I caught a TV ad today for Nicolas Cage’s Bangkok Dangerous, and joltingly realized that it’s becoming more and more likely this movie actually exists. Since Lionsgate is again hewing to its seemingly standard policy of not screening the movie in advance (see Disaster Movie, The Midnight Meat Train), I had fallen into a half-belief that the film was a hallucination on my part — that the trailer was pieced together from National Treasure outtakes and maybe footage from a honeymoon vacation and the Asian swing of an international press tour Cage did with the aforementioned film.
Professionally, when a movie isn’t screening in advance, sometimes I’ll still nab a review on opening day (see above examples), but, on a more personal level, I find that mentally I start to write these films off, and just discount their very existence. Wonkish, profit-protecting studio number-crunchers would obviously disagree, but I tend to think that a sizeable portion of the film-going public actually thinks like this as well. Yes, they see the TV ads and billboards, but when the free-media onslaught includes absolutely no reviews, they smell an attempted put-on.
For English beauty Sophia Myles, 2006 represented a sort of coming-out party, with the period piece romance Tristan & Isolde and the vampire-and-werewolf action sequel Underworld: Evolution releasing within a week of one another, and a plum role in Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential following five months later. Myles’ latest film is writer-director David Mackenzie’s Mister Foe, in which she stars opposite Jamie Bell as Kate Breck, a middle-management hotel employee who enters into a warped relationship with a mixed-up kid, Hallam, who starts spying on her because she reminds him of his dead mother. I spoke with Myles recently about working with a pervy, adult Billy Elliot, Mackenzie’s deft touch with sex, and fan reaction to the recently canceled CBS vampire drama Moonlight. For the full Q&A interview, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.
I spoke to the loquacious Robert Englund recently, for a feature piece about both Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer and his career as a horror icon. Wrapping up, out of left field I couldn’t resist asking him about how insane Neville Brand may or may not have been, since on the audio commentary track for the DVD release of Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive — the movie that sparked Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill homage of Englund’s character and his signature sleazy line, “My name is Buck, and I wanna fuck” — costar Roberta Collins talks about Brand trying to sexually assault her.
“I’m not sure,” says Englund, seemingly genuinely stumped. “I don’t even remember him being extremely eccentric. He was Neville Brand, but I think he might have been having problems with his family in Malibu — that’s something in the back of my head, that he was going through a bad divorce or maybe some problems with his daughter. I don’t know, I vaguely remember that. And he may have freaked out after I left the project.”
Community organizers were understandably irked by Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin‘s comments last night in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, in which she mocked Barack Obama’s experience as a community organizer thusly: “I guess a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer — except that you have actual responsibilities.” This being the digital age, they’ve quickly created an outlet for their push-back, via this web site.
It’s worth noting that this wasn’t just some off-the-reservation one-liner, either; it was part of a sustained line of scornful Republican attack, with former New York Governor George Pataki saying, “[Barack Obama] was a community organizer — what in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job,” and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani playing to an eager crowd’s laughter, offering up, “[Obama] worked as a community organizer. What? I said, ‘OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume.'”
Even before the Internet, this is the sort of mass-agitable detail — wherein a campaign really steps in a big pile of it with a certain constituency, but seeks to move forward and drown out the clamor of disaffection by denying any attack and taking mock-offense at those who raise it as an issue — that even the best films about political campaigns have a hard time cramming in. Watch for it over the next 72 to 96 hours, in particular.
By all accounts the randy new teen comedy College should have been a solid late summer performer — the movie that kids either just back at school or gearing up to head back to class went to check out over the weekend, in order to get primed for some autumnal partying. Instead, the movie was stillborn at the box office, debuting to just $2.15 million in its first weekend — failing to crack the top 10 in the same slot that the party-hearty Accepted grossed eight figures en route to a total domestic haul of $36 million just two years ago.
As if designed by checklist, College has all the most essential ingredients of a low-budget teen comedy: an R rating, an eye-grabbing poster, a cost-efficient cast comprised of mostly new faces, cartoonish antagonists in the form of frat-boy jerks, and plenty of nudity. About the only thing College misses the mark on is the inclusion of a henpecking or ironically hip parental presence. (Fred Willard wasn’t available, apparently.)
And yet… it doesn’t gel. And a general audience screening on opening day afforded a unique opportunity to witness firsthand viewer dissatisfaction with College. At an afternoon show with 20-25 people, someone actually threw a drink at the screen — something I didn’t think really happened anymore, what with their $6-plus cost. The group later left, and not too quietly. Teen braggadocio, sure, but still… if your core constituency will effectively surrender as much money filing a flamboyant protest as to the quality of your movie as he did actually patronizing it, that’s probably not a good sign.
Somewhat belying the title, College centers mostly on three high school kids, and the weekend roadie they take to Fieldmont University in order to acquaint themselves with the institution and its academic and social climate. Having just been dumped by his girlfriend, buttoned-up Kevin Brewer (Superhero Movie‘s Drake Bell, above center) is inclined to loosen up a bit and start taking some risks, especially when he meets Kendall (Haley Bennett), a sorority gal who shares his interest in photography. Gangly, bespectacled Morris Hooper (Kevin Covais, above left) is even more bookish and tightly wound, which makes him the perfect punching bag (verbally and quite literally) for Carter Scott (Andrew Caldwell, above right), the requisite motor-mouthed fat oaf of the bunch. When the student at their assigned dorm housing seems too weird, the trio head to a nearby frat house, where Carter’s (never-met) cousin was once a member. There, the guys are put through hell for their room and board, with the threat of revelation of their “pre-freshmen” status always being used as an instrument of bullying and torture.
Debut feature filmmaker Deb Hagan injects a lot of energy into the proceedings, but College‘s main failings are twofold. First, the story requires that Kevin and his pals constantly re-engage and keep on some level trusting the jackass fraternity members who take all their money and generally make their lives hell for a couple days. By the time the revenge element of the screenplay kicks in, during its last 10 minutes, you’ve ceased looking at these guys as anything but doormats, collectively and individually.
Second, and there’s not particularly a polite way to put this, College just doesn’t pass its personality exam. Seminal teen flick American Pie launched and/or solidified a couple careers, including that of Jason Biggs, Seann William Scott, Alyson Hannigan and Shannon Elizabeth. It even secured steady work for Chris Klein and Chris Owen, for Pete’s sake. This October’s Sex Drive, by point of further comparison, has a cast that elevates the material in delightful ways. Its three leads — Josh Zuckerman, Amanda Crew and Clark Duke — all make hay, delivering not only the laughs in the script, but also comedic moments of their own devising.
While College has the minor-chord titillation of seeing former American Idol contestant Covais drop a couple F-bombs and eventually roll around in some mud-caked tighty-whiteys, there just isn’t ever any pop here on the screen — a feeling that something special is happening, or a star maybe being born. The best teen sex comedies feel at some point dangerous and reckless, as if one or more characters might just do anything, but the wackiness and outrage in College feels never less than manufactured. Caldwell merely comes across as the guy cast when Jonah Hill quickly passed without reading, and Bell, a huge Nickelodeon star courtesy of Drake & Josh, is a milquetoast lead. I wouldn’t waste a $6 drink, but I understand that teen’s irritation. (MGM, R, 94 minutes)
Whatever one thinks about the pregnancy of the 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, you have to give it up for the above poster, taken from a post on Perez Hilton, a site which I most assuredly do not frequent. Rarely do satiric conceptualization, actual execution and PhotoShop persuadability so nicely intersect. Solid. Though the idea of McCain in yellow short-shorts spawns its own, entirely different level of howling discomfort.
Following Christopher Nolan’s announced West Coast appearance at a special Q&A for Following, his first film, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh will submit to similar navel-gazing at a special benefit screening of his already very inward-looking 1997 Slamdance entry, Schizopolis. The event will take place in New York City at the IFC Center on Tuesday, September 16 at 8 p.m. Tickets will be $20, and are available through IFC’s web site, or by clicking here. Following the screening there will be a Q&A with Soderbergh moderated by author Anthony Kaufman, and a hosted reception for ticket holders at The Post Factory.
Hounddog first attracted acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007, as the movie in which a 12-year-old Dakota Fanning is raped. Nearly 20 months later, it’s finally seeing a theatrical release, with plenty of evidence as to the cause of its lengthy delay.
An amorphous blob of clichéd Southern gothic, where thunderstorms rumble portentously and there’s seemingly only one or two pairs of shoes in the entire town, Hounddog is a pretentious, mildly terrible period piece drama of random, falsely weighted dramatic signifiers and vaguely defined personal triumph — the type of movie where air-quote catharsis is achieved by someone screaming, “Leave me alone, I hate you!” several times at another person before finally collapsing into their arms.
Written and directed by Deborah Kampmeier — who previously mined some of the same loosely related thematic territory with Virgin, about a pregnant teenager who has no memory of ever having sex, and is thus convinced she’s carrying the son of God — Hounddog unfolds in rural Alabama in the 1950s. Young Lewellen (Fanning) lives with her stern, religious grandmother, Grammie (Piper Laurie, spinning a warmed-over variation of the same stiflingly overhearing nut-job that she delivered 30 years ago in Carrie), just up the hill from her no-account father (David Morse), a heavy drinker prone to disappearing for stretches of a couple days at a time and bringing home strange women, like one played by Robin Wright Penn.
Lewellen loves Elvis (not Schmelvis), and when she finds out he’s scheduled to make a stop in her small town, she makes plans to try to get a ticket to attend, along with her friend Buddy (Cody Hanford). After the aforementioned rape, by an older boy dangling the promise of an Elvis ticket, nearby neighbor Charles (Afemo Omilami, suffering the screen caricature of the “mystical Negro”) tries to help Lewellen get her spirit back by teaching her to tap into the blues. There are also a few obligatory third act revelations regarding a tangled family lineage, but they hold much more shrug than pop.
Hounddog is rather gorgeously shot (cinematographers Ed Lachman and Jim Denault share credit), but the film’s mossy beauty soon wears thin — done in by characters that are defined broadly, by race, socioeconomic class, terrible wig, or some combination thereof. For the full review, from H Magazine, click here. (Empire Film Group, R, 98 minutes)
This goes beyond any sort of stunt casting, obviously, and it’s no lazy, shrugging toss-off, either, since the pairing then necessitates the casting of two two mixed-race kids, shared by the actors’ characters. I don’t know if this can be called a bonafide trend, really, but there’s something interesting in it — especially in a genre picture like Mirrors, which conceivably could face commercial prospect blow-back from the uncultured slice of the horror base. It’s not like that’s a multi-million dollar difference in gross or anything, but you can bet it flipped a switch or two at the executive level, because these are the types of things that get discussed when studio movies are green-lit. Regardless, the winds they are a-changin’, that’s for sure; younger generations both see and care (which is to say, less) about race in radically different ways than their parents. Heck, this helps explain a large part of Barack Obama‘s appeal to young voters, ages 18 to 30.
A stand-up compendium, The Best of Comedy Central Presents 2 groups together feature specials from eight comedians — most from the past several years, and each running about 20 minutes apiece. The end result is a nice buffet spread/sampler pack, something to allow a nice cross-section without forcing the consumer to go all-in on a single performer’s catalogue.
The roster here, listed alphabetically, includes Dave Attell, Mike Birbiglia, Frank Caliendo, Zach Galifianakis, Stephen Lynch, Patton Oswalt, Nick Swardson and Daniel Tosh. Attell’s set is I believe the oldest, dating from the late 1990s, or early 2000; he’s funny (introducing himself by saying, “I have an Andre Agassi-with-a-drinking-problem kind of look”), but it’s before he really found his stride. He talks some about mock-sexual bonding with his dog, but the funniest bit from him is when he talks about how summer weather is not the right fit for fat guys.
Caliendo, of course, currently in heavy commercial rotation sending up everyone from William Shatner and John Madden to George Bush, trots out plenty of impressions, and Lynch breaks out the guitar for some silly ditties. Swardson, performing in front of a picture of himself at six years of age, jokes about teeth whitening and wanting zoo animals in his one-bedroom apartment. His funniest bit, though — about the outdated pictorial representation of bombs on airport security signs — draws mostly uneasy and indifferent reactions from the live crowd.
The very funny Oswalt’s show isn’t among his best, necessarily. He talks about watching old movies in L.A. and losing both love and hate in his “old” age (he recently turned 30 before this set), and there’s an extended riff about a pot-fueled trip to Amsterdam. The biggest shocker of the disc, though, may be Tosh, with whom I wasn’t too terribly familiar prior to settling down with this DVD. Exuding a zonky energy that turns familiar stage riffs (the difficulties of unhooking a woman’s bra) into screwy high-wire acts, Tosh has a rapid-fire imagination that crams jokes of accompaniment all around his main anecdotal bits. His best bits involve a laboriously set-up joke about collecting change in cargo pants and then paying off a homeless guy in lottery-winner fashion, and befriending seventh graders to boost one’s self-esteem.
The Best of Comedy Central Presents 2 comes presented in 1.33:1 full screen. Trailers for the first season of Kenny Vs. Spenny and South Park‘s eleventh season are amongst the preview gallery that comprise the only bonus supplemental features on the disc. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Concert) D+ (Disc)
Are paper dolls your thing, for some reason? Then by all means get collectible versions of both Barack Obama and John McCain, via Dover Publications’ site. The resemblances are a bit off, but McCain’s does have the stiff-arm thing going on. Looking at these, I’d love to see a film done with paper dolls, in the mold of Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Team America: World Police. Well… a short film, maybe… more along the lines of Todd Haynes’ Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, I guess.
There’s no Bono, alas, but the new concert DVD Absolutely Irish brings together the brightest stars of traditional Irish music for a once in-a-lifetime concert that will leave folk music fans appreciatively awed by its virtuoso performances.
Filmed live at the intimate Irish Arts Center in New York City’s famed Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, this disc finds Irish music impresario Mick Moloney presenting three generations of brilliant musicians as they display their mastery on much-beloved jigs, reels and airs, then rock the hall with contemporary takes on favorite traditional tunes. Clearly shot and crisply captured, Absolutely Irish includes
performances by whistle player Joanie Madden; fiddlers Liz Carroll,
Eileen Ivers and Athena Tergis; flute and banjo player Seamus Egan;
guitarist John Doyle; singers Karan Casey, Robbie O’Connell and Susan
McKeown; concertina player Tim Collins;
accordionist Billy McComiskey; dancers Niall O’Leary and Darrah
Carr; and piper Jerry O’Sullivan. There are also special guest appearances by two living legends — 80-year-old flute player Mike Rafferty and 85-year-old Irish dancer Jo McNamara — and a heart-tugging rendition of “Leaving Liverpool” performed by the entire ensemble. Absolutely Irish belies the sometimes misguided notion that folk music is an utterly American tradition, and showcases some of the best talent on the Irish music scene today.
Housed in a regular Amray plastic case, Absolutely Irish runs around 70 minutes, and is presented in anamorphic widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions. The DVD also includes bonus footage of eight additional performances taped at the same venue. A bit of commentary or interview footage would have been a nice inclusion as well — just to get a chance to better know some of these personalities — but for those already heartily interested in the trad-Irish music scene, this is a nice value. To order any DVD or VHS release from WGBH Boston Video, including Absolutely Irish, call (800) 949-8670 or click here to visit their web site. B- (Movie) B- (Disc)
Barbet Schroeder’s 1976 film Maitresse, about a burglar (Gérard
Depardieu) who falls for a dominatrix (Bulle Ogier) when he breaks into
her apartment, kicks off a special “Fetish Film Series” when it screens at the Egyptian Theatre at the American Cinematheque on Friday, September 12 at 7:30 p.m.
The once-monthly series will take place at the Egyptian’s Spielberg Theatre, and will be hosted by Rick
Castro of Antebellum Gallery. All screenings will have fetish as the main theme and subject matter, and each film will be followed by an
informal discussion and debate with the audience. Slated for October is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 film Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. The historic Egyptian Theatre is located at 6712
Hollywood Boulevard,
between Highland
and Las Palmas,
in Hollywood.
Tickets for this and all events at the Egyptian are available through Fandango, but for 24-hour recorded information on screenings,
directions and other matters, phone (323) 466-FILM, or visit the Cinematheque’s eponymous
Web site.
Acclaimed rock ‘n’ rollers The Smashing Pumpkins, who’ve sold over 30 million albums, is coming to Activision’s Guitar Hero World Tour in a groundbreaking way, as the band will debut their new single “G.L.O.W.” exclusively in the game. This marks the first time a band has recorded a new song exclusively for the franchise that will then be released afterward, giving Guitar Hero fans exclusive access to Smashing Pumpkins music before anyone else. The new track, bundled with two of the group’s other hits, “1979” and “The Everlasting Gaze,” will be available after launch of the game as a three-song downloaded content pack. For more information, click here.
Republicans have fired up the “One of us!” tom-toms over John McCain‘s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for the vice presidential slot on his ticket, and now they’re saying that having an
unmarried teenage daughter who is pregnant, a state ethics investigation stemming from a nasty child custody
battle involving a former family member, and blue-collar husband who racked up a DUI citation as a 22-year-old may all help solidify the national newcomer’s reputation as a regular American, according to this Politico piece by Charles Mahtesian.
“The media doesn’t understand life membership in the NRA; they don’t understand getting up at 3 a.m. to hunt a moose; they don’t understand eating a mooseburger; they don’t understand being married to a guy who likes to snowmobile for fun. I am not surprised that they don’t get it. But Americans get it,” says Florida Rep. Adam Putnam, who surely knows of 3 a.m. moose hunting. “A mooseburger means she is like one of us. She is not some jackass who’s ‘gone Washington.'”
The original Phantasm, released in 1979, broke new ground in horror filmmaking, instantly marking Libyan-born writer-director Don Coscarelli as one of his generation’s masters of the genre. After two sequels filled with zombies, dwarves and slicing spheres, this wild, gory desert-set flick delivers perhaps the most bizarre installment of Phantasm yet.
For years, the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) has waged a gruesome war against humanity, slowly populating the world with his undead legions. To stop the horrifying onslaught, two determined heroes, Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) and Reggie (Reggie Bannister) hurtle themselves through a gateway in the time/space continuum to unearth a vital clue that may just put an end to the horror. Along with Jody (Bill Thornbury), Mike and Reggie come to understand the terrifying birthright of the Tall Man, as well as the origins of the infamous and lethal sphere. As the Tall Man prepares his final assault with his dark army, the future of the human race hangs in the balance.
“Phans” of this series waited years for this installment, making their wishes known at horror conventions all over the world. And Anchor Bay Entertainment, the leader in cult and classic horror DVDs, does the series proud with its release of the uncut
version of Phantasm IV: Oblivion — reinstating scenes that were deleted prior to its
original 1998 North American theatrical release — as part of its prestigious “Anchor Bay
Collection” banner. Presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 audio track, and boasting both a brand new video transfer and fiery new cover art, the DVD also features
a number of supplemental extras that vastly boost its value when compared to the bare-bones 2001 DVD version. The crown jewel of the set is undeniably a newly recorded
audio commentary track with writer-director Coscarelli, Reggie Bannister and the Tall Man himself, Scrimm; in it, Coscarelli talks some about the genesis of the series and the fact that Roger Avary penned a concluding chapter for the Phantasm series that was prohibitively expensive, leading him to pen this as an alternate, and not mutually exclusive wrap-up. A short retrospective featurette is also provided, built around some never-before-seen production footage. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)
Self-styled “spoof” filmmakers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer hit
rock bottom in the creatively bankrupt Disaster Movie, a poorly staged,
entirely laugh-free big screen exercise that, despite its name, is not
really a genre spoof at all, but rather merely an excuse to (attempt
to) poke fun at Hollywood movies from this calendar year. Even by the
most forgiving standards of clamorous adolescent distraction, this film
fails hugely. Not screened for critics prior to its release, Disaster
Movie opened in seventh place this weekend, grossing an estimated
$6.2 million.
After a dream sequence in which the movie’s release date is (perhaps somewhat appropriately) established as the end of the world, a birthday party brings Will (Matt Lanter, above), who is fresh from a break-up with girlfriend Amy (Vanessa Minnillo), together with his best friend Calvin (Gary Johnson) and Calvin’s girlfriend Lisa (Kim Kardashian), among others. When disaster strikes, a group sets out to rescue Amy, who is trapped across town. They encounter all sorts of weird characters along the way, with both cows and meteors occasionally raining down around them.
The originating writers on 2000’s Scary Movie, Friedberg and Seltzer aren’t parodists, they’re juvenile recyclers. This would be fine if they were slick packagers of such needling, but their touch with structure is so inartful as to leave one constantly imagining better, more amusing interactions and juxtapositions. Date Movie at least had a story that made some nominal sense. Here characters exist and move from scene to scene solely to engage in another sketch-comedy bit.
One accepts the litany of “spoof” characters with the conceit of the movie, but it’s problematic for the undertaking that two of them (Juno, portrayed by Crista Flanagan, and a demented princess straight from Enchanted, played by Nicole Parker) are afforded such prominent roles, alongside the “regular” characters. This undercuts any sense of intended identification, when one outlandish character is confronted by another outlandish character. Similarly, battle sequences with animals (Kung Fu Panda, Alvin and the Chipmunks) are staged with no nod or wink of acknowledgment regarding the characters’ animated or CGI roots, and there’s no comedic pay-off or explanation of the disaster element.
Disaster Movie is lazy writing, through and through. The two moments approximating any sort of energetic punch are musical numbers that send up High School Musical and Step Up 2 the Streets. The early inclusion of a joke seemingly at the expense of Heath Ledger’s fatal overdose on Ambien, meanwhile, is both tasteless and tonally jarring, as it’s the sole moment of true edginess present in the entire film.
Of the actors, only Nicole Parker acquits herself, bringing a pinch of chirpy insanity to her Princess, and also offering up impressions of singers Amy Winehouse and Jessica Simpson. Ike Barinholtz is the production’s jack-of-all-trades, playing no fewer than seven characters. Production values are noticeably meager, in costumes, special effects and background detail. The latter shortcoming is particularly instrumental in the movie coming across as flat and uninspired. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (Lionsgate, PG-13, 87 minutes)
Honey West (Anne Francis), sensual and glamorous private eye, was something of a trendsetter in 1965 and ’66 — one of television’s first liberated females. In an era when actresses were frequently restrained to sedate housewives and girlfriend roles, this series marked an exceptional and original departure. And now it’s coming to DVD, via VCI Entertainment.
Producer Aaron Spelling spun the title character off a spring episode of Burke’s Law, “Who Killed the Jackpot?,” in which, true to form, Honey outwitted the suave detective played by Gene Barry. Later in the year, Honey West appeared as the first dramatic TV show with a female star in what might be classified as an action-adventure role. In the show, Honey inherited her spying business from her late father, a top private eye. As part of the deal, she also got his partner, rough and handsome Sam Bolt (John Ericson). There was a strong attraction and chemistry between the partners, but Honey’s only true love was the thrill of adventure and her pet ocelot, Bruce.
In addition to being TV’s first modern, independent, self-sufficient woman, Honey frequently engaged in fight scenes and shoot-outs. An expert at judo and a black-belt in karate, she was the first character on the American small screen, male or female, to use martial arts as self-defense. A la James Bond, Honey also owned an arsenal of special weapons and gadgets, including an exploding compact, a garter belt gas mask (!), teargas-emitting earrings and a lipstick microphone. Although short-lived, this series broke the mold and paved the way for future female action heroines, including Wonder Woman and the ladies from The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., The Bionic Woman and Alias.
Spread out over four region-free DVDs and housed in a regular Amray case, Honey West‘s 30 black-and-white episodes are presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with a Dolby digital mono sound mix. Bonus features include an Anne Francis photo gallery, vintage commercials and a separate behind-the-scenes photo gallery. To purchase the set on DVD via Amazon, click here.
