On an appearance on The Tonight Show last night in support of his so-so thriller 1408, John Cusack — characteristically dressed like the extra Reservoir Dog — was asked by Jay Leno if he was a fan of Stephen King stories growing up, if he liked scary movies when he was young.
Cusack’s reply: “I love good films, any kind of good films at all, but I do remember The Exorcist, The Shining, 28 Days Later… there’s a lot of terrific films.”
The only problem, of course, is that, The Exorcist came out in 1977, The Shining (which Cusack went on to talk about being freaked out by as a teenager) in 1980, and 28 Days Later in… 2003. The question, then: did Cusack simply ignore the root of Leno’s question in mentioning movies he liked, or did someone prep him with a studio-vetted list of similar genre product that he mindlessly plugged in as a reply (in which case the latter still doesn’t really pass muster)? 1408 is based on a Stephen King short story, and Cusack dutifully cited The Shining, Misery and The Shawshank Redemption in answering another question about King’s work. But… 28 Days Later?
Steve Carell’s latest film, Evan Almighty, may be a grand-scale misfire of sorts, but the actor is still feeling good about his upcoming slate of projects, including next summer’s Get Smart.
“Get Smart was something I loved growing up with as a kid,” he says, “and getting the chance to bring that to a movie screen is…” Here Carell trails off, as the wide grin of a man getting paid to play for a living breaks out across his face. “We’re 12 weeks in, we’re almost done shooting it and I think it’s going to be fantastic. I’m very bullish about Get Smart for next summer.”
Disney’s animated fare gets all the glossy DVD treatment and Academy laurels, but its estimable live action canon is the focus of a special screening series July 11-15 at the Aero Theatre.
Thursday, July 12, starting at 7:30 p.m., there’s a double feature of 1961’s wonderful, Oscar-nominated (for its lush, black-and-white cinematography) The Absent Minded Professor, starring Fred MacMurray, and the same year’s The Parent Trap, with Haley Mills preceding Lindsay Lohan. The following night, also kicking off at 7:30 p.m., is Escape From Witch Mountain, with Donald Pleasance, and 1977’s superb Freaky Friday, starring Barbara Harris and a young Jodie Foster. Other films screening during the series include 1960’s spry, delightful Swiss Family Robinson, 1950’s Treasure Island, the classic Mary Poppins and more. The Aero Theatre is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica; for 24-hour recorded information on tickets, directions and the venue’s upcoming schedule, phone (323) 466-FILM.
Evan Almighty has as its lead certainly one of the hottest comedy stars working today in the form of Steve Carell, of television’s The Office. Still, even filtered through the more forgiving lens of PG-dom, and giving its mash-up narrative conceit (part Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, part Noah’s arc bible story) a hall pass, Evan Almighty is a dispiritingly timid comedy of laid-track laffs.
I say “laffs” instead of laughs because there’s so little that’s either surprising or even genuine about this movie — it feels phony, in a rib-nudging sort of way, almost bizarrely, purposefully false. From every pore Evan Almighty exudes the feel of a meticulously corporate-vetted tale, and one so nakedly designed to radiate broad appeal that it ends up being a bore — and a rather predictable bore, at that.
From almost the get-go, Evan Almighty feels like the wrong choice for a spin-off to Bruce Almighty, just in terms of the story and where it’s taken. The smug, pompous Evan Baxter of the first film — a cameo bit player who finds himself the unknowing recipient of frustrated colleague Jim Carrey’s passive-aggressiveness — is completely gone, replaced with a generic-type sitcom dad, struggling to please the wife and kids with family time. Robbed of the comedic tension and opportunities that an erosion of this self-importance would provide, the movie becomes an exercise in visually tricked-out tedium. When Evan Almighty dips into its obligatory music montage of arc-building mishaps, Carell hits his thumb with a hammer not once, not twice… but three times, because, you know, comedy comes in triplicate. For the full, original review, from FilmStew, click here. (Universal, PG, 90 minutes)
The web site for the new documentary on David Lynch has gone live, and includes the above, quite spare poster image. Compiled from over two years of footage, the film charts Lynch’s creative path during the making of his latest film, Inland Empire, and just recently had its premiere at the Munich Film Festival. No word yet on American play dates, but more to follow in the coming weeks…
So the first picture of Harrison Ford on the set of the fourth Indiana Jones movie is up on the Indiana Jones community site — snapped by director Steven Spielberg, no less — and it looks like production, which commenced yesterday, is starting with a bang, no hand-wringing scenes of namby-pamby exposition chatter or anything. (Those will be left to Jim Broadbent, I guess.) Ergo, Indy’s bloodstained pants, and the blood in and around his ear.
I can only hope that this scene of repose, however, was soon followed by Ford whip-cracking the shorts off of that production assistant in the background, cackling with glee and growling, “I’ve still got it.”
Filming will continue throughout the summer, with the movie set to release May 22, 2008. No word, yet, though, on whether the “Opal of the Mer-Man Prince” will be found…
Universal’s very bland and disappointing mega-comedy Evan Almightytests the relatively new big screen maxim of, “Leave ’em dancing, leave ’em happy.” Ever since the Farrelly brothers re-popularized — to the tune of “Build Me Up Buttercup” in 1998’s There’s Something About Mary — the notion of end credit-scored goofing around (we’re not going to count Lethal Weapon 4‘s desperate, diversionary “Why Can’t We Be Friends?,” from the same year), comedies have been delighting in having their casts and crew goofily flail around just before the final lights come up.
Will Smith’s Hitch found the cast spinning its nuptial-set finale off into an end credits dance-off, getting down to Heavy D’s “Now That We’ve Found Love.” The 40-Year-Old Virgin, meanwhile, featured a Bollywood-style rendition of “Age of Aquarius.” Now Evan Almighty gives us C+C Music Factory’s “Everybody Dance Now.” When a comedy has really hit (like with Mary), it’s a blast of sunshine to see the fun everyone had making the film, and in a more marginal work (like with Hitch), it can accrue goodwill with tremendous downhill momentum, sending you out of the theater on a high, lifting you up and momentarily blinding you to some of the movie’s problems.
When you’ve just suffered through something like Evan Almighty, though, you just kind of look at the screen and think about how much more money these craftspeople are making than you, and it pisses you off.
Somewhere, Paul Weitz is cackling. The wide-eyed, interlaced-finger corporate synergy he lampooned in searing fashion in In Good Company is on full, unapologetic display on NBC, which is using The Office to pump up star Steve Carell’s burgeoning movie career.
The network re-ran three episodes this evening, but stretched them to a cumulative running time of two hours by padding the night out with interstitial bumpers featuring copious clips from the movie and banter with Carell and other cast members, like Lauren Graham and Wanda Sykes. This tack may work for the film’s opening weekend numbers, but don’texpect word-of-mouth to help this movie out.
Carell exudes a certain nice-guy sympathy, so the natural inclination is to want to go easy on Evan Almighty, but the truth is that there are five times more laughs in the single half-hour “Casino Night” episode of The Office (which Carell penned, incidentally) than the entire running time of Tom Shadyac’s ramshackle (sigh) “comedy of biblical proportions.” It’s that uninspired, though Carell did give me one good laugh with an obviously improvised line — clarifying his bearded appearance by way of explaining that he was cultivating “a Loggins and Messina look” to spice up his love life.
I know that the MTV Movie Awards are a complete joke, and I hate to play the role of fist-shaking elder, but I was flipping by the channel recently, saw a bit of a rebroadcast of the aforementioned show, and caught a brief snippet that struck me as especially goddamned stupid — Shia LaBeouf, Tyrese Gibson and Josh Duhamel accepting an award on behalf of Transformers. The category — the “Best Film Not Yet Seen.” Seriously.
I think there were eight nominees… even Rush Hour 3, a movie I can’t yet bring myself to fathom really existing, was “honored,” for Chrissakes. Why didn’t they just keep the brief clips from the movies and retitle this segment “Four Minutes of Us Fellating Movie Studios While Moving Pictures Unfurl in the Background,” huh? Beck had it right, yo…
For those in Southern California, capping off a weekend of moviegoing
with a classic cinematic experience just got easier, with the Rialto Theatre‘s announcement of its slate of midnight summer screenings. One of the last remaining single-screen movie palaces in the Los Angeles area, the beautiful and
historic Rialto is located in the heart of South
Pasadena, and has been operated by Landmark Theatres since 1976. Built in 1925 and sporting a unique blend
of Spanish Baroque and Egyptian stylings, the Rialto was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. It has been
featured in many films and commercials, most notably Robert Altman’s The Player.
Screening this Saturday, June 23, will be Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, a brilliant examination of the Vietnam War and the dehumanizing process that turns people into trained killers. Ticket prices are $8.75. For tickets by phone,
call (626) 444-FILM; for regular engagement showtimes and other
information, call (626) 388-2122, or simply click here.
Los Angeles-based Anonymous Content and T&C Pictures, a
division of T&C Holdings of Japan, have jointly announced the completion of
casting for the sexy horror flick Animals,
scheduled to begin production later this week in Salt Lake
City, Utah. Penned by Craig Spector (A
Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child) from an original novel co-written
with John Skipp, the film is being helmed by first-time director Doug
Aarniokoski, an assistant/second unit director on numerous projects for Robert
Rodriguez. The finalized cast includes Mark Blucas, Perfect Stranger’s
Nicki Aycox, Eva Amurri,
Andy Comeau and Naveen Andrews, of Lost and Grindhouse.
Described as blurring the line between civilized human and wild animal behavior,
the film follows Jarrett, a blue-collar Joe in a dying factory town, whose life
is given a jolt after meeting (and bedding) the magnetic, beautiful
Nora. As their relationship becomes increasingly intense — and complicated
by Jarrett’s feelings for a local bartender, Jane — an unconventional romantic
triangle ensues amid a spate of uncontrolled violence. I don’t know why, quite, but I really feel like this movie
is calling out for a C. Thomas Howell cameo…
It’s a happy birthday to Nicole Kidman, who turns 40 today, and — Keith Urban’s drug problems notwithstanding — can now wear heels without guilt, and doesn’t have to worry about this guy ruining the cushions on her upholstery. My girlfriend teases me about having a crush on Kidman, but can I help it if she’s hot, talented and sweet to boot? As interesting as a filmography as Kidman has constructed (even though Fur didn’t do it for me), it might end up being the Chanel No. 5 advertising campaign that Baz Luhrmann directed which produces some of the most iconic photographs of Kidman; those images are stunning. Just stay away from the Botox and other assorted face-stretching, Nicole, we already have one painfully depressing cautionary tale in the form of Meg Ryan. Please, be natural.
In a less puzzling pairing of director and material than the below, Michael Apted — whose innovative Up series has charted the fate of fantastical adolescent imagination on the shoals of adulthood — has been inked to helm the third Chronicles of Narnia film, according to Screen International. The awfully titled The Voyage of the Dawn Treader will start shooting in 2008, to be released on May 1, 2009. Apted is at his core a dramatic filmmaker, a humanistic explorer of interstitial greys, but he also knows a thing or three about huge franchises, having helmed The World Is Not Enough. He should be a good caretaker of the series, as well as a guy who can put a bit of a spin on things. Mark Johnson and Andrew Adamson, who directed the first two installments, will serve as producers for Walden Media/Walt Disney Productions project.
Even before the turnaround of Casino Royale, I’ve long supported the notion that the 007 franchise was in need of a major shake-up, either in the form of an action auteur or a filmmaker with enough of an idiosyncratic sensibility to make a difference. The Broccoli family has been extremely good business stewards of the franchise, but arguably until recently strangled much of the thrill and creativity out of it.
Now, from the total “WTF Files,” comes word, via Variety, that Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction) has signed on to direct the 22nd James Bond film, and will soon begin work with Paul Haggis on a draft of the original screenplay by Neil Purvis and Robert Wade, with shooting on the film to commence in December for a release from Sony early next November.
It’s a somewhat baffling marriage from both points-of-view. In an interview last year, Roger Michell — who turned down a chance to tackle the franchise and re-team with star Daniel Craig — came out and admitted to me what many people have been whispering for years, by calling the series a huge, massive supertanker that takes a superhuman effort to nudge half a degree off its
prescribed course. Foster has shown a certain appreciation for the offbeat, story-wise, but how will he deal with, say, not getting to helm his own action sequences? Meanwhile, does this hire advance or capture any new ground, demographically speaking, for the 007 franchise? Strange, very strange…
Looking forward to Ratatouille, and having recently engaged in a debate with a friend and colleague about the shelf life of the Fantastic Four sequel, I got to thinking about legitimately compelling kids’ films, and particularly those of the non-animated persuasion. That led me to think back to Zathura, so I’ll repost a redacted version of a DVD review of the movie that initially ran elsewhere, concurrent with its original release.
Wall Street again, and
taking it seriously), it’s probably on the surface less foolhardy to try to
handicap children’s films. After all, animated smashes like the Toy Story and Shrek franchises are built for the long haul — or maybe just deftly
sold as such. Take away animated films, though — admittedly a hug chunk of
kids’ films these days — and then try picking the last youth-skewing movie you
think you might actually want to revisit with your own children, grandchildren
or nieces and nephews somewhere down the line. Are the Agent Cody Banks flicks or, God forbid, disposable tripe like Martin Lawrence’s Rebound going to have any residual sway
with the adolescent audiences of tomorrow?
Hopefully not, but I’ll wager that Zathura, actor-turned-director Jon Favreau’s crisp, smart adaptation of Jumanji
and The Polar Express author Chris
Van Allsburg’s sci-fi adventure tale, will hold up admirably, and stake itself
a deserving place in the DVD collections of discriminating film fans looking
for both wholesomeness and quality. Chiefly a tale of fraternal strife and
reconciliation, the movie centers around two bickering brothers — athletic
pre-teen Walter (Josh Hutcherson, above left) and his diminutive, 6-year-old sibling, Danny
(Jonah Bobo, above right). When their father (Tim Robbins) leaves the boys alone in the care
of their inattentive teenage sister Lisa (Kristen Stewart), Walter and Danny
immediately start squabbling. A bored Danny soon finds an old, dusty, metallic
board game, and… presto chango!, the
entire house is magically transported into an outer space world rife with
meteor showers, malfunctioning robots, ice storms and carnivorous, lizard-like
creatures. The only way back “home” is for the family to work together and,
with the assistance of a wayward astronaut (Dax Shepard), complete the game.
Beautifully fleshed out in non-pandering fashion by
screenwriters David Koepp and John Kamps, Zathura
mines a deep reservoir of genuine feeling
often missing in adolescent entertainment, and combines this with enough spry
sensory pleasures to produce a winning piece of entertainment that, truly, the
whole family can enjoy. While Lisa is egregiously underwritten, other
characterizations are crisp, and conflict between the brothers exists in
perfectly measured fashion — not too heavy so as to be a drag, not too
contrived so as to come off as emotionally irrelevant. All the films that push
off needlessly surly adolescents or histrionics in lieu of genuine pubescent
discord could stand to learn a thing or three from the smart, modulated set-up
of Zathura and the emotional
authenticity that subsequently flows naturally.
DVD special features on the movie’s single-disc, 1.85:1 anamorphic
widescreen release include an audio commentary track with Favreau and
co-producer Peter Billingsley, a look at the making of the accompanying
videogame to the movie and a clutch of featurettes on the work of author Van
Allsburg, the cast, the visual effects and the like. The best of these examines
the vanishing art of model miniatures, and includes interviews with Favreau,
miniatures supervisor Michael Joyce and others about the painstakingly detailed
construction of the six-foot replica of the house from the movie’s Glendale
location shoot. A hint for all you future model makers out there — the herb thyme
doubles nicely as bushes, since it doesn’t deteriorate or go bad. A- (Movie) B+
(Disc)
So Superbad‘s trailer has dropped, but it leaves a taste in my mouth of wanting to like this movie a lot more than I do right now… of just giving it credit because it’s co-written by Knocked Up‘s Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and produced by Judd Apatow. Director Greg Mottola’s The Daytrippers, from 1996, was a pleasantly diverting indie flick, but since then he’s benefited from working with some great television writers (Undeclared, Arrested Development), and has yet to re-prove himself on the feature front.
I understand that the whole conceit of the movie — about two dweeby, co-dependent high school seniors (Jonah Hill and Michael Cera) trying to get laid, and forced to cope with impending graduation — lies in laughs of the languidly structured, but so many of the trailer’s jokes and bits seem arbitrary, Rogen’s cameo elicits a yawn and the use of “Panama” doesn’t get me hyped up like it should. Cera’s inadvertent boob punch is funny, though, as is his briefly glimpsed fiddler-on-the-roof dance and Hill’s exclamatory conniption of, “We could be those mistakes!” Maybe it’s just a hard sell, trailers for these ramshackle laffers of careening tone. Or maybe I’m maturing? Jesus, I hope it’s the former…
The trailer for James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma has dropped, and it looks pretty sweet, all things considered. Mangold has always been a guy who values and gets great performances out of his actors, long before the success of Walk the Line. (If you doubt, rent the underrated Heavy for a look back at of the 1990s’ more interesting and unhurriedly paced independent flicks.) With Yuma — a remake of the 1957 Western starring Glenn Ford, and the story of a lowly cowhand rancher (Christian Bale) who gets caught up delivering a rakish desperado (Russell Crowe) for an appointment justice — Mangold has obviously inverted the demeanors and looks of his two protagonists, making Crowe’s Ben Wade comfortable in his own skin and Bale’s Dan Evans a reticent, small-fry guy who awakens to the idea of the sordid experience being of value as a lesson for his son (Logan Lerman). Notoriously averse to bullshit, Crowe is an actor who feeds off of matched-effort collaboration, and the extremely dedicated Bale seems like a great match.
And by the way, who would’ve figured, after 1999’s Liberty Heights, that Ben Foster would morph into a go-to guy for supporting roles as greasy, sleazy, hotheaded psychos (see Hostage, Alpha Dog, this and I believe 11:14 as well, if I recall correctly)? Strange, very strange. 3:10 to Yuma releases October 5 from Lionsgate; for the trailer, click here.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer proved fantastic at the box office this past weekend, debuting to an estimated $57 million-plus on just over 6,200 screens. Fan-boy gripes about whether Galactus should look like this or rock out with more of the purple-and-blue classic comic look turned out not to have much of an effect on Fantastic Four‘s bottom-line grosses, powered as much by family business as diehard comic book aficionados. The opening was a bit higher than the $56.1 million haul of 2005’s series launch, and easily outpaced theatrical holdovers Ocean’s Thirteen ($19.1 million, down 47 percent from its debut June 8), Knocked Up (down 26 percent in its third week, to $14.5 million) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (down 43 percent in its fourth week of release, to just over $12 million), as well as the weekend’s only other new wide release, Nancy Drew, which bowed to only $7.1 million.
In homicidal theatrical news, meanwhile, Hostel: Part II tumbled more than 63 percent in its sophomore frame, pulling in $3 million for a two-week total of just over $14 million. If writer-director Eli Roth‘s first film was a xenophobic travelogue recast as a grim exercise in “BTK-horror,” this movie highlights the amorality angle even more starkly (“We’re the normal ones,” says one of two American businessmen who eventually don swim caps and slaughterhouse gear for their vicarious thrill-kill sessions), something audiences apparently had less of an appetite for.
Kevin Costner’s wildly careening serial killer tale Mr. Brooks, on the other hand, scratched out another $2.8 million in its third weekend, bringing its total haul to $23.5 million. Made for a cost-conscious $20 million, foreign receipts and ancillary revenues might actually be enough to help realize the filmmakers’ visions of a sequel and/or franchise, an ambiguity that most certainly doesn’t await 20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Four. Stay tuned…
The Winnie the Pooh
books, penned by A.A. Milne and illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard, were a staple
of childhood for many, and certainly the barbershop-style, lightly crooned
theme song by Richard and Robert Sherman, with its evocations of “deep in the
100-Acre Wood, where Christopher Robbin plays,” is like a front row seat in a
ride back in time. That trip gets a mainstream release, now, with the DVD bow
this week of the three magical tales that really started the Pooh tradition —
“Honey Tree,” “Winnie the Pooh with Tigger Too” and “The Blustery Day,” the
latter the Academy Award winner for Best Animated Short Film of 1969.
Delightfully low-fi, The
Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh features a live action opening which
pans over to a bookcase and picture book, thus setting the piece — in the
tradition of many classic fairytales — firmly in the imagination, both
individually and collectively, of its viewers. Narrated by Sebastian Cabot, the
adventures that follow are warm, friendly and lightly moralizing set pieces for
the entire family — stuff like Pooh getting stuck in Rabbit’s house after
eating too much honey, Pooh being feted by Christopher Robbin on “Hero Day”
after an act of kindness, and together everyone battling the perils of high
winds. All the lovable characters that from the frontline of Disney’s stable
are here: Pooh (voiced in young-hearted fashion by Sterling Holloway), Tigger,
Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit and Piglet.
Despite its relatively minimalist palette — sharply captured
here, in a crisp transfer with surprisingly little grain — it’s interesting how
many of this movie’s images trigger such a strong sense of recollection, from
Pooh and Piglet’s plummet over a waterfall to Piglet tearfully ceding his home
to Owl, who doesn’t recognize it as Piglet’s. (Piglet takes ineffectual
timidity to a new level.) The material was first grouped together for a feature
release in 1977, and the animation cheekily feeds the notion of the entire
enterprise as a story of the adolescent mind, with the seams on Pooh’s back
popping open at one point, before he sticks his own stuffing back in.
Presented in 1.33:1 on a dual layer disc that triggers a
smallish pause mid-feature, this “Friendship Edition” of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh comes housed in a regular
Amray case that in turn slides into a sturdy cardboard slipcover. Running just
under 75 minutes, the movie comes with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio
track, and is actually available in three languages — English, French and
Spanish. A nice little slate of bonus features complements the main attraction,
kick-started by the debut episode of the Disney Channel’s television show My Friends Tigger & Pooh, a
performance of the movie’s theme song by Carly Simon (!) and a brief video art
gallery. For younger viewers, there’s a special short for Eeyore, a sing-along
special and a “100-Acre Wood Challenge” set-top game. On the outside of the
release, there’s a coupon good for purchases on other Disney titles, on the
inside there’s a cardstock insert and a small, fold-out advert with information
on the aforementioned Disney Channel spin-off show, its special Christmas movie
and the Disney “Movie Rewards” program. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)
I
Love the ’80s series, or snarky fan web sites dedicated to sarcastically
keeping the flames of Sydney Barnes or Matthew Happnard alive. R&B, rock ’n’ roll… they each had
their hot-risers who stand (or more aptly lay) in total obscurity today, but
perhaps none so much as the soul scene, which put artists and church-trained crooners
through the wringer like so much grist through the mill.
The performance compilation DVD Soulvation, concentrating ostensibly on the regional speciality of Northern soul, attempts to rectify some of that anonymity, collecting
20 anthems from the underground dance music scene, each performed by their
legendary (and in some cases not-so-legendary) artists. Its play list is as
follows: Frank Wilson’s “Do I Love You,” Bob Brady and the Con Chords’ previously
unreleased “Everybody’s Goin’ To the Love-In,” top-shelf belter Brenda Holloway’s
“Reconsider” (a real stand-out), Kim Weston’s “Helpless,” Edwin Starr’s “I Have Faith in You,”
Sandi Sheldon’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Love You,” Leon Haywood’s “Baby
Reconsider,” The Artistics’ previously unreleased “Hope We Have,” Richard
Temple’s “That Beatin’ Rhythm,” the aforementioned Barnes’ “I Hurt on the Other
Side” (once put to good use by Spike Lee), JJ Barnes’ “Our Love Is in the
Pocket,” The Gems’ “I’ll Be There,” Lee Andrews and the Hearts’ “Nevertheless,”
The Carstairs’ enervated “It Really Hurts Me Girl,” Evie Sands’ “Picture Me
Gone,” The Platters’ “With This Ring,” Jackie Ross’ “Selfish One,” Betty
Lavette’s “Let Me Down Easy,” Pat Lewis’ “No One to Love” and Tobi Legend’s “Time
Will Pass You By.” As a grab-bag title, Soulvation more or less succeeds, but it’s obviously got niche appeal; for me, only about a quarter of the tunes connected in lasting fashion.
Housed in a regular Amray case, Soulvation is presented on a region-free disc in 1.33:1 full
screen, with a Dolby 2.0 stereo audio mix that is certainly adequate if not
mind-blowing. The video quality of its footage varies a bit, but most is solid considering the sources and time of its recording. Overall, the title runs 70 minutes, padded out a bit with interview footage,
though some academic overview would definitely have been welcome, particularly
given the missing-in-action nature of some of the included acts. C+ (Concert) C-
(Disc)
Michael Showalter plays an average guy in The Baxter… a really average guy. In honor of that film’s off-kilter delights, as well as his 37th birthday today, here’s a reposting of an interview with him from the fall of 2005, on occasion of the movie’s original theatrical release. To wit:
For someone whose comedic resumé includes inspired absurdist
fare like Wet Hot American Summer and
the new Comedy Central show Stella, Michael Showalter is remarkably relaxed and low key in person, cycling through
bottled water and fiddling with the string on a hooded sweatshirt as he
discusses his feature film directorial debut, The Baxter. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise, though, since guilelessness is always the leavening ingredient in his often willfully incongruous
comedic collaborations.
Showalter, of course, got his start as part of the sprawling
comedy collective The State, which achieved a cultish following in the 1990s
via an eponymous sketch show on MTV. Showalter and his cohorts — including Stella and The Baxter costars David Wain and Michael Ian Black — met as
freshmen in college at New YorkUniversity
in the late 1980s. “It was just one of those things — a large group of people
all in the same place at the same time with exactly the same goals,” Showalter
recalls.The Baxter, which
he characterizes as a deadpan cartoon in which “all the characters are
participating in the same drawn reality,” marks Showalter’s film debut as a writer-director,
though he has plenty of experience helming sketches.
He also stars in it, playing Elliot Sherman, the very
embodiment of romantic compromise. If George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone”
announces swaggering screen bad boys and exotically flavored orchestral scores
herald the arrival of cinema’s most sensitive heartthrobs, Death Cab for
Cutie’s “The Sound of Settling” would serve as the putative theme song for
Elliot, a dowdy but sincere accountant who finds himself caught between
well-heeled fiancée Caroline Swann (The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s Elizabeth Banks) and Cecil Mills (Michelle Williams),
a bookish temp who seems on the surface a much better geek match. (Both she and
Elliot read the dictionary as a book.)
The film’s story finds Elliot awkwardly attempting to assert
himself. Though he’s not a 40-year-old virgin, he is a man-child whose
politeness has metamorphosed into serial acquiescence. When Caroline’s dashing
ex-boyfriend BradleyLake
(Justin Theroux) arrives, Elliot recognizes the familiar warning signs of an
impending dumping.
Showalter’s leaping off point for The Baxter was the great screwball romantic comedies of the 1930s
and ’40s, films in which second male leads like Ralph Bellamy and John Howard
took it squarely on the chin when the Cary Grants of the world swept in and
relieved them of their women. (For a modern day comparison, think of Bill
Pullman’s jettisoned character from Nora Ephron’s Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan romantic
comedy Sleepless in Seattle.)
It wasn’t a role that Showalter originally wrote with
himself in mind (Edward Norton’s name was bandied about at one point), but when
it became clear that it made the film financially feasible he rose to the
challenge. “Well, my attitude was that I wanted to do what was best for the
film,” Showalter says, “and at that time I saw myself playing Elliot as being
in service of the larger good.”
Like many comedians, Showalter seems to blanch a bit when
discussing the roots of his own inspiration. “I haven’t given it a lot of
thought. I like smart, fast, tight and clean,” he says. “I definitely like
tension, that’s something I like to try to find. And I think that I like
awkwardness. That’s something I find funny — human awkwardness. The Office is the funniest thing that
I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s basically because it’s just non-stop awkward
tension between all these characters, that constant sense of wanting to crawl
inside your own skin and die. But I really couldn’t define it beyond that. I
don’t think I have a formula.”
Showalter — who says he devoured all types and sub-genres of
comedy growing up — may not have a set creative formula, but he does have a
distinctive voice. His comedy is very mannered, driven by a sense of
playfulness. If there’s a tension, it’s never malicious, but rather balanced
perfectly between earnestness and silliness. It’s micro comedy instead of macro comedy, Showalter
concedes — comedy of protocol and words that isn’t built for breakout
mainstream success. “Probably not,” says Showalter when asked if he could ever envision
transitioning to more overt, studio-friendly fare. “I think The Baxter is a very independent film. I
think that it’s accessible in a way that some of my other stuff isn’t, but I
[also] think that it will not and cannot possibly be appreciated in the same
way that Wedding Crashers is. It’s
too stylized, it’s too specific.”
“I don’t have a good sense of what the bigger audience
likes,” Showalter continues, “and that’s partly why I think I exist in the
margins in my career. But I know what I like and what appeals to the
sensibilities of people I know.”He’s hoping those sensibilities help the whimsical Stella carve out as comfortable a small
screen home as that of Cops spoof Reno 911!, conceived and rendered by his
fellow ex-Staters. “We’re flying blind,” says Showalter of his show with Wain
and Black, a piquant staple of VH-1’s I
Love the ’90s specials. “It’s about these three guys who get into utterly
insane misadventures. We just take something small and take past the point
where it’s at all logical.” He’s not kidding. A recent episode found the guys
growing their own vegetables (indoors, naturally) to save money ($50 a year!) only
to become itinerant farmhands for the very crew boss whose agricultural advice
they failed to heed.
If Stella doesn’t
stick, Showalter won’t be gloomy for long. “It took me until when I started
doing The Baxter to really feel like
I was ready to step out on my own,” says Showalter. “And I’m grateful for
having had the opportunity to sort of stay inside the bubble for so long. What
I want to do now is sort of bounce back and forth between the collaboration and
working as an individual.”
That means, given his druthers, definitely more writing, and
almost certainly more directing. “I don’t think I could give up writing, but I
think I could give up acting,” says Showalter, who’s also a big sports fan who
likes to play poker and chess. “I would never in a million years tell you that
I’m an actor. …I just think doing this and getting paid at all seems like such
a novelty and farce that I never got too hung up on the money. If you’re paying
me to write this stuff that feels so much like my own, I’m just so lucky, so I
never got too up in arms over it.” For a review of The Baxter, click here; to purchase The Baxter via Amazon, click here.
It’s a cool, sunny Los Angeles day and David Goyer is where any
self-respecting comic book aficionado would be on such a clear morning:
inside, in a dimly lit room. Except instead of poring over copies of
the latest hot titles and dissecting minutiae to do with color, shading
and character, Goyer is in the edit bay tinkering onThe Invisible
— a film that represents a bit of a change-up, and a departure from
the graphic novel subgenre for which he is most well known. In the wake
of The Invisible’s $20 million spring box office take, Goyer has now been tapped by Universal to do an update of The Invisible Man, and may or may not direct a Magneto spin-off for 20th Century Fox.
Directing is something of an intriguing new, well, direction for Goyer who, as a kid
growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, always just wanted to write comic books,
which eventually led to his bringing them to life for the big screen.
As a writer, producer and occasional director, Goyer has exercised his
passion for telling brooding, character-driven stories by helping
translate comics both obscure and hugely popular. To him, it’s no
coincidence. “In retrospect, most of my movies are kind of about
outsiders,” Goyer says while fiddling with a coffee cup. “Even going back to Dark City or Batman or Blade
— they’re all about these people who are outsiders and alone. I didn’t
have a lot of friends growing up, so that clearly must be why I’m drawn
to these kinds of stories.” For the full feature piece, from FilmStew, click here.
The Baxter’s
Elliot Sherman is the very embodiment of romantic compromise. If George
Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” announces swaggering screen bad boys and
exotically flavored orchestral scores herald the arrival of cinema’s most
sensitive heartthrobs, Death Cab for Cutie’s “The Sound of Settling” would
serve as the putative theme song for Elliot, a dowdy but sincere accountant who
finds himself caught between well-heeled fiancée Caroline Swann (The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s Elizabeth
Banks) and Cecil Mills (Michelle Williams), a bookish temp who seems on the
surface a much better geek match given that both she and Elliot read the
dictionary as a book.
The Baxter marks
the feature directorial debut of Michael Showalter, who of course got his start
as part of the sprawling comedy collective The State — which achieved a cultish
following in the 1990s via an eponymous sketch show on MTV — and later went on
to co-script and produce the peerless summer camp send-up Wet Hot American Summer. Showalter’s leaping off point for The Baxter is the great screwball
romantic comedies of the 1930s and ’40s, films in which second male leads like
Ralph Bellamy and John Howard took it squarely on the chin when the Cary Grants
of the world swept in and relieved them of their women. (For a modern day
comparison, think of Bill Pullman’s jettisoned character from Nora Ephron’s Tom
Hanks-Meg Ryan romantic comedy Sleepless
in Seattle.) The twist here is that The
Baxter repositions the nice guy who never gets the girl (hence the stiff
but regal nickname) as its leading man, to drolly winning if extremely dry
effect.
The film’s basic story arc finds Elliot (whom Showalter also
stars as) awkwardly attempting to assert himself and land his leading lady,
even if in his heart there’s some confusion as to whom that is. Though he’s not
a virgin, Elliot is a man-child whose unfailing politeness (“Like I always say,
compromise is the key to success…”) has metamorphosed into a sort of wussy,
serial acquiescence. When Caroline’s dashing ex-boyfriend Bradley Lake (Justin Theroux) arrives on the scene, Elliot recognizes the familiar warning signs of
an impending dumping and reacts alternately with nice-guy petulance — think of
the most fastidious passive-aggressiveness possible — and wan resignation.
Showalter’s mannered comedy is as distinctive and guileless
as it is perhaps out-of-fashion, or at least decidedly non-mainstream. It stems
from situational awkwardness and absurdity, and is always perfectly balanced
between heaping helpings of earnestness and silliness. (Frequent collaborators
and Stella costars David Wain and
Michael Ian Black also pop up here, as Elliot’s emasculated
brother-in-law-in-waiting and a zonked-out neighbor, respectively.) It’s micro
comedy instead of macro comedy, in other words, and if broader humor and
joke-driven laughs are more your forte then you won’t want to waste your time
with The Baxter.
If wry, understated character comedy is up your alley,
though, you’ll likely dig this movie. For most of its running time, it really
works; things only bog down when Showalter starts relying too heavily on
narration and contrivance to advance scenes. The former is funny when building
up the temperament and personality of Elliot, but less so after the parameters
of character roundelay have already been clearly established. A brief scene
with The Station Agent’s Peter
Dinklage as a (gay) wedding planner also falls flat.
The amusingly observant point of the film, though, is that
for all we allow others to dictate about our own self-perception and, in many
cases, worth, we are still the stars of our own stories — our own leading men
and women. As Elliot rises, another must fall. It’s the circle of life, and we
all go through it at some point. (IFC Films, PG-13, 90 minutes) For an interview with Michael Showalter, click here.
At the recent press day for You Kill Me, Téa Leoni recounted a memorable coupling with husband David Duchovny, and she touched more on her courtship with Duchovny during an appearance on The Tonight Show this past Thursday evening. Allowing that they’d just celebrated their 10th anniversary with “some hotel fun” (“All those new sheets and towels…” she said suggestively), Leoni recalled first meeting Duchovny during an exploratory booking lunch with a pair of Jay Leno’s producers, who typically take drinks or meals with up-and-coming actors to gauge how interesting a guest they might make. Several years later she walked in on a conversation between her agent and him, and, when told who’d entered the room, Duchovny asked if she’d stopped talking yet. Nine weeks later they were married. Now that’s some rakish, ring-a-ding charm.
A little more than a week after appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s show to promote his latest film, Sicko, documentarian Michael Moore hit the comfy chair of David Letterman’s The Late Show Friday night, where he rocked the more characteristic baseball cap that he’d abandoned for his date with the queen of daytime talk.
Moore talked about the more than 18,000 deaths per year nationally that result from in-network hospital red-tape crapola that mandates things like driving a baby with a temperature of 104 degrees across town to a different care facility. Letterman, sympathetic but obviously right-leaning and of the more free-market persuasion, asked Moore if he was sure these weren’t “one-off circumstances,” but Moore was politely firm, and the chat was far from contentious. He didn’t point out, as on Oprah, that as a society we have “socialized” (the new, single-word scare tactic of those married to the status quo) emergency care and fire response, but that will doubtfully be in heavy rotation once the film’s detractors come out swinging upon its release.
Instead, Moore talked a good bit about his trip to Cuba, and how the Bush administration, in its investigation and threatened fining of him, is pursuing an avenue of legal recourse that could then give them the exercisable right to confiscate his film as a thing of determinate value illegally “imported” from (read: partially filmed in) Cuba, which is of course classified as a non-trade partner with the United States.
Since the film releases June 29, though, I’m not sure if that would mean profit confiscation or what. I’ll be screening it next week, and have some thoughts shortly thereafter.
Evan Almighty has as its lead certainly one of the hottest comedy stars working today in the form of 
Wall Street again, and
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