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Shared Darkness

A Communal Life in Film, Examined

Monthly Archives: June 2008

City Slickers

Coming two years after Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams, 1991’s City Slickers tapped into some of that big screen hit’s same listlessness and ennui, deeply felt by an aging boomer population. The story centers around New York City family man Mitch Robbins (Billy Crystal), who finds himself sort of going through the motions — he’s unhappy with his advertising job at a radio station, frets that his kids don’t respect him (little Jake Gyllenhaal makes his screen
debut as Mitch’s youngest, while Crystal’s real-life daughter Lindsay
plays his eldest screen kid), and generally feels the soul-deadening crush of impending middle-age. His wife Barbara (Patricia Wettig) wonders where the smile and spring in the step of her husband have gone.

Things are similarly screwy for Mitch’s friends: Grocery store manager Phil Berquist (Daniel Stern) finds himself teetering on the edge of divorce, while commitment-phobe Ed Furillo (Bruno Kirby) keeps intimacy at bay through habitually dating a string of much younger women. Trading their briefcases for saddlebags, the three longtime pals decide to beat a retreat from the hustle and bustle of big city life, and take a vacation together at a New Mexico theme ranch where people can live on the land and take part in cattle drives. There, under the tutelage of grizzled cowhand Curly Washburn (Jack Palance), the men locate a pinch of the wonderment of adolescence. Out of place but enthralled, they, along with an array of other vacationing city folk, learn about the Old West and themselves.

Crystal may have still been in his early 40s when City Slickers was made, but the idea of him playing a 39-year-old may be among the biggest stretches of credulity on display in this film (hence the ubiquitous Mets baseball cap his character wears, to cover his chrome dome and aid in this regard). Still, despite a few obvious set-ups (Helen Slater guests as a single gal on the same ranch trip), the script offers up a quotable skewering of colliding cultures. As directed by Ron Underwood (Tremors, The Adventures of Pluto Nash), the movie also has the benefit of solid pacing and staging; known-commodity jokes don’t linger too long, which helps still give City Slickers, all these years later, a bit of a leg up on most of its masculine-angst brethren — like Wild Hogs, which was obviously based upon this movie, at least in the loosest sense.

The special edition presentation of City Slickers, housed in a regular, plastic Amray case with cardboard slipcover, comes with a nice array of bonus material. Presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio, it come with English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and Dolby digital stereo surround audio tracks, a Spanish language Dolby stereo surround track and a French mono mix, as well as optional English and Spanish subtitles, the latter of which instantly make the urban cowboy kvetching even funnier, in bits and spurts. An audio commentary track with director Underwood, Crystal and Stern kickstarts the affair, and it’s a genial, all-inclusive affair. Naturally, lots of kind words are reserved for Palance, who of course would go on to stake his claim on AARP virility with his famous Oscar telecast performance of a bunch of one-armed push-ups.

Four featurettes follow, all running around 10 minutes, give or take. Though all feature interview segments interspersed with clips from the the movie, one is more of a generalized making-of, with the cast and crew reminiscing specifically about production. In another, longtime writing tandem Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel also revisit their experiences, and chart how they came to be involved in the project. The remaining two featurettes are a bit more out-of-field, with “A Star is Born” showcasing the baby calf (actually several calves, of course) used in the movie, and “The Real City Slickers,” slickly packaged self-congratulation as only Hollywood can, throwing a spotlight on people who were inspired to go on a real-life cattle drive after seeing the movie. One’s mind might wander here, wondering why there wasn’t a similarly canted featurette on Must Love Dogs, about all the women inspired to try online dating when shown Diane Lane‘s hook-up with John Cusack. A clutch of deleted scenes rounds out the collection, in fine form. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B (Disc)

Andrew Stanton Talks Wall▪E


Robotic loneliness, love and yearning
may not seem like the most natural jumping off points for an animated
film, or any movie for that matter, but those questions were at the
heart of Wall▪E, according to director Andrew Stanton. “We
had this lunch around the time of Toy Story, in 1994, where we
were batting around any idea we could think of to try and come up
with what the next movie would be,” recalls Stanton. “One of the
half-brained sentences tossed out was, ‘What if we did the last robot
on Earth — everybody’s left and this machine just doesn’t know it
can stop?’ All the details weren’t there, there
wasn’t a name for the character and we didn’t even know what it would
look like. But it was just the loneliest scenario
I’d ever heard and I just loved it; I think that’s why it stayed in
the ether for so long.”

The yawning interim between Wall▪E‘s
inception and release, marked by some noodling around and roughly
four years of production work, have of course been filled with
animated hit after hit from Pixar — nine theatrical releases in all,
and around $5 billion in ticket sales. Still, there’s no simple
formula. “We’re always trying to be different with every movie,”
says Stanton. “We’re a director-driven studio and we’re trying to
encourage and support the (director’s) vision so that every film will
be unique, and have its own taste and slant. But I knew going in that
this was more of a major unconventional film, even when we just had
the character conceit and nothing else.” For the full interview feature piece, from Reelz, click here.

Wall▪E, Wanted Rule Box Office

A G-rated robot did battle with a slick actioner with a hard R rating this past weekend, and there was plenty of business for both. Pixar’s latest animated effort, Wall▪E, debuted to $62.5 million, while hyper-kinetic action vehicle Wanted, starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, tallied $51.1 million. Both films should continue to woo large audiences throughout the week and over the extended July 4 holiday, though with Will Smith’s Hancock set to invade theaters tomorrow night, in advance of its official Wednesday opening, the drop-off for Wanted could be a bit steeper.

Placing third for the weekend, Steve Carell‘s big screen action-comedy adaptation of Get Smart, which topped the box office last week, added $20 million to its coffers, pushing its domestic total to $77.3 million. Rounding out the top 10 were the animated family flick
Kung Fu Panda ($11.7 million, $179.3 overall); Universal’s Edward Norton-starring reboot of The Incredible Hulk ($9.2 million, $115.6 million overall); Mike Myers’ The Love Guru ($5.4 million, $25.3 million overall); Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($5 million, $300 million overall); writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening ($3.9 million, $59.1 million overall); Sex and the City, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, ($3.8 million, $140.1 million); and Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess with the Zohan ($3.2 million, $91.2 million overall).

In limited release, Kitt Kitredge: An American Girl, starring Abigail Breslin, held on five screens in advance of its nationwide bow this week, and picked up $106,000, pushing its two-week total to $449,000. The Last Mistress and the documentary Trumbo opened on a handful of screens, grossing $35,200 and $28,500, respectively. John Cusack’s sprawling satire War, Inc., meanwhile, added another $50,000 to its limited, six-week domestic haul, pushing its total theatrical gross to date to just under $410,000.

John McCain Muzzles His Mom, Sort Of

The John McCain campaign doesn’t really want his 96-year-old mother, Roberta, talking with the press, according to this James Rainey piece in the Los Angeles Times — a warm-and-fuzzy write-around that still intimates the generalized worry that old people are more likely to go off the reservation and say something crazy, or so wildly out of step with modern convention and language that it makes them seem unhinged or unkind. “They’ve got me muzzled,” says the (truly) elder McCain at one point, then adding with a chuckle: “Now, don’t you print that… I
really don’t like to be interviewed.” Later she tells Rainey, who relied on a preexisting relationship to circumvent the normal channels of interview arrangement, “Well, hon, they never said so, but I just don’t think they’re crazy about me talking to anybody.”

The Spiderwick Chronicles

From the beloved, best-selling series of children’s books written by Holly Black and illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi comes the fantasy adventure The Spiderwick Chronicles, a rangy, free-spirited and mostly enjoyable family film that brings to life in wondrous, state-of-the-art fashion a fantastical, unseen world that exists all around us. For those who devoured dime-store fantasy tales in their younger years, and dreamed up all sorts of outlandish reasons behind the strange hump of grass in your neighbor’s yard or the oddly shaped tree at the end of the block… well, this will spark memories of nostalgia, and likely win a place in the hearts of your own children, or nieces and nephews.

From the moment the Grace family, headed by exasperated single-mother-to-be Helen (Mary Louise Parker), moves into a secluded old country house, peculiar things start to happen. Unable to explain a series of accidents and strange disappearances of personal items, the three Grace children — Mallory (Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker‘s Sarah Bolger) and twin brothers Jared and Simon (both played by Freddie Highmore) — start to investigate. When one of them uncovers a manuscript hidden in the wall, the unbelievable truth of their sprawling new home and the amazing creatures that live in and around it is revealed, leading to much adventure. It turns out that 80 years ago, naturalist Arthur Spiderwick (David Strathairn) began compiling all sorts of information about fairies, sprites, hobgoblins and other fantastical creatures, and this hidden tome is the culmination of his life’s work — a text with which the evil ogre Mulgarath (Nick Nolte) could do much damage, if only he could lay hands on it.

As directed by Mark Waters (Mean Girls), The Spiderwick Chronicles doesn’t bowl one over with breathlessly ambitious scope and dazzling, dizzying, overly slick execution, so perhaps the best way to appreciate its solid charms is in the comfort of one’s own home, where it properly feels like just a nice, imaginative bedtime story come to life. Seth Rogen and Martin Short contribute voice work, and Highmore — who between this, Finding Neverland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is racking up quite the fanciful filmography — delivers two nice performances, as both the bookish, introverted Simon and the more rascally, forward-leaning Jared, most upset over his parents’ impending divorce. Overall, the movie is an engaging enough, direct-line-to-the-fanciful piece of entertainment, in the vein of Bridge to Terabithia.

The two-disc, “field guide,” special collector’s edition DVD of The Spiderwick Chronicles comes housed in a regular, plastic Amray case that is then in turn stored in a nice cardboard slipcover with a small, red, horizontal, mock-wax seal that preserves the “unbroken” integrity of the fantastical secrets that await inside. Presented
in widescreen enhanced for 16×9 TVs, the movie comes with Dolby digital
5.1 surround sound audio mixes in English, Spanish and French, and
optional subtitles for all of those languages as well. It also boasts an impressive array of behind-the-scenes featurettes, starting with the seven-minute, Waters-hosted segment “It’s All True!,” which finds the director gently pitching the movie’s back story as real, and catching audiences up on the wide variety of characters and which household items offer safety (that would be salt, though tomato sauce is also a good defense against goblins).

An introductory look at the cast and characters further delves into the genealogy and intertwined relationships of all the Spiderwick creatures (hobgoblins, above left, are part pig, part bat, part monkey, don’t you know, and you shouldn’t take their fondness for spitting in your face personally), while a nine-minute explication of the series’ back story features sit-down interviews with humble-seeming authors Black and DiTerlizzi, as well as producer Mark Canton. “Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide,” meanwhile, spotlights reprinted pages from the books, with 10 links to in-movie scenes featuring the specific, mentioned creatures, though it should be noted that this function deactivates the DVD’s subtitles options. A separate little making-of featurette spotlights the movie’s production design and cinematography, and four deleted scenes are also included. Rounding things out are Nickelodeon TV spots and preview trailers for Barnyard, Bee Movie, the new Indiana Jones DVD Collection and a couple other titles. To purchase the two-disc DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) A- (Disc)

Aero Fetes Blake Edwards in July

In a career that has spanned over 50 years as a writer, producer and director, Blake Edwards has delivered classics in nearly every genre. To that end, his varied body of work will be celebrated at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica during the month of July, with screenings of his wild comedies as well as thrillers and musicals.

Though known primarily for comedies such as The Party and The Pink Panther, Edwards exhibited mastery of the domestic melodrama (the beautiful and tragic Days of Wine and Roses), the thriller (Experiment in Terror) and the musical (Darling Lili). In the best tradition of studio-era auteurs like Howard Hawks, Edwards managed to inject distinctly personal ideas and styles into popular forms. Regardless of genre, almost all of his films share a profound interest in the complexities and difficulties of close relationships (whether between friends, lovers or colleagues) and the wide range of the human experience. In fact, Edwards’ best films often veer from humiliation and anxiety to giddy romance and celebration, all within the space of a couple of hours. I reviewed some of these movies when they hit DVD for the first time a couple years ago, as part of a collection of Edwards’ work, so I may try to slap up a couple of those reviews later next month.

Regardless, the Aero’s special retrospective kicks off on July 10 with an evening screening of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, followed the next night by a double feature of 1964’s The Pink Panther and 1975’s Return of the Pink Panther, starring Peter Sellers. The series concludes with a celebratory screening of The Great Race on Edwards’ 86th birthday, July 26. The Aero Theatre
is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. Tickets for all the movies, as well as other special events, are available through Fandango, but for 24-hour recorded
information on directions and the Aero’s upcoming schedule,
phone (323) 466-FILM.

Jenna Fischer Will Now Piss on You

I’m sorry, but this story about Jenna Fischer, and her years-ago encounter with creep-o writer-director Shem Bitterman, needs to be put further out there. Apparently recounted during an interview with Playboy (how’d I miss that?), Fischer talked about her most memorable encounter with a sleazy industry-type.

An excerpt: “I had been living in Los Angeles for about a year and was a member of
a theater company. One night, after a play, I went to a party and ran
into the playwright. He said, ‘What’s your story?’ I said, ‘I’m from St. Louis. I just got here. I want to be an actress.’ He said, ‘I’m writing a film, and I think you’d be great for it. But I
have a question for you — would you ever do a raunchy sex scene in a
movie? Like really raunchy, with nudity?’ I kind of laughed and said,
‘Well, I wouldn’t do anything I wouldn’t be proud to show my parents.’
And he said, ‘A real actress would say yes. A real actress would piss
herself on stage if that’s what it took. Sylvester Stallone did porn, Shelley Winters pissed herself on stage. Every play, every movie I
write has nudity in it. You know why? Because that’s how I know if I’m
working with real actors. You’re not a real actress. You should just go
home. You don’t have what it takes.'” Fischer then went on to say that she would now gladly urinate on Bitterman, which would be a good thing to see.

Tool-bags like Bitterman are sadly about a dollar a half-dozen in Hollywood, and I’m depressed to say that I’ve personally overheard a conversation very similar to the one above at a party. It’s a sad fact — fringe-dwelling guys and self-touting producers pull crap like this as a way to try smoke out the most impressionable and psychologically persuadable aspirant starlets out there, fresh off the bus from the Midwest. It helps them save on buying drinks, I guess.

Happy Birthday, John Cusack

Perpetual man-in-black John Cusack turns 41 today, so it’s a bushel of benevolent birthday wishes for him. I could point out how he attempts to singlehandedly keep the whole Reservoir Dogs look alive, but what’d be the utility or purpose in that?

Wieners

The DVD cover art of Wieners, starring Saturday Night Live‘s Kenan Thompson, is a thing to behold. And by behold, I mean laugh at, in shocked awe. First there’s Thompson’s creepily airbrushed photo, with his whitened teeth and eyes, and crazily plastered, shit-eating grin, like the fifth grade yearbook picture of your school’s biggest dorky outcast. Then there’s the picture of bit player Jenny McCarthy, plunging neckline and all, standing in front of a squirting bottle of mustard (apparently something she likes to do)… you know, positioned so it’s like Thompson is splooging on her! Two other dorks stand behind McCarthy, one on each side, underneath the words “100% Pure Beef Edition!” — indicating, falsely, that there might be some other “bare bones” DVD version of this movie. All of this is inset slightly against a background photo that makes the entire case look like… wait for it… a package of hot dogs. Ha!

Directed by Mark Steilen (The Settlement), Wieners centers on Joel (Fran Kranz), a guy who falls into a serious, Forgetting Sarah Marshall-esque funk after he’s publicly humiliated and dumped by his girlfriend on popular, nationally televised talk show of host Dr. Dwayne (Darrell Hammond, offering up a confused, listless, hybrid imitation of Al Gore and Dr. Phil). Trying to save Joel from his moping, his friends Wyatt (Thompson) and Ben (Zachary Levi)
force him to join them on a cross-country road trip to seek some revenge against Dr.
Dwayne. The three guys set out across America in Wyatt’s homemade wiener mobile,
handing out free hot dogs and encountering an endless
array of oddballs, weirdos and losers — including loogie-hocking
hippies, a flipper-fingered circus freak known as Walrus Boy and Ms. Isaac (McCarthy), their
formerly hot sixth grade teacher who’s unfortunately gone to seed.

The staging here is atrocious, and the script, by Suzanne Francis and Gabe Grifoni, offers up virtually nothing except lame patter and set-ups for the next obvious joke. Wyatt’s wiener mobile is explained only by him having really wanted an Oscar Meyer internship (?), and he also nurses a pointless Charlie’s Angels fetish (“Cameron Diaz wouldn’t say that to Drew Barrymore!” he snipes at one point) that doesn’t really pay of in any rewarding way. Many miles are traveled, and Joel eventually achieves a sort of cathartic reinstitution of testicular fortitude, but there’s nothing to really recommend suffering through this. Cameos from Tenacious D member Kyle Gass (as the aforementioned Walrus Boy), Andy Milonakis and Mindy Sterling yawningly come and go, and McCarthy’s cameo is just a bit of gross-out stunt casting. If she’s a secret crush of your’s, just do a quick Google search and you’ll feel much better than if you rent this.

Wieners comes housed in a regular plastic Amray case, presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English, Thai, Portuguese and Spanish audio tracks in Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound, and a French language track in Dolby stereo surround. Optional subtitles in the above-mentioned languages are also included, along with Chinese. There no supplemental bonus features — unless one counts outtakes under the end credits, or previews for Meatballs, The Cottage, Starship Troopers 3 and a half dozen other flicks — or pleas of forgiveness from those involved. For a clip of the movie, click here. To purchase it via Amazon, meanwhile, or at least just glimpse that stupid damn cover, click here. D- (Movie) D (Disc)

Wanted

The latest brawny, slick, slow-motion-fed shoot-’em-up to air-quote reinvent the action genre, Wanted is a hyper-stylized swirl of color, outlandish gunplay, acrobatic escape sequences and punishing sound design. It will titillate and enthuse a young, rabid (and overwhelmingly male) fan base for the summer, doing big box office business and leaving a deep international footprint. And then, like The Big Hit or Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever or Aeon Flux, it will disappear with a gentle plunk!, to be not much thought about outside of its fan-boy base until it pops up on cable television some drizzly evening 10 years hence.



Directed by Timur Bekmambetov, the Russian filmmaker behind Night Watch and its 2006 follow-up, Day Watch, the highest-grossing native movie of all time in his homeland, Wanted is based on a series of comic books by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones. Filmed in Prague against a panoply of architectural styles, the movie centers around Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy), an accountant who leads a droning office existence (a la Office Space, and The Matrix), and is so non-confrontational that he can’t even bring himself to dump his girlfriend, a harridan who’s cheating on him with his equally insincere and duplicitous best friend.

Wesley’s life gets turned upside down when hit-woman Fox (Angelina Jolie) crashes into him on the business end of a smoking gun, and informs Wes that his presumed long-dead father was actually an elite-level killer just recently cut down by the vengeful Cross (Thomas Kretschmann). Escaping a rubout from the latter, Fox whisks Wes away and introduces him to the not-very-originally-named Fraternity, a secret, thousand-year-old sect of assassins derived from… weavers? Yes, honestly. Leader Sloan (Morgan Freeman) then explains that they “keep the order and balance” by bumping off individuals whose names are spit out from a loom, encoded in binary form by whether certain strands lay above or below other stitching. (Seriously, one can’t make this stuff up.) Drawn into the Fraternity, Wes learns to slow down and focus the 400-heartbeats-per-minute panic attacks that besiege him, all as he trains to seek revenge against Cross.

As shot by Transformers cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen, Wanted is an anthology of eye-popping steeplechases and nutso special effects, with characters leaping across city streets and flipping cars to fire guns down through the top of open sunroofs. It’s extreme and willfully over-the-top, in other words. It’s also very well put together, powered by special effects from Bekmambetov’s own visual effects house in Moscow. Several of the action scenes (Fox scooping up Wes in a red Viper, saving him from Cross; a train-set sequence which concludes in crashing fashion on a bridge between two steep cliffs) get the blood pumping. There are also cool visual conceits — like a waxy rejuvenation chamber which heals bruises, cuts and apparently bullet and knife wounds as well — and an exacting sense of each of the main characters’ presentations. “Toil” and “Tears” read the tattoos on the insides of Fox’s arms, accompanied by a string of ones and zeroes on her left wrist, presumably the code for some long-past target of special importance.

The problem is a matter of rootedness. Wanted aims to position itself as an outrageous slice of aspirant pop-cinema, about the transformation of a “nobody” into an unparalleled enforcer of justice; indeed, part of the direct-address marketing campaign touts the fact that “six weeks ago I was just like you.” The inspirations for the source material, and its cinematic translation, are fairly obvious, from Star Wars to The Matrix and Fight Club. A bigger part of the problem, though, is that the movie never convincingly sells us on its tone, and setting. Keanu Reeves’ transformation into Neo in The Matrix worked because of the differentiation established between two worlds. Here, everything is angled, and “extreme,” right down to Wes’ obese, grotesque boss (Lorna Scott), who could be something out of a Tim Burton film, or maybe even a Dr. Seuss book.

Centuries of presumed Fraternity customs, traditions, codes and the like are boiled down to vague directives (“Like an apostle, your task is not to interpret, but deliver”) and even vaguer overall motivations, and Bekmambetov can’t stop himself from pitching things at an ironic angle. Bits like the rejuvenation chamber, meanwhile, notwithstanding their visual appeal, render large chunks of the action wholly irrelevant. The movie also ends on a needlessly nasty and condescending note, with a direct-address dismissal of its core viewership.

Wanted isn’t lastingly odious or offensive — in its own warped way, it’s perfectly serviceable for what it is — but it is emblematic of what I like to think of as Cinema of the Now, which is to say films that answer to no greater sense or discipline than what works in the moment. Entertainment like that can wash over one pleasantly at times, but it isn’t ever a cleansing rain. Nor a particularly memorable one. (Universal, R, 108 minutes)

Jenna Fischer Talks Jobs Both Crappy and Good

I chatted with Jenna Fischer a while back, in advance of the sadly aborted release of The Promotion, and she confirmed that The Office was a dream gig for her in more ways than the obvious. “I was a secretary for five years in various offices and I loved it,” says Fischer. “I always thought if I didn’t have a career in acting, I’d want to be the secretary to the President of the United States. Like, what is the biggest job you can shoot for as an assistant? I think I can do it, I can anticipate his or her needs!”

Here she laughs a bit, then continues. “I really did like it, though. I like filing, I like organizing things — not in my personal life, but I love going to work and working on an Excel spreadsheet. My Christmas list is on an Excel spreadsheet — any reason to make an Excel spreadsheet! But really, I like offices, and I like office work, so to get an acting job set in an office was like my dream come true — they combine my two loves. Even now, if you take to a Staples, I’ll get lost in there. The sheer variety of Post-It notes is amazing to me.”

Not everything in Fischer’s occupational past is peaches and cream, though. “I didn’t like catering very much — catering is so weird. I was always offended when people would look right through me, like I was a moving prop of food, but then I didn’t want anyone talking to me either,” says Fischer. “I was like, ‘Please don’t ask me any questions, don’t ask me what’s in it, I’m just going to make it up.’ I was always very grouchy as a caterer. If I was at a wedding and everyone [is getting] chicken, just don’t ask for the sauce on the side, just don’t. Because I don’t want to have to walk back to the kitchen and get sauce in a little cup and remember where you’re sitting, because you look like every other person at every other wedding that I’ve done for the past two years. So I was very grouchy, but as a result, when I’m at an event that is catered, I do not ask for my sauce on the side. I am polite but not too chatty with the staff, because I’ve been there.”

Firestorm

After suffering heavy losses of aircraft during attacks on German factories, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered — or at least allowed — cities to be targeted, in order to smash German morale and reduce the number of workers available for the Nazi war machine. Roughly 500,000 German civilians were killed as almost one-and-a-half million incendiary bombs turned the center of cities like Hamburg and Dresden into tornadoes of fire. Sixty years later, a new debate is underway over the reasons for this lethal bombing campaign. Were these relentless aerial attacks — many of which came in 1945, in the war’s waning days — a necessary tactic? Or was it an act of revenge by the British and Americans? Michael Kloft’s 2003 documentary Firestorm examines this issue, in fascinating if somewhat distracted fashion.

Kloft has a vast array of historical footage at his disposal (maybe too much), and it’s this material that forms the backbone of Firestorm. There are also plenty of interviews with former bomber pilots and survivors of the destruction too — from British bombardier John Chatterton, now an 83-year-old farmer, to American pilot Robert Morgan, whose B-17 “Memphis Belle” provided Hollywood filmmaker William Wyler with the first color footage of an American bombing run of Germany. The recollections these subjects provide, and the film’s exacting sense of detail with respect to the chronological escalation of this so-called moral bombing (euphemistically referred to by the British as a “de-housing of the industrial suburbs”), give the movie a genuine sense of engagement.

Yet Firestorm isn’t really a sustained moral inquisition. In German historian Joerg Friedrich and British counterpart Richard Overy, Kloft has two compelling advocates for at-odds points-of-view. But he doesn’t contrast these opinions and disagreements over matters factual and moral as directly as he should, and too often fritters away the heavy ethical lifting with digressive asides, like ducking into (some admittedly hilarious) footage from a National Socialist Party firefighting training video. The film would also benefit from a slightly more academic explanation of the British and American research that actually informed saturation incendiary bombing — how British Air Chief Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris plotted for the roofs of buildings to be first blown off, and then peppered with small stick bombs that would shoot flames after the initial explosions, burning for only 10 to 15 minutes but, in sum, overwhelming German firefighting capabilities. This wasn’t accidental collateral damage, in other words — this was truly a scorched-Earth policy. Knowing the specifics of the research that informed this policy would be interesting.

A lot of Firestorm is preamble, though perhaps necessarily. It’s only in its introduction and its final 25 minutes or so — detailing the bombings of Hamburg and Mainz, and then the fire-bombings of Berlin, Dresden and another port city in Eastern Germany, full of refugees — that the movie truly examines some of the more controversial bombings of World War II. If a debate about moral equivalence is mostly avoided, though, that doesn’t mean the film doesn’t put those questions in your mind.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Firestorm is presented in 1.33:1 full screen, and comes with eight minutes of (silent) amateur film footage of a bombed-out Germany in ruins. There’s also a scrollable text biography of Kloft, who from 1989 to 1995 worked as a
freelance director of historical TV documentaries for Chronos-Film in
Berlin and for Spiegel TV, and has since personally produced a variety of historical
films in addition to serving as the head of Spiegel TV History. Extra interview material would have been nice, but for history buffs this title is still a solid, meat-and-potatoes kind of meal. To purchase the film on DVD, click here. B (Movie) B- (Disc)

Wall▪E

It’s only June, but with Wall▪E, the latest collaboration from
Pixar/Disney, the pole position in the race for the next Best Animated
Feature Oscar has clearly been staked out. A bold, wondrous and
touching work that thrills and entertains even as it strives to impart
a message of moderation and environmental respect, Wall▪E is two parts
robot love story and one part cautionary conservation tale, with just
enough anarchic intergalactic adventure thrown in to sweeten the pot
for wide-eyed adolescents.

Set in an apocalyptic, consumerist wasteland seven or eight centuries into the future, the movie centers around squat, solar-powered WALL•E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class), who’s apparently the last robot on the planet. Wall▪E wanders around the dust storm-ravaged landscape, where seemingly only Twinkies and his pet cockroach have survived, dutifully compacting trash into neat cubes, and stacking them into towering structures that summon to mind the leaning garbage towers in Mike Judge’s Idiocracy.

Wall▪E possesses a unique combination of loyal obligation and instinctual yearning. He keeps performing his “directive,” even in the face of its absurd futility, but also watches clips from Hello, Dolly! over and over, and collects various knick-knacks and trinkets which catch his eyes, stashing them in scrupulously ordered bins, as much for a sense of domestic comfort as any future practical use.

Wall▪E discovers a new purpose in life, though, when a sleek search robot named EVE (an acronym for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Examiner), lands on Earth to search for signs of photosynthesis. Trepidatious at first, Wall▪E befriends EVE, who comes to realize that, in the form of a small seedling, WALL•E has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the Earth’s future. When this revelation kick-starts an automatic departure, WALL•E gives chase after his new love.

Pixar’s meticulous attention to detail, both visually and conceptually, makes Wall▪E an absolute joy to watch — in fact, to experience may be the operative word. Wall▪E’s personality — his curiosity, compassion and desire for connection — comes through with crystal clarity. His Earthbound rituals — struggling to get his treads on in the pre-dawn morning, like a commuter before their coffee — feed a strong and sympathetic identification with him.

Like Brad Bird’s The Incredibles and Ratatouille, too, the film pushes the envelope for kid-pitched big screen fare, underscoring the fact that animation is a medium and not a genre in and of itself. Andrew Stanton, a co-director of A Bug’s Life and the driving force behind 2003’s Oscar-winning Finding Nemo, delivers a movie with considerable heart, narrative substance and characters to care about. A few moments early on may be tough for younger viewers to translate, given that a viewing of Wall▪E requires one to engage more actively than a lot of animated films, which trade chiefly in noise and color. It is, in many ways, particularly its first third, a very adult film about keeping the wolves of loneliness and despair at bay.

Its concessions toward kids, though — a gallery of malfunctioning, rogue robots that become Wall▪E and Eve’s protectors during a frenetic chase sequence, say — actually always feed the story, though, instead of merely some checklist of scatological humor. As it is thoughtful, Wall▪E is about caring for others and the environment around all of us, and the regenerative value that comes from both. For the full review, from Reelz, click here. (Pixar/Walt Disney, G, 103 minutes)

Wanted, From Behind: Angelina Jolie

Adrenalized and violent as all get out, Wanted is a weird thing, no doubt about it — one feels like director Timur Bekmambetov is probably a fan of 1998’s The Big Hit, and the movies could eventually form a repertory double bill in a few big cities, depending on the bravery, taste and/or intoxication of programmers.

The shot-from-behind, naked walk-off of Angelina Jolie (above) is certainly a high point, of a sort, in the film — a perfect companion piece to her slithery CGI nude scene from Beowulf. The other biggest non-action scene moments, just in terms of sheer audience reaction, involve, 1) a Samuel L. Jackson-esque blast of obscenity from Morgan Freeman, and 2) a silent, bemused reaction shot of Jolie as she lets a flustered James McAvoy pass by her. Oh, and a kiss between the latter pair, too, designed to elicit jealousy from McAvoy’s bitchy, cheating girlfriend. More to likely follow tomorrow…

Lori Petty Refuses to Endorse Murder of Projectionist

Chatting later today with Lori Petty, in advance of the final Los Angeles Film Festival screening of her autobiographical directorial debut, The Poker House, at 7 p.m. at the Majestic Crest Theatre in Westwood. Monday afternoon’s screening, at the Landmark Theatre, was unfortunately marred by technical difficulties, but an in-attendance Petty picked the perfect lull in the proceedings for this interjection from the dark: “I’m sorry about this guys. It’s not the print, because it’s the same one from Friday night (the movie’s world premiere). So I’m sad… and angry.”

Hancock

A fun, fairly crisp opening hour gives way to a muddled, entirely unsatisfying ending in the action-comedy Hancock, which finds Will Smith starring as a sullen superhero trying to win over the population of Los Angeles via a very public makeover. Delivering very much more in personable half measures than in thrilling fashion on its actual premise, Smith’s first summer entry in four years — coming on the heels of his biggest Stateside hit in more than a decade in the form of last December’s I Am Legend — should own the box office for a week-plus after its July 2 opening, but face stiff sci-fi action competition when Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy II bows the following week.



When we first meet Hancock, who’s awakened to stop some fleeing bad guys shooting up a highway, he’s swigging bourbon from a bottle and blowing his nose on his hand — hardly the behavior audiences have come to expect from Smith. Disgruntled, sarcastic and misunderstood, Hancock gets the job done, but his heroics often leave a trail of enormous municipal damage in their wake. After being saved by Hancock, public relations executive Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) pitches his rescuer on an image rehabilitation. He advises Hancock to turn himself in on an outstanding bench warrant for his arrest, hypothesizing that a needy public will appreciate his act of penance and also come to recognize and more fully appreciate his indispensability. Begrudgingly, Hancock acquiesces. While Ray’s young son idolizes Hancock, even in his imprisoned state, Ray’s wife Mary (Charlize Theron) seems to regard him much more cautiously.

When Hancock finally is summoned from jail, he foils a bank robbery that looks like it was staged by guys who might have watched Heat one time too many (perhaps too overt of a tip of the cap by director Peter Berg, given that producer Michael Mann also cameos in the film). Hancock also inadvertently starts learning a bit more about his past, of which he has heretofore had no recollection.

Hancock gets by for the bulk of its running time on the relative strength of its character, which allows Smith both to display his roguish charm and play against type, as squinty, pained and reticent. Hancock‘s truly fatal miscalculation, however, comes in its final third, when the script tries to get into its protagonist’s past, but ends up peddling all sorts of incongruous information. Outright baffling choices mark the last 30-35 minutes of the movie, even if its special effects work mostly sings and zings. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (Sony/Columbia, PG-13, 92 minutes)

Viggo Mortensen Denies Poe Biopic

Over on Reelz, Jeff Otto has up an interview from CineVegas with Viggo Mortensen in which the A History of Violence and Eastern Promises star shoots down the rumors of top-lining an Edgar Allan Poe biopic directed by Sylvester Stallone. Between this and Notorious — the drama about Russel Poole, the Los Angeles police investigator of the murder of The Notorious B.I.G., and a film I’m not sure really exists — I think Stallone just seeds his own IMDb page with material that he’d like to be involved in, and then sits back and sees if someone else can help bring it to fruition.

Boom Goes Wanted!

More soon on the hard-R film, which graces audiences with a butt shot of Angelina Jolie and surely sets some sort of informal record for the most swirling, pounding-heart sound effects contained in a single flick. For now, though, I’ll just say that it’s strange, yes, and Brian Collins is no doubt completely horrified, but the viral sensation that is “Boom Goes the Dynamite!” scores a referential mention in Wanted, actually. Wow, that thing really has legs…

Finding Amanda

Los Angeles television writer-producer Taylor Peters (Matthew Broderick) has kicked most of the bad habits (drink, drugs) that conspired to throw his career off track, but still finds himself addicted to gambling. When his wife (Maura Tierney) tells him that his 20-year-old niece Amanda (Brittany Snow) is working as a prostitute in Las Vegas, Taylor all too eagerly volunteers to go collect her and deliver her to a cushy, expensive rehab facility back in Pasadena. Naturally, old habits die hard.

The co-creator and executive producer of FX’s Rescue Me, writer-director Peter Tolan has an extensive list of writing credits that represent badly botched concepts (America’s Sweethearts), cloying hunks of high-concept goo (Just Like Heaven), or both. Finding Amanda, though, doesn’t even have a good reason to exist. I neither know nor care if this has any kernel of rooted truth in Tolan’s life. The fact is that apart from the contrived main scenario there’s no compelling reason for any of these characters to be who they are (since we never see Taylor win or lose, we feel no real connection to his past), and Tolan doesn’t even bother trying to connect the allegorical occupational dots between writer and whore, which might give this pointless, cardboard-thin premise an ounce or two of subtext.

The performances sink to the level of the material; Broderick completely phones it in as Taylor and Snow, auditioning in perky, signpost-emoting fashion in an effort to break out and be the Next Big Thing, neither elicits sympathy or pervy titillation. Peter Facinelli, as Amanda’s jerky boyfriend, and Steve Coogan, as a casino manager who feigns chuminess with Taylor, fare no better.

And about that writing — no matter his own private agenda (gambling, free from his wife’s questioning gaze and checkbook-free allowance for at least 36 hours or so), would Taylor really locate Amanda while she was propositioning drunken skeezers in a hotel lobby, and then unblinkingly acquiesce to her chirpy wish to meet back up later that night, after she “finished working?” I mean, really? Good God, man. By the time Amanda’s pimp starts pitching Taylor his idea for a script, you might think Tolan is trying, in his own inside-baseball kind of way, to deliver a Sin City super-sized version of the careening, serial phantasmagoria of After Hours, albeit awfully; when the inevitable, teary, wholly unearned soul-searching late third-act moment finally arrives, you realize, more to the point, he’s just been dicking around the entire movie. (Magnolia Pictures, R, 90 minutes)

Comedy Surrogates Hathaway, Malco Duel on Late Night

I just put a bullet in Friday evening’s episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien, with both Anne Hathaway and Romany Malco guesting, and it has a peculiar flavor of improbable victory and defeat when viewed through the lens of the weekend box office shakedown of Get Smart and The Love Guru, their respective projects.

Hathaway was in full, flirty, hard-sell mode, peddling stories of her alt-porn name (Sandy Chestnut) and anecdotes about doing absinthe shots with Steve Carell during an in-production jaunt to Russia. She also laughed giddily — the forward-leaning, eager-to-placate kind of laugh — at all of O’Brien’s jokes, and reminisced about her a cappella experience at Vassar, something she shared with Conan’s wife. Plenty of charm overall, but it still felt nervous and clutchy — there was a desperateness to please, with Hathaway talking about how people were really responding so positively to the movie, which is what one says when they’re pitching a film about Sudanese orphans or a crack-smoking high school teacher, not a big summer action-comedy.

Malco, meanwhile, was all smooth angles and charisma, talking about skating, which he had to pick up for the movie (“If you suffer from NoAssAtAll, put on some skates…”) and sharing how it helped bring him together with fiancée Taryn Dakha, stand-in and stunt and body double for Jessica Alba. And yet look at how the theatrical gate shook down. As much as Carell’s star is waxing, this beat-down really is a referendum on Mike Myers as much as anything else.

Get Smart Tops Box Office

Steve Carell washed most of the stench of Evan Almighty off himself this weekend, headlining the big screen action-comedy adaptation of Get Smart, which topped the box office with a better-than-expected $38.7 million in receipts. The other big entry of the week was Mike Myers’ The Love Guru, which didn’t fare so well; budgeted at $60 million-plus, the comedy grossed an anemic $13.9 million on 3,012 screens.

Placing second and third, in a photo finish, were Universal’s reboot of The Incredible Hulk, with another $22.1
million in receipts, and the animated family flick
Kung Fu Panda, which used a lack of direct genre competition and voice work from Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman and Angelina Jolie to add $21.9 million to its $155.8 million domestic haul thus far in three weekends of theatrical release.

Rounding out the top 10 were writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening ($10.5 million, $50.8 overall) in fifth place, followed by: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($8.5 million, $291 million overall); Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess with the Zohan ($7.5 million, $84.3 million overall); Sex and the City, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, ($6.5 million, $132.5 million); Iron Man ($4 million, $304.8 million cumulatively); and the well-crafted horror-thriller The Strangers,
$2.1 million, $49.8 million).

Opening in limited release, Kitt Kitredge: An American Girl, starring Abigail Breslin, picked up a whopping $220,000 on only five screens, while Sony Pictures Classics’ Brick Lane grossed $47,000 and change at seven theaters. Continuing to fare quite well were Mongol ($1.15 million in less than three weeks of release) and The Visitor ($7.2 million in 10-plus weeks of release), while John Cusack’s sprawling satire War, Inc. added a screen and $57,000 to its domestic tally of $328,000.

George Carlin Dead at 71

All due respect to legendarily acerbic comedian George Carlin, who passed away Sunday evening at the age of 71. Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John’s Health
Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain
and died later that night, according to his publicist Jeff Abraham. He had
performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel
in Las Vegas.

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