With the announcement that he’s throwing his hat into the ring for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 — however seemingly improbable the odds, currently — Kansas Senator Sam Brownback may be angling for inclusion in the revised version of this fascinating documentary.
Daily Archives: January 20, 2007
Wanted: Extinguished Butts
Hey, so no reasonable person would argue or expect movies to accurately reflect the manner in which we spend most of our time, or the many pedestrian activities (brushing one’s teeth, putting away laundry, walking from our car to an apartment or home, vacuuming) that round out our days. But one thing that struck me recently is the manner in which even included prosaic acts get trimmed down and glossed over.
Take cigarettes, for instance. It’s become far less pervasive on screen over the past 15 to 20 years, no doubt about it, but when we do see someone smoking, it’s frequently in the act of lighting up and taking that first drag — the ultimate foreplay and sexualization of the act. What about extinguishing cigarettes, though? I’ve seen entire movies set in smoky bars where smokestack characters never once properly dispose of a butt.
On the other hand, if we need to show a character is thoughtless or bad, we’re apt to get the artfully flicked away finished cig. (You’ll never see this from a straight-up protagonist, though, because Lord knows none of that litter comes from decent folks…) This is most recently egregiously represented in Alpha Dog, which goes out of its way to include a scene in which Justin Timberlake’s character flicks away a Marlboro and lobs a beer bottle into a neighbor’s yard. (I mean, kids these days! Abusing drugs, ‘napping kids… littering!) At some point, though, I’d like to see a character rub out a butt and toss it in a trashcan. I mean, that still happens in real life, right?
Onward, Slagging of Sundance!
David Lynch, above, who turns 61 years old today.
Meanwhile, though I’m chained to a desk in Los Angeles, it’s the second day of the Sundance Film Festival, and the inevitable trickle of the usual “worst year ever?” pieces has started. The latest is from Movie City News’ David Poland, though it does stoop to include a bit of backhanded friendliness and credit. One thing’s for sure: Grace Is Gone does sound like a snug fit for John Cusack, who never met an interview he couldn’t dispassionately grind his teeth through. (If you want to get him to open up, try asking about the Cubs — sometimes it works, sometimes not.) The film is about an emotionally detached father who loses his wife in the Iraq War, and goes on a roadie with his two daughters. Word is that the Weinstein Company is circling as a potential distributor…
The Guardian
The Guardian is a sincere and capably
executed film, if ultimately also a dispensable one.
sort of machismo on display in The
Guardian is fairly tame, and the movie isn’t an overt and specific portrait
of American military culture in the vein of last year’s
in
around the mentor-protégé relationship between a veteran Coast Guard Rescue
Swimmer and one of his young charges. Ben Randall (Costner) is legendary
amongst his peers, but after a terrible accident claims his crew, he’s haunted
by the memory. His commander temporarily reassigns him to an instructional
post, where we meet Jake Fischer (Kutcher), an ex-high school swim champion who
has spurned a variety of college scholarship offers to give the Coast Guard’s “A” School
elite program has a washout rate of more than 50 percent, but Jake readily
distinguishes himself, even if his focus on training records makes Ben uncertain
that he’s there for the right reasons — to save lives.
lacks the gigantic scope and additional nonfiction heft of Wolfgang Petersen’s The Perfect Storm. What director Andrew
Davis’ The Guardian has in abundant
earnestness, it also matches in recycled conventions, as various military pic
genre touchstones — tortured flashbacks and nightmares, unconventional training
methodologies, inter-branch antagonism, romance with a townie — all receive
hearty workout over the course of 139 minutes.
of The Guardian were it not for the
picture’s dutiful insistence to hit all the beats of synthetic conflict, from
Ben’s crumbling marriage, a casualty of workaholic neglect, to an arbitrary
second act detour in a confrontational Navy bar. A love story between Jake and
local schoolteacher Emily Thomas (Melissa Sagemiller), while bringing a wisp of
early levity to the proceedings, is also a non-starter.
Ben and Jake lives outside of work that robs the movie of a chance to get to
know any of its other characters beyond purely the functions they serve in the
story. Ron L. Brinkerhoff’s script is a fine model of structure, but offers
little in the way of interpersonal insightfulness, and its rescue finale is a
somewhat credibility-stretching combination of all tests rolled into one. A
late play at mythic significance also misfires.
at ease sliding into grizzled mentor-type roles, and he already has such a
pleasantly well-worn demeanor suited to these roles that you glimpse, even in
something as predictable as The Guardian,
a successful future in substantive movies about aging, busted romances and
reconciliation.
play the “normal,” orbiting body to a more colorful or outrageous character, at
least in a comedic/romantic context. In the role of apprentice here, however,
he’s less successful. Part of this is a function of how the character of Jake
is written — vaguely haunted by a secret we know will eventually come out, but
not truly obstinate enough to create substantial friction with Ben — but his
performance is also uneven, hampered early on by indistinct, wide-eyed stares.
The Guardian is housed
in a regular Amray plastic case with snap-shut hinges, which in turn slides
into a glossy cardboard slipcover. The movie is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic
widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, and comes with complementary Dolby
digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks in English, French and Spanish. Supplemental
bonus materials kick off with a genial, two-handed feature-length audio commentary
track from Davis and Brinkerhoff in which the pair discuss paring to the script,
plus location and production detail. You get the sense that theirs was a close
collaboration, particularly when Brinkerhoff talks about being the only writer
on the project, and his enjoyment at seeing the movie through completion.
of the movie’s partial Louisiana shoot and water tank work, and is replete with
enough choice talking head interview bits to give an overview that feels
substantially longer. A second featurette, clocking in at five and a half minutes,
focuses on the real-life Coast Guard, a bit of its history, and the fine job
they do of rescuing those in distress. Finally, excised material also gets a
workout in the form of seven minutes of deleted scenes — including a further
fleshing out of Jake and Emily’s relationship — as well as a much more “Hollywood”
(and thankfully unused) alternate ending, all with additional commentary from
Davis and Brinkerhoff. A small collection of preview trailers round things out. C+ (Movie) B (Disc)
Children of Men
Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men is in the very loosest sense a science-fiction film, in that it takes place in the future, and is driven by a quandary both biological and scientific. Its bleak palettes, meanwhile, mark it as a dystopian drama. It’s also a political thriller, if a decidedly free-flowing and ramshackle one. Some of its action sequences, finally, rank among the year’s best, and certainly most flamboyantly staged.
After raking in just under $1 million during its limited Christmas holiday release, the film has enjoyed wide weekend frames of $10.1, $6.3 and $7.4 million — certainly nothing to sneeze at, but perhaps not quite the sort of breakout performance hoped for in the shadows of runaway family hit Night at the Museum and Will Smith’s The Pursuit of Happyness. The good news is that with something approaching critical consensus (the film currently has an aggregate score of 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to the 80 percent of this weekend’s number one advance ticket seller, the resurgent Dreamgirls), Children of Men has clearly lured a sizeable horde of filmgoers to the multiplexes. Once there, though, have they and will they be similarly wooed and moved by a movie that is a stylistic gem, but also one of deep thought, reflection and even denunciation? For the full, original review of the film, from FilmStew, click here. (Universal R, 109 minutes)
Cracker & Camper Van Beethoven
Set both amidst an outdoor Old West movie set and the
surrounding prickly cacti, as well as the adjacent “Pappy and Harriet’s
a musical celebration of two bands that have used the desert and their own headstrong
dedication to forge a musical family and an artistic homestead lasting almost
two decades.
courtesy of their 1994 funky-grunge hit “Low,” with its evocative electric slide
response. I’ll always associate them most with Kerosene Hat hidden track “Euro Trash Girl,” however, since that was
the funky ditty one of my apartment mates at the time dropped on repeat for his
marathon Nintendo sessions. I learned of the group’s forerunner, cult-status
indie rock innovators Camper Van Beethoven, then, in reverse — and was certainly
glad when I did.
aforementioned site in the high
raw, live purity and joyous fervor, it features not only sets from Cracker and
Camper Van Beethoven (in a rare reunion with CVB’s original drummer, Chris
Pedersen) but also several rare, live performances from side projects and interrelated
spin-offs: groups and solo acts like the Monks of Doom, Johnny Hickman, Victor
Krummenacher, Jonathan Segel and Greg Lisher, plus bootlegged excerpt footage
from a late-night, impromptu “Porchstock” jam.
hours of music here is top-notch stuff, and very small crowds gives it a backyard BBQ-type feel. CVB’s two-part “Eye of Fatima” holds
serve, as does “Take the Skinheads Bowling.” Cracker’s aforementioned “Low” is given
a nice treatment — with the frontman of both groups, David Lowery, holding
forth in a UVa t-shirt and pinched ranch-hand hat — and the rest of their outdoor,
nighttime, 25-minute set includes “Movie Star,” “Teen” and “Big Dipper Cracker.”
(No “Get Off This,” unfortunately…) Johnny Hickman’s unbilled contributions, meanwhile (consisting of “The Great
Decline” and “Little Tom”) are a wonderful evocation and empowerment of those
that have slipped through the cracks, and rank as some of the best of the material
here. Monks of Doom’s outdoor offerings include “Poison” and “Riverbed,” as
dusk quickly bleeds out into night, and Krummenacher presents “Not Coming Back,”
“Bittersweet” and “Questa Sunset.”
great, and is nicely photographed, with blends and fades that showcase a light
artistic hand but don’t become too heavy on the directorial interjection. Some
of the interior footage suffers in comparison to the outdoor sets due to its
lighting, but the disc comes up with ways to get around this — rendering Lisher’s
set in a heavy sepia tone, for instance. The bummer of the release is that
there really isn’t a fuller explication of the genesis of the event, or any interviews,
commentaries or even biographies that would shine a light on the cooperative
and celebratory nature of these musicians for lapsed fans or newcomers. As is,
it’ll just have to settle for being great, and hope an appreciative and
nostalgic alt-rock audience finds it. A- (Concert) C- (Disc)
Lindsay Lohan Rehab Update!
So, umm… the Wonderland Center where Lindsay Lohan is seeking treatment specializes in treating addictive disorders such as… love addiction? Whatever. But: props to you, James Franco, props to you.