A polished technical package lends considerable emotional weight to Supremacy, a siege/hostage drama shot through with racial animus. Based on real events, director Deon Taylor’s movie connects largely on the strength of its solid acting and charged stakes, but suffers a bit from muddled plotting and a dramatically diffuse end game. For the full, original review of the Los Angeles Film Festival premiere, from ShockYa, click here. (Hidden Empire Film Group/Media House Capital, unrated, 106 minutes)
Author Archives: Brent Simon
Last Vegas
Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Kevin Kline and Morgan Freeman star as four lifelong friends who convene in Sin City to relive their glory days in advance of the nuptials of one of them in Last Vegas, a funny, sweet and poignant crowd-pleaser that doesn’t insult its audience’s intelligence. Far more than just the unmoored, geriatric version of The Hangover that its premise suggests, this seriocomedy roots down into its characters in a manner that throws a spotlight not merely on jocular fraternity, but also the duties of friendship, and the hard truths that sometimes only the best and closest of pals can offer up.
Director Jon Turteltaub provides a steady hand on the tiller, but much credit belongs to screenwriter Dan Fogelman, for fleshing out his original treatment in a manner that allows for the inclusion of substantive discord. Fogelman has penned a lot of animated films (including Bolt and Tangled), but Last Vegas most conjures up the same sort of bittersweet mix of first loves, lost loves and the swollen hope of new romantic possibility that also marked his Crazy Stupid Love. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (CBS Films, PG-13, 105 minutes)
The Call
Cop thrillers are ubiquitous, but it’s fairly rare to see a movie that takes as its primary focus other emergency responders. That novelty is but one of several factors that help distinguish and elevate The Call, an enjoyably nerve-racking thriller of imperilment that takes as its heroine a distraught 911 call center operator. Solid performances by Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin abet a rigorous, smart packaging from director Brad Anderson.
If much of the enjoyment of The Call is not necessarily in what happens so much as how it happens, the movie still imparts good, popcorn-level tension and thrills. Further adding to its differentiation, The Call also delivers a nice end twist that isn’t so much a wild revelation as just a little spiky add-on of moral ambiguity. This is pop Hollywood filmmaking done right — stirred cocktail of tension, with the ability to also actually spark a conversation. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Sony, R, 94 minutes)
The Odd Life of Timothy Green: Jennifer Garner, Joel Edgerton
There was a time when, between Alias on the small screen and myriad projects on the big screen, Jennifer Garner seemed to be everywhere. Now, married (to Ben Affleck) and a mother of two, she’s a bit less ubiquitous but no less charming. Garner recently sat down with press at a Beverly Hills hotel to discuss her new movie, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, and also talk about on-set rap battle free-styles that she did not take part in. Joel Edgerton was also there. Both roundtable conversations are excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for Garner and here for Edgerton.
Cook County
On the small screen, AMC’s Breaking Bad has shined a light on the production of methamphetamine, and wrung much drama from the heightened stakes of a seemingly regular family man’s descent into moral and criminal contravention. Writer-director David Pomes’ effectively grimy Cook County takes a look at the ravaging effects of the same drug from a user’s point-of-view, detailing the familial chaos surrounding three generations of addicts living in rural East Texas. A gritty, pungent drama with some nicely attuned performances, the film is well worth seeking out for fans of off-the-beaten-path independent fare.
At the movie’s center is Tommy, aka Bump (Anson Mount, above left), a perpetually strung-out addict and meth cook who lives with his girlfriend Lucy (Polly Cole) and a series of other burn-outs who seem to come and go. The ruination of his own life might not be so bad, but Bump’s six-year-old daughter Deandra (Makenna Fitzsimmons) is also caught up in the mix, and a continuous victim of his curious combination of obliviousness and over-protectiveness. Bump’s teenage nephew, Abe (Ryan Donowho), tries to look out for his younger cousin as best he can, but lives in constant fear of his uncle’s violent rages and irrational paranoia. He’s older, but no less stuck and a victim of his circumstances than Deandra.
An uptick of hope arrives when Bump’s older brother and Abe’s dad, Sonny (Xander Berkeley, above right), returns home after a two-and-a-half-year absence. He’s gone clean and sober, and unbeknownst to Bump has also done a stint in prison, and is thus required to check in with a parole officer. Abe at first welcomes his father back, but then old resentments come bubbling up. Trying to finally do right by his son, Sonny wonders if his brother is too far gone, and if so whether it’s too late to extricate the rest of his loved ones from the dark clutches of drugs.
The winner of the prestigious Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival, Cook County is a solidly constructed little film that casts its lot with a group of game actors. If Mount — emaciated and sporting a scruffy beard that makes him look like a crazed gold rush ancestor of Daniel Day-Lewis — sometimes feels like he’s overdialing his accented impression of Matthew McConaughey, he certainly nails the flitting mindset of a drug addict, in which tangential thoughts collide and battle for mangled articulation. Donowho, who kind of recalls Lou Taylor Pucci, exudes a basic sympathetic nature. The underrated Berkeley, meanwhile, particularly shines as a fundamentally decent but in-over-his-head guy trying desperately to pay down the sins of his past. Crucially, there is humanity here in all these characters, regardless of their sins and shortcomings.
Director of photography Brad Rushing and production designer James Fowler, meanwhile, abet Pomes in creating a movie with a grungy authenticity. Sweat pours off of almost every character in every scene (Mount probably never wears a shirt during the entire film), and the rank aroma of frantic hopelessness can almost be smelled coming off the screen. That things end badly is no great surprise, but there is hope in the pinched battle for redemption that unfolds in Cook County. This may not be a pleasant slice of Americana, but it is unfortunately part of our modern collective story. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information on the movie, meanwhile, click here. (Hannover House, R, 94 minutes)
Dances With Films: Stan
Watching the new indie dramedy Stan, which just had its world premiere at the ongoing, 14th annual Dances With Films festival, one could be forgiven, if they were so inclined, for letting their mind wander and recall the title track of Ben Folds’ excellent Rockin’ the Suburbs, in which he bemoans being “all alone in [his] white boy pain.” It’s not, after all, that the movie has no dramatic stakes, it’s just that they seem so small and quaint and, well, adorably solvable. A low-key effort, Stan is more interested in eliciting smiles of knowing recognition than any real laughs, resulting in a movie of such willfully mild temperament as to sort of question its reason for existence.
The story centers on Stan (co-writer John F. Schaffer), a kindly, oafish guy who works at a small orchid greenhouse, occasionally visits a “happy endings” massage parlor, and then combats his metastasized guilt by making trips to a doctor to make sure his penis doesn’t bear any signs of herpetic infection. Mostly, though, Stan suffers the quiet indignities of being in “friendship alley” with Mary (Christina Diaz), a blonde babe who keeps him on standby while also dating jerky Nick (David Michie). When Ann (Gioia Marchese) shows up and gets a job at the greenhouse, she slowly draws Stan out of his shell a bit more, but remains inwardly frustrated with his dopey dedication to a girl not willing to give him any real romantic attention.
All of this could veer into more straightforward lonely-hearts dramatic territory, a la something like James Mangold’s Heavy, but for better or worse Shaffer and his co-writer, director Evald Johnson, eschew much heavy dramatic lifting. It’s quite nice that Stan doesn’t have any forward-leaning over-emoting by actors seemingly trying to get some material for their demo reel, but the characters’ motivations overall seem ill-defined. The filmmakers mostly step back from active engagement or tension, except for the awkward inclusion of a plot strand involving the pervy peeping Tom-ishness of Ann’s boss and boarder, Mr. Frankle (Todd Patrick Breaugh), which doesn’t seem to have a good reason for existing within this framework. There isn’t a deeper insight or emotional identification with Stan’s loneliness or self-loathing; he comes across merely as a guy kind of half-assing it through life.
To be fair, Schaffer’s amiable persona suits this tack of inquiry, which, as stated, is more interested in summoning forth recognition than drawing out laughs. With his quietly expressive eyes, unaffected yet halting speech pattern and propensity for socially sawing himself off at the knees, Schaffer’s Stan seems like a long-lost cousin of comedian Brian Posehn. And cinematographer Michael Off’s work abets this unfussy naturalism. After a while, though, you want to see this bear awake from his slumber, and release some pent-up aggression. After all, even Rockin’ the Suburbs had a song called “The Ascent of Stan.” For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (S17 Pictures, unrated, 88 minutes)
As Good As Dead
I’m not necessarily proud of the fact, but I own two movies with Andie MacDowell featured prominently on the DVD cover, and enjoy them immensely despite her presence. I’m talking about Groundhog Day and Four Weddings and a Funeral, of course (what, you were thinking The Muse, perhaps?), and so I approached As Good As Dead wondering if I would be blown away, and fall prey to the long-dreaded MacDowell hat trick.
No worries, as it turns out. Though MacDowell’s proclivity for constipated, furrowed-brow pronouncement rears its head every once in a while, kidnap/home invasion drama As Good As Dead bobs along engagingly for a while and then kind of dissipates on final contact as the end credits roll, a weird, full-to-the-brim cocktail of major-chord drama. Scripted by Eve Pomerance and Erez Mossek, and directed by Jonathan
Mossek, the story crams domestic/marital strife, kidnapping, white supremacist grandstanding, more generalized scumbag terrorizing, good, old-fashioned vengeance and ironic revenge into one claustrophobic tale.
What begins as an average day for Ethan (Cary Elwes), a divorced photographer juggling custody of his young daughter with his ex-wife Kate (Nicole Ansari), takes a dangerous turn when mysterious attackers break into his New York apartment and hold him hostage. The home invaders, who are led by Helen (MacDowell), aren’t looking to rob him, though. On a mission of revenge, the assailants, including Jake (Matt Dallas)
and the more psychotic and unhinged Aaron (Frank Whaley), are instead looking to avenge the years-old murder of Reverend Kalahan (Brian Cox), Helen’s racist right-wing cult leader/preacher husband. Ethan swears he had nothing to do with the crime, but Helen and her crew weigh how best to extract their pound of flesh, even as interrogations shed doubt on Ethan’s culpability. Also getting sucked into the proceedings as a hostage is Ethan’s innocent neighbor Amy (Jess Weixler).
From a story-structure point-of-view, there’s probably at least one too many characters here, whether it’s Dallas’ glowering Jake and/or Weixler’s Amy, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Juggling pathos and seething anger does not come easily to MacDowell, and Elwes, too, trades in an unplaceable accent that comes and goes. Still, there’s a hearty investment in the characters (over only action) that makes their moral dilemmas seem rather palpable, and Mossek and crew grind some nice drama out of a confined space, though, again, one wishes the dialogue and did-he-or-didn’t-he? machinations had a bit more intellectual heft, or master-chess-level scheming to them. All in all, this is a fine way to pass the time for those who are fans of the lead actors, but only as a rental — not a keeper.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, As Good As Dead comes to DVD presented in what’s billed as 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen but is actually 1.78:1 widescreen, with an English language 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound audio track, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Its motion screen menu divides the movie into 12 chapters. Bonus features consist of a half dozen preview trailers, including for The Assassin Next Door, as well as a sub-par, uninvolving behind-the-scenes featurette that consists of 19-plus minutes of mostly unshaped on-set and B-roll footage. An additional 19 minutes of cast and crew interviews includes thoughts from producers Heidi Jo Markel and Jordan Gertner, as well as plenty of cross-cut, backslapping praise by all the actors. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C- (Disc)
Infidelity in the Air at 2010 Cannes Festival
The American Cinematheque’s Margot Gerber, guesting over at The Wrap, takes a look at all the big screen infidelity coursing through the Cannes Festival, including Gregg Araki’s Kaboom, which sounds… interesting. As she notes of the film’s raunchy slang — comment dites-vous “vagetarian?”
Greg Giraldo: Midlife Vices
Greg Giraldo is most widely known, along with Jeffrey Ross, as arguably one of the top two comedians who rips apart everyone from Flavor Flav and Bob Saget to Pamela Anderson and Joan Rivers on Comedy Central’s regular roasts. In his stand-up special Midlife Vices, though, Giraldo lets loose less on people than on more whimsical topics, and the result is every bit as side-splitting and delightful.
Recorded in front of a raucous hometown crowd in New York City, and new to DVD, Midlife Vices is a worthy follow-up to Giraldo’s amazing debut CD, Good Day To Cross a River. Giraldo has a stage demeanor that, unlike a lot of comedians, doesn’t ooze either anger or neediness; this allows his mood and delivery to shift more naturally with the tone and tenor of the material, conveying bewilderment when he’s digging into the innate ridiculousness of some unspoken rule of dating, or agitation when he’s shifting gears into more of a rant.
Giraldo’s choice of material, too, is wide-ranging. Unlike many comedians, he doesn’t necessarily “pre-sort” his topical assaults through the filter of a single, immovable personality, so there’s a genuine sense of gleeful surprise when he bounds from the political arena and talking about the energy crisis into a discussion of koala bear sex. While overt political statements aren’t part of his main agenda, Giraldo does get into the 2008 election and talk interestingly about coded campaign language, which is something in which I have a specific interest. He also makes points in roundabout fashion, as when he launches into a dissection of homosexuality by saying both that “there’s a certain level of gayness that seems a choice,” as well as, “Discriminating against gays seems stupid, because it’s not a choice — just like I don’t choose to be attracted to women, that’s just the way I am. And it sucks, because it means basically every 10 years or so I have to give away all my stuff and move out.”
Midlife Vices is a rangy title, with Giraldo touching on everything from obesity in modern children (“You aren’t supposed to be winded when you’re 9 years old and on flat ground”) to peanut allergies and the craziness of texting, as embodied by the problem of accidentally sending messages to the wrong people, like his mother. He also relates an anecdote about a group of homeless a capella guys he recently saw, and wondering how they met. Other objects that feel the burn of Giraldo’s ire include Obama‘s cessation of smoking, the uproar over Michael Phelps’ bong shots, and a rastafarian audience member who falls asleep in the third row during his set. One of the rare comedians of his age (he’ll be 45 next year) who can get away with both lowbrow and highbrow humor with equal, matching grace, Giraldo is far less well known than he should be. Give his Vices a spin; the vicarious thrills and naughtiness will likely do you good.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with two snap-shut hinges on the inward spine, Midlife Vices comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a 2.0 stereo audio mix. Bonus features consist of a 22-minute installment of the revolving comedian serial Comedy Central Presents, featuring a bit leaner Giraldo from 2000, as well as the never-before-seen pilot for a sex-centric show called Adult Content, with Giraldo as its smirky emcee. A bit more backstage or behind-the-scenes stuff would have been a nice touch, but the hour-long feature presentation more than carries the day. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Concert) B- (Disc)
Anil Kapoor Sees Changes on Horizon for Indian Film Industry
Screen International‘s Mike Goodridge has up a nice interview with Anil Kapoor, of Slumdog Millionaire, in which the 49-year-old actor-producer talks about his 10-episode arc on the eighth season of Fox’s 24, the English language version of his 2007 production Gandhi, My Father, and what sort of changes he sees for the Indian film industry.
Should Indie Flicks Get a Pass on Vanity Producer Credits?
The phenomenon of runaway producer credits is a topic of special interest to me — maybe because it feels too much like the situation in high school where a couple loafers glom onto the work of others on a group project, and it thus strikes a nerve — so it’s worth noting that the recent indie flick Yonkers Joe tallies a dozen top-lined producers, including star Chazz Palminteri, and that’s not counting a line producer and two associate producers.
Still, I tend to give independent films more of a pass, and I think others (to the extent anyone else cares about this) do too. Why? Because there are more side deals to be made, many more gears to be greased when making a film outside of the studio system. And that sometimes means making deals with unsavory characters, or simply asshats that want a spread of personal pictures with Keira Knightley and Jessica Biel, and are willing to dole out a couple million dollars to get them. So those guys get producer credits — hedge fund managers and dotcom cowboys, multimedia tycoons and silver-spoon business scions — because “filthy rich bore” or “necessary evil” are credits deemed too insensitive. And that’s fine, in my book. If suffering wealthy dullards is the price of a go-it-alone shot at great art that Hollywood studios want to make, I’m not going to hold it hard-and-fast against the real-deal players that lent these guys the same credit they take.
But, on a knee-jerk level, if I see a dozen names on a studio film, I think overkill, and immediately start scanning for the star’s manager, or some other corporate glad-hander who somehow manages to accrue two dozen credits a year, despite not being part of a start-up, self-sufficient production shingle. There’s no reason, to my mind, that an originally conceived studio film with no labyrinthine source material backstory needs 10 producers. There just isn’t.
I’ve talked with a lot of producers about this issue, both on the record and off, and while many are pissed about it, a lot more are awfully touchy. “Don’t rock the boat, whaddya gonna do, go along to get along,” they seem to say, in ways both fancy and abstruse. In this regard, Hollywood is like the Mafia, or a corrupt police union; there’s an unspoken code (“Those who need to know know“), and there’s less interest in exposing credit-mongering than exposing those who want to expose it.
Republican Is a Four-Letter Word to John McCain
So I long ago signed up to receive campaign emails from both Barack Obama and John McCain, and among the interesting tidbits from the latter’s most recent e-blast of financial solicitation, from today: six uses of some version of the word reform, five uses of the word Democrat, and zero uses of the word Republican. All of which further underscores the ridiculousness of McCain’s previous lampooning of Obama as a “celebrity,” given that McCain so clearly fancies himself — both in record and out of political necessity for this election cycle — a brand unto himself. Yes, “R” is the new scarlet letter, and a self-designation to be scrupulously avoided. That is George Bush’s true legacy.
Aero Spotlights Diminished Capacity, Across the Universe
Director Terry Kinney’s poignant and bittersweet comedy Diminished Capacity poses the query: How much is a
good memory worth? That’s the question that faces newspaper editor
Cooper (Matthew Broderick) after a debilitating concussion takes him
from the political pages to comic strip detail. Looking for answers,
he travels home to Missouri, where his senile uncle (Alan
Alda) is on the verge of losing his home. When a valuable baseball
card is thrown into the mix, these two men, along with a motley group
of hometown friends — including Cooper’s high school sweetheart, played by Virginia Madsen — head to a memorabilia expo to make the
deal of the century. The movie screens this coming Thursday, June 26 at 7:30 p.m., in advance of its limited theatrical release in early July. Also, this Sunday, June 22, director Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe screens at 7:30 p.m., with a special post-screening appearance and discussion by choreographer Daniel Ezralow.
The Aero Theatre
is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica
information on directions and the Aero’s upcoming schedule,
phone (323) 466-FILM.
Nim’s Island
Adapted from Wendy Orr’s same-named children’s novel, Nim’s Island tells the story of 11-year-old Nim (Abigail Breslin, Oscar-nominated for Little Miss Sunshine), a precocious girl who lives alone on a remote island in the South Pacific with her widowed, marine biologist father, Jack Rusoe (Gerard Butler, of 300). The lack of human companionship doesn’t bother them, though — Nim plays with and talks to her pet lizard and sea lion, and enthusiastically devours a once-a-month shipment of adventure novels featuring a swashbuckling, fedora-sporting character named Alex Rover.
But when a storm unexpectedly sweeps her father out to sea, Nim finds herself truly alone, and scared. A series of research email queries from the real-life author Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster), in actuality an agoraphobic recluse living in San Francisco, awakens, to degrees, adventurous and heroic impulses in both parties. As Nim looks to protect her island home from the intrusive tourism inroads of Buccaneer Cruise Lines — a company peddling virginal beach expeditions to their loud, gawking clientele — Alexandra faces up to her own considerable fears, packs a suitcase full of Progresso soup and Purell hand sanitizer, and embarks on a far-flung voyage to help her young fan.
More intimately scaled than a lot of other recent children’s book adaptations, the sweet-natured and light-hearted Nim’s Island nonetheless achieves a nice hold over its audience, courtesy in no small part to Barry Robison’s superb production design. Co-directed by Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin (Little Manhattan), the movie is pitched just a little to the left of naturalistic but it’s never so outlandish as to come off as completely unrealistic, as long as one is prepared to make a few acquiescences — mostly with regards to the interacting-with-animals bits.
The obvious touchstone here is Disney’s 1960 family adventure classic Swiss Family Robinson, a sick-day staple for many a kid courtesy of its theatrical reissue and subsequent VHS peddling in the 1980s. (There are a few brief allusions to that movie, and Nim and her father’s last name, Rusoe, is another nod of homage, to Daniel Defoe’s castaway tale Robinson Crusoe.) Many other movies, though — from Matilda and Zathura to Jumanji and even The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep — share the same sort of fantastical, flight-of-fancy imagination that powers this movie. While Nim’s Island is in the end far less explicitly effects-driven than some of those films, it does open and close with hand-crafted credit sequences that frames this tale as a metaphorical yarn as much as anything else.
As for the performances, Breslin is suitably bright-eyed, and energetic. Butler, meanwhile, has great fun portraying both Jack and the more rugged, roguish Alex, who appears both in Nim’s imagination during her reading and in several spirited arguments with Alexandra, who is the antithesis of the best-selling character of her own creation. The movie also benefits greatly from a pitch-perfect manic turn by Foster, who knows how to take formulaic bits of slapstick and uptight unease and make them ring amusingly true.
Nim’s Island isn’t without a few moments of over-familiarity, and in some ways it’s actually demure when compared to a lot of other movies aimed these days chiefly at kids — which may be a bit of a strike for those raised on the Harry Potter films and The Chronicles of Narnia. Its greatest success, though, is the manner in which it taps into the pleasurable feeling of awakened imagination that surges during adolescence. Rekindling fond memories of childhood is never a bad thing. For the full review, from Reelz, click here. (Fox Walden, PG, 94 minutes)
The Girl Next Door
Author Stephen King’s cover blurb is displayed prominently
on the face of the DVD release of Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door, and why not? Just as King’s endorsement gave an
early boost to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead,
so too does it help prop up this grim little indie bauble, inspired by actual
events. “Authentically shocking… a long look into hell, suburban-style, [this
film] will not disappoint,” reads the text on front, with King going on to call
the movie “the dark-side-of-the-moon version of Stand By Me.”
He’s not too terribly off, actually; it’s not King merely
stumping for one of his own, with contemporary Ketchum being one of the premier
horror writers of his day. This well-plotted tale of betrayal, violence and
terror unfolds in a quiet, picket-fence kind of town in the lazy, hazy summer
of 1958, and is all the more shocking because it actually happened.
for their perfectly bruised and/or jolting imagery, is a sense of ominous,
accumulating dread. The Girl Next Door
nails that. The film’s performances anchor it in fine fashion, and it feels
real, in this case in all the worst senses of the word.
(Blythe Auffarth) and Susan Laughlin (Madeline Taylor), who are placed in the
care of their distant aunt Ruth (Emmy winner Blanche Baker). Susan is disabled,
and Ruth’s depraved sense of discipline — an illness that extends to her three
teenage sons as well as a group of their peers — manifests itself in
unreasonable demands and needling about Meg’s body and burgeoning sexuality. With
Ruth modeling sadism and supplying liquor to these impressionable kids, this behavior
soon gives way to even more unspeakable acts of abuse and torment — emotional manipulation, branding and even rape. In the end,
only 12-year-old neighbor David Moran (Daniel Manche) stands between the sisters and
what threatens to be their protracted and torturous deaths.
Housed in a regular plastic Amray case, The Girl Next Door is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen,
with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and Dolby 2.0 surround audio tracks. The
digital transfer is a solid one, with only a few minor problems with edge
enhancement, fairly consistent and deep blacks, and minimal grain. Supplemental
extras consist of not one but two separate audio commentary tracks, the first
with director Gregory M. Wilson, producer Andrew van den Houten and
cinematographer-producer William Miller, and the latter with novelist Ketchum
and screenwriters Daniel Farrands and Philip Nutman. These are nice, and certainly the dual high points of the extra offerings. EPK-style interviews with
cast and crew provide plenty of opportunity for congratulatory reminiscence, and a behind-the-scenes making-of featurette offers up a perfunctory glimpse at the movie’s production. Rounding out things are a DVD-ROM copy of the movie’s script
and an original full-length trailer. B (Movie) C+ (Disc)
On the Rise: Craig Robinson
Craig Robinson is the man. You know this. I know this. In between bites of a turkey sandwich, Robinson took some
time recently to answer questions about his new film Dragon Wars, his work on The Office and the new fan base he’s cultivated courtesy of his turn in this summer’s Knocked Up. The conversation is excerpted below:
Brent Simon: Hey Craig, thanks for the time. I’d love to be
able to ask intelligent questions, but they haven’t screened the movie for us — I’m
flying blind. So I have a few sincere biographical questions and hopefully some
fun ones as well.
CR: It’s Dragon Wars
in the States, and D-War overseas.
rooted in Korean legend, but is there a popular source material or text over
there, or is it more just an urban legend?
destruction of downtown
this or Transformers,
even though I guess that the latter isn’t even supposed to be set there?
Wars; they really get their rocks off. I mean, there’s a big snake, and
then all these other monsters just wreaking havoc.
chronology of your own personal schedule and work on The Office?
Wars.
awesome.
What’s the preferred object of choice when acting against special effects: is
it a tennis ball on a stick? A goofy A.D.? A gaping void? What works best for
you?
with it, so I use imagination and timing. On this it was all, “Action!” And
then just someone yelling, “Monster!”
show you mock-ups, drawings of what creatures are going to look like?
they sent out a DVD, which was what really piqued my interest in doing the
project, and hoping that I got it. (Casting director) Christine Sheaks sent out
a DVD of the CGI they had done — the very first scene where they go to
and bomb the village. They show the monsters and the army and all the soldiers
— it was pretty awesome.
I would reckon, is not English, sounds a bit difficult, or at the very least
different.
difficult, especially since at that time that was (only) my second movie. He
would do two takes, and I wouldn’t have even warmed up. I was like, “Oh man,
come on!” So it was very interesting, I had to learn to quickly get my game
on.

these people who had a big performance instinct as a little kid?
kind of public display of talent, whether it was reading scriptures and singing
in the church choir and playing piano in church, or doing something in school.
We didn’t do a ton of plays, but we did some stuff. And then I got into doing
stand-up comedy, which was my ticket to
and ticket into acting, properly.
for that moment, you have to throw out the window — even though it’s impossible,
you still have to do it — you have to remember that this can change your life,
and this, that and the other. You just go in there and say, “Okay, this is
another opportunity to perform.” Whether it’s for one, two, three or 17 people,
you just have to go in there and enjoy what you do. And the more that you can
be prepared for the audition, the better. I have loved it and I have dreaded
it.
its faux-documentary framing, has a very relaxed and naturalistic, improvisational
feel. Was there anything special or notable about that audition?
called Lucky, and there had recently
been a flurry of articles written about the show, and one of them said, “Bring
on more Mutha!” And that was my character. That article happened to be in the
office of the audition for The Office.
So I was like, “Hey, check this out!” So that was one little spark, and Greg
Daniels had happened to see me do a bit with Jerry Minor — a song, it’s a bit
about someone fucking his lady, all right? Now, if you go to YouTube and look
up L Witherspoon, you can check it out.
Greg was highly complimentary of that bit, and then what I ended up reading was
one of Jim’s asides to the camera. I got to choose one and read it. And they
dug it, so I got a call that said they want you to do this part in the
warehouse, and it has blossomed, thank God.
exploding like that, so how deep are you guys into the new seasons and what can
we expect for Daryl this year on The
Office?
last of the hour-longs. And it’s very exciting — the table-reads for the
scripts are just a party, we’re laughing so hard in there. And then Daryl is
going to be stepping in a little bit more, and have some interaction with not
only Michael Scott. So it’s going to be a little bit more for me to do.
check. (laughs) No, I’m just kidding, I’m teasing. Of course I don’t mind!
Whatever they’ve got — sometimes I’m in there for one line, sometimes a whole
episode, it’s really pretty awesome. They know what they’re doing and I just roll
with it.
ridiculous hypothetical question — if the creatures from Dragon Wars descended upon Dunder-Miflin, what would happen?
everyone in the office too, except for Michael and Dwight, would get out of
there. Michael and Dwight would probably try to reason with them.
coming from them that way. Some bouncers have emailed me saying thank you, you
said what I’ve wanted to say so many times. I’ve gotten some love at the doors
of certain nightclubs. It’s a brand new fan base, absolutely.
sounds pretty madcap, and yet David Gordon Green isn’t known for comedy, per
se. What sort of part do you play in the film and how would you describe its tone?
amazing. It was like trusting a brilliant… (laughs) and I mean this with all due
respect, but he looks so young that I tease him that he’s the world’s most
brilliant fifth grader. From the minute we met… I just learned to trust him, and he got some great stuff out of all of us, so
it was fun. I play a hitman chasing Seth Rogen and James Franco around, because
Seth Rogen witnessed a murder by my boss.
you play Bobby Shad, which already has the ring of a classic character in name
alone, but what is that character like, and I heard you might have some musical
sequences, is that right?
the 1940s or ’50s era. What happens is Dewey Cox, John C. Reilly’s character,
is studying my moves and my songs. And then one night I get hurt, and that
happens to be the night that some Jewish record producers are out in the
audience, and Reilly gets up and performs, and does my stuff.
too happy about that.
there’s a tendency for comedians to police their own when it comes to this, but
have you had someone steal bits from you?
it, so it’s OK.
the sweet spot for you, or, given your druthers, are there other things you’d
like to soon do — branch out dramatically, or work behind the camera?
I’m happy to go. It’s really like that. There’s a lot of things that I dream
about (laughs), but at the same time, who knew I’d be in Judd Apatow’s camp,
you know? So I don’t wanna block anything.
Dragon Wars opens this Friday, September 14. To access the film’s trailer, click here.
Germany Underwrites New Tom Cruise Flick
So a portion of this piece from Variety, on the German government’s decision to help fund United Artists’ Valkyrie — a rooted-in-truth drama, directed by Bryan Singer, about an assassination plot against Adolf Hitler during World War II — struck me as interesting. The project has already been in the news, of course, due to the government turning down the production’s repeated entreaties to shoot at an actual historical location, all owing to Cruise’s beliefs as a Scientologist, which the German government views as totalitarian.
What I don’t get, I guess, is how the government’s $80 million annual federal film fund — $6.5 million of which will go to Valkyrie — doles out its kitty. Production incentives and enormous tax rebates are one thing, and totally old hat, part of the game of luring Hollywood flicks abroad, but chipping in cash on a foreign production would seem to be the role of an investor, no? What, exactly, does the government get for its money? I know production money then flows back to local economies via catering, room and board, local artisans, etcetera, but how does it benefit German filmmakers or fans to throw that kind of money at a Hollywood flick?
Meanwhile, if the grant — which exceeds the total cost of most German
features — seems generous, it’s not the biggest of the year. In April, the same government agency put up $12.3
million for Warner Bro.’s Speed Racer, starring Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci and Matthew Fox, which is currently shooting at
Studio Babelsberg just outside of Berlin.
Perfect Stranger
Perfect Stranger is one of those utterly anonymous film titles,
lightly evocative in its own way and yet suitable enough to be applied
to any number of situations or genres. It feels like a relic of the 1980s, an
indie flick title designed to conjure up an association with some
bigger hit.
Starring Halle Berry and Bruce Willis, and evincing a style that might best be described as deliciously retarded, Perfect Stranger is an overloaded, under-reasoned thriller that’s wholly engineered in reverse. It culminates in one of
those chunky scenes wherein a potential victim laboriously explains a
murderer’s entire convoluted plot directly to said person. Except in Perfect Stranger,
that scene is actually spread out over three different locations, and
includes the killer and deductive explicator snuggling up together on a
couch. Yes, seriously. A single graspable tone is the film’s greatest mystery; file this one under “comedy, unintentional.” For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.
Happy Birthday, Summer Altice
Forgive me, I really should have also bestowed birthday wishes upon Summer Altice, who turns 27 today, but I was busy still staring at Estella Warren. But wait… is Summer really an actress, you ask? Well, yes. Perhaps you remember her role as “Girl Who Cries” in Wedding Crashers, or “Blonde Woman #1” in You, Me and Dupree.
Regardless, I guess this is what you call product placement.
Factotum
It would be the autobiographical novels Post Office, Women and Hollywood, along with, eventually, the 1987 movie Barfly — all searing portraits of a distinctly Southern California underclass — that would resonate worldwide and turn blue collar novelist and poet Charles Bukowski into a celebrated countercultural icon. The biographical drama Factotum, though, takes as its core Bukowski’s same-titled second tome, as well as excerpts from three other books, all centering around drunken roustabout Henry Chinaski, widely acknowledged to be the writer’s alter ego.
Directed by Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer (Kitchen Stories) and released this month through IFC Films, the movie is a rambling, episodic mock-biography of Bukowski, anchored by a fine, square-jawed starring performance from Crash‘s Matt Dillon. Like his creator, Chinaski swings through a wide variety of low-paying, non-creative, menial jobs (working at a bike shop, a pickle factory, as an ice deliveryman and janitor) and a smaller handful of codependent, quasi-abusive monogamous relationships (embodied here by Marisa Tomei as a fling, and Lili Taylor as on-again/off-again girlfriend Janet). Truly playing the field, you see, would take too much effort — as well as time away from Chinaski’s favorite mistress, the bottle. Through it all Chinaski pens short stories and sends them off blindly to a magazine in New York, subsisting on jug-wine and pancakes, cigarettes and melancholy.
Hamer has a penchant for fade-ins and -outs that will strike some as too affected, and the “story” here is undeniably paced like a snail, and at times willfully crude. (One amusing segment finds Chinaski getting his testicles delicately taped up into a homemade diaper after he contracts crabs from Janet.) Dillon, though, has in his age settled into a more mature, relaxed and naturalistic delivery, and he here approximates Bukowski’s deep, rumbling and inflected timbre — part wizened yet intoxicated preacher’s cadence, part sonorous bullshitter — in a manner that really gives you a window into Chinaski’s inherent glumness, his death-grip hold on misery. You get a palpable sense of how Chinaski’s (and thus Bukowski’s) acting out stems from his racing, perpetually dissatisfied inner monologue, and how his general disagreeableness and bad attitude toward those around him is hardwired to an irreconcilable urgency to locate in both life and his art the same sort of forward-leaning insistence he feels in his soul.
For Bukowski, writing was living. An arthouse curio, Factotum isn’t for all tastes, but it’s studded with dark delights (Chinaski stalking one employer, trying to score a check for a half-day’s work), and it conveys with unflinching precision the life of a dinged, beaten-down spirit for whom creativity wasn’t just an impulse but rather a compulsion. (IFC Films, R, 94 minutes)The Shipping News
It’s an end-of-month archival expansion, and this only slightly redacted review of The Shipping News, from its theatrical bow in 2001, is now being added to the rolls. To wit: