Digital Playground, the same folks that produced the X-rated send-up, and its impending sequel, of the Pirates of the Caribbean flicks, has announced the April 4 release of Cheerleaders (below) on both DVD and Blu-ray formats, crowning it, per its press release, “the first adult studio to accomplish the assiduous task of producing dual masters, in competing formats, within a designated deadline” — a fact that I’m certain won’t be lost on first-week buyers and dedicated pre-purchasers.
The DVD version of the title will be released as a two-disc set, while the Blu-ray disc will be available in full HD 1080p. For more information, click here.
The involvement of writer-director Daniel Waters (Heathers) pretty much mitigates some of the feelings of queasy, not-so-hot execution that the trailer for Sex and Death 101 induces. The central idea itself also helps. A comedy starring Simon Baker as a successful guy who, on the eve of his marriage, receives a list with the names of everyone he ever has and ever will have sex with (a list that notably doesn’t end with the name of his wife-to-be), the movie — releasing in limited theatrical fashion on April 4, from Anchor Bay Entertainment — costars Winona Ryder as a mysterious temptress, named Death Nell, who becomes an urban folk hero when she targets men guilty of sex crimes against women.
A couple things: first, the female nudity in the movie (assuming it’s there) had best be limited to Sophie Monk, Leslie Bibb and/or other nameless costars, and not trumped-up outrageousness involving The Facts of Life‘s Mindy Cohn. Just sayin’. Second, is it just me or does Baker — who I really liked in the underrated Something New — seem to be subtly channeling John Travolta in his performance, at least cadence-wise? Overall, the trailer elicited some meh-type feelings, but not enough to be a deal-breaker. I should still catch this and have more soon. Also of note, and no small amusement, is some of the film trivia on this page from its web site. Perhaps my favorite tidbit: “Much of Death Nell’s wardrobe comes from Winona Ryder’s closet in the
form of vintage clothing from old Hollywood films, such as a Claudette
Colbert outfit from It Happened One Night.” Hmmm… yes, I wonder how Ryder got that outfit?
It’s a happy 32nd birthday to Reese Witherspoon, owner of the most adorable drop-down chin in Hollywood. It’s always interesting to see how young actors and actresses manage the ups and downs of their perilous career track, because not all of them can achieve, or sustain, stratospheric-level success. Witherspoon’s attention-to-detail focus and drive is certainly well chronicled, but there’s another side to her too, though it’s probably been at least somewhat paved over by the necessary caution that becoming a box office superstar breeds. Interviewing her for both Pleasantville and Election, she talked openly about how she had seriously considered giving up acting altogether until 1996’s Freeway came along, costarring Kiefer Sutherland. (Not such a good experience, I guess, 1994’s S.F.W.) And it wasn’t bunk, or spin. It was just the honest sharings of someone who figured, “You know what, I can probably do other things in my life and be just as happy.” I’ll always have a bit of a soft spot for Witherspoon, because she’s not the most obvious or innately gifted actress out there, but she puts in hard time and hard effort, and I can identify with and appreciate that. Her focus and work ethic have helped augment and hone her talent. Plus she has low-key charm and spunk in equal measure, no small feat.
Promoting this week’s Drillbit Taylor on The Tonight Show last night, Leslie Mann showcased her very dry, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor in a quasi-performance piece trainwreck that totally didn’t play, at least with Jay Leno’s captive audience. After confessing that she and husband Judd Apatow don’t sleep in the same bed, because he’s a big-time snorer, Mann talked about instead sleeping with their youngest child, whom she sometimes forgets to properly diaper. “I wake up covered in pee, but at least that’s better than the snoring,” she said.
Met with polite titters, Mann then proffered: “I feel bad… we’re not gay or anything — not one of those couples who pretend to be a couple.” More uncomfortable laughs and even a gasp or two, with surely plenty of folks not making the necessary leap in logic. No matter the smoothness of delivery, this chop-busting humor — the same sort of stuff Michelle Obama got dogged on for dropping on her husband Barack — requires that it comes from a known, vetted commodity, i.e., someone of a similar public stature. Mann doesn’t have that. Yet. So her run-downs of Apatow and other wide-eyed biographical confessions (about how she believes in ghosts, and once dated a homeless man), whether true or not, don’t play. I’m sure she’s been on The Tonight Show before, but she’s clearly still in “introductory mode” with mainstream audiences. Except that someone forgot to tell her…
The trailer for the PG-13 martial arts flick The Forbidden Kingdom (Weinstein Company/Lionsgate, April 18), starring Jet Li and Jackie Chan, elicits a shrug, for the most part. It mixes its message a bit, with varying tonal signals. It opens with typically earnest, historical narration (“In a land… where heaven touches Earth… with an empire divided by war”), and seems to have a fairly legit scope in terms of production design and setting. The floating-arrows-and-spears stuff is pretty cool, but then the prophesied-American-teen-transported-back-to-ancient-China stuff starts getting played up a little more, and the brow furrowing commences. There are lines seemingly meant to convey a sort of pithy jocularity (Chan to Li: “We can kill each other when it’s over”), but they essentially fall flat, and I don’t know that Michael Angarano (aka “the kid,” Jason) can pull off enough of a transformation to make any of this pop, or matter. There’s one legitimate laugh here (Chan’s petulant “He’s got no kung-fu — none!”), but the movie definitely doesn’t seem to be going for Shanghai-type hijinks. Maybe it should, given the mash-up/fish-out-of-water plot. Also, randomly, I do have to admire, on a certain level, Chan’s steadfast refusal to iron out his English. It’s obvious (even if you haven’t seen the bloopers and deleted scenes from any of the Rush Hour films) that he still learns his lines phonetically, bless him, and I think the weird intonations are inextricably part of his charm. For more about The Forbidden Kingdom, click here.
File this under “Apocalypse, pending.” Slashfilm is reporting, per a video announcement from Troy Duffy himself, that the long-threatened… err, rumored Boondock Saints sequel is finally happening, with original cast members Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus and Billy Connelly all said to be returning. Does St. Patrick’s Day fall on a Tuesday next year? Because I’m sensing a savvy direct-to-DVD stunt from financier Sony, a la the recent remake of The Omen, which studio middle-ups and director John Moore basically admitted was made solely to opportunistically fill the slot of a June 6, 2006 (i.e., 6/6/06) release date. Either way, maybe this gives Duffy another chance to threaten to kick my ass if I don’t like his movie, and give it a bad review…
Based on the best-selling book by renowned author Jack Ketchum, The Lost is a psychological thriller about the ennui of small town life and a young, charismatic serial killer who looks like the lead singer of The Killers — sporting mascara, an affected beauty mark and crushed beer cans in his boots to give him a boost in height as well as ego.
Inspired by actual events related to Charles Schmid, the so-called “Pied Piper of Tucson,” The Lost delves into human horror on a fairly mundane level. For sadistic sociopath Ray Pye (Marc Senter, above left), who lives with his (very much alive) mother at the hotel they own and operate together, small-town life is a dead-end road of sex, drugs, liars and losers. Yet Ray’s cajoling charm and intelligence mask a raw temper and insatiable compulsion to lash out.
After shooting a couple girls in the woods (Seduction Cinema staples Misty Mundae, né Erin Brown, and Ruby LaRocca), twentysomething-ish Ray and his two younger acolytes, Jennifer (Shay Astar) and Tim (Alex Frost), go about their business, which consists of biding their time during the day so that they can party and do as they please during the evenings. In an effort to protect the young girlfriend, Sally Richmond (Megan Henning), of an old friend, Eddie Anderson (Ed Lauter), Detective Charles Schilling (Michael Bowen) pays a visit to Ray, to sort of let him know in informal fashion that he’s got his eyes on him. Ray, though, has other options when Sally spurns his amorous advances, and he eventually confesses his act of murder to a new girl, Katherine (Robin Sydney), in a warped effort to impress her. Things come to a depraved head when
Notwithstanding a very brief but strikingly emotional cameo by Dee Wallace-Stone and the appearance of Luke Y. Thompson as “Handsome Country Club Patron,” The Lost is for the most part a meandering (the movie runs just under two hours) ensemble mood piece about vice, violence and psychopathy. Adapted for the screen and directed by Chris Sivertson (I Know Who Killed Me), The Lost bills itself as a suburban fairy tale gone horribly wrong, which I suppose is partially true. But since most of the film unfolds four years after the initial murder, and its effects are largely out of sight and out of mind after the first 15 minutes, there’s a weird disconnect between those events and the present day, even though we obviously know Ray is psychotic. He was the only suspect in those slayings, but Schilling seems awfully resigned to his freedom, and The Lost consequently suffers, since for much of its running time there is simply no direct conflict or ticking-down moral clock driving the movie forward.
What we get instead is a bunch of discrete scenes of hair-trigger temper, some of which work, and some of which don’t. The Lost is a movie that bears some small similarity to young-homicidal-lovers-on-the-lam flicks (Kalifornia, Natural Born Killers, Jimmy and Judy), but the mentor-lover-friend triangle between Ray, Jennifer and Tim isn’t fully explored until Schilling and company come crashing in, via a series of interrogations, in the third act. By that point, through other dawdling scenes (a protracted introduction to Katherine, for instance), you’ve been wanting a fuller, in-all-its-tangled-ingloriousness exploration of the twisted dynamics between the aforementioned trio, not just some post-mortem.
Meanwhile, Senter — as mentioned before, dolled up like the lead singer of The Killers, to mimic some of the Elvis-inspired “peacocking” of Schmid — delivers a performance that’s often forceful and engaging, but ultimately tips over into precious, look-at-me theatrics, with tics, wild gesticulations and snarled asides. It doesn’t help that Sivertson shoots much of the movie in tight close-up, giving viewers a claustrophobic urge to ditch the proceedings even before the most egregious bloodletting commences. Music (composed and rock) is also used liberally, to wildly varying effect.
Forced-play trailers for The Girl Next Door, also from Ketchum, and the forthcoming theatrical release Sex and Death 101 open the DVD, which comes in a regular Amray case that’s then housed in a cardboard slipcover with mock bullet holes on the front. Presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, the disc comes with Dolby digital 5.1 surround and Dolby surround 2.0 audio tracks.
As for supplemental features, first up is a rather snooze-inducing audio commentary track with Ketchum (his first such undertaking) and fellow horror novelist Monica O’Rourke. Ketchum offers up a very few interesting tidbits early on, like how the inspiration for the story came from a newspaper clipping from friend and fellow writer Christopher Golden, but he has virtually nothing to say about the production, so while interesting or notable things are unfolding on screen, he’s just as likely to be talking about an idea for another book project, or speech he gave years ago. Thankfully, the rest of the bonus features are a bit better. There are seven minutes worth of audition footage and 16 minutes worth of outtakes, including some random nudity. There’s also a three-and-a-half-minute storyboard sequence and an Easter egg that’s accessible from the bonus menu screen — a two-minute black-and-white short film, Jack and Jill, which gives grim new meaning to picnic offerings. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)
So a warrant for the arrest of Shia LaBeouf has been recalled a day after the young actor failed to show up in court to face an unlawful smoking charge. Authorities issued a $1,000 bench warrant for his arrest earlier in the week, but on
Wednesday the court discarded the warrant after
LaBeouf’s attorney turned up to plead not guilty on behalf of the 21-year-old. Small potatoes, sure, but why even bother with a non-guilty plea? A good friend of mine has the right idea: “If I were his lawyer, I’d say they were those sticks of gum coated with powdered sugar that look like cigarettes from the 1980s — you put them in your mouth, inhaled the sugar and blew them out to make it look like you were smoking. I think they stopped selling them because they claimed it marketed cigarettes to kids. But Shia’s got Spielberg money now, so he can afford to buy some of those off eBay and ‘smoke’ sugar wherever he wants.”
A sort of Muppet Babies animated satire crossed with That’s My Bush!, the short-lived, live-action White House spoof from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Comedy Central’s Lil’ Bush: Resident of the United States is a razor-sharp skewering of the rascally, tunnel-visioned foibles of George W. Bush (and other political figures), all in miniaturized, adolescent form. Created by Donick Cary (a former scribe on The Simpsons), the series details the blinkered antics of Lil’ George and his Lil’ White House posse — including Lil’ Condi, Lil’ Rummy and the unintelligible, foul-mouthed Lil’ Cheney — as they tackle all the major playground issues of the day, from illegal immigration and abortion to evolution and the war on terror.
The first series to make the transition from mobisode to full-fledged television show, Lil’ Bush premiered in mid-June of last year, as the most watched Comedy Central original series bow since 2004. Unfolding in a sort of alternate, suspended imaginary state (present day, inclusive of all the complications in Iraq, but with a doddering George H. W. Bush as president, allowing Lil’ George run of the White House grounds), the series’ inaugural season naturally gets a lot of painfully comedic run out of its subjects’ war-mongering ways. Lil’ George makes a statement with his Aquaman underpants while facing off against Lil’ Kim Jong Il, and the gang also goes on a panty raid against an Al Qaeda training camp before eventually unleashing weapons of mass destruction. Lil’ George also becomes fascinated with Lil’ Tony Blair (beguiled by his accent, he asks if he’s from Narnia), and the pair become cheerleaders together.
Some of the most jaw-droppingly hilarious episodes, though, take other topical issues as their leaping-off points — an ill-reasoned attempt by Lil’ George to speed up global warming, and a protest at an abortion clinic which ends with Lil’ Cheney, umm, stuck inside Barbara Bush’s uterus. The musical predilections of Cary and fellow show runner Opus Moreschi
are also revealed via the show’s voice cameos, which include Iggy Pop, Henry
Rollins, Frank Black, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, Dave Grohl and Red Hot Chili Peppers
members Anthony Kiedis and Michael “Flea” Balzary. In fact, since Lil’ George and his pals are in a band together, and he’s always talking about wanting to rock, a portion of many episodes is devoted to music video-style send-ups, which are amusing at first, but eventually reach a point of somewhat diminished return, except in an episode like “Walter Reed,” in which, wincingly, Lil’ George enthusiastically opines, “These troops’ll be blown away all over again — but this time by rock ‘n’ roll!”
For what it’s worth, there is an honest attempt here made at fair play, with bipartisan skewerings of various Democratic candidates and left-wing figures like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and filmmaker Michael Moore. But these bits (they too, are classmates of Lil’ George) are not as tightly scripted or effective, and mostly just play off a single character trait (e.g., Kerry’s ponderousness, or Bill Clinton’s lasciviousness). Thankfully, the cracked, tangential observations of Lil’ George — humorously embodied with petulant confidence by Chris Parson — are sharp, and high-yield enough to keep things moving at a great pace. (Sample line, about the Oval Office: “Oval is a shape they don’t tell you about in school — it’s like a circle, but for rich people.”) And the show’s humor also reaches back in time a bit; Bush Sr. is reminded that he’s “allergic to Asian people,” a reference to his vomitous state dinner trip to the Far East.
The show’s uncensored first season DVD set (allowing for an unbleeped airing of Lil’ Cheney’s occasional favorite exhortation of “Go fuck yourself!”) is presented on a single disc, and housed in a regular Amray case. It comes with a quite-nice roster of bonus material. An animated, one-and-a-half-minute White House tour sets up the show’s concept nicely, and allows for a few zingers. There are also six minutes of cast and crew interviews, with Cary, Moreschi and voice talent Parson, who it turns out was found and booked for the series via Craigslist, amazingly enough. A six-minute table read for the episode “Hot Dog Day” (in which Lil’ George bristles at the un-American notion of scaling back his school’s lunch line offerings), meanwhile, offers a glimpse at the pre-production process.
Its most intriguing bonus feature, though, might be its collection of
audio commentaries. Cast and crew sit for a number of them, during which we learn that the animation for the series takes anywhere from four to six months, but that the brief “cold open” to each episode is scripted about a week prior to airing. Even more interestingly, creator
Cary is also joined on a trio of commentaries, improbably enough, by Jerry
Springer, Tucker Carlson and Ralph Nader. While each figure’s familiarity with the show varies, their participation certainly makes for some off-the-beaten-path exchanges; Nader’s in particular is strange, as he mercilessly harangues the real-life Bush by pointed comparison to the show’s animation, noting that arched brows are “a signal of belligerency in chimpanzee land.” Seriously.
Finally, there’s also the inclusion of the aforementioned, but never-before-seen bonus episode “Walter Reed,” which substituted for another episode that finds Lil’ Cheney dying of a heart attack after getting stuck in a vending machine, going to hell, and loving every minute of it, crying, “Home, home!” As Cary and Moreschi explain in a brief introduction, they had to work up something to swap in for public airing and sensitivity’s sake on the off chance that the real-life Cheney passed away. Wow — if only that sense of preparation was applied to, say, post-war planning for Iraq. To purchase Lil’ Bush on DVD, click here. A- (Show) A- (Disc)
So I had a dream last night about a very detailed trailer for a film starring Madonna, directed by Julie Taymor. And it came on during an episode of Saturday Night Live that Jessica Alba was hosting. What the hell is that about?
He gained around 60 pounds for the role, so you know it’s not something he undertook lightly. Now Jared Leto will step out and make a few bi-coastal, in-person appearances for Chapter 27, the long-delayed Mark David Chapman flick whose release through Peace Arch Entertainment is finally just around the bend (March 28 in New York, April 4 in Los Angeles). Based on crime journalist Jack Jones’ book Let Me Take You Down: Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman, the movie, costarring a pre-rehab Lindsay Lohan, takes its title from the notion that Chapman was trying, through his actions, to author his own concluding chapter to J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, which features 26 chapters. In New York City, at the Angelika, Leto will appear at two evening shows apiece on March 28 and 29, at 8:00 p.m. and 10:20 p.m. The following weekend, in Los Angeles, Leto will appear at the 7:30 p.m. and 9:50 p.m. shows at the Nuart, on April 4 and 5.
I’ve noted this past week just how bad Doomsday is (a couple times, actually) but previously failed to mention that one of the more unusual and curious elements of its failure is the sound design, which is mixed too high only, and notably, in non-action scenes. Composer Tyler Bates‘ cheesy instrumentation notwithstanding (he dabbles all over the map, to poor effect), Doomsday‘s sound mix masks simple dialogue and (arguably) crucial expository set-up, which is usually a sign of a director not trusting his or her script. The rub? Director Neil Marshall wrote the screenplay here as well, raising the crucial question: is a somewhat self-aware hack better than a hack who doesn’t know they’re a hack?
A riveting, perfectly constructed crime saga of counterweighted hopelessness and humanity, Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men, based on the novel of the same name by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy, is a film that originally seduces you with its cool sheen of menace and nervy, swallowed intensity, and then, in subsequent viewings, wins you over with all the broader questions its desperate scramble for survival raises.
That the back of No Country for Old Men‘s DVD cover synopsis ends by touting the movie’s “heart-stopping final moment” is… I don’t know, ironic? Or maybe just stupid? No Country for Old Men is several things at once — a dusty ensemble elegy for simpler times, a neo-western, and a relentless, stalking psycho-killer picture — but its famously contemplative ending (more on that in a bit) isn’t a conventional capper by any stretch of the imagination. Irrespective of its box office gross (it made $74 million domestically), to try to sell this movie as a “super-charged action thriller” (another lame-brained quote from the DVD cover text) to folks who haven’t yet seen it is to simply set everyone up for confusion and potential disappointment, if only based on expectation. Just sell the many things that it is, and let that be enough.
The winner of four Academy Awards (for Best Picture, Best Directors, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, for Javier Bardem), No Country for Old Men was also nominated for four more Oscars, and features achingly beautiful cinematography from Roger Deakins as well as a sparsely used score from composer Carter Burwell’s that summons the feelings of a distant roar of thunder — a thin string of vague, atmospheric discomfort until, finally, full-fledged menace suddenly overtakes you. That’s in keeping with the overall tone of the movie, actually — at once the most ambitious and reserved Coen brothers’ picture in some time.
Violence and mayhem erupt in the parched scrubland and panoramic skies of West Texas, a land dominated by beiges and greys. While out hunting one afternoon, cud-chewing Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin, above) stumbles on a suitcase containing $2 million dollars, and the site of drug deal gone very bad. Fleeing with the money and sending his girlfriend Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) off for safety, Moss finds himself stalked relentlessly by Anton Chigurh (Bardem, eerie and mesmerizing), an unstoppable sociopathic killer with a pageboy ‘do and chilling, thousand-yard stare.
A hired gun who takes his task very, very personally, Chigurh, who could well be an even more demented cousin of Bobby Peru, has no qualms at all with violence, and leaves a bloody trail in his wake while searching to recover the cash. As Moss scrambles to hang on to the money and his life, small-town sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a taciturn third-generation lawman, closes in on both men, but wonders what he’s gotten himself into. Meanwhile, fellow bounty hunter Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson — a tall, cool glass of water) tries to find Moss and convince him to turn over the money before Chigurh does away with his family.
The cast here is uniformly excellent, but the revelation of the movie, though, may be Brolin, who had quite a 2007 between American Gangster, In the Valley of Elah and Robert Rodriguez’s vibrant, fun Planet Terror portion of the misguided experiment that was Grindhouse. He’s the emotional heartbeat of this film — the character you’re most sympathetic to, and personally interested and invested in… unless perhaps you’re a retiree.
Jones’ character is hamstrung by the fact that he ducks in and out of the film more than Moss or Chigurh; if they’re the mouse and cat, respectively, he’s the old hound dog sitting on the backyard porch, trying to figure out a way to get down and catch up to both of them. Large swatches of the movie address his dissipating passion for his work, his worn-down weariness at having to confront evil. (“This is a mess, ain’t it, sheriff?” asks his junior deputy at the aforementioned outdoor crime scene, to which Bell replies in deadpan fashion, “If not, it’ll do ’til one arrives.”)
The first go-round, some of these passages might seem to slow the movie down a bit. But they actually give it a corresponding real-world starkness and depth that serves to counterbalance the inexorable march of Chigurh. This is most robustly embodied in the film’s finale, in which Bell recounts some dreams he’s recently had — dreams featuring his father. There’s a specificity of intent there, but Bell’s monologue of recollection is also about hope and the future, about recognizing a world outside of and independent from all the evil, familial acrimony and missed opportunity in the world (“And then I woke up…”), and choosing to live there. While more overt Iraq films have flailed at the theatrical box office (not the least of which Jones’ own In the Valley of Elah, written and directed by Paul Haggis) because Americans by and large don’t like to see on the big screen mirrored reflections of real life and/or what they’ve been seeing on the television news, in certain ways No Country for Old Men is very quietly, shrewdly and profoundly political. It’s a movie whose grace-note ending presages some of the hope attached to the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. The arc of Bell’s character represents a typical independent American voter, from 2002 to 2007.
Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, No Country for Old Men is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional French, English and Spanish subtitles. Along with a gallery of trailers, supplemental extras consist of a trio of featurettes, running around 40 minutes in total, and pieced together from the same interview sessions with cast and crew. The first, a more general making-of overview, charts all the ins and outs of production. Another featurette examines working with the Coens, and includes some amusing anecdotes about their working methods. Finally, “Diary of a Country Sheriff” offers up a more thematic and slightly esoteric view of the film itself, using the character of Bell and the movie’s geography to give it some contextual mooring. Oh, and there’s also a six-minute striptease lesson from Tommy Lee Jones… just kidding. A (Movie) B+ (Disc)
I’ve talked before about his cinematic oratorical punch, and in a riveting, landmark speech on racial division today in Philadelphia, Senator Barack Obama tackled head-on the incendiary statements of his former pastor that have been dominating recent headlines — rejecting the content of his divisive statements, but diagnosing a generations-long “racial stalemate” with personally felt clarity, civility and clear-eyed perspicacity. “I can no more disown [Reverend Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black community,” Obama said. “I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
Sometimes honesty meets challenge, but very rarely, it seems, in the political sphere. Cannily dialing down his affected and slightly exaggerated preacher’s cadence — doubtless a source of discomfort anyway for some unswayed downmarket white voters — in a sign of deference to the subject matter, Obama spoke difficult truths to both blacks and whites alike, perhaps in a way for which he alone on the national scene is uniquely qualified, but certainly in a way that was brave.
Nuanced, shaded and roundly unpatronizing, it was a speech that, radically, acknowledges such a thing as fair reaction, and then makes a case for hard-work healing and higher discourse. Part of the home-stretch wrap comes via this assertion: “For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, conflict and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle, as we did in the O.J. trial, or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina. Or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.”
In talking about inequalities passed along from earlier generations, Obama strings together grievances, anger and fear, connecting the dots of the unspoken and obvious in a manner that is at once breathtaking and infuriating — the latter because it makes you realize, if there were any doubt, just how much of the political oxygen is self-serving, power-grab pap. I don’t need to read or hear Senator Hillary Clinton’s response to know that she just got H-bombed, in this news cycle and for many to come. Just the little picture of her on MSNBC and other news sites — with the blurbed, lift-quote phrase “It’s an important topic,” from her deemed-necessary response — tells you everything you need to know. Clinton is a politician to her core. Shrewd, intelligent and a master of her craft, yes, but a politician nonetheless — someone who never could or would lean forward into incoming fire like this, and deliver a heartfelt, unblinking call for unity and elevation. That is the opposite of her essence, which is brokerage and willful division. For more, the full text of Obama’s speech is available here.
The reign of its amusing but hardly revelatory teaser trailer was brief, but the full-length trailer for Tropic Thunder has gone online, and it’s a nice, streamlined thing; it sells the movie’s concept with grace and a muscular confidence, plus features a crazy-eyed Nick Nolte to boot. Particularly amusing, for those perhaps worrying about it, are the segments selling Robert Downey, Jr. as a hotheaded Australian actor who undergoes a “controversial procedure” (i.e., he darkens the pigment of his skin) to play an African-American member of the film’s “band of brothers” platoon. Downey, to one of his fellow soldiers, after being called out for quoting the theme song to The Jeffersons: “Just because it’s a theme song doesn’t make it not true…”
Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella is dead at 54, from a hemorrhage, after what is being described as a routine operation on his neck. It’s a completely different situation, but one in its own way every bit as shocking as the death of Heath Ledger.
In 1996, Minghella’s The English Patient won nine Academy Awards, and it remained his signature piece, for better of worse; he got trapped in the gauzy-lit lock-box, it seemed. Those who found The English Patient sludgy and unrewarding might have taken out those feelings — though not completely undeservedly — on Minghella’s somewhat thematically similar adaptation of Charles Frazier’s bestselling Cold Mountain, starring Nicole Kidman, Jude Law and Renee Zellweger. For those interested in reaching a bit deeper into Minghella’s canon, check out 1990’s underrated Truly, Madly, Deeply, and of course The Talented Mr. Ripley, which to me is his most uniformly involving work.
So I’ve watched it twice, but the trailer for American Zombie, co-directed by Grace Lee and John Solomon, and releasing March 28 via Cinema Libre, does little to advance a positive case for this mockumentary about “high-functioning zombies living in Los Angeles, and their struggles to gain acceptance in human society.” I guess this seemed like a hot idea after Shaun of the Dead and the first, legitimately clever wave of those Geico “Caveman” ads, but there’s not a single moment here — with the arguable exception of the Asian zombie woman talking about her hopes and dreams, then losing her train of thought — that evidences rich, inventive parody, let alone a moment that pops, which is really what an independent flick’s trailer has to have. And what’s with all the hand-held action-cam stuff in the last third of the trailer?
Taking its title from a lyric in “Dancing in the Streets,” popularized by Martha and the Vandellas, the three-disc DVD set Don’t Forget the Motorcity (it pains me to type that as one word — it’s like punching the nitpicker in me in the face) offers up a jaw-dropping, treasure chest-like collection of studio promotional videos from the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. For fans of the catchy Motown sound, it’s an hours-long trip back in time.
The impetus behind this labor-of-love project was producer Ian Levine’s love of the Motown sound, from when he was about 10 years old. By the age of 14 he’d collected every British Motown release, and after a huge run of hits in the 1980s, he went to Detriot and Los Angeles, and recorded over a hundred different artists who were signed to the Motown label in the 1960s and ’70s. The result was a staggering total of over 800 songs, roughly an eighth of which appear here. Sadly, more than half these artists are no longer with us, but this priceless footage remains — much of it never before seen prior to the release of this DVD.
The artist roster is impressive, but most of all deep, eschewing a lot of the obvious hit-makers for singers like C.P. Spencer, Frank Wilson, Frances Nero, Sammy Ward, The Elgins. Big-ticket draws like The Supremes (who offer up “Crazy ‘Bout the Guy”), Mary Wells, the aforementioned Martha Reeves, and The Contours are here, but more as part of the flavoring than the main ingredient. Mary Wilson’s catchy “Oooh Child” is a definite highlight, and The Vandellas’ “Nowhere to Run” will always get me on my feet. Edwin Starr —
who probably has the most songs here, with four — contributes an exceptionally
smooth version of “Back Street,” as well “Where Is the Sound,” “I Have
Faith in You” and “Darling Darling Baby.” Frankie Gaye’s “My Brother” is an emotional cut, and I also quite enjoyed Vee McDonald’s “You’re My Loveline” and The Lovetones’ “Fire Alarm.” Overall, in aggregate, this footage captures the magic of a long-gone era — it’s music to make your feet tap, your hair tingle and your fingers snap. The high feel-good factor makes one feel like they’re driving down the Pacific Coast Highway on a warm, carefree summer’s day, with only good friends and fond memories as their companions.
Housed in a regular Amray case with a snap-hinge tray which holds two of the discs on reverse sides, the three-disc, region-free set runs a whopping 360 minutes in total, and comes with a paper insert that celebrates the artists on display. There are otherwise unfortunately no extras, which is a shame, given the doubtlessly fascinating anecdotes attached to such an undertaking by Levine. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Concert) C- (Disc)
20th Century Fox’s Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who put the box office in a sleeper hold this past weekend, pulling in $45 million in its first three days of release, over $11,300 per screen. Brace yourself, parents, for the eventual adaptation and release of the entire Seuss catalogue. In second place, 10,000 B.C. raked in another $16.7 million, proving the spending power of CGI sabre-toothed tiger enthusiasts and putting the movie’s two-week total at just under $62 million. Never Back Down opened third for the weekend, with $8.6 million. The week’s other wide opener, meanwhile, Doomsday, wasn’t fooling quite as many folks; not screened in advance for critics by Universal/Rogue, it slotted seventh for the same frame, grossing $4.9 million on just over 1,930 screens, for a $2,544/screen average.
Rounding out the weekend’s top 10 were College Road Trip, with $7.8 million (now $24.2 million total); Vantage Point, with $5.4 million (now $59.2 million total); The Bank Job, with $5.1 million (now $13.3 million total); Will Ferrell’s R-rated Semi-Pro, with $3 million (now $29.8 million total); inert bodice-ripper The Other Boleyn Girl, with $2.9 million (now $19.1 million total); and The Spiderwick Chronicles, with $2.3 million (now $65.3 million total). Opening in 274 theaters, meanwhile, writer-director Michael Haneke’s controversial Funny Games grossed just under $511,000, or $1,864 per site.
It’s a happy birthday to erstwhile Sweet Valley High star (so I’m told) Brittany Daniel, who turns 32 today, and probably celebrates by sharing a laugh with her twin sister over some sort of naughty bait-and-switch shenanigans the pair engaged in years earlier. Daniel has that hot pro-volleyball chick look going on, and has also shown evidence of nice comedic timing in small screen sitcom guest stints and in movies like Joe Dirt and Club Dread, though the heaving bare bosom of Jordan Ladd in the latter film clouds my memory of citeable specifics. But, umm… nice belt, by the way. Seems practical.
It used to be only gory horror flicks or willfully stupid, stoner-friendly comedies (think Grandma’s Boy), but studios now play shell games with even their downmarket genre fare, refusing to screen for critics movies that they think they can bypass traditional press and reach audiences with via direct-marketing napalm campaigns. The latest example of the trend? 20th Century Fox’s PG-13 paranormal horror flick Shutter, starring erstwhile Dawson’s Creek pin-up Joshua Jackson, which opens this Friday, March 21. It’s their product and totally their prerogative to follow this tack, naturally, but I always do feel there should be reportage on this fact, for the image it projects, rightly or wrongly.
Launched in 1997 and having just kicked off its 12th season on Comedy Central, Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s South Park remains perhaps the most freewheeling, irreverent and consistently anarchic half-hour of comedy on the small screen, certainly since the dissolution of Chappelle’s Show. While other series (Queer Duck, for instance) may be more outré in their conception or framing, South Park comes by its outrageousness more legitimately, if that makes sense. The entire raison d’etre of the series is the slaughter of sacred cows. (Well, that and the dissemination of scatological jokes.) If further proof is required, one only need submit to Imaginationland — originally presented last season as part of a three-episode arc, and now available as a feature-length, uncensored DVD with all-new material added in.
Imaginationland opens with all the South Park kids trying to capture a leprechaun that Cartman swears he has seen. In fact, Cartman has a $10 bet with Kyle that if said leprechaun does exist, Kyle then has to suck Cartman’s balls. Everyone is astonished when it turns out not to be another case of Cartman’s exaggeration or lying. The leprechaun escapes, though, and some of the boys of South Park are transported to the magical realm of Imaginationland, where all the characters of fiction cavort in a brightly colored gumdrop heaven. Circumstances are dire, though — Stan, Kyle, Jimmy, Kenny and Butters find themselves in Imaginationland just as terrorists launch an attack that unleashes all of mankind’s most evil characters — a legion of nasty, bloodthirsty villains that includes Darth Maul, storm troopers, the Big Bad Wolf, a marauding Alien, Jason Voorhies, Freddy Krueger, Frankenstein, etcetera.
With the world’s imaginations spinning out of control, the government prepares to nuke Imaginationland — and thus put an end to all imagination — in an effort to quell the chaos. Racing against time to prevent total nuclear annihilation, the citizens of Imaginationland realize their only hope of salvation lies with the unlikeliest of heroes: Butters. Cartman, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about the impending apocalypse; he just wants his balls sucked. After seeking a court order to uphold the legitimacy of his signed contract bet with Kyle, Cartman sets out on a Jack Bauer-style quest of tunnel-visioned justice and retribution, following Kyle — who, along with Stan, has been detained by the government in an attempt to help contact Butters — to extreme lengths to impose the terms of their agreement.
The show’s spoof of the questing-hero plot machinations of dramatic serials like 24 and Battlestar Galactica is airtight, and as with the more politically trenchant South Park episodes, the notion that terrorists most win only when we cede them permanent space in our heads is a worthy, if debatable, leaping off point for satirical exploration. Likewise, the single-mindedness of Cartman’s efforts at subjugating Kyle is a brilliantly lewd (if perhaps off-putting, to some) encapsulation of certainly his ego-centric, maniacal personality, as well as to a certain extent the entire macho world of testosteronized adolescence.
Housed in a white Amray case with a giant, text-free portrait of a rampaging Manbearpig (more on this in a moment) on the back cover and an open-front cardboard slipcover, Imaginationland is presented in full screen. A pair of two-minute, black-and-white storyboards chart the progress of the episode’s animation, and executive producers Parker and Stone also sit for an audio commentary track that’s a much deeper and more substantive offering than their typical episodic mini-commentaries on the seasonal DVD sets of the series. While they joke around some, indicating that the show’s bumper music will play whenever lawyers deem it necessary to block out defamatory content for which Comedy Central could be sued, the pair also talk (semi-) seriously about the issues at the core of the show, and admit that they strongly considered using the idea as the basis for a second South Park feature film. They also talk about the front-loaded production value and work schedule (the first episode got a lot of extra time and attention), and point out some of the dialogue content trims in the project dictated by television, including a portion in which some of the villains talk about raping children in front of their parents.
Also included on the disc are two bonus episodes from past seasons whose characters play an active role in Imaginationland — “Manbearpig,” about Al Gore’s “super-serial” obsession with the so-named mythical creature, and the scathingly hilarious “Woodland Critter Christmas,” an earnestly narrated tale in which Stan stumbles upon a group of chipper forest animals and
helps them build a manger for
their savior child, only to discover that the critters are actually Satanists, and he
just paved the way for 10,000 years of darkness and the return of the
(woodland) Antichrist. These are nice inclusions, but the release undeniably does feel a bit thin, especially for those who might already have the seasonal DVD sets containing the two bonus episodes. Still, it’s hard to push for supplemental extras that simply don’t exist for an episodic creation like this. To purchase the DVD, click here. A- (Show) B (Disc)
As devoid of narrative ambition as it is of accomplishment, post-viral action flick Doomsday artlessly cobbles together its many apocalyptic influences, and offers itself up as reformulated genre pap, plain and simple. Written and directed by Neil Marshall, though, it’s atrociously staged, full of baffling incongruities, and not much fun to boot.
Obviously pitched at fans of the popular Resident Evil series and 28 Days/Weeks Later films, the film — which opened yesterday without screening for critics — should have a short but decent Stateside theatrical window with young males, courtesy of a slick, effective, turn-out-the-base advertising campaign and lack of direct genre competition. Aiding international totals will be in particular the foreign embrace of Marshall’s 2006 sci-fi spelunking thriller The Descent, which rang up $57 million worldwide, $31 million of that overseas. Overall, though, poor to middling word-of-mouth should dent theatrical earnings. The DVD marketplace will be kinder, with the film’s splat-and-squib work being more able to be appreciated in piecemeal fashion.
A narrated, seven-minute prologue, set in the present day, opens Doomsday, detailing the spread of the highly infectious “Reaper” virus. Having decimated the population of Scotland, the decision is made to halve England via a 30-foot-high wall of reinforced steel just south of Newcastle. More than 25 years later, with a new strain of the virus now threatening an overcrowded London, Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra, above) is drafted by her boss (Bob Hoskins) to head to the infected zone and suss out a cure from survivors that the government has been keeping secret. Upon arrival, she finds herself confronted by a population gone wild, descended into utter savagery and cannibalism.
On some level Marshall obviously wants Doomsday to be “timely,” and assay governmental conspiracy, but his script addresses this in only the most perfunctory and purposeless way, through an ineffectual prime minister (Alexander Siddig) under the spell of a scheming second-in-command (David O’Hara). The Reaper virus survivors, meanwhile, are weirdly divided into a medieval constituency, headed up by disaffected former doctor Kane (Malcolm McDowell), and the more outlandishly roguish, Road Warrior-type thugs under the sway of his mohawked son, Sol (Craig Conway). It’s as if crucial story points were based on what costumes were most readily available.
Marshall doesn’t have the imagination to scratch beyond the surface of his conceit, let alone explain why and how post-apocalyptic survivors have the time and inclination to style their hair into purple mohawks. Other narrative decisions (including Eden having a removable eyeball that she can use as a portable DVR, as well as a messianic rave/human cook-out set to… the Fine Young Cannibals’ 1989 pop hit “Good Thing”?) are merely odd, or come across as parody, definitely out of step with the rest of the movie. Most plainly damning, though, is the fact that Marshall simply cannot firmly establish any sense of space within his action scenes, leaving audiences awash in nonsensical cross-cuts and jump-cuts. For the full, slightly longer original review, from Screen International, click here. (Rogue, R, 105 minutes)
I’ve linked some of my adventures in punditry previously, and I recently submitted to an interview regarding the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski, which ran this past week as part of a 10th anniversary retrospective cover story by Roger Yale in the Weekly Surge, the preeminent free weekly entertainment paper in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. My Blogcast software isn’t feeling a direct link, so if interested in taking a spin click here, and select from “Looking Back at Lebowski” from the drop-down “Main Story Archives” tab.
It’s an interesting and amusing piece, and I was especially heartened that it got into a bit why the film has spawned eponymous bowling festivals and the like. My take? “Each generation goes through a period of ‘creative loafing,’ where
you have your interests, [but] the real world is starting to encroach on
you with responsibilities and obligations, demands on your time. So you’re trying to find out… how much of
these interests and enjoyment you can hold onto. You want to carry it
all, but how much can you realistically take with you? For that
reason, The Dude remains a really appealing character and always will,
hence, ‘The Dude abides.’ The phrase is simple but it’s shorthand for a
character that is a little bit older and [yet still] free from a lot of these
responsibilities.” Again, for more click here.
Very much reminiscent and of a piece with fellow non-fiction extreme-skiing flick First Descent, director Mark Obenhaus’ Steep is an engaging documentary look at thrill-seeking slope masters and legends. Powered by legitimately breathtaking cinematography, this streamlined flick serves as an ample, exhilarating showcase for the world’s best freestyle skiers, who go beyond their dreams in conquering some of the craziest, near-vertical runs ever faced.
From the sheer cliffs of Grand Teton and the treachery of Chamonix France to the untouched Alaskan peaks of Valdez, these hardcore skiers sacrifice their lives for a thrill, but what a thrill it is. Legends Jean-Marc Boivin, Pierre Tardivel, Anselme Baud and Patrick Vallencant, among others, are all captured in stunning period footage, and a well-communicated historical overview of freestyle, downhill extreme skiing highlights both just how much of a personal endeavor this pastime was before it evolved into something more approaching a sport. The big sell here, though, is of course just the imagery on display, and the fantastically beautiful photography of some of the most magnificent mountain peaks on the globe — along with the requisite devastating avalanches and fatal spills — deliver plenty of gape-mouthed drama. There’s also a slight environmental bent to the picture, as several of the skiers talk about how climate change conditions have rendered Chamonix impossible to ski nowadays.
Housed in a regular Amray case, Steep comes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 audio track, and optional English and French subtitles. Bonus features kick off with an audio commentary track with director Obenhaus and skiers Andrew McLean and Ingrid Backstrom. There’s also a 13-minute Q&A session from the movie’s 2007 AFI Fest presentation, where McLean fields a question and talks about skiing on all seven continents. The best bonus feature, though, is a lean yet still superb 17-minute making-of featurette which assays the astonishing means by which Obenhaus and his crew captured some of the skiing footage. For back-country work, this meant laying in cable-cams with ridge-to-ridge wire, a process captured with base-camp shots from helicopters, which were also used to freight in all the production infrastructure. Wrapping things up are two-and-a-half minutes of photo montages, plus a March 2006 interview with Doug Coombs from La Grave, France. Also included are preview trailers for My Kid Could Paint That, The Natural, Across the Universe, Persepolis, Talladega Nights and five other Sony DVD releases. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B (Disc)
