As any fan of French noir cinema knows, Jean-Pierre Melville
was not alone in re-inventing the French crime film, or policier. To celebrate, the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre presents “Crooks in Clover: Noir, French Style,” running October 19 through 28.
Like the American West
Coast jazz scene of the 1950s, the French crime film was the very definition
of cool — a quicksilver world of silent killers and speeding
Citroens. Two spellbinding weeks of mystery and murder from the
French masters, including many hard-to-see gems and 11 films not on DVD,
kick off on October 19 with a double bill consisting of Jacques Deray’s The Swimming
Pool (1969) and Rene Clement’s Joy House (1964), the latter starring Alain Delon as a callous
young card shark on the run from New York
gangsters.
Other titles include Costa-Gavras’ ultra-rare debut film, The Sleeping Car Murder, Claude
Chabrol’s The Champagne Murders, Melville’s Second Breath, Alain Corneau’s Serie Noire and Choice of Arms and Yves Allegret’s Riptide, among others. Tickets are available through
Fandango.com, but for more details, phone (323) 466-FILM, or visit the Cinematheque’s eponymous
Web site by clicking here.
Handheld gaming might have a totally different definition for the title character of Napoleon Dynamite, but the game version of the hit indie film hits the DS and PSP soon, shipping October 23.
Lantana director
Ray Lawrence mines the source text of a Raymond Carver short story — one of the
same strands that made up 1993’s Short Cuts,
fans of Robert Altman
will certainly remember — for Jindabyne,
a so-so melodrama that skates by on the focused emotional investment of its starring
leads, Academy Award nominee Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne.
the chief
problem is one of scattershot focus and stalled dramatic device; this movie is
serial dawdler, and it wrecks much of the accrued downhill momentum that might
otherwise build up in its favor. Both pros, Linney and Byrne give us delicate
shades of how things have gone astray, even if the rest of the movie overcooks Carl,
Rocco and Billy’s relationships with their significant others. Jindabyne was highly praised in its
native country, where it was nominated for nine Australian Film Institute
Awards, include Best Film, Best Actor and Actress, Best Director, Best Adapted
Screenplay and Best Cinematography. As is, though, it remains just a bit too distant
and overdrawn to succeed as the tone poem of heartache that the premise and
evocative staging suggests.
Jindabyne comes housed
in a regular Amray case, and is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with
a Dolby digital 5.1 soundtrack, and optional French and Spanish subtitles. The
DVD features a small clutch of deleted scenes that runs around six minutes in
total, as well as a hearty collection of trailers, but the main supplemental bonus
is a solid, half-hour making-of featurette that delves into production choices
big and small. To order the movie via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) B+ (Disc)
A piece in the Los Angeles Times yesterday by Ashraf Khalil presents an interesting overview of the struggles facing actors of Arab and Middle Eastern descent. This despite opening with a deeply suspect, no-names anecdote — a voice coach lecturing an actor about hiding his grandfather’s heritage, or he “won’t work in this town.” Even if true (and I would flag it as somewhat dubious not because of shoddy reporting, but because of self-motivation on the part of the actor), this is reflective of the individual, bigoted opinion of one idiot voice coach, and not a top-shelf decision maker. As such, it’s an awful if predictably emotionally strategic opening for a much more thoughtful piece about one of the chief dilemmas facing Arab actors today — whether to play terrorist roles.
Interview subjects include Omar Metwally (Munich, the forthcoming Rendition), Tony Shalhoub and Sayed Badreya (next summer’s Iron Man), and of course the main gripe seems to (rightly) be one about multi-dimensionality. One of the more amusing bits, meanwhile, mentions the pilot episode of The Watch List, which features a skit in which young Arab actors learn how to play terrorists — practicing holding assault rifles, begging 24‘s Jack Bauer for their lives and, finally, falling down dead. In the end, the class’ teacher (Iranian American comedian Maz Jobrani) earnestly urges his students to learn how to play these roles “so that Latino actors won’t get them.”
There’s also a telling, funny-sad anecdote from Badreya about his work as a consultant on the 1996 Kurt Russell/Steven Seagal action flick Executive Decision; a wedding scene at a mosque, meant to showcase Arabs in a positive, familial light, as well as a moderate Arab ambassador character who helps the movie’s heroes defeat the terrorists were both trimmed from the film. That’s something you can hang on studio executives. Well… them and a jingoistic test audience, more than likely.
A story of awkwardly overlapping romances liberally seasoned
with the patented, over-the-top humor of the brothers Farrelly, The Heartbreak Kid reunites the
behind-camera comedy specialists with star Ben Stiller in a careening showcase
for serial outrageousness that favors potent commercial formula over strict
adherence to narrative through-lines.
The Heartbreak
Kid retains the Farrelly’s trademark humanistic touch (evident with the
care paid to Miranda’s country-raised family) it also doesn’t hesitate to
offend, chiefly through Lila’s sexual voraciousness, but also a wide variety of
casual brusque language and one-liners.Notions of character consistency are hard to pin down,
though, especially since some of Lila’s sprung “surprises” are matters that would have
been sorted out, even in six weeks of virginal, whirlwind courtship. Then
there’s the contrast, too, of scenes in which Lila talks about being just like
an elderly couple in 10 years (she’s “not good at math,” she confesses), then
immediately references spending the next 40 or 50 years together.
The fact is that The
Heartbreak Kid asks in many ways to be taken air-quote seriously as
something a bit darker and of more modern, sardonic substance than director
Elaine May and screenwriter Neil Simon’s original 1972 comedy, from Eddie’s
familial entanglements with his “would-be” in-laws to the movie’s general view
of relationships and its barbed, deliciously bleak-hearted ending. The film’s wild and
crazy, blue asides, then (bits that include a shot of Lila’s hairy, pierced
pubic area, and a discussion of Carlos Mencia’s hotel concierge placing Lila’s
hand on his genitals), often arrive with the jarring force of a
less-than-well-oiled traveling theme park ride; they’re naughty,
outside-the-lines coloring, wedged in for cheap effect. Still, the performances are almost uniformly engaging,
with Stiller cycling through a catalog of sputtering resistance ploys
that still work, no matter their familiarity. For the full review, from Screen International, click here.
The American Cinematheque celebrates the 85th anniversary of
the Egyptian Theatre, 85 years to the day from its original opening, on Thursday, October 18, with a special screening of William Wellman’s classic Wings, the first movie ever to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
The 1927 World War I epic, starring
Richard Arlen, Charles “Buddy” Rogers, “It Girl” Clara Bow and Jobyna
Ralston, features breathtaking aerial stunts blended with real battle footage. A special book signing with William Wellman, Jr., author of The Man & His
Wings: William A. Wellman and the Making of the First Best Picture, will precede the film, and Robert Israel will provide live musical accompaniment. Tickets are available through
Fandango.com, but for more details, phone (323) 466-FILM, or visit the Cinematheque’s eponymous
Web site by clicking here.
It’s a happy birthday to Rachael Leigh Cook, who turns 28 today. Despite this summer’s Nancy Drew cameo and appearing in the forthcoming The Final Season, Cook is stuck is a rut of inconsequentiality, the result of a really bad 2001 (Antitrust, Josie and the Pussycats and fabled Miramax washout Texas Rangers) and… oh, who am I kidding? The only moment of commercial note in Cook’s career was the 1999 release She’s All That, which topped $100 million theatrically (seriously), and momentarily catapulted her to the top of people’s call lists.
Meeting with Robert Benton recently to talk about Feast of Love, I also had occasion to chat with him a bit about Bonnie & Clyde (a film he co-wrote), on occasion of its 40th anniversary. The violence of that film is always talked about,
but it is kind of a love story as well, one that has in retrospect been seen and
embraced as that more and more. I asked Benton if he and David Newman thought of it in those terms when they were writing the screenplay, and his enthusiastic reply was, “Yes!”
The emulation that the movie would in turn inspire, though, is another matter. That was unforeseen. Answering a question by way of question, Benton says, “Did you read the A.O. Scott piece in the (New York) Times?
It’s an interesting piece, isn’t it? He’s a smart guy, and I agree with some of
it, but I think the point he missed is that one of the reasons the violence
seemed so terrible is that you got to know the characters and you liked them. You had
sympathies with them, and when the violence started you were in the car with
them, and once it started, you couldn’t get out of that car. You were trapped
like their undertaker. And it was their humanity that made the violence seem
more awful. If you had looked at them as sociopaths, or psychopaths, the violence
wouldn’t have seemed as bad.”
“And the third thing is,” Benton continues, “the violence came from one
line in the script. In movies, we were so used to, when someone got shot,
seeing them clutch their chest and having a death scene and falling down, and we said in the screenplay, when bullets strike people in this movie, they
should hurt. And what Arthur (Penn) did with that was so brilliant; he made the
beautiful slow-motion sequences that he did with (editor) Dede Allen, and they really
owe an enormous amount to Kurosawa, with Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai. Now, nobody
has accused Kurosawa of fostering a culture of violence, but it’s the same
thing. Perhaps because it’s foreign we don’t identify with that. But I think
it’s not just the beauty of those shots, I think it’s because you weren’t able
to ever put the characters at arms’ length — that seems to me the thing that
made the violence seem worse.” The films that stylistically nip from Bonnie & Clyde, of course, rarely plumb such depths of identification.
the man arrested at actor Nicolas Cage’s home in Newport Beach in the early hours of the morning on October 1, was naked except for the purloined leather coat he was wearing. Yikes. That really puts a damper on any sort of barked communication which includes the phrase, “Put. The Jacket. Down.” Furo, who
has pleaded not guilty to felony burglary in the first degree, remains in custody until a pretrial hearing currently scheduled for Oct. 10.
So it’s a happy 31st birthday to Alicia Silverstone, who I gather caused something of a stir a few weeks back with this combo print/cable ad, which was pulled from rotation in beef-centric Houston, and maybe even some other spots.
More soon, but you know you’re watching a Farrelly brothers’ movie when there’s a character credited as “Donkey Fluffer” (that would be Jimmy Shay, by the way, making his mother proud). Well, either a Farrelly brothers flick or something from Kevin Smith. Whew…
The British-produced “Under Review” series has cranked
out some great looks at musical artists, and some snoozers as well. Because
they’re unauthorized productions, there’s oftentimes a refreshing clarity to
the unvarnished opinion they can express; the downside of this fact is that
sometimes there really needs to a licensed audio or video clip to ground the
discussion taking place. So it’s a mixed bag, really.
Keith
Richards: Under Review falls into the camp of solid entries in the series,
mainly because of the innate curiosity factor surrounding its subject — Rolling
Stones guitarist, walking bag of pharmaceutical contradictions, and now Pirates of the Caribbean
costar and inhaler of his father’s ashes.
Maybe it’s because Richards looks for all the world like a living
(well,
arguably), breathing (again, same) version of one of those garish
puppets from Genesis’
“Land of Confusion” video — a grinning, Cheshire-cat badass who’s
exhausted all
of his nine lives and then some, and yet still somehow keeps on
ticking.
Whatever it is, casual music fans and diehard Stones enthusiasts alike
all find this guy fascinating.
This disc is basically a glorified clip-fest,
but it does tap relatively deeply into the vault for rare and classic musical
performances both from the Stones and Richards himself. The charismatic axeman’s
pivotal influences are recounted and assayed, and snippets of live and/or
studio recordings of “Satisfaction,” “Jumping Jack Flash,” “Brown Sugar,” “Tumbling
Dice,” “Start Me Up” and many others give this title a charged energy all its
own. Offering up analytical contributions are a panel of esteemed musical
experts that includes Richards biographers Alan Clayson and Kris Needs, Rolling
Stones biographer Robert Greenfield, former Stones techie Keith Altham,
celebrity guitar coach Wolf Marshall, original Stones member Dick Taylor, ex-Melody Maker journalist Chris Welch, Rolling Stone contributors Robert
Christgau and Anthony DeCurtis, and musical collaborator Bernie Worrall, among many
others. The tapestry of opinion and sheer volume of anecdotal value, then, carries
the day, even if a crisp portrait of Richards the man doesn’t quite emerge from
the haze.
Housed in a regular Amray case in turn
stored in a cardboard slipcover, Keith
Richards: Under Review
is presented on a region-free disc in a letterboxed 4×3
aspect ratio, with a stereo surround mix audio track. In aggregate the
program runs
just under 120 minutes, with supplemental material consisting of
contributor
biographies, a fairly detailed interactive trivia quiz about Richards
and a short
featurette in which aforementioned biographer Needs reminisces about
his
personal encounters with the human riff. To purchase the title via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B- (Disc)
Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman and Chief Executive
Officer Michael Lynton has had his contract extended to 2012, it was announced
today by Howard Stringer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sony
Corporation.
Spider-Man 3
holds the crown for biggest domestic box office performance of 2007, and last
week the studio crossed the $1 billion domestic box office mark for the sixth
straight year, a feat accomplished by only one other studio in Hollywood.
“Michael Lynton’s financial acumen and firm grasp of content
in the digital era is exactly what’s needed to lead a studio in the 21st
century,” said Stringer. “Together he and Amy have become a forceful and
dynamic team, guiding the studio to even greater heights than I could have
hoped. I am delighted that they will both continue on in their roles for
years to come.”
What with it being the month of Halloween, I figured I’d get re-linky (apologies, Will Smith) and stuff the archives here and there with a few reviews of (ostensibly) scary movies. Ergo, this refreshing of poor Wes Craven’s Cursed, only slightly redacted from its original publication in Screen International. To wit:
The release date of 2005 tells one side, perhaps the
official one, to Cursed, the new
werewolf picture from Dimension, the in-house genre arm of Miramax that
revitalized the modern horror landscape with the self-aware yet scary Scream pictures from what now seems like
eons ago. Almost every frame of its being, however, tells the other side of a Cursed story — of a troubled and shelved production (it shot in
2003) stitched together and reanimated as an awkward, unconvincing entry in the
PG-13, jolt-and-shock, teen disposable income sweepstakes. The result is
spectacularly and unremittingly awful.
Christina Ricci
stars as Ellie Myers, a talent booker on The
Craig Kilborn Show (one of several signs of the movie’s datedness, since Mr.
Kilborn is no longer on television) whose newish boyfriend is party planner
Jake (erstwhile Dawson’s Creeker
Joshua Jackson). Ellie and her younger brother Jimmy (an unappealing Jesse
Eisenberg), a bookish high school wallflower, get into a car accident with
Becky (Shannon Elizabeth).
All three are then attacked by a vicious, hairy and
mysterious creature, but Ellie and Jimmy survive, only to then have heightened
senses and a strange (and presumably new) predilection for chewing on raw bacon.
As Jimmy reads up on werewolves and faces down a coterie of gel-haired bullies
that actually do things like slap books out of his hands and lob a steady
stream of homophobic insults his way, so Ellie does her best to ignore any
symptoms of hirsute change and instead cope with a weirdly insistent and
abrasive publicist, Joanie (Judy Greer). Spurred on by a bizarre confession
from Jake, Ellie finally acknowledges there might be something to Jimmy’s
supposition that they’ve been “marked by the beast.” Things come to a
head at a Hollywood club opening where all parties meet,
under a full moon of course.
If the narrative synopsis sounds vague and confusing, it’s
because Cursed doesn’t have a
cohesive plot; the film in theory takes place over the course of two nights,
but the re-conceptualized story places scenes up against one another that find
characters behaving in nonsensical, contradictory ways. The relationships
between certain key characters are never wholly and accurately defined. The
roles of the aforementioned Elizabeth and singer-actress Mya have seemingly
been whittled down from plot-device supporting players to essentially cameos,
and Jackson’s and Greer’s parts figure to have been drastically reconstituted
and tailored to fit new-fangled conveniences.
A herky-jerky, movie-like mass, Cursed moves hastily and inexorably forward, but like one of those
wooden-track rollercoaster rides that induces more aches than thrills. A
picture of this conspicuous popcorn type shouldn’t have you checking your
watch, but Cursed stumbles so badly
with its irrational, illogical plotting that it feels interminable, and it’s
quite a shock at the end to discover only 95 minutes have passed.The esteemed Rick Baker provides some decent practical
creature effects, but these are easily cancelled out by wretched and laughable
CGI that rob the werewolf scenes of any beastly scares. “What doesn’t kill
you makes you stronger,” goes the old saying. With Cursed, though, all but the most hardcore and generous (read:
uncritical) genre audiences will be praying for an end to their lycanthropic
misery. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here.
There’s no cool intellectual sheen or pretense to filmmaker Richard Shepard. Meeting for an interview in the bar of a Beverly Hills hotel, he’s whip-smart but instantly sociable, and he retains the raw
enthusiasm of a college kid just talking movies — minus any of the
manic geek factor awkwardness that can shade conversations with
similarly effusive filmmakers, like Quentin Tarantino. His is a laidback personality that’s somewhat at odds with the stamp of
intensity most usually associated with authorial moviemaking. Age and
experience, however, have taught him important lessons. Unlike many a
headstrong, would-be indie wunderkind, the early 40-ish Shepard knows
facile entertainment can be an entrée into something more
intellectually and emotionally substantive.
Richard Gere),
who reconnects with his former cameraman Duck (Terrence Howard) in
post-war Bosnia, the scene of his nationally broadcast meltdown five
years prior. Now stringing for a variety of low-rent international
outlets, Simon convinces Duck that he knows the whereabouts of Bosnia’s
most wanted war criminal (Ljubomir Kerekes), a brutal former Serbian
commander known as “The Fox.” Along with rookie reporter Benjamin
(Jesse Eisenberg), a recent college graduate and the to-the-manor-born
son of a network vice president who’s been handed a tag-along ticket to
this reconciliation coverage as a means of getting his first
international “merit badge,” Simon and Duck embark on a dark and
dangerous mission that takes them deep into hostile territory, where
The Fox is still a hero of the people. Along the way they uncover a
tangled web of international complicity that seems to help shield a
killer and ethnic cleanser supposedly being sought at the highest
levels of government.
Though it takes place in Bosnia, and not during wartime, some parallels between The Hunting Party and the mysterious, now six-year search for Osama bin Laden are undeniable. Shepard is obviously a political animal — speaking not of his specific
views, but his grasp of the birds-eye interconnectedness of policy,
rhetoric and state action, both public and covert — and in interviewing
source writer Anderson and all the other journalists who comprised his
coterie, as well as officials from the UN, NATO and the Hague, Shepard
began to get a more complete sense of the black comic potential that The Hunting Party
offered, of an interesting story with definite relevance to today. “We
all say that we want to catch war criminals, and yet the biggest one,
Osama bin Laden, hasn’t been caught,” Shepard says. “And maybe it’s
because we’re not really looking. And if so, why wouldn’t we really be
looking?”For the full feature interview, from FilmStew, click here.
I caught Sean Penn on The Late Show last night, decked out like the extra Reservoir Dog in a white shirt, black suit jacket and tie. He was low key and at his most gloriously disheveled; I swear, looking at this guy makes me immediately want to destroy every comb, brush and mirror in sight. It’s a look that somehow really works for him.
Penn talked in erudite fashion about Into the Wild, and the real-life Chris McCandless’ trip-the-soul-fantastic journey, saying that we live in “a comfort-addicted society,” which is an interesting turn of phrase that I don’t believe I’d heard before. David Letterman tried to make Oscar small talk, looking back on Penn’s Mystic River victory, but Penn kept his reminiscences brief, noting that “any social gathering of more than five people, without alcohol” makes him uneasy.
Interestingly, the typically politically-averse Letterman then segued into Penn’s recent trip to Venezuela, asking why he went there. Penn’s classic response: “I felt almost invited to go by Pat Robertson when he encouraged the assassination of Hugo Chavez, because I always can assume that whatever he says, it ought to be the opposite.” When Letterman went on to say that he’d heard Chavez was “wacky,” Penn paused and offered forth a perfectly hollow smile before replying, “If people have oil under their ground, they’re called wacky.”
Director Brad Anderson, who delivered credible budget thrills with Session 9 and The Machinist, takes the “Masters of Horror” franchise for a spin with Sounds Like, an effectively creepy tale of swallowed grief’s slow transmutation into insanity.
Chris Bauer (The Wire, The Devil’s Advocate) stars as Larry Pearce, a family man and call center supervisor for whom careful listening is a way of life. His days are spent monitoring hundreds of tech support phone conversations, his ultra-sensitive ears attuned to every nuance of voice and sound. When he loses his young son, however, Larry is shattered. Slowly, his sense of hearing becomes even further intensified, to the point of teeth-grinding distraction; even simple noises are magnified into a cacophony of torment. As Larry’s grasp on reality begins to loosen, he grows even more surly and resentful of his wife Brenda (Laura Margolis), who’s been dealing with their son’s death differently. Eventually the deafening clamor is all too much, and Larry slides headlong into shocking acts of violence.
Obviously the big narrative touchstones here are Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and Gene Hackman’s The Conversation, and Anderson summons comparisons to these works favorably from a point of actual execution as well. His skill with sound design — roundly evidenced in particularly Session 9, but also on his episodic work on HBO’s The Wire — comes into play, and makes Larry’s dizzying predicament searingly real. There’s also a smart sense of when to parcel out the moments of shock or air-quote gore (squirmy maggots get some nice play), and when to merely let Bauer sell the distracted, slow-rising distress of this character. Sounds Like isn’t nearly as gory as many other entries in the “Masters of Horror” series, but it works very well within the established parameters of the anthology, and even on its own, if one isn’t familiar with the other hour-long movies. If the ending doesn’t pack a huge twist or reversal, it’s still well acted, well constructed and persuasively moody, auguring a successful return to theatrical feature films when/if Anderson gets the opportunity.
Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Sounds Like is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with superlative Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 surround sound audio tracks. Anderson submits to an audio commentary track in which he amply demonstrates his thoughtfulness and preparedness. He has all sorts of anecdotes about the movie’s purposefully ambiguous production design, composer Anton Sanko’s chamber quartet, non-contemporary score and the mad-dash, one week location scouting that preceded the film’s Vancouver shoot.
Thirteen minutes of cast and crew interviews are wisely preceded by a spoiler warning advising those who haven’t yet watched the movie to turn back, and it’s here that series producer Mick Garris shrewdly assays Sounds Like as the story of “what happens when repressed sadness becomes madness,” and one of the best in the “Masters of Horror” series. There’s also a five-and-a-half-minute featurette on the sound effects work in the movie; here, effects supervisor Howard Berger has some interesting insights and cinematographer Attila Szalay offers up some important new advice he learned firsthand on the production: “Backlight maggots!” Rounding things out are a photo gallery and a DVD-ROM copy of the movie’s screenplay. A- (Movie) B+ (Disc)
She’s now shedding the robes of diva-dom, though it may be
too late to resuscitate her career as a mainstream, dependably bankable leading
lady. Still, all those who doubt the acting chops of Jennifer Lopez should check out not
only Bob Rafelson’s Blood and Wine
and Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight
as rebutting evidence for the defense, but also her groundbreaking, lead role
debut, 1997’s Selena, in which the
erstwhile arm candy of Ben Affleck and Puff Daddy vividly brings singer Selena
Quintanilla Pérez to life.
My Family, the forthcoming Bordertown), the film is at its core essentially
a melodramatic tribute biopic, but it’s also a legitimately stirring showcase for the young
Lopez, who was 27 when she made the movie. It centers on Tejano superstar
Selena, who at 23 was about to become a crossover sensation on the strength of
tender, mid-tempo ballads like “I Could Fall in Love” and “Dreaming of You.” Her
dreams were tragically cut short, however, when she was gunned down by a crazed
fan. While a good bit of the film is powered by an amiably whitewashed idealism
and optimism born of familial script approval, it’s Nava’s skill and Lopez’s mesmerizing
presence, however, that make Selena
worthwhile.
Academy Award nominee Edward James Olmos stars as Selena’s
father, Abraham Quintanilla, Jr., a dreamer who, along with his wife Marcela
(Constance Marie), nurtures his daughter as the vessel for his family’s
ambitions (but in not quite as scary a fashion as Joe Jackson), all against enormous
odds. Jon Seda stars as Chris Perez, a rebellious guitarist who joins the
family’s South Texas band and is captivated by Selena, in
time becoming her husband. Rounding out the cast are Jacob Vargas as Selena’s
brother, Abie, and Jackie Guerra as her sister Suzette; Lupe Ontiveros (As Good as It Gets), meanwhile, plays
the role of Yolanda Saldivar, the unhinged admirer who would eventually take
Selena’s life.
The film hits all its story beats in rather methodic
fashion, charting the upward trajectory of a girl who had the spirit to believe
in a dream and both the courage and support system to make it come true. Powered
by the voice of the real-life Selena, it’s the movie’s musical passages that most
connect, naturally. Unlike the recent El Cantante,
a biopic of popular salsa crooner Hector Lavoe starring Lopez and her
off-screen paramour, Marc Anthony, there’s not the need here to try to paint
the picture of an entire burgeoning “scene.” Selena is more tightly focused, and better off for it. Lopez,
meanwhile, captures her subject’s exuberance, to a degree that even neophytes
to the Tejano blend of traditional Latin, rock, R&B and pop influences can
still identify in a universal fashion with the joy she feels on stage.
Housed in a double Amray case with a glitzy cover, the 10th
anniversary, two-disc special edition DVD of Selena features, in a nice, 2.35 anamorphic widescreen
transfer, both the original version of the film (127 minutes) and an extended,
134-minute version, and comes with a Dolby 5.1 surround sound audio track, and
English, Spanish and French subtitles. A half-hour, clip-laden making-of featurette
kicks off the supplemental features, examining both the life of the real Selena
(via copious interview footage with her father) and her family’s involvement in
bringing her story to the screen. A clutch of deleted scenes follows, running
just under 12 minutes in total; most of these relate to small moments of
character shading, either travails of Selena’s early life or some trappings of
success related to her rise. There is also a 19-minute featurette that focuses
more specifically on Selena’s music and career, as well as a collection of brand
new interviews with Lopez and Selena’s family, as well as other cast and crew. While
an audio commentary track would have certainly been a nice inclusion, there’s
more than enough material here to warrant an upgrade for hardcore fans of the
title, and definitely merit a look for those unfamiliar with Selena. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B+ (Disc)
. <I>Napoleon Dynamite: The Game</I> features 20 mini-games for the DS and 30 for the PSP, all of which really require that you use your skills… even your bow-hunting skills from when you went hunting wolverines with your uncle in Alaska. For more information, <A href=)
click here.,<br />
a former race car driver now worn down by life, leads pals Carl (John Howard),<br />
Rocco (Stelios Yiakmis) and Billy (Simon Stone) out into the wild, where they come<br />
across the body of a young Aboriginal woman. Deciding it’s too late in the day<br />
for them to hike back to the road and report their tragic find, they delay<br />
taking any action. The next morning, instead of making the long trek back, they<br />
spend the day fishing. When the men finally return home and report finding<br />
the body, all hell breaks loose. Their wives can’t understand how they could<br />
have gone fishing with the dead girl right there in the water — she needed<br />
their help. The men are confounded — the girl was already dead, they argue, so there<br />
was nothing they could do for her.<o:p></p>
<p></o:p>Stewart’s wife Claire (Linney), already troubled by the<br />
discovery that she’s pregnant and beset by a meddling mother-in-law (Betty<br />
Lucas), is the last to find out about the situation, and she becomes increasingly<br />
distressed over her husband’s callous behavior. To her it’s heartbreakingly emblematic<br />
of an already unraveling marriage. As public opinion builds against the actions of the men,<br />
their certainty about themselves and the decision they made at the river is<br />
challenged. They cannot undo what they have done. Only Claire understands that<br />
something fundamental is not being addressed. Determined to make things right again — not only<br />
for her own peace of mind, but karmically as well — Claire tries to reach out<br />
to the family of the murdered girl and offer them her condolences and<br />
explanation, in the process setting herself not only against<br />
her own family and friends but also those of the dead girl. Her marriage is<br />
taken to the brink and her peaceful life with Stewart and their young son hangs<br />
in the balance.</p>
<p><o:p></o:p>In relocating Carver’s “So Much Water so Close to Home” to <st1:country-region><st1:place>Australia</st1:place></st1:country-region>,<br />
Lawrence and screenwriter Beatrix Christian also add a racial element to the<br />
narrative. This gives the film a bit of a different flavor, but <span style=)
the chief, and best friend Mac (Rob Corddry), starts to<br />
wonder if he’s being too picky about the women he meets. The<br />
wedding of a former girlfriend only serves to amplify these feelings of<br />
isolation, so when a chance encounter with an alluring blonde marine<br />
researcher named Lila (Malin Akerman) leads to the sweet bloom of<br />
romance, <b>Eddie believes he’s finally found true love</b>. When the threat<br />
of a potential job transfer for Lila endangers the relationship, he<br />
impulsively proposes.<em></em></p>
<p>But as the newlyweds drive down<br />
the California coast on the way to their honeymoon to Cabo San Lucas, <b>Eddie feels<br />
familiar pangs of unease</b>. Soon after reaching their exotic Mexican<br />
hideaway, he’s convinced he’s made a terrible mistake, put off as he is<br />
by <b>Lila’s aggressive bedroom demeanor and a chain of kept secrets that<br />
range from merely unnerving (a deviated septum) to jaw-tighteningly<br />
negligent (a mountain of debt, an old drug habit)</b>.<em></em> It’s here that Eddie also happens to fall for the down-to-earth Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), who’s visiting with her family.</p>
<p>Miranda<br />
has no clue that Eddie has just married, and with Lila confined to the<br />
honeymoon suite with a brutal case of sunburn, Eddie struggles to find<br />
a way to extricate himself from his days-old marriage without losing<br />
the (new) girl of his dreams. A tangled bit of misunderstanding<br />
Leads Miranda to believe that Eddie is a widower, but when that gives<br />
way to the truth, and Miranda returns home, Eddie sets off to try to<br />
win her back.</p>
<p>While <i style=)
The Heartbreak
the man arrested at actor Nicolas Cage’s home in Newport Beach in the early hours of the morning on October 1, was naked except for the purloined leather coat he was wearing. Yikes. That really puts a damper on any sort of barked communication which includes the phrase, “Put. The Jacket. Down.” Furo, who
 and the suburbanite (Greg Kinnear) with whom he gets mixed up.</p>
<p>Taking the aforementioned journalistic memoirs as a leaping off point<br />
(<b>an introductory title card notes that “only the most outrageous parts<br />
of this story are true,” and the end credits back that up</b>), <i>The Hunting Party</i> centers on disgraced TV news reporter Simon Hunt (<a href=)
Richard Gere),
My Family, the forthcoming Bordertown), the film is at its core essentially