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Shared Darkness

A Communal Life in Film, Examined

Daily Archives: August 11, 2009

Shorts

A colorful, noisy, slapstick romp very loosely in the mold of his imaginative, hugely commercially successful Spy Kids franchise, multi-hyphenate Robert Rodriguez’s Shorts robustly embodies an age-old principle familiar to many parents: that a certain slice of adolescent entertainment is primarily about an all-out assault on the senses. A chopped-up and shuffled selection of a half dozen episodic stories built around the havoc created by a magical wishing rock, the movie connects best when taken as a sort of a love-action cartoon, an exercise in kiddie wish fulfillment. This means, yes, a lazy, poorly edited ending that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but also crocodiles walking upright, giant dung beetles and a rampaging Booger Monster. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here.

Cheri Oteri Wants To Be Your Life Coach

Ever wonder what ex-Saturday Night Liver Cheri Oteri is up to, other than a surprising recent turn in Jennifer Lynch’s Surveillance? I stumbled across the answer in the form of a bizarre infomercial-type thing that popped up during a film I recently grabbed via TiVo off of AMC. Unanchored to any other information, it touted a web site for a character Oteri plays, a perky life coach named Liza who spouts vaguely empowering self-help lines (“Turn what ifs into why nots!”) underneath an encouraging, slightly deranged smile. Turns out there’s a whole series of shorts centered around Oteri’s Liza; they run on Mondays during AMC’s prime-time movie, and the full sessions are of course available online.

Breaking the Bank

Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis might have been late to the financial meltdown party, but he has such a hugely unforgiving countenance, and looks so stereotypically like the face of the establishment, or “the man.” So it’s no great surprise, really, that he graces the DVD cover of Breaking the Bank, an hour-long Frontline special that delves into wonderful financial meltdown of the past two years.

The bets were hugely risky — billions of dollars on the booming housing market, insuring increasingly risky loans and credit swaps amongst other institutions. In the good times, these super-banks reaped billions of dollars in profits, and gobbled up competitors. Then the bottom dropped out and massive losses on Wall Street nearly broke the banks, leaving many teetering on the brink of failure. As the federal government contemplates what could still become a massive nationalization of the industry — and crazy FOX News viewers somehow hit reset on their meager mental counters, and affix the entire blame of the meltdown on President Obama rather than his predecessor or anyone else in either the government or the private sector — this solidly informative docu-overview from writer-director Michael Kirk (Inside the Meltdown) and reporter Jim Gilmore provides a breakdown of the complicated financial and political web that ensnared greedy and/or system-gaming, out-of-control lenders, using Bank of America as its prime example. The only glaring demerit? Failing to adequately address issues of voted-down oversight regulations that would have stemmed the disaster.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Breaking the Bank is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language 5.1 stereo audio track that more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of this title. There are no supplemental materials, but if you want to freak out your kids — or perhaps explain the cardboard city they’re living in 30 years hence — buy this DVD and stick it in a time capsule for them. To purchase the disc, click here. B (Movie) C (Disc)

Dark Night of the Soul Still Beckons, But Not For Long

Those in the Los Angeles area owe it to themselves to get down to the Michael Kohn Gallery by this Saturday, August 15. That’s when Dark Night of the Soul, an installed exhibition of the label-blocked musical collaboration between Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, with accompanying “visual interpretations” (that would be photos) from filmmaker David Lynch, closes. It’s pretty cool, and doesn’t take too long to cycle through.

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