Monthly Archives: June 2008

Nancy Travis Reflects on Life as an Axe Murderer

Interviews

It’s been 15 years, but for Nancy Travis, So I Married an Axe Murderer is still a scarring experience… literally, actually. Just out on an air-quote special edition DVD, timed to coincide with the theatrical release of The Love Guru, which includes a code for the download of eight free songs from the movie’s bestselling soundtrack, the 1993 film stars Mike Myers stars as Charlie MacKenzie, a San Francisco poet who meets the girl of his dreams, Harriet Michaels (Travis), when he stops to pick up some haggis for his parents at a butcher shop where Harriet works. Although neurotically commitment-phobic in the past (dumping one girlfriend because she “smelled like vegetable beef soup,” for instance), Charlie thinks that Harriet could be the one. His mother, May (Brenda Fricker), and best friend, cop Tony (Anthony LaPaglia), however, help feed Charlie’s worst instincts when Harriet’s circumstantial connection to a series of slayings makes him begin to wonder if she could be an axe-wielding serial killer. Nevertheless, after those fears are momentarily quelled, Charlie pops the question, leading to a wild honeymoon where all is eventually revealed.

Calling in from Los Angeles, Travis took some time recently to field a couple questions about her experience on the film (a quick clip is available here), and one can read between the lines as they may. The chat is excerpted below.

Brent Simon: You’d done a couple comedies prior to this — was it the Three Men and a Baby films that really opened things up for you?

Nancy Travis: I think even earlier than that, I was kicking around New York a while, and first got a break doing commercials. And then I did Three Men and a Little Lady, Married to the Mob and Eight Men Out all at the same time, and that started to really open things up more. I actually maybe think it was Married to the Mob, in which I played a comedic caricature, that opened things up. But everything led to the next thing — there was no bolt of lightning where everyone suddenly said, “Oh, get her!” You could even go so far as saying the first sitcom I ever did opened up a whole comedic avenue as well. And right before Axe Murderer I was doing The Vanishing, a very intense horror movie, and I literally drove from that location to begin shooting Axe Murderer.

BS: To beautiful San Francisco, which plays an integral part in the movie. Did you shoot all of it there, or were you back in Los Angeles some as well?

NT: All of it was really shot there. We were there three months, and it was fantastic.

BS: Does that make a big difference for an actor, being on location? Or does it depend on the movie?

NT: I don’t know, I think for an actor it’s more interesting and fun. And often, because you’re away from your own home environment, your whole focus is on the film. But I think I’ve seen just as many things shot almost exclusively in studios that are just as good and interesting.

BS: How tricky was it trying to play different tonalities, because your character is seen, through the lens of Mike’s character, as quite different at certain points in the film, but you don’t want to bait those things too obviously.

NT: Yeah, it’s a tricky thing to balance, and often we did various takes of my
reactions to things, just to see how far we could push that limit.

BS: Mike came out of Saturday Night Live, which, despite all the camaraderie, is still an intensively competitive environment, with everyone jostling to get face time, and get their sketches on the air. Was he more relaxed with So I Married an Axe Murderer, or still really driven?

NT: It was his leading man debut. He’d already done [Wayne’s World], so he was already a movie star, and this script came along, and the man who eventually became my husband (Robert Fried) is the producer, and it was hard to get Mike to commit to do the movie because it was a leading man and not a character. And I think to help him feel (long pause) comfortable, he created the role of his father. The studio wanted to cast an actor to play that role, and Mike really wanted to do it. They brought in a make-up artist to do all this prosthetic make-up, and they made him screen test as the father, and that ends up being some of the most memorable and charming scenes in the movie.

BS: I’ve talked with Mike before about his process of testing out his characters in live settings — 30 minutes of scripted material, 30 minutes of improvisation, which obviously isn’t the case here.

NT: This was a movie that shows a side of him that no one ever really saw before — it’s a certain vulnerability that he has in the movie that you don’t really get to see. It was a dangerous place for him to go as an actor, and yet possibly one of the more rewarding.

BS: Was his angst outwardly manifested on set?

NT: First of all, I have a lot of admiration for him. I think he’s incredibly talented, and has an instinct about what is funny and what he does that is funny that a lot of people don’t have. Mike did a rewrite on the script and it was his idea to set it in San Francisco with the whole coffee bar craze. And he did a lot in terms of creating a lot of the characters and plot of the movie. So he had quite a hefty hand in it, and I think with that goes a lot of responsibilty and nervous tension as to how it’s all going to turn out. And I think that was tough for him.

BS: So what’s your verdict on the infamous ghost child from Three Men and a Baby?

NT:
You know, I denied it for so long, and came up with excuses for what it
could possibly be. And then someone said, “You should just really look
it, it’s really weird.” So I rented the movie and it looks like a
ghost-child. I mean, every excuse that I gave seemed to fall by the
wayside. Either that, or it’s the greatest marketing ploy in the
history of moviemaking. We shot that in L.A. and in England, and a
little bit that we shot in New York, and the piece that we shot on the
soundstage is the piece that is the ghost-child.

BS: Wrapping up, back to Axe Murderer, so how was working in a butcher shop?

NT: Oh God, believe it or not I went to a butcher shop and did research, quote-unquote, and the one thing the butcher told me was, “Cutting meat, there’s nothing to it — all you have to do is remember not to look up from the knife and the meat, keep your eyes on the knife.” And that was the one thing I took away with me from my training, and sure enough, the first day of shooting I’m cutting the meat and Mike Myers walks into the butcher shop, and as I’m cutting the meat I look up to say my line and cut my finger. So then I was yelling, “Cut, cut!” and literally meaning cut. So we stopped production, they rushed me to the hospital, I got stitches, the whole thing. I still have a little scar.

To view the film’s special edition trailer, click here; to purchase So I Married an Axe Murderer on DVD, meanwhile, click here.

The Love Guru Sings About Work, Sex and Drugs

Ephemera

In addition to cheekily assaying Eastern-influenced self-help culture, The Love Guru also lets Mike Myers get his musical ya-yas out. The movie opens with a version of the theme song from 9 to 5, works in a scrupulous, sitar-influenced cover of the 1990 acoustic shut-up-and-fuck-me ballad “More than Words,” from Extreme (right down to a mimicking of the moves from the shot-in-the-round music video), and closes with a Bollywood version of Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker” under the end credits. Yes, seriously.

Fox News on Obama: “Terrorist Fist Jab?”

Irritations, Politics

Fox News long ago devolved into a broken-limbed, blinkered, self-congratulatory parody of itself, but they may have outdone themselves with their latest bit of whack-ass fear-mongering. During the June 6 edition of America’s Pulse, host E.D. Hill threw it to a commercial by teasing an upcoming discussion segment on nonverbal communication, and specifically Barack Obama‘s celebration of securing the Democratic presidential nomination, thusly: “A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently.” In the ensuing discussion with Janine Driver — whom Hill introduced as “a body language expert” — Hill at no point explained her previous reference to “a terrorist fist jab,” all of which raises the question of how we feel when the freedom of the press collides with tactics that are the moral equivalence of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

The Happening Happens Not To Be Screening Much

Irritations, Musings

Because 20th Century Fox is going for their collective corporate masters degree in radio silence and media manipulation, they didn’t send out invites for M. Night Shyamalan’s new film. In fact, they’re holding two screenings of The Happening today on their lot, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., but I’ve been caught up in other things, forgot to reach out and prod them to confirm, and now just have too much else going on today to drive across town and wreck the rest of my schedule.

They’re usually pretty decent about ‘fessing up to these “opt-in” affairs, Fox, but I’ve had a pair of other folks with legitimate reviewing interests tell me they were either turned down for admittance, or flatly told that the movie wasn’t at all screening. I can’t get a firm read on what this means for The Happening specifically — trying to just run up the opening weekend gross since they know/feel they have a turkey, or protecting some arguable narrative twist — since Fox’s new modus operandi seems to be to angle for the quietest release possible anyway. (Exhibitors were also forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement in advance of screening the movie, a highly unusual and punitive move.) There may soon be a day when the studio just accidentally forgets to ship prints of a film, and releases something straight to DVD not necessarily because they meant to all along, but because someone using the logical extension of their publicity rubric figures that’s a good way to slip a film past an audience as well.

Comedy Central’s Home Grown

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

From its inception, cable channel Comedy Central has willfully cultivated a following amongst the recreational hippie lettuce crowd, both through word and deed. In this regard, then, this DVD was a long time coming. A great little grab-bag compilation title, Comedy Central’s Home Grown collects a handful of full episodes of some of its series, throws them together with sketches from past shows like Drawn Together and Chappelle’s Show, and rounds things out with twisted Animation Show shorts and other fare like “Spiders on Drugs.”

The material here is partitioned into “buds” (full episodes), “stems” (sketches) and “seeds” (a random assortment of green-friendly fare). The former fare consists of episodes of Strangers with Candy, TV Funhouse, Reno 911!, The Sarah Silverman Program and Root of All Evil. Of these, Silverman‘s “Face Wars” is probably the best, and legitimately edgiest; it finds her donning black-face to better understand the plight of African-Americans, and her two gay pals Brian Posehn and Steve Agee grappling with some potent medical marijuana after their personal dealer gets busted. Silverman’s good with dirty-talk shock value (“Did you eat a fart?” she asks her sister’s cop boyfriend), but she also pushes envelopes with the best of them, as shown here. TV Funhouse seems like a low-rent, less gleefully subversive version of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, from 20 years earlier, with only black-and-white claymation segments really soaring. Comedian Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil, a sort of comedic oral-argument litigant showdown, pits weed against beer, to amusing effect.

The other odds and ends offer up their own hit-and-miss amusement as well. Of the three puppet-fronted Crank Yankers segments, the four-minute “Badonkadonk,” in which a guy tries to place a dirty ad in the Village Voice, is easily the best. Other bits include sketches from Viva Variety, Drawn Together, Chappelle’s Show (no Prince basketball stories, alas) and more. The most truly zonked inclusion, however, is a 25-minute episode of the PBS series The Joy of Painting, with Afroed, sing-song-voiced host Bob Ross. It’s easy to imagine the belongings of someone’s roommate getting ruined by fingerpaint after this.

Housed in a white Amray case and presented on a single disc with a picture of an apple bong on the front, Comedy Central’s Home Grown is of course presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with a Dolby digital audio track to handle the meager aural demands of the material herein. Special mention should be made of the lengths gone to in order to preserve the (cough, cough) “inspiration” of this collection; in addition to the aforementioned sectional groupings, the DVD’s menu screen gently undulate, creating a sensation of dazed wonderment if one stares long enough (or has the right accouterments, one presumes). The back cover of the disc also contains the following consumer advisory: best served with nachos and Funyuns. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Collection) B+ (Disc)

Roman Polanski Documentary Sheds New Light on Rape Case

Interviews

On February 23, 2003, an op-ed article about director Roman Polanski’s U.S. fugitive status appeared in the Los Angeles Times. What was most remarkable about it was not the fact that it was written by Samantha Geimer, the now 45-year-old woman whose sexual encounter as a 13-year-old with the Polish-born filmmaker triggered 1977 rape charges and a high-profile Los Angeles indictment. No, it was the fact that Geimer, the perceived “victim” of Polanski’s actions, was making the case that his Oscar-nominated film The Pianist should be judged on its own merits. Two days later, Geimer followed up the article with an appearance on Larry King Live. “I got over it [the sexual encounter] a long time ago,” she told King. “I wasn’t prepared to carry a lot of bad feelings with me and further damage my life and continue the trauma of it.” Among those watching Geimer’s appearance on the program with attorney Lawrence Silver was documentary filmmaker Marina Zenovich, also now 45. That was ultimately the spark that led to Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which, after screening to acclaim at this year’s Sundance and Cannes film festivals, premieres tonight on HBO and later hits theaters courtesy of ThinkFilm. For the full feature interview with Zenovich, from FilmStew, click here.

Kung Fu Panda Tops Box Office

Box Office

There’s been a low-key martial arts vibe bubbling up in arthouse theaters over the past few weeks, what with David Mamet’s Redbelt and Danny McBride’s The Foot Fist Way each hitting theaters in the past month, and all it took to deliver mondo box office was a little animation. Powered by voice work from Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman and Angelina Jolie,
Kung Fu Panda made an authoritative statement, grabbing the top weekend spot with an estimated $60 million in receipts. Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess with the Zohan slotted second, with an estimated $40 million.

Placing third, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull grossed another $22.8 million; the fourth film in the iconic period adventure franchise has now grossed $253 million domestically and another $267 million overseas. Sex and the City, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, pulled in another $21.3 million over the weekend, pushing its second-week cumulative total to just under $100 million. Horror thriller The Strangers,
meanwhile, added 11 screens and finished fifth for the weekend, tallying $9.3 million, good for $37.6 million overall, in its second week of release.

Rounding out the top 10 were Iron Man ($7.5 million, $288.9 overall); The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian ($5.5 million, $125.8 overall); Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz’s What Happens in Vegas ($3.4 million, $72.2 overall); Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s Baby Mama ($779,000, $57.9 million overall); and Patrick Dempsey’s Made of Honor ($775,000, $44.7 million overall). In limited release, meanwhile, John Cusack’s sprawling satire War, Inc. added 21 screens and pulled in another $47,600, to pull its limited, three-week total to around $130,000. Writer-director Steve Conrad’s quietly funny The Promotion, meanwhile, opened on six screens, to $28,900.

The Foot Fist Way Employs Talking Heads*

Musings, Posterized!

Paramount Vantage’s ad-buy promotional campaign for The Foot Fist Way — a film for which I didn’t much care for, though through no particular fault of star Danny McBride — is a pretty smart thing, utilizing face-identified quotes from big screen colleagues Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, Patton Oswalt, Seth Rogen and even the director’s father, Paul Hill. Some are semi-earnest pitches, most are tongue-in-cheek, but, individually and collectively, they give off a guerrilla-cool vibe, which is exactly the right thing for this movie, which is trying to tap the same low-fi vein that made audience-owned hits out of first Napoleon Dynamite and then last autumn’s Juno. The original poster is graphically catchy — it’s got a good color scheme and tagline — but this concept should have been pumped even earlier as the official second-round poster.

* not the band

Jenna Fischer Sparkles on The Late Show

Ephemera

Jenna Fischer appeared on The Late Show With David Letterman last night, in promotion of The Promotion, a quiet but good little movie that could use the extra push. After joking with Letterman about the slightly more revealing dress that she opted out of, Fischer talked a bit about recovering from her back injury of last year, taking up jogging, and picking oranges from a tree in the yard of the neighbor of The Office costar Steve Carell, whose house gives her a nice mile-and-a-half route. She also talked about growing up in the Missouri Ozarks, and the popularity of Bagnall Dam and “Party Cove,” all of which culminated with an impression of an animatronic man who guards a mock outhouse (one of those regional things, don’tcha know). She’s still something of a newbie on the talk show circuit, but Fischer’s top-shelf skill with comedically-inflected delivery extends to all manner of anecdotes, something I can attest to, having interviewed her this past week. More on that to follow in the coming days…

Kung Fu Panda

Film Reviews

Kung Fu Panda, the latest animated effort from the folks at DreamWorks, is an energetic and surprisingly colorful family adventure tale that trumps formula through sheer force of personality. Obviously owing a debt to Joseph Campbell, the movie tells the story of a big-hearted panda bear who follows his bliss, and discovers the unlikely hero within himself.

Enthusiastic, big and more than a little clumsy, Po (voiced by Jack Black) is the biggest fan of kung fu around — he has vivid, participatory dreams in which he stars as a swaggering, heroic figure, and foes “go blind from exposure to pure awesomeness.” Unfortunately, none of this exactly comes in handy while working every day in the noodle shop of his very practical father, Mr. Ping (voiced by James Hong). Po’s dreams unexpectedly become reality when he’s chosen to fulfill an ancient prophecy by the aged Oogway (Randall Duk Kim, more or less doing the Yoda thing). Tapped to defend his city and learn the secret of the sacred “Dragon Scroll,” which will grant him unlimited power, Po joins the world of elite kung fu and studies alongside his idols, the legendary “Furious Five” — Tigress (Angelina Jolie,
purring proudly), Monkey (voiced by Jackie Chan), Mantis (voiced by Seth
Rogen), Viper (voiced by Lucy Liu) and Crane (voiced by David Cross, of
Arrested Development).

With the looming threat of an attack by the vengeful, all-powerful Tai Lung (voiced by Ian McShane), Oogway’s decision doesn’t sit well with his former pupil, and the trainer of the Furious Five, Master Shifu (voiced by Dustin Hoffman). He had envisioned one of his charges inheriting the mantle of leadership, certainly not a pudgy panda bear. Shifu tries to make life for Po so miserable that he’ll quit, but before they know it, bitter snow leopard Tai Lung — Shifu’s adopted son — is headed their way, and it’s up to Po to defend everyone from the oncoming threat. Putting his heart (and considerable girth) into the task, Po tries to live up to everyone’s expectations of him, and the unlikely hero ultimately finds that his greatest weaknesses might turn out to be strengths.

You wouldn’t necessarily know it from a lot of the advance promotional clips, but Black’s intentionally overbearing voice work– which completes a circular lap of total investment and then does another 180 degrees for good measure — turns out to be a good match for Po, who compensates for his nervousness through excess (both eating and talking). There’s something infectious about his indefatigability and lack of self-pity; Po doesn’t eventually succeed merely by his wits, physical skill or pure happenstance, but rather a combination of all three, something that seems to ring true to real life.

Leaning a bit on Asian art and animation style, Kung Fu Panda eschews the rounded angles and cuddly style of a lot of youth-skewing animated flicks, and is better and more intriguing and visually engaging for it. Co-directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne do a good job of balancing slapstick comedic elements with fast-paced action, while never straying far from the core story, or awkwardly cramming in referential modern gags or bathroom humor. Shifu and the Furious Five, too, are nicely drawn; while the latter each have different feelings about being passed over for Po, the point is that they have these feelings and work through them, they aren’t reduced to overly broad, two-dimensional slapstick sounding boards.

While the reasons for Tai Lung’s bitterness are well sketched, there isn’t necessarily a strong sense of imperilment with respect to the town as a whole. In fact, it’s never quite clear, apart from his physical brutishness and some hastily pronounced expository balderdash, what real threat Tai Lung presents; he’s an antagonist because of his snarling discontent and blinding personal ambition, not any true opposition.

If one wants to further nitpick, the action match-ups — particularly the finale, with Po having progressed a bit in skill — aren’t necessarily based on any principles of counterweight. No, Shifu’s training technique is instead just based on having Po imagine food, and then dangling these tangible rewards just out of his reach. (Somewhat weirdly, there’s a silly but important mystical finger hold that seems nipped from the ending of Hot Rod — or vice versa, since it’s just as easy to assume, given the typical gestation of an
animated film — and also pops up in the trailer’s for this week’s You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.) Still, the visual pop and thrill of these action sequences don’t disappoint — indeed, among the high points of the entire movie, alongside a bridge-set battle between Tai Lung and the Furious Five, is a wild, dumpling-inspired training montage, which could play favorably alongside scenes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That’s enough for kids and tweens, certainly, and parents won’t be suffering through this with rolled eyes, either. (Paramount/DreamWorks, PG, 91 minutes)

Is Keira Knightley a Fair Lady?

Casting About

Eliza Doolittle is set for another big screen makeover. Keira Knightley is eying a remake of My Fair Lady for producer Duncan Kenworthy and Columbia Pictures, according to Variety. While retaining the original musical’s score and setting, the filmmakers plan to adapt Alan Jay Lerner’s book more fully for the screen by drawing additional material from  George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, which served as the source material for the original film.

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

Film Reviews

Admired and respected as one of the world’s great film artisans, Roman
Polanski has led a life full of its own dramatically cinematic highs
and lows. Now a happily settled and seemingly at-peace family man, he’s
been a Holocaust survivor, a brash raconteur and l’enfant terrible,
an Oscar-winning director, a shockingly sudden widower and a fugitive
felon. It’s the latter description, of course, that still hangs most
heavily over him — the result of a 1977 guilty plea for unlawful
sexual intercourse with a minor — and that’s the subject of the new
documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, premiering this week on HBO.

Chock
full of infrequently reported intriguing details (the incident took
place at Jack Nicholson’s house, while he was out of town) and some
speculative sidebar analysis (the prosecutor ruminates on “corruption
winning out over innocence in or over water” in all of Polanski’s films
up to that point), Wanted and Desired
is a fascinating exploration of a complicated case that is still hugely
misunderstood. Serving as both a differential snapshot of the law from
a bygone era and a warts-and-all exploration of the case and its
bizarre, messy aftermath (European press tended to see Polanski as a tragic, brilliant figure, and forgive his faults; one American writer covering the case called the director a “malignant, twisted dwarf”), the movie opens with a statement that at
first blush seems a self-pitying stretch, with the filmmaker subject, in an archival interview snippet, comparing
himself to “a mouse that’s being toyed with by an abominable cat.”
Remarkably, while not excusing the crime, director Marina Zenovich
slowly shows that to be more or less true.

Like many, Zenovich  at first knew only the barest
details of the case: contracted by a European fashion magazine,
Polanski had arranged for a private photo shoot with the then
13-year-old Geimer, signed off on by Geimer’s mother. Charged with a litany of felony counts, including providing drugs to a
minor, he later plead guilty to one count, and fled the country before
sentencing. What Zenovich found out, though, was that Polanski actually served six weeks in Chino State Penitentiary for psychological
analysis, as part of a strange, elongated pas de
trois between legal counsel and adjudicator.

This isn’t a revelation in and of itself, of course, just an underreported fact from the past, but how the case arrived at that point in an era of indeterminate sentencing —
where Polanski could have been sent to jail from anywhere from six
months to 50 years — is a twisted story of play-acted justice. For that, Polanski needs a foil, and while Wanted and
Desired is indeed awash in grey in the picture it delivers of
Polanski, one of the more interesting characters that emerges is the
judge in the case. Laurence Rittenband had previously shown an
inclination for the spotlight, requesting and receiving oversight of
paternity suits against Spencer Tracy and Marlon Brando, among other
celebrity cases. His strange and overly solicitous courtship of the
media turned what was already a circus — with European press, not
bound by victim confidentiality rules, descending on Geimer’s school
and outing her identity — into something even more surreal and fatally flawed. (As an interesting sidebar, lifelong bachelor
Rittenbrand also had at least two girlfriends — “one for the cooking and one for the other stuff, he once explained to a friend — one of whom was 30 years
younger than him.)

A
riveting examination of the story behind the sound-bite, Wanted and Desired is superbly constructed with archival footage and modern day interviews, and is notable for the unanimity it
locates amidst all the murky morality of the situation. Even prosecutor
Roger Gunson, a straight-arrow Mormon who would eventually publicly side with
defense attorney Doug Dalton in some of the more explosive allegations
regarding the handling of the case, says that under the circumstances
he’s not surprised Polanski fled. As for Polanski, one can abhor
the crime, but still glimpse the pathology that informed it, dating
back to the brutal 1969 murder of his pregnant fiancée, Sharon Tate. As
he revealingly says in a rare interview with Clive James from 1984
which bookends the film, “Well, different people deal with things in
different ways — some go to whorehouses, some go to monasteries.” (HBO/ThinkFILM, unrated, 99 minutes)

Transsiberian Anything But Chilly

Trailer Watch

The 90-second trailer for Transsiberian, writer-director Brad Anderson’s Hitchcockian thriller releasing July 18 from First Look, conjures up memories of just how effective Session 9 and The Machinist were as unremittingly stark, anxiety-provoking mood pieces.

The movie stars Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer as an American couple who decide to take the long way home from their recent sojourn in Asia, boarding the legendary express train from Beijing to Moscow. On their way, they meet another couple (Eduardo Noriega and Kate Mara), with whom they quickly form a bond as fellow travelers away from home. When Harrelson accidentally gets separated from Mortimer at a stopover, she begins to realize that their new friends aren’t exactly who or what they seem to be; more danger surfaces when a deceitful Russian detective (Ben Kingsley) arrives, asking questions about a heroin smuggling scheme.

The exoticness of the setting — its snowy landscapes and grim sense of containment — is a big part of what helps sell Transsiberian, certainly, but Anderson (who’s been busy between full-length features with work on HBO’s The Wire and Sounds Like, an entry in the Masters of Horror anthology series) is an ace with tone, and even if the last five seconds of the trailer seems to tip its hand a bit, this looks like to be a solid genre base knock.

Clint Eastwood Tells Spike Lee to “Shut His Face”

Amusements

Clint Eastwood has dropped n-u-t-s on fellow filmmaker Spike Lee, after the latter director excoriated him for not including any African-American actors in the battle scenes in his 2006 films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. “A guy like him should shut his face,” says Eastwood in an interview with The Guardian, a newspaper in the United Kingdom. I’m suddenly transported back to third grade: “Fight, fight, fight!”

Clip Art: The Boondocks Hits DVD

Ephemera

The second season of The Boondocks — Aaron McGruder’s politically charged comic strip turned animated series, not to be confused with Troy Duffy’s The Boondock Saints — hits DVD on June 10, with all 13 domestically broadcast episodes, plus two exclusive episodes too hot to air in the United States, as well as audio commentaries and other bonus features. To access clips from the show, click here, here and here. To purchase the set via Amazon, meanwhile, click here.

Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Its cover presents an amusingly airbrushed portrait of emcee Vince Vaughn, microphone in hand, but the Vaughn on display inside Wild West Comedy Show is a puffy-faced, bleary-eyed and at times ground-down road warrior. Of course, he’s also still Vince Vaughn — which is to say a wryly upbeat chatterbox, forever pressing the action as well as the flesh, moving things forward in an inimitably devilish way. Inspired by a charity benefit slapped together during the filming of The Break-Up in his hometown of Chicago, Vaughn hand-picked four Los Angeles-based comedians to take their show out on the road to regional audiences, playing 30 gigs in 30 nights. He joined them as an emcee, along with special guests like Justin Long, old Swingers pal Jon Favreau and Wedding Crashers costar Keir O’Donnell, and the result — part comedy concert flick, part road movie, part honest examination of what informs comedians’ lives — is a fun, unique little curio.

The comedians themselves have fairly different sensibilities, and the movie benefits from these contrasts. Self-deprecating, Egyptian-born Ahmed Ahmed (above, to Vaughn’s left) centers a good bit of his act on stereotypes and living as an Arab-American in a post-September 11 world, and recounts an amazing story of how he was in fact detained and arrested at the airport in Las Vegas by saying, “This [was] God’s way of saying write some new material.” The observational humor on the absurdities of modern living and social interaction that form the bedrock of the act of waiter Sebastian Maniscalco (third from left) are influenced by his Midwestern values. Italian alpha male Bret Ernst (third from right) specializes in high-energy storytelling, though he has a dark secret. Rolly-polly John Carapulo (center, in the white shirt and cap), meanwhile, focuses his acerbic wit and parrot-sounding squawk on frequently dirty tales of misanthropy, though he admits it masks a lingering insecurity.

Bits with country crooner Dwight Yoakam, who guests in Bakersfield, and the legendary Buck Owens highlight Vaughn’s deep appreciation of Americana, as does his insistence (and joy) at booking Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to ’74. Producer and former A Christmas Story star Peter Billingsley pops up to share the stage with Vaughn a few nights, though most of the interstitial, improv-laden patter invovles Long, O’Donnell and Favreau, who come and go as schedules permit. Additional shading is achieved through interviews with the comedians’ parents (a smart inclusion by director Ari Sandel), but the biggest hairpin narrative turn comes in the form of the sudden, real-life intrusion of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina in Texas and New Orleans. After scratching venues and rescheduling a couple shows as relief benefits on the fly, the comedians, somewhat begrudgingly, visit an evacuee camp to pass out tickets, and find themselves transformed.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Wild West Comedy Show comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, preserving the aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition. In addition to the theatrical trailer and previews of Semi-Pro and a couple other New Line titles, there’s a hearty serving of supplemental material here that underscores the project’s labor-of-love roots. First up are two audio commentaries — one with the four comedians, in which they recount their good fortune and praise Vaughn as an all-around nice guy while reliving the road experience, and another with Billingsley and Vaughn, longtime pals. In fact, if one toggles to the left on the first bonus menu selection, a clip of the after-school special (on steroids, with Billingsley as the rage-o-holic and Vaughn as his concerned pal!) on which they first met appears as an Easter egg.

A whopping 53 minutes of extra material finds Maniscalco recounting his humorously misguided attempt at Hollywood takeover (sending out a head shot to casting agencies announcing his impending arrival in town, but with no contact information); there are also segments on the show’s musical Grease send-up, the “Dinner for Two” sketch with Favreau and Long, and O’Donnell being recruited to join the festivities at the tour’s third show, in Santa Ana. A six-minute making-of featurette delves into the editorial process a bit, while a five-minute, tour-focused segment details how no one save executive producer John Isbell had previous experience with a road show of this sort. Mixing after-the-fact interviews with lots of great, captured-in-the-moment material (especially funny is Vaughn sarcastically bitching about the grind of early morning, turn-out-the-audience radio show interviews, but then getting warmed up and downright giddy over his own responses) really helps give a nice, fact-checked, honest overview of the entire production. Ten more minutes of behind-the-scenes material chiefly spotlights the cramped tour bus living conditions and stir craziness that can induce, with Carapulo steaming over someone having eaten his sandwich and Ernst joking about the “100% Muppet” blanket that graces his “sleeping coffin.” While the warmth of a shower at home is nice, the cumulative effect is almost enough to make one wish they had the opportunity to run away and join Vaughn’s crazy traveling circus. B+ (Movie) A- (Disc)

Mat Hoffman’s Tribute to Evel Knievel

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Working in conjunction with BMX legend Mat Hoffman and some of the best
stunt riders in the world, Johnny Knoxville hosts a super stunt
spectacular in homage to the late, great Evel Knievel. A fittingly over-the-top doff of the cap (and cape) to a unique American icon, Mat Hoffman’s Tribute to Evel Knievel is a nutty compendium of bike jumps and stunts that ends with blood streaming down Knoxville’s leg, from a torn urethra.

Gathering in Oklahoma at a massive, bulldozed dirt track seemingly in the middle of nowhere, this outrageous and uncensored tribute is co-emceed by Hoffman and Knoxville, with the former helping oversee jump particulars (along with stunt coordinator “Spanky” Spangler) and Knoxville offering up his own cackling, awed commentary. The participants include MotoX superstar Travis Pastrana, Trigger Gumm, Allan Cooke, Davin Halford, Jeff Schneider, Scott Palmer and Mike Hook, a midget who straps on for a record-setting tandem jump. Director Spike Jonze also stops by for a bit, and tries a BMX back-flip into a giant metal bin of foam cubes.

Most of the stunts top even that in entertainment value. Schneider attempts the same aforementioned feat riding a heavy Harley Davidson bike, and Gumm — sporting a cape that reads “Fuck It” and working with a five-foot ramp — runs through a litany of distance jumps, including a record-setting 69-foot back-flip. The nuttiest moment, though, may be Palmer’s planned dive out of an airplane without a parachute. After freestyle air-surfing for about 40 seconds, he links up with another jumper who latches onto him and rigs the pair up in mid-air.

The final segment finds Knoxville (a self-professed motorcycle newbie) attempting repeated back-flips, the last of which ends with the bike coming down on his… well, junk. He gets up, but moments later feels a strange trickle down his leg; the handlebar has torn his urethra, so he’s packaged in an ambulance, wailing that he’s injured the only body part that means anything to him. All in all, buoyed by some nice period piece footage, this lark of a title is a crazy, cathartic tribute to Knievel, the man whose stunts inspired not only the movie Hot Rod, but also an entire generation of daredevils and jackasses alike.

Housed in a red Amray case that gives the DVD some extra pop on one’s shelf, the disc is presented in widescreen, and comes with a Dolby digital stereo audio track. While it only runs 47 minutes, there’s over an hour of supplemental bonus content to bolster the title’s rental and replay value, including mounds of rowdy behind-the-scenes jostling, plenty of heartfelt thoughts on Knievel from the participants here, still photo and audio footage from Knoxville’s painful hospital visit and a clutch of music videos. There’s also a tattoo montage, a retrospective of Hoffman’s trailblazing BMX career, a photo gallery and more. B- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

A Semi-Pro Non-Review

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews, Irritations

When is a DVD review not a DVD review? When, in lieu of the double-disc version of a release, you’re sent the bare-bones single-disc version, which is what recently happened with Semi-Pro, releasing today. So instead of my thoughts on the “Four Days in Flint” featurette, the look at the one-hit wonder (“Love Me Sexy”) featured prominently in the film, the presumably included Old Spice in-character ads, or the behind-the-scenes footage with Bill Walton, Bob Costas and the cast, I instead merely refer you to my previous review. And mention that Will Ferrell’s shorts on the movie’s slipcover are pointedly shorter than those of his costars.

The Happening Touts Scarlet Letter

Musings

There’s no doubt that the second trailer and re-jiggered ad campaign for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening is a much better, more effective selling of the film, to whatever degree it lives or dies on its own. Portions of it summon to mind Will Smith’s recent, post-apocalyptic I Am Legend (perhaps to its comparative detriment, perhaps to its benefit — too soon to tell). I noticed an interesting thing about the mass-market billboards, though — in the righthand corner, the MPAA ratings box and information is distinguished by a red R rating. This is a subtle way of giving the movie some edge, cleaving Shyamalan from the recent taint of his reputation, and saying, “Look, this really isn’t another Lady in the Water… we don’t know what the hell that was about either.” It’ll be interesting to see how The Happening fares in its box office showdown against The Incredible Hulk next week, though instinct tells me (no matter its mixed buzz) not to bet against the PG-13 flick, this past weekend’s robust returns on The Strangers notwithstanding.

The Comeback Id: Vanity Fair on Bill Clinton

Musings, Politics

For those looking to cast their eyes past the horizon of the Democratic primary battle, Todd Purdum has penned, for Vanity Fair, a fascinating piece on former President Bill Clinton which examines his successes and excesses, particularly since leaving office. “It is beyond dispute that Clinton’s foundation has done worthy work
around the world,” Purdum writes, “funneling low-cost anti-retroviral drugs to more than
a million AIDS patients, shining the singular
power of a presidential spotlight on the good work of others, and
raising millions of dollars for practical programs in places much of
the world’s power establishment never bothers with.
But it is also beyond dispute that Clinton has blended the
altruistic efforts of his philanthropy with the private business
interests of some of his biggest donors in ways that are surpassingly
sloppy, if not unseemly, for any former president.”

That means a shined light on rubbed elbows with billionaire raconteur Ron Burkle, occasional movie producer/Elizabeth Hurley impregnator Steve Bing and InfoUSA CEO Vinod Gupta, as well as smoke-if-not-fire intimations of other rubbed body parts with Gina Gershon, Barbara Streisand, Eleanor Mondale and a handful of other nameless women in positions of power, wealth and nominal fame. Purdum also ruminates in much less sexy fashion about possible mood changes and
loss of stamina in Clinton following his 2004 quadruple-bypass heart surgery. It’s not so much a firmly conclusory piece as it is an exploration of the great, inimitable shade of grey that dominantly makes up both Clinton the man and politician, but it is well written, reasonably speculative, and does provide a glimpse behind the curtain as it relates to some of the proxy campaign shortcomings of Hillary Clinton, particularly the simultaneous disbelief and disdain for Obama’s meteoric national rise.

Incidentally, it’s a no-brainer that there’s a great big screen biopic waiting to be done about Clinton. It’d be a case full of dynamite if they wanted to do it right, but Tom Hanks or maybe even John Travolta — who has the proper glad-handing charm and same gift of sartorial weight control, and previously channeled Clinton in the roman a clef Primary Colors — could do a smash-up job. Maybe Tom Wilkinson, too. Of course, you’d need to be about 20 more years removed, I guess, so who does that leave? Ed Norton and Christian Bale have shown a chameleonic ability to disappear into character. Hugh Jackman also has the right rakish charisma, if he could put on some pounds. Hopefully not Zac Efron, though, that’s all I’m saying.