Daily Archives: July 25, 2007

The Simpsons Movie

Film Reviews

Mixing to pleasingly irreverent effect the same sort of light
social satire, dysfunctional family comedy and base physical gags that have
been part of its well-honed formula for almost 20 years, The Simpsons Movie smoothly jumps the yawning chasm from small
screen to large, delivering consistent laughs from the start-to-finish fallback position of a
wide, nearly uninterrupted smile.

The Simpsons Movie forward is Homer’s habitual indifference and
inattention, which drives Lisa and Marge up the wall and sends Bart, searching for a father figure, into the
open arms of do-gooder neighbor Ned Flanders.

There has to be a fleshed-out plot, of course, and The Simpsons Movie takes as its
launching-off point a premise of environmental destruction. With Springfield
teetering on the brink of ecological ruin thanks to its rampant pollution,
littering and illegal dumping, Homer unloads a silo full of his new pet pig’s
waste into the local lake. The effect is toxic, and draws the attention of
hard-charging Environmental Protection Agency chief Russ Cargill (voiced by
Albert Brooks), who advises President Arnold
Schwarzenegger (voiced by Harry Shearer) to seal off the entire rotten city with
a giant biodome.

With Homer scape-goated for their situation, the town turns
on the Simpson clan, who manage to accidentally escape the bubble, and briefly
set up a new family life in Alaska.
Old fractures quickly give way, however, and Homer — aided by an Inuit-assisted epiphany — is forced to embark on a
personal odyssey of redemption, seeking the forgiveness of Marge and his
family, as well as the salvation of his hometown.

It’s somewhat surprising how immediately suited for long-form narrative
the characters feel, and this is without even giving much more than lip
service throwaway jokes to many of the supporting players that have
come to flesh out the citizenry of Springfield. The only surprising thing might be that the movie doesn’t feature any
satirical musical numbers, something for which the television show has
become known. For the full review, from Screen International, click here. For more random thoughts and a few good joke bits (like how a book club reading of Tuesdays with Morrie sets off a riot), check back over the next several days.

Cuba Gooding Jr. Continues Debasement

Musings

Has anyone else seen those unnerving Hanes commercials with box office toxin Cuba Gooding, Jr., alongside erstwhile basketball star Michael Jordan? It’s not merely bad enough that Gooding’s in a forthcoming sad-sack sequel/spin-off, Daddy Day Camp, directed by Fred Savage, but he’s also prostrating himself in commercial work. The pieces (of which I’ve seen two cuts), find a couple production assistants instructing Gooding to be cool in front of Jordan as they prepare to shoot an ad, and then Gooding running up like a fan-child, and locking himself around Jordan in a bear hug.

To be clear, this would (or at least could) be funny if it played off the dignified image of a cool and collected customer, but Gooding reeks of flop-sweat and desperation. He’s got the accumulated stench of a dozen bad choices on him, and it’s clearly a burden that weighs on him. I last interviewed Gooding for Dirty, writer-director Chris Fisher’s very derivative amoral cop drama, and he seemed like a dead man walking even then, before the release of the emotionally overdialed, air-quote artistic Shadowboxer. (His action movie End Game, meanwhile, didn’t even make it to theaters.) It’s not mortgage-payment commercial work in and of itself that is misguided (Kevin Bacon also appears in Hanes ads with Jordan, and Jennifer Love Hewitt has some herself), it’s just the shuck-and-jive desperation to please that comes across as debasing — here as in the Daddy Day Camp poster. Can Chill Factor 2 really be that far behind?

Adam Sandler on The Daily Show

Ephemera, Musings

I just put a bullet in another episode of The Daily Show — this one with guest Adam Sandler, from Thursday, July 19, in support of I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry — and I found it telling that Sandler and Jon Stewart were able to avoid talking about that desperately unfunny trainwreck for almost the entirety of their six-minute chat.

I’ve talked before about how the special evasiveness involved in selling a crappy movie is its own art, really, and Sandler showcased some nice moves on The Daily Show, talking in relaxed and relatively amusing fashion for a good four minutes about the “rabbinical” goatee he’s grown for a film he’s currently shooting, which I assume to be You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, about a Mossad agent who fakes his own death to relocate to New York City as a hairstylist. Sandler was relaxed, much more so than on other talk shows; it certainly helped that he and Stewart have a friendly rapport dating back to Big Daddy. Strangely, they did show a clip of the movie with Sandler and costar Kevin James, instead of just Jessica Biel prancing about in her bra and underwear, which is the only real value that Chuck & Larry holds.

Monster

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Her birthday is coming up in a few weeks, so I thought I’d go ahead and re-post this review of Charlize Theron‘s break-through movie, Monster, which originally appeared in another publication on occasion of the film’s special edition DVD release in 2004. To wit, slightly redacted:

There are cinematic breakthroughs like Hilary Swank‘s work
in Boys Don’t Cry, in which a
heretofore virtually unknown actor or actress delivers a searing, memorable
turn, and then there’s the flip-side breakthrough, in which a performer shows a
professional side of themselves — a depth and ferocity seemingly sprung from
nowhere — that very few people, if anyone at all, ever saw coming. Best
Actress Oscar winner Charlize Theron‘s revelatory performance in Monster is no doubt the latter, one of
the most jaw-dropping transformations — physically and emotionally — in modern
screen history.
Christina Ricci, the greatest accomplishment of first-time
writer-director Patty Jenkins’ serial killer tale is its capturing — in disarming
ways — the reality that there is “love,” that there is some impulse for
connection, in everyone, no matter how screwed up, formally uneducated,
self-medicated and monstrous they are. (Hey, who knew Journey’s “Don’t Stop
Believin’,” used here pre-Sopranos finale, could be an anthem of the disenfranchised?)
The film’s two-disc special edition DVD release rectifies the pointlessly
rushed-out, cash-in edition from earlier, which featured only an inessential,
back-patting interview with Jenkins and composer “BT,” a DTS film mixing demo
featurette that let viewers toggle between various combinations of the audio
channels and a brief making-of featurette. That content is all replicated here,
but there’s also a welcome if not mind-blowing array of new material. First up
is a behind-the-scenes documentary that appears an extension of the first
release’s minute featurette. It includes on-set interview material with Theron
and a look at the film’s extraordinary makeup work with chief makeup artist
Toni G (what’s the deal — can no one on the production team have a full, regular
friggin’ name?). There honestly could be a bit more of substance here — this is
mainly a rah-rah affair — but it’s certainly meatier than the first apportioning.
There’s also a nice audio commentary track with Jenkins, Theron and producer
Clark Peterson, plus an array of deleted/extended scenes that total 16 minutes
and come with optional commentary from Jenkins. Strangely, the film mixing demo
and interview with Jenkins and BT on my disc didn’t work in the 5.1 mix, but
did in the Dolby surround mix. Take that for what it’s worth. If you have the
first edition, don’t feel too cheated — an upgrade isn’t absolutely essential — but if you
haven’t yet been scared and moved by Monster,
this is definitely the version with which to do it. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Jessica Simpson Joins the Army

Casting About, Irritations

Every other day or so, there’s news out of Hollywood that makes me want to claw my eyes out, and today’s irritant comes in the form of casting news surrounding a Jessica Simpson film that I heretofore didn’t know existed. In a piece in The Hollywood Reporter announcing the addition of other actors, it was noted that she’s toplining Major Movie Star, about (and I quote here) “a somewhat clueless movie star who impulsively enlists in the U.S. Army Reserve after discovering her boyfriend is gay and her cousin/accountant has stolen all her money.”

Clearly the classic target with this project is Private Benjamin, the 1980 comedy starring Goldie Hawn. But that movie was co-scripted by Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers, who, whatever one thinks of the films they’ve gone on to direct, know both structure and quality quips. It also can’t be stressed enough that in no way, shape or form does Simpson have one-tenth of Hawn’s talent or comic timing as an actress. Vivica A. Fox, Steve Guttenberg, Ryan Sypek, Saturday Night Live alum Cheri Oteri, High School Musical‘s Olesya Rulin and Gilmore Girls regular Keiko Agena will also be picking up paychecks for this trainwreck-in-waiting. Steve Miner (err… let’s say My Father the Hero) directs.

Renaissance

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

The rise of the so-called geek elite — the kids who
purchased and hoarded comic books and action figures in the 1980s, and then
slipped in the back door of the entertainment industry as grown-ups — is having
far-reaching influences, of which only the first wave we are now experiencing. Movies
like Sin City and 300
are new standards by which genre product will be judged, not merely some quirky
aberrations.

Renaissance fits
into this trend is somewhat hard to say. A French, animated sci-fi crime thriller
that didn’t really catch on at the theatrical box office earlier this year, the movie is set in
the labyrinthine underworld of 2054 Paris,
and unfolds in starkly captivating black-and-white frames that perhaps turned
some folks off. A dystopian thriller loosely in the vein of Blade Runner and Minority Report, the movie paints a bold vision of a not-so-distant
future where all life is monitored, recorded and regulated, thanks to the City
of Lights’ largest corporation, the
health and beauty conglomerate known as Avalon. Detective Barthelemy Karas (voiced
by Daniel Craig in the movie’s English translation) has a reputation for
finding anyone at any cost, but while tracking down Ilona Tasuiev (voiced by Romola
Garai), a scientist abducted in the midst of some groundbreaking anti-aging research,
Karas ultimately finds himself buried beneath the film’s illicit world of
corporate malfeasance and soulless genetic research. Added pressure comes in
the form of Ilona’s bad girl sister, Bislane (voiced by Catherine McCormack),
and her shady boss, Paul Dellenbach (Tony Award-winner Jonathan Pryce), who heads
up Avalon. (Also providing voice work is Ian Holm.)

Whatever one feels about the story, Renaissance’s visual bonafides are not in question; it’s a dizzy,
wondrous, slurry experience. One often finds their mind slinking off into
recesses of the frame, and wondering about the world just out of our field of
vision. The interesting thing is that the movie relies on motion capture for
the bulk of its body animations, which is a strange mixture with black-and-white.
It sort of tricks the brain every once in a while, and you find yourself
sometimes so caught up in the visuals, and trying to piece together backgrounds
in fill-in-the-blank fashion, as to miss a line or two of dialogue.

Directed by Christian Volckman, the film also makes smart,
consistent and specific use of futuristic items that seem plausible in their
extension from today’s society, perhaps due to an exacting and mentally
rigorous pre-production process (Alexandre De La Patelliere, Matthieu
Delaporte, Jean-Bernard Pouy and Patrick Raynal share screenplay credit). If
there’s a knock, it’s that the story is kind of boilerplate, and even attempts
to subvert certain noirish genre clichés announce themselves with, well,
black-and-white signposting.

Renaissance comes
housed in a regular Amray case, presented in its original 2.35:1 widescreen
aspect ratio, enhanced for 16:9 televisions. The film’s video transfer is
excellent, with sharp edges, no enhancement problems or other blemishes. As one
might expect, its tones are quite necessarily deep; there’s no room for shades
of grey here. Audio comes in the form of a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound
track, and in either English or French it’s powerful, consistent and deep, with
action effects echoing from all channels during the movie’s shoot-outs and brawnier
sequences. Apart from a clutch of trailers, the film’s sole DVD bonus feature consists of a lengthy making-of featurette which explores the
innovative process by which Volckman and his collaborators brought the
digitally animated noir tale to life, over the course of five painstaking
years. Along with interviews with many of the behind-the-scenes players, the
featurette also includes footage of the movie’s wireframe mock-ups and its motion
capture work players — a great look at the unsung heroes of a new-fangled production
like this. There’s also a glimpse at the musical scoring process. B- (Movie) B (Disc)

Matt Damon on Fatherhood

Interviews

At the recent press day for The Bourne Ultimatum,
Matt Damon took some time to also talk about family life with his wife Luciana Barroso and new young daughter, Isabella. “Being a dad is still great, it’s been just amazing,” he says. “I mean,
these stages just go by… incredibly fast, you
know? The little discoveries every day — so much is happening, so much changes
in the first year. I mean, she’s walking around now. She’s 13 months old,
so it’s just amazing. It happens at warp speed. I see why, when parents
see little babies, they get that thing, they go, ‘I want another
one,’ because the stages all just fly past. And if you’re with her every
day, which I’m lucky enough to be, you don’t necessarily [notice it]. It’s only if you’re taking
pictures or it’s only if people you haven’t seen for a couple months come by that you
even realize [how fast things are moving].”

“Right now, she kind of sounds like a crow,” continues Damon, making a high-pitched squawk for illustrative purposes. “And she points at things. This morning,
she pointed at the ceiling, and there was nothing on the ceiling. And she
just went, ‘Caw!,’ like that. And I was like, ‘Well, that’s the
ceiling,’ and she just laughed. And I was like, ‘I don’t
know what’s funny about that.’ So I’m trying to figure out what’s going on
in her head. Sometimes you know… you go, ‘Oh, you want some milk?’ And she [laughs], and you go, ‘All right, she was thirsty. That’s good, she communicated.’ But then sometimes she just has these things that I just have no idea what she’s
thinking. So I’m working on that.”