Monthly Archives: July 2006

30 Days

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

documentary Super Size Me, in which he willfully gorged himself on all manner of McDonald’s food (and only
McDonald’s food) for an entire month. But whereas that film gaily used
its self-destruction as a sort of teaching mechanism, Spurlock’s latest
project is a bit more tinged with lamentation and earnestness. 30 Days
finds its subjects — including Spurlock himself — trading in a certain
lifestyle to explore a social or religious issue from another point of
view for a month. While its form and rules are a bit roughhewn and
amorphous, shifting to suit the need of whatever topic is under the
microscope, the short-order summer television series is ultimately an
infinitely better exploration of the sort gulfs between cultural
subsets than FX’s own Black & White.

In the show’s pilot, Spurlock and his girlfriend Alex move from New
York to the Midwest to try to make ends meet on the federal minimum
wage — $5.15 per hour — but face difficulty both when they have to go
to the doctor and Spurlock’s niece and nephew come to visit them. Two
other top episodes send a devout Christian into a Muslim family and a
homophobic youngster to live and work in San Francisco’s largely gay
Castro district, where they experience what it’s like to live as
members of a minority that sometimes still elicit feelings of fear
and/or revulsion from many Americans. Other episodes follow an athlete
who tries to reverse the aging process by going on a controversial
anti-aging drug regimen; a mother concerned about her college-aged
daughter who goes on a month-long drinking binge to experience firsthand the social pressures and physical effects of such partying; and
“Off the Grid,” in which two overly enthusiastic American consumers
repair to a Missouri “eco village,” where they do without many of the
comforts of their material world and live without the use of products
derived from fossil fuels.

Presented in a regular Amray case with a snap-in tray, the double-disc 30 Days
includes audio commentary on four of the six episodes and an abundance
of extra “diary cam” footage for each program. More strictly
educational material could have been included, but these confessionals
form the emotive narrative backbones of each show, and in their honesty
instill a certain hope about the nature of open-mindedness moving
forward. Each episode is presented in 1.33:1 full frame, with optional
subtitles in English and Spanish. B (Show) C+ (Disc)

On Mel Gibson and Lindsay Lohan

Musings

So
I know as a blogger I’m supposed to be all over Mel Gibson’s drunk
driving arrest in Malibu from late last week, his rambling,
anti-Semitic tirade and its alleged quasi-cover-up or suppression
courtesy of a celebrity-friendly police department.

In a way, though, I’m simply just much more intrigued at Lindsay Lohan getting awesomely blasted by Morgan Creek Productions CEO James G. Robinson
for her serial, late-night partying, corresponding habitual tardiness
and its effect on the production of the Garry Marshall film Georgia Rule, co-starring Felicity Huffman and Jane Fonda. That’s a good, old-fashioned Hollywood shaming, folks. I wonder what Hector Elizondo thinks about all this?

Gibson, on the other hand, has been giving off the pungent aroma of
craziness for some time now. I mean, was it possible for the guy to
become any more hermetic, post-The Passion of the Christ? Robert Welkos and John Horn have a great piece in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times
which examines the potential toll all this will take on Gibson’s
career. The gist of it is that while actors and directors bounce back
from all manner of naughty, idiotic and/or illicit behavior, the bigger
the face, the bigger the necessary mea culpa.

For Gibson, who’s grown out that shoe-bomber’s beard and largely shirked firing-line press obligations for The Passion
while simultaneously eschewing high-profile acting roles, the warm and
fuzzy days of Martin Riggs-style glory may be over. Sure, he could
further play out his latter-day career track as self-financier and
director of far-out historical epics — his latest outing behind the
camera is Apocalypto, set to be released by Disney in
December — but without the experience, infrastructure and clout of a
major distribution partner, he’d face an uphill battle getting his
film(s) in theaters. Gee, I just hope this doesn’t spell doom for Who Killed the Electric Car? On the plus side, it at least means we probably won’t ever have to suffer through Lethal Weapon 5. And I think that’s a win for everyone.

Jonah Hill Feeling Accepted Despite Girly Scream

Interviews



He’s not yet a household name, but Jonah Hill is getting plenty of small screen face time in the weeks leading up to the release of the new teen comedy Accepted, courtesy chiefly of two clips — one in which, clad in a foam hot dog costume, he exhorts passersby to ask him about his wiener, and another in which he lets loose with an ear-piercing, high-pitched scream. The funny thing is, that scream isn’t really his.

Directed by Steve Pink, Accepted centers on an enterprising high school senior, Bartleby (Dodgeball‘s Justin Long), who, after getting rejected by every college he applies to, creates a fake university to serve as a post-graduation refuge for he and some friends. Hill plays Bartleby’s best friend, Sherman, who actually gets into a nearby school but helps his lifelong pal by designing said fictitious school’s Web site, among other things.

The set-up for the in-heavy-rotation scream occurs when Bartleby and his friends scout a condemned mental asylum to serve as the physical location for their mock university, and a skeleton falls from a ceiling panel, frightening Sherman. In an instinctual stroke of improvisational brilliance, Hill conspired with costar Maria Thayer. “When it came time for my close-up,” relates Hill, “I said to Maria, ‘Don’t tell anybody, but you scream and I’ll just mime it. But don’t say anything to anyone else, because it’ll be way funnier that way, if they’re not expecting it.’ So we did it and everyone around us kind of lost it. I totally didn’t expect them to put it in the movie, but they haven’t changed it. And it gets a huge laugh. That’s one of my most proud moments, because if you write or [come up with something on a movie like this] and it goes in, you feel like you really contributed toward making it a little funnier.”

Also co-starring comedian Lewis Black and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants‘ Blake Lively, Accepted now opens in theaters nationwide on August 18, after pushing a week. For more information, visit the movie’s Web site.

Straight-to-Video Dreamin’…

Amusements, Musings

This is just one of those images that first makes you randomly laugh, then piques your interest, then slowly scares the bejesus out of you, because you start to think: “Sweet mother of pearl, wait a second… are they making a movie together?”



Early ’90s ass kicker Steven Seagal last tasted a nominal big screen hit in 2001 with Exit Wounds. Since then he’s tasted many donuts, and is now relegated — and has been for some time, actually — to having various stuntmen run headlong into his fists and feet in a string of straight-to-video re-hashes while he stands around whispering eco-friendly platitudes, and cinematographers, directors and costume designers figure out new ways to mask his corpulence.

Prop comic and disturbingly plastic-faced commercial pitchman Carrot Top, meanwhile, has uncorked really only one headlining movie stinker, the utterly atrocious Chairman of the Board, which is notable for an extended belching scene shared with Courtney Thorne-Smith that, somehow, is still more dignified than any randomly plucked moment of her work on According to Jim.

Seeing this photo, though, has me in terrified stitches. I mean, what would the title of such a pairing be — Laugh Past Dead? Hard to Kielbasa? Out for Just Ice? Enemy of Comedy? The Slimmer Man? Red Yawn? Actually, in my current fog I’m now coming around to the idea, though for what it’s worth I think the photo was taken at one of Seagal’s musical gigs (he’s cut several country/rock albums). Still, that makes you wonder who opened for whom. It also makes you realize that Carrot Top is on the cusp of being one degree away from Tommy Lee Jones in the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game. I’m just saying…

Scoop

Film Reviews

Regardless of what you ultimately thought of it, part of — scratch that, most of — the buzz surrounding last year’s Match Point
was undeniably a result of writer-director Woody Allen abandoning the
comfortable terrain of New York and lighting out for across the pond,
where he delivered a much darker film than that for which he has been
previously, or at least recently, known. It was the very stark contrast
to the rest of his work that had people outside of his most hardcore
devotees jazzed about seeing an Allen film again. The similarly
London-set Scoop, unfortunately, plays as the lesser film in a
double bill with that thriller, a ramshackle and laboriously whimsical
comedic trifle that falls back on the filmmaker’s increasingly tired
penchant for nattering faux-realism.

Scarlett Johansson), in town visiting friends, gets plucked
from the audience for a trick. She’s then visited by an apparition of
Strombel, who feeds her a series of cryptic clues pointing to British
aristocrat Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), and urges her to pursue the
story.

Taking a phony name and introducing Sid as her father, Sondra poses
as an actress and romantically snuggles up to Peter. She discovers a
deck of tarot cards in his tucked-away music room, as well as
additional secretive behavior, but has her share of doubts, even as
further visits from Strombel provide more information. Sid wants no
part of the investigation, but feels caught up in it by a need to
protect Sondra.

Allen clearly wants to use Lyman’s positioning within posh English
society as a contrasting backdrop for the movie’s two American
characters — one intrepid, one spineless — and he sets Scoop’s
light narrative gallop to an array of mischievously inquisitive
classical music, including Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake Ballet Suite” and
Johan Strauss’ “Annen-Polka.” But there are a clutch of small
inconsistencies and incongruities within the story, including one scene
in which a newspaper editor relates a piece of secondhand information
that he claims Peter’s father told him, a piece of information that
would directly contradict Sondra’s “front” to the Lyman family. One’s
pulse quickens here, expecting a fresh twist. Instead, it appears to be
merely a narrative flub.

Problems like this — and the manner in which Allen cuts quickly on
certain scenes, obviously trimming lead and trailing dialogue — give
the movie and its headlong dash toward conclusion the feeling of a
series of dopey vignettes. This certainly isn’t enhanced when a smitten
Peter suddenly leaves town on Sondra’s birthday after giving her a
gift, freeing her to dine with Sid. This and other moments like it defy
reasonable plausibility.

If its narrative isn’t one to hook audiences, Scoop at least
allows Johansson a chance to nicely subvert her burgeoning sexpot
image. With her round specs and a somewhat golly-gee persona, Sondra is
part Nancy Drew, part smitten bobbysoxer — and Johansson plays her with
a sunny and believably adolescent mix of aplomb and self-doubt. Even
if, that is, the story early on undermines this by setting Sondra up as
a bit of a floozy. In what is a somewhat uncomfortable window into
Allen’s imagination, Sondra — in an attempt to get an interview —
beds, off-camera, a film director. I’m not quite sure what
Allen’s trying to say about journalism here, and I’m not sure he knows
either. The big scoop on Scoop is that there really isn’t one. (Focus Features, PG-13, 95 mins.)

Miami Vice

Film Reviews

With its big-budget flash and style, Miami Vice charted new
ground for episodic television dramas in the 1980s, changing the way
such shows were conceived and staged, and no doubt laying the
groundwork for the directorial careers of folks like, let’s say, Charlie’s Angels’
McG. The big screen re-imagining then, starring Colin Farrell and Jamie
Foxx in the roles made famous by Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas,
had many folks atwitter with anticipation. In reality, though, Miami Vice
is an incidentally titled, gritty travelogue and skillfully crafted but
surprisingly insular tale of parallel love stories — in other words, a
film dressed up and masquerading as a summer movie.

At its
center are Sonny Crockett (Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Foxx), and their
faithful band of ever-ready back-up (an underwritten group which
includes Justin Theroux, Elizabeth Rodriguez and Domenick Lombardozzi).
After the identity of an informant (John Hawkes) is leaked and his wife
killed, Crockett and Tubbs go undercover as courier specialists to
assist a high-up FBI agent (Ciaran Hinds) and determine the source of
the leak. This leads them to a shadowy Colombian drug and illicit
merchandise kingpin named Arcángel Jésus de Montoya (Luis Tosar) and —
perhaps to racially balance out the villainy — a homegrown Aryan group
that, for reasons never quite fully illuminated, eventually conspires
with Montoya’s quietly menacing middleman, José Yero (John Ortiz), to
kidnap Tubbs’ girlfriend, Trudy (Naomie Harris). Crockett, meanwhile,
falls for Montoya’s second-in-command, the poker-faced yet still sultry
Isabella (Gong Li), taking her up on her offer, mid-deal, to dash away
to Havana for mojitos. From here the petty incidents of gamesmanship
mount, with José’s perceptive distrust of Crockett and Tubbs eventually
culminating in bloodshed.

Mann’s world here is one of dark maneuvering and clenched, stubbled
jaws. He’s not interested in crafting a pop masterpiece, and there are
several types of truth with which he is wholly unconcerned — the
comfortable emotional track of narrative movie truth, certainly, but
also the truth of the mundanities of law enforcement. In Mann’s
idealized, stylized world of alpha male wolves on the prowl, police
work isn’t constrained by the necessity of paperwork, logistics or even
sleep — it’s a 24/7, multi-national hall-crawl, captured by
cinematographer Dion Beebe’s inscrutable, dirty frames and powered by
the lightly throbbing pulse of John Murphy’s score and lowly mixed
sonic offerings from Audioslave, Moby and Mogwai.

But for whom is Miami Vice made, precisely? Certainly not
hardcore devotees of the television show who have some nostalgic jones
for pastel blazers and Phil Collins tunes. (But then again, what sort
of these in-name-only adaptations of old small screen product typically
are?) Neither does it have the moral clarity of Saving Private Ryan, Seabiscuit or Cinderella Man, other adult-skewing films of recent summers. And Miami Vice
isn’t suffuse enough with staged conflict to sate the appetite of
general action audiences. An exciting and exactingly staged final
shootout punctures the movie’s mostly languid mood, but as the hearty
grosses of the mindless Pirates of the Caribbean sequel prove, casual summer audiences don’t go to the movies for
ruminative parables on violence and the difficulties inherent in
balancing dangerous, undercover investigative work with romance. Collateral,
which two years ago crawled across the $100 million mark only due to
Tom Cruise’s pre-couch jumping star power, had at its core the hook of
an Everyman thrown into a violent world with which he has no
familiarity or ease. If that film was Mann’s concessionary power play
in the direction of commercial relevance, Miami Vice comes
across on several important levels as a flippant clutch of the balls,
so densely atmospheric and deeply plotted is the film.

Ever since Heat, Mann’s films of the past decade — even a finely charted biopic like Ali — have been as much about the creation and sustenance of mood as anything else. (Maybe this is why he abandoned The Aviator, which in its hermetic subject didn’t have the inherent, sustained, hypnotic allure of Muhammad Ali.) Miami Vice
is no exception. While Mann’s visual and aural mastery of the cinematic
form and in particular Farrell’s laser-eyed intensity get you engaged,
one keeps waiting for a deeper sense of intrigue to set in — my mind
kicked around several interesting twists or narrative avenues that
never came to fruition or were explored.

I like that the film doesn’t conform to hackneyed clichés in service
of an attempted franchise launch, but can’t help feeling a bit
disappointed at Miami Vice’s deliberate murkiness, and the fact
that Farrell and Foxx are so divided and free of the bristling
masculine chemistry we want to see from them for much of the movie.
Drained of the juice that first made it such a visceral, cathartic
thrill, this film is Miami Vice in name only. Perhaps some deep undercover work is needed to find its mojo. (Universal, R, 132 mins.)

Tsotsi

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Born of both a long-standing affection for the works of author Athol Fugard, upon whose novel this film is based, and an intimate familiarity with the shantytowns of his native South Africa, writer-director Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi is, when boiled down to its most basic elements, a coming-of-age story set in an extreme environment — and a searingly memorable one at that.