time a film had ended in that manner. Antoine has run away from the reform school to seek out the sea (he tells René that he doesn’t want to join the army, but wouldn’t mind the navy). When he finally reaches it, the film stops at his moment of self-liberation, but the look on his face doesn’t suggest triumph, but instead uncertainty. Truffaut and Léaud would carry forward Antoine’s story two more decades, but in a certain sense it ends right here, forever frozen in time.

Immediately followed by the kick-off of the all-new, all-different HAGEBOC II on the 23rd.  Rules to follow.  Maybe even prizes.

It’s the most magical time of year and it begins on Monday…or Sunday if I have time.   Something like that.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (trailer)
Director: Troy Duffy (The Boondock Saints)
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Never saw the original, although I vaguely remembering it being released. Didn’t realize it has a big enough following to justify a sequel a decade later.
Metacritic: 26

Gentlemen Broncos (trailer)
Director: Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre)
Personal Interest Factor: 3
I understand that I should see one of Hess’s movies one day before bashing him, and I won’t insult anyone by defending my behavior in this regard. But there’s something about his movies that instantly and thoroughly repel me, and the thought of sitting through one is anathema to me. So my sincere apologies to Hess for the unjustified dismissal but I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon.
Metacritic: 28

The House of the Devil (trailer)
Director: Ti West (The Roost)
Personal Interest Factor: 4
Allegedly decent little horror film. Woman on the run from psychos, etc. Not a fan of horror in general, and when I get sucked into one I usually regret it (e.g., The Descent), so I’ll probably leave the enjoyment of this to others.
Metacritic: 74

Pirate Radio (trailer)
Director: Richard Curtis (Love Actually)
Personal Interest Factor: 5
A few weeks ago I praised Ang Lee for not using super-obvious song choices in Taking Woodstock. It appears that Curtis has done exactly that for this movie – the trailer advertises music by The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, etc. Maybe Curtis has used obscure and/or counterintuitive selections by those bands, a la Wes Anderson, but I doubt it. This looks like the kind of movie that pats Boomers on the back for being alive when “My Generation” was new.
Metacritic: 56

Skin
Director: Anthony Fabian
Personal Interest Factor: 7
Interesting-sounding movie out of South Africa, about a black child born to white parents apparently unaware of their own black ancestry. Starring Sophie Okonedo and Sam Neill.
Metacritic: 65

Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon (trailer)
Director: Mary Mazzio
Personal Interest Factor: 2
Documentary about inner-city teens competing in an “annual business plan competition.”
Metacritic: 47

2012 (trailer)
Director: Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC)
Personal Interest Factor: 4
I was working as a projectionist when Independence Day came out, and I remember a co-worker of mine, Geoff, had dismissed the movie beforehand as trash. He grudgingly joined the rest of us for a screening, and changed his tune after the alien attack. “OK, I was wrong!” he said, unprompted, as that scene ended. I think we all felt the same way. Point is, that kind of all-out disaster mayhem was a real kick back in the day. But 13 years and a million disaster movies (half of them by Emmerich himself) later, do I really need to see that same scene stretched out to feature length? I doubt it. Been there, done that.
Metacritic: 50

A couple of months back filmman did a post on several movies that he couldn’t understand why they were considered classics. Inspired by that, I’ve decided to start off a similar discussion on TV series and have listed a couple of acclaimed TV shows whose appeal I’ve largely missed. I could’ve listed more but decided to limit it to ones that would be known internationally.

Curb Your Enthusiasm –Despite the enormous critical acclaim and cult popularity it has received and despite me being a big fan of ‘Seinfeld’, it took me a long time to getting around to seeing this series. Indeed, the fact that Larry David was the star and creator of this show made this more appealing as I felt ‘Seinfeld’ went into dismal decline in its last couple of seasons once he left.

I eventually got around to watching Series 1 (made in 2000) recently and while it did have some inspired moments, overall not only did I not find it particularly funny but at times it was an ordeal to get through as David’s character is either such a obnoxious dolt or he is put in such painfully awkward situations that it’s painful to watch. Sure, you could argue similar things about ‘Seinfeld’ but imo they were a lot more entertaining to watch.

Even the genuinely funny moments (such as the obituary in the ‘beloved Aunt’ episode) were usually based on a Borat-style shock humour instead of genuine wit and cleverness.

If I’d watched this when it was released back in 2000, I would’ve said it was a vastly inferior, lazy retread of Seinfeld and would never catch on. So much for what I know.

M*A*S*H – There’s probably no other series from the 1970s that has endured as much as this show did. Here in Australia, it has been repeated constantly on both free-to-air and pay-TV since it finished its run over 25 years ago and continues to have a strong following. It was enormously popular with critics over the course of its tenure, being nominated for multiple Emmys in each of its 11 seasons. And today, it’s probably considered the highpoint for American sitcoms in the 1970s.

But for all that, while I’ve enjoyed aspects of the show it’s never been a show I’ve particularly admired. In part because most of the characters were tediously one-note; Frank Burns was almost always obnoxious and stupid, Sherman Potter is always shown to be wise, Hawkeye Pierce always is rebellious yet does the right thing, etc… Even by sitcom standards the character behaviour I found regularly telegraphed and that made the show rather deadening for me.

The other reason I’ve never really taken to the show is in relation to the 1970 Robert Altman directed film that it came from. That film had a much more harsher tone and with more layered, believable characterisations. The heroes of the movie Hawkeye and Trapper John almost venture into ‘anti-hero’ territory in that while they often attack those who deserve ridicule, they on occasion can be abrasive and cruel. These ‘anti-hero’ elements were absent from the TV version (perhaps not surprisingly considering the medium) and on occasion heavy-handed moralising took its place (especially in the latter seasons of the series). In that context, it’s no surprise that Altman apparently hated the TV series.

Today the reputation of the M*A*S*H TV series has probably surpassed that of the movie, which is understandable in a way because – having gotten rid of the rougher elements of the film – it became a much more agreeable package for a wider array of people. But imo the film is clearly the superior effort.

Anyway, feel free to add your ‘classic’  TV shows over the years that you think are overrated.

An Education is a fine, engrossing character study set in a particular time and place, and studded with fine performances. The only thing keeping it from absolute excellence is a conventional structure that ultimately lets a little air out of the film’s tires.

The setting is Twickenham, England, a suburb of London. The time is 1961. The protagonist is Jenny, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, played by Carey Mulligan. She is smart and has an ambition to be accepted to Oxford, or rather that is the ambition of her father, a bumptious but meek man (Alfred Molina) who is both a tightwad and a dullard. Her mother, Cara Seymour, has drifted into a life of obsequiousness to him, though flashes of personality indicate that Mulligan is her mother’s daughter.

Enter David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard), a rakish older man who gives Mulligan a lift in his sports car in a driving rainstorm. He is witty and dashing, and knows how to have fun, which earns Mulligan’s affection immediately, as she wants to shake off the dust off her provincial town and listen to French records, read books, and be a full-blown Bohemian. Sarsgaard wants to show her things, and together with his friends, Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike, they paint the town red, going to swanky restaurants and classical music concerts.

Sarsgaard is the kind of guy who can want something from someone and manage to spin it so he can make it seem like the thing he wants is the other person’s idea (he does with Molina when he wants to take Mulligan on a weekend trip to Oxford, dropping the name of C.S. Lewis while doing it). Of course this means he’s a man of slippery ethics, as Mulligan finds out while witnessing what kind of business he and Cooper are in. But she’s too dazzled by him to let it bother her, despite the protestations of a sincere English teacher (Olivia Williams) and an officious headmistress (Emma Thompson).

After all, her parents don’t object. In 1961 a 34-year-old man could court a teenager without too many eyebrows being raised, and Mulligan realizes that her father thinks her being provided for in a marriage to a man of means equals an Oxford education. Therefore when she discovers a secret about Sarsgaard her entire world crumbles.

The film is based on a memoir and written by novelist Nick Hornby, and the screenplay crackles with clever dialogue. The direction, by Lone Scherfig, is unobtrusive–this is not the work of an auteur. The smartest thing Scherfig does is let her writer and cast dominate, particular the lead. A lot of ink and pixels have been expended on how this is a star-making turn for her, and I’m not disagreeing, as its a performance of incredible poise and depth. Her facial expressions at certain points in the film will linger with me a long time, and I feel, after just under two hours in her company, that I know the character she creates well.

The supporting cast is just as strong. Sarsgaard has played these sorts of shifty types before–he’s an actor that specializes in ambiguity–but it’s strong work (his best performance remains the one he gave in Shattered Glass as a man with impeccable integrity). Molina, touted as a surefire Oscar nominee, is good, but the part is the flimsiest in the film. He’s a man who’s afraid of life–he has to be dragged to a fancy restaurant because he’s worried he won’t know how to order a starter–and he’s funny, but there’s something phony about the character. He gets a speech at the end that’s supposed to tell us all about him, but instead it only makes him more obscure. Williams, who previously played a different kind of sympathetic teacher in Rushmore, is quietly effective as a woman whom Mulligan initially wants to be nothing like, but later finds she has a lot to learn from.

It’s the film’s final moments that knocked it down a peg for me. I’ve seen too many films that climax with a character receiving a letter from the college they hope to attend to see it pop up in a film like this one, and then a voiceover narration by Mulligan closes the film. I’m not against voiceover narration, but it hadn’t been heard at all up until the final minute of the film, so it was awfully jarring to hear it, especially since the dialogue was particularly trite.

That quibbling aside, this film has a wonderful look and great performances, and is one of the better films of the year.

With the release of A Christmas Carol, it would appear that the holiday movie season is officially upon us. I’m not too excited about that movie, but there are a few other interesting movies out this week.

Bliss
Director: Abdullah Oguz
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Turkish film about a young woman who escapes an honor killing by fleeing her small village.
Metacritic: 76

The Box (trailer)
Director: Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko, Southland Tales)
Personal Interest Factor: 7
Previously reviewed on this site by Nick, who concludes that it’s “a step in the right direction” for Kelly after Southland Tales. That sounds good to me … I didn’t hate Southland Tales as much as everyone else.
Metacritic: 45

A Christmas Carol (trailer)
Director: Robert Zemeckis (Contact, Cast Away, The Polar Express, Beowulf)
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Zemeckis used to be a favorite of mine, but I confess that I don’t understand the appeal of his motion-capture movies. This one looks pretty bad, both in the sense that it doesn’t look very good, and in the sense that it actually looks bad. Maybe the movie looks better, but so far it doesn’t seem like the motion-capture stuff is advancing at all.
Metacritic: 54

The Fourth Kind (trailer)
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Personal Interest Factor: 1
The fifth kind: anal probes. The sixth kind: nattering on about your abduction to a disbelieving, state-appointed psychiatrist. The seventh kind: being brainwashed by aliens into seeing stupid horror movies.
Metacritic: 34

The Horse Boy (trailer)
Director: Michel O. Scott
Personal Interest Factor: 3
Documentary about parents who take their autistic child to the outer reaches of Mongolia in order to treat him.
Metacritic: 63

The Men Who Stare at Goats (trailer)
Director: Grant Heslov
Personal Interest Factor: 8
Reviews haven’t been the greatest, but it looks like fun to me. Director Heslov co-wrote Good Night, and Good Luck with Clooney.
Metacritic: 56

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (trailer)
Director: Lee Daniels (Shadowboxer)
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Tough call on this one. A lot of good reviews, dating back to Sundance. But I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t look like two hours of pure misery.
Metacritic: 76

(Untitled) (trailer)
Director: Jonathan Parker (Bartleby, The Californians)
Personal Interest Factor: 4
Comedy starring Adam Goldberg, set in New York’s art world. Haven’t really heard anything about it.
Metacritic: 59

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it’s not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time.” – Mohandas Gandhi

Hillsong United started out as a band playing music for their local church (Hillsong) in the youth ministry (also called United) in the late 1990s.  As their talents matured and the songs caught on they made a commitment to release an album every year “as long as God keeps bringing us songs.” Their popularity continued to extend beyond their home in Sydney, Australia and reached the far corners of the Earth. In 2005 they embarked on a 2-1/2-year world tour (not contiguously) that took them to places they had only heard of and opened their eyes to things they had only read about. They decided to document their journeys and this movie (as well as last year’s double-album and the continuing movement at www.i-heart.org) is the result. I’m almost positive they set out to make a concert DVD & CD project but along the way it turns out everyone was more touched and changed than they originally thought possible.

The purpose of the film is summed up fairly well in the  final trailer by United frontman (if you can call him that) Joel Houston when he realizes that the streets the band travels down to get to the concert venues are likely to be unchanged by what happens inside the venue itself. “Maybe we’re missing the point,” he laments.

I knew I was in for something different than a feel-good “Christian” movie when the title opened with a reading of Amos 5:21-24 where God basically says he doesn’t want our religious meetings or fancy projects or schemes. He wants justice and fairness. This is something the Western church has generally been lacking in for a long time. The film says we know it, but are we doing anything about it.

From the title and for the next hour the movie takes us basically around the world with the band and seeing the plight of young and old everywhere. There is a focus on consumerism, slavery, image-consciousness, materialism, AIDS, the downtrodden, poor, homeless, hopeless, etc… Throughout it all I found myself feeling concerned, but like I had heard it all before. The band recognizes this as well as they admit to knowing it’s going on, but always changing the channel or walking/driving past and going on to the next thing.

Young people are interviewed all around the world and a few are picked out to show their self-centeredness and unaware of the world outside their own bubble. I thought to myself, aren’t most teenagers that way? I don’t blame them – they’re just finding out who they are. Some want to be schoolteachers, others want to be actors and one guy said what we’d all like to do - make a lot of money without having a lot of responsibilities. Sign me up!

Each country or struggle was its own vignette that sometimes felt separated from the other parts of the film. After about 45 minutes I was wondering what was going on. They did not delve deep into any one struggle and just gave us a few glimpses into things like: refugees displaced by war or natural disasters, the child slave/sex trade, racism, genocide and the poor all over the world. I was feeling frustrated because it was a high level view of so many issues plaguing our world at home and abroad but they kept shuffling on to the next place or next horror.

At about the 1 hour mark the background music starts building and the voiceovers and images get more frenetic. Everyone is feeling helpless at seeing and experiencing all of these injustices and wonders what to do. It was then that I finally got what they were trying to do. The band can only relate their experiences and for them they got off a plane, got on a bus or in a van, drove to a venue, setup & soundchecked, played, packed it all back up and got on another plane. There was maybe a few hours to spend with a local church or ministry or people and see what was happening and then they were off to the next thing. That is the experience I was feeling just watching it unfold: “You’ve only spent 5 minutes on this thing or 2 minutes on that and then rushed off to the next issue. What are we supposed to do with so little time?” And that is exactly how they felt.

After the crescendo the movie took a different tone and started speaking (indirectly) to the church – to Christians. Though the Gandhi quote above was not used that sentiment was felt throughout the latter half. The movie is bookended and sprinkled throughout with excerpts from Robert Kennedy’s historic speech in South Africa 1966 which concluded by saying that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own (which he quoted from his brother). If I could sum up the 2nd half of the film it would be those final words.

The focus was certainly on youth and young people but it was really for everyone. The message was to stop just “doing” church and actually start living what you say you believe. People like Mother Theresa should be the rule and not the exception. We know that and say that , but do we believe it? And if we do then it’s time to start acting on it rather than keeping it inside. I know that but I always allow something else to get in the way. There was a pastor in India who told of his passion being so great and crying out to God to call him wherever He wanted him to go. The man was just waiting for “the call.” After some time (I can’t remember whether it was days or weeks or months) he says he finally realized he was in the middle of extreme poverty and injustice and it was like God said to him, “Are you still waiting for the call?” He woke up and that is what the church needs to do.

Someone in the movie said Christians are all too often known for what we are against. We have made big things out of small things (poilitical issues) and small things out of big (social justice). One of the pastors said the message of Jesus is perfect (i.e. – love your neighbor as yourself) and therefore the only thing that can screw it up is people – is Christians. And he is totally right. None of these things are new revelations, but there has to come a point where you say “no more” as Martin Smith does in this video below:

So what do we do? What do I do? I saw the movie with a friend of mine and we both agreed that the injustice is staggering and overwhelming. What can I do? Is giving $5 to someone on the street going to change anything? And is that really costing me anything or am I doing it to make myself feel better?

What I took away from it just to get more serious and be more intentional about seeing the needs locally. I drive everywhere and rush from place to place, thing to thing, event to event. I’m always concerned about what’s next and never realizing where I’m at. Another quote from movie was, “People always say ‘We are the future.’ And that’s true. But we’re also the present.” If I could learn to live now in this moment, I think I would have wider eyes to see what is happening around me rather than reading about it online or seeing it on the evening news.

I don’t know if this film is going to change anyone or if it’s going to be a flash-in-the-pan. My goal is to not let it be a two-hour experience one Wednesday night back in November of 2009…somewhere in the distant past. I’ve got to start with myself and if others can too then maybe the church can start becoming what Jesus prayed it would be 2000 years ago – that they will know we are Christians by our love.  

Nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain.

Crap, it’s Friday. I almost forgot to do Openings! Perhaps it’s because there’s really nothing going out this week that seems at all worthwhile. Nonetheless, my apologies for being a few hours late.

Bronson (trailer)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn (Pusher, Pusher II, Pusher 3)
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Prison story that won some hype at Sundance, especially for the performance of Tom Hardy as over-the-top psycho “Charles Bronson” (there’s a long true story here if you want to look it up). Anyway, since I’m blessed with an abundance of time, I’ll probably check this out sometime next week out of boredom as much as anything else.
Metacritic: 69

Labor Day (trailer)
Director: Glenn Silber
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Documentary of the 2008 election filtered through the eyes of SEIU – partly financed by SEIU.
Metacritic: 18

This Is It (trailer)
Director: Kenny Ortega (Newsies, Hocus Pocus, High School Musical 3: Senior Year)
Personal Interest Factor: 3
For more than a decade, I’ve made an effort to see films that get Ebert’s 4-star rating, but this is the second time in the last month that I’m going to have to take a flat-out pass (the other was We Live in Public. Perhaps not coincidentally, both films are documentaries of a sort, and even more to the point, both trade in a sort of celebrity-worship culture that I have no interest in or use for. Besides which, random Michael Jackson rehearsal footage constitutes a movie these days?
Metacritic: 67

21 and a Wake-Up
Director: Chris McIntyre
Personal Interest Factor: 2
Never heard of this before, but both Chicago critics hated it. Based on the director’s stay in an Army hospital during the Vietnam era.
Metacritic: not listed

The Yes Men Fix the World
Director: The Yes Men
Personal Interest Factor: 5
The Yes Men are what you might call industrial pranksters; they do stuff like pose as corporate representatives for companies that they don’t represent to take responsibility for disasters that the real companies certainly do not take responsibility for. That’s all well and good – I have no real sympathy for corporate interests in general – but, well, eh.
Metacritic:

Written and directed by Lars von Trier. Released by IFC Films.

(Note: This review discusses specific events late in the film, so SPOILER ALERT. Seriously, I’m giving away the whole game here. Be aware that you may find the discussion overly graphic and/or repulsive.)

Danish director Lars von Trier has long had a reputation for misogyny, and there’s little question that he’s prone to putting his actresses through the proverbial wringer. Of his past work, I’ve seen Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, and Dogville, and all three featured stories that put their heroines through wave after wave of abuse and humiliation. Dogville eventually allowed Nicole Kidman’s character to turn the tables on her tormentors, but by and large, all three films portrayed these characters as innocents under assail. That may be a form of casual misogyny itself – seeing women as helpless, innocent, and frail – but I thought the targets of those films were the male characters and their unrelenting weakness and cruelty.

While that may also be the case – to an extent, anyway – in Antichrist, there’s no denying that it’s a different beast altogether. The film is about a couple, played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg (given no names, and referenced in the credits only as “He” and “She”), who are grieving over the loss of their infant son. He is a therapist, and takes it upon himself to treat her extreme grief. Eventually, as part of her treatment, he moves them to their isolated cabin in the woods, which they call “Eden.”

At this point, it’s clear that von Trier has more on his plate than simply the interactions between a grieving couple in a broken marriage, and indeed the film becomes a merciless allegory of grief, pain and despair. von Trier introduces different religious and historical elements into the story in such a flurry that it’s hard to keep up with them – Satan, the burial and resurrection of Christ, witch trials. Finally, the film climaxes in an eruption of sadomasochism so brutal and hopeless as to suggest that the world is a fundamentally evil place.

It’s an understatement to say that this is an ambitious film, but I found myself wondering if von Trier really has the discipline as a storyteller to pull it off. If the film were less of a frenzy, it may have been overwhelming, but I think von Trier goes so far over the top as to undermine himself. For example, it’s one thing for a man to have his genitals crushed by a fireplace log. When you proceed to have a woman jerk him off, however, and then have him ejaculate blood while he’s passed out … how is one supposed to take that kind of imagery seriously?

I’ve written before about my innate self-defense mechanism that kicks in when a movie becomes difficult to watch. Simply put, when I’m pushed too far, that fourth wall is broken, and I find myself consciously thinking about how everything I’m seeing is fake. One example that I’ve used in the past is during 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, when we’re given a lingering shot of the fetus on the bathroom floor. Up until that point, I had been absorbed in the film, but that shot took me out of it. As it lingered, I found myself thinking that it obviously wasn’t real, and as the shot continued it started to look like the fake it was. It was a mostly masterful film, but that shot was a miscalculation.

Instead of a single shot, I think the entire last act of Antichrist is a similar miscalcution. Besides the bloody ejaculation, we’re treated to seeing Charlotte Gainsbourg drilling a hole in Dafoe’s leg and fastening a grindstone to it. We’re shown a graphic (but again, obviously fake) shot of her cutting off her own clit with a pair of scissors. He’s buried alive before being dug up again. And he strangles her in a long, drawn-out sequence. Perhaps I’m simply unwilling to face the horrors in the world, that I find myself unable to take these images seriously. Or perhaps I simply understand that I don’t have to just because I’m at the whim of some huckster with a movie camera.

I wish I could report that the film is an admirable misfire. I generally do admire Lars von Trier and his willingness as a provocateur. Some of the less painful imagery is astonishing; in particular, von Trier and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, along with their special effects artists, have created an effect in some shots I haven’t seen before, where landscapes appear to move like animated paintings. And the performances by Dafoe and Gainsbourg are certainly worthy of respect, even if I couldn’t help but think “Green Goblin!” a half-dozen times as Dafoe glowers into the general vicinity of the camera (probably my fault more than his or von Trier’s). I feel it’s worth seeing if you’re an admirer of the director or otherwise up to the most challenging semi-mainstream film likely to appear for some time.

But I genuinely feel that the movie is a failure of communication. Whatever von Trier’s intentions, they’re lost in a mix of heavy-handed symbolism, impenetrable allegory, and corrosive imagery.

Part seven of our discussion on the films of the 00’s, this time focusing on 2006.

1) Best of 2006?
2) Worst of 2006?
3) Most underrated?
4) Most underseen?
5) Most overrated?
6) Best performance(s) of the year?
7) Best single scene/sequence of the year?
8) One thing you could change about any single film in 2006 (Example: different cast, different director, different style, different release date, different studio).
9) Most memorable (good or bad) theatergoing experience of the year?
10) Most influential film/performance/style/director?

Obviously feel free to answer only the questions you’re interested in or to write/respond to something else entirely.

2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005

And here it is:

A completely pointless, toothless, plotless, wholly non-scary, poorly-written, acted and directed genre exercise that has gotten drunk off its very own brand of ‘request me!’ Kool-Aid.

Paranormal Activity Directed by Oren Peli

Please ignore the poster. It is not one of the scariest films of all time. It does not leave an imprint on your psyche. I would have thought audiences would have learned, after Blair Witch Project, that just because you say it, doesn’t make people believe it. (I am still convinced, all these years later, that so many people went to Blair Witch because they couldn’t figure out why they didn’t see what so much of the ‘hype’ told them they should).

Perhaps I’m being too hard on the movie. But I expected better than a b-level exercise in an already-tired “Let me follow you with a camera, wait, you’re upset, wait things are happening, wait, now you’re angry, wait, this is going to work, wait, this is worse than it seems, wait, this is what happened before, wait, we’re all…” but then, I wouldn’t want to spoil the completely expected and really pretty standard ending you’ve seen in a million other movies of this type, in one similar derivation or another.

The movie opens with loving couple Katie and Micah moving into a nice new home that, surprise! is visited by a presence that really doesn’t like the nice, smiling young lady.

And that’s about it, folks. The hauntings get increasingly severe, there are moments and issues the director touches on but that go nowhere, and I mean genuinely creepy instances occur but then are thrown to the movie ether to focus on a really trite demonic specter. If the director had placed his faith in the story he was building and had he not focused so much on this one pretty intense ‘Macguffin’, he really may have had something here. Never has someone getting up and turning and just…standing…been so effectively creepy.

As it is, he has twenty minutes of a smiling, loving couple and something like sixty minutes of running with a camera, a shaking chandelier, a weird Ouija sequence that is almost laugh-out-loud ridiculous, and baby powder footsteps walking across the floor. (I just chuckled a bit thinking today’s kids would even sit through the rest of the movie after the Ouija sequence).

The poster says ‘Don’t see it alone’. Do yourself a favor. Only see it alone. Because whether you bring a date, a relative, or an enemy, it’s going to still be a pretty bad movie.

Directed by Spike Jonze.

Where the Wild Things Are is a film for all ages, but not in the same way as something like Toy Story.  It’s an emotional film that more adults may identify with than kids.

Max (Max Records) is a young boy who runs away after having a fight with his mother (Catherine Keener).  Through his imagination, he ends up on an island and meets the giant creatures known as the wild things.  They decide to make him king because he convinces them he has special powers and can make everything perfect.  After a while, it becomes apparent that Max doesn’t have special powers and the wild things return to their unhappy state.  Max tries to make amends and “travels” back home.

There are no adults in Max’s imagination.  The wild things act how Max would act, which is the true genius of the film.  Everyone wants to be true friends and do everything together.  They run around.  They destroy things.  They build a fortress.  And they have dirt clod fights.  The strained relationship between Carol (James Gandolfini) and KW (Lauren Ambrose) is possibly reflective of Max’s parents divorce, but in a much less mature way.  I also suspect “downer” wild thing Judith (Catherine O’Hara) in some way represents Max’s older sister.

I was thrilled to see the Jim Henson Creature Shop do the costumes.  I’ve always been a fan of Jim Henson, and think the creatures really capture the spirit of his work.  It’s too bad the heads were CGI, but logistically it seems there was nothing else that could be done.

Speaking of Henson, in many ways  Where the Wild Things Are is similar to Labyrinth.  There is a recurring theme of friendship and betrayal.  And instead of songs by David Bowie, we get songs by Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs).  But there is no clear cut divide between good and evil in WTWTA.  Is it possible that Max is both the protagonist and the antagonist?

Spike Jonze does a great job capturing the emotions and imagination of a child (and Max Records is great as Max).  In some ways it brings me back to my own childhood.  My mother used to type up my stories as I told them to her.  I once had a huge meltdown after someone called me names.  And I ran out of the house and went for a long walk before coming back.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought of their childhood while watching this movie.  I’m thinking that Where the Wild Things Are will become one of my favorites to be added to classics like Princess Bride and Labyrinth that I will enjoy watching for years to come.

Amelia (trailer)
Director: Mira Nair (Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair, The Namesake)
Personal Interest Factor: 4
Sounds like this one is a pretty huge misfire. Let’s be honest, though, there was never any reason to think that “Hey, let’s make a movie about Ameria Earhart’s love life!” would be a winner, either creatively or in terms of box office.
Metacritic: 41

Antichrist (trailer)
Director: Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville,Manderlay)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
Been steeling myself for this one since the disastrous screenings in Cannes. Thing is, von Trier’s films are always hard to watch in some sense or the other, and he always is tough on his female leads. And a lot of critics hated Dogville, also, but I thought that one was interesting (missed Manderlay, sadly). I guess what I’m saying is that I suspect the whole controversy is overblown, but I’ll see for myself.
Metacritic: 52

Astro Boy (trailer)
Director: David Bowers (Flushed Away [co-director])
Personal Interest Factor: 2
Looks harmless enough but still not anything I really feel the need to see.
Metacritic: 55

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (trailer)
Director: Paul Weitz (American Pie, About a Boy, In Good Company,The Golden Compass)
Personal Interest Factor: 2
Blah, blah, blah, vampires, blah, blah, blah.
Metacritic: 44

An Education (trailer)
Director: Lone Scherfig (Italian for Beginners)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
Strong reviews since it premiered earlier in the year at Cannes, and even the trailer is charming. Looking forward to it.
Metacritic: 84

Léon Morin, Priest
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville (Les enfants terribles, Bob le flambeur, Les doulos,Army of Shadows)
Personal Interest Factor: 10
Melville is one of my favorite directors, based on the four of his films that I’ve listed (and especially Army of Shadows), and every chance to see another one is exciting to me. The Gene Siskel Film Center is doing a weeklong run of this film as the centerpiece to their mini-retrospective of Jean-Paul Belmondo’s career, which will also include, among a few others, Truffaut’s Mississippi Mermaid and Godard’s Pierrot le fou.
Metacritic: not listed

Saw VI (trailer)
Director: Kevin Greutert
Personal Interest Factor: 1
I’ll let the Personal Interest Factor speak for itself, I guess.
Metacritic: no score yet

Walt & El Grupo (trailer)
Director: Theodore Thomas
Personal Interest Factor: 3
I’ve never heard of this; apparently it’s a documentary about Walt Disney and his crew of animators taking a trip to South America on a government-sponsored goodwill mission in the 1930s. I’ll leave any further comments to Joe, our resident Disneyologist.
Metacritic: 58

Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Written by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto. Reissued by Janus Films.

(Note: Specific plot points discussed, so beware of spoilers.)

Rashomon was Kurosawa’s first big international hit, winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1951 and being recognized with an Honorary Academy Award in the US (Oscars for foreign films were not awarded at the time). It made a star of Toshiro Mifune, the film’s leading actor. And Kurosawa, of course, went on to create any number of classic films, eventually passing away in 1998 with his status as a master of cinema secure.

The film’s great contribution to cinema is its structure of dueling flashbacks. After a wealthy man is found slain in the woods, a notorious bandit Tajomaru (played by Mifune) is arrested, and he tells the court that he lured the dead man into the woods to capture him and rape his wife. A duel between the two men follows, and Tajomaru tells of his respect for his adversary and his honorable death. When the wife – and then the dead man, summoned by a medium – give their stories, however, their testimony hardly matches Tajomaru’s, and in all we see four distinct, incompatible versions of the events.

By all accounts, Rashomon introduced the concept of unreliable flashbacks to a wide audience, and the film’s influences can still be seen today. Recently, films like Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects and Joe Wright’s Atonement have used the device to pull the rug out from under their viewers, but Kurosawa’s intentions are more complex. He questions not just the reliability of eyewitness testimony but the nature of memory and even objective truth itself.

After all, the natural question to ask is which of the film’s characters we can believe? The answer seems to be that all of them have motives to hide the truth not just from the court but from themselves. The plain suggestion made by the film is that not only are these characters unreliable, but anyone’s interpretation of what they see and remember is based on their own personal motives and biases. Perhaps none of us are capable of relaying the objective truth of what we see, and if we can’t, does it even exist?

The movie also finds Kurosawa subtly mocking the well-known – and perhaps stereotypical – preoccupation with personal honor in Japanese society. Not only does each character give different testimony, but Tajomaru, the dead man, and his wife are all so driven to preserve their sense of honor that they each admit to being the killer rather than dishonoring themselves. Tajomaru has no difficulty admitting to being a rapist and a bandit, but he assures the court that he had nothing but respect for the man’s swordplay and gave the man an honorable death. The wife is so overcome by shame that she inadvertantly slays her husband, apparently in a trance. And the deceased himself claims to have committed suicide at the shame of being overcome by a bandit and failing to protect his wife. In a society that was still reeling from their destruction during World War II, this must have seemed like a hollow joke, and indeed the film – and Kurosawa himself – was not popular with Japanese moviegoers at the time.

To be completely honest, I don’t think Rashomon holds up as well as many other Japanese classics. The framing device, featuring three men holed up during a storm in a ruined castle, doesn’t really cohere with the rest of the film, and seems to contain as much heavy-handed symbolic importance as narrative relevance. At times, the pacing lags. And the ending veers dangerously close to outright mawkishness. Personally, among Kurosawa’s 1950s work, I much prefer Throne of Blood or Ikiru.

Yet it’s undeniably an important film. I was lucky enough to see a newly restored 35mm print that’s playing here in Chicago, and it looks wonderful. Hopefully, this restoration makes its way to DVD (and Blu-ray!). Whatever its minor flaws, it’s certainly essential viewing for anyone interested in Japanese film and foreign film in general.

Written and directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen. Released by Focus Features.

The middle of the decade found the Coens in something of a rut. Intolerable Cruelty was poorly received, although I found it amusing, and The Ladykillers is indisputably the worst film of their career. After taking a few years off, though, they returned with a couple of fine films, and A Serious Man finds them still on a roll with one of the best films of their career.

The film is about Larry Gopnik (played by Michael Stuhlbarg), a Jewish professor from suburban Minneapolis whose life is crumbling around him. His wife announces that she’s fallen in love with a neighbor and wants a divorce, he’s having problems at work, and his aimless and socially inept brother won’t move out of his house. He’s fearful of his Gentile neighbors, and he’s mortgaged to the hilt so money is tight. And to top it all off, his TV reception is fuzzy.

Larry’s response to his troubles is to seek wisdom from the rabbis, and the intersection of his misery and religion form the heart of the film. He wonders why he is earmarked for such suffering when he’s been trying so hard to be a good, serious man, while the rabbis do their cheerful best to remind him that just maybe he isn’t meant to know. “Accept the mystery,” one character tells him, and even though the line comes in a different context, it serves as the most straightforward statement of the film’s guiding ethos.

The Coens have always had an arch sense of humor, and that’s perhaps more true than ever with this film. In some ways, Larry bears some resemblance to Jerry Lundegaard, William H. Macy’s character from Fargo, in that they both always seem about to explode as their bad luck continues to accumulate. Larry is a much more sympathetic and complex character, of course, but as with Jerry, the Coens seem to take some perverse pleasure in watching him squirm. If there’s one constant in their career, it’s the humor to be found in watching the best laid plans go awry. More so than their other films, however, the best laid plans this time around have a more existential bent. Who is Larry, if he is not who he thought he was?

In terms of casting, the Coens take a much different approach than they have lately, with no big-name actors in the cast and only one, Richard Kind as Larry’s misfit brother, that I even recognized (aside from a cameo by Fyvush Finkel, although I didn’t exactly “recognize” him). Stuhlbarg is excellent, balancing a sympathetic portrayal of his character with the movie’s not-so-vague sense that Larry is missing the forest for the trees. Another standout is Fred Melamed as the worst kind of asshole – the kind that is easily able to convince the world that he’s a deeply decent fellow, even while looking someone in the eye and stabbing them in the chest.

With No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, and now A Serious Man, the Coens have made a trilogy of sorts that reflects an uneasiness that has been central to the American experience during the Aughts.  No Country warned of the consequences of unchecked arrogance, and Burn disguised seething rage against American intelligence services behind a dopey violent farce. Now comes A Serious Man, which openly asks how “serious” American middle-class priorities can really be considered to be. If the film’s ominous ending gives any clue to the answer, it’s “not so much.”

I hope Nick doesn’t mind me borrowing his dormant topic…

I attended a concert last week where they showcased the increasingly popular “I Am T-Pain” iPhone application during one of their in-between moments. I caught it on video. The audio isn’t too great, but if you turn it up I think you can get the gist of what’s happening.

A friend of mine had mentioned this application to me last month, but I didn’t realize how much it had taken off. Auto-tuning (a specific sort of pitch correction you can read about here) came to prominence through Cher’s 1998 hit Believe:

Even though it’s been around a long time I’m now beginning to notice it everywhere. Yesterday I found “auto-tuning the news” which left me in stitches. Just the thought of politicians and heads of state singing back and forth was enough to make me chuckle, but their execution here is mostly flawless. There are 9 so far, but I’m only putting up the first 2.

#1

#2

Not sure if someone changed something behind the scenes or if WordPress rolled this out across the board: but GE is now mobile browser friendly. Screenshot is from an iPhone. Pretty cool.

Whip It is the perfect embodiment of a directorial debut for Drew Barrymore. She is, for all her charm, not a particularly good actress. She doesn’t have a big range, is not an elocutionist of any distinction, and has never shown a great depth–she won’t be performing Chekhov any time soon. But her innate sunniness, along with a little-engine-that-could biography, have made her an appealing star. Whip It operates in the same manner. The film is at times a technical mess, and is littered with cliches, but earns my recommendation based on an undeniable attitude and a winning performance by Ellen Page. It exists in a cinematic world that doesn’t exist in real life, but very may well in Barrymore’s imagination.

The film is set in the world of roller derby. The last movie I saw in this milieu was Kansas City Bomber, starring Raquel Welch, when I was twelve (I saw it in a double feature with Bless the Beasts and the Children). That may be the last studio film about a sport that is pretty much an anachronism now. It was popular in a pre-cable TV era, sort of a distaff version of pro wrestling, and was a forum for attractive but butch women to knock each other around for the blood lust of the audience. Whip It therefore has a unique challenge–it’s about a sport that no one really remembers. I suspect more people know quidditch than they do roller derby, and the film has to take a few minutes to explain the rules.

Page plays Bliss, a high school girl in a nowhere town in Texas. Her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) pushes her into beauty pageants, where the mother excelled. But Page has eyes for the Bohemian culture of nearby Austin, and likes to wear ironic t-shirts and boots bought in a head shop. It’s in that shop that she serendipitously grabs a flier for roller derby, and on a lark she and her friend (Alia Shawkat) attend. I have no idea is there is really a roller derby culture in Austin or anyplace else, but this is where the film displays the most verve and creativity. The film is written by Shauna Cross, based on her novel, and she is either a creator of new worlds or a keen observer of a sub-culture. Lower middle-class women, many with tattoos and menial jobs, spend their limited leisure time engaging in a rough and tumble sport, in themed teams (the Hurl Scouts wear faux Girl Scout uniforms, the Holy Rollers in Catholic school-girl outfits) and vivid pseudonyms, like Smashley Simpson, Eva Destruction, and Bloody Holly. On what seems to be a strictly amateur basis, they perform in a warehouse for a small audience and then hawk merchandise after it’s over.

Page, captivated by the world, decides to lie to her parents and try out, even though she’s too young and has to regain her skating form by using Barbie skates. But she’s fleet, makes the team, and adopts the moniker of Babe Ruthless. She bonds with her teammates, none more so than the motherly Kristin Wiig as Maggie Mayhem, and falls for a gangly indie-rock boyfriend (while they were wooing each other a teenage girl behind me sighed rapturously, “I like this guy!”)

 The cliches then start coming, fast and furious. They are of two types–the sports-movie cliches, where the once bad team finds their mojo and challenges for the championship, and the child-defies-parents-but-then-parents-come-around cliches. However even when I wanted to groan at them I was enchanted by the whole thing, and much of the credit has to go to Barrymore. She may not know how to transition between scenes, but all that time on movie sets has taught her how to earn her characters devotion. And, of course, she is good to her actors and lets them shine. Page plays a very different character than Juno. She’s not especially bright or glib, just a girl who is trying to find an identity and escape her mother’s shadow, and the camera loves her. If Bliss had decided to take up quilting there may have been a move in that.

Harden also is successful, walking a difficult line of being an overbearing mother without being a stereotype. Daniel Stern is the father, a good-ol’-boy who’d rather watch football than deal with a family crisis. He is also successful in taking a cliche–the parent who allows his child to spread their wings–and creating something interesting. I find it interesting that Wiig, such a gifted sketch comedian, plays a character who is not funny, but she is very good. Juliette Lewis is Iron Maven, the villainous captain of the rival Holy Rollers, is effective, as is Andrew Wilson as the Hurl Scouts coach, and Jimmy Fallon as the louche ring announcer.

Another character in the film is the city of Austin which, as it did in films like Slacker and Death Proof, comes across as a easy-going Bohemian enclave in a state otherwise as red as a beefsteak tomato. To the kids in Page’s town, it is something like the Emerald City, a place to aspire to, peopled by hipsters who indulge in cool pursuits and aren’t bogged down in the petty concerns of middle-class suburbia. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, one of the most celebrated independent movie theaters in the country, makes a cameo. This film makes me want to go there.

Some may not be able to get past the obvious story points. Almost every plot turn of the script is obvious, there are no surprises. Yet in this instance familiarity brings comfort, and I left Whip It charmed and entertained.

There are few things more exciting to me than having the privilege of watching a classic silent film in 35mm with live accompaniment.  I have seen The Phantom of the Opera (1925)  (full orchestra), The General (organ) and Battleship Potemkin (piano).  I can now add Nosferatu to the list.

The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago is playing Nosferatu as part of their “Art of the Remake” series.  Next week they will show Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu.  I’ve seen both films on DVD, but I love having the opportunity to see them in 35mm.

Nosferatu was directed by F.W. Murnau and the screenplay “freely adapted” from Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Henrik Galeen.  Max Schreck infamously plays the vampire Count Orlok.  His long dangling fingers and rat-like teeth were enough to make me uncomfortable that my neck was exposed.  It isn’t the greatest film story-wise, but the use of shadow makes it iconic.  The most unforgettable scene takes place when the shadow of the vampire reaches out and clutches the heart of Ellen, the film’s heroine.

This was a 1996 restoration print on loan from a private collector in Milwaukee, which I thought was interesting.  The film quailty was stunning.  It’s just a shame the projectionist couldn’t keep it in frame the entire time.

The piano accompaniment was pretty good for the most part.  It must have taken a little while for the pianist to really get in the spirit of things because the musical phrases seemed fairly detached at the beginning.  Of course I’m a bit of a music snob, so maybe no one else noticed but me.  Things got better after Count Orlok was introduced.

I’d like to thank the private film collector in Milwaukee, the Gene Siskel Film Center, and pianist David Drazin for making this all possible.  This was quite a treat.

Hey everyone, hope things are well.

Black Dynamite (trailer)
Director: Scott Sanders
Personal Interest Factor: 2
Blaxploitation spoof that … well, you know what? I haven’t seen much blaxploitation in my day: the original Shaft, some of Foxy Brown on TV, and that’s probably about it. But I’ve always gotten the vague sense that most of them spoof themselves, like exploitation movies of any other genre. They’re not meant to be taken seriously. Spoofing them is either stupid or a pointless nostalgia trip or both.
Metacritic: 70

The Damned United (trailer)
Director: Tom Hooper
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Not sure why I don’t care more about this, other than I feel like these annual good-natured British imports are all vaguely the same movies, imported to allow affluent suburbanites to watch formulaic comedy-dramas while feeling like they’re watching art movies. See also the upcoming Pirate Radio. Strong reviews, though, so I might check it out anyway in case I’m wrong (happened once).
Metacritic: 80

Law Abiding Citizen (trailer)
Director: F. Gary Gray (Friday, The Negotiator, The Italian Job,Be Cool)
Personal Interest Factor: 4
Perhaps it’s somewhat irrational on my part, but I’ve gradually come to think of Gerard Butler as one of my least favorite actors. I haven’t even seen many of the movies he’s been in: The Phantom of the Opera and 300, and that’s about it. But he seems to have a knack for starring in movies that I simply don’t want to see, like a male version of Kate Hudson but without an Almost Famous to redeem himself.
Metacritic: 37

More than a Game (trailer)
Director: Kristopher Belman
Personal Interest Factor: 1
I feel like I’ve seen this trailer so many times that I really don’t want to hear LeBron James’ name ever again. Tough luck for me, I know.
Metacritic: 60

New York, I Love You (trailer)
Director: Jiang Wen, Mira Nair, Shunji Iwai, Brett Ratner, Allen Hughes, Shekhar Kapur, Natalie Portman, Fatih Akin, Joshua Marston, Randy Balsmeyer
Personal Interest Factor: 6
I saw Paris, je t’aime, and thought it was an interesting though mostly forgettable anthology. The general idea was to have a different director make a short film about each of Paris’ 18 arrondissements. Now there’s a follow-up about the city of New York, only this time with a less interesting lineup of filmmakers and actors (Brett Ratner?). Apparently another film is planned for Rio, the bastards who stole the Olympics from us. Not that I’m bitter.
Metacritic: 53

Rashomon
Director: Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Ikiru,Ran)
Personal Interest Factor: 10
Hey now. I watched this on DVD a few years ago, but now the good people at Janus have put a new 35mm print out into the world. Obviously an all-time classic and can’t be missed.
Metacritic:

The Stepfather (trailer)
Director: Nelson McCormick (Prom Night)
Personal Interest Factor: 1
My question about these things is why more interesting actors aren’t cast in the villian roles. I mean, what difference could it possibly make for the studio? In this case, we get Dylan Walsh playing the titular step-parent. Who wants to see that? Why not aim high and try to get someone like Michael Keaton? His career has been stuck lately, give him a call! Or maybe William Hurt is willing to goof around for a few bucks. Or if you want to go a little younger, try out Luke Wilson. But Dylan Walsh, seriously? That’s not even trying.
Metacritic: no score yet

We Live in Public
Director: Ondi Timoner (DiG!)
Personal Interest Factor: 4
Tedious-looking documentary about that, according to the Metacritic summary, “reveals the effect the web is having on our society.” I’ll tell you what effect the internet is having on our society – every week people all over the world get a list of movies opening in Chicago, a one-stop shop complete with trailer links, Metacritic scores, and pithy commentary. Suck on that, internet pioneers!
Metacritic: 69

Where the Wild Things Are (trailer)
Director: Spike Jones (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation.)
Personal Interest Factor: 9
I think my personal trajectory on this movie has been similar to most people’s: initial skepticism, followed by outright dismissal, followed by being surprised by how great the trailer looked, followed by growing anticipation as the good reviews started to trickle in.
Metacritic: 71

While I’m no expert on the history of the Academy Awards, I’d dare say it would be hard to find a film that was nominated for Best Picture within the last 45 years that’s been as forgotten as 1965’s ‘A Thousand Clowns’ has. Based on a highly-regarded 1962 play, it was well enough received critically to be nominated for 4 Oscars including Best Picture and winning one for Martin Balsam as Best Supporting Actor.

And yet despite its critical success and pedigree it’s so ignored today it hasn’t even been released on DVD. Why is this? Perhaps it’s in part because the original play itself hasn’t endured with recent revivals seeing it being perceived as dated.

But the great irony is that as a film, ATC was probably ahead of its time. It was a sign of some of the themes that would dominate Hollywood movies by the decade’s close.

The story centres around Murray (Jason Robards) who has effectively dropped out of society because of his distaste for the conformity and dishonesty of the ‘rat race’.  He takes care of and shares a good relationship with his eccentric but intelligent 12 year-old abandoned nephew Nick but that is all threatened when Child Welfare representatives threaten to take him to a foster family. Murray is then faced with a dilemma: either get his old job back and sell out on his principles or lose Nick.

As is made clear from the pre-credits sequence, there’s nothing that Murray despises more than having a conventional 9-to-5 steady job , with life becoming dominated by deadening routine and having to compromise ideals and views on others and society to become a ‘success’. For someone who prides himself as an individual, being at the behest of bosses and making compromises to ‘climb the ladder’ is a fate worse than death.

This explains why he undermines welfare agency representatives Sandra (Barbara Harris) and particularly Albert (William Daniels) when they check up on him. Albert represents everything Murray resents; a by-the-numbers man devoid of passion and individuality governed by routine. With the help of Nick he seeks to totally undermine his smooth, superior exterior and regimented processes and turns him to a dishevelled, agitated mess.

The central character of Murray is a fascinating one. On one hand he’s full of roguish charm and wit while on the other he is immature and irresponsible. While one can emphasise with his dissatisfaction with the society he lives in, he doesn’t have anything of substance to replace or challenge it. In his bohemian attitude and perspective one can see shades of the youth/hippie anti-establishment movement that was just around the corner for American society but at this point in time he isn’t part of a growing social trend; he’s an individual fighting vainly against the conventional thinking of how one should live one’s life.

And it’s this attitude that underlines his relationship with Nick. It isn’t a conventional father/son type relationship; indeed of the two Nick often comes across as more mature. It’s more a friendly camaraderie with Murray wanting to see him develop into a genuine individual not afraid to say what he truly thinks, even if it offends others. When Nick does display this ability in the closing scenes of the film, Murray’s reaction is the equivalent of a father seeing his son winning an academic award.

ATC really comes into its own in the final 30 minutes with firstly a marvellously written and acted scene between brothers Murray and Arnold (Martin Balsam). Arnold is the antithesis of Murray and is able to argue convincingly and passionately that he has nothing to be ashamed about for the life he has chosen. Equally compelling is a concluding scene where Leo (Gene Saks), a dismal children’s comedian, arrives to Murray’s place trying to entice him back to his old job as his gag writer. 

There are weaknesses in the film with a major one being the romance between Murray and Sandra. It might have been plausible in the setting of the theatre but in the more realistic setting of film it feels contrived and never convinces for a second. The film also doesn’t really succeed in ‘opening out’ from its theatrical base. While the location footage of New York is great to view, the segments come across as padding, especially rather gooey scenes with Murray and Sandra gallivanting around NY.

But weaknesses are easily outnumbered by the film’s strengths. It’s particularly impressive that the likes of Leo and Albert – who could’ve easily been caricatured villains – are given depth and in their own way are quite sympathetic. All the performances are first-class, especially Barry Gordon as Nick who gives one of the more impressive child acting performances.

Unlike other Best Picture nominees of 1965 such as ‘The Sound of Music’ and ‘Dr. Zhivago’ it’s unlikely that ATC will ever get a deluxe DVD treatment with deleted scenes and multiple commentary tracks. But at the very least it deserves to be on DVD and it deserves to be seen by a modern audience.

Coco Before Chanel (trailer)
Director: Anne Fontaine (The Girl From Monaco)
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Perhaps some Oscar buzz for Audrey Tautou? That would be about the only reason I’d want to see this.
Metacritic: 65

Couples Retreat (trailer)
Director: Peter Billingsley
Personal Interest Factor: 3
Good thing we’re not in the middle of an AGEBOC contest, as I would have really blown this last weekend. $35 million to watch Vince Vaughan do his warmed-over motormouth schtick? Come on.
Metacritic: 24

Free Style
Director: William Dear (Harry and the Hendersons, If Looks Could Kill, Angels in the Outfield,Wild America)
Personal Interest Factor: 1
I don’t even know what this is. Something about soccer and High School Musical. On the other hand … Harry and the Hendersons, that takes me back. I remember going to see that when I was a kid.
Metacritic: 29

Good Hair (trailer)
Director: Jeff Stilson
Personal Interest Factor: 6
I like Chris Rock. He’s never really found a movie project that suits him, though, has he?
Metacritic: 71

In a Lonely Place
Director: Nicholas Ray (Johnny Guitar, Rebel Without a Cause, Bigger than Life,The True Story of Jesse James)
Personal Interest Factor: 10
Saw a double-bill of Rebel Without a Cause and Bigger than Life earlier this year, and while there’s a certain dated aspect to both, it was a lot of fun. This is one of Ray’s earlier features, with Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame.
Metacritic: not listed

Paranormal Activity (trailer)
Director: Oren Peli
Personal Interest Factor: 4
Played some midnight shows last weekend, and now opened for real this weekend. Lots of hype but I guess I’m not plugged in enough to feel any excitement for it.
Metacritic: 66

A Serious Man (trailer)
Director: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen (Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, No Country for Old Men,Burn After Reading)
Personal Interest Factor: 10
I think that I look forward to a new movie from the Coen Brothers more than any other director(s). With that said, I certainly hope to like the film more than I liked the trailer, which is incredibly abrasive.
Metacritic: 79

Trucker (trailer)
Director: James Mottern
Personal Interest Factor: 8
Lots of acclaim for Michele Monaghan’s performance as a, well, truck driver. I always thought that Monaghan was better than the roles she’s been playing, so I’m glad that she’s got something going for her.
Metacritic: 60

The box office failure of Jennifer’s Body was the story upon its release a few weekends ago. I caught it just before it seems to be on its way out of theaters (there were only two shows, one of them at 10:35 in the morning–AMC has a $6.00 A.M. show price that rocks, for those of us who have no family or social lives). It wasn’t great, but I was into it and never bored. Why it failed is a question for those who study marketing, because I have no clue what makes the masses happy.

The focus of the marketing was all about the screenwriter, Diablo Cody, and one of the stars, Megan Fox, and both of them have been caught up in an absurd kind of backlash that I can’t pretend to understand. With Cody it might be that would-be screenwriters, whom I imagine are legion in the L.A. environs, are jealous of an ex-stripper who scored big on her first try, with Juno. That and her dialogue contains an abundance of preciousness and pop-culture effluvia that defies reality. Jennifer’s Body has some of that–a line said by Fox, “Move on, dot org,” will be the equivalent to Juno’s “honest to blog”–but I found most of the writing to be smart and nicely off-balanced the horror.

Yes, this film is a horror picture. It has a comic tone, but there’s no denying this a red-blooded fright flick, and as such it has more than its share of thrills and creeps. Director Karyn Kusama seems to have done her homework and channeled the best horror movies, from the Universal classics to Nightmare on Elm Street, and maybe even she or Cody read some of the books by Richard Laymon, who specialized in combining horror and teen sexuality. Jennifer’s Body is not torture-porn, and may disappoint those who demand buckets of gore, but I found it to be evocative, especially a climax in an abandoned natatorium, which is beautifully shot by M. David Mullen.

The story is about two high school girls, played by Fox and Amanda Seyfried. The latter actress is really the lead, though she’s frumped up in contrast to her more glamorous co-star. “Hell is a teenage girl,” is Seyfried’s first line of dialogue, doubling as tag line, and the spine of the piece is an examination of friendships between teenage girls, particularly when they have drifted into different social circles. Seyfried’s Anita (known as “Needy”) is the bookish, good girl, while Fox’s Jennifer is a queen bee, a cheerleader and non-virgin (she’s not even a “backdoor virgin,” as she tells Seyfried,going to say that she had to sit on a bag of frozen peas). They were friends as a small children, and have maintained the relationship, however tenuous.

Fox drags Seyfried to the local bar (the girls live in the vividly named Devil’s Kettle, Minnesota) to see a band she likes. The band is a great creation, the kind of band that is so calculating (they wear eyeliner and aspire to be “like that guy in Maroon 5″) that they would probably would become popular. They are later described as “agents of Satan with really awesome haircuts.” When a fire that is eerily reminiscent of the one in Rhode Island kills several patrons, the band, fronted by Adam Brody, lures Fox into the band’s van. The next time Seyfried sees her friend, she’s vomiting thick, black blood.

It seems that Fox’s Jennifer fell victim to a botched Satanic sacrifice (that she was not a virgin is key) and has become a succubus, feeding on some of the boys of Devil’s Kettle High. She starts with the football star and then a Goth boy (leaving him looking like “lasagna with teeth”). Seyfried suspects that Fox is not quite right, and the resulting showdown could be a metaphor for the mild-mannered girls of the world standing up to the popular crowd.

As for Fox, I haven’t seen much of her acting. Mostly I’ve seen her in magazine pictorials, where she excels (she’s also a gift to journalists for her exceedingly quotable interviews). A lot have slammed her for this and other roles, and while I can’t disagree I wonder if she isn’t getting a fair shake. The role of Jennifer calls upon two modes that aren’t exactly conducive to Oscars: a superficial bimbo and then a demon-possessed succubus. Both of these modes require Fox to exhibit a kind of glassy-eyed soullessness that could be easily attributed to bad acting. Until she’s called on to play something else (that doesn’t require being second fiddle to giant robots) I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, and continue to study the matter.

Matt Damon as "The Informant!"

In the Best Actor Oscar race this year, there are some heavy hitters on the short list, including a few previous winners, but the field overall is weak, much like two years ago when Ryan Gosling snuck in. There’s also a plethora of geezers among those mentioned by the Great Mentioners, which could make this one of the oldest aggregate quintets in Oscar history.

I see two slam-dunk nominations, both of them members of the Ocean gang: George Clooney, earning advance raves for his role as an itinerant businessman in Up in the Air, and Matt Damon, so marvelous as The Informant! Damon’s role is outwardly very comedic, at which Oscar normally turns up his nose, but I think the effect is so strong in this picture that Damon will not be overlooked. He could double-dip this year, as he has a prominent supporting role in Clint Eastwood’s Invictus.

Speaking of Invictus, that film stars previous winner Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, which sounds like an Oscar nomination if there ever was one. But no one has seen the film. The same for Daniel Day-Lewis in the big musical Nine. Johnny Depp managed to snag a nomination for an intense actor doing musical comedy, but Sweeney Todd wasn’t light-hearted fare like Nine is. Last year’s winner, Sean Penn, stars in the enigmatic Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, but it’s unclear how large Penn’s role is.

If three of the nominees come from the list above, I would suspect the other two would come from these: Jeremy Renner, so good as a bomb-disposal unit soldier in The Hurt Locker, Colin Firth as A Single Man or Michael Stuhlbarg as A Serious Man (I’m going to confuse those titles and blend them into A Simple Man all winter), or Viggo Mortensen in The Road. That film has seen some wildly diverging advance critical response, so he’s a real wild card.

Then there are the old-timers: Christopher Plummer in The Last Station, Hal Holbrook in That Evening Sun, Michael Caine in Harry Brown, or Robert Duvall in Get Low. Apparently the last of these has been pushed back to 2010, and I’m not sure if Caine’s film has found a distributor yet, but if it does watch out.

As a liberal, I sometimes feel as though the right-wing has a chokehold on the national media, what with all the attention that professional entertainers like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh get. Therefore I’m appreciate of the left’s own baggy-pants clown, Michael Moore. He’s an entertainer, too, and throws it out there, and sometimes gets a little sanctimonious. But as Woody Allen said in Annie Hall, “I know, I’m a bigot, but for the left.” And Moore is a muckraker, a rabble-rouser,a provocateur, for the left. I can go see his movies and think to myself, “What he said.”

In his latest jeremiad, Moore takes on what supposedly is the bedrock American system, capitalism. Although he rightly points out, during a visit to the National Archives, that’s there’s nothing in the Constitution that specifies our economic system. We have been led to believe over two plus centuries that the free market is synonymous with all that is good about America, and is somehow also Christian, as well. Moore says hold the phone, that capitalism should play second fiddle to democracy, and perhaps we should rethink everything.

The format is familiar. Moore comically uses stock footage, including home movies of himself as a child, to show how things used to be good and the American dream was possible(aside from details like institutional racism and an immoral war in Southeast Asia). He pins the beginning of the end on Ronald Reagan, the “spokesmodel as President,” who allowed Wall Street to run amok (he includes a dire warning by Jimmy Carter that is awfully prescient, but you can understand how Carter got defeated). The financial industry in the U.S. has had a free pass ever since, with the Treasury department basically being an arm of Wall Street (this is in both Republican and Democratic administrations). Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, one of the heroes of this film, describes it as a “financial coup d’etat.”

Moore also is there with the people who are suffering, and at times this edges into the overly maudlin, but most of it should get you angry. He’s there when people are foreclosed on, mostly because of predatory lending. One family in Peoria had their interest rates jacked up until they couldn’t make the payments anymore. He’s there with two families who had a loved one die, and the companies they worked for (Wal-Mart was one) had taken out life insurance policies, collecting substantial sums while the families got nothing (these are known in the business as “dead peasant” policies). He wonders why airline pilots, who are responsible for the safety of their passengers, make less money than a manager at Taco Bell. He’s there with the workers at Republic Windows and Doors, who are fired and then denied severance and vacation pay.

Some of the tacks Moore goes on are outrageous, but seem more like isolated scumbaggery than an indictment of capitalism, such as the case of judges in Wilkes-Barre sentencing kids to a private juvenile detention center and then getting kickbacks. Where the film soars is when it takes dead aim on the notion that capitalism simply doesn’t work. He has some eye-opening chats with priests, including the Bishop of Detroit, who flatly state that capitalism is evil and antithetical to Biblical teachings (Moore has a hilarious bit with a redubbed Jesus film, Christ telling a lame man, “I can’t heal you, you have a pre-existing condition”). He comes down hard on Alan Greenspan, no surprise, but also on Democrats like Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad, who are in the Banking committee yet took sweetheart mortgages from Countrywide Financial. He includes hopeful footage of the election of Barack Obama, but you won’t feel good when you hear that Timothy Geitner and Laurence Summers are yet more stooges of the financial system who is now in a position of power.

The last third of the film focuses on the bailout, and I was for it, but now I’m not so sure. Moore equates it to a robbery, with Wall Street backing up a truck to the Treasury building and absconding with 700 billion dollars. He includes George W. Bush’s fear-mongering speech that no bailout would lead to the sky falling, and I bought that. There’s no way of knowing whether that scare tactic was based on reality or whether it was just politicians cutting deals with fat-cats.

The film predicts a rebellion between those who have nothing and those who have everything. A 2005 memo from Citibank to their biggest investors talks of a “plutonomy,” where the society is ruled  by the rich. One percent of the population own ninety-five percent of the wealth. The memo points out that the fly in the ointment of this ideal plutonomy is that we are a democracy, and the poor still have the right to vote. For now. But that makes the rich scared. I hope they are.

The film ends with Moore showing Franklin Roosevelt’s 1943 State of the Union address, in which he proposed a second bill of rights. They included the right to a job, the right to a living wage, the right to a decent home, the right to an education, the right to health care. Roosevelt died a little over a year later, this utopia unrealized. At least it was unrealized in the U.S. Moore points out that all of these things have been achieved in the countries vanquished in World War II: Germany, Italy, Japan (Italy guaranteed equal rights for women in 1947). Turns out that they had new constitutions written, largely by men from Roosevelt’s administration. It’s therefore ironic that these things didn’t get accomplished here.

In an interesting statistic, Moore shows the results of a poll that says thirty-three percent of young people think that socialism is the way to go. Of course socialism has been long painted as a dirty word, but with the far-right fringe tossing the word around as if it were equal to Satanism there has been a renewed interest in finding out just what socialism means. It will be interesting to see, if the dichotomy between rich and poor continues and the plutonomy takes hold, what future generations will decide to do about it.

I spent the first ten or so minutes of The Invention of Lying with a goofy grin on my face. I was in the hands of one of my favorite comic geniuses, Ricky Gervais, and the premise was delicious–we are shown a society where people have not evolved (Gervais’ word) the ability to lie. Therefore there are no untruths of any kind–no flattery, no fiction. Entire industries have taken on completely different complexions. Advertising, for instance. Coke puts on commercials that warn that drinking the product can lead to obesity, and says simply, “It’s famous.” Pepsi counters with, “When you can’t get coke.” The film business centers around dry documentaries about history, hosted by academic types about topics like “The Invention of the Fork” or “Napoleon, 1812-1813.”

Gervais plays a screenwriter for the studio, Lecture Films, but he’s stuck with writing about the 1300s, which means he’s always writing about the black plague. He pines for a beautiful girl, Jennifer Garner, who goes out with him but dutifully tells him that he is not attractive enough for him. The next morning he gets fired from his job.

So far, so good. But as the film went on the smile went away and I was crestfallen to realize that Gervais’ first film script ends up being completely toothless. He takes that great premise (a nursing home has a huge sign that says, “Sad Place for Hopeless Old People”) and turns it into a conventional romantic comedy. This, despite it’s audacious take on religion, which could have been scathing satire but instead is just pablum.

When Gervais’ character realizes he can lie (there isn’t even the word “lie,” or “truth,” so he has trouble defining what he does to friends) he conjures up a whopper: there is a man in the sky who controls everything, and after we die we go to a wonderful place where we will see again everyone we loved and get our own mansion (and get free ice cream all day). If we do three bad things, we go to a bad place. All of this he has written down in ten bullet points on two pizza boxes, a clever gag. But this zing at religion doesn’t have the bite of Bill Maher, instead it comes off as a half-baked idea. So the world of the film has existed entirely without theism until Gervais’ pizza box moment. What would a society like that be? We only skim the surface in this film, and it settles for Hollywood glibness. I think a discussion over beers after the film would be more interesting that what Gervais comes up with.

The film also completely avoids the other profession that would be completely different if truth were mandatory, politics. I guess that would necessitate an entirely different film.

Aside from the script taking the easy way out, I have to agree with Manohla Dargis in her review–this film looks terrible. Gervais co-directs with Matthew Robinson, who has no other credits. Gervais has directed TV, but The Invention of Lying has no visual style and often has incompetent camera work and poor editing, with comic beats lasting far too long. I also found some of the scriptwriting lazy. After Gervais’ character realizes he can lie, he sets about making people’s lives better. We see him visiting characters we’ve seen before as miserable wretches, but he tells them something and they get happy all of a sudden. What he tells them we don’t know, because the soundtrack is a zippy pop song. I’d rather have heard what he said, which isn’t immediately obvious.

For fans of The Office and Extras this film has to be a disappointment, although I am interested to see what Gervais comes up with next. I would prefer he steer clear from rom-com templates and try something more daring.

I’m writing this on Thursday night, so that I don’t have to distract myself in the morning while I’m watching the Olympic vote. I’ve been worried about Rio since the finalists were announced, but I also get the feeling that the IOC wished that a different South American city was available besides Rio. I guess we’ll just have to see what happens in the morning.

Big Fan (trailer)
Director: Robert Siegel
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Siegel wrote The Wrestler and is making his directorial debut. Patton Oswalt plays a loser sports fan. Might be decent.
Metacritic: 71

The Boys Are Back (trailer)
Director: Scott Hicks (Shine, Snow Falling on Cedars, Hearts in Atlantis,No Reservations)
Personal Interest Factor: 3
I hated Shine so much – it still infuriates me that Geoffrey Rush won an Oscar for that stupid mumbly shit – that I’ve skipped every Hicks movie since. I see no reason to change that policy at this time. This movie seems intolerable anyhow.
Metacritic: 59

Capitalism: A Love Story (trailer)
Director: Michael Moore (Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11,Sicko)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
Barack Obama could do a lot worse than by cribbing health care talking points from Sicko – both in a political and substantial sense. Moore quite simply made the best argument for comprehensive reform that I have seen. Most reporters and commentators have yet to really try. But for some reason, I don’t have the same confidence in Moore when it comes to analysis of the financial system. It’s an easy topic with which to make an argument that sounds good but is actually terrible, and as great as Sicko was, Moore didn’t always choose the soundest arguments in either Columbine or Fahrenheit. Though I enjoyed those movies quite a bit as well…
Metacritic: 60

Crude (trailer)
Director: Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster)
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Documentary about the long-running lawsuit between Chevron and native Ecuadoreans over contamination of the Amazon.
Metacritic: 74

The Invention of Lying (trailer)
Director: Ricky Gervais & Matthew Robinson
Personal Interest Factor: 6
I’ve always thought that Ricky Gervais was somewhat overrated, but then again, I’ve never actually seen any of his stuff. Basically, my opinions were based on talk show appearances and perhaps an SNL guest spot. At any rate, this project seems more like *his* project than his other movies, which basically seemed to be assembly-line comedies that Gervais was plugged into. So, I dunno. May go, may not.
Metacritic: 58

Toy Story
Toy Story 2 (trailer)
Director: John Lasseter (A Bug’s Life, Cars)
Personal Interest Factor: 3
I love the Toy Story movies – I’ve written about them here and here – but I can’t really abide 3D. So if I want to watch them, it’ll have to be at home. Bring out the Blu-rays!
Metacritic: 96

Whip It (trailer)
Director: Drew Barrymore
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Drew Barrymore makes her directorial debut, with a movie that absolutely drips Drew Barrymore-ness. I don’t think there could be more pluck crammed in here.
Metacritic: 68

Zombieland (trailer)
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Looks sort of funny, albeit in a way that the trailer is likely just as satisfying as the movie probably will be. I kinda miss seeing Woody Harrelson; I thought he’d be a lot bigger in the aftermath of Natural Born Killers that he turned out to be. Speaking of which, WB is finally issuing the director’s cut of NBK, and it’ll be out on Blu-ray in a couple weeks. Cool.
Metacritic: 75

The leaves are changing color, the air is getting crisp, baseball’s postseason is about to begin and, best of all, it’s Rocktober!

Bright Star, which tells the brief story of the romance between poet John Keats and his neighbor, Fanny Brawne, gets off to a stuffy, Masterpiece Theater sort of start, but the accumulating emotion, centered around his untimely death, crept up on me, and made the film a very rewarding experience.

Written and directed by Jane Campion, the film is set in the years 1818 to 1820. Keats (Ben Whishaw), in his early twenties, struggles with poverty as he pursues his calling as a poet. He relies on the generosity of his friend Charles Brown (Paul Schneider), also a poet. Brawne (Abbie Cornish) is from the middle-class, with a younger brother and sister, and excels as a seamstress. The act of stitching, whether of Brawne’s threads or Keats’ words, is a prevalent theme throughout the film.

Keats has limited renown and less money, so a marriage with Brawne is out of the question. Brown and Brawne share a mutual disdain, which makes their housing situation difficult when the Brawne family move into the same house with Brown and Keats. The center section of the film sags a bit when we get different iterations of how unfair it all is that though they love each other, it’s just not to be between our two lovebirds.

The final act, though, is very moving. When Keats stumbles in after getting soaked in the rain, the savvy viewer will get that “uh-oh” feeling, even if they don’t know their literary history. Watching the principles come to grips with the inevitable is exquisite drama, and when Fanny’s mother (Kerry Fox) acquiesces to their engagement it would take a stone heart not to be affected.

Given that her movie is about a poet who used vivid natural imagery, Campion’s film is something of a visual poem. There are exquisite scenes from all four seasons, with abundant uses of natural beauty (the first line of Keats we hear in the film is “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”). There are some remarkable shots: a servant in a kitchen, looking like something out of Vermeer; Fanny leaning back on her bed, flush with the excitement of love, a curtain billowing out of a window before her; a room full of butterflies; a long shot of three figures stalking angrily across a meadow. Full credit should be given to the cinematographer, Greig Fraser.

Cornish dominates the film. At first she is like a Jane Austen heroine, bristlingly ahead of her time, but then playing two basic notes: pining for John Keats, and grieving for him. Despite these limitations, she excels. She reminded me a lot of Charlize Theron, but without the self-consciousness. Her scene of anguish after learning of Keats’ death is draining to watch. She will certainly be on the short list of Oscar hopefuls.

Whishaw is also fine, playing a consumptive genius without sentimentality and fully-shaded. One can really believe he is a poet, too. There’s a great moment for English majors when he’s called upon to recite a poem and responds with “When I have fears I may cease to be,” and then can’t remember it (this was at a time when people recited poetry for amusement, a charming thing that almost makes up for the abysmal health conditions). But the best performances may be by two supporting players, Schneider and Fox. Schneider, almost unrecognizable from his current role on TV’s Parks and Recreation, plays Brown as a brash, bearish man who is protective of Keats but lacking in tact. When the arc of his character is complete, and he realizes he has failed his friend, Schneider nails the scene brilliantly. Fox, who has less to do, is an integral player in that it is she that sets the tone of John and Fanny’s relationship, and when she changes the film changes with her.

A final note to complain about boorish movie audiences: over the closing credits Whishaw recites “Ode on a Nightingale.” Nevertheless, patrons at the theater I attended stood up and put their coats on, chatting loudly, their rudeness on full display. And these were not teenagers, but respectable Princeton citizens of a certain age. Another reason why I’m watching more and more films at home.

Earlier this year I joined Disney’s D23 on an impulsive whim. Sometimes I am given to these flights of fancy and usually pay for it, literally in dollars, soon thereafter. However it has only taken me 6 months to see a return on that investment: admission for 4 to the soon-to-be-opened Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio in San Francisco. This visual/architectural/technological/audtorial spectacle is sure to be the destination of many a pilgrimage from the time it opens this Thursday October 1st.

There are countless Disney fanatics who can (and probably already have) go into great detail about anything and everything, including ‘easter eggs,’ found in each of the museum’s 10 galleries. I am not that person, but I will do my best to try! As they would not allow cameras of any kind inside, and I had to rush through due to my tickets being for the last timeslot of the day, my memories will have to suffice.

Ticketing Counter and Lobby (courtesy of the Blue Parrot)

The lobby is where I we spent the least amount of time, though I’m sure 30 minutes could have gone by in a blink. If I remember correctly there was a wall with detailed Disney family history, a re-creation of Walt’s living room, various Oscar statuettes (including the miniatures created especially for Snow White) and other displays that we had to hurry by. Museum admission operates on timed tickets scheduled 15 minutes apart. Once you gain entry you can stay as long as you like, but you will not normally be allowed in before you time window. Because of previous engagements I had to take the absolute last timeslot which gave use an hour and 15 minutes to view it all. This was the absolute minimum recommended time and I should say you could spend twice that time and still be whizzing by many points along the way.

After having our tickets scanned and entering Gallery 1 I knew we were going to run out of time. The museum is set up in a chronologically (and technologically for that matter) linear fashion. The first gallery begins with Walt’s birth and some personal stories told by Walt himself through plasma TVs and direct overhead speakers. The next room showed some early drawings and his own testing of special effects and camera tricks before he got to Hollywood. By the time we left the first gallery a kind attendant (can we call them Cast Members? I don’t know…the organization is separate from the Walt Disney Company) directed us towards and elevator and told us to keep in mind that there were still 9 more galleries to go.

Gallery 2 (courtesy of the Blue Parrot)

The elevator ride up to the 2nd floor was a treat. It was a normal sized elevator but decorated to look like a train car with “windows” looking out at the scenery. Walt’s voice accompanies the ride up and I was shocked to find that even the 15-second elevator ride was entertaining. Once you step off the elevator you enter the limelight of Hollywood. You are shown monitors describing Walt’s Alice Comedies and his other early achievements. It is also here that the interactive exhibits become more prominent.

Rotary Candlestick Phone

In addition to the video screens with directed speakers, the next few galleries sport “personal” audio information devices in the style of an old telephone earpiece (shown at right hanging in the cradle of a “Candlestick” phone). My daughters got a kick out of picking them up and holding them up to one ear. The audio plays automatically in sync with the video screens and can be manually started with the push of a button. As you travel through the museum, the style of handset progresses to the modern telephone (of Walt’s time) style. The technology of the displays continues to progress as well.

Gallery 3 introduces Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie. Artifacts and original sketches are littered throughout all the room. One new exhibit display allows you to play a “mini-RockBand” foley game in which you time your hits/pulls/cranks on various devices to match the sound effects of the image on screen. This was, of course, another hit with my kids. More and more monitors with Walt and other animators describing how they made their magic continue to fill each room. The gallery was also the first time I saw a touchscreen on display, but it definitely wasn’t the last. 

The next 3 galleries were kind of a blur because everywhere we turned the kind ”purple people” (employees all wear a lone-sleeved coat of purple) were  reminding us that we only had 45 minutes left to see ’X’ number of galleries. There were the 1930s capped off by Snow White exhibits. The 1940s saw tales of a Union strike and all the work that was done for the war. More and more monitors began using touchscreen technology along with an iPhone-esque slide-browsing technique. I even think I got to see Microsoft Surface in action on one of the displays. Gallery 7 brought my next “wow” moment, however.

Gallery 7 (photo by Mike Kepka, San Francisco Chronicle

This picture may be too small to do it justice, but the seamless interactivity on display here is an awe to behold for a techie like myself. Overhead there are a dozen or more projectors that display various images and movies on a flowing ribbon that surrounds the room. Not a pixel is out of place and very rarely does any stretching or warping occur. If it does, it appears it was meant to be that way. Projectionists probably know, but I had fun just trying to figure out how there is no bleeding over the edges (i.e. – onto the wall) or other anomalies that should happen when not projecting on a flat surface. The interactive exhibits in this room are the where I could lose most of my time, however.

Utilizing what I call an overhead ”touch screen projector” images are displayed on a table in front of you. The wall in front of you has a plasma display and as you touch the projected images on the table the screen displays information (text, picture, audio, video, etc..) about what you touched. There is a list of hundreds of topics each with dozens of items to drill down in to. There is information about actors/actresses, interviews with animators, movie and charater summaries…seeming endless amounts of data on all things Disney. Again my kids enjoyed the interactivity, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I would have been content to spend my whole day just going through that one exhibit.

From the Walt Disney Family Museum's Facebook page

Gallery 8 is an interesting design choice. It’s a long downhill hallway. To the left are floor-to-ceiling glass windows that overlook the Presidio, bay and Golden Gate bridge. On the right are monitors all displaying the same thing. However, they are all facing the opposite direction, so you have to turn around (hopefully not into oncoming traffic) to view them. We were there in the early evening as the sun was going down so you had to face the sun to face the monitors. We were hurry through, though, because we had heard that the piez-de-resistance was Gallery 9 and we weren’t disappointed.

After you turn the corner from the previous gallery you realized that it all has been leading up to this gigantic two-story open air gallery. This is, I’m sure, one of the reasons they don’t allow cameras. It has to be seen and experienced to understand it. There is a winding walkway that takes you from Walt building his personal railroad through the building of Disneyland.

Artist's rendering of Gallery 9 is pretty close to the real thing (courtesy of MiceAge)

There is a model of the original Disneyland that is just a joy to look at. Hanging from the ceiling over the entire room is a sphere upon which projected images make it look as though it’s a perfectly round screen with hardly any portion untouched by the projectors. As you keep moving you see more and more exhibits with artifacts and drawings and models and miniatures and videos and….! This gallery is overhwelming but in a good way. It ends with Walt discussing his purchase of some land in Florida that could be the “biggest thing” he’d ever done.

Then, like that, you enter a narrow room where a small television is playing a newscast (I don’t know if it’s historical or newly created for this exhibit) describing Walt’s death and immediate reactions. On the opposite wall there are facsimiles of political cartoons and telegraphs and letters written to his wife that show just how shocking and sorrowful his death was to the world. It was an emotional and sobering gallery that completely caught me off guard. I guess I sometimes forget that though his name, company, ideas and inventions live on the man himself is no longer with us.

Your final room, before you get to the gift shop (of course), is resplendent white with variously arranged screens summarizing everything we have seen: the life of a uniquely gifted visionary that has impacted so many all over the globe.

There is a gift shop and cafe as you exit, but since we got out late the cafe was closed and we could only stay a few minutes in the gift shop. There was also a stairwell leading down below where I guess some offices, conference rooms/classrooms and the theater are located. Alas, my whirlwind tour was at an end. Perhaps next time I’ll wander downstairs to the conference rooms or take in a screening at their 114-person theater. It would definitely be worth it.

WDFM Theater (photo by Mike Kepka for the San Francisco Chronicle)

Finally some bonus video footage (not mine):

Worst of the Worst (courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes)

I know James has his “Decade In Film” series running, but after seeing this on Rotten Tomatoes I just had to make a post. I’m usually a little ashamed that I haven’t seen the balance of AFI’s (or critics or whoever’s) top 100 list. However, I can say that I am fully proud that I have only seen 7 of these worst 100 movies (and even then only 1 in the “top” 40 – Kickin’ It Old Skool). Thoughts?

Bright Star (trailer)
Director: Jane Campion (The Piano, The Portrait of a Lady, Holy Smoke, In the Cut)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
Seems like it’s been forever since Jane Campion had a new film, but while it actually has been, part of that perception is that I never saw her last two. In other words, it’s been over a dozen years since I’ve seen one. While I’m on the subject, The Piano is one of the great neglected movies on DVD, having only ever received (in R1, at least) a non-anamorphic bare-bones release over a decade ago. Might have to make that suggestion on Criterion’s Facebook page.
Metacritic: 81

Disgrace
Director: Steve Jacobs
Personal Interest Factor: 7
Never heard about it until I saw Ebert’s 4-star review this morning. Stars John Malkovich as a disgraced South African professor.
Metacritic: 71

Fame (trailer)
Director: Kevin Tancharoen
Personal Interest Factor: 1
What do you do if you’re a struggling studio and you want to get a piece of the High School Musical action, despite not having the rights to High School Musical? Here’s the answer, I guess. Gonna learn how to fly!
Metacritic: 47

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (trailer)
Director: Bob Gosse (Niagara, Niagara, Julie Johnson)
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Don’t care at all about this, but I’m intrigued by the line from Frank Scheck’s review (from The Hollywood Reporter) that is excerpted on Metacritic: “outdo[es] Dumb and Dumber in sheer grossness and detail with its depiction of the unfortunate effects of explosive diarrhea.” It’s worth noting that D&D is neither particularly gross nor detailed in this aspect; that scene was based completely on Jeff Daniels’s facial expressions and perhaps a couple of mild sound effects.
Metacritic: 34

Pandorum (trailer)
Director: Christian Alvart
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Pity poor Dennis Quaid. First GI Joe, and now this.
Metacritic: no score yet

Paris (trailer)
Director: Cédric Klapisch (L’auberge espagnole)
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Interest here stems mostly from the presence of Juliette Binoche. It’s about a guy needing a heart transplant, who moves in with his sister and her three kids. That’s all I know.
Metacritic: 61

The Providence Effect
Director: Rollin Binzer (Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones)
Personal Interest Factor: 3
With a title like that, you’re probably swearing that it’s a Christian-themed movie, possibly with someone like Kirk Cameron in the lead, but it is in fact a documentary about a successful prep school here in Chicago.
Metacritic: 71

Surrogates (trailer)
Director: Jonathan Mostow (Breakdown, U-571, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines)
Personal Interest Factor: 3
Jonathan Mostow used to be a semi-prominent action director, but each of his movies has been less satisfying than the last. Roughly the same can be said of Bruce Willis over the last who-knows-how-many years.
Metacritic: 47

A Woman in Berlin (trailer)
Director: Max Färberböck (Aimee & Jaguar)
Personal Interest Factor: 5
I don’t really know how to say this, but … I’m awfully tired of over-earnest WWII movies being an instant ticket to credibility. I’m sure that this has all kinds of emotional truth and carefully calibrated moral ambiguity and whatnot, but it just looks like an enormous chore and if I’m being completely honest, I’d just as soon not bother.
Metacritic: 74

“We’re at, uh wordpress.goneelsewhere…no, wait…it’s goneelsewhere.word.press.  No, there are no hyphens…”

No more!   http://www.gone-elsewhere.com

You never know what you’re going to get with a Steven Soderbergh film, and with The Informant! you’re not even sure as the closing credits roll. I think it’s a psychological drama masquerading as a comedy, but it might be the exact opposite. Some critics, specifically A.O. Scott, write that this genre-bending is part of the film’s genius, but I’m not so sure. This film may be as bipolar as its main character.

Viewers can be excused if they swallow this film as nothing more than a comedy in the Coen Brothers tradition, from the exclamation point at the end of the title, to Matt Damon’s cheesy moustache, to Marvin Hamlisch’s bouncy score, which recalls the canned music from 1960s sit-coms. Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a bioscientist who has made VP at agricultural conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland. He comes to his bosses with a story about a Japanese rival looking to extort money in exchange for information on a saboteur, and in turn the FBI is brought in (primarily in the form of agent Scott Bakula). This, though, is just the start of a slippery slope of misinformation, as Damon goes to work as a mole for the FBI, gathering information on price-fixing.

What starts as a film about corporate malfeasance that any liberal could love, Soderbergh slowly twists it into something else entirely. Whitacre, it turns out, is entirely unreliable, and I won’t say more in order to avoid spoilers. Suffice to say that the film is really about a pathological liar, and the destruction of a man’s life. It gets harder to laugh at the more the movie progresses.

But there are plenty of laughs. Soderbergh frontloads the film with manic comic energy, and also peppers the cast with stand-up comedians (including cameos by both Smothers Brothers). I found the funniest bits to be Damon’s running commentary of stray thoughts that come in his head, even as he’s meeting with FBI agents or his bosses, about things as meaningless as neckties or how polar bears hide their black noses when they hunt (“How do they know they have black noses?” Damon wonders).

Whitacre is an inspired creation. This is based on a true story, but I have to believe that everything we see of Whitacre is Matt Damon alone. He plays the man as an overfed, seeming well-meaning Midwesterner who is over his head, but as the movie progresses darker and darker layers of Whitacre emerge, and Damon, while hilarious through most of the film, also can be chilling in his pathology.

I think this film edges around greatness, but never gets there, and I left the theater underwhelmed. I’d give it an uninspired B-minus, but will expect Damon to be in conversation when it comes to Best Actor nominees.

Last Thursday night was the world premiere for Richard Kelly’s The Box, his third film after the excellent debut Donnie Darko and embarrassingly bad follow-up Southland Tales. The world premiere took place at the opening gala for Fantastisk Film Festival in Lund in the south of Sweden, inside a huge tent erected in the Lundagård park especially for the occasion.

While the idea of having a world premiere inside a big tent is audacious – and there was no doubt that the organizers had spent a good deal of time making it as viable an option as they could within their budget constraints – the reality was that the seats were cramped and uncomfortable, the sound for the feature badly calibrated during the first ten minutes and the projectionist had to take a five minute break in the middle of the film to change reels. It was fun trying it once but I would reconsider such a venue next time. I did like the big fountain sticking up out of the main reception area.

My mobile camera doesn't work very well with bad lighting, as you can see

The Box takes place in Virginia during the winter of 1976. Norma and Arthur Lewis (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) are a stable couple with one quiet but intelligent teenage son; she a school teacher and him a scientist at NASA working on the Mars program, having dedicated his life to become an astronaut. They wake up one early morning to find a small box at their doorstep. Inside it is a wooden box consisting of a red metal button and a letter telling them to wait for instructions. Later that afternoon Arlington James Steward (Frank Langella), a man with half his jaw missing, drops by their house to explain the nature of the box. If they press the button someone they don’t know will die and they will receive a payment of one million dollars. They have twenty four hours to make a decision. Initially dismissing Mr Steward as a hoax or madman, during the following day some of the preconceptions of their lives are tested and as the deadline approaches pressing the button becomes a tempting possibility.

Based on Richard Matheson’s short story Button, Button (also filmed as an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1986) The Box has many hallmarks of what you might now call Richard Kelly’s style. The plot is labyrinthine, going off on tangents that appear to lead nowhere, and it probably requires more than one viewing to make sense. There is an all-encompassing conspiracy and potentially the fate of not just the main characters but the world at stake. There are enough odd sci-fi elements for three films. The characters will occasionally ramble philosophically about their dilemmas.

The film looks great and could just as well have been filmed in the seventies, if it weren’t for Kelly’s apparent fondness for whatever cgi software James Cameron used in The Abyss. Despite that, Mr Steward’s facial deformity is probably the main effect in this film, and Langella is such a professional actor that he steals the film from under Diaz and Marsden’s feet. Diaz is a capable actress, and she doesn’t embarrass herself here, but even though she plays a cripple in this film, I doubt she will ever win an Oscar. Marsden is solid in his role. The score is supposedly by members of Arcade Fire but I can’t say I noticed. It sounded like most scores for these kinds of films.

To be blunt, The Box is a much more concentrated and even restrained effort than Southland Tales but it still makes you worry that the wunderkind let initial success go to his head. The film starts off well, with a sense of atmospheric paranoia (the 70s setting serves well in this regard) but as the director slowly introduces one plot element after another, some of them bordering on silliness, it begins to test your patience. It’s hard to discuss the film without going into spoiler territory (as Ms Diaz apparently did at Comic-Con) but the central question – “Would you kill someone you didn’t know with the press of a button for a million dollars?” – shouldn’t require the wild plot this film has. There is a scene at a library involving water that I still don’t quite understand the point of. There are also two jumps in time between a car crash, an airplane hangar and the couple’s house that seemed to be missing a few scenes.

The Box is a gothic sci-fi thriller melodrama that some will like but more than a few will shake their heads at. I liked it, overall, and I’d probably watch it again, which is the best compliment you can give this film. Kelly is a good director, but as a screenwriter he tends to want to include any and all elements that appeal to him, even though it makes little sense to the overall picture. He’s not exactly a master of restraint. I would like to say that Kelly was back on track, but this is more of a step into the right direction, even though I wonder where it’s leading.

A bit short on the comments this week. We’re flying to Denver early in the morning and I still need to pack. Fortunately, other than The Informant!, there’s not a must-see this week. Have a good weekend, everyone.

Amreeka (trailer)
Director: Cherien Dabis
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Story of a single Palestinian mother who emigrates to the US in search of a less sectarian environment.
Metacritic: 70

The Burning Plain (trailer)
Director: Guillermo Arriaga
Personal Interest Factor: 5
I could feign interest if I wanted, based on Arriaga’s pedigree, but seriously, there’s no reason to think this is good. The reviews are pretty tepid and the trailer could hardly be worse
Metacritic: 53

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (trailer)
Director: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Personal Interest Factor: 2
I like food. But the thought of it raining food is far more off-putting to me than the thought of a talking rat who is a chef. This movie looks frankly disgusting to me.
Metacritic: 68

The Informant! (trailer)
Director: Steven Soderbergh (Bubble, The Good German, Che, The Girlfriend Experience)
Personal Interest Factor: 10
Steven Soderbergh makes a Coen Brothers movie. Can’t wait.
Metacritic:

Jennifer’s Body (trailer)
Director: Karyn Kusuma (Girlfight, Æon Flux)
Personal Interest Factor: 2
I guess this movie’s supposed to have pedigree because Diablo Cody wrote it, but … please.
Metacritic: 44

Lake Tahoe
Director: Fernando Eimbcke (Duck Season)
Personal Interest Factor: 6
Never heard of this movie until I started writing this tonight, but Eimbcke’s Duck Season, about a couple of kids home alone during an afternoon, was a charming little movie from Mexico. I doubt I’ll have the time to see this, but if I do, I might check it out.
Metacritic: 72

Love Happens (trailer)
Director: Brandon Camp
Personal Interest Factor: 2
Self-help guru who can’t help himself, a woman who’s sworn of romance, etc. You know how it is.
Metacritic: 37

No Impact Man (trailer)
Director: Laura Gabbert, Justin Schein
Personal Interest Factor: 1
I’ll be honest. I recognize the good intentions here but it looks as tedious as a movie possibly could be. And as activism, it strikes me as quite likely to counterproductive to its cause; the last thing people want to be told is that they’re going to have to adopt extreme lifestyle changes in response to environmental crisis. Far-fetched do-gooder shit like this gives liberals a bad name.
Metacritic: 63

I wouldn’t be surprised if some enterprising Intro to Theology teacher screened 9 for his charges, but I would be if it were shown to film students. The film is loaded with religious allegory, but despite evocative animation the story is routine adventure.

Directed by Shane Acker, based on a short film of his that is unseen by me, the film is co-produced by Tim Burton, and I remember when I first saw the trailer for 9 Burton’s name popped into my head before I saw his name in the credits. It has his visual fingerprints all over it. I’m not sure of the reason for this–did Burton influence Acker, or was Burton drawn to it because it tickled his sensibilities–but in any event this film looks a lot like Burton films such as Edward Scissorhands and the Henry Selick-directed Nightmare Before Christmas.

9 concerns a time just after the expiration of the human race, which have been destroyed by machines that were created as their salvation. This, of course, strongly smacks of the Terminator films, and there’s also quite a bit of The Lord of the Rings in the story, as a small band of individuals go on a quest to save their kind (Acker was an animator for The Return of the King). Where Acker shows some originality is the characters themselves: they are dolls, about a foot high, made of burlap, with binocular lenses for eyes.

These dolls were created by the scientist who also invented the machine that destroys humanity. He makes nine of them, each marked by a numeral. The story begins when the last, 9, is created, and he stumbles into being. Soon he meets others of his kind, namely 2, an elderly inventor. When 2 is grabbed by a spidery robot and taken to a distant structure, 9 wants to save him, but the leader of the group, 1 (natch) balks. 1 is a representative of fundamentalism–when 9 asks why “the Beast” (surely a reference to Satan) is after them, 1 scoffs and says that these questions are pointless. 1 is at odds with the scientific 2, and is interested only in preservation, preferring to hide away and leave 2 to his fate.

9 influences 5, who is sort of the Samwise of the group, to help him, and they meet up with 7, the only female and a warrior who wears a bird skull as a helmet. But while trying to rescue 2, 9 awakens the dormant mother machine, and there’s hell to pay.

Some of this is engaging, but I was gripped with a sense of impatience almost immediately, as if I’ve seen this all before. We’re all familiar with the look of post-apocalypse–the perpetually dusky skies, the ruined buildings, the detritus of human existence such as old cars, newspapers, and broken doll heads. And though the film is very short and gets into the action right away, the core of the action is so simplistic–characters are attacked, some get taken, remaining characters go to the rescue–that a metronomic quality of the film overwhelms the theme.

What is most interesting about 9 is that theme, which is one of the most basic to humanity though it is relatively unexplored in films that play in multiplexes: who created us, and why are we here? The dolls of 9 struggle with this in different ways, with 1 choosing not to even think about, to 7 choosing to fight, to 9 questioning. With the character 6 Acker even references deeper meaning, with the character being fashioned out of what looks like mattress ticking that resembles the rags worn by those in concentration camps during World War II.

But all of that goes by the wayside when the mechanisms of the plot muck up the works. I give screenwriter Pamela Pettler a perverse sort of credit, because I wouldn’t be able to type lines of dialogue such as, “We’ve got to go after them” (I believe this is said more than once) or “I started this, and I’m going to finish it.” I’m not even sure small children would enjoy this film, as it is almost unrelievedly grim, and has an ending that is spiritually uplifting (it made me think of the end of Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves) but won’t send kids out of the theater looking to buy action figures.

Alien: The Director’s Cut
Director: Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, Body of Lies)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
I saw a DLP reissue of Alien several years back, which I guess was the “Director’s Cut” being shown again now. The Music Box is showing it this week (in 35mm) for it’s 30th Anniversary, and obviously it holds up pretty well. Fun fact: to this day, I’ve yet to see Aliens.
Metacritic: 83

The Baader Meinhof Complex
Director: Uli Edel (Last Exit to Brooklyn, Body of Evidence, The Little Vampire)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
The final Best Foreign Film Oscar nominee to open here, about the notorious Red Army Group. Reviews have been good, but you have to admit, Edel does not have an inspiring filmography to date.
Metacritic: 73

I Can Do Bad All By Myself (trailer)
Director: Tyler Perry (Why Did I Get Married?, Meet the Browns, The Family That Preys, Madea Goes to Jail)
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Say what you will about Tyler Perry – and I can’t really say much, since I’ve never seen any of his work – but he’s settled into a two-films-a-year output level that’s putting even Steven Soderbergh to shame. If nothing else, the man is extraordinarily prolific.
Metacritic: no score

Import/Export
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Film about two people leaving home in search of better lives. Premiered at Cannes two years ago.
Metacritic: not listed

9 (trailer)
Director: Shane Acker
Personal Interest Factor: 9? No, 7.
Weirdly enough, this reminds me of the artwork for the liner notes of The Smashing Pumpkins Machina/The Machines of God. I don’t know why that is; they aren’t at all similar. But they’re both appealing to me in the same way. Of course, that album wasn’t very good.
Metacritic: 60

The September Issue (trailer)
Director: R.J. Cutler
Personal Interest Factor: 2
Documentary about Vogue editor Anna Wintour, the inspiration for Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada. Seems like stright-up cult-of-personality type stuff and I’m really not at all interested.
Metacritic: 69

Sorority Row (trailer)
Director: Stewart Hendler
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Am I missing something, or is this just a straight-up ripoff of I Know What You Did Last Summer? Which was itself a stright-up ripoff of a teen horror novel that I remember reading, although I don’t remember its name. Which itself was probably a straight-up ripoff of something else that I don’t know about.
Metacritic: no score

Whiteout (trailer)
Director: Dominic Sena (Kalifornia, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Swordfish)
Personal Interest Factor: 3
Kate Beckinsale in an Antarctic murder mystery. Maybe Werner Herzog should have made this movie instead of Encounters at the End of the World. “The gay penguin did it!”
Metacritic: 36

This is the first of Bobcat Goldthwait’s directorial efforts I’ve seen, but I was well aware of his comedy, having once seen him in person. He was something of a bomb-thrower, basing his comedy on saying something outrageous for the sake of outrageousness and not being particular sophisticated about it. There’s some of that in that World’s Greatest Dad, a movie on the whole I liked, but is awfully thin gruel.

The central joke is that an obnoxious teenager, who doesn’t do anything much but jerk off to Internet porn, dies accidentally by autoerotic asphyxiation. His sad sack father, a schoolteacher and frustrated writer (Robin Williams), decides to cover up the cause of his son’s death and makes it look like a suicide. He then crafts a suicide note that makes his son seem like a misunderstood genius.

Goldthwait pushes this as hard as he can. Daryl Sabara does a great job making his character reprehensible, and you can believe that a parent of his would question the concept of unconditional love. Sabara is rude, crude, and without a redeeming characteristic, yet I think I’ve known people like him. Williams gives one of those performances that makes you forgive his work in crap like RV, playing a mild-mannered poetry teacher with gracious humanity. I particularly liked a scene where he breaks down in sobs while looking at a  newsstand filled with his son’s favorite porno mags.

That being said, World’s Greatest Dad is a 100-minute film that could have been half that. When Williams’ ruse turns his son into a deceased hero, with kids wearing his image on t-shirts and listening to his favorite music (Williams tell them it’s Bruce Hornsby, who is really his favorite singer) he realizes that his life is starting to become everything he dreamed of. His secret relationship with a pretty young art teacher (Alexie Gilmore, bearing a perhaps unfortunate resemblance to Shelley Long) hits its stride, and after he fakes his son’s journal, he makes contacts with publishers.

The ending is kind of predictable, and Goldthwait pulls back his claws for a resolution that is morally correct but toothless. All along I was rooting for Williams to make the most of the situation, which I guess makes me a bad person. Goldthwait does score some points satirizing the reaction to teen suicide, but I’m not sure it wasn’t said already twenty years ago in Heathers (“I loved my dead gay son”).

If you would allow me, for just a moment, to speak on something I bring up not to be a firestarter, not to throw tinder on a smoldering set of pine needles nestled somewhere deep in the San Fernando Valley, but rather to ask, to foment discussion and out of a true sense of “Why?”: How have these films become the critical and commercial success they have? Are they popular because of their pedigree? Their director, stars, filming location/backstory, etc.? Are they looked-upon as they are because everyone everywhere decides you must look on them with reverence simply because everyone else tells you to?

If you can explain to me why these films are what they are and the reason they are that way, then please, by all means, let me know. But do not just throw in simple explanations like: “You’re retarded, that’s why you don’t get it.” (And please don’t use retarded as a pejorative. It’s juvenile and really insensitive.)

So with no further adieu, I give you Part 1 of the list of movies that I just. don’t. get.

First-and-absolutely-foremost on my list is that bloated carcass of an “epic”:

1. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

Lawrence of Arabia

Okay. I know what you are all going to say. I know the backlash this will engender and I know I must be out of my mind. But I’m being completely honest when I say I Just. Don’t. Get. It. This is a bloated 3-hour mass of men riding camels through the desert. I tried recently to watch this again and, once again, I saw the same thing. So what is it? The cinematography? Then say that. Is it the direction? Then say that. Is it the acting? All this seems to me is a director at the height of his power making the movie he wanted to make…and everyone drinking the Kool-Aid of an obvious master.

2. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

No Country For Old Men

Okay. I’ll give you Fargo. Probably more-so, Raising Arizona. Hell, I even loved Hudsucker Proxy for what it was. But this movie? With a script that was probably thirty pages of actual screenplay that goes nowhere but back around on itself and  a thumb-its-nose-at-convention ending, I think this is a great example of critics getting together and asserting their will for a pair of filmmakers who are well-liked and who can influence academy voters and decided they would make a campaign to elevate a decent movie that is simply a generic heist thriller polished with the wry approach of two masters-of-the-game. Even more criminal than how Kevin Costner and Dances with Wolves took the Oscar from Goodfellas was the idea that this movie could beat There Will Be Blood and the upstart Paul Thomas Anderson. “Okay, Coens, you have Tommy Lee Jones as a sheriff? Javier Bardem in a bowl cut? A suitcase of money? Josh Brolin finally coming into his own? And what do you have, Paul? Daniel-Day? With a Noah Cross voice? And a really good oil derrick scene? Here’s a cinematography Oscar.”

3. THE STING

The Sting

This is another one I’ve watched three times now and still don’t get it. Robert Redford and Paul Newman? Okay. Robert Shaw being snakily mobbish with his amazing acting skills? Okay. That soundtrack? I get it, but you’re losing me. The entire movie shaped around, as far as I can tell, a fake horse race? You’ve lost me completely, and even though my eyes were nearly closed at the end all three times, I still kinda get what the woman represented. Either way, and regardless, why put so many double-crosses into a movie one could care less about? If someone can explain this one, please do, I’m ALL EARS.

4. THE APARTMENT

The Apartment

I recently watched this one based on, if I remember correctly, something someone wrote on this site. After being pulled in by the initial cinematography, which is quite good with shots of the office area, I became quite baffled by the dour nature and complete lack of focus in the script. Jack Lemmon mugged more than he ever had and his character was so agreeable to being put-upon, even during a ridiculous last-minute call by one of his superiors, it didn’t seem he was even his own person. There are limits to what you would let people do to you, promotion or corner office or not. And the unlikability of Shirley MacLaine’s character was completely unexpected. Overall, I simply. Didn’t. Get it.

5. THE ENGLISH PATIENT

The English Patient

This should have been much higher on the list. This is a movie that so obviously relied on its bloated ‘epic’ moniker to snatch the nine oscars it won and utilized a, at that time, mis-realized military-like campaign by the Weinsteins to take oscar gold. With its over-edited and convoluted beginning that seems to go nowhere after the plane accident but to meander through time and tragedies with Ms. Binoche, I just don’t see the allure of The English Patient. I’ve tried most of these films three times, just to give them a chance, but after number two of this butt-numb-a-thon, I won’t let this go on any longer.

Well, there are the first five. Let’s hear it.

And to add a note to the proceedings: Why the hell is Seinfeld finally mastered for Hi-Def but The Abyss is not?!

The winner is (drumroll please)… James!

Few will be surprised by this. It’s been largely expected for a while. He was close to losing it for a short time there, but he stuck through and proved to all in the last weekend that he’s a worthy winner of this year’s AGEBOC. Just plain well done and played.

I was thinking long and hard about some form of prize. Maybe some flash animation with the winner’s name, fireworks going off in the background. But then I’d have to learn programming, plus it would be kinda cheesy, so I skipped that.

It was when I was walking inside a weird Asian trinket shop that I saw it. It called to me. I realized that it was what we had been looking for so long, unconsciously. I haven’t given him a name yet.

It’s getting a little metal plaque at the bottom that says “King of the AGEBOC”. (Added a small note there just for appearances sake, so you can get an idea of what it will look like once it’s done.)

The recipient of the prize must agree to the following conditions:

1. The recipient shall pass on (paying postage and all) the prize to the next winner of the AGEBOC. Unless that winner is him- or herself, then he or she can keep it, until there comes another winner of the AGEBOC.

2. The recipient promises to take care of the prize and buy a new one (with a metal plaque saying “King of the AGEBOC”) that looks similar or better, if he or she loses, breaks or damages the prize beyond recognition and/or use.

3. The current recipient makes sure that the next recipient/winner repeats and agrees to the above conditions.

I’ll mail it to James once the engraving’s done.

Runner-up is Brian, winner of last year’s AGEBOC, who was very, very close to taking it home again this year again. Good job, man! For him I have this (remember to enter your name in correctly). Almost as good as that trip to Mexico, eh?

Everyone, thanks for joining! I do f-ck up sometimes with the schedule of this thing, but overall I’ve had a fun time. Hope you did, too.

Honorable mentions:

Most mysterious disappearance: Rhymerguy

Best newcomer: Rob

Best single weekend prediction: Joe Webb scored a total of 7 points in the May 29 – June 1 weekend

Final score:

James: 38.5

Brian: 31.5
Rob: 30.5
Joe Webb: 22.5
Nick: 19.5
Jackrabbit Slim: 19
Filmman: 13
Marco Trevisiol: 9
Jeanine: 9
Juan: 7.5
Rhymerguy: 4

Part six of our discussion on the films of the 00’s, this time focusing on 2005.

1) Best of 2005?
2) Worst of 2005?
3) Most underrated?
4) Most underseen?
5) Most overrated?
6) Best performance(s) of the year?
7) Best single scene/sequence of the year?
8) One thing you could change about any single film in 2005 (Example: different cast, different director, different style, different release date, different studio).
9) Most memorable (good or bad) theatergoing experience of the year?
10) Most influential film/performance/style/director?

Obviously feel free to answer only the questions you’re interested in or to write/respond to something else entirely.

2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004

As is usually the case for Labor Day, it’s a good weekend to be out of town. We’ll be spending the next few days in Mexico City, seeing the sights, dodging the bullets, and getting high on the toxic fumes suspended in a permanent haze four feet off the ground. Or so I’ve been led to believe by a bunch of people who have never been there.

Only things I’m going to miss, movie-wise, are a couple of screenings of restored prints of John Sayles films, Return of the Secaucus Seven and The Brother from Another Planet. Pity, but it can’t be helped.

All About Steve (trailer)
Director: Phil Traill
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Funniest thing about the trailer is the tagline that it’s from the producer of Miss Congeniality. Far as I can tell, that producer is … Sandra Bullock herself. I guess the link between the two movies was just not clear enough. Relatedly, this may be the worst-reviewed movie of the year, excluding those that were withheld from critics in the first place.
Metacritic: 13

Extract (trailer)
Director: Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, Office Space, Idiocracy)
Personal Interest Factor: 7
I was a big fan of Idiocracy, and of course Office Space remains a classic, but this looks like relatively average for Mike Judge. Maybe there’s more to it than the trailer suggests. Also, I think Jason Bateman’s one note persona (i.e., “smartass exasperation”) plays better on TV than in the movies.
Metacritic: 60

My One and Only (trailer)
Director: Richard Loncraine (Richard III, Wimbledon, Firewall)
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Renée Zellweger FAIL
Metacritic: 64

Still Walking (trailer)
Director: Kore-eda Hirokazu (Maborosi, After Life, Nobody Knows)
Personal Interest Factor: 8
A good example of how there’s always something to discover when it comes to cinema. Kore-eda has been making highly regarded movies for over a decade, but I’ve never seen any of them. If the reviews are to be believed, this may be his best yet.
Metacritic: 92

Tony Manero
Director: Pablo Larrain
Personal Interest Factor: 4
Chilean film about a man who, according to Metacritic, “is willing to lie, cheat and kill in order to become John Travolta’s character in the cult classic Saturday Night Fever.”
Metacritic: 72

World’s Greatest Dad (trailer)
Director: Bobcat Goldthwait (Shakes the Clown, Sleeping Dogs Lie)
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Well, I dunno. Here’s an interesting and counterintuitive thought: for all the crap Robin Williams takes – from myself included – his career over the past decade has been much more respectable than most of his contemporaries. Sure, he’s done his fair share of crap, but he’s also made a few interesting choices. Compared to, say, Steve Martin or Eddie Murphy, he looks pretty good.
Metacritic: 69

What filmman wants, filmman gets.

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of September 4-6, 2009.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Notice! In this, our last installment of the summer AGEBOC 09, predictions will be sent over email. I’ve checked, and all except Juan and Rhymerguy should know my address. If any of those two wish to email me, I’ll send a mail to them over the email address they’ve put in their comments accounts. Participants predictions will be shown on Thursday after deadline.

Otherwise it’s business as usual. You know the deadline, you know how many points are given out. Three people are competing for the win here: James, Brian and Rob. They’ve done good over the past few months and I’m not going to throw in some lame 5 point questions just so someone can swoop in and win over other people’s, eh, hard work.

If other people wish to join in so they can take points instead of them, then they are of course still welcome to do so. That’s only fair.

There will be prizes, of a sort, though the specifics are still being worked on. Prizes will be given out next Monday the 7th of September.

I’ve enjoyed doing this. For a short while it was one of the few structured things I was doing in my life (weird as that may sound). As other things came into the forefront, I’ve been sorta slipping, as people have been correct to point out. I’m not a very disciplined and organized guy, though I try to be.

I’m looking forward to when James takes over this thing for the fall/winter.

Bonus questions:

1) Will Extract make more or less than 11 million this weekend?

2) What will be the #3 film of the weekend?

Deadline is Wednesday September 2 at 11:59 pm (blog time).

To find out the rules of the game, go to the main thread for AGEBOC 09.

AGEBOC 09 score

James: 34

Brian: 31
Rob: 30
Joe Webb: 22
Jackrabbit Slim: 19
Nick: 17
Filmman: 13
Marco Trevisiol: 9
Jeanine: 9
Juan: 7.5
Rhymerguy: 4

Well, my last day at work was today, which means that Openings will return to its previous Friday morning schedule starting next week. On one hand, I’m a little bit relieved, as I’ve had very little to do at work lately, and while it’s good to get paid I don’t think anyone really likes feeling useless. On the other hand, I’m back to looking at an uncertain future. On the third hand, we’re going to Mexico next week and that will be fun. On the fourth hand, though, this means I might have more time to get back to writing the odd review here and there, plus the mysterious new feature that I’m planning and just haven’t gotten around to initiating. On the fifth hand, it’s impossible to ponder the vastness of space.

Le combat dans l’île
Director: Alain Cavalier
Personal Interest Factor: 10
Re-issued French conspiracy thriller from 1962 playing at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week. Never really heard of it, and I’m not familiar with Cavalier at all, but I love stuff like this more than just about anything.
Metacritic: Not listed

The Final Destination (trailer)
Director: David R. Ellis (Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco, Final Destination 2, Cellular, Snakes on a Plane)
Personal Interest Factor: 1
Way back in the day, I remember people saying that the first Final Destination was pretty decent, but I never saw it. Obviously, I then skipped the next two sequels, as well. This one looks unbelievably stupid, even by the standards of the genre. Killer escalators? Deadly car washes?
Metacritic: 38

Halloween II (trailer)
Director: Rob Zombie (House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, Halloween)
Personal Interest Factor: 1.01
Again, very little interest in sequels of movies that I didn’t see in the first place. I guess if I had to choose, though, I’d take this over The Final Destination.
Metacritic: 50

It Might Get Loud (trailer)
Director: Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, Gracie)
Personal Interest Factor: 7
This seems like a decent idea for a documentary, and as it turns out it’s about three guys who actually seem like interesting people to hear talk about playing guitar.
Metacritic: 71

Taking Woodstock (trailer)
Director: Ang Lee (The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brockeback Mountain, Lust, Caution)
Personal Interest Factor: 6
It’s always worth going to an Ang Lee movie, but this one looks highly suspect in my view as I’ve never understood why Woodstock was such a big flippin’ deal. Reviewed here already by Marco Trevisiol, who says, “Overall, the film has significant deficiencies and isn’t the substantial, insightful work it could’ve been … [b]ut it is entertaining and occasionally captivating.”
Metacritic: 55

Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love (trailer)
Director: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Documentary about Senegalese singer Youssou Ndour.
Metacritic: 58

Ang Lee’s latest film ‘Taking Woodstock’ is – as the title implies – centred around the 1969 music festival held in New York, one of the iconic pop culture events of the 1960s. It attempts to be both a character study and convey the experience of what it was like to be at the event. While it doesn’t really work as a character study it’s much more successful on the latter theme.

The character study is focussed on Elliot Teichberg, a Jewish closeted homosexual who has moved back from Greenwich Village to help out his parents on their dismal and dilapidated motel in the Catskills. Out of this dreary existence, he seizes an opportunity to bring a music festival to the area to create some activity for the family business and the town, not realising that it will be much, much bigger than he ever anticipated… and inevitably have a major impact on him and his future.

One reason it struggles as a character study is that Elliot isn’t a particularly compelling character. We don’t get many revealing insights into his persona or even know that much about his background. Despite him playing a pivotal role in the creation of the festival, he’s actually quite passive and seems to function at times purely as our eyes and ears of the event.

Another reason it struggles on this front is that the pivotal character of Elliot’s mother is the weakest aspect of the film. Very broadly played by Imelda Staunton, she may not be the biggest stereotype of an overbearing Jewish mother I’ve seen in a film, but she’d be close. She does have one or two amusing scenes but she’s such an obnoxious caricature that it was impossible to care or emphasise with her (which the film tries to do towards the end) and as a result the dramatic interaction with Elliot is severely weakened.

Plotwise the film isn’t particularly well structured. Some interesting subplots – the negative reaction of the locals to Elliot’s role in bringing the festival there, the enormous technical difficulties in organising such an event , anti-Semitic attacks on Elliot’s family – are either not followed through or forgotten in the latter stages of the film.

But in a funny way, the fragmented structure of the film probably works to its advantage in recreating the experience of what it was like to be there at Woodstock, which itself was messy and disjointed.  The film’s great strength is that it feels genuinely authentic as a recreation of what it was like to be a spectator there. This is in part because the film’s perspective is from that of the locals so we see from the very beginning how it’s transformed from a sleepy, small town to a buzzing mini-metropolis. The film portrays this well by making the pre-concert scenes quite languid in pace, in contrast to the lively and effervescent scenes once the concert and youth in their hundreds of thousands come to town.

The film captures the concert atmosphere superbly. There’s a marvellous scene where we follow Elliot as he’s riding on a motorcycle to get to the concert site and we pass by numerous amounts of people, congregations, gatherings and various types of transportation; it perfectly illustrates what a once-in-a-lifetime experience it would’ve been.  Split-screen style footage (imitating the famous 1970 documentary of the event) is also used at regular intervals to demonstrate the vibrancy and chaos of the event.

The fact that the concert and musicians itself aren’t shown (whether in recreations or in actual archive footage) has been criticised but I think this works to the film’s advantage. The film isn’t about the musicians themselves but about the spectators who went there and what it was like for them.

With the exception of Staunton, the performances are fine. Demetri Martin is quite good as Elliot considering the limitations of his role although I got quite a shock learning after seeing the film he was 34 in real life in 1969; the way the film portrays him and how he acts in the role, you’d think he was in his early 20’s. Henry Goodman delivers a nicely nuanced performance as Elliot’s father and Eugene Levy and Jonathan Groff are standouts in support roles.

Ang Lee’s direction on individual scenes is mixed. There’s one very subtle, well done scene early on when Elliot is on the telephone which perfectly captures how trapped and dissatisfied he feels with his life. In contrast there’s another early scene when Elliot goes into a diner and the locals (all unhappy at him bringing the event to the town) in unison become silent and turn towards him menacingly; it’s a trite effect straight out of a lousy sitcom.

Overall, the film has significant deficiencies and isn’t the substantial, insightful work it could’ve been. But it is entertaining and occasionally captivating and is one of the more enjoyable films I’ve seen in 2009. If nothing else, it sure makes you envious of those who went to Woodstock.

NOTICE! This was supposed to be the last of the AGEBOC 09’s, but due to management failure the challenge will be extended one more week, where there will be special rules and prizes.

The new deadline is

Thursday 9pm

(because there are midnight showings for the two horror movies released this weekend).

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of August 28-30, 2009.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus questions:

1) Yes or no: Will Halloween 2 earn more in its opening weekend than the previous installment ($26,362,367)?

2) Yes or no: Will The Final Destination earn more in its opening weekend than the previous installment ($19,173,094)?

Deadline is Thursday August 26 at 9:00 pm (blog time).

To find out the rules of the game, go to the main thread for AGEBOC 09.

AGEBOC 09 score

James: 33

Rob: 29
Brian: 26.5
Joe Webb: 22
Jackrabbit Slim: 18
Nick: [disqualified for reasons of distraction, formerly 14]
Filmman: 13
Marco Trevisiol: 9
Jeanine: 9
Juan: 7.5
Rhymerguy: 4

Better Late Than Never Edition. This week, I’m trying something a little different. I’m going to assign each movie a Personal Interest Factor, a number between 1 and 10 that serves as a gauge to how much I want to see any given movie. Obviously, the higher the number, the more I want to see it.

To be clear, this does not measure how likely I am to see a movie; I go to see stuff I’m not excited about all the time. It’s just a measure of how excited I am.

Art & Copy (trailer)
Director: Doug Pray (Surfwise)
Personal Interest Factor: 2
Documentary about advertising, looking at some famous marketing campaigns from the past few decades. I mostly resent marketing mindsets and truly hate most advertising so this isn’t exactly in my wheelhouse.
Metacritic: 53

Cold Souls (trailer)
Director: Sophie Barthes
Personal Interest Factor: 4
Quite simply, this looks incredibly tedious. I’ve always thought that Paul Giamatti was an incredibly overrated actor, an opinion that’s only gotten stronger as Giamatti has gotten more repetitive and untethered with each passing role. You watch – eventually the world will come around to my way of thinking on this, just as it has (more or less) with Kevin Spacey.
Metacritic: 69

Fifty Dead Men Walking (trailer)
Director: Kari Skogland
Personal Interest Factor: 4
Story about an IRA turncoat starring Jim Sturgess, Ben Kingsley, and Rose McGowan(?). Yikes. Sounds intense, but director Skogland’s previous movie work looks like it exists entirely in the direct-to-video realm.
Metacritic: 58

Flame & Citron (trailer)
Director: Ole Christian Madsen
Personal Interest Factor: 7
Danish film about that country’s WWII-era resistance that Nick reviewed for this site fourteen whole months ago. He says, “It’s a good, sometimes very good, film, but it’s not the great film it aspires to be.” I’m just happy that it’s being released here; didn’t look like it was going to happen. If nothing else, if the trailer is any indication it’s beautifully shot.
Metacritic: 74

Inglourious Basterds (trailer)
Director: Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 1)
Personal Interest Factor: 6
I’m frankly surprised that a new Tarantino arrives this weekend, and it’s all I can do to even care. Where did this apathy come from? Possibly, it was Grindhouse, which at the time was a questionable idea and in retrospect seems like an attempt at career suicide. If nothing else, it signaled loud and clear that QT had devoted his career to esoterica that I only vaguely understand and which I have a hard time getting excited for. Says Jackrabbit Slim in Gone Elsewhere review: “It’s a lot of fun, but there are plenty of places you can get up to go to the bathroom.”
Metacritic: 69

The Marc Pease Experience
Director: Todd Louiso (Love Liza)
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Had not actually heard about this until earlier in the week, as it appears to be a straight dump by soon-to-be-defunct Paramount Vantage. Starring Ben Stiller and Jason Schwartmann in a story about … something, presumably. Who knows.
Metacritic: 31

Post Grad (trailer)
Director: Vicky Jenson
Personal Interest Factor: 2
Looks like an ABC Family sitcom given feature treatment. Harmless enough.
Metacritic: 35

Shorts (trailer)
Director: Robert Rodriguez (Desperado, Spy Kids, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D)
Personal Interest Factor: 5
Fitting, I suppose, that Tarantino and Rodriguez have movies opening the same day. They should, like, show this and Inglourious Basterds as a double feature, with, like, a bunch of fake trailers and stuff. I’m telling you, box office gold!
Metacritic: 53

Weather Girl (trailer)
Director: Blayne Weaver
Personal Interest Factor: 1
A TV weather girl loses it on the air after learning her boyfriend is a cad. That right there is about all it takes for me to want to avoid it.
Metacritic: 47

X Games 3D: The Movie (trailer)
Director: Steve Lawrence
Personal Interest Factor: 1
I don’t even watch the X Games in 2D at home. I don’t know anyone who does. Does anyone? It seems very odd that a movie gets made out of it.
Metacritic: 44

You, the Living
Director: Roy Andersson
Personal Interest Factor: 8
Swedish film that’s gained some notoriety lately as a film that Armond White actually likes. I think it’s supposed to be good, but I’ll be darned if I know what it’s about, even after reading the lengthy synopsis on the Facets website.
Metacritic: not listed

As with all of his films, Inglourious Basterds doesn’t take place in any world we would recognize, but in the head of Quentin Tarantino, where a fevered imagination dreams of countless films, from the highbrow to the lowest of the low. In a sense, he doesn’t create new works but mash-ups, regurgitations of everything he has seen in altered ways. In some cases, such as Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, he took the memes and tropes of crime noir and reinvented them, making him the most audacious American filmmaker in action.

I stand behind no one in my admiration for Pulp Fiction (it’s where I get my nom de blog), but like many, I’ve found his post-PF work–Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, and Death Proof, to be a squandering of his talent. Instead of continuing the exciting work of his first two pictures, he’s become hermetically sealed in his own world of hack cinema, reproducing what he loved as a child, like Miss Havisham preserving her wedding cake. To be sure, each of these pictures had a lot to admire, particularly Kill Bill, but it was akin to Picasso spray-painting a subway car.

I regret to say that Inglourious Basterds is another film in this decline. I did like it overall, and if this were a film made by someone completely unknown I’d say “the kid’s got something,” but nothing exists in a vacuum and there’s no mistaking that it was made by Tarantino. I give it a thumbs up on its amusement park thrills, but a thumbs down when considering what it could have been.

Of course Tarantino can’t make a straight World War II film. Instead he has crafted a spaghetti Western as war film, with a touch of the grindhouse he so loves. We know that right away with the Ennio Morricone music and a title card reading “Once upon a time…” a sure allusion to Sergio Leone. The prologue takes us to the French countryside, which if you squint could double for Nebraska, and a family who happens to be hiding a family of Jews. A contingent of German soldiers arrive, led by Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, a sure Best Supporting Actor nominee), who is known as the “Jew Hunter.” It is here that Tarantino, somewhat ham-fistedly, begins his tale of revenge of Jews against Nazis.

The film is told in chapters, which make abrupt leaps in the story. We go from that French countryside, where one Jew escapes, to the Basterds themselves, a guerilla unit of Jewish-American soldiers, led by Lt. Aldo Raine, played amusingly by Brad Pitt. The character’s name is a reference to 1950’s character actor Aldo Ray, and Tarantino gives Pitt a scar around his neck (Eastwood in Hang ‘em High?) and a Li’l Abner accent. That the character comes from Tennessee, Tarantino’s birthplace, is certainly no accident, as Raine is a foxy fellow who never fails to spin a clever aphorism or get the better of his enemy. Pitt certainly seems to enjoy himself, taking special delight in pronouncing Nazi as if it rhymes with “patsy.”

The Basterds are a gang of vicious thugs, including a psychopathic German and a Red Sox fan with the moniker of “the Bear Jew” (played by Eli Roth, who should stick to making vile horror films–he’s no actor). Roth’s method of execution is to use a baseball bat to the melon of his victim (Robert DeNiro’s Al Capone in The Untouchables?). Pitt has charged his Semitic squad with collecting as many Nazi scalps as they can (Raine is part “injun,” and the Germans know him as “Aldo the Apache”). I’m not Jewish, so I have no cultural response to seeing Jews portrayed as sadistic brutes, but I suppose if Spielberg could do it in Munich Tarantino has a right to.

All too soon we leave the Basterds (the film seems to flag whenever Pitt is away) to meet the girl who escaped in the first scene, her identity changed and running a cinema in occupied Paris. Played by the excellent Melanie Laurent, she’s reminiscent of a Hitchcock blonde–icily sexy. A young German war hero (Daniel Brühl) takes a shine to her, and since he’s the star of a new propaganda film (he’s the German Sgt. York) he arranges for her theater to host the premiere of the film. Revenge immediately pops into her head.

But, as the commercials says, that’s still not all! We then meet some British (including a heavily made up Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill and a what-the-fuck? cameo by Mike Myers) planning to blow up the theater the night of the premiere. They enlist a suave film critic, Martin Fassbender, (Tarantino sucking up to the scribblers who will pass judgment on him?) to join up with the Basterds and a German movie star (Diane Kruger, another Hitchcock blonde) to infiltrate the German high command. So we essentially have Tarantino laying plot upon plot, an extreme case of overkill that bloats the film to two-and-a-half hours.

And it is a long film. There are several times during the film I got the fidgets. Tarantino has a difficult time with all the languages being spoken. There’s a restaurant scene that has German being translated into French with English subtitles. Aside from being a cinematic Rosetta Stone for future linguists, this was stultifyingly inept. When Kruger and Fassbinder meet up in a tavern, a scene that must last half an hour, he has the characters playing twenty questions far longer than anyone can tolerate. Tarantino has never been one to follow the rules set down by Robert McKee–the scene in Pulp Fiction where Travolta and Jackson actually stop the plot to debate whether a foot massage is cheating is famous for this–but in Pulp Fiction it was funny and entertaining, not so in Inglourious Basterds.

But toward the last third of the film I got into it, and enjoyed the ending, which rewrites history and has Pitt delivering a coup de grace that will rank among the great ending scenes in film history. All of the classic Tarantino quirks are on display: foot fetishism, the Mexican standoff (including two characters debating just what exactly constitutes a Mexican standoff), the idiosynchratic score (this will be the first and presumably last World War II film to contain a David Bowie song), brief voice roles by Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel, and winking at the audience stuff like identifying the Nazi bigwigs with a kind of telestrator. Tarantino, like the blowhard at the bar who knows everything, also makes sure to include as many film references as he can, whether it’s dropping names like G.W. Pabst and Emil Jannings or having his British character refer to “Jerry” like they were right out of some forties war flick.

I’ve been kind of long-winded, so let me sum up by saying Inglorious Basterds gets a solid grade of B from me. It’s a lot of fun, but there are plenty of places you can get up to go to the bathroom. I’m still waiting for Tarantino to fulfill his early promise, but perhaps he’s not interested in doing that, and instead is satisfied in these well-wrought doodles.

The month-long, ultra- dramatic countdown on Quicktime’s website for the teaser of James Cameron’s Avatar has hit zero.  In keeping with FOX’s new strategy of fucking up everything they touch, the trailer has still not gone live nearly one hour later.

The good news is that it IS available via MSN’s website, in French, right here.

Initial thoughts:

The stuff with the space marines looks awesome…like an unofficial, mega-budget sequel to Aliens.  Unfortunately, things rapidly head south once we linger on Eric Bana 2.0 staring at some stupid looking Nightcrawler-wannabe in a tank.  Then, it goes full-Delgo and I lost interest completely.

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of August 21-23, 2009.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus questions:

1) What will be the #2 film of the weekend?

2) What will be the #3 film of the weekend?

Deadline is Wednesday August 19 at 11:59 pm (blog time).

To find out the rules of the game, go to the main thread for AGEBOC 09.

AGEBOC 09 score

James: 30.5

Brian: 26.5
Rob: 24.5
Joe Webb: 22
Jackrabbit Slim: 18
Nick: 14
Filmman: 13
Marco Trevisiol: 9
Jeanine: 9
Juan: 7.5
Rhymerguy: 4

I just got my issue of Twilight Entertainment Weekly, and it’s their fall preview issue, so that can only mean one thing—it’s time to start thinking about what movies will be up for the Oscar. This year there is a new wrinkle that will change the landscape of prognostication: there will be ten Best Picture nominations, doubling the field. Oscar hasn’t done this since 1943, too long ago to be relevant to how it will affect this year’s nominations. As Grace Slick said forty years ago this weekend at Woodstock, “It’s a new dawn, people.”

There is two ways this could go. Sid Ganis, president of the Academy, opined that it might mean that more different kinds of pictures would be nominated: comedies, foreign films, documentaries. Fat chance.  I think it may allow more boffo box office adventure films in (surely a ten-picture field last year would have  included The Dark Knight), but I don’t envision voters creating in their minds a comedy slot, a documentary slot, a foreign film slot. Instead, I’m guessing what we’ll get is more of the same—instead of five films of a certain prestige released late in the year, we’ll get ten.

So on to my annual wild-ass guesses. In past years I came up with ten possibilities for five nominations. I’m going to stick with ten guesses, but of course I’ll probably only hit about five on the head. If I do more than that I’ll be pleased with myself. In alphabetical order:

Avatar (Dec. 18, James Cameron) The Academy has given a cold-shoulder to sci-fi/fantasy, but opening it up to ten may help here. If this film is as visually dazzling as everyone thinks it is, that could be the ticket into the top category. It certainly should earn lots of tech nominations.

An Education (Oct. 9, Lone Scherfig) Lots of good buzz about this one, about a British teenager in the early 1960s who is courted by an older man.  Certainly a lock for a Best Actress nomination for newcomer Carey Mulligan. Could be the critical sleeper of the year.

The Hurt Locker (July, Kathryn Bigelow) This may be wishful thinking on my part, since the film has been disappointing at the box office and will be hurt by a summer release. But damn it’s a good movie.

Invictus (Dec. 11, Clint Eastwood) A no-brainer: Clint Eastwood directs Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. Don’t know if it’s any good, but it certainly will give the Academy a huge boner. The only downfall will be that it’s too earnest (see Cry Freedom).

The Lovely Bones (Dec. 11, Peter Jackson) Got pushed back specifically to be awards bait, this could be dreadful but Jackson is certainly an Academy favorite. Adapted from a novel by Alice Sebold, it’s about a girl who is murdered and then watches over her family from a heaven-like place. If the movie takes the weird sexual turn the novel does, it could be too disquieting for Oscar.

Nine (Nov. 25, Rob Marshall) Ever since Chicago won Best Picture every year another musical comes along and it’s touted as the presumptive Oscar favorite. But more and more it’s looking as if Chicago was an aberration, not the start of a trend. Phantom of the Opera, The Producers, Rent, Dreamgirls, Sweeney Todd—zero Best Picture nominations among them. Nine, based on a Broadway musical that was in turn based on Fellini’s 8 ½, certainly has a good pedigree—there are six Oscar-winners in the cast.  I’m putting it on the list, but wouldn’t be shocked if it underwhelms. And what’s with all the movies with that particular numeral in the title? We’ve got Nine, 9, and District 9.

Shutter Island (Oct. 2, Martin Scorsese) Scorsese’s been on an Oscar roll—he’s had three Best Picture nominations in the seven years. This one is a genre picture, reminiscent of Cape Fear, but you can’t count Marty out.

The Tree of Life (Dec. 25, Terrence Malick) Sean Penn and Brad Pitt bring the star power, and the mystical Malick directs. Don’t know much about it, but it must be remembered that the difficult Thin Red Line got a Best Pic nod (of course The New World was ignored).

Up (May 28, Pete Docter) This is problematic. No way Up is nominated if there are only five nominees, and it may still get overlooked because animated films are ghettoized in their own category.  What could happen is that if it does get nominated, and the Academy sticks with ten nominees, it may be the end of the Best Animated Film category, as it may be deemed unnecessary.

Up in the Air (Dec., Jason Reitman) George Clooney as a businessman who practically lives in the air. Clooney has a knack for picking good projects, and Reitman comes off the big success of Juno. Smells like a hit and Oscar-friendly to me.

There are a lot of films that I’ve left off that are ripe for nomination, including films by Steven Soderbergh, the Coen Brothers, Jane Campion, Pedro Almodovar, and Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu. There’s even one, The Road, which I had on my list last year that got bumped to this year. I guess the thing I’m most hoping for is that many of these films are good.

I’m joining the consensus of critical opinion about Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia by stating that it is half a good movie. The half about Julia Child discovering her talent for cooking and co-writing a cookbook that changed the ways Americans thought about food is well done, with yet another smashing performance by Meryl Streep. The other half, about a plucky office drone who decides to make all 524 recipes in Child’s book, is a warmed over Lifetime film and a drag on the whole enterprise.

Child was the wife of a career diplomat who, as the film begins, takes a post in Paris in 1949. She is looking for something to do (she was always a woman who worked, the couple met while they worked for the O.S.S., which has led to rumors that she was a spy) and finally lands on taking cooking classes at the Cordon Bleu. Despite some sexist reaction, she flourishes, and eventually meets two French women who are trying to write a French cookbook in English (which apparently didn’t exist at the time). With her husband’s support, Child works for years to get the book published.

Julie Powell (Amy Adams) has a thankless job fielding the sometimes heartbreaking problems of those affected by the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center. She wants to be a writer, but has a problem sticking with things. She too has a patient husband (Chris Messina) and eventually comes with the idea to write a blog about making all the recipes in Child’s book.

This sounds like a good concept, but I’m afraid Ephron isn’t a talented enough writer or director to make it work. The sequences involving Powell seem to have been written with a chisel, they are so unsubtle. For example there’s a very poorly written scene with Powell having lunch with her much more successful friends (they’re always on their cell phones!) and then the obligatory scene in which Adams and Messina have a bad fight and he stalks off. I have no idea how true this is, but even if it were it’s too tidy and seems jerry-built.

The Child scenes, though, are much more palatable, but it’s not so much for the writing and directing as it is because it’s just a better story, and it has the incredible talent of Meryl Streep going for it. I feel bad for Amy Adams, who in review after review is being found wanting when it comes to Streep, which is kind of like being the second-best golfer to Tiger Woods. I will say this, though, Adams is definitely in danger of being typecast as a chirpy, perky woman. In some of her scenes she seems to still be playing the fairy princess in Enchanted. Even when she’s having an emotional breakdown she comes across as absurdly adorable. This woman needs to play Lady MacBeth, stat.

Now for Streep. How many more superlatives can be tossed her way? It’s only August, but I have a gut feeling this performance will be the one to beat for Best Actress come Oscar time, as the Academy is about due to award her a third Oscar (I think they wanted to last year for Doubt, but had to give one to Kate Winslet first). Only four other actors have won three or more Oscars (not counting honorary awards): Katharine Hepburn with four, and Walter Brennan, Ingrid Bergman, and Jack Nicholson with three. Streep is an actor who works from the outside in, as she starts with Child’s distinctive fluty voice but moves beyond impersonation into transformation. She even acts tall (Child was six-two). Other actors have done this (Laurence Olivier started by figuring out his character’s walk) but Streep, who has played women from all sorts of places, has made a name as the greatest chameleon in film history.

Credit is also due to Stanley Tucci, who plays Paul Child. Julia Child was not what anyone would consider sexy, but the relationship between Streep and Tucci is a pleasure to watch (and they even get a little frisky in the sheets). There’s also a great moment when Child makes a vulgar simile that brings the house down.

I’d like to add that I saw this in a matinee on a beautiful summer day and the theater was more than half full, which is unusual (I almost always see matinees with only a handful of other patrons), and there wasn’t a face under twenty-five. It’s nice to see adults at the movies, even if they should have gotten a better movie. They all seemed to enjoy it.

American Casino
Director: Leslie Cockburn
Documentary about financial institution hijinks in the subprime lending industry. Spoiler alert: they screwed everything up.
Metacritic: not listed

Bandslam (trailer)
Director: Todd Graff
Looks harmless enough.
Metacritic: 65

The Beaches of Agnes
Director: Agnès Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7, Vagabond, The Gleaners and I)
One of my priorities for the week, it appears to be one of the increasingly rare films that qualify as documentaries but play around with the form and offer something different. Varda, of course, has been making movies for decades, but Cleo from 5 to 7 is the only one I’ve seen (I enjoyed it).
Metacritic: 85

District 9 (trailer)
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Already reviewed at Gone Elsewhere by filmman, who calls it “a distinct and wholly original take on the alien sci-fi genre” before letting the superlatives fly. Myself? Eh, I’ll see it sooner or later. I’ve fallen for fanboy hype one too many times to get too excited now, although I acknowledge that this one seems a cut above the usual.
Metacritic: 81

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (trailer)
Director: Neal Brennan
I’ve never really thought of Jeremy Piven as someone who I’d go out of my way to see in a movie.
Metacritic: 40

Lorna’s Silence (trailer)
Director: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (The Promise, Rosetta, The Son, L’enfant)
New film from Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, about an Albanian woman struggling to survive in Belgium. I saw L’enfant a few years ago, and it was something of an experience. I’d love to see this one, also, but there’s so much playing these days that I find myself not quite able to keep up.
Metacritic: 84

Ponyo (trailer)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki (Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle)
And here we have a real-life, honest-to-goodness dilemma. I would love to see this, but I have little interest in seeing the American-dubbed version, which as far as I know is the only version in theatres. Ebert has an easy way around this: “You dummy! All animated films are dubbed! Little Nemo can’t really speak!” Of course, that’s true, but it doesn’t really get me anywhere. For one thing, it sounds downright Turner-esque – it’s easy to imagine the Ted saying, “You dummy! It was always in color! Chaplin wasn’t really monochromatic!” For another, as Ebert must know, almost all foreign films of a certain age are dubbed – would he want to watch a version of Bicycle Thieves (for example) with Tom Hanks doing the voice of Antonio? I would think such a thing would be a travesty. Why would an animated film be any different? To me, that it is a Japanese film is part of the appeal, not something to be worked around. So I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Metacritic: 89

Spread (trailer)
Director: David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Asylum, Mister Foe)
I’m perfectly good with not seeing another movie about the Den of Sin That Is Los Angeles again. I guess the most surprising thing about this is that it’s not based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis.
Metacritic: 40

Thirst
Director: Park Chan-Wook (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, Lady Vengeance)
I hope I have the time to see this, too, as I fear a one-week-and-out scenario is developing. For whatever reason, it seems like only a very small percentage of Korean films get a meaningful U.S. release – it must be the most active film industry in the world to be relegated to such a niche role here. In this case, the film has a decent distributor (Focus), who hasn’t even bothered to put a trailer on Apple. Unfathomable.
Metacritic: 71

The Time Traveler’s Wife (trailer)
Director: Robert Schwentke (Flightplan)
I honestly don’t understand, from watching the trailer, what this movie is even about. Girl meets time traveler, girl grows up, gets married to time traveler, and … is upset because he’s always out time traveling. What? This sounds like a hackneyed setup for a conflict, or is it just me?
Metacritic: 47

Triangle
Director: Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, Johnnie To
The idea here is that you have three directors, but only one narrative. So instead of an anthology, as such, you end up with a sort of tag-team arrangement. That sounds interesting, I guess. Anyone have anything to add? I would think that such a project would be something that would get more press, and maybe it did – it’s been over two years since the film premiered at Cannes.
Metacritic: not listed

Throw Down Your Heart
Director: Sascha Paladino
Documentary about banjo player Bela Fleck traveling to Africa.
Metacritic: 65

District 9 is a distinct and wholly original take on the alien sci-fi genre. A relentless action film that moves at full-speed right from the beginning, it’s a deftly-handled, tightly-written and furiously-paced parable about humans and aliens struggling to co-exist.

District 9 Directed by Neill Blomkamp

The idea that one can mix the tenets of a fully-formed parable within the genre framework of a kick-ass action picture is quite staggering to watch unfold. As with Sleep Dealer before it, District 9 (albeit on a much slicker and far better effects budget) proffers remarkably deep ideas about humans and what it means to exert control over another race. The fact that the race in question is from another planet holds absolutely no bearing in our belief in or our ability to surrender to this supremely talented filmmaker, a young man who has created a living society of creatures through amazing special effects for the budget and incredibly seamless direction and camerawork and placed them in a world that we feel exists completely.

It is a testament, also, to the digital camera that will, quite easily, supplant the Genesis and even the Filmstream as the go-to digital cameras for “New Hollywood”. The striking resolution of the images blew away anything in Zodiac or Superman Returns. (Shot on Filmstream and Genesis, respectively.) The film-like images and lack of digital-flash in the movement was a wonder to behold. Unlike other major action films shot on digital, this movie moved and moved and moved and jumped and jiggled and never stood still, but not once did it feel as though we were watching a video image (except when it was supposed to feel that way), and never once did we say ‘hold still’. The format worked for what the movie was and the camera is nothing short of a sensation and mark my words, it will be used for many years to come on many more major movies. It’s nothing less than a complete game-changer.

The movie itself relies more on the framework of its ideas than anything substantially deep in the plot department as it sets up a situation that involves a worker for a major arms dealer/everything-else-controlling-corporation going into the slum to clear all the aliens into a de-facto concentration camp with the thought of making the aliens’ lives better. What everyone knows but fails to acknowledge (except an extremely perceptive talking head) is that this corporation wants to control alien weapons, and they will do genetic tests to achieve just that goal.

When the main character ignorantly infects himself with alien DNA, the corporation finds out and wants to take his tissues for experimentation. The rest of the movie is a race against time to find a way to ‘cure’ the lead character’s transformation. What really solidifies the amazing structure of the movie is its absolutely pitch-perfect and satisfying ending, the first ending in a long time that left it wide-open for a sequel while being insanely satisfying in itself. (A lot like the final episode of The Shield. A lot.)

But what struck me the most, and what no review I’ve read has yet touched on, is just how…completely ‘modern’ the director’s and writers’ handling of the material comes across.

At times, this is as close to watching a first-person shooter as you’re going to find. That is in no way a knock on the film, quite the contrary, it gives such a visceral feel to the film while at the same time triggering something within the viewer that says: “I know this conceit…and I really, really like it.”

The allusions to popular video games are sometimes so strong, one in particular involving a pig and a “Blackwater” Agent, that I wondered why more of the young men in the crowd didn’t yell “BFG!” or “Half-Life” when many of them so obviously knew what had happened. And honestly, I had to take a second and say: “Please, please give this man the Halo movie.”

For me, it was incredible to see this, the first director actually using the video game conceits, sometimes to the letter, for an action film that you may as well, at times, have been playing with a joystick in your hand. The way people died, even…I just…unless you’re an avid gamer, which many in the audience obviously were, I’m not sure you’ll understand. This was the first movie in a long time where the crowd was audibly gasping in fear and anticipation and then cheering at situations on the screen. In so many aspects, this movie represents the ushering in of a new era. Its implications will be felt for many years to come.

We have only just begun to touch the surface of modern filmmaking and like OK Computer in ‘96, District 9 will be seen as the movie that correctly ushered in a new way to treat an old art form.

And these shorts just keep getting better.

Just when I think I’ve found my favorite early works, another comes along to take its rightful place at the top of the food chain.

First, is Burton’s stop-motion masterpiece, VINCENT.

This is a strikingly-shot and handsomely-written film spoken in a verse-style that appears to be an autobiographical script of what one would surmise Mr. Burton grew up wanting to be.

The young man involved describes how he grew up wanting to be Vincent Price and how he has different ideas of things he wants to do compared, I assume, to what the status quo says to do.

Enough from me. Enjoy this, the first Tim Burton film. A true masterpiece of lighting, animation and writing.

“You’re not Vincent Price, you’re Vincent Malloy. You’re not tormented or insane, you’re just a young boy.”

Why this has not become a legendary children’s story, I don’t know.

**Interesting fact: Burton’s girlfriend, an executive at Disney, produced this.

The next I could only find in three parts:

His first major foray into directing, with big names and production values, but still an early film, was FRANKENWEENIE.

Filled again, with stark blacks and whites and harsh shafts of light in a world that, rather than seemingly shot on a backlot, seems to exist perfectly in that Leave It To Beaver world where if you visited the backlot, you would think you were intruding on a neighborhood you shouldn’t be disturbing.

This is, once again, a masterpiece of the psychological underpinning of what it takes to be a child in a world that shows how random terrible things can happen…and what some children think they may be able to do to reverse the awful fates that befall some things.

No doubt, Burton just wondered what it would be like to bring back a dead dog, but he added so much more depth to that simple idea.

Dare I say, I feel, after viewing these two films, Burton has fallen far off his initial brilliance as he made his way through the studio system. What types of movies could this man have made had he stayed independent?

My love of Batman aside, that movie now seems like a large wart of a blemish on his career, a steam-rolled contract hit fostered by those two wunderkind of the Sony system who, it seems, fooled everyone in a town where what you can say and get means more than what you can do. But who am I to question men who make so much money in a very profitable business.

And please don’t get angry, but after these films, Burton strikes me as the dark version of Steven Spielberg, making pitch-prefect representations of the dark side of suburbia, what kids think of when they think about what they wouldn’t want to tell anyone.

All of that aside, this is a great movie, a sign of a brilliant talent, and a very enjoyable watch, with an ending that brings child and adult together in the implication of Burton saying that no one is immune to child’s impulses.

This month at New York City’s Film Forum there is a huge series called “Brit Noir,” a retrospective of British films, mostly from the post-war period, that feature the seamier side of life. There are a total of 44 films being screened, and I would love to see every one of them. In one of my alternative lives, the one where I’m an independent man of means who lives in a fab Greenwich Village apartment and dates intellectual European girls who wear a lot of black and look like Audrey Hepburn, I would see each and every one. Instead I’ll have to settle for renting the films that are available on DVD.

Of the 44 films I’ve only seen two previously. One of them is Night and the City, and the other is The Third Man, which opens the Film Forum series. I hadn’t seen The Third Man in quite a while, though, so I purchased the Criterion Collection’s DVD version and spent an enjoyable Sunday afternoon watching the film and the many extras.

The Third Man, which was named in a poll as the best British film of all time, is described as a “non-auteur film.” This is because the idea germinated from the writer, Graham Greene, who was sent to Vienna by the producer Alexander Korda and asked to come up with a script. Greene had the kernel of an idea about a man who comes to a city to visit a friend, but hears that he is dead. Later, he is shocked when he sees the man alive. Greene researched Vienna, and learned about the ubiquitous black market, specifically the horrific practice of stealing penicillin and then diluting it for sale, which wreaked medical havoc on children and others.

The film was directed by Carol Reed, who has a somewhat unsung film legacy. He is certainly best known for The Third Man among the cognoscenti, but earned an Oscar for the lavish musical Oliver! Now I happen to think Oliver! is a terrific film, but that view is not universal, especially among those who feel that Reed’s work in the forties and fifties is largely forgotten.

The Third Man, like Casablanca, is called a happy accident, as many things fell into place (hence the “non-auteur” tag). Consider the music, which is one of the aspects that it’s best known for. Reed was in a wine bar in Vienna when he heard a man playing a strange instrument that he later learned was a zither. Reed got the bright idea to use it for the film, jettisoning a score played by the London Symphony Orchestra and using nothing but the zither playing of Anton Karas. The main theme would become a smash hit, making Karas a millionaire.

Then there’s the cast. Originally it was conceived for Cary Grant as Holly Martins and Noel Coward as Harry Lime. This would have made the film much more British in tone, as the roles ended up going to Americans: Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. It was Welles who would provide the film with a speech that would give The Third Man its most lasting legacy.

The story concerns Cotten as Martins, a hack writer of pulp Westerns who arrives in post-war Vienna, which is reeling from the bombings and shortages of every kind.  The city is divided into zones controlled by the Allies: Britain, France, Russia and the U.S. Martins has been promised a job by his old school chum, Lime, but shortly after arriving he learns that Lime is dead, and arrives at the cemetery just in time for his friend’s funeral. There he meets a British military policeman, Trevor Howard, who tells Martins that Lime was a ruthless racketeer. Martins doesn’t believe him, and begins to dig into the circumstances of Lime’s death. When he gets conflicting witness reports involving a third man at the scene, he gets very suspicious, and teams up with Lime’s girl, played by Alida Valli, to get to the bottom of things.

The film has the essential form of classic noir, with the amateur sleuth, the mysterious beauty, and several suspicious characters (a Baron who carries around a miniature Pinscher, a pinch-faced doctor, and a jocular Romanian). Greene, who despised much of American culture, scores several points by making his leading man a bumbler. In one of Cotten’s early scenes he is seen walking under a ladder, and Howard describes him as “born to be murdered.” He haplessly tries to seduce Valli, and gets bitten on the hand by a parrot. Sam Spade he’s not.

In contrast, Harry Lime is viciously competent (yes, I am revealing Harry Lime is alive, it’s not a well-kept secret among film buffs). Welles was wooed to play the part, though the American producer David O. Selznick objected, saying Welles was box office poison. He was convinced to play the part by Reed, who told him that his part was small but that he would steal the picture. In many ways Welles involvement in the film was like Marlon Brando’s in Apocalypse Now–he earned a truckload of money for a few days work and exhibited diva-like behavior (he refused to film the climactic scene in Vienna’s sewer, necessitating it be rebuilt in England’s Shepperton Studios). The difference is that Welles elevated The Third Man to classic status while Brando almost sunk Apocalypse Now.

Harry Lime was said to be modeled after Kim Philby, a British double-agent, whom Greene remained friendly with even after Philby was disgraced. Indeed, Lime, with Welles as his voice, has a somewhat British demeanor, and is clearly Martins’ better. The first appearance of Welles, hiding in a doorway, a cat at his feet, with a light exposing his smirking face, is one of the most striking in film history. The conversation that Welles and Cotton share on a Ferris wheel at the end of the picture is one of the most famous. In some respects it is to film what Hamlet’s soliloquy is to drama, posing the moral question that hung in the air following the atrocities of World War II–how much is a human life worth? Welles asks Cotten to look down at the people below and wonders, “Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?”

Of course Cotten is appalled, but doesn’t have the words to express a counter-argument. Welles then improvises the film’s most famous passage: “Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Because Welles wrote this bit, it is erroneously thought that he wrote all of his part, or even directed his scenes or the entire film, and in some interviews he didn’t deny it (later in life he did). He was good-humored enough to relate that the Swiss pointed out to him that they have never manufactured cuckoo clocks.

Welles did later give Carol Reed all the credit, and a lot of credit is due him. Greene’s script is magnificent, but Reed gave the film a look that has entranced audiences for sixty years. For one thing it is one of the best examples of a film that makes a city a character. They filmed this thing on the streets of Vienna, with all the Old World charm and rubble intact. Reed utilized the narrow passageways brilliantly, using light and shadow to an astonishing effect (credit here also to Robert Krasker, who won an Oscar for cinematography) and used an old noir trick of wetting the streets before shooting, making the cobblestones glisten. No matter how many times I see the film, I can’t help but go slack-jawed at certain moments, such as when the old balloon salesman enters the square, or the way the shadow of a small boy makes him look like a giant, or the breath-taking final chase sequence in the sewer. To make the film even more expressionistic, the scenes are frequently filmed at an askew angle, which annoyed some critics but will remind others of the shots of the villain’s lair in the old Batman TV series.

Then there’s the very ending, a long shot of Valli walking toward the camera out of a cemetery, passing Cotten as he stands to the side, a perfect summation of the film. Ironically it wasn’t the ending Greene wrote–he crafted a happy ending, with Cotten and Valli going off arm in arm. Reed argued against it, and Greene later fessed up that Reed was right.

“The concept is if we’re talking about a creature with supernatural abilities, Moby Dick, then every whaler will have supernatural abilities, too. Something. They can fly. I don’t know, they can bend bullets, whatever.”

- Timur Bekmambetov on his upcoming adaptation of Moby Dick

I’m getting the above tattooed on my chest tomorrow.

Previously: James jokingly correctly predicts that the film will have a supernatural aspects

Okay…I understand this series is only three posts into its run, but this, for me, is the most impressive piece so far.

An early student film from Oliver Stone entitled: Last Year in Viet Nam

Filled with some striking imagery, some impressive camera work and framing and some pretty obvious early hallmarks of an important talent, this is the most fully-formed, mature work I’ve seen in this early series.

The film, about a soldier’s return to New York from Vietnam, is a silent film shot in black and white in an apartment and on the hardscrabble streets of New York. Interspersed with these scenes are color shots of jungle and forest and river and ocean, an obvious allusion, I feel, to the only place the soldier is now comfortable, where his life is real, in the jungles of Vietnam and nature.

When we return to the streets of New York, we switch back to black and white and we see sparse settings with few people and an obvious sense of dread and abandonment of life.

I really liked this film and apparently it was originally twelve minutes long. Will search for the entire piece, but for now, enjoy this early student film of Oliver Stone.

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of August 14-16, 2009.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus questions:

1) What will be the #2 film of the weekend?

2) What will be the #3 film of the weekend?

Deadline is Wednesday August 12 at 11:59 pm (blog time).

To find out the rules of the game, go to the main thread for AGEBOC 09.

AGEBOC 09 score

James: 29.5

Rob: 23.5
Joe Webb: 22
Brian: 20.5
Jackrabbit Slim: 18
Nick: 14
Filmman: 13
Marco Trevisiol: 9
Jeanine: 9
Juan: 7.5
Rhymerguy: 4

Part five of our discussion on the films of the 00’s, this time focusing on 2004.

1) Best of 2004?
2) Worst of 2004?
3) Most underrated?
4) Most underseen?
5) Most overrated?
6) Best performance(s) of the year?
7) Best single scene/sequence of the year?
8) One thing you could change about any single film in 2004 (Example: different cast, different director, different style, different release date, different studio).
9) Most memorable (good or bad) theatergoing experience of the year?
10) Most influential film/performance/style/director?

Obviously feel free to answer only the questions you’re interested in or to write/respond to something else entirely. The lists themselves are just a starting point designed to foster discussion.

Previously: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003

Part of the reason I found (500) Days of Summer to be ninety-five minutes of uninterrupted bliss is that I feel like I could have written it. In fact, I did some years ago write a screenplay that is very similar to it in plot and style, so much so that if my script were ever produced people would think I was influenced by this film. In baseball terms, this movie was right in my wheelhouse.

While I enjoyed the dickens out of it, a smile plastered on my face throughout, I recognize that the film is a delicate high-wire act, with a script that teeters on the overly precious. But it always stays on the wire due mostly to the capable hands of its leading man, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I’ll say it right now: Gordon-Levitt is the best actor under thirty in Hollywood films today.

In (500) Days of Summer (those parentheses are annoying to type) he plays Tom Hansen, a greeting-card designer and alround decent guy. When a new girl, Summer (Zooey Deschanel) starts work at his office he’s instantly smitten, but insecurity keeps him at bay. Finally, after a drunken night of karaoke, they start dating, even though they have a fundamental disagreement about the nature or even existence of love: he thinks it’s essential part of a person’s happiness, and is tied up with destiny, while she thinks it’s all a fantasy. This difference in philosophy will ultimately take its toll.

The film is told in non-linear fashion, with each scene identified by one of the five-hundred days between Tom meeting Summer and his getting over her. This keeps the story from bogging down, and we get the pleasure of watching Gordon-Levitt veer from giddy puppy love to post-breakup despair. The direction by Mark Webb also keeps things interesting, as he utilizes all sorts of tricks to keep it varied, from effective use of split-screen at a party (one side shows Gordon-Levitt’s expectations, the other reality) or when Gordon-Levitt wanders into one of his character’s sketches.

But this film really belongs to the writers, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. It percolates with terrific lines and forays into Tom’s psyche. I especially liked when he, in full self-pitying mode, goes to an art cinema and sees himself in a French film (complete with mime and balloon) and then a Bergman film, that ends with a funny take on the chess on the beach scene from The Seventh Seal. There are all sorts of small details that make the film enjoyable, such as Tom taking counsel from his much younger sister.

That is not to say that there aren’t a few problems with the film. At times it does edge into gooey preciousness, such as when Tom and Summer play house in an Ikea. Tom’s best buddies are kind of stock characters, even if they do have a lot of funny lines, while Summer isn’t a completely rounded character. I get the feeling (especially from an opening title card) that she’s based on someone who broke the heart of one of the writers, so perhaps that’s why she seems alternately charming and cold. She’s supposed to be quirky (Ringo’s her favorite Beatle) but I found the characterization wanting. No fault of Deschanel, though, who is luminous.

But those are small potatoes in what is otherwise a pleasure. The film bears a huge debt to a couple of other films, most notably The Graduate, which is spoken (Tom’s over-romantic nature is chalked up to a misreading of the film as a child, and then when Summer sees it she breaks into sobs and breaks up with Tom shortly thereafter). There’s even a key moment set to a Simon and Garfunkel tune. The unspoken is Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, another biography of a relationship that doesn’t work told in non-linear form. Instead of romanticizing New York, this film does the same for Los Angeles, as Tom loves its architecture. The film is set in L.A. but has only one scene which is set in a car, and Tom is even able to walk to work. I wouldn’t have thought that possible.

After a light slate last week, the movies open with a vengeance again this week.

Adam (trailer)
Director: Max Meyer
The trailer for this is reasonably engaging, yet there’s something that is ever-so-subtly off-putting about it. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it has something to do with the title, which is horrible. Besides being hopelessly generic, it invites us to look at the movie solely in terms of Adam’s character, which then implies that the other characters – and especially the woman played by Rose Byrne – are afterthoughts or otherwise not priorities. And that, in turn, makes the movie seem like it’s exploiting the main character’s illness (if we call Asberger’s an illness) for the sake of making something “sweet.” Or, I dunno, maybe I’m reading too much into it. Still a bad title, though.
Metacritic: 58

The Answer Man (trailer)
Director: John Hindman
I guess every character actor of a certain age does a movie like this (i.e, an indie about a lonely middle-age to elderly man who is rejuvenated by the attention of a younger woman) sooner or later. Jeff Daniels is a little younger than most actors when they play this role, but it is what it is. Speaking of bad titles, this one apparently was called Arlen Faber when it premiered at Sundance. Yikes.
Metacritic: 44

Brighton Rock
Director: John Boulting
Rialto Pictures’ latest release, of a 1947 film based on a novel by Graham Greene. I had never heard of the movie before this week, but I love this kind of stuff.
Metacritic: not listed

The Cove (trailer)
Director: Louie Psihoyos
I guess this is the must-see of the week, having gathered near-unanimous positive notices to this point. It’s a “pulse-pounding eco-thriller” about Japanese harvesting of dolphins.
Metacritic: 82

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (trailer)
Director: Stephen Sommers (The Jungle Book, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Van Helsing)
Well, Van Helsing is on the short list for worst movie of the decade, at least out of stuff I’ve seen, so there’s that. Plus, unlike Transformers, I never played with G.I. Joe toys as a kid (or watched the show). So I don’t even have any nostalgic curiosity going on here.
Metacritic: 32

Irene in Time (trailer)
Director: Henry Jaglom (Babyfever, Last Summer in the Hamptons, Festival in Cannes, Hollywood Dreams)
Jaglom, I gather, is a sort of cult figure, although I can’t say I’ve ever heard of any of his movies. I’m operating out of ignorance here, but he seems like more obscure version of Alan Rudolph, or perhaps the cinema world’s equivalent to Lyndon LaRouche. I dunno.
Metacritic: not listed

Julie & Julia (trailer)
Director: Nora Ephron (Sleeples in Seattle, Michael, You’ve Got Mail, Bewitched)
It occurs to me now that I’ve never in my life seen a movie that Nora Ephron directed, which, when you think about it, might be the only thing she has in common with Satyajit Ray. At any rate, this has the best odds to break that streak since probably Michael, although I wouldn’t say that the odds are exactly good.
Metacritic: 65

Paper Heart (trailer)
Director: Nicholas Jasenovec
Sorta-documentary about Charlyne Yi’s ruminations on the nature of love. If Jeanine really wants to see it, I might could be persuaded to tag along (or might not), but I’m not likely to see it otherwise. It has the feel of something that would make a great short but semi-tedious feature.
Metacritic: 54

A Perfect Getaway (trailer)
Director: David Twohy (The Arrival, Pitch Black, Below, The Chronicles of Riddick)
It occurs to me now that I’ve never in my life seen a movie that David Twohy directed, which, when you think about it, might be the only thing he has in common with Erich von Stroheim. At any rate, this has the best odds to break that streak since probably Pitch Black, although I wouldn’t say that the odds are exactly good.
Metacritic: 63

Revanche (trailer at official site)
Director: Götz Spielmann
Austrian film that is the fourth of the five 2008 Foreign Film Oscar nominees to open stateside. I don’t rightly know anything about it, but it seems worth checking out.
Metacritic: 83

Rumba
Director: Dominique Abel
Never seen a trailer, and I’ve only lightly skimmed the synopsis, but the second still on this site is enough to scare me away from this movie. I know this is Wellsian in the extreme, but I simply have no desire to see a movie in which those two people dance.
Metacritic: not listed

…by ranking him below Jay Leno’s new series in search results for “The Tonight Show”.

The indignity of it all.

Baby Mama is a comedy about Kate (Tina Fey), a single, successful late-30s businesswoman who suddenly has a desire to have a child but finds that her body seems incapable of having one. She turns to surrogacy and frictions arise with the working-class surrogate mother Angie (Amy Poehler) whose personality and attitude towards pregnancy are at complete odds with Kate’s high-maintenance views. When Angie moves in with her after leaving her cheating husband the friction inevitably increases.

In its opening third the film seemed to be about how two characters from vastly different socio-economic backgrounds would learn to adjust and like each other in a challenging situation. While it appeared to be heading down a predictable path I was quite fine with that as it was enjoyable enough and had a pretty good comic sensibility.

But alas, from the moment we learn that Angie is in fact faking the pregnancy that the film falls apart. While still having its reasonable share of funny moments, the plot (even by mainstream Hollywood standards) becomes increasingly contrived. The finale where numerous idiotic events occur to create a happy ending – which would’ve been much easier to do if they’d stayed with the plot of the opening third – is mind-numbingly idiotic.

(Warning: spoilers follow)

To use one example of a problematic plot turn, at a fairly late stage in the film Kate learns that the baby Angie is carrying (who is pregnant through her husband) isn’t hers. You would presume this piece of deceit would be devastating for her and would lead to much understandable bitterness and anger towards Angie. Instead, after some brief remorse from Angie at a court hearing, that is all forgotten and Kate is right by Angie’s side as she’s about to have her baby as if she’s her best friend!

It’s a shame that these plot weaknesses hurt the film because it has a reasonable share of funny moments, helped by writer/director Michael McCullers who displays a decent sense of comic timing. As for the cast, while Fey and Poehler weren’t really successful at creating fully-fledged three-dimensional characterisations (especially Poehler) their comedic skills ensured they were enjoyable to watch. Steve Martin is mildly funny in a minor role as Kate’s boss but the real standout support performance was Sigourney Weaver who, as the somewhat eccentric head of the surrogate institute, is very amusing and avoids the obvious trap of overplaying her role. Greg Kinnear was somewhat wasted as Kate’s love interest and Maura Tierney continues to be stuck with thankless support roles that she was doing back in the 1990s.

Despite its good qualities this film wasn’t a particularly satisfying experience. Even in a conventional comedy like this some level of intellectual rigour needs to exist for it to work successfully.

(Note: image from http://seantm.blogspot.com/)

As blatant a rip-off as I’ve ever seen:

(Tip of the hat to Brad aka ‘Juan’ for pointing it out)

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of August 7-9, 2009.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus questions:

1) Will Julie & Julia earn over or under 20 million?

2) Will A Perfect Getaway earn over or under 6 million?

Deadline is Wednesday August 5 at 11:59 pm (blog time).

To find out the rules of the game, go to the main thread for AGEBOC 09.

AGEBOC 09 score

James: 27.5

Rob: 23.5
Brian: 20
Jackrabbit Slim: 18
Joe Webb: 18
Nick: 14
Filmman: 12
Marco Trevisiol: 8.5
Jeanine: 8
Juan: 7.5
Rhymerguy: 4

Volume 2 of this series now focuses on two of Scorsese’s early short films.

The first is:

What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?

This was a Scorsese short film that seemed to fall between his first film, Vesuvius VI (which I couldn’t find, and which is apparently, amazingly, a Roman Epic inspired by 77 Sunset Strip. Man…I want to see that) and It’s Not Just You, Murray!, about an aging mobster, which seems to be available on an anthology entitled Early Works.

In this short, you can find the energy and style that would color his later films. There are some really-well-done camera shots, like at 3:18, an awesome dolly around an illuminated face.

The second short, made in 1967, arguably his most popular and well-known, is the short entitled The Big Shave or Viet-’67.

This is apparently an allegory on the Vietnam war how Scorsese saw it at the time. I was a bit trepadatious about how much praise I’ve heard about this short, but it’s surprisingly well-made and really rather affecting, given the idea of what Scorsese was obviously going for, given the alternate title.

It’s a very simple short, and pretty powerful. With an economy of place and some great music, we watch a man enter the bathroom and…shave. What happens at the end is where it gets pretty powerful and intense.

One thing that sticks out to me, pretty greatly, is how well-edited the two shorts happen to be. Operating at a pretty high level for being so early.

Enjoy. Let me know what you think…

I’ve just finished my most enjoyable movie experience of the year, the scabrously funny In the Loop, directed by Armando Iannucci and written by Iannucci, Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, and Tony Roche. That’s a lot of writers, but this script is absolutely packed with gems of dialogue that are laugh-out-loud hilarious and dripping with seething venom. I’m writing this review quickly before I have a chance to forget some of them.

The film, which owes a lot to the bureaucratic nightmares conjured by Joseph Heller in Catch-22 and Good as Gold, details the skullduggery concerning mid-level state department officials in London and Washington over a prospective invasion of an unnamed middle-east country. On one side is the acid-tongued Prime Minister’s Director of Communication (Peter Capaldi, in a bravura performance). On the other is a weak-kneed minister (Tom Hollander) who creates a firestorm when he tells an interviewer that war is “unforeseeable.” He and his new aide, Chris Addison, head down the rabbit hole to Washington, where they are enlisted by an Assistant Secretary of State (Mimi Kennedy), who is in a pissing war with a fellow Assistant (David Rasche). Kennedy’s assistant (Anna Chlumsky) has written a paper listing very good reasons against war, which becomes a political football.

Also in the mix is a U.S. general deliciously played by James Gandolfini, who dominates each scene he is in. He is variously referred to as “General Flintstone” and “General Shrek” by those in conflict with him. But he also has one of the best lines in the film when he describes war as something that, when one sees it, one never wants to go back, unless absolutely necessary. “Like France,” he adds.

If Capaldi is the electricity that makes this film hum, others in the cast are also excellent. Hollander, in particular, is funny just by how Iannucci uses his vertically challenged size (which was also used to a similar effect in his turn as Mr. Collins in Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice). Hollander’s character is variously described as sounding like a “chicken with a wasp up its ass,” and “a Nazi Julie Andrews.” He is also chided by an aide, after he complains that he has a stressful job, that he “is not a lion-tamer or a snooker player.”

Visually the film is pretty thread-bare, looking like an episode of The Office (UK or US version, take your pick). It’s the Mametesque script, which will be confounding to those who have to sanitize these things for airplanes, that sings brilliantly. The writers have perfectly captured the double-think of government functionaries, whether it’s the manner in which they name controversial committees with the dullest names they can think of, or how a supplicant walks around with a squash racket strapped to his back, hoping his boss will ask him to play. My only complaint is that because of some thick British Isles accents, I missed some of the lines. I’m eager to see it again, with subtitles.

Milford, CT 8/1/09

The fat-free edition.

A constant in film discussion online and elsewhere is the worst films people have seen in a particular genre, year, decade or all-time.

But such discussions haven’t really extended to documentaries and considering how they’ve increasingly become a regular and integral part of cinema releases, they deserve discussion… not just for the best but the worst.

My vote for the worst I’ve seen would be to a 2005 doco (which got very brief cinematic release in America) called ‘The Last Mogul’, a biopic of Hollywood agent and later mogul (involved with Universal studios) Lew Wasserman.

Wasserman is apparently one of the most significant people in terms of changing the setup of the Hollywood movie system post-WW2, but I didn’t care by the end as this doco simply bored me to tears. Maybe modern Hollywood executives are less interesting stories than the original moguls who set up the studio system, but it had to be better than was shown here.

Using the criteria of a documentary that got a cinematic release, what’s the worst doco you’ve seen?

I got home late last night, but if I had realized it was such a light week, I’d have tapped this out then. As it is … it’s a light week.

Act of God (trailer)
Director: Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes)
Now this looks interesting: a documentary about lighting and the metaphysical effects thereof. I’m not so sure about the metaphysical aspect of this, but I’d see the movie just for the lightning footage anyway. I’m there.
Metacritic: not listed

Aliens in the Attic (trailer)
Director: John Schultz (Drive Me Crazy, Like Mike, The Honeymooners)
I don’t think that this is going to do all that well in terms of box office, but Fox has only themselves to blame, not putting this out in 3-D. Yup, 3-D would have made all the difference.
Metacritic: no score

Funny People (trailer)
Director: Judd Apatow (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up)
Looks good, unquestionably the most I’ve wanted to see an Adam Sandler for at least a decade. Maybe ever. Relatedly, the release of a new Apatow film reminds me of Chris, who slipped away into the night all those years ago, not to return, but at least didn’t delete all his shit.
Metacritic: 60

Shrink (trailer)
Director: Jonas Pate
Well, I’m not going to surprise anyone by expressing my dislike for Kevin Spacey, or my disinterest in a movie about a Hollywood shrink in which … wait for it … the shrink is the one who’s really messed up.
Metacritic: 40

So I thought I would try something new here and do a series of posts on the early, early works of directors I admire and who I think have made major contributions to the medium of filmmaking.

For the inaugural post I thought I would shed light on a really early work of a major Hollywood director, Quentin Tarantino.

From the YouTube Synopsis by username World2008rain:

“My Best Friend’s Birthday (1987) is an unfinished black and white independent film by Craig Hamann and Quentin Tarantino, while they were working at the now shuttered Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, California. The project started in 1984, when Hamann wrote a short 30-40 page script about a young man who continually tries to do something nice for his friend’s birthday, only to have his efforts backfire. Tarantino became attached to the project as co-writer and director, and he and Hamann expanded the short script into an 80 page script. On an estimated budget of $5,000, they shot the film on 16mm over the course of the next four years. Hamann and Tarantino starred in the film, along with several video store and acting class buddies, and worked on the crew, which included fellow Video Archives employees Rand Vossler and Roger Avary. The film is the most overtly comic that Tarantino has made. Tarantino himself referred to it as like a “Jerry Lewis movie”. The original cut was about 70 minutes long but due to a fire only 36 minutes of the film survived. The 36 minute cut has been shown at several film festivals. It has never been officially released.”

A few thoughts:

1.) Listen closely in the first part and you’ll hear the name of a familiar radio station.

2.) The man who comes out of the bathroom in part 2 is, apparently, one of the police with the German Shepherd in the bathroom in Reservoir Dogs.

3.) Starting at 4:50 of the second part there is a rather ambitious and pretty brilliant shot that is one take and involves no cuts and what I can only assume is a dolly or some sort of rig that allowed him to get the shot he got. An early hint that this man really knew what he was doing. Awesome.

4.) Funny. There’s a reference to Aldo Raine in part 3 at the 5:00 minute mark.

5.) What was the whole subplot with the African-American? Big question mark.

6.) Part 3 has a great what seems like a 360-degree pan of a bedroom and the posters on the walls glancing over the woman on the bed and ending on Tarantino at the 9:08 mark.

7.) The commenters say a lot of this script was recycled or re-purposed for True Romance. Would have to watch the two together to say with any certainty.

8.) A strong use of music is present in this film.

Give your thoughts. Would be interested to know what you all think.

Be careful, there is quite a bit of objectionable material herein. You have been forewarned.

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of July 31 – August 2, 2009.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus questions:

1) What will be the #3 film of the weekend?

2) Will The Collector make more or less than 6 million?

Deadline is Wednesday July 29 at 11:59 pm (blog time).

To find out the rules of the game, go to the main thread for AGEBOC 09.

AGEBOC 09 score

James: 24.5

Rob: 22.5
Brian: 19.5
Jackrabbit Slim: 17.5
Joe Webb: 17.5
Nick: 13.5
Marco Trevisiol: 7.5
Jeanine: 7.5
filmman: 7
Juan: 6.5
Rhymerguy: 4

I was watching the Avatar panel at Comic Con when I remembered:

I once met Jon Landau.

That may not mean a lot to many of you, but allow me to share with you why I still kick myself to this day.

First, a little background:

I moved to LA in 2002 and ensconced myself in Studio City, in the San Fernando Valley.

I needed a job, so I walked into an electronics store on the corner of Ventura and Laurel Canyon Blvd.

I got the job and proceeded to sell high-end electronics to every single celebrity you could think of. Honestly, you name them, they came in. From Robin Williams to Joe Pesci to James Marsden to the Highlander to Shaq to Dharma (and Greg) to Marilyn Manson and, really, anymore you could name. Watching Tommy from Goodfellas buying a palmcorder is a profound experience. Just envision Leo Getz’s voice asking: “Should I get this one, or this one, or this one. How is this in low light?” and you get a bit of an idea. The MOST profound person I was able to meet and speak to, for me, was Mardik Martin.

Well, back to my main idea. So there I am watching the Avatar panel and there, introducing the actors, was Jon Landau.

Now, I don’t mean to give this story more weight than it deserves, or make it seem more than it is. When you strive for any place in this business, sometimes, networking and meeting people is the only way you ever make anything of what you want to do. All the talent in the world can’t get you connections. Many writers, filmmakers, etc., do nothing more than go to parties and worry about having work to show only if they ever need it.

So here I am, making all these connections, hoping, beyond hope, that maybe something will come of any of them. Hey, that dude who made Rodger Dodger kept the script in his back pocket and gave it to Campbell Scott in a coffee shop, so I’m not too delusional…am I?

So, there I am  one day, and my co-worker, who knew what I was trying to do, said there was someone looking for a vcr. So I walked over to the customer and started talking to them. Well, somehow, as always, we got onto the topic of why I was in LA. And so I told this man my dreams, this man who had a very quick, very halting manner of speech, as though there was always something else he wanted to tell you, like what he was telling you at that moment was simply getting in the way of what he wanted to say next.

Now, I had no idea who this man was. None. I had just spoken to Mardik Martin that day, so my mind wasn’t registering much else.

I asked what type of vcr he wanted, and he kept saying it was for his kid’s room and that it didn’t need to be anything special and he kept asking me if I knew who he was. Constantly. Like every other sentence.

“How is this vcr? Do you know who I am?”

“How about this tv, does it have a built-in vcr? Do you know who I am?”

“Why is that vcr 20 bucks more than this one? Do you know who I am?”

And that’s pretty much it. That’s the story. He bought the vcr and a tv and left the store. And I always wonder, if I had known, and if I had worked my way into a conversation about…anything…other than vcr’s and tv’s…would anything…anything at all maybe come of it? I could pick out the most obscure writer…the most obscure owner of an obscure distribution company, but I didn’t recognize or have any knowledge of one of the most successful producers to ever grace Hollywood.

Maybe that’s what truly haunts me: that I could spend my entire life spewing worthless amounts of minutiae about everything film, but when Jon Landau asked me, repeatedly, if I knew who he was and gave me a moment to answer and when I didn’t, continued to ramble about a lame tv and vcr for his kid…I dropped the ball.

Not a day goes by I don’t wonder.

G-Force (trailer)
Director: Hoyt Yeatman
Jerry Bruckheimer turns 64 in two months, which is good news, because it means he’s rapidly nearing retirement age. You’ve worked all your life for this, Jerry! That’s what Social Security is for!
Metacritic: 44

Humpday (trailer)
Director: Lynn Shelton
Supposed to be pretty good. Not 100% sure on this, but I think it might be “mumblecore.”
Metacritic: 76

In the Loop (trailer)
Director: Armando Iannucci
Now this I’m interested in, a political comedy that is supposedly razor-sharp.
Metacritic: 84

Katyn
Director: Andrzej Wajda (A Generation, Man of Marble, Man of Iron, Danton)
More proof that World War II remains an endless well for movie subjects, this is about the Soviet massacre of Poles in 1940 that was subsequently blamed on the Nazis. Wajda is undoubtedly the most legendary of Polish filmmakers, though I’ve only seen a couple of his films (the first two listed above). Nominated for a Foreign Film Oscar last year (as in, for the year 2007), so it’s been floating around for awhile.
Metacritic: 81

Munyurangabo
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Film about two children, one Hutu and one Tutsi, caught in the middle of ethnic strife in Rwanda. Seems like something I might go out of my way for; while I don’t necessarily trust Roger Ebert’s four-star reviews for more mainstream fare, the smaller movies that get four stars are almost always worth seeking out.
Metacritic: not listed

Orphan (trailer)
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra (House of Wax, Goal II: Living the Dream)
I don’t think I’d go see this even if it was supposed to be good, which I gather it is not. Perhaps I suffer from lack of imagination, but I can’t fathom a way to do a story like this in a way that would make it worthwhile. Also, it looks a lot like Joshua – even bringing Vera Farmiga along to play the mother – and I hated that movie like a thousand white-hot suns.
Metacritic: 45

Soul Power (trailer)
Director: Jeffrey Levy-Hinte
Film documenting the epic R&B concert that preceded the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire in 1974.
Metacritic: 76

The Ugly Truth (trailer)
Director: Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!, Monster-in-Law, 21)
What we have here are two actors who seem to be quite content with being in crappy movies. Butler is a classic case of someone who casting directors think much more highly of than he warrants. Heigl, meanwhile, may be on a career path that will make her utterly intolerable within a few years.
Metacritic: 31

Unmistaken Child (trailer)
Director: Nati Baratz
Documentary about a monk trying to find the reincarnated child of his former teacher.
Metacritic: 68

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of July 24-26, 2009.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus questions:

1) What will be the #2 film of the weekend?

2) What will be the #3 film of the weekend?

Deadline is Wednesday July 22 at 11:59 pm (blog time).

To find out the rules of the game, go to the main thread for AGEBOC 09.

AGEBOC 09 score

James: 24.5

Brian: 19.5
Rob: 18.5
Jackrabbit Slim: 17.5
Joe Webb: 14.5
Nick: 13
Marco Trevisiol: 7.5
Jeanine: 7.5
filmman: 6.5
Juan: 6.5
Rhymerguy: 4

Well, sorry again for the delay. I really do prefer to write this Thursday night, but it just takes too long to do on nights when I get home late. In this case, I went to see Jean-Luc Godard’s Made in U.S.A., which was arguably not worth the effort … I feel that Godard is not someone I’m able to understand all that well. And not necessarily from lack of effort.

Incidentally, anyone else notice that Metacritic redesigned their site? It’s not really much different except they ramped up the ugly pretty hard.

Dead Snow (trailer)
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Norwegian film about Nazi zombies. I mean, you know, like a parody of zombie films. I wonder if we aren’t getting to the point where sending up horror films isn’t more cliched than the actual horror movies themselves. This is … not a new idea.
Metacritic: 61

The End of the Line (trailer)
Director: Rupert Murray (Unknown White Male)
Well, as far as this goes, Unknown White Male was one of the worst documentaries I’ve ever seen. I know it sounds weird to hear a documentary described that way, but it really was a stunningly poor film (I wrote about it here). So I’m not exactly going to run to the Cinematheque to hear Ted Danson tell me that all the fish are gone.
Metacritic: 71

(500) Days of Summer (trailer)
Director: Marc Webb
Looking forward to this to some degree. Seems like something that won’t be radically great but will be just different enough to keep things enjoyable and even maybe a little unpredictable.
Metacritic: 74

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (trailer)
Director: David Yates (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)
Arrives with strong reviews and awesome early business, but as the Leonard films showed, the sixth movie in a series can often be problematic.
Metacritic: 78

Three Monkeys (trailer at Zeitgeist Films site)
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Distant, Climates)
Turkish film from acclaimed filmmaker Ceylon. I remember wanting to see Climates, but it never played in Dallas (as far as I recall), and I missed it.
Metacritic: 73

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of July 17-19, 2009.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus questions:

1) Will this be the highest opening weekend for a Harry Potter film?

2) What will be the #2 film of the weekend?

Deadline is Tuesday July 14 at 11:59 pm (blog time).

To find out the rules of the game, go to the main thread for AGEBOC 09.

AGEBOC 09 score

James: 24

Rob: 18.5
Jackrabbit Slim: 15
Brian: 14.5
Joe Webb: 14
Nick: 12.5
Marco Trevisiol: 7.5
Jeanine: 7
filmman: 6.5
Juan: 6.5
Rhymerguy: 4

Not much going on this week. Obviously The Hurt Locker demands attention, but not sure about the rest.

Blood: The Last Vampire
Director: Chris Nahon (Kiss of the Dragon)
I know … it looks like it should be direct-to-DVD, but here it is in theaters. I don’t get it either.
Metacritic: 28

Brüno (trailer)
Director: Larry Charles (Masked and Anonymous, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Religulous)
I was only OK with Borat, but I do think he’s a cleverly conceived character. This one, on the other hand, has felt like a cynical, pointless fraud from the first moment I saw the wholly unfunny trailer. For example, naming the baby OJ … how many things are wrong with this? For one thing, it’s 2009, and not 1994, so OJ jokes are beyond dated. Secondly, the same critique applies to exploiting the Springer-style talk show for cheap laughs. It was old in 1999 when Austin Powers did it! And third, the “African baby” jokes were played out after the first wiseass crack about Angelina Jolie. I haven’t decided whether or not to see it yet, but at this point I’m leaning towards “no.”
Metacritic: 55

The Hurt Locker (trailer)
Director: Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark, Point Break, Strange Days, K-19: The Widowmaker)
It occurs to me just this moment that the only one of Bigelow’s films I’ve seen is Strange Days. Anyhow, Jackrabbit Slim has already reviewed this, and calls it “probably the best narrative film that uses the conflict in Iraq as its subject matter.” In other words, he’s in line with the critical consensus, which is as overwhelmingly positive as any film that I can remember from the last few years.
Metacritic: 93

I Love You, Beth Cooper (trailer)
Director: Chris Columbus (Rent, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Bicentennial Man, Stepmom)
I’m not a fan of Columbus in general, but this seems beneath even him.
Metacritic: 34

Il divo (trailer)
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Italian film about the life and times of former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. Been wanting to see this for a while; it was one of the films that I meant to see during the EU Film Festival here in March but missed out on.
Metacritic: 81

Made in U.S.A.
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
The Gene Siskel Film Center is showing both films as a double feature this week. From what I understand, Godard shot both films simultaneously and meant them to be shown together. I haven’t seen Made in U.S.A., but I saw 2 or 3 Things last year and was frankly bored. I don’t like admitting these things but honesty compels me.
Metacritic: neither listed

Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker is probably the best narrative film that uses the conflict in Iraq as its subject matter. At first blush I thought it might be because it sticks to the conventions of the platoon war picture, and is less political than films like Stop-Loss and In the Valley of Elah. But after a few hours have passed I realize that it is a political film, but in a much more subtle way.

The set-up is simple: we are embedded with the U.S. Army, specifically an E.O.D. (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) unit. It’s a small group, consisting of three soldiers, who are called upon to disarm unexploded devices. After one of their number is killed, a new guy arrives to assume the role of team leader, and things get a little unsettled.

That’s because the new guy is Will James, played by Jeremy Renner, and he marches to the beat of distinctively different drummer. He marches right into danger with a casual attitude that drives his colleague, Anthony Mackie, crazy. The third man, Brian Geraghty, fancies himself a walking dead man, and deals with his overwhelming sense of dread with visits by a psychiatrist. It soon becomes apparent that Renner thrives on danger (the opening epigram is from war correspondent Chris Hedges: “War is a drug).” For Renner it certainly is a drug, helping him forget about the troubles he’s having with his wife.

Written by Mark Boal, a journalist who spent time embedded with an E.O.D., the film unfolds episodically, as the trio deal with increasingly dangerous situations. Renner disarms a bomb in a car, taking far longer than Mackie would like. They encounter a group of British soldiers, and get pinned down by some enemy snipers. Renner sneaks out of the base to investigate the death of a local boy he befriended, and then Renner tries to help an unfortunate man who has been pressed into service as a suicide bomber. All of these scenes drip with authenticity, and are pumped with maximum suspense by Bigelow and editors Chris Innis and Bob Murawski. The cinematography by Barry Ackroyd is an example of how jittery hand-held photography serves the story, rather than distracts from it (as in Public Enemies). If it recalls a video game, I think that’s intentional, and we see that Geraghty unwinds by playing a first-person shooter game during his off-time.

The acting is first-rate. Renner has a young Russell Crowe quality, and though he’s a far more flamboyant character than Mackie, both should be in the conversation come Oscar time. There are a number of more notable actors who pop up in brief roles: Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse and Evangeline Lilly.

In some respects this story could about soldiers in any war, but in other respects it could only have taken place in Iraq. We are told at the outset that we are in 2004 Baghdad, so that may summon the images of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in some. But I think the longer view has less to do with the particulars of how the U.S. ended up in Iraq than in what the war does to those who fight it. One of the strongest sequences in the film is a cut from Renner driving a HUMVEE down a dusty Baghdad street, with children running alongside (some of them throwing rocks) to him pushing a cart down the aisle of a grocery store back home. He has gone from a life of almost constant danger to a life where his greatest challenge is deciding which cereal to buy (he’s faced with a seemingly endless choice). The greatest legacy of this war for Americans just may be the scars it leaves on the young men and women who leave a part of themselves in the desert.

I haven’t really been following the Michael Jackson tributes and recollections all that intensely (not that big a fan), but I gotta say this one did make me smile. Video is taken from the central square in Stockholm, Sergels Torg, and then from its Central Station.

Thankfully, 2009 has so far been a much better year than 2008 was. Out of 39 new releases that I’ve seen through the first six months of the year, I’m actually comfortable with listing 10 of them here, with a few of them being genuinely great movies.

As always, I’ve linked to the Gone Elsewhere reviews where they exist, and as always, I’m grateful to Jackrabbit Slim for writing the vast majority of them (all reviews are his unless otherwise noted). I seem to have stopped writing reviews almost altogether, which is kind of sad but unlikely to change in the short term. Also, only movies released before July 1 are eligible.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the ten best films of the first half of 2009.

1. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas)
I could tell this was a great film from the opening shot, a hypnotic extended take of a sunrise over a Mennonite community in rural Mexico. This is a slow-moving tale of a man torn between his love for two women in a conservative religious community, but it’s riveting all the same because it never unfolds the way you would expect. It’s a shame it didn’t get a wider theatrical release, because although it is a foreign film and does move slowly, I think it’s an accessible film that could have found a strong arthouse audience. Unfortunately, Tartan Palisades didn’t see it that way, and despite strong critical backing it was buried, and there’s not even a DVD release scheduled here in the States until September. All the same, add it to your Netflix lists now; it’s a strong contender for the top film of the year, regardless of how the next six months pan out.

2. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
A film that has a lot to say about a lot of subjects, including art, culture, family, the global economy, the passing of generations, the nature of one’s ties to home and country, and the way that all of these things interact. Like Silent Light, it uses plotlines that may seem routine in other movies, such as a dispute between adult siblings over their inheritance, and lets them unfold in ways that are unexpected.

3. The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh)
The prolific Soderbergh turns in his best film in years. It’s a document of a time and place – specifically, New York City in fall 2008 – when it became clear that the empire was crumbling, so to speak. While outwardly a movie about a call girl, I see it more as a movie about how the relentless pursuit of status among American elites leads to the exploitation of the lower classes. Ironically (or perhaps not), it’s more of a revolutionary-minded film than Soderbergh’s Che.

4. Tetro (Francis Ford Coppola)
I wasn’t expecting much from Coppola’s latest given lukewarm reviews and my own ambivalent reaction to Youth Without Youth, but I pretty much loved every minute. It’s a story about two brothers reuniting in Buenos Aires and facing the legacy of their famous father. It’s funny and poignant, and features terrific performances, especially by Vincent Gallo and Maribel Verdú. And, as an added bonus, the black-and-white photography is unbelievably beautiful.

5. Sugar (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck)
To start with, it’s rare for a sports movie to get simple sports things right, so I was impressed when Miguel “Sugar” Santos makes his pro baseball debut and walks the first batter on four pitches. A lesser movie would have had him a little nervous but triumphing, but this movie’s scenario is far more believable. In this movie, the coaches talk like coaches, the players struggle from day to day and even inning to inning, and the actors actually look like they play the sport they’re playing. In short, it’s a thoughtful movie about a sport I love, and I appreciated the way the filmmakers allowed all of their characters, including those that would be villians in lesser movies, have their dignity.

6. Sita Sings the Blues (Nina Paley)
Perhaps the strangest and most original movie I’ve seen this year. As a reaction to being dumped, filmmaker Nina Paley has animated the Indian legend of Ramayana and set it to the songs of Annette Henshaw, and the result is both very funny and curiously sad. Unfortunately, the songs she uses are copyrighted and unlicensed, meaning it’s unlikely you’ll be able to rent a DVD any time soon. On the bright side, though, the entire film is available to download from the film’s website. If you’re so inclined, and don’t happen to be in Chicago tomorrow, I encourage you to check it out (if you are in Chicago, it’s playing at the Gene Siskel Film Center).

7. Up (Pete Docter)
Unfortunately, not one of the best Pixars in my opinion, but still a plenty fun way to spend a couple hours. I still laugh when I think of Dug, the talking dog. If dogs really could talk, I’m guessing that the vast majority would sound just like him.

8. The Merry Gentleman (Michael Keaton)
Keaton’s directorial debut mostly came and went without notice, but it has one of the year’s best performaces, by Kelly MacDonald. She plays a woman who seems to find herself in awkward relationships with men, including a hitman played by Keaton himself. At first, it seems like the movie is going to succumb to the tired old cliche in which the hitman is actually the nice guy, but it turns out to be more complicated than that. It’s an unusual film in that it’s made by a man, but sees its male characters as predatory and sinister, and sympathizes with the everyday difficulties of simply being a woman having to deal with these creeps.

9. Everlasting Moments (Jan Troell); review by Nick
Swedish film that follows a familiar template of immigrants dealing with being strangers in a strange land … only it’s not actually about immigrants. It’s about the way dramatic social change can make people feel alienated even in their own homes. Perhaps it views its characters through an overly sentimental lens – the ending felt somewhat flat to me – but it is, as Nick says, “a gripping portrait of the times.”

10. Sleep Dealer (Alex Rivera); review by filmman
There are, to be sure, things not to like about the film. The story’s a little uneven, the ending is bad, and the budget for the special effects looks like it was less than it would have cost to simply buy a new Mac. But while I was skeptical when our own filmman announced it to be on the cutting edge of science fiction, after seeing the film I had to agree. This is a thoughtful and provacative look at the casual militarization of American culture, with a premise that is absolutely ingenious.

Part four of our discussion on the films of the 00’s, this time focusing on 2003.

1) Best of 2003?
2) Worst of 2003?
3) Most underrated?
4) Most underseen?
5) Most overrated?
6) Best performance(s) of the year?
7) Best single scene/sequence of the year?
8) One thing you could change about any single film in 2003 (Example: different cast, different director, different style, different release date, different studio).
9) Most memorable (good or bad) theatergoing experience of the year?
10) Most influential film/performance/style/director?

Obviously feel free to answer only the questions you’re interested in or to write/respond to something else entirely. The lists themselves are just a starting point designed to foster discussion.

Previously: 2000, 2001, 2002

I found this amazing. It’s not the execution, though it’s well done. Nor even the fact that it’s Salvador Dali’s work, whose art I more often than not find overrated. It’s the idea of Salvador Dali collaborating with Walt Disney and seeing what could have been and now in a way is (it was assembled by a french studio based on the preliminary work by the two). Say what you will about the company as a moneygrubbing machine, but the man Walt Disney did work together with some of the great and most controversial artists of the age. Pixar does great things but I dare them to do a short film with Damien Hirst.

After experiencing something of a renaissance while shooting films in Europe (well, if we forget about Scoop), Woody Allen has returned to New York for his latest comedy. Unfortunately, returning home hasn’t done him any good, and Whatever Works is perhaps the worst comedy he’s ever made (the worst film he ever made remains the pretentious drama September).

As someone who thinks Allen is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his spotty (to put it kindly) record for the last ten to fifteen years pains me. And I was uncomfortable from the opening moments of this film. We are introduced to Boris, played by Larry David, who is an irascible physicist who is a repository of all the tics that Allen has manifested over the years, but without any of the charm. David tells the audience, breaking the fourth wall, that we won’t like him. And how! He’s a kvetch, but what’s worse, he’s not very interesting. He insults everyone he sees for their lack of intelligence, but these slurs aren’t very clever (moron and inchworm are the most common). The character is instantly tedious. It’s as if a devoted student of Allen had attempted to write his own Allen film.

Anyway, David is an anhedonic curmudgeon who finds life without purpose and has no social skills. But he does have a circle of friends and an ex-wife. One day he is approached by a young woman living on the street, who somehow convinces him to take her in. She’s Evan Rachel Wood, and though she’s an appealing performer she’s asked to do the impossible here, playing a naif from Mississippi who we are somehow supposed to believe actually falls in love with David. He resists, admirably enough, citing the difference in their ages, but they eventually marry.

Now, psychologists can have a field day dissecting Allen’s persistent use of May-December relationships in his films, and given what we know about his own life it is even more sordid. My take is that Allen is an individual who lives in his own bubble and has very little idea of what life for others is like. He knows that he found a much younger woman, so doesn’t find the idea as disturbing as the rest of us. It would also account for his tin ear when it comes to characters like Wood’s, who is a cliche of Southern stereotypes (she actually talks about catching catfish).

The film picks up a bit when Wood’s mother, delightfully played by Patricia Clarkson, shows up. She’s a Bible-thumper who quickly turns into a Bohemian, taking photographs of nude models and living in a menage a trois. A film about her may have been more interesting.

Of course, the greatest sin of this film is that it’s not funny. David has considerable strengths as a performer, but he’s not up to carrying the weight of a feature film on his back, especially when he’s a conduit for Allen’s warmed over word-weary dialogue.

The story goes that Allen first conceived of this script in the 70s (it was going to star Zero Mostel). He resurrected it because he had a window to make a film but no script, so he went into his drawer to dust this one off. Mistake. In fact, Allen’s prolificness is doing his legacy no favors. Take a long vacation, Woody, you’ve earned it.

Aran!

Outside the west coast of Ireland lie the Aran Islands: Inishmore, Inishmaan and Inisheer. Populated since the 17th century, when the Irish peasants were fleeing Cromwell’s persecution of Catholics, the climate on the islands is harsh and their geology mainly karst limestone. Yet somehow the Aran islanders have developed a survival system of total self-sufficiency, mixing layers of sand and seaweed on top of rocks to create fertile soil, a technique used to grow potatoes and other vegetables. The same seaweed method also provided grazing grass within stone-wall enclosures grass for cattle and sheep, which in turn provides wool and yarn to make handwoven trousers, skirts and jackets, handknitted sweaters, shawls, caps, and hide shoes. The islanders have also constructed unique boats for fishing, building their thatched cottages from the materials available or trading with the mainland.

It’s a harsh place to live, but that has only added to the romanticism that has been sparked in Europe for the islands during the last few decades. The British sitcom Father Ted took place on an island based on Inisheer. Since it aired tourism has become more and more central to the islands’ economy.

Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, most famous right now for In Bruges, has written a trilogy of plays that take place on the islands: The Lieutenant of Inishmore, The Cripple of Inishmaan and one unpublished play. The Cripple of Inishmaan is the only one of his plays that I’ve read, an equally brutal and savagely funny tale about a crippled boy in the 1930’s who tries to become a part of a Hollywood film being made on the island.

What McDonagh based the tale on is that there was a film being filmed on the Aran islands in the 1930’s. The film Man of Aran by Robert J Flaherty is considered one of the first and best feature length documentaries along with his Nanook of the North. The British band British Sea Power recently created a soundtrack for the film, to be played while watching it. Great stuff.

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of July 10-12, 2009.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus questions:

1) Will Bruno beat the per screen average of The Hangover? ($13,759 from 3,269 theaters. Bruno is scheduled for 2700+)
2) Will Chris Columbus I Love You, Beth Cooper have an ADJUSTED opening weekend that is over or under his 1991 opus Only the Lonely, starring Macaulay Culkin? ($5,997,993 x 7.18/4.21 = $10,229,356 being the adjusted opening weekend)

Deadline is Wednesday July 8 at 11:59 pm (blog time).

To find out the rules of the game, go to the main thread for AGEBOC 09.

AGEBOC 09 score

James: 23.5

Rob: 18
Joe Webb: 13.5
Nick: 11.5
Brian: 11.5
Jackrabbit Slim: 10.5
Marco Trevisiol: 7.5
filmman: 6.5
Jeanine: 6
Juan: 5.5
Rhymerguy: 4

It’s hard, when you follow the film business closely, to not have certain expectations when you walk into a movie. Public Enemies, Michael Mann’s lavish take on the era of the celebrity bank robbers during the Great Depression, certainly seemed like it would be the definitive take on this subject, casting a popular movie star, Johnny Depp, as John Dillinger. The film doesn’t quite achieve that epic status, and at the same time falls slightly short as a popcorn entertainment. It is sporadically brilliant, though, and on the whole I recommend it, but it’s no Godfather. It’s not even Heat.

I mention Heat, Mann’s great crime film from the 90s, because Public Enemies has certain parallels. The story follows a criminal and his pursuer, who only have one meeting before one kills the other one. The comparison pretty much stops there, though, because unlike Heat, Public Enemies doesn’t explore the inner psyches of the characters. We really don’t know what makes them tick.

The film is ostensibly the story of Dillinger, who was not only a public enemy during 1933 and 1934, robbing several banks and killing several police officers, but he was also a huge celebrity. In a time when banks were held in contempt, Dillinger was cheered on by much of the populace, applauded when his face appeared in newsreels. In Mann’s film the dack is stacked for him with the casting of Depp, a megastar, who plays him with a sleek sensuality. Contrast this to Warren Oates’ portrayal in John Milius’ 1973 film, Dillinger. Oates, a fine actor, would never have been said to exhibit sleek sensuality.

For the most part the film is accurate as it depicts Dillinger’s crime wave from his escape from prison in 1933 to his death in 1934. There are a few changes to the truth: Dillinger’s men did escape from the pen at Michigan City, Indiana through the use of smuggled rifles, but Dillinger was in jail at the time (they later busted him out); Pretty Boy Floyd died after Dillinger did, not before; Baby Face Nelson didn’t die at Little Bohemia; but the shell of the truth is there and it shouldn’t bother experts on the subject. In fact, there are some details that are myth-bustingly true, such as The Lady in Red was actually a lady in orange. What may bother historians is that Depp’s Dillinger is a romantic anti-hero, much like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway made Bonnie and Clyde. But Dillinger was really just a thug, more Warren Oates than Johnny Depp.

The spine of this film is Dillinger’s relationship with Billie Frechette, a hat-check girl played by Marion Cotillard, and frankly these portions of the film are dull. I didn’t find any chemistry between the two (I’m not sure Depp has ever been convincing in a consummated romance–he’s always excelled more at being the oddball who can’t have requited love). Cotillard is fine and easy on the eyes but the whole relationship, to me, dragged down the story.

Instead the best parts of Public Enemies are the set-pieces. I thought the film really picked up steam during Dillinger’s escape from the Crown Point, Indiana jail, in which he used a wooden gun (that, hard to believe, was true). The editing by Jeffrey Ford and Paul Rubell is spot-on. Then, the shootout at Little Bohemia, a lodge in Wisconsin where the gang was hiding out, is the highlight of the film. The choreography and sound combine to form an almost balletic orgy of violence, and the image of one of gangster going down in a hail of bullets, his machine gun blazing, is an arresting one. And finally Dillinger’s death, outside the Biograph theater, is a fitting climax, shot with precision and powerful emotion.

The problem with Mann’s film is what comes in between. The romance is ineffective, perhaps because we really have no idea who Dillinger is. He mentions spending a long time in prison for a minor offense, but aside from a Bull Durham-like list of things he likes (“baseball, movies, fast cars, and you”) he’s an enigma. Even more of a cypher is Melvin Purvis, the dedicated G-man who hunts him down. He’s played by Christian Bale, who’s a fairly big star in his own right, but there’s nothing there to tell us what his motivation is, other than doing his job (Purvis killed himself in 1960, which is mentioned in the closing moments of the film, but there’s nothing in the script or the performance to tip us off as to why). A more interesting performance is by Billy Crudup, a weird choice to play the gnomic J. Edgar Hoover, but a canny one, giving us a glimpse of the man who would one day be among the post powerful men in America.

Public Enemies, despite these faults, resonates. The imagery of a man in a long top-coat and fedora, a machine gun crooked in his arm, has undeniable power. The costumes of Colleen Atwood are terrific, and all the period cars and locations are exquisitely done. I do have complaints about Dante Spinotti’s photography, as there is way too much hand-held stuff. Or more precisely, hand-held stuff that is not smoothy photographed, and makes the viewer motion sick. I see no reason for it other than hubris.

Given that this film was made in a time when banks are once again thought of with disdain, it makes some interesting statements. Mann has added an element with the addition of characters from the “Syndicate,” such as Frank Nitti, who end up considering rogue bank robbers as irritants. There is a pointed scene when Dillinger is shown a bookmaking operation that makes as much money in a day as Dillinger can in one job, and without anybody shooting at each other. Mann clearly sees Dillinger as the last of a species, which is perhaps why he is tinged in romantic hues. That makes for a handsome thing to look at, but not a particularly substantive one.

Well, it’s off to Texas for the weekend for me. Thought about doing an “Opening in Dallas” this weekend, just for old time’s sake, but then I remembered that I couldn’t care less what’s going on in Dallas.

The Girl from Monaco (trailer)
Director: Anne Fontaine
Meant to see this back in March, when it was playing during the EU Film Festival, but missed it. I think it won the Audience Award then, though I may be mistaken on that. Aside from the most annoying voiceover since Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the trailer is light and appealing. Basically, it looks like one of those airy French things that you can’t remember ten minutes after watching it but it’s enjoyable nonetheless.
Metacritic: 53

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (trailer)
Director: Carlos Saldana (Ice Age: The Meltdown)
Pass.
Metacritic: 51

I Hate Valentine’s Day (trailer)
Director: Nia Vardalos
I’ve asked this before, but why do so many romantic comedies have such stupid premises? This one’s about a woman who always ends relationships after five dates. What kind of idiocy is that? Who lives like that? I should try getting rich by writing asinine shit like this.
Metacritic: 25

Julia
Director: Erick Zonca (The Dreamlife of Angels, The Little Thief)
I had never heard of this (nice work, Magnolia Pictures!) until Ebert come strong with the four-star review this morning, praising Tilda Swinton’s performance to the skies. I should probably go see it. Wish it was playing somewhere other than the aggressively uncomfortable Facets Cinematheque.
Metacritic: 54

Public Enemies (trailer)
Director: Michael Mann (The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The Insider, Miami Vice)
Already seen it, and I wanted to write a review of this before I left but I’m just not going to have the time. I liked it, and think that it’s undeniably a visionary film. At the same time, though, it’s a challenging work in some ways (hello muddy digital photography – filmman was right) and it’s hard for me to be super-enthusiastic about it. I do think time will be kind to it.
Metacritic: 71

Another celebrity bites the dust: Karl Malden is dead at 97. He may be best known to a certain age group for being on The Streets of San Francisco, or as a pitchman for American Express Traveler Checks (“Don’t leave home without them!”) but his greatest work was in the ’50s for Elia Kazan, specifically as the tough priest in On the Waterfront and his Oscar-winning role in A Streetcar Named Desire.

The morning before I saw Away We Go I spent some time in a dentist’s chair to get some cavities filled. I was more uncomfortable during some of the scenes of the film than I was getting my teeth drilled. Not that all of Away We Go is cringe-inducing, but there’s enough stain on it to keep it from being a worthwhile entertainment.

Written by the husband-wife team of Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, Away We Go carries much of what makes them distinctive in the literary world (I’ve never read anything by Vida, but I read Eggers’ Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and know him as one of the main voices in the McSweeney’s vein of literature). To be sure, Away We Go is full of a kind of arch sentimentality and self-aware preciousness that overwhelms any hope that this film can resonate with authenticity.

The story concerns a young unmarried couple, John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph. She gets pregnant, and they decide they can live anywhere they want, so embark on a tour of some cities across North America, trying to find the perfect home. This odyssey is kicked off when Krasinski’s self-absorbed parents (Jeff Daniels and Catherina O’Hara) tell them they are moving to Antwerp before the baby is born. The characterizations of these two are pretty horrid, but they are mild compared to what’s to come.

Starting in Phoenix, the two visit an old colleague of Rudolph’s, Allison Janney. This is the first scene in which I wished I was back in the dentist’s chair. Janney is a fine actress, but what she is asked to do here is a crime. She plays a loud and obnoxious woman who openly insults her children and makes jokes about her sagging breasts that can be heard by anyone within fifty feet. She and her husband (Jim Gaffigan), who seems to be heavily medicated, take our couple to the dog track, a particularly bourgeois endeavor (we don’t see their home, which is no doubt decorated with prints by Thomas Kincaid).

If that scene wasn’t horrible enough, Krasinski and Rudolph next go to Madison, Wisconsin to visit a childhood friend of his. She is played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, and here we have another example of a good actress forced to inhabit a character that only exists in the revenge fantasies of writers like Eggers and Vida. She plays a college professor, and when she’s introduced breast-feeding a toddler, we know we’re in for a litany of new-age quackery. Sure enough, she and her husband (Josh Hamilton) aren’t really people, they are a chance for the filmmakers to vent against every cliche of holistic, hippie behavior known to man, even taking it into the realm of the unbelievable, such as Gyllenhaal’s objection to the concept of strollers.

These scenes highlight a certain tone that really rankles me–the filmmaker looking back at his audience and winking at us, saying “People! Don’t you just hate ‘em? Aren’t you glad you’re normal like us?” There is such vitriol in these scenes that it’s hard to contemplate where it stems from, other than that Eggers or Vida must have had some horrible friends in their lives.

Not all of Away We Go is like this. There are some lovely scenes in the film, especially when we focus solely on Krasinski and Rudolph. I liked a scene early on when they huddle in bed, their electricity out, and Rudolph wonders whether they are fuck-ups. Then, toward the end of the film, after they are dealing with Krasinski’s brother, whose wife has left him, there is a poignant scene between the two of them on trampoline. But those scenes can’t stand the weight of the general misanthropy on display in the rest of the film. I realize that for two people in love sometimes it can feel like they are the only sane people on Earth, but the ugliness of some of the characters in this film is too much.

The film is directed by Sam Mendes, and this is certainly a departure from his more polished and slick films like American Beauty, Road to Perdition, and Revolutionary Road. Away We Go is casually presented, like a shaggy-dog story, and appears to have filmed on the cheap. The look fits the kind of rambling mentality, though.

Krasinski, as the hirsute boyfriend, is fine, though he is asked to use his expression of a mixture of bemusement and incredulity that he specializes in on The Office. Rudolph is very good, excellently potraying the confusion and panic a woman in her situation would be going through.

Finally, there are some logistical problems that nagged at me. Krasinski is an insurance salesman of some type, though he certainly doesn’t dress like one (I doubt any insurance company would hire someone who shows up for an interview in a tweed sport coat and Hush Puppies). At the outset, they are living in what looks like near poverty (they have a cardboard window) but have no trouble funding unlimited travel across the continent. And the resolution of the film seems to be a complete real-estate fantasy.

I can’t recommend Away We Go, though it does have some admirable elements. In an attempt to isolate just what it is that makes a home for two likeable people, it manages to savage entire classes of people.

(warning: contains very mild spoilers)

From the late 1960s to early 1980s one of the safest bets in the Hollywood film industry was a film based on the work of Neil Simon. An enormously successful playwright, he proved to be very appealing on film because of his exceptional comic skills, especially in writing witty and memorable one-liners.

The 1968 film ‘The Odd Couple’ – based on Simon’s 1965 play – is probably his most famous effort and one of his most successful films. It’s an apt reflection of Simon’s work, showcasing not only his many strengths but also his weaknesses.

Like many of Simon’s works, the plot is simple but appealing. Two long-standing middle-aged friends with recently broken marriages move in together and their contrasting personalities cause much friction. One, Felix Ungar (Jack Lemmon), is neurotic, uptight and obsessed with cleaniness while the other, Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau), is lazy, laidback and a slob.

The film is not without its flaws. As the ‘raison d’etre’ of the film is the byplay and relationship between Felix and Oscar, sections of the film where they’re not sharing scenes feel like padding (especially the opening 15 minutes which feel flat and dragged out). And Gene Saks’ direction is rather sluggish and uninspired, making it feel like it’s a filmed version of the stage play instead of a film in its own right.

But once Felix and Oscar come together, the film is a joy to watch. Not just because of the often superb one-liners and comic situations Simon creates, but because of the skilled performances and terrific chemistry Matthau and Lemmon have. They help ensure these are fully-fledged characters, making the film far more interesting through their relationship than if they’d become the caricatures they could have easily become.

The film’s peak is reached with a lengthy scene where Felix and Oscar have a double date with a pair of somewhat eccentric British sisters which is a masterclass of comic writing, timing and acting. Equally as good is the feuding between Felix and Oscar following the double date disaster which as a contrast has some very funny silent visual comedy followed by dialogue from Oscar listing his grievances about Felix which is probably the highpoint of the film (it can be viewed here).

Overall, this is an excellent comedy that deserves its reputation as one of the funniest Hollywood films of the last 50 years… and yet despite its many outstanding qualities this film can’t be rated as a truly great film. And in an unusual way Jack Lemmon’s performance exposes some of the reasons why.

Lemmon’s performance as Felix seems almost too truthful and honest as it inadvertently exposes the limitations of Simon’s work. The authenticity of Felix’s pain as he goes through divorce seems to clash with the tone of the film which wants to keep things at never more than a skin deep level, invariably falling back on smart one-liners at key moments instead of taking a risk and attempting something more rewarding. As good as a gag writer Simon was, even in his best works there was something constricting and even brittle about characters constantly engaging in conversations so heavily doused with one-liners and snappy retorts. As one critic one said, Simon’s films often feel like the main characters have professional gag writers living with them. That element is present in just about all of Simon’s works and probably prevents films like this from evolving into all-time classic status.

But one shouldn’t detract from the many exceptional qualities this film has. It is a top-class comedy that has held up very well over the years and one can only wish in vain that modern comedies of today would have acting and writing as sophisticated and funny as this.

Note: Image from http://www.movieforum.com/

Hello, people of the future. Not a very far future, perhaps (I scheduled this to appear tomorrow, I hope it will/did), but the future none the less. As you read this I am no doubt being chased by bears in the woods of the wild north, unable to get any wi-fi reception or even find a bathroom that flushes. It’s all good.

The success of Transformers 2 made me consider what the future holds in store for us. Maybe there will one day be giant robots that can transform into GM vehicles fighting on our surface for the survival or destruction of the human race, but for some reason I find it hard to do so. What I, coincidentally, found far more worrying and of more acute interest is the state of our intelligence, and how it’s evolving.

In a way this guy prompted it, because, while he is very passionate in his defense (which is admirable), he is espousing stupidity. “Don’t think so hard, dude. There are robots. Look at Megan Fox’s tits bouncing!” Don’t be boring. Don’t be a “snob”. Be fun. Be dumb. I’ll admit I will sometimes resort to this kind of defensive attitude over things I like but others call stupid (hello Brian thinking of Indy 4, hello me thinking of the snooze-inducing Bandits), everyone does it, but you have to draw the line between willing suspension of disbelief and retardation somewhere.

Idiocracy covered one possible outcome of where this kind of laissez-faire-les-Transformers attitude might lead us.

A film that’s been growing on me lately. Disappointed when it came out, since it could have been much better, but there’s something oddly topical about a show called “Ow my balls” and all the reassurances of “it’s got… electrolytes”.

Yet a cure for stupidity exists! Reading! Books! But for those disinclined towards such arduous activity there already exists a machine that can raise your talent level temporarily. Developed by Allan Snyder, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation can enhance your cognitive abilities for a limited time through electro-magnetic stimulating pulses to your brain (the name sort of gave it away). That already sounds like science fiction, but it’s been available for quite a while now. Its main use has been for helping people with depression and schizophrenia.

On top of all that there’s the future of controlling objects with your mind. This fall a toy will be released where the amount of concentration you use will determine if and how high you can keep a ball floating in the air. It’s not technically telekinesis, but close enough.

Two things struck me while watching that clip. One was that that thing is going to get real old, real fast. It’s the kind of toy that the boring geeks buy to impress and distract people at a party, and it does so for an hour or two. A $100 well spent? Second was that of all the things they could come up with using that technology for, all they could come up with was keeping a ping-pong ball floating in the air? Not even having something where you can compete with someone in concentration, trying to force it towards your opponent? Give him an electric shock if he loses, thereby making it harder for him to concentrate next time. Or mental Pong? The possibilities are practically endless already. And they chose to have it in a Star Wars package, with Yoda mewling in the background. It almost went from being cool to being sad.

So, in conclusion, while our intelligence may drive us to create the most amazing technology to realize the most profound things, be sure that we will use it in the dumbest and most commercialized way possible.

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of July 3-5, 2009.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus questions:

1) Will Ice Age 3 have the 3rd largest 3-day Independence Day weekend, counting from Friday July 3 2009? (Superman Returns has held that position for the last three years, with an adjusted opening of $57.58 million)
2) Will the Friday-Sunday take of Public Enemies be the largest Friday-Sunday take of Michael Mann’s career? Yes or no? (His largest until now is Collateral with an adjusted opening of $28.55 million)

Deadline is Tuesday June 30 at 11:59 pm (blog time).

To find out the rules of the game, go to the main thread for AGEBOC 09.

AGEBOC 09 score

James: 21

Rob: 17
Joe Webb: 13
Nick: 11.5
Jackrabbit Slim: 10
Brian: 7
filmman: 6.5
Marco Trevisiol: 6.5
Juan: 5.5
Jeanine: 6
Rhymerguy: 4

Film snob alert: you know what I’m really looking forward to watching this weekend? My newly arrived Blu-ray of The Seventh Seal. Suck on that, Bay.

Big Man Japan (trailer)
Director: Hitoshi Matsumoto
There’s probably no way I’ll have time to see this, but seriously, watch the trailer. I haven’t seen a trailer this bizarre since … well, Kung Fu Hustle. Maybe.
Metacritic: 62

Cheri (trailer)
Director: Stephen Frears (High Fidelity, Dirty Pretty Things, Mrs Henderson Presents, The Queen)
Stephen Frears hits paydirt in his search to make a movie about a hot over-50 actress, after a horrible misfire with Judi Dench and a gamble with Helen Mirren that was a long shot to start with before finally being sabotaged by the makeup department.
Metacritic: 62

Jerichow
Director: Christian Petzold (Yella)
Apparently a German reworking of The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Metacritic: 72

My Sister’s Keeper (trailer)
Director: Nick Cassavetes (She’s So Lovely, John Q, The Notebook, Alpha Dog)
Talk about timely, here’s a movie that addresses the high-profile epidemic of people raising kids for the purpose of harvesting their sweet, sweet organs. I knew Jon and Kate were up to something!
Metacritic: 50

The Stoning of Soraya M. (trailer)
Director: Cyrus Nowrasteh
Parable about an Iranian woman who turns to Jesus when overcome with despair. Hint, hint, Iranians!
Metacritic: 52

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (trailer)
Director: Michael Bay (Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor)
I pretty much hated the first one … well, that’s not quite right. I didn’t so much hate it as much as I just thought it was unbelievably stupid. I came out of it dreading the sequel. After awhile, I started to consider skipping the sequel so that I wouldn’t have to dread it (there’s precedent for this – I skipped Bad Boys II on identical grounds. Over time, this developed into a general feeling that I would likely skip the sequel. Now, I’m wondering exactly what eternal horror God would have to threaten me with that would convince me to go. Fortunately, I suspect God is on my side in this matter, and I think I may instead actually stand to gain some kind of eternal reward for having the purity of soul required to abstain from defiling myself in such a crude and vulgar manner. Basically, what I’m saying is that I thank Michael Bay for getting me in touch with my spiritual side again. I haven’t felt this close to God since summer church camp back in 1991 (or maybe 1992?) when I refused to clean the horse stables, on the grounds that the kids actually going to horse camp should have to do that. God protects the righteous!
Metacritic: 36

Whatever Works (trailer)
Director: Woody Allen (Match Point, Scoop, Cassandra’s Dream, Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Perhaps the saddest aspect to Michael Jackson’s passing is that we’ll never see his long-anticipated collaboration with Woody Allen, in which Jackson plays a self-absorbed middle-aged malcontent with a conspicuously young romantic interest. It would have been called Michael Bubbles Bahrain and whatever problems it would have had in the US market, it would have killed in Eastern Europe.
Metacritic: 47

Warning: This review contains mild spoilers about a plot point that occurs very early in the film, but you may want to experience it without knowing that, so tread lightly.

Duncan Jones has directed a nice quiet sci-fi film in Moon. It is not the most original piece of work, though, and as I watched it I counted the films that it reminded me of, including Silent Running, Solaris, and most especially 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the use of a computer with a spookily level speaking voice and its own agenda.

However, the nods to 2001 are, by the end of the film, clearly part of Jones’ plan, and he uses those cinematic references to catch snarky viewers like me off  our guard.

The simple premise of the film is that a new form of energy is being mined on the moon. A one-man crew, assisted by a computer, looks over things. That crewman is Sam Rockwell who, we are told, is near the end of a three-year contract. He is looking forward to returning to his gorgeous wife and their adorable little girl. At first you may wonder why a guy would leave a family like that to spend three years in isolation on the moon, but don’t get too critical, all will be answered.

Going out to investigate a mechanical problem, Rockwell crashes and is injured. When he awakens in the infirmary, the computer (called Gerty, and voiced eerily by Kevin Spacey) tells him that he will be fine in a few days. But Rockwell is suspicious, and when he goes out, against Gerty’s instructions, to the scene of the crash, he finds something shocking–himself.

I won’t go any further than that, but I needed to reveal that bit of plot to discuss the notion that the bulk of the film consists of Rockwell playing two parts, and the special effects involved to have both characters on screen at the same time. This is accomplished most effectively because Rockwell, even though he is playing two characters who are the same person, manages to make us see separate individuals. But the camera tricks are interesting. Jones starts with having them simply share the screen, but then it gets more complicated–they play a game of table tennis. Finally they are physically interacting, such as dressing each other or having a knockdown drag-out fight.

But I don’t mean to suggest that this film is about special effects. Instead it’s about identity, and what makes each of us unique. Discovering one has a doppelganger is surely very disquieting, and Jones and Rockwell both express this notion effectively.

I wouldn’t say the film is excellent, though, just good. At times it seems like an extended Twilight Zone episode. Though I understand what Jones was trying to do with Gerty vis-a-vis the HAL 9000 in 2001, I couldn’t help but spend half the film thinking to myself, “It’s been done” (but I did like the monitor on Gerty which showed his mood with a changeable Happy Face application).

Appropos of nothing, Jones is of course the son of David Bowie. I can only be grateful he did not name his main character Major Tom.

According to Variety. Whoa.

Will they do it for any other categories? Foreign, for example?

Joe got flummoxed last week when I posted a link to the awesome inbflat.net on Facebook but not on the blog and he almost missed it. It is indeed great. I like combining the glass marimbas with the bass, the clarinet, the weirdo with the ambient voice and the flight of the red balloons sequence. It’s like my own little Michael Mann soundtrack.

Something I’ve been playing more with lately is the tonematrix by programmer André Michelle, based on Yamaha’s Tenori-On. Sometimes I’ll just let the mouse slide around randomly on that board and come up with the strangest, hypnotic pling-plong.

There is also something called Audiotool, where you can have a whole set of amplifiers, knobs and stuff, but that’s way too complex and timeconsuming for me.

Thankfully there’s the slightly easier WD-1 DJ-trainer to practice on, even if its selections are pretty cheesy.

Then of course there’s just the plain weirdness that is Looptracks.net.

Before this film I had seen two of Oliver Assayas’ work: Demonlovers, which I found incomprehensible, and Boarding Gate, a standard and seamy thriller. Therefore I was totally surprised by Summer Hours, which on first glance appears to be a pastoral drama about artsy-fartsy French people, but on further investigation is a metaphor for the crumbling of European culture.

We begin at a gathering of the Marly family. The widowed mother, celebrating her 75th birthday, is obsessed with how her house and pieces of art will be distributed after her death. Her uncle was a famous painter and collector, and she seems to regard his legacy and these objects with more affection than her own family.

She has three children, played by Charles Berling, Juliette Binoche, and Jérémie Renier. Berling is an economist who doesn’t consider economics a science, Binoche is an edgy designer of housewares, living in New York and working for a Japanese department store chain and Renier works for Puma sneakers in China. The matriarch, Edith Scob, recognizes that Binoche and Renier are unlikely to ever live in France again, so she urges Berling, who lives locally and will be the executor of her will, to sell everything.

When the old lady dies, the film goes into how the three siblings deal with her inheritance. Berling, sentimentally, wants to hang on to the past as much as possible, but recognizes the wisdom of Binoche and Renier, who tell him that having a country house in France is not a benefit to them. Binoche is marrying an American, and Renier is accepting a promotion that will keep him in China for the foreseeable future. His children speak French at home, but go to an English-language school and have a fondness for American culture.

This film says a lot of smart things and in clever ways. For example, the film is bookended by parties at the country house. The opening has children in a treasure hunt, romping through the verdant grounds as their ancestors could have. The close finds one of these same children, a teenage granddaughter, throwing a party for her friends, who arrive on noisy motorcycles, play loud music on their laptops, and pass around joints. Assayas shows us the global economy has chipped away at the vault of French culture (and by extension, the other old world nations) and is being replaced by a world culture that is like a rude guest at a garden party.

There is much to admire about this film. The script is like a Swiss watch in it’s structure and economy of parts. We hear Binoche and Renier say that they are unlikely to return to France, and then we realize that they have disappeared from the film. Asssayas also skillfully uses the camera. At times it is unmoving, as if we were seated at a party, and characters move in and out of frame. But then, as if we got up and are mingling, the camera moves through space, and his choice of when to do each are spot-on.

The acting is restrained and very good. Berling is the emotional center of the film, the man who tries to hold his family culture together at impossible odds. After some of his mother’s things are donated to a museum and he visits them, he remarks that they look like they are caged. Binoche is also very good as a woman who has more going on than she’s willing to tell us. There’s a fragility beneath her steely exterior.

I think the thing I most appreciated about this film was that it didn’t go where lesser films would go. After the mother dies there are numerous discussions of how the property should be divided, but for the most part the siblings come to accord. A lesser film would have been all about screaming matches, and the opening of old wounds. Assayas isn’t interested in simple family melodrama, though. There’s more afoot.

Kurt Kuenne is one of many talented filmmakers who do great and sometimes fantastic work that still never quite break into the mainstream. Last year he received the most attention so far in his career with the documentary Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, in which Kuenne chronicles the life of his friend Andrew Bagby for the sake of Zachary, Andrew’s son by way of the ex-girlfriend who murdered him and then fled to Canada. “A film worthy of comparison to Errol Morris’s seminal The Thin Blue Line” according to The Village Voice. I won’t review the film here, only say that it is perhaps one of the most wrenching, personal documentaries I have ever seen.

What’s also worth seeing are Kuenne’s short films, two of which are available on Youtube. The first one, Validation, stars TJ Thyne, most known for his role on the tv-show Bones. The other one, Rent-A-Person, stars James Haven, most known for being Angelina Jolie’s brother.

It’s cool seeing two short films whose stories intersect, but what is most impressive is how the two films manage to embrace high melodrama yet have a three-act structure that does not take the usual turns. It’s whimsical without being annoying; very sweet and upbeat without being cloying. Together they’re a half hour of your life well spent.

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of June 26-28, 2009.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus questions:

1) Will the Thursday to Sunday (note: excluding Wednesday, but including Thursday midnights) take of Transformers 2 be more or less than the first weekend of The Dark Knight ($158.4 million)?
2) Will My Sister’s Keeper earn more or less than Year One does this weekend?

Deadline is Tuesday June 23 at 11:59 pm (blog time).

To find out the rules of the game, go to the main thread for AGEBOC 09.

AGEBOC 09 score

James: 18.5

Rob: 16.5
Joe Webb: 13
Nick: 10.5
filmman: 6.5
Brian: 6
Marco Trevisiol: 6
Jeanine: 5
Juan: 5
Jackrabbit Slim: 5
Rhymerguy: 4

Food, Inc. (trailer)
Director: Robert Kenner
Newsflash: lots of mass-market food is bad for you and/or produced in ethically questionable ways. Maybe one of the reasons that documentaries typically bomb at the box office is that it’s so rare to see one distributed that doesn’t tell you things you almost certainly already know.
Metacritic: 80

Moon (trailer)
Director: Duncan Jones
This looks definitely worth seeing, my general dislike for Sam Rockwell aside. Trailer is strong, at any rate.
Metacritic: 63

Of Time and the City
24 City
Directors: Terence Davies (Of Time and the City), Jia Zhang-Ke (24 City)
The Gene Siskel Film Center is showing both of these films as a double bill called “Cities Past and Future.” Of Time and the City is Davies’ documentary about Liverpool, while 24 City is a fictional story set against the backdrop of a factory closing in Chengdu, China.
Metacritic (24 City): 75

The Proposal (trailer)
Director: Anne Fletcher (Step Up, 27 Dresses)
I don’t have anything to say about this movie, except that it occasions me to reflect that Bullock’s breakout in Speed, and hence my first job at the now-defunct Mandarin Corners cinema in Jacksonville, Florida, was fifteen years ago now. This makes me feel old – I was only 16 at the time. It means that almost as much time has passed between then and now as passed between the time I was born and Speed came out.
Metacritic: 52

Séraphine (trailer)
Director: Martin Provost
Winner of all kinds of César awards, which is actually not a bad indicator of quality. Recent winners include The Beat That My Heart Skipped, The Secret of the Grain, and Lady Chatterly, all films that were well worth watching. Certainly those are three much stronger films than the last three Best Picture Oscar winners. This one’s a film about the French painter Séraphine de Senlis, who I have never heard of.
Metacritic: 86

Tetro (trailer)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, The Conversation, Jack, Youth Without Youth)
I saw Youth Without Youth, and while I can’t claim to have gotten much out of it, it seemed like the kind of movie that cinephiles 50 years from now will remember and bitch and moan about when Criterion puts out a Holo-ray of The Outsiders instead of Coppola’s shamelessly overlooked late-career gem. I’ll see Tetro because I expect it to be genuinely unique, like Youth, even if I perhaps won’t quite know what to make of it.
Metacritic: 63

Year One (trailer)
Director: Harold Ramis (Caddyshack, Vacation, Groundhog Day, Analyze This)
Apparently this is terrible (but Manohla Dargis likes it?), although I have to admit that I find Michael Cera’s bit to be ceaselessly amusing, similar to how I feel about Owen Wilson. In the end, I’m sad that Harold Ramis has apparently hit rock bottom, but I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. Analyze That and The Ice Harvest were both basically uselsss, and I didn’t even see Bedazzled.
Metacritic: 41

Princesses!

There has been some discussion here, as well as other places, over the lack of female protagonists in Disney fare lately. The response was that Disney has actually been focusing specifically on female role models these last few years, with their retro-fitted Disney Princess line (sales in excess of $3.5 billion). You go to their site and they have The Official Princess Website (funny how they can make stuff like the idea of princesses and old fairy-tales appear like their intellectual property), a predominantly pink website with sections where kids can learn to color in Cinderella and parents can learn “Parenting a Princess”.

Personally, I’m not against kids having role models, but in this case the artifice starts to crumble a little when you start asking questions about it. Is it okay for little boys to follow the princess line, i.e. can a little guy be a princess too? I didn’t find any pictures of boys with tiaras on the website. And what, exactly, does being a princess entail?

On Wikipedia there’s this perspective on princesses:

Yet another take on the rising popularity of being a “princess” is the gentleness and refined composure associated with the title. It often conjures images of elegance and self-control, and among the younger generations, is a depiction of all things feminine and lovely, yet in reality, a real princess is just a title given to one who is part of a royal family and does not necessarily mean that they are always like so.

Australia’s The Age has an an intelligent article on what it calls The Princess Syndrome. Even if the author of the article (Tim Hunter) can’t seem to come to a conclusion, it does make some interesting observations, such as “On a very basic level, princess stories are transformation tales [...] one of the classic narratives of social mobility.”

‘Social mobility’ in modern society is represented by consumerism. “Part of becoming a princess is getting a lot of good stuff: jewellery, clothes, and even houses. The shopping experience therefore is becoming closely linked to the princess experience,” Tim Hunter writes.

How does a princess achieve the transformation, this princess experience? By way of a man, of course! Prince Charming, to be precise. “The notion that women rise in the social stakes by virtue of the man they attach themselves to [...] that marrying well, especially financially, is desirable, so they can easily live the life of a princess.”

While the Disney princesses have become much more active lately, even in the case of the Disney Pocahontas who chooses country over man, nearly all of them have required a man to achieve their goals. Only Mulan is the notable exception, although she too returns home to her father. It’s like, if you don’t care to start a family yourself, take care of the one you have.

In a NY Times article entitled “What’s Wrong With Cinderella?” writer Peggy Orenstein, worried about the influence of the Disney Princess line on her young daughter, had another example of a princess who didn’t need a man.

I mulled that over while flipping through ‘The Paper Bag Princess,’ a 1980 picture book hailed as an antidote to Disney. The heroine outwits a dragon who has kidnapped her prince, but not before the beast’s fiery breath frizzles her hair and destroys her dress, forcing her to don a paper bag. The ungrateful prince rejects her, telling her to come back when she is ‘dressed like a real princess.’ She dumps him and skips off into the sunset, happily ever after, alone.

There you have it, ‘Thelma and Louise’ all over again. Step out of line, and you end up solo or, worse, sailing crazily over a cliff to your doom. Alternatives like those might send you skittering right back to the castle.

Orenstein’s article is worth a read, but she doesn’t come to any firm conclusions about the Princess line either. (She does note that pink was considered a masculine color up until the 1930s, something I didn’t know.)

Recently a marketing campaign from M&C Saatchi that was done for Disney, “Life should be a little more Disney”, was uncovered by the Super Punch blog.

More pictures after the jump.

They’re somewhat controversial, I suppose. It’s not how we’re used to seeing Disney princesses. The commenter Drew over at Cinematical has a good angle.

Cinderella [...] surrounded by a world that treats her like crap. Realism be damned; there’s no reason that the audience can’t wish for a Prince Charming to come along in her case. After all, isn’t Disney about ‘making dreams come true’ and ‘when you wish upon a star’ and all that jazz? Some people might find it offensive, but in a way, it’s sort of a noble statement.

It might be a “noble statement” but I’m not sure it’s a very encouraging one. What both ads are indirectly saying is, once again, that women need a good man to take them away from their troubles. Will the fairy godmother give cleaning lady Cinderella a college scholarship or turn her into a one-night debutante so she can woo the boss of the big corporation? Life should perhaps be a little less Disney.

Aside from all that a princess has to want, there’s also what a princess has to be and show: gentleness, refined composure, elegance and self-control, according to the Wikipedia entry, but most of all “the connection between beauty and goodness has always been an integral part of the princess tale” (Hunter again).

The connection between beauty and goodness is perhaps not as crystal clear as it once was, what with Shrek’s Princess Fiona choosing to be herself, i.e. fat and green, but even there I’m left wondering if it’s not more like a racially mixed woman acknowledging herself as black or Asian. Ogre-Fiona might look somewhat averse from a Western ideal, but beautiful from the perspective of an ogre. Still, that’s a good lesson for a kid to have.

Princess Fiona’s “be yourself” is probably the most positive message one can get from a princess film, because you have to wonder where the causes of wanting to be a princess lies. The appeal is clearly about more than wanting to be pretty in nice dresses (the similarity between the princess syndrome and the boom in models over the last decades is worth noting, though).

Fear. Simple fear is the cause. Insecurity in one’s ability to weather difficulties. Better to have a man to defend oneself from dragons. Sit high up in a castle and look down on the commoners. Have a pretty dress that all the other girls can envy but still be loved by all. Always be smiling, because smiling signifies happiness. Never want for anything and always get what you want, because what you want and what you need is stuff, and a man that can get you that stuff and keep you safe. Your main preoccupation should be to be pretty and nice. Whenever a girl tries to help herself she gets in trouble.

It’s not even curious that girls want to be princesses but not queens, women who might actually rule. Four out of five times Disney queens turn out to be witches and they always turn out witches because they want power. Women and power equals bad. Better to be a princess.

Over at JPG Magazine the photographer Dina Goldstein has done a series on Fallen Princesses. I like the one with Beauty best. It’s good (and fun) seeing a continued questioning of these role models.

This winter sees the next Disney Princess enter the commercial zone, this one specifically engineered to fit into the lineup – Tiana in The Princess & The Frog. It’s about time that a black woman took center stage, even if this one is somehow a princess in New Orleans and the central plot surrounds the fable of the princess kissing the frog. Funny how the girl always has to look past the guy looking like shit (see also: the Apatow universe). Of course I don’t know if they’ll spin the concept somehow. Maybe the frog prince turns out to be white.

To complete the rainbow spectrum of princess colors, will the next Disney Princess be from India? Might I suggest Mumtaz Mahal? She’s suitably passive and became famous because of her man.

Going back to the first question, would a boy want to be a princess? Honestly, would you want your boy to be one?

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of June 19 – 21, 2009.

The one who predicts closest to the total Friday to Sunday gross for the #1 film wins 4 points. Runner-up gains 2 points. Predicting within half a million earns 2 extra points.

Bonus questions:

1) Will Year One be the #4 most grossing film in the US this weekend? Yes or no?
2) Will The Hangover place over or under Up this weekend?

Deadline is Wednesday June 17 at 11:59 pm (blog time).

To find out the rules of the game, go to the main thread for AGEBOC 09.

AGEBOC 09 score

Rob: 16

James: 14
Joe Webb: 13
Nick: 9.5
filmman: 6
Brian: 6
Marco Trevisiol: 5.5
Jackrabbit Slim: 4.5
Rhymerguy: 4
Juan: 4
Jeanine: 3

One thing about doing this Thursday night is that the Metacritic ratings don’t include all of the Friday reviews. So, you know, buyer beware.

Away We Go (trailer)
Director: Sam Mendes (American Beauty, The Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road)
I’m surprised by how much I want to see this, actually. I always thought that Maya Rudolph was one of the most talented SNL performers of the last decade or so, even if, like all SNLers, she had to rely too much on funny voices.
Metacritic: 58

Enlighten Up! (trailer)
Director: Kate Churchill
Sometimes I’ll be sitting in a movie theater, minding my own business, just waiting for the picture to start, when I’m hit for a trailer for a movie for which I have no idea how it ever got a distribution deal. This is one of those movies. I can open a year-end issue of Film Comment and read about 100 movies that were made around the world that I’d love to have seen but couldn’t, because someone instead decided to distribute a documentary about some jackass doing yoga. The free market in action, I guess.
Metacritic: not listed

Imagine That (trailer)
Director: Karey Kirkpatrick
It’s almost midnight so I’m not going to waste time coming up with a pithy comment.
Metacritic: 54

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (trailer)
Director: Tony Scott (Spy Game, Man on Fire, Domino, Deja Vu)
Up until very recently, I thought this existed only to embarass people who used to be John Travolta fans. I mean, come on, he looks utterly ridiculous in the trailer. Tony Scott is usually dependable enough, however (besides his last two films, I mean), so I guess we’ll see.
Metacritic: 55

Tulpan (trailer at Zeitgeist Films site)
Director: Sergei Dvortsevoy
Following Nomad and Borat in a long, proud tradition of Kazakh films comes this tender comedy about a shepherd trying to romance his neighbor. Reviews are good enough that I’ll make time for it if at all possible – screw Terminator, right?
Metacritic: 90

Ahhhh, Pontypool.

There are some brilliant choices and touches of flair in this unique take on a time-warn genre. However, those brilliant choices and touches, for me, sadly, didn’t live up to the idea of what I thought this film would deliver, especially given it’s high festival marks.

First, I will say that, as independent films go, this is a crackerjack of conceit and execution. Confine your characters to one place, put them in a tense situation, heighten the tension and suspense by never showing the horrors we keep hearing (save for one really well done scene) and let us watch a great actor at work and we’ll be riveted for the time it takes to finish the story.

Bravo to the filmmakers and writer for showing us just enough of these characters to make them believable and to make us care and then good job to the director for stepping back and simply letting the camera wash over the made-for-film face of the lead actor, Stephen McHattie. Why hadn’t I known about this Canadian actor sooner? My loss, because he is simply amazing.

I don’t like to give away any of the story in my reviews. Suffice to say, it takes one simple click and not much typing to figure out what you need to know and I, for one, love to go into a movie I know nothing about knowing nothing.

That said, something has inflicted the people of Pontypool with a deadly virus that turns them into the type of Zombie you’ve never witnessed before. The conceit is handled brilliantly and it’s a shame the filmmakers didn’t have more money to explore the idea a bit further than they did.

A few things I didnt understand:

1. The characters’ complete inability to simply not speak. Why not just write things down? (They eventually do, but, come on. You see the horror first-hand. SHUT UP!)

2. The way characters simply appear, sometimes nearly out-of-nowhere.

3. Please, please, please do a remake and show more of what happens in the run-up to the virus destroying its host. This is something we’ve never seen before and it’s really a great idea. Make the doctor(who was a great character) more of the movie so we can see more of what’s happening.

Things I LOVED:

1. The lead actor and his character. Eric Bogosian and Talk Radio pale in the light of this genius.

2. The young woman and her turn. She was great, had a good backstory and then…she loses it. Sad and scary and tense and very-well-handled. (If slightly not handled fully enough).

3. The humor and the pathos mixed together. This guy is sad and finished with life. But they still laugh, they still cry and he still thumbs his nose at the man. Brilliant.

4. The entire last third. The movie goes from tense to awesome to funny to crackerjack zombie flick. Thank you.

If it seems I liked this movie more than I let on, I did. I’m just not sure where to put the ending and what the writer was trying to say. I felt it took something away from the horror of it and made it…dare I say…political. Confused me somewhat and would have liked a different reason for what ultimately happened.

Definitely worth a watch!

Ahhhh…Pontypool.