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Shared Darkness

A Communal Life in Film, Examined

Daily Archives: July 29, 2010

Middle Men Trailer Takes Viewers Back to Crappy 1995 Internet

George Gallo’s Middle Men opens next week, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from the mainstream marketing (of which there is little, if any), or the outreach of any studio publicity department representative. It’s an orphaned Paramount Vantage release, with parent corporation Paramount handling in shrugging fashion what I gather is a contractual theatrical release to an unknown number of theaters.

But do they have reason to shrug it off? I checked out the trailer, and it plays — there’s a nice mix of music (Deee-Lite, Biggie, “Super Bon-Bon”), strippers, porn stars, hammy fisticuffs, a cross-bow, someone “making it rain” and all other manner of montage-captured material excess. Smart use of the phrase “mad men,” too, in the trailer’s voiceover; trying to
gravy-train some of the love for AMC’s small screen series is certainly not a bad strategy.

Starring Luke Wilson, Giovanni Ribisi and Gabriel Macht (oh, and Laura Ramsey), it’s one of these “I’m-comin’-up,” fratty-bratty business guy tales, like a boozy cross between The Social Network and The Boiler Room. It doesn’t look cheap, either, given all the locations and extras involved. So despite the presence of Wilson — seemingly the default star every studio project that can’t attract a heavy hitter — and despite the suicide release date against The Other Guys, another guys-guy flick with a much bigger profile, it’s a bit curious that this isn’t getting more of a push. After all, you have a movie, based on a true story, about the early-days intersection of the web and porn, with political blackmail and other commercial intrigue thrown in to boot. If you’re a major studio that can’t sell that (or, weirder still, don’t even really try) what exactly constitutes “mainstream” to you?

Gold: Before Woodstock, Beyond Reality

The success of Easy Rider spawned all sorts of indulgent, wonky and mostly terrible “free love,” anti-establishment knock-offs, but one of the more notable arrives on home video for the first time in any format in Gold: Before Woodstock, Beyond Reality. A goofy, loose-limbed, nudity-filled western musical dramedy, the movie stars improvisational godhead Del Close, who would populate only bit roles and cameos in TV series and movies (mostly those that came through Chicago, like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Untouchables), but through his teachings come to influence some of the biggest names in comedy over the past 30-plus years.

In the summer of 1968, filmmaker Bob Levis led a rag-tag band of drop-outs and drug-happy darlings (some with professional acting experience, some not) into the California wilderness to make a movie loosely centered around the notion of a killjoy police captain, Harold Jinks (Garry Goodrow), and his battles with a crippled eccentric, Hawk (Close), in bringing an end to all the debauchery in his community. The result is Gold, a bizarre journey into the mind and madness of the late 1960s — a project overflowing with fantasies of revolution, recreation and sexual experimentation, and fueled by a groovy, funky soundtrack that includes MC5 and more.

In all honesty, while the movie itself is a profound potpourri — and thus holds some interesting standalone lessons from a certain academic and anthropological point-of-view, mostly for the manner in which it sets out to systematically shatter various filmmaking rules — it doesn’t hold up that well, narratively speaking. Close’s performance is a cracked, wily thing, though, and the disc itself holds such an abundance of colorful reminiscences that aging boomers –even those who missed out on all the partying the first go-round — may want to give this title a spin.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with snap-shut hinges, Gold comes to DVD presented in 1.33:1 full screen, divided into 18 chapters, with a main menu screen music loop that repeats every eight seconds or so, and will infiltrate your brain if you get pulled away to a string of emails upon start-up, and leave it playing in the background. The movie boasts two superlative feature-length audio commentary tracks. The first, with director Levis and star Goodrow, contains plenty of warm production anecdotes and other behind-the-scenes stories (Levis used to date star Caroline Parr), and tangentially provides an intriguing sort of time capsule snapshot of DIY production from that era.

There’s also a special
commentary track from Upright Citizens Brigade founding members Matt Walsh and
Ian Roberts, each of whom studied under Close. While this chat takes a while to warm up, the nature of the duo’s recollections is broad-ranging and fascinating, especially when they get into Close’s battles with addiction (he kicked alcohol through aversion therapy, gave up speed and other drugs, but kept smoking weed and cigarettes, and would also lecture passersby on the so-called “hobo code” of not rubbing out a butt with the heel of one’s shoe) and depression (he would attempt suicide a number of times). Close was a fascinating character, full of contradictions, and this presentation of Gold hearteningly allows him one final curtain call.

The other supplemental material is just as engaging, starting with a wide-ranging hour-long 2008 interview chat with Levis by Harold Channer from a New York City public access cable show. There’s also 10 minutes of material from a good-natured roast of Goodrow, plus trailers for Gold and a half dozen other films, and a self-scrolling presentation of lobby card art from the movie’s original release. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) A- (Disc)

Dinner for Schmucks

French filmmaker Francis Veber’s works have long proven ripe for Hollywood adaptation, and his 1999 comedy The Dinner Game provides the source material underpinning for the odd-couple farce Dinner for Schmucks, which reunites The 40-Year-Old Virgin stars Steve Carell and Paul Rudd to generally underwhelming effect. Some mildly amusing character work and colorful detail gets largely lost in a movie that can’t decide whether it wants to be sour or sweet. For the full review, from Screen International, click here. Mind the pay-wall; it’s worth it, though. (Paramount/DreamWorks, PG-13, 114 minutes)

The Rolling Stones 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years

Casual fans may know only Mick Jagger’s strut and sneer, and Keith Richards’ seemingly unlikely hold on life, but the years during which Mick Taylor was the fifth Rolling Stone are often regarded as part of the band’s golden age, the period in which the group recorded some of the
finest and most adventurous music of their career.

On landmark albums like Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street, the Stones’ sound underwent a metamorphosis as they developed new ideas and were informed by a range of new influences. At the center of those changes was Taylor’s sophisticated blues and jazz licks, and fluid style of playing that really gave the Stones an added dimension for a five-year period stretching into the mid-1970s — one they lacked before and have certainly had much trouble recapturing since.

New to DVD, hour-long doc The Rolling Stones 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years tells the behind-the-scenes story of this hugely productive era for the group. Interviews with Taylor and John Mayall form the spine of the work, but the roster of talking heads is deep, formidable and well-heeled, including author and group colleague Robert Greenfield; Village Voice music editor Robert Christgau, U.K. music critic Barney Hoskyns and Stones session musicians Al Perkins and Bill Plummer, among others. While a lot of music documentaries targeting boomer audiences run ashore on the shoals of rights issues and ergo tend to err on the side of academic dryness, this program thankfully also includes liberal performance footage of the Stones, as well as a nice smattering of archive interviews and other footage. While it doesn’t totally get to the bottom of how others necessarily felt about Taylor’s departure (punted or otherwise muddied songwriting credits were an issue, it seems), this title is an engaging and intellectually honest exploration of the difficulties inherent in nurturing creative relationships amidst a backdrop of druggy, world-touring excess.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Rolling Stones 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years comes to DVD on a region-free disc in a regular plastic Amaray case, in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover. The feature is presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio, with a fairly robust English language stereo sound mix. In addition to a roster of contributor biographies, DVD extras include a featurette in which Mayall and music historian Alan
Clayson provide a nice biographical sketch of Taylor prior to his entry with the Rolling
Stones. To purchase the DVD, click here. Or if Amazon is totally and inescapably your thing, click here. B (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Sasha Grey Plans To Melt With You

Adult film starlet turned The Girlfriend Experience topliner Sasha Grey has found another legit film role in the form of I Melt With You, according to the Hollywood Reporter. A low-budget drama set to be directed by Mark Pellington, who most recently helmed Henry Poole Is Here, the film follows a group of college buddies (Thomas Jane, Rob Lowe and Jeremy Piven) who, as adults, have their annual summer reunion, look within themselves and find nothing but emptiness. So naturally, they do that thing disaffected adults do, namely resurrect a drunken college pact to “live free,” or something. Grey will play a character named Raven, described as “a free spirit who helps one of the men realize that nirvana can only be achieved by death.” Members of Modern English will be stoked to hear the news, no doubt.

UPDATE, December 5, 2011: For a chat with Piven about the movie, meanwhile, click here.

Charlie St. Cloud: Cuddling Is The New Shock Care

Full review to soon follow, but it’s worth noting one (interesting? strange?) thing about Charlie St. Cloud, the new Zac Efron flick — that there’s a moment that features a most unusual therapeutic twist.

Yes, the movie touts (and debuts, probably) the notion of “cuddle-rescue.” At one point, when Efron’s Charlie goes to comfort Amanda Crew‘s stricken character, who has weathered a couple balmy days of a very mild Pacific Northwestern summer or something like that, he snuggle/sidemounts her like a pinniped, while director Burr Steers marks time by employing a series of very discrete dissolves. (All this despite the fact EMTs are on the way, less than 20 or 30 minutes away, and, again, it’s not snowing or subzero or anything like that.) Later, it’s said that this brief exposure of body heat saved her from the threat of death by hypothermia (!?), which is apparently the only major injury she suffered in a boating accident.

This is all of course horseshit ridiculous, but teen girls will probably spark to the notion of Efron unbuttoning their jackets and nuzzling up against them asexually. Or maybe not. One twenty-ish-year-old at the screening of the film I caught responded with heavy skepticism afterward: “Seriously… what was that about?”

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