April 2008 - Shared Darkness

Senior Skip Day

Just in time for high school upperclassmen with suitably meandering minds comes the new direct-to-DVD release Senior Skip Day, which surprisingly doesn’t bear a possessive National Lampoon’s appellation.

The shopworn story here centers around Adam (Gary Lundy, above), a slightly geeky kid who accidentally reveals the secret location of his class’ party, and endeavors to save himself from eternal infamy by scrambling to host the event at his house. Enlisting the assistance of a couple friends — as well as three for-hire lingerie models who become surprisingly sympathetic to his plight — Adam scores some alcohol, makes a humongous gravity bong and manages to impress the otherwise-engaged girl, Cara (Kayla Ewell), with whom he’s smitten. When principal Frank Dickwalder (Larry Miller, of The Nutty Professor flicks and, more recently, Blonde Ambition), an Ed Rooney-type figure of perpetual debasement, centers in the party and moves in to break it up, however, good-guy Adam must think on his feet in order to squirm out of the situation.

Written by Evan Wasserstrom and directed, in his feature debut, by Nick Weiss, Senior Skip Day takes a while to find its stride. Especially early on, some of the movie’s sideshow bits are idiotic and kind of thoughtless (a light but recognizable gong every time one Asian character shows up… really?), and undercut the direct-address authorial voice that derives from a few Ferris Bueller’s Day Off-style asides delivered by Lundy. Eventually, though, the warped, full-throttle commitment of a couple of the performances (including Miller and volleyball pro Talan Torriero, as the jerky jock), give the movie some legitimate lift as compared to a lot of its fellow teen comedy brethren.

Though prominently billed, Tara Reid and Lea Thompson have quite small roles, as Adam’s party-hearty sister and mother, respectively. Clint Howard, Russell Peters and Norm McDonald also show up, doling out serving-size portions of mostly their usual shtick, with Howard’s role — an old classmate and nemesis of Dickwalder’s, and sort of the 180-degree antithesis of Matthew McConaughey’s Wooderson, from Dazed and Confused — garnering the most screen time. Another bit player who makes quite an impression is the super-cute Taryn Southern (the girl behind the music video “Hott 4 Hill,” a pro-Hillary Clinton send-up of Obama Girl’s viral videos), as the school’s requisite “hot-but-crazy” chick, Isha, a crusading vegetarian who finally gets to unleash and make greasy-good upon her secret desire for a chicken wing. Wait a second… I just realized that sounded like a complex sexual metaphor. It’s not. I meant that literally.

At any rate, housed in a regular Amray case, Senior Skip Day comes presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. There are no supplemental bonus features here, alas, apart from a trailer for the movie and nine other releases, including Blonde and Blonder, Smiley Face, Remember the Daze and the forthcoming theatrical release War, Inc., starring John Cusack, Marisa Tomei, Ben Kingsley and Hilary Duff. The kind of painfully amusing thing, though, is the way in which the back cover touts — in large print, and circa 1998 fashion — the subtitles and audio option (singular!) as bonus features. Guys, you should just bury that with another photo or something. At any rate, to purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) D- (Disc)

The Onion Tweaks Iron Man

On the eve of Iron Man‘s impending release, The Onion has up (or, more to the point, I was just recently forwarded) an amusing, played-totally-straight spoof of how the film’s popular, well received trailer is set to be adapted into a full-length motion picture, “with Robert Downey, Jr. reprising his role.”

John Cusack Talks War, Inc.

In advance support for War, Inc., releasing May 23 from First Look after its not very well received Tribeca presentation, writer-actor John Cusack sits for an interview of decent length with the English language Al Jazeera channel, which can be found in two parts on YouTube (part one here, running six-and-a-half minutes; part two here, running 13-plus minutes, the first five-and-a-half of which can be skipped since they focus on celebrities more broadly). A political satire about the privatization of war — co-written by Cusack, with Mark Leyner and Jeremy Pikser (who did good things with Bulworth), and starring he, Marisa Tomei, Ben Kingsley, Hilary Duff and Dan Aykroyd — the movie finds the dryly sardonic Fan of Black slipping back into a pro forma version of his conflicted Grosse Pointe Blank hit man, here sent to bump off a Middle Eastern oil minister and consolidate power for an American company run by a former vice president.

Mainly because the questions seem to come from Billy Bush, the chat is fairly reserved and full of expected stuff — Cusack deriding the “conveyor belt” mentality pervasive in society today, and talking about keeping his sense of outrage and independence — though one wonders how it plays overseas. The most interesting portion comes late in the interview, when Cusack says that there’s a “vision of the world that corporate ethics are our national interests. And I just don’t think as a citizen, or a spiritual creature, or even as a thinking creature that we should accept that. I don’t want to be a shareholder in a great, ecumenical college of corporations. That’s not my thing. I don’t want to join that party.”

Obama’s Struggle Against Racist Spam

Forget the ongoing, relatively successful “secret Muslim” smear campaign, forget the drumbeat mention of his oh-so-exotic middle name — an iteration on a theme, meant to court the “Bubba vote,” that, ironically, should highlight the value of his judgment in opposing, from the beginning, the quagmire of this war in Iraq — this, above, is the sort of racist spam email flotsam that Barack Obama has to contend with in his campaign against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

You very rarely see these sorts of racists — or, let’s downgrade, even, and say pepetuators of hurtful and/or merrily ignorant prejudice — depicted in films. You occasionally get the oafish, derisible KKK characters of Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, or from the same movie the outlandish federal agent played by Rob Corddry, whom everyone else (audience inclusive) is meant to recognize, and treat, as a fool. Yet whither the entirely nice, not uneducated folks who forward along stuff like this? I get that there’s no gain to this sort of painful highlighting — why risk alienating minorities in the context of films that may be manifestly “about” something else? — and yet as a society we ignore reality in our art at our own continuing peril.

Jason Bateman Samples Extract

Jason Bateman has signed on to topline the new comedy from Beavis and Butt-Head and Office Space creator Mike Judge, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Entitled Extract, the film centers around a flower extract plant owner dealing with workplace issues and a stream of bad luck, including his wife’s affair with a gigolo (hopefully not portrayed by Rob Schneider). North American distribution rights have been snapped up by Miramax, which has a notoriously deep shelf, even post-Weinsteins; hopefully the movie gets treated better than Judge’s Idiocracy, which saw a corporate-snuffed micro-release from 20th Century Fox in 2006.

Miss Conception Seems Miss-Worthy

The one-minute teaser trailer for Miss Conception, releasing theatrically June 6 from First Look and starring Heather Graham as a woman in the throes of a freaky early menopause, last-ovulation, ticking-biological-clock crisis, doesn’t inspire much amusement or hope, though I guess there hasn’t really been hope attached to a Graham-fronted project in some time. The British accents can’t (or at least don’t, here) mask the lack of wit, and while slapstick-y physical bits and yoga-sex positions are all fine and dandy, unless this movie gives it up with an R rating, and/or somehow ends with Graham and costar Mia Kirshner involved in a hot threesome, it doesn’t hold much appeal. It’ll also suffer from postpartum comparison to Baby Mama, no doubt, though I gather Miss Conception will be a fairly limited release anyway, before a quickie DVD roll-out.

Iron Man

A slickly attractive, well cast and solidly constructed piece of mainstream, action-adventure entertainment, Iron Man represents the latest Marvel comic property to go legit, and would seem, based on its top-shelf execution, to have all the ingredients of another successful franchise-in-waiting. Anchored by an enjoyably charismatic performance from Robert Downey, Jr., and serving as the logical extension of Jon Favreau’s directing skill, the movie should represent a positive kick-off to the summer box office season for distributor Paramount.

Occupying the same early-May slot that has typically been reserved for sequels like Spider-Man 3 and Mission: Impossible III the last couple years, Iron Man should have no problem turning out Marvel’s devoted fan base. With a forward-leaning protagonist seeking a more moral interaction with the world, the film also seems to have the potential to expand on its core audience. While it’s not an ensemble hero piece like the X-Men series, the rest of the cast are involved enough in the story to give it a broader sense of moorings, and one can easily envision a grander series blooming from this origin story.

The absence of a hugely marketable action star, and relative stature of the comic book title, may somewhat suppress international turnout when compared to other superhero adaptations, but positive word-of-mouth and critical reaction should push Iron Man close to an even split with domestic returns. Ancillary marketplace value will be additionally robust, with extensive excised scenes, presumably re-included, driving DVD sales.

Downey, Jr. stars as billionaire industrialist and genius inventor Tony Stark, the second-generation CEO of the government’s top weapons contractor. A rascally charmer derided as being constitutionally incapable of responsibility, Stark has achieved political-celebrity status by protecting American interests around the globe for decades, and enjoying himself while doing it. This embrace of the limelight costs him, though; following an overseas weapons test, Stark’s convoy is attacked. Injured by shrapnel embedded near his heart, Stark is tasked with building a weapon, but instead builds a suit of armor to escape captivity.

Upon his return to America, this erstwhile lord of war is transformed, and vows to take his company in a new direction. Despite resistance from long-time aide Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges, below right), Stark secretly sets about personally developing a cybernetically controlled suit of armor that, with its proprietary repulsor-ray technology, gives him superhuman strength and the ability to fly. Distraught by his company’s complicity in a tangled case of arms double-dealing with global implications, Stark sets out, with the help of his devoted assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and trusted friend and military liaison Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard), to right past wrongs.

Some of the seams of Iron Man‘s screenplay — the first draft of which was penned by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, then punched up by Children of Men co-writers Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby — show, given the lengths to which the movie goes to establish the multi-ethnicity of its terrorist bad guys. These bits, and swathes of its third act action finale, sometimes feel like an exercise in obligation, albeit dazzling in their technical execution.

Still, there’s a playfulness to many especially introductory scenes that benefits Iron Man, and informs the crusading yet wryly self-effacing spirit of its protagonist. The true test of a superhero movie, especially a series debut, is whether it could survive without any of the action scenes, and Iron Man definitely could. Favreau exhibits great care and investment in establishing the relationships of all the characters, and the latent exasperation many feel for Stark; his gift with actors is evident in carefully attuned supporting performances from Bridges, Paltrow and Howard.

Also, while he previously proved his talent at juggling fantasy action elements — albeit on a much different scale, in the under-regarded kids’ flick Zathura — Favreau here shows himself skilled as a cinematic constructor, a master of attention to the component parts of filmmaking. He’s abetted by fantastic, sleek work from Industrial Light & Magic. The different iterations of the Iron Man suit are all interesting, as is the giant Iron Monger suit — resembling a marauding version of the title creature from 1999 animated flick The Iron Giant, from Brad Bird — that Obadiah Stane uses to battle Stark late in the movie. Other technical credits are equally top-notch.

Stark possesses intellect, ingenuity, rakishness and more than a little self-destructive single-mindedness, and Downey wonderfully captures all of those aspects of his personality. Owing to Downey’s dramatic chops, there’s also a glimpse of the deep reservoir of pain that comes through, effectively shading the material without explicitly dwelling on many of the darker elements present in the comics, namely Stark’s alcoholism. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here.

Hollywood Reporter Undergoes Redesign

The Hollywood Reporter has completed and relaunched a wholesale overhaul of its iconic brand today, including a redesigned look and format for its print and digital publications, a revised editorial approach, and expanded coverage, analysis and new industry data exclusive to THR-parent The Nielsen Company. “Today is a new day at The Hollywood Reporter, and one of the most exciting times in its 78-year history,” said publisher Eric Mika. “This brand redesign is the result of our ongoing efforts to create a new Reporter, one that is more relevant, accessible and impactful for our global audiences on every platform,” adds editor Elizabeth Guider. “Our new design and editorial approach will make it easier for print and online audiences to access the data, information and insight they rely upon each day for mission-critical decision making.”

Some of the touted new features include more seamless and contiguous copy flow; more clearly defined sections; chart data exclusive to The Nielsen Company, including weekly Top 40 Box office data and other entertainment consumption trends, complemented by expert external and internal analysis; and region-specific content and supplementary digital coverage, along with more than 250 special issues throughout the year. Wait… 250 special issues?! Sweet Christ, as a former editor, I can tell you these spin-offs are little to nothing except a boon for the advertising folks. It’s the way (errr… one of the ways) publishers hold a gun to editors’ heads. But great, I guess this means more special Raven-Symoné tributes…

Baby Mama Tops Weekend Box Office

Baby Mama, starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, owned the top spot at the box office
this weekend, delivering $18.3 million for distributor Universal, on the heels of its triumph last weekend with romantic disaster flick Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Fellow laffer Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, placed second for the weekend, debuting to $14.7 million, and presumably inspiring lots of concession sales to patrons stricken with mysteriously sudden hunger pangs. The only other new wide release was 20th Century Fox’s Deception, which bowed at just over 2,000 theaters and placed tenth for the weekend, with $2.2 million earned.

The Forbidden Kingdom, starring Jet Li, Jackie Chan
and that noodle-armed kid whose last name sounds like a disease, slipped to third place, adding $11.2 million to its coffers, for a $38.3 million total haul so far in less than two weeks of release. Starring Jason Segel, Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis, Forgetting Sarah Marshall dropped only 38 percent, placing fourth, with just over $11 million.

Rounding out the weekend’s top 10 were nicely crafted family flick Nim’s Island, starring Jodie Foster and Abigail Breslin ($4.5 million, $39 million total); the critically maligned Prom Night,
featuring Brittany Snow
($4.4 million, $38.1 million total); ensemble blackjack flick 21 ($4 million, $75.8 million cumulatively); Al Pacino’s 88 Minutes ($3.6 million, $12.6 million total); Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who ($2.4 million, $147.9 million in its now seventh week of release); and the aforementioned Deception. Falling out of the top 10 were Keanu Reeves‘ testosteronized urban cop thriller Street Kings, George Clooney’s period piece football comedy Leatherheads, and Ben Stein’s anti-evolution doc Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

Hero Wanted

It’s been an astonishing decade-plus since Cuba Gooding, Jr. picked up his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Jerry Maguire. Since then, he’s starred in a handful of quasi-honorable films that didn’t catch on (What Dreams May Come, Instinct, Men of Honor) and made some dubious-to-say-the-least commercial choices (Chill Factor, Snow Dogs, Boat Trip), all before tripping headlong into misguided, “bold” indie fare (Shadowboxer, Dirty) in an effort to recapture his mojo. (We won’t even dote on the faux-Oscar bait embarrassment of Radio.) Now — an entirely decent, if small and begged-for supporting role in American Gangster notwithstanding — Gooding has arrived at straight-to-video-ville, with flicks like End Game, The Land Before Time XIII and his latest muddy action drama, Hero Wanted.

Written by brothers Evan and Chad Law, and helmed by stunt coordinator
and second unit director turned first-time feature filmmaker Brian
Smrz, Hero Wanted centers on a widowed, small town trash collector, Liam Case (Gooding), who we see rescue a little girl from a car accident while his co-worker Swain (Norman Reedus) stands on. Years later, Liam finds himself caught up in the middle of a bank robbery in which teller Kayla (Christa Campbell) is shot, and slips into a coma.

It’s soon revealed that Liam not only knows the group responsible for the shooting — a group that is led by Skinner McGraw (Kim Coates), and includes Swain — but in fact wanted to stage the robbery in order to impress Kayla, whom he had admired from afar. Naturally, this perfectly nutty plan now FUBAR, a bloody trail of revenge and cover-up ensues, with Liam trying to maintain a respectful relationship with Kayla’s mother, Melanie (Jean Smart, delivering a few good scenes), while also cutting down those he views as responsible. Oh, and did I mention Liam seeking both absolution and gun training from a Vietnam vet friend of his deceased father, Cosmo Jackson (Ben Cross)? Or spurning the confused, romantic advances of 12-year-old Marley (Sammi Hanratty), the girl he saved in the aforementioned auto accident? No, because those would seem like weird, potentially forced inclusions, right? Sigh…

Ray Liotta also shows up to pick up a paycheck, as Detective Terry Subcott, the requisite lawman slowly piecing things together as he finds dead body after dead body of criminal lowlifes. He’s essentially the third or fourth male lead, and his role is hardly well integrated into the movie, though — coincidence places Terry at the same bar as Liam, where he can then recollect Liam’s previous heroics, and somehow surmise his potential complicity in this latest chain of events. Tommy Flanagan (Smokin’ Aces), Steve Kozlowski and Todd Jensen also co-star, meanwhile.

The brothers Law don’t have a firm sense of where they want to take this story, so they employ the kitchen-sink strategy of stylistic and narrative devices, throwing out jumps back and forth in time, flashbacks and, most damningly, some awful, awful narration. Gooding needs to escape movies requiring this sort of voiceover work from him, especially when it involves on-the-nose reminiscences about his character’s “obligatory father figure,” or when it opens a movie thusly: “I really wish we hadn’t started here… it’s too easy to get the wrong idea about me.” Oh brother, is it. Look, the problem here isn’t necessarily Gooding’s performance; he trots out the usual welling-tears thing he does so well, and gives it a pretty game effort, all things considered. No, the problem is that the script here is an awful, careening mess, and the movie is both hamstrung by limited means and also just not that well cast and directed. Coates, and Kozlowski, as his little brother, are each sneeringly over-the-top, and Hero Wanted never locates a satisfying, or convincing, tone.

The movie’s DVD releases comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks in both English and French, and optional subtitles in English, French and Chinese. Distributor Sony seems to understand that it faces a tough sell with Hero Wanted, so it’s tricked out in smoke-and-mirrors fashion with a couple things designed to elicit the inner myna bird in consumers — namely a lenticular, 3-D cover with Gooding and Liotta’s mugs transposed over a giant explosion that doesn’t occur in the film, as well as a huge sticker boasting a “bonus digital copy” of the movie.

Proper DVD special features include only an amiable, relatively congratulatory audio commentary track with Gooding, director Smrz and co-writer Chad Law, in which the three discuss homesickness brought about by the movie’s Bulgaria shoot, as well as other production anecdotes. Smrz also lets slip that Liotta dictated the reinsertion of at least one scene involving his character. As mentioned, there’s also a free digital copy of the film, which purchasers can transfer to their PC, PlayStation 3 or PSP (PlayStation Portable) system, pending minimal memory requirements. That’s a plus for some, I guess, who favor portability over all else. But an extra version of something so utterly shrug-inducing is, to me, no great shakes. To purchase the movie via Amazon, however, click here. To view its trailer, click here; to view a scene between Gooding and Liotta, click here. D (Movie) C- (Disc)

Happy Birthday (Suit), Jessica Alba

It’s a happy birthday to Jessica Alba, who turns 27 today. By mutual agreement (my suggestion, her silent consent), we’ve agreed not to discuss Good Luck Chuck, and to go ahead and pretend The Love Guru doesn’t exist.

The way she’s clinging to those bed sheets, you’d think she was doing her impression of a Pennsylvania Democratic primary voter… what?

Yeah, I said it.

Cloverfield

Like 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, which took advantage of nascent Internet
marketing to whip audience interest into a fervor and ingeniously, partially sold itself as a rescued artifact, Cloverfield is a guerrilla-style exercise in “found footage” subjectivity, unfolding
completely in handheld style, with often canted or shaky camerawork. Reframing a classic monster movie conceit as a post-September 11
allegory of big city trepidation, and skillfully evoking more dread than
lasting cathartic release, it’s also a thrilling, skewed slice of cinematic terror tailor-made for our times, now new to DVD.

Delivering on its pre-release buzz to the tune of $165 million worldwide — unlike Snakes on a Plane, the last such sensation to so strike a viral marketing vein — Cloverfield owes its existence to the participation of producer and Lost hit-maker J.J. Abrams. Yet the style, unique framing device and top-shelf execution are what ultimately help sell this mash-up of classic genre filmmaking with new-school tropes.

Like The
Blair Witch Project, the film chronicles the plight of a group of young
people fighting for their lives trapped in an unforgiving outdoors, in this
case an urban jungle under siege by a gargantuan rampaging monster, and
hundreds of hostile smaller, scurrying creatures which pose every bit as much
of a threat. The film opens chillingly, with a silent
title card that stamps the subsequent video camera footage as a found audiovisual
document, from the U.S. military. The first portion of the tape reveals the tender morning
after a hook-up between long-time friends Rob (Michael David-Stahl, above left) and Beth
(Odette Yustman, above right). The videotape, and thus the movie, then leaps forward a
month, to the evening of a huge going-away party for Rob, who’s preparing to
move to Japan as part of a promotion.

Tasked by his girlfriend Lily (Jessica
Lucas, below right) with recording the event, Rob’s brother, Jason (Mike Vogel), passes off
the duty to friend Hud (T.J. Miller), who fruitlessly tries to engage Marlena
(Lizzy Caplan, below middle) in flirtatious small talk. The party takes a turn for the
awkward when Beth shows up with another guy. Rob’s suppressed feelings of affection
come bubbling to the surface, words are spoken in anger, and Beth leaves.

Suddenly, a massive jolt shakes the remaining
revelers, and the power goes out. As the group heads outside to see what
exactly has happened, fireballs explode on the horizon, and utter havoc is unleashed.
After one route of evacuation is sealed, Rob receives a distraught cell phone
message from Beth, and becomes determined to make his way to her apartment to
try to find her. Friends in tow, the group sets out, but when the destruction
and fighting on the streets between the creature and the National Guard gets
too intense, they seek shelter underground, and try to traverse subterranean subway
tracks.

Nicely balancing confusion and
interpersonal anxiety with these grander, under-siege segments, Drew Goddard’s
screenplay is a thing a pared down grace and lean, muscular virtuosity. It
starts by sketching out the underpinnings of character in fine fashion. After
18 brisk, well-plotted minutes of typically angsty young adult introduction, the
movie yields to mayhem — basically an hour-long dash through urban hell.

As with other apocalyptic and sci-fi
movies, Cloverfield squeezes some
bedazzlement out of the destruction of familiar, iconic buildings and
monuments. Here it’s the Brooklyn Bridge, in a grim obliteration that serves as the film’s first mass-scale,
panicky set piece. There’s also the beheaded Statue of Liberty, which arrives
early in the movie, and additionally serves as the perfect visual metaphor for America’s
still-lingering apprehension over the state of world events and its own
security. Yet director Matt Reeves (a co-creator of
TV’s Felicity, whose other feature
credit is 1996’s The Pallbearer) also
proves himself effective at simplistic evocative imagery, as with a coachman-less
horse-drawn carriage wandering through Central
Park.

Key to substantial gratification with Cloverfield are two bits of necessary surrender:
succumbing to its overall framing device, and accepting the notion that such
trauma unfolds against a PG-13 backdrop, which is only really a matter of
language, coming after movies like Superbad
and the Hostel films have made coarse exclamatory talk integral to their stamp of “realism” within their respective
genres. The action sequences here — which include a bravura night-vision attack in the
subway tunnel, as well as a ferocious street battle with real military sniper fire that Hillary Clinton would surely remember — are so tensely effective as to eradicate any legitimate
quibbles with the rating for the rest of movie, a problem that arguably plagued Live Free or Die Hard last summer, at least in advance of its release.

Cineastes holding on steadfastly to the notion
that less is more may balk at the degree to which the film reveals its monster.
While it’s true that this does if not undercut then at least muddy the water with
respect to the movie’s metaphorical associations, it’s interestingly handled
within the framework of the film, and seems a commercial tip of the cap as much
as anything, something that DVD interviews about its late production inclusion seem to support. It’s undeniable that Cloverfield
is, at its core, a metaphor for the terror and uncertainty of the real world,
from its aforementioned iconic poster and DVD cover image and willfully vague tagline (“Some
thing has found us”), which makes no mention of a CGI monster on which millions
of dollars was spent, to specific dialogue of choking despondency (“I don’t
know why this is happening”). Like much
great cinema, Cloverfield works on multiple levels; it’s incidentally a monster thriller.

The single-disc DVD’s packaging, as well as its main menu screens and the jittery, chopped-up style of some of its featurettes, loosely continues upon the theme of the movie as a “found artifact,” with a brown, classified, “Project Cloverfield” sticker taking the place of the usual side-binding sticker found on many releases. The DVD itself, meanwhile, is slightly degraded in mock fashion, though it does bear the Paramount and Bad Robot corporate logos. Presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio enhanced for 16×9 televisions, the movie comes with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks in English, French and Spanish, with optional subtitles in each of those languages. It’s also worth noting that all of the main supplemental features are subtitle-enabled too, which is a nice touch.

First off, director Reeves sits for an audio commentary track, and it’s a thoughtful and substantive affair throughout. Even better, however, may be a superb 28-minute making-of featurette which intersperses interview segments with Abrams, Reeves, producer Bryan Burk and other behind-the-scenes figures with loads of on-set production footage from the movie’s semi-secret summer 2007 shoot. A good bit of material here features Miller, since he’s the lens through which so much of the movie unfolds (costar Margot Farley good-naturedly chides him that he can “screw up everything twice, as an actor and a cameraman!”), but Caplan also flashes her droll wit, and we learn that some of the actors stay out of breath by jumping rope between takes. Reeves and editor Kevin Stitt, meanwhile, talk about the “soda straw” approach of the movie’s visual scope — that is, creating a grand vision captured in very restricted form. After 28 days of principal photography in and around Los Angeles, the production moves to New York City with a skeleton crew; there, even under the codename “Cheese,” they amusingly discover pictures of their shoot posted to the Internet within mere hours.

A separate 22-minute special effects featurette duplicates a bit of footage, but does showcase plenty of impressive green-screen work, from the Brooklyn Bridge sewquence and other street scenes. Another six-minute featurette focuses more on the creature design itself, with conceptual artist Neville Page talking about his work, the skin of the creature and its pupil-less eyes, which are modeled after those of a great white shark, nature’s most efficient killing machine. Blooper fun gets highlighted in a four-minute segment called “Clover Fun,” and there are also four brief deleted scenes and two alternate endings, all with optional commentary from Reeves. Most of the former are judicious tonal trims (a wisecrack from Hud during the ultra-tense subway sequence, for instance), but I did wish a post-attack sequence between Marlena and Lizzy — part of a brief re-shoot, in which she acknowledges the trauma caused by Jason’s death — had been left in. The two alternate endings, meanwhile, are very much variations on a theme; without spoiling the specifics of the conclusion, one is essentially a different coda, built around a shot for which Reeves had great affinity, while the other focuses on a very brief interstitial flash which hints at the source camera actually capturing the film’s footage being found.

Finally, there’s also a special Easter egg on the disc, able to be found by toggling right after lingering above the Spanish subtitles option on the set-up scene. Doing so will yield a two-minute clip of cast and crew members riffing in goofball fashion on one of the military figures’ lines of dialogue in the movie — “Rack ’em and pack ’em, we’re phantoms in 15!” Cloverfield, meanwhile, seems to be rightly enjoying a bit more than a mere 15 minutes in the pop-cultural spotlight. To purchase the film via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) A (Disc)

First Knight Gets Special Edition DVD

On April 29, Richard Gere, Sean Connery and Julia Ormand revive the passion of Camelot in First Knight, directed by Ghost helmer Jerry Zucker, when the 1995 summer flick — a theatrical washout which grossed only $39 million domestically — comes to special edition DVD and Blu-ray.

Special features include an audio commentary track with Zucker and producer Hunt Lowry, deleted scenes, a making-of featurette, a production design featurette and an “Arthurian Legend” commentary. For a spitfire clip between Gere and Ormand, click here; for a more action-oriented fortress escape sequence, click here. For more information, meanwhile, visit the official First Knight web site by clicking here.

Constantine’s Sword Impales CBS

I’ve been e-noticed that filmmaker Oren Jacoby will appear on the tele-newsmag CBS Sunday Morning this Sunday, April 27, to discuss his superb new documentary Constantine’s Sword, as part of a story about the military and religion. The show is typically aired from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, but check your local listings for the exact show time in your area.

Aero Hosts Advance Screening of Iron Man

One of the early summer’s more hotly anticipated mainstream flicks (and rightly so I can say, having seen it), director Jon Favreau’s Iron Man screens at the Aero Theatre on Thursday night, May 1, at 7:30 p.m., to be followed by a Q&A and discussion with Favreau. The movie, centering around a dissolute industrialist, the brilliant, sardonic Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), who builds a heavily weaponized suit of armor and becomes a superhero after a near-death incident, will release nationwide on May 2, from Paramount; Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow also star.

The Aero Theatre
is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. While tickets for most events are available through Fandango, $20 tickets for this special screening will be available at the theatre only, with proceeds going to a special Aero Building Fund. For 24-hour recorded
information on directions and the Aero’s upcoming schedule,
phone (323) 466-FILM. To visit Iron Man‘s official web site, click here.

Baby Mama

Sometimes perfectly met expectations are a great thing. Case in point: Baby Mama, starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Written and directed by Michael McCullers, a Saturday Night Live veteran and co-writer on the last two Austin Powers flicks, the comedy reunites the former “Weekend Update” co-anchors, and lets them butt heads and play off one another in exactly the mode, tone and fashion one could have predicted from the trailer, or a logline synopsis of the plot. And that’s enough, that’s what best serves this concept and story.

Kate Holbrook (Fey), a newly promoted vice president for Round Earth, an organic market chain, feels her biological clock ticking. Thirty-seven years old and unmarried, Kate has everything else in her life in perfect order: a nice apartment in a tony section of Philadelphia, a pony-tailed guru of a boss, Barry (Steve Martin), who values her, and of course all the financial security that brings. After trying to conceive through artificial insemination, and being told her chances are slim, Kate considers adoption, but is put off by the wait.

She then turns to a surrogacy center run by Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver), which sets up a meeting with Angie Ostrowiski (Poehler) and her common-law husband Carl (Dax Shepard). Impressed by both Kate’s “aura” and her bank account, Angie agrees to be her surrogate. When Angie’s pregnancy test brings good news, Kate goes into nesting mode, but her well-organized plans are thrown into disarray when Angie shows up at her doorstep after a fight with Carl. All of Kate’s structure and patience is tested by the loudmouthed Angie, an under-educated caffeine addict, and the working definition of a “downmarket” voter who would surely be targeted by Hillary Clinton in a direct-mail campaign. Naturally, there’s also a potential love interest, in the form of juice shop owner Rob Ackerman (Greg Kinnear).

Fey’s innate likability and self-effacing demeanor keep Kate from ever becoming shrewish or overbearing. Poehler of course specializes in playing rude, screwy and chaotic, and here she plays the sort of woman who is just a rung-and-a-half, maybe two rungs up the socioeconomic ladder from one of the chicks from Rock of Love. The pair’s shared chemistry is what makes the movie work, and gives it some lift. Martin, meanwhile, is also a hoot, “transferring [his] success” by touching foreheads and gazing wordlessly into his workers’ eyes. Baby Mama doesn’t have a lot of complications, but it is witty enough, well paced, and tailored to its stars’ strengths and charms, which is all that it need be, truth told. (Universal, PG-13, 99 minutes)

Nicholas Stoller Talks 83 Frames of Penis

So I had coffee with Forgetting Sarah Marshall director Nicholas Stoller a week-plus ago, in advance of his movie’s release, for a forthcoming Q&A magazine piece. Some of it didn’t make the cut, naturally, so you’re getting some parceled out odds and ends. But really, when it includes exacting shop-talk about male nudity, how can you complain? To wit, another fun excerpt:

Brent Simon: So testing the movie, were you surprised by the crowds’ “penis reactions,” or were there any memorably funny ones?

Nicholas Stoller: You know, how much penis do you think is in our movie? Like, how many seconds?

BS: Maybe like two.

NS: You’re good. Most people [say] like 10 or 15 seconds. It’s two-and-a-half seconds. Our funniest thing [was] in focus groups — guys would get like, “Why was the penis up there for 20 minutes?” Like, really angry, but also in that hilarious and awesome homophobic way, and also slightly turned on or confused about their own sexuality — like, “I am so angry you showed us a penis!”

BS: “I was not expecting that! That was not part of the deal for this movie!”

NS: Exactly. But of course the girls didn’t give a shit. The worst was that they might roll their eyes and say, whatever, it was a dumb joke — and they’re not wrong! But I thought we might have walk-outs on the penis. We didn’t. The only time we had walk-outs was the pig-killing scene. …Still, we tested it to the nth degree, it was almost scientific. You know, there’s a flash at the end, and we showed three flashes during the break-up. We tested four flashes in the break-up, and by the fourth flash the audience is kind of like, “All right, we’ve had enough.” We tested two flashes, and with two flashes it just wasn’t charged enough, the audience wasn’t on edge in the way that you are during a break-up — albeit they were on edge because they thought they were going to see Jason’s penis again. So we settled on three. Also, when he stands up from the couch, that’s 13 frames of penis, and we cut it to 10 frames, but you couldn’t read that it was a penis, so we added back in three frames, which as you know is just a millisecond. In total, 83 frames of penis.

BS: Very scientific indeed, as you said — and comedy’s “rule of three” is again proven out. So on a giant editing bay screen, how much time did you spend looking at Jason’s member?

NS: Oh, a lot of time. A lot.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Made for only $9 million, and released in the summer of 2004 the week after The Bourne Supremacy, as rib-nudging counter-programming to the seriousness of both The Manchurian Candidate and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, New Line’s raunchy, pot-driven teen comedy Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle may be one of the more simultaneously unlikely and inspired movies to spawn a spin-off in the past decade-plus.

After courting high school and college kids in coded fashion (“Fast food, high times” was the poster’s tagline), the movie grossed a respectable $18 million in theaters. But it became a true sensation on DVD, where a cultish following developed around the wild hijinks of the two namesake New Jersey pals (John Cho and Kal Penn) as they attempted to sate a case of the munchies, and in the process crossed paths with both a cheetah and the erstwhile Doogie Howser, M.D. — Neil Patrick Harris, playing an obscenity-spouting, drugged-up, hyper-masculinized version of himself.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay ups the ante even further. Picking up right at the conclusion of the first movie, the guys head to Amsterdam to track down Harold’s crush, Maria (Paula Garcés). En route, they bump into Kumar’s former girlfriend Vanessa (One Tree Hill‘s Danneel Harris), now engaged. After Kumar’s smokeless, battery-operated bong is mistaken for a bomb, though, he and Harold are assumed to be terrorists, and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay. Harsh forms of subjugation that even former Justice Department official John Yoo couldn’t have crafted a loophole memorandum around seemingly await the pair, but they escape, and make their way back to the States.

On the lam, they make their way west to Texas. The intent is to seek help from Vanessa’s fiancé, and make good on his professional connections; Kumar has the secret intention, though, of busting up their marriage. It’s not long before a chance reunion with Neil Patrick Harris occurs. Meanwhile, the entire time, federal agent Ron Fox (Rob Corddry, above right, playing one of the most brazenly racist film characters in recent memory) is feverishly hunting down Harold and Kumar. He finally catches them, but they again escape his grasp, and end up meeting with the president, and helping him work through some daddy issues.

The writers of the first movie, Hayden Schlossberg and Jon Hurwitz, make their joint (get it?) directorial debut here, and improve upon the original in virtually every way. Naturally, things are driven by some of the same coarse, rapid-fire patter (i.e., “Shotgun anus!”), and certain other structural similarities remain; in both movies the guys have a moment with nature, and come across a strange married couple living in seclusion. And then there’s Neil Patrick Harris, who is an integral, if zonked part of the films’ careening, out-of-left-field charm.

Stoner flicks of course have a rich screen history all their own, from Dude, Where’s My Car?, How High and Half Baked to of course just about anything starring Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong. But that’s just a small part of the world of Harold and Kumar — the spark to their fire. While weed was a big part of the comic misunderstandings that fueled the plot of the first movie, and works in similar fashion here as well, the fact is that both films operate on a higher plane than an awful lot of sludgy spliff flicks.

The drugs — and in particular Kumar’s voracious appetite — are a means to an end. They’re what fuels the outrageousness of the scenarios (a “bottomless party” in Miami, Harris branding a prostitute, sky-diving to safety over Crawford, Texas), and otherwise allows Schlossberg and Hurwitz to tackle sacred cows and semi-topical socio-political humor. The relationship at the core of both movies is essentially a riff on The Odd Couple, with Kumar living sloppily and in the moment, and Harold fretting about consequences.

The nerviness of the film is impressive. There’s a KKK beer party in the woods, and Corddry’s agent attempts to wheedle a confession out of an African-American by opening up a can of grape soda and pouring it out on the ground; the ethnicity of its leads gives its makers some extra leeway, no doubt. But Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay mostly works not because of its baser instincts (of which there is plenty of indulgence), but because it’s well cast, wildly written and full of good, old-fashioned comedic friction. That’s a formula for success, no matter the age, ethnicity or drug intake level of your protagonists. (New Line, R, 100 minutes)

Happy Birthday, Sara Paxton

It’s a happy 20th birthday to Sara Paxton, of Superhero Movie and, err… Sydney White and Aquamarine? Her hotness increases by several multiplied factors based on the fact that she wears it well… that is to say, doesn’t yet seem fully aware of it.

Judd Apatow Slagged… Poorly

Another weak parody of the alleged new cookie-cutter template of Judd Apatow-produced flicks like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, this time from Michael Swaim and Cracked.com. Yeah, yeah, I get it… the easy targets — schlubby guys, weed, juvenile slagging on one another. But the point is what, exactly? A disdain for the improvised feel of these flicks? Also, other stuff mentioned is just wrong (“Never reuse an actress,” “Remember to change locations once in a while”); the closest thing that comes to a knowing laugh is the PhotoShopped poster tutorial, born of Knocked Up. Otherwise this is just lazy writing. And believe me, I know of what I speak…

Advance Thoughts on Harold & Kumar Sequel

A full review should follow tomorrow, but it’s worth noting that Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, the follow-up to 2004’s inspired stoner comedy, is a hell of a lot of fun. Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, co-writers of the first film, make their directorial debut with the movie, and the delicious uniformity of vision creates a wild ride. Harold & Kumar is first and foremost (as well as maybe second and third) a lewd, pot-infused re-imagination of The Odd Couple, but racial expectations, male sexual subjugation and topical political humor all get a hilarious workout, as well as the current president’s unresolved daddy issues. What makes this work so well is a game cast, and the movie’s ability to honestly and confidently depict white fear with a feverish intensity, while also exposing its ludicrousness. Oh, and there’s also a groundbreaking “bottomless party” scene. Yes, as in the opposite of topless…

Constantine’s Sword

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Oren Jacoby’s fascinating documentary explores some of the massive amount of violence and ill done in God’s name throughout history — a skipped-stone journey of remembrance and reckoning. Starting with the story of conservative Christian ideology being peddled at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs (where fliers for Mel Gibson’s The Passion were handed out, and Ted Haggard’s New Life ministries touted) and winding back in time, the movie follows author and former Roman Catholic priest James Carroll as he interweaves his own family history with a grander inquisition into faith, and in particular the nasty, tangled intersection between Christianity and Judaism.

Neither naked provocation nor burrowing analysis is a part of Jacoby’s agenda here. In fact, as soon as the film alights on some engrossing historical nugget — Roman general Constantine’s 310 A.D. conversion, which ushered in the iconography of the cross — it’s just as quickly off to something else. This occasionally makes for some minor frustration, since one wants a deeper probe and massage of certain topics. Carroll, though, is a fantastic and articulate guide, and this exceedingly contemplative and engrossing work is both topically important — warning of what happens when military might and religious fervor are mixed — and intellectually stimulating as all get out. For more information on the film, click here. (First Run, unrated, 95 minutes)

Dare Not Walk Alone

The civil rights struggle holds thousands of stories, and this
clear-eyed documentary focuses on St. Augustine, Florida, which in 1963
and ’64 found itself at the center of this great social upheaval. Much
of the movie centers around the business establishment primarily
targeted in the protest, the Monson Motor Lodge, and embittered, now 81-year-old owner
James Brock (below right), makes for an interesting interview subject, along
with former UN ambassador and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young and other former field organizers of the demonstrations.

Directed by Jeremy Dean, Dare Not Walk Alone successfully avoids the trappings of many well-meaning civil rights docs that serve only as grief mops for white liberal guilt. This movie comes by its solicited emotions honestly, simply, plaintively. Eschewing overly explicative narration, it isn’t afraid to trade in silences, or let 8mm or newsreel footage unfold under a trip-hop spiritual beat. The effect is often mesmerizing, and certainly heartrending; it’s the grandness of history writ in personal strokes.

Still, there are a few small bumps; a little more than halfway into its running time, the film makes a hairpin, and not entirely convincing, turn into the present day, tying the story of the allure of hip-hop’s upward social mobility with current-day St. Augustine residents, where over a quarter of the African-American population lives in poverty. It’s not so much a stretch to try to tie together the ugly history of racial divide with a gaping socioeconomic chasm that still exists, it’s just that it’s not foreshadowed or particularly smoothly interwoven here. One feels like they’ve been jerked out of one movie and put into another one. That whiplash is almost forgotten and entirely forgiven, however, with moving closing footage of a church reconciliation ceremony for African-American parishioners turned away from shared worship 40 years earlier. For more information on the film, click here. (Indican Pictures, unrated, 71 minutes)

Semi-Pro Bear Kills Trainer

In unfortunate news, it seems the grizzly bear who played “Precious” in Will Ferrell’s recent Semi-Pro — and seemed to obediently follow all cues during filming —
killed the cousin of his long-time trainer with a bite to the neck. Three experienced handlers were working with the grizzly bear, named Rocky, Tuesday afternoon at the
Predators in Action wild animal training center when the bear attacked
Stephan Miller, 39, said San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokeswoman
Cindy Beavers. Pepper spray was used to subdue and contain the bear; paramedics were unable to revive Miller, and there were no other injuries.

Hip Hop Time Capsule 1994

In 1994, hip hop experienced an incredible commercial and artistic rebirth, a period that many historians refer to in already wistful terms as “hip hop’s last great year.” There was big-time heart and camaraderie within the industry — this prior to the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. — and records actually took longer than a week or 10 days to create, and weren’t reliant on a zillion cameos from other artists of whom you’d never heard. The west coast-fueled “g-funk” sound dominated the charts, powered by Snoop Dogg, who then still had an extra “Doggy” in his name; Nas stepped on the scene with the now-classic Illmatic; and the wildly creative Wu-Tang Clan was unstoppable.

Hosted by Koe Rodriguez, Hip Hop Time Capsule 1994 takes a look back at the artists, music videos and cultural movement of that time, as captured in archival footage from (cable access channel show?) RETV. Naturally, that means a huge mixed bag. While it’s true that there are videos herein from House of Pain, Craig Mack, Wu-Tang Clan and A Tribe Called Quest, to name a few, more often than not these snippets aren’t the group’s best-known or biggest hits, and neither do they run in uninterrupted fashion. Sure, you get to see some lost, rarely spun material, like The OC’s “Time’s Up” and the Pharcyde’s “The Rubbers Song,” but is anyone really yearning for House of Pain’s “Legend/Word is Bond”?

The problem here is a matter of focus. Rodriguez is an amiable enough guide through this material, but too many bits — like his interview with producer Maleet, who found inspiration in Beatnuts-style sampling — drag on for too long. If there’s a little attention to chronology, there’s certainly none paid to overall cohesion, sadly. Still, despite its grab-bag construction, there are worthy bon mots for intellectually-minded hip hop fans — that is to say those who dig deeper than just the beat, and find fascination in the music’s relevance and relation to modern-day minority culture. In particular, there is some thoughtful interview material with film director John Singleton, from the press day for Illegal Tender, as well as insightful analysis from Princeton political science professor Melissa Harris Lacewell. Strangely, there’s also unsourced material from the trailer for American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.

Hip Hop Time Capsule 1994 is housed in a regular Amray case, and presented on a region-free disc that features a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound track, and alternates between widescreen and full screen transfers of source material of greatly differing quality. The good news is that there are ample bonus features here, even if the layout of their presentation leaves a bit to be desired. Smif-N-Wesson’s “Let’s Get It On” is one of 10 bonus musical selections. There are also interview snippets (including with Run DMC’s late, great Jam Master J), clips from the Source Awards, a mini-documentary by LaMar Stephens and four PSAs promoting safe sex, including one that misidentifies Ice-T as Ice Cube. Whoops. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Shared Darkness

A Communal Life in Film, Examined

Monthly Archives: April 2008