I had a chance to chat with Steve Conrad, the writer-director of The Promotion, recently, and ask about Chad Schmidt, his long-gestating, zonked-sounding script about an actor who moves to Los Angeles in 1989 and, over the next 16 to 24 months, finds his career burnished but mostly stymied by the fact that he looks like Brad Pitt.
“I said I wanted to do a movie like Straight Time now, but I feel like I can’t just do it. I just feel like there’s a more invitational way to make that movie,” recalls Conrad, the writer of The Weather Man and The Pursuit of Happyness, of the project’s genesis. “So I thought long and hard and I came up with this concept making a comment about faith, which I’m really preoccupied by — how little we actually control and choose, and how difficult it is to just put one foot in front of the other some days. And so I had to get Brad Pitt to sign off on it, because it wouldn’t be worth my time to write if he weren’t up for it. So he’s up for it, spiritually, and I know that he’s starting to talk about directors now, to start to talk about making the actual movie. So I feel like we’ve slipped into a groove on it.”
Conrad is a credited producer on project, and laughs about rumors that it’s started filming, guerrilla-style. But would he like a chance to take a crack at it as director, now that he’s whet his behind-camera appetite with The Promotion? “Oh, I absolutely do have interest,” says Conrad. “I don’t know if he has an interest in me. Brad doesn’t know I’ve even made this movie, but I’m trying to get him to come see it.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you,” Conrad continues, “but I think I’m going to put that script online, because people ask me about it all the time. There’s just something about the idea that people want to lean into. I don’t think there’s any harm in reading the script, do you? Why can’t it be like a book? People don’t not see a movie because they read the book — no one said, ‘I don’t wanna see Harry Potter because I read it already.’ Why would they not go see the movie if they read the script?” Here Conrad pauses, thoughtfully. “I’m going to ask (Sony) if I can do that.” Another beat. “They’ll say no, though,” he says, somewhat with the resignation of an academic who knows he’s about to lose a bureaucratic argument.
Not counting some assorted supporting players in the Austin Powers films, it’s been more than a decade since Mike Myers has debuted an original character on the big screen, which he does in The Love Guru with a rascally self-help guru who actually needs to learn to love himself. Eschewing what could have a more interesting and provocative treatment of the same concept, the film instead trades in Myers’ favored trademark steady diet of scatological humor, outlandish asides and laboriously constructed sexual double entendres. Laughs are intermittent but detached from any sense of a cohesive whole, and the sum product makes a persuasive case that manic relentlessness is not by itself a film virtue.
An American who was left at the gates of an ashram in India as a child, Myers’ Pitka was raised alongside Deepak Chopra — with whom he still has a rivalry — and mentored by Guru Tugginmypudha (Ben Kingsley). Now the head of a successful self-help and spirituality empire that spins simple truths from all sorts of trademarked acronyms and tweaked bromides, Pitka’s unorthodox methods are put to the test when he’s hired to settle a rift between Toronto Maple Leafs star hockey player Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) and his estranged wife (Meagan Good). Out of revenge, Roanoke’s wife has started dating L.A. Kings star goalie Jacques “Le Coc” Grande (Justin Timberlake), sending her husband into a major professional skid.
With the two teams squaring off in the Stanley Cup championship, Maple Leafs owner Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) and Coach Cherkov (Verne Troyer) look to Pitka to get Roanoke back on his game, so the team can win. Pitka, meanwhile, nurses a crush on Jane, believing that she can unlock the chastity belt with which he’s been saddled since youth.
Some of The Love Guru‘s haphazard gags (a voiceover machine with a Morgan Freeman setting; the repeated, blessed invocation of Mariska Hargitay, which invites a cameo by the actress of the same name) are inspired, even if a bit industry-specific. Myers, dropping his voice register to a honey-dipped professorial tone that spikes when he’s stricken with devilish delight, is as invested as ever in character, and one sees in Pitka much possibility with regards to a new franchise.
The Love Guru‘s chief problems are twofold. The first lies in tone, and narrative direction. The coexistence of highbrow and lowbrow is always a tough marriage, but if attempted, the former tone has to take a background position of subjugation, or jostle for attention in the form of a contrasting character who cluckingly disapproves of the unevolved events swirling all around him. Pitka, though, seems to embody both highbrow and lowbrow, but only based on what’s convenient for a given scene. This leads one to question his sincerity, and the movie’s veracity, even within its own parameters of heightened absurdity. Not rooted in character, much of the film’s scatological humor feels like not particularly clever attempts at shoring up tween audience support.
The second problem is more specifically related to Myers’ portrayal. Debut director Marco Schnabel certainly keeps things moving at a brisk pace, and has a visual conception for the story, but there’s no honest check on Myers’ hammy instincts, which drain a good bit of pop and surprise from many of the lines. Less mugging for effect would have certainly bred a stronger attachment to the story, and a more natural appreciation of the jokes.
In supporting turns, a zonked Stephen Colbert and straight man Jim Gaffigan breathe some life into their roles as sportscasters calling the hockey action. Singer-actor Timberlake has fun playing big, meanwhile, in more ways than one (his character is legendarily well endowed, you see) and Malco (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Baby Mama) continues to display fine comedic timing and plenty of charisma to burn. (Paramount, PG-13, 86 minutes)
I just put a bullet in Tuesday night’s episode of The Late Show, on which Steve Carell appeared to tout tomorrow’s release of Get Smart, and share stories of Father’s Day gifts from his kids (he joked that he told his 7-year-old daughter it wasn’t true that the best gifts are made, not bought) with host David Letterman. An awful lot of the one-segment chat was non-movie-related, interestingly enough. The competitive reception of Get Smart — an adaptation that an entire generation doesn’t even know is an adaptation, kind of like 2002’s I Spy — up against the return of Mike Myers in The Love Guru will be an interesting barometer reading of possibly converging comedy stars.
Director Terry Kinney’s poignant and bittersweet comedy Diminished Capacity poses the query: How much is a
good memory worth? That’s the question that faces newspaper editor
Cooper (Matthew Broderick) after a debilitating concussion takes him
from the political pages to comic strip detail. Looking for answers,
he travels home to Missouri, where his senile uncle (Alan
Alda) is on the verge of losing his home. When a valuable baseball
card is thrown into the mix, these two men, along with a motley group
of hometown friends — including Cooper’s high school sweetheart, played by Virginia Madsen — head to a memorabilia expo to make the
deal of the century. The movie screens this coming Thursday, June 26 at 7:30 p.m., in advance of its limited theatrical release in early July. Also, this Sunday, June 22, director Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe screens at 7:30 p.m., with a special post-screening appearance and discussion by choreographer Daniel Ezralow.
The Aero Theatre
is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. Tickets for these movies, as well as other special events, are available through Fandango, but for 24-hour recorded
information on directions and the Aero’s upcoming schedule,
phone (323) 466-FILM.
Ever dreamed of swimming naked with watermelons? Well now you can live vicariously through Israeli artist Sigalit Landau’s wall-spanning projection, on view at MoMA through July 28. No hugely tangible cinematic connection here, except for the fact that I just really expected to first see this image in a Tarsem film.
I’ve written before about the sort of direct-line connection between base-level slapstick and the the things that first tickle our funny bones, and few acts embody that synergistic relationship with more commitment, fervor and longevity than the Three Stooges. To that end, The Three Stooges Collection: Volume Two gathers more slap-happy
hijinks from the lovable Larry, Curly and Moe, in the form of 24 chronologically
arranged, digitally re-mastered short films, from 1937 to 1939. This
latest volume follows the success of the first set of Stooges film shorts, from 1934-36, released last year by Sony, and comes in advance of more like-minded releases.
It goes without saying that the Three Stooges are one of the most important screen comedy teams of the 20th century, and an inspiration to generations of screen comics that followed. After their initial retirement late in the 1950s, television reruns helped reintroduce them, at home and abroad, to a new generation of kids and adults alike, and their enthusiastic reception certainly indicates an abiding love for anarchic silliness.
At the time of the material here, the vaudeville-born Stooges were no longer some mere novelty act seeking attention in the still nascent world of filmed entertainment; they had achieved fame, and their countrywide personal appearances, of which there were many, were frequently mobbed. Naturally, even with such mainstream embrace (or perhaps because of it), there were cultural warriors who viewed the Stooges’ eye-poking, head-slapping, pie-tossing antics as too violent, and crusaded to have them banished. Thankfully, their efforts didn’t succeed.
With the guys’ rapport now even more settled upon, Larry, Curly and Moe were able to focus a bit on coming up with some rich scenarios to serve as backdrops for their antics, cranking out a new short film every six-and-a-half weeks or so. 1937’s slate consists of Grips, Grunts and Groans; Dizzy Doctors, one of many hospital-set shorts; Three Dumb Clucks; the bizarre and hopelessly dated Back to the Woods, in which the Stooges are exiled from England and sent to protect colonists from “savage” Native Americans; Goofs and Saddles; Cash and Carry; the racetrack-set Playing the Ponies, in which a prize horse is powered by hot peppers; and The Sitter Downers, a domestic-leaning sketch in which the Stooges attempt to build a house to satisfy their future father-in-law. The films from 1938 are: Termites of 1938; Wee Wee Monsieur; Tassels in the Air; Healthy, Wealthy and Dumb, one of many Stooges shorts to assay issues of class; Violent is the Word for Curly; Three Missing Links; Mutts to You; and Flat Foot Stooges. Finally, 1939’s slate consists of Three Little Sew and Sews, in which the Stooges become seamen tailors; We Want Our Mummy; A Ducking They Did Go; Yes, We Have No Bonanza; the island-set Saved By the Belle (of which surely Mario Lopez is a fan); Calling All Curs; the hilariously named Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise; and Three Sappy People, in which the boys are mistaken for respected psychiatrists.
The across-the-board value here is of a high quality, with only a couple of the forced “genre” offerings (Western-inflected Yes, We Have No Bonanza, for instance) coming across as forced. Calling All Curs, Grips, Grunts and Groans and Three Little Sew and Sews all score particularly high marks. Three Sappy People, meanwhile, remains one of the more popular syndicated Stooges efforts, if chiefly for its cream pie shenanigans. Frequently plumbing class friction for laughs, the Stooges seem best when placed out of sorts and forced to madly improvise in order to maintain the plausible cover of their scenario or promise, and there are plenty of examples of that here.
Presented in full screen with an English language mono audio track, The Three Stooges Collection: Volume Two looks pretty great, all things considering (only contrast levels would be a point to quibble on), and if the sound design isn’t something to stand up against the comparatively brawny mixes of movies of today, it certainly serves the relatively meager demands here, with just a slight bump in volume level over similar mono mixes. The films are housed on two dual-layered discs in slimline cases that are in turn stored in a nice cardboard slipcover.
Apart from a small handful of unrelated preview trailers (like from the first volume: Seinfeld, Meatballs and… Close Encounters of the Third Kind?), there is unfortunately no supplemental material, a fact established by the first release in the series. This cuts two ways; the sheer volume of material (including five more shorts than in the first volume) makes for plenty of entertainment, and its straightforward cataloging is invaluable, but just a brief talking-head retrospective or two would help contextually root the material for a lot of younger viewers for whom the term “classic comedy” perhaps only means Eddie Murphy, circa Raw. To purchase the set via Amazon, click here. A (Movies) B- (Disc)
Religulous, Bill Maher’s documentary examination of organized religion and some its more fanatical leanings, about which I thought I’d posted something earlier but apparently didn’t, has a new, full-length trailer up/out, and if it doesn’t pitch a throughline other than one of generalized sardonic inquiry, does it really have to? The answer to that is of course no, especially with intimations of hulking dudes threatening to pound Maher for disrespecting their God.
This is a blue-state niche film, through and through. One never really needs an excuse to play Gnarls Barkley (“Does that make me craaaaaazy?”), but it’s a good match here. Also, priceless is Maher’s reaction shot to being told by a federal lawmaker,
“Well, you don’t need to pass an IQ test for the U.S. Senate.” Yes, I’m looking forward to this film. Helmed by Larry Charles, the director of Borat, Religulous opens via Lionsgate on October 3.
Like 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, which partially sold itself as a rescued artifact and ingeniously took advantage of nascent Internet
marketing to whip audience interest into a fervor,Cloverfield is a guerrilla-style exercise in “found footage” subjectivity, unfolding
completely in handheld style, with often canted or shaky camerawork. Reframing a classic monster movie conceit as a post-September 11
allegory of big city trepidation, and skillfully evoking more dread than
lasting cathartic release,it’s also a thrilling, skewed slice of cinematic terror tailor-made for our times.
Like the aforementioned film Cloverfieldchronicles the plight of a group of young
people fighting for their lives trapped in an unforgiving outdoors — in this
case an urban jungle under siege by a gargantuan rampaging monster, and
hundreds of hostile smaller, scurrying creatures which pose every bit as much
of a threat. The project owes its existence to the participation of producer and Lost
hit-maker J.J. Abrams, who’s quietly setting up his own brand-name film factory, albeit in more diverse fashion than comedy man-of-the-moment Judd Apatow. Yet the style, unique framing device and
top-shelf execution are what ultimately help sell this mash-up of
classic genre filmmaking and new-school tropes.
Cloverfieldopens chillingly, with a silent title card that stamps the subsequent video camera footage as a found audiovisual document from the U.S. military. The first portion of the tape reveals the tender morning
after a hook-up between long-time friends Rob (Michael David-Stahl, above left) and Beth
(Odette Yustman). The videotape (and thus the movie) then leaps forward a
month, to the evening of a huge going-away party for Rob, who’s preparing to
move to Japan as part of a promotion.
Tasked by his girlfriend Lily (Jessica
Lucas, above right) with recording the event, Rob’s brother Jason (Mike Vogel) passes off
the duty to friend Hud (T.J. Miller), who fruitlessly tries to engage Marlena
(Lizzy Caplan, above middle) in flirtatious small talk. The party takes a turn for the
awkward when Beth shows up with another guy. Rob’s suppressed feelings of affection
come bubbling to the surface, words are spoken in anger, and Beth leaves.
Suddenly, a massive jolt shakes the remaining
revelers, and the power goes out. As the group heads outside to see what
exactly has happened, fireballs explode on the horizon, and utter havoc is unleashed.
After one route of evacuation is sealed, Rob receives a distraught cell phone
message from Beth, and becomes determined to make his way to her apartment to
try to find her. Friends in tow, the group sets out, but when the destruction
and fighting on the streets between the creature and the National Guard gets
too intense, they seek shelter underground, and try to traverse subterranean subway
tracks.
Nicely balancing confusion and
interpersonal anxiety with these grander, under-siege segments, Drew Goddard’s
screenplay is a thing a pared down grace and lean, muscular virtuosity. It
starts by sketching out the underpinnings of character in fine fashion. After
18 brisk, well-plotted minutes of typically angsty young adult introduction, the
movie yields to mayhem — basically an hour-long dash through urban hell.
As with other apocalyptic and sci-fi
movies, Cloverfield squeezes some
bedazzlement out of the destruction of familiar, iconic buildings and
monuments. Here it’s the BrooklynBridge, in a grim obliteration that serves as the film’s first mass-scale,
panicky set piece. There’s also the beheaded Statue of Liberty, which arrives
early in the movie, and additionally serves as the perfect visual metaphor for America’s
still-lingering apprehension over the state of world events and its own
security. Yet director Matt Reeves (a co-creator of
TV’s Felicity, whose other feature
credit is 1996’s The Pallbearer) also
proves himself effective at simplistic evocative imagery, as with a coachman-less
horse-drawn carriage wandering through Central
Park.
Key to substantial gratification with Cloverfield are two bits of necessary surrender:
succumbing to its overall framing device, and accepting the notion that such
trauma unfolds against a PG-13 backdrop, which is only really a matter of
language, coming after movies like Superbad
and the Hostel films have made coarse exclamatory talk integral to their stamp of “realism” within their respective
genres. The action sequences here — which include a bravura night-vision attack in the
subway tunnel, as well as a ferocious street battle with real military sniper fire that Hillary Clinton would surely remember — are so tensely effective as to eradicate any legitimate
quibbles with the rating for the rest of movie, a problem that arguably plagued Live Free or Die Hard last summer, at least in advance of its release.
Cineastes holding on steadfastly to the notion
that less is more may balk at the degree to which the film reveals its monster.
While it’s true that this does if not undercut then at least muddy the water with
respect to the movie’s metaphorical associations, it’s interestingly handled
within the framework of the film, and seems a commercial tip of the cap as much
as anything, something that DVD interviews about its late production inclusion seem to support. It’s undeniable that Cloverfield
is, at its core, a metaphor for the terror and uncertainty of the real world,
from its aforementioned iconic poster and DVD cover image and willfully vague tagline (“Some
thing has found us”), which makes no mention of a CGI monster on which millions
of dollars was spent, to specific dialogue of choking despondency (“I don’t
know why this is happening”). Like much
great cinema, Cloverfield works on multiple levels; it’s incidentally a monster thriller.
Presented in 1.78:1 widescreen (1080p/VC-1), the picture in the film’s Blu-ray release is even crisper and clearer than on its standard DVD release, particularly as it relates to small object detail. Audio is anchored by a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix, with optional English, French
and Spanish subtitles as well. Even though the entire film is supposed to be comprised of amateur footage, it’s not wanting for clarity — especially in the sound mix, which effectively uses rumbling deep registers to convey the impending and above-ground terror in the disrupted party scene and subway track sequence, respectively.
A nice collection of supplemental features, all presented in high-definition, are almost all subtitle-enabled too, which is a nice touch. Director Reeves sits for an audio commentary track, and it’s a
thoughtful and substantive affair throughout. Even better, however, may
be a superb 28-minute making-of featurette
which intersperses interview segments with Abrams, Reeves, producer
Bryan Burk and other behind-the-scenes figures with loads of on-set
production footage from the movie’s semi-secret summer 2007 shoot. A
good bit of material here features Miller, since he’s the lens through
which so much of the movie unfolds (costar Margot Farley good-naturedly
chides him that he can “screw up everything twice, as an actor and a
cameraman!”), but Caplan also flashes her droll wit, and we learn that some of the actors stay out of breath by jumping rope between takes.
Reeves and editor Kevin Stitt, meanwhile, talk about the “soda straw”
approach of the movie’s visual scope — that is, creating a grand vision
captured in very restricted form. After 28 days of principal
photography in and around Los Angeles, the production moves to New York
City with a skeleton crew; there, even under the codename “Cheese,”
they amusingly discover pictures of their shoot posted to the Internet
within mere hours.
A separate 22-minute special effects
featurette duplicates a bit of footage, but does showcase plenty of
impressive green-screen work, from the Brooklyn Bridge sewquence and
other street scenes. Another six-minute featurette focuses more on the
creature design itself, with conceptual artist Neville Pagetalking about his work, the skin of the creature and its pupil-less eyes, which are modeled after those of a great white shark, nature’s most efficient killing machine. Blooper fun gets highlighted in a four-minute segment called “Clover Fun,” and there are also four brief deleted scenes and two alternate endings, all with optional commentary from Reeves.
Most of the former are judicious tonal trims (a wisecrack from Hud
during the ultra-tense subway sequence, for instance), but I did wish a
post-attack sequence between Marlena and Lizzy — part of a brief
re-shoot, in which she acknowledges the trauma caused by Jason’s death
— had been left in. The two alternate endings, meanwhile, are very much variations on a theme;
without spoiling the specifics of the conclusion, one is essentially a
different coda, built around a shot for which Reeves had great
affinity, while the other focuses on a very brief interstitial flash
which hints at the source camera actually capturing the film’s footage
being found.
The new addition to the
Blu-ray edition of the film is a viewing option called
“Special Investigation Mode” which establishes further spatial clarity, letting audiences track the
locations of the characters, the creature and the military via a box in the upper
corner of the screen. On the bottom, meanwhile, there’s an in-story, textual fact track, similar to something like the factoid track featured on the DVD release of First Sunday. For fans of the movie’s viral marketing campaign craving even more context and detail, this is an especially nice bonus.
Finally, there’s also a special Easter egg on the disc,
able to be found by toggling right after lingering above the Spanish
subtitles option on the set-up scene. Doing so will yield a two-minute
clip of cast and crew members riffing in goofball fashion on one of the
military figures’ lines of dialogue in the movie — “Rack ’em and pack
’em, we’re phantoms in 15!” Cloverfield,
meanwhile, seems to be rightly enjoying a bit more than a mere 15
minutes in the pop-cultural spotlight; talks of a sequel or prequel persist, though Reeves and Abrams insist they have yet to come up with an angle that fully satisfies them. To purchase the film on Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) A (Disc)
So Jaman has a subtitle feature which allows users to create their own Mystery Science Theater 3000-esque mash-up, choosing from dozens of clips of weird films and then turning said scene even further on its ear by adding one’s own subtitles, and then sharing it friends. You know, kind of like a Mad Lib for movies. Whither clips for Showgirls or Alone in the Dark, though?
A documentary about Africa’s last absolute monarchy, the Kingdom of Swaziland, Without the King offers up a piercing snapshot of a distant ruler out of touch with his country — something which seems strangely timely. King Mswati III, who came to power as a teenager in 1986, rules by decree and lives a life of luxury with a dozen wives while his subjects suffer from crushing poverty, the world’s highest HIV infection rate and an average life expectancy of 31 years. Built around interviews with Mswati and his family, as well as many Swazi citizens plotting his downfall, this fascinating movie captures an agitated pre-revolutionary state, just before everything comes to a boil.
Eschewing voiceover narration and directed with a loose touch, Michael Skolnik’s film boasts extraordinary access to Mswati who, like President Bush, seems genuinely personable and perfectly willing to receive air-quote counsel, as long as it’s from those who agree with him. If there’s not much substantive plumbing of Mswati’s thought process in his bizarre decision to enact a piecemeal constitution that still bans political parties, Skolnik wisely locates a true emotional arc in the form of Mswati’s eldest child — an articulate, candid 17-year-old rap fan who comes to California for Christian boarding school. Princess Sikhanyiso is part of the future of Swaziland, and her subdued realizations about the contrast between her impoverished country and her lavish lifestyle give this already engaging movie a casually ominous subtext. (First Run/Red Envelope, unrated, 84 minutes)
Since its June 2007 debut, Army Wives, executive produced by Grey’s Anatomy‘s Mark Gordon, has become the most successful original series in the history of the Lifetime Television network. Billed as a patriotic and thought-provoking serial drama, Army Wives centers around five military spouses who share friendship, secrets, home and heartache. If the drama is of the pure paint-by-numbers variety, the series at least has the advantage of topicality on its side (John McCain and Barack Obama have both recorded introductions for the series’ second season bow), which should be meritorious enough for undiscerning blue-collar viewers merely looking for a little scripted fare that reflects the same sort of struggles they have to deal with on a weekly basis.
The show’s talented ensemble cast includes Emmy winner Kim Delaney, ex-JAG looker Catherine Bell, Sally Pressman, Brigid Brannagh, Brian McNamara, Commander in Chief‘s Wendy Davis, Sterling Brown and Drew Fuller. Executive producer Katherine Fugate created the series using as a blueprint Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives, by journalist Tanya Biank, who also serves as a consultant on the show.
Set on a South Carolina military base, the first season acquaints viewers with the intertwined stories of four women and one man tied to career members of the armed forces. Married to earnest officer Michael Holden (McNamara) is the elegant, educated Claudia Joy (Delaney), who serves as den mother to a disparate group that includes Roxy (Pressman), a raucous, fun-loving bartender; radio show host Pamela (Brannagh), a surrogate mother trying to solve a financial crisis; Denise (Bell); and Roland (Brown), a psychiatrist whose most important patient is his PTSD-afflicted wife (Davis). Far from family and old friends, the five turn to each other for
emotional support, companionship and advice, as their loved ones tackle
the dangerous business of defending the country. Bound together by pressures familiar to many military spouses, they build a bond that sustains them through sacrifice, loneliness and unforgiving conventions of Army life.
Boiled down, that means for some pretty pedestrian drama — an affair here, a pregnancy scare there, a secret held by Denise that could destroy her family — though the game cast are all engaged enough to keep things moving at a solid clip. A couple subplots and character arcs misfire in major ways, though — namely one involving Amanda, Michael and Claudia Joy’s college-bound daughter. It certainly doesn’t help that Kim Allen, the actress playing Amanda, is 25 years old but looks more like she’s 35, but the way her character is written is just grating, in all honesty. Things also reach a crescendo of ridiculousness in the season finale, which involves a suspected terrorist munitions theft/illicit sale and a spurned husband-turned-suicide bomber. The mode of storytelling, the filmic vocabulary and framing used in these segments — but also at other times throughout the season — is jarringly at odds with the tone and intent of the show, all lurking, lazy hand-held camera work.
Housed in a cardboard slipcase and presented in a widescreen aspect ratio with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, this DVD set includes all 13 episodes from the first season, including the aforementioned cliffhanger finale, and also comes with an array of exciting bonus features. Kicking things off are some episodic audio commentaries from Fugate, executive producer Deborah Spera,
director Ben
Younger, Delaney, Bell and more. Next up are bloopers and outtakes, a clutch of deleted scenes and an un-aired storyline from the show, complete with optional producer commentary. A Q&A session with the cast features questions submitted by fans; “Have at It,” meanwhile, so named after Pamela’s radio show, finds the series’ executive producers holding forth on the challenges and joys of production. Finally, there’s a featurette that offers audiences a glimpse of real, home-front Army wives, and tells their own personal stories of life in the service. This may be the best thing about the set. C (Show) B+ (Disc)
Director Nicholas Stoller and his Forgetting Sarah Marshall star, Jason Segel, not only delivered a solid commercial base knock ($62 million, domestically) with their spring comedy, but they also laid track for a couple future collaborations as well — including Five-Year Engagement as well as a reboot of the Muppets franchise, which the pair are writing together. “Jason had a general meeting at Disney, and at the end of the meeting they asked, ‘Are there any properties you’re interested in?'” recounts Stoller in a recent interview. “And he said, ‘Well, I’m just curious — what you’re doing with the Muppets?’ And there’s an awkward pause, and they looked at each other and said, ‘Nothing.’ And he said, ‘Well, if you do something, I’d love to be considered.’ And then they said, ‘We’d love to have you involved,’ and then Jason pulled me into the project.”
“I love the Muppets, like any comedy geek,” Stoller continues. “I call the Muppets the gateway drug to comedy; that’s what kids get into when [they’re young], that was certainly the case with me. We’re in the middle of the script right now. It’s an old-school Muppets movie, like Muppets Take Manhattan or The Great Muppet Caper. [It should be] really cool.”
As with Myers’ Austin Powers character, the preparation for the film involved a number of improvisational public performances of the character, to help workshop material, and that’s where the Hargitay joke came from. “A friend of mine and I played Mike’s main devotees,” explains co-writer Graham Gordy, “so we shaved our heads, and did intros about how the guru changed our lives. I was a junior high basketball coach from Joplin, Missouri that was selling meth out of the trunk of my Chrysler LeBaron, and the Guru Pitka found me face down in vomit behind an Outback Steakhouse, and pulled me up and helped me out. And this other guy, Eric Gilliland, is friends with Mariska Hargitay. So when he said that she was going to be there one night, at one of the shows, we just started saying [her name], and then we started saying ‘Paula Zahn.’ Mariska Hargitay was there and started laughing hysterically in the crowd. That may have been the first stage show we ever did, and it just caught on from there. And we were like, ‘Really? People know who Mariska Hargitay is, but will they get that as a joke?’ But eventually it became so ridiculous that it just stayed.”
Gwen Ifill, host of PBS’ Washington Week and frequent Meet the Press guest, has a nice piece of remembrance on Tim Russert on The Root, citing her experience covering the Million Man March in 1995 and disagreements with Russert regarding the Don Imus controversy as examples of his honest intellectual curiosity, and willingness to book and brook dissenting opinion, even when it made him personally look bad. Confirming the obvious, the world of journalism lost a good one.
Will people turn out to revisit a character they revisited only five years previously? It seems so. Universal’s reboot of The Incredible Hulk owned the top spot at the box office this past weekend, grossing $54.5 million (down from the $62.1 grossed by Ang Lee’s 2003 version, starring Eric Bana). Powered by voice work from Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman and Angelina Jolie — and abetted by a lack of direct genre competition — the animated family flick Kung Fu Panda made a strong second week showing, earning an additional $34.3 million to push its accumulated domestic receipts to just under $118 million. Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s R-rated The Happening, meanwhile, debuted in third place with $30.5 million.
Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess with the Zohan slotted fourth, with an estimated $16.4 million in its second week of release. Placing fifth was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which grossed another $13.5 million; the
fourth film in the iconic period adventure franchise has now grossed
$275 million domestically and another $327 million overseas. Rounding out the top 10 were Sex and the City, starring Sarah Jessica Parker and a bunch of shoes and handbags ($10.2 million for the weekend, just under $120 million in total); Paramount’s high-flying Iron Man ($5.1 million, $297.4 overall); horror
thriller The Strangers
($5.1 million, $45.3 million overall); The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian ($3 million, $131.7 overall); and Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz’s What Happens in Vegas ($1.7 million, $75.8 overall).
In limited release, meanwhile, writer-director Steve Conrad’s
quietly funny The Promotion, added 75 screens and grossed $137,000; John Cusack’s sprawling satire War, Inc.
added nine more theaters and pushed its slow roll-out, month-long total to around $236,000. Werner Herzog’s documentary Encounter at the End of the World opened in a single theater in New York City, to $17,500.
It’s a happy birthday to Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody, who turns 30 today and probably doesn’t even regret this whipped cream bikini shot (which I’ve as of yet been unable to get my girlfriend to reenact), bless her soul.
Hey, she looks a lot better than Stephen Gaghan would in the same get-up. And Ali Larter would surely dig it, Juno what I mean? The handcuff necklace is a nice touch, too.
I meant to slap this up earlier, a comprehensive DVD review of Oliver Twist originally published on IGN upon its release in 2006, in advance of the HBO debut of the fascinating new documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which will also be receiving a limited theatrical run via ThinkFILM later this summer. Best laid plans, though, you know? So here it is now, in slightly abridged form:
The latest re-telling of Charles Dickens’ classic story of squalor, neglect and adolescent exploitation in 19th century London — the original hard-knock life, yo! — comes courtesy of none other than Roman Polanski, and this finely detailed, impressively mounted Oliver Twist instills in its audience a rooting interest in both its scruffy protagonist and the film as a whole.
Orphaned at an early age, 9-year-old Oliver (a quite good Barney Clark, above) escapes his cruel institutional patronage and receives an apprenticeship with an undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry (Michael Heath). This fortune is short-lived, however, as Oliver is railroaded out by the teasings and provocations of a manipulative older boy, and makes his way to London. There he meets up with a young pickpocket known as the Artful Dodger (Harry Eden), and falls under the sway of Fagin (Ben Kingsley), a warped father figure — conniving and exploitative, but a father figure nonetheless — who serves as the greasy criminal instructor and economic pimp of a gang of kiddie thieves.
Oliver’s tutelage begins slowly, but when he is seen shadowing a scam by fellow pickpockets and mistakenly fingered as the culprit, he’s brought up on charges before a magistrate. The victim, a kindly older gentleman named Mr. Brownlow (Edward Hardwicke), takes Oliver under his wing and into his house, but Fagin and his hotheaded, lowlife associate Bill Sykes (Jamie Foreman, suitably slimy) aren’t going to let Oliver slip away so easily, and thus risk the good thing they have going.
Oliver Twist marks the follow-up collaboration of Polanski and screenwriter Ronald Harwood, but just as their Oscar-winning adaptation of Wladyslaw Szpilman’s Holocaust memoir The Pianist was informed by Polanski’s own abandoned childhood in Krakow during the Nazi occupation of World War II, so too does Oliver Twist feel studded with the filmmaker’s own adolescent rootlessness and hardships. It’s mannered at times, as you might expect (it’s one of those films that opens on a finely sketched engraving and fades in from there), but the surprising thing about Oliver Twist is how deeply it resonates.
At a purported $60 million, the internationally financed film has a substantive enough budget to feel expansive in scope, but Polanski never neglects the telling details — be they young Oliver’s bruised, bloody feet and his simple delight at Fagin gracing him with a new pair of shoes, or Sykes’ thuggish sneer and emotional sheep-herding — that constitute a more robust whole. There are dark elements to the film, but mixed in with the larger-than-life trappings of the characters and the more fanciful bends in the story are simple, relatable truths about the human condition.
The casting of young Clark in the title role is one of the film’s more inspired strokes — he inspires with almost effortless, contrasting civility and grace (“Please sir, may I have some more?”) a generous and sincere sympathy. Flagrant sniveling would have been easy, and in many respects serviceable, in this role, but Clark delivers much more. Score aficionados, too, will particularly spark to the work of Rachel Portman (Emma, The Manchurian Candidate), who delivers some wonderful music. The twin questions of necessity and audience do loom in one’s mind — will literature buffs turn out for another variation on this story, and will modern fans of adult film drama find the themes explored here too childish? But Oliver Twist slowly wins you over, sweeping you up in its dramatic stakes and reminding you in the end that everybody’s got a hungry heart, no matter the circumstance.
Housed in a regular Amray case, Oliver Twist comes presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, and it looks great. The browns, greys and blacks of the movie, of which there are many, are nicely differentiated, and the image is nearly grain-free. Contrasting spectacular vistas, blacks are also appropriately deep and dark in certain interior scenes, as when a passed-out Oliver is plucked from a rural road and given soup by a kindly woman during his journey by foot to London. Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound tracks are available in both English and French on this disc, and are solid presentations if not quite spectacular. While the streets of London offer some sense of realistic bustle, most of the film’s budget was obviously allocated to the painstaking visual replication of Victorian England, and so Oliver Twist‘s sound design is by comparison less dynamic. Subtitles in English and French are also available.
Owing, of course, to his fugitive status in the United States, Polanski is somewhat of a tough interview for most publications, and so he remains a distinctly reserved and removed figure in the modern American filmmaking landscape. The supplemental features here thankfully help abate that, including a large spread of interview material that, if somewhat scattered in its presentation, nonetheless provides a nice overview of Polanski’s interest in the project, and the process of bringing his vision to bear. First up is a making-of documentary that clocks in at nearly half an hour. Smartly blending on-set interviews with the cast with post-production sit-downs with Polanski, screenwriter Harwood, editor Herve de Luze and various other figures, this footage is unfailingly celebratory and self-serving, certainly, but still engaging, particularly when Polanski talks about the universal “sanctional elements” of Oliver Twist‘s narrative that still hold influence.
Two other featurettes complement the production overview. The longer one, at 18 minutes, provides a look at historical presentations of the character and story on film and stage, as well as gives viewers a glimpse at the costumes, cinematography, editing and set construction of Polanski’s version. More slight, but still charming, is a six-minute featurette that looks at the movie from young Clark’s eyes, including narrated passages from his on-set diary and off-camera footage of him performing a card trick and clowning around with a lizard. The only real problem I detected with the disc was a somewhat strange one — that by accessing the main menu out of a subsection of bonus trailers of other Sony films, the menu screen will freeze or disable the selection
buttons, necessitating disc re-start. This happened three separate times, but no other playback problems were encountered. The bottom line, though: Some literature skates by on reputation alone, and some has the truer weight of aptitude and a deep emotional resonance. Oliver Twist is the latter, a timeless story nicely brought back to life here by Polanski and a gifted ensemble acting corps. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)
Five not-so-long years have passed since Ang Lee’s Hulk, which grossed $245 million worldwide, but “only” $132 million Stateside, since I guess it irked comic book fans with its Shakespearean undertones and lack of “Hulk smash!” forthrightness. This time studio executives seem to have actually read the screenplay — by frequent superhero scripter Zak Penn (Elektra, X-Men: The Last Stand) — upon which the production is based, and the result is a very standard summer actioner that delivers reasonably well, if straight down the middle, on audience expectations.
After the obligatory experiment-gone-terribly-wrong credits montage, set to pulse-pounding music, The Incredible Hulk opens in exotic Brazil, where on-the-lam scientist Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) is working at an energy drink bottling plant as low-key hired help. It’s been five-plus months “without incident,” and Banner has training with breathing and relaxation exercises to control the gamma radiation poisoning that turns him into a not-so-jolly green giant when he becomes overly excited, angry or stressed. He’s also been working to cure himself, consulting via encrypted web chat with a doctor (Tim Blake Nelson) who advises him of potential natural remedies. The secret of his location leaks out, though, and Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (a mustachioed William Hurt, chewing cigars if, pleasantly, not scenery), the Army general who oversaw the experiment that triggered the changes in Banner, sets out to find him, hoping to harness Banner’s Hulkian rage for military application. Spearheading Ross’ team is Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), a Royal Marine apparently “on loan” from the United Kingdom.
Despite the significant manpower dispatched to bring him in, Banner escapes and makes his way back to the States, where he finds out his ex-girlfriend and fellow Culver University colleague Betty Ross (Liv Tyler), also Thunderbolt’s daughter, has taken up with a new guy. Ross the senior commands a new squadron to capture Banner, but also gives Blonsky a dose of “super soldier” juice, which only whets his appetite for a bigger taste of what Banner has. Explosions and more battles ensue; Banner, as the Hulk, escapes one showdown, but not another. As he’s being helicoptered off, however, Blonsky’s souped-up alter ego, Abomination, goes on a Rampage-style… well, rampage, and, hand forced, General Ross lets the Hulk do his thing.
Directed by Louis Leterrier — who brought a level of hand-crafted kick to the two Transporter films, starring Jason Statham — The Incredible Hulk hits all its beats, in both story and action, fairly dutifully. Norton is certainly fine, if a bit gangly, which the movie pokes small fun at in a scene or two. Roth and Hurt underplay what could have been much more snarlingly over-the-top characters, and Tyler bats her eyes in fine, dewy fashion. All of this slow-pitch character work serves as counterpoint to the mountingly aggressive action, with the exception being Nelson’s awestruck scientist, who comes across a bit unhinged.
The CGI special effects work is nicely shaded, and there always seems to be a rainfall and/or full moon to help show off the Hulk’s musculature. On that note, the Hulk’s skin — still like a leathery potato — is perhaps a bit darker than in Ang Lee’s film, but he still never seems much worse the wear for all the bullets, splinters and tranquilizer darts he takes, which feeds a bit of shrugging indifference with the entire affair if one cares about such a thing as a legitimate sense of imperilment.
Leterrier is set loose to get his foot-pursuit action ya-yas out in a parkour-style rooftop chase that very much summons to mind The Bourne Ultimatum, but the rest of the movie, including a finale in which the Hulk and Abomination lay waste to an entire city block, is very much about Hulk (and Abomination) tossing things about and pounding the holy hell out of one another. In fact, if the Hulk had Internet access and could bookmark his favorite web sites, at the top of the list would surely be CarsAsBoxingGloves.com.
This is all fine and well — the movie’s spell is brief, but harmless. But like a lot of superhero movies, though, The Incredible Hulk reaches a point of pulsing, ultimate stupidity, when it runs out of sensible narrative motivation and then has to figure out a way to cram in a big action, rock-’em, sock-’em showdown regardless. That moment occurs here about 15 minutes from the finale, when Banner convinces General Ross to turn around the helicopter they’re on (above) so that he can fight Abomination. To… I don’t know, save time, he decides to free-fall plummet from several thousand feet. “You don’t have to do this — you don’t even know if you’ll change!” says Betty to Banner. (Given what else the movie has taught us, in the form of an aborted love scene, it makes just as much sense that she should jack him off before he jumps.)
But no, merely because it’s “dramatic,” the movie gives us a lingering kiss between the pair, and then a tumble. Banner hurtles through the air and then smashes down onto the asphalt below, where he emerges from the rubble as the Hulk. Wait… what? So he fully transformed the exact moment before he hit the concrete? Or since he’s the Hulk, Banner too is impervious to injury? I know, I know… who cares. But by cheating on the effects shots that would have explained this very important detail, one is painfully reminded just how entirely fabricated this flung-together set-up and, by extension, this entire finale, is. From there, as the videogame smash-up unfolds before your eyes, the Hulk even learns to talk, if seemingly only to counter the taunting Abomination. Oh, and so that he can deliver his signature line: “Hulk… smash!” Yes, indeed, Hulk, yes indeed. (Universal/Marvel, PG-13, 112 minutes)
Actress Lori Petty makes her directorial debut with the The Poker House, screening in competition at the forthcoming Los Angeles Film Festival, and its 90-second trailer is a very well put-together thing, an effective selling of an autobiographically-tinged tale of shattered adolescence, a la Frank Whaley’s Joe the King or Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth. Set in 1976, and co-starring Selma Blair, Bokeem Woodbine and David Alan Grier, the movie centers around 14-year-old Agnes (Jennifer Lawrence, below left). With a strung-out
mother, a pimp father figure and a home overrun by gamblers, thieves
and johns, Agnes’ life is a tangled struggle of dark days and lonely nights. The narration (“When a girl falls in the city and nobody sees it, did it happen?”) could tip the finished product into over-sentimentalized pap, who knows, but it’s undeniably arresting in short-form here. Nice score from Mike Post, too.
The Los Angeles Film Festival runs from Thursday, June 19 through Sunday, June 29.
Over the course of 10 days and 11 nights, the public is invited to take
advantage of world premieres including independent films and major
studio releases, as well as tribute screenings, outdoor movies,
celebrity-filled red carpets and more. Festival passes and individual tickets are now
available; for more information, click here.
Director Giuseppe Tornatore reunites
with composer Ennio Morricone and actress Kseniya (aka Xenia) Rappoport for the suspenseful film noir The Unknown Woman, which screens at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica on Saturday, June 21, in tandem with a 20th anniversary print of the Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso. The Aero Theatre
is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. Tickets for this movie, as well as other special events, are available through Fandango, but for 24-hour recorded
information on directions and the Aero’s upcoming schedule,
phone (323) 466-FILM.
It seems unlikely if not unfathomable given the first leg or two of his filmography, but it occurred to me a while back that Josh Brolin may be the new Tommy Lee Jones, and not merely because the duo costarred together in No Country for Old Men, and he’s set to portray George Bush in Oliver Stone’s W. No, it’s more that Brolin has clearly become the go-to guy for grizzled Texans and southwesterners in general, a career track that offers up its own assurances of longevity and profitability. In addition to the above-mentioned films, Brolin also worked this angle — quite well, it must be stated — in Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror segment of Grindhouse. Next up on the occupational agenda will be proving that he can pivot from playing salty hard-asses to lampooning his reputation of the same, something Jones did with the Men in Black flicks and (hard swallow, here) Man of the House. Plus Brolin has Diane Lane, too. So that’s pretty sweet.
The heartwarming eighth and final season of Home Improvement, Tim Allen’s Emmy-nominated sitcom about a Mr. Fix-It television personality and the exasperation that he frequently visits upon his loveable brood, hits DVD this month.
For those unfamiliar with the Detroit-set show, Allen stars
as Tim Taylor, the affable, pun-loving host of Tool Time, a Bob Villa-type, do-it-yourself
television program.
(For a brief clip of the show, click here.) His faithful co-host is Al Borland (Richard Karn), and their attractive assistant is the vibrant Heidi (a chipper but surgically enhanced Debbe Dunning). Together with his long-suffering wife Jill (Patricia Richardson), Tim presides over a family comprised of three
rambunctious sons (Zachery Ty
Bryan and Taran Noah Smith are the at-home mainstays, while the older Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who left the series previously, ducks back in for a number of episodes). They live next door to a
never fully glimpsed neighbor, Wilson (Earl Hindman), who dispenses nuggets of
advice from just over a backyard fence that help, when necessary, steer the perpetually mishap-making Tim
toward compromise and apology.
Winding things down, this season finds Tim quitting his job at Tool Time,
his boys setting off to follow their own dreams, and Tim and Jill deciding it’s time for new adventures, and heading off to
Indiana. Al also undergoes big life changes; his mother passes away and he proposes to Trudy (Megan Cavanagh). Guest stars
this year include Oprah Winfrey, Morgan Fairchild and Mario Andretti, and, as Wilson, Hindman finally gets a chance to show his face in the season finale — a just reward for being such a good sport for so many years.
Home Improvement
co-creators Matt Williams and Carmen Finestra previously wrote for iconic ’80s
sitcom The Cosby Show, so their work
retains much of that show’s good-heartedness, if not quite the same aplomb with
which the requisite “very special episodes” are handled (witness the two-part “Love’s Labor Lost,” in which Jill grapples with the possibility of a full hysterectomy). Though originally conceived of as a showcase for Allen’s trademark macho-goofy humor, honed by his experience of more than a decade as a stand-up comedian, Home Improvement would eventually evolve into a much more traditional, staid sitcom. That means stories of diluted familial drama, carried along largely by charisma
and goodwill.
There’s certainly nothing deeply odious or wrong with Home Improvement. But as this collection of the show’s final go-round
reflects, blue-collar inspiration has a certain shelf life. The type of big screen fare that Allen has gone on to — undemanding, pre-chewed entertainment like Wild Hogs and The Santa Clause franchise — prove that he has a keen grasp of his audience and perhaps inherent limitations, but it also serves as an indication of what one gets here: familiarity, microwaved to accompany a microwave dinner or post-supper couch sprawl.
Presented in a 1:33.1 aspect ratio with a Dolby digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack, the final season of Home Improvement comes housed in a cardboard nice slipcover case. With all 28 of the season’s half-hour episodes, plus exclusive DVD bonus features, this four-disc set is an irreplaceable
addition to the collection of any diehard fan of the series, but obviously more of a Netflix rental for those without either kids who might get replay value out of it or a strong rooting interest in the show themselves. A six-minute, season-specific blooper reel kicks things off, and there’s also a retrospective special from 2003, Tim Allen’s User’s Guide to Home Improvement, that gathers Allen, Karn, Hindman and Dunning in front of a live
studio audience to revisit their favorite moments from the show’s run. For a glimpse of the final curtain call, click here; to purchase the set via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. C (Show) B (Disc)
What do you get when you put a jokester, a social misfit and a German whose best friend is a rabbit named Munchkin in the same room? Why, the world’s second most famous high stakes poker tournament, of course. A mockumentary in the spirit of improvisational comedies like Best in Show and This is Spinal Tap, the ensemble comedy The Grand is writer-director Zak Penn’s messy love poem to both card playing and the aspirant Vegas lifestyle in general.
Set in the world of professional poker, the film’s story follows the players as they struggle to get to the final table at the Grand Championship of Poker, held at The Rabbit’s Foot Casino. The Grand was improvised from a detailed treatment co-written by Penn, whose writing credits include X-Men: The Last Stand and the forthcoming The Incredible Hulk, and collaborator Matt Bierman (Urban Legends: Bloody Mary), who also served as executive producer. It stars some of today’s top comedic supporting players, boasting an eclectic cast that includes Woody Harrelson, David Cross, Dennis Farina, Cheryl Hines, Michael McKean, Richard Kind, Chris Parnell, Jason Alexander, Judy Greer and Ray Romano. The film also stars Shannon Elizabeth, Hank Azaria, legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog, less legendary American director Brett Ratner and sitcom vet Gabe Kaplan, himself a poker ace in his (ample?) spare time. Cameos by professional poker players like Phil Gordon, Andy Bellin, Doyle Brunson, Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Hellmuth Jr. and Phil Laak lend the proceedings even further rootedness.
In fact, it’s that sense of legitimate detail that most recommends the movie. Shot at the famous Golden Nugget Casino, and lighting upon all sorts of insider-ish social etiquette humor that comes from sharing cramped, bluff-happy space with a bunch of strangers, The Grand has the twin pillars of setting and tone on its side, thus enabling it to work more or less as a filmic exercise. Though it sometimes creeps over into self-satisfaction, there’s enough fun character work here to qualify the movie as a diversion; Parnell’s clutchy, Asperger’s Syndrome-stricken homebody stands out, as does Cross’ crass attention whore.
Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, The Grand is released by Anchor Bay, who typically does a smash-up job on their DVD presentations and packaging, regardless of the quality of extras. A full house of supplemental material is included here, though, underscoring the personal nature of the title. A sort of meta-audio commentary track with Penn, co-writer Bierman and actor Michael Karnow kicks things off, though their attention to anecdotal detail waxes and wanes. Alternate endings (owing to the fact that the movie’s finale is shot in real time, with a real hand) and a half dozen deleted scenes are included too, along with select scenes with commentary from Harrelson, Hines, Romano and Penn, the constant co-pilot. In addition to the theatrical trailer, there is also a “player profiles” feature that lets home audiences view a mix of material (some in the final cut of the movie, some excised) on eight characters. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B+ (Disc)
John Cusack got his political ya-yas out recently with the limited release of War, Inc., coming soon to DVD. Now he’s taking more specific aim at John McCain in this 30-second spot, funded by MoveOn.org. A couple apolitical thoughts on the piece: First, what’s with the four quick flashes early in the ad? You gotta build to that stuff, kids. Secondly, all those cigarettes are finally starting to take a toll on Cusack’s vocal timbre.
Oh, forgot to mention — one thing I liked about The Lather Effect? That it subtly acknowledges the formulaic nature of its conceit and embraces the casual, offhand clichés that we often lazily lean on while talking with good friends, while also thumbing its nose at other tired genre markers, in the form of one character greeting another’s lewd proclamation thusly: “Good to know you’re still the needle off the record player!”
