Blades of Glory centers on toothy golden-boy Jimmy MacElroy (Jon
Heder, above center), a technically proficient but socially sheltered champion figure skater rigorously
groomed for success since childhood. Boozy bad boy Chazz Michael Michaels
(Will Ferrell) is his polar opposite — a self-described “ice-devouring sex tornado”
who relies on instinct and on-ice improvisation. When a tie at the World
Championships erupts into an embarrassing, medal-stand brawl in front of a
horrified crowd, both Jimmy and Chazz are stripped of their awards and barred
from their sport. Years later, Jimmy’s coach encourages them to exploit a loophole and compete together as the first male/male pair in the history of figure skating. Hungry for laurels, the duo agrees.
Fitfully amusing but indefatigable, Blades of Glory doesn’t touch the anarchic highs of the inspired Talladega Nights, but there’s some pleasantly inspired riffing from Ferrell, and the movie’s early story-beat, sitcom-style repartee is actually pretty solid, before it descends into only half-sketched macro arcs. Relying on Ferrell’s trademark mock intensity and
man-child ignorance, the movie wraps its plot around comfortable clichés
of warped competition found most recently in fellow insistently silly sports flicks
like Dodgeball, Heder’s The Benchwarmers and Ferrell’s Kicking and Screaming.
In recent years, films like Traffic, Syriana and
others have tried to meld narrative ensemble conventions with the burgeoning
sense and social consciousness of activist filmmaking most robustly found in a
new wave of documentaries from liberal filmmakers like Robert Greenwald,
Michael Moore and the like. Heartening
in effort if not fully successful in implementation, then, is The Hanging Garden writer-director Thom Fitzgerald’s sprawling
anthology 3 Needles. A trio of discrete stories that span South Africa, rural China and Montreal, the movie attempts to cast a broader light
on the AIDS crisis, and ask why mankind has not bonded together more
tenaciously and durably against this common scourge.
First, in China,
pregnant Jin Ping (Lucy Liu, above) sets up a mobile, black market blood collection
service in a tiny fishing village, paying residents $5 for their donations.
When rice farmer Tong Sam (Tanabadee Chokpikultong), resentful of his neighbor’s
financial gains yet barred from selling his own blood because he has the flu,
lies about his daughter’s age in order that she can sell blood and fund
improvements to their family’s humble farm, it sets off a chain reaction of
events.
In Montreal,
Denys (X-Men‘s Shawn Ashmore) is a
porn actor hiding his HIV positive status in order to continue working and
supporting his ailing, terminally ill father and mother Olive (Stockard Channing).
When his father dies and Denys’ secret comes out of the closet, Olive herself
goes to extreme lengths to provide for the family’s future.
Finally, in Africa, Sister Clara
(indie mainstay Chloë Sevigny) is a young Catholic nun driven, along with
Sister Hilda (Olympia Dukakis) and Sister Mary John (Sandra Oh), to prevent the
spread of HIV in the region and convert as many of the rapidly dying African
population as she can. In doing so, Clara makes a desperate sexual bargain with
corrupt plantation owner Hallyday (Ian Roberts) to help more immediately secure
all sorts of necessary improvements in equipment, facility and sanitation.
Restoring 20 minutes
of footage and reinstating a triptych structure to the film from its 2005
Toronto Film Festival cut, 3
Needles probably tops out with its initial entry, which features an
impressively subdued and nuanced performance from Liu. The segment also best
evidences Fitzgerald’s keen eye for detail and exhaustive sense of research. The Canadian offering, on the other hand, surprisingly
dips a bit into darkly comedic terrain, occasionally with nice effect, scene to
scene. In the end, though, when a former partner spits at Denys, “You killed me
for $800,” it doesn’t comfortably tonally jibe with much of what we’ve seen.
The concluding
African segment, meanwhile, is at times a bit staid, but delves into the
interesting custom of virginal rape as a “folk cure” for HIV and AIDS, which is
apparently quite a problem in some cultures. If this inquiry were married to a
bit more natural and noteworthy narrative strand — and just off the top of my
head, I can think of a few — it would be better and more inherently compelling. As is, reach exceeds grasp, and the symbolic intertwining of sex and disease,
power and powerlessness, comes across as one metaphor too many. More ludicrously
closed minds might also potentially misread this as a condemnation of Catholic church
involvement in Africa.
Quite nicely shot by
Thomas Harting, who has a real touch with the film’s wide-open exteriors, each portion
of 3 Needles opens with a narration that’s equal parts Desperate Housewives and sermonizing
middle school scholastic filmstrip, which is perhaps appropriate. A variety of
far-flung and long-lasting travels informed Fitzgerald’s crafting of the
screenplay (obviously quite well), and his characters are nicely sketched. Still,
while characters are given wide berth and scenes plenty of room to breathe, much
material feels extraneous. With more clearly delineated motivations and streamlined
stories, this project would work much better. As is, it’s a psalm, to be sure,
but it doesn’t truly sing.
3 Needles is presented in 1.85:1 non-anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 2.0 stereo audio track, and optional English subtitles. DVD special features
include the theatrical trailer and TV advertising for the film, a photo gallery
and a collection of deleted scenes. Informative mini-documentaries China AIDS Initiative (with Magic Johnson and Yao Ming) and House on Fire: AIDS in America,
meanwhile, rightly point up the global nature of this crisis, but in
calm-headed, even-keeled fashion. Each aims to inform, not inflame, and they
succeed. One point of quiet contention, though: a more global offering of subtitles. C (Movie) B+ (Disc)
Grindhousedelivers an uneven mixture of patchwork, sugar-rush thrills.
Consisting
of two discrete features strung together by a series of fake trailers
shot by Edgar Wright, Eli Roth and Rob Zombie, the movie benefits mostly from
the recombinant pop of Rodriguez’s Planet Terror (above), a strikingly well designed and tackily atmospheric zombie action flick, before the twin-bill’s finale, Tarantino’s muddled Death Proof, fumbles its way through a pointless set-up to an invigorating car chase climax.
A charm offensive of cool that will play well to those heartily psychologically invested in the concept of genre homage, the degree to which Grindhouse successfully spreads outside of its chief demographic target
depends on word-of-mouth amongst those for whom referential lionization
for lionization’s sake means very little. For the full review, from Screen International, click here. For more isolated critical thoughts on each separate feature, check back on Shared Darkness throughout the week.
Variety is reporting that Sydney Pollack will direct Recount, a scripted HBO movie about the contested 2000 presidential election that will focus on the five weeks following Election Day, up through the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of George W. Bush. Casting has yet to be finalized, but presumably slightly fictionalized and composited disgruntled voters will rub shoulders with real-life strategists and local politicians (after all, who can forget this face?).
Sorry, but the fact that the project is “aiming for the widest possible audience, and will steer clear of a partisan point of view, according to execs,” doesn’t bode well for its meat-and-potatoes worth as a drama. I totally get this project’s editorial and financial value in the middle of a heated election-year cycle (it will air on the net sometime next spring or summer), and Pollack’s deft touch with the politically-related material makes him an easy and solid, if somewhat too safe choice. But what gives that backdrop its electrical charge is the winning and losing. Anything else might as well be just a documentary offering — the same sort of thing which …So Goes the Nation incidentally did a pretty damn good job of capturing, in Ohio in 2004.
If you’re not showing the anger of people who feel like they’re getting jammed (or, conversely, the celebration of those “getting over”), if you’re too busy tap-dancing around some imaginary line of kumbaya appeasement, if you’re not choosing, in some loose sense, you’re going to end up with just a neutered piece of info-tainment to serve as lead-in fodder for shows like Hardball and Tucker, and the policy wonks that watch them. It will be interesting to see if all the major players and party power brokers are represented in Recount‘s story, whatever its putative dramatic focus. If not, it has the strong potential to be empty theater.
The one person who should be most grateful for this announcement, other than actor-turned-writer Danny Strong? Fran Drescher. I don’t what the hell she’s up to, but if her agent is worth a rat’s ass, they’re booking her for the role of Katherine Harris. Yesterday.
UPDATE 8/09: A few days old now, but according to Reuters and other outlers, Pollack, 73, has backed out of directing Recount, citing unspecified health concerns. “He’s got some medical issues,” spokeswoman Leslie Dart told Reuters.
“He’s not feeling well right now. It would be unrealistic for him to go
into production right away.” Pollack will stay on board as a producer, and Jay Roach (Austin Powers, Meets the Parents) will step in to direct.
Blades of Glory centers on toothy golden-boy Jimmy MacElroy (Jon
Grindhouse delivers an uneven mixture of patchwork, sugar-rush thrills.
