Part teen sex comedy, part anarchic road trip, Sex Drive has a punchy, forward-leaning energy that marks it as one of the best high school comedies since the original American Pie, and a big part of that success is up-and-comer Clark Duke, who plays the wryest side of a love triangle, opposite Josh Zuckerman and Amanda Crew. Perhaps to date still best known for the hilarious web series Clark and Michael, Duke seems poised to drink Jonah Hill’s milkshake, as evidenced by choice forthcoming wisecracking supporting roles opposite Eddie Murphy and Nicolas Cage. As part of a weekend built around his very first press junket, I recently sat down with Duke to talk about pal Michael Cera, the state of film comedy and why he now loves Hyundai Sonatas. For the full Q&A, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.
At the recent press day for Sex Drive, costar Seth Green talked about the possibility of a fourth Austin Powers flick, joking, “I’m sure it’ll get made at the same time as The Brazilian Job.”
Snarkily played, Seth. Kudos. Green then went on to realistically assess the chances of another spy spoof from multi-hyphenate Mike Myers, though. “I don’t think Mike would get behind something that wasn’t good,” he says. “You look at what happened with the Dieter movie, and that’s a testament to the fact that Mike doesn’t want to put shit out in the world, he wants to make things that he really believes are good. He took a big hit for not making that Dieter movie, and it turned into The Cat in the Hat [which Myers agreed to star in to help settle pending litigation from Universal Studios]. So I don’t know how gun-shy he is, but I do know that he’s sincere about his quality-control. So my suspicion is that if Mike wanted to make another Austin Powers, it would be because he had a great idea, and if Mike had a great idea then I’m sure we’d all come back to make that movie.”
Yesterday Varietyconfirmed what I first mentioned five months ago as a near-lock, namely that porn star Sasha Grey has been cast in Steven Soderbergh’s new film, The Girlfriend Experience. The reigning AVN “Female Performer of the Year,” the 20-year-old Grey cites Jean-Luc Godard, Bernardo Bertolucci and Catherine Breillat (!) among her favorite filmmakers, and says of working with Soderbergh: “I’ve been an admirer of his films for years, and I’m elated that I have been given a leading role in a character-driven film.” For more on the film, click here.
It’s been four years since Anne Hathaway last sported a tiara, but the beaming, very proper good-girl image established in large part by Ella Enchanted and two Princess Diaries movies still to some degree exists. That will change. This summer’s Get Smart shook things up for Hathaway, and in her new film, Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, she plays Kym, a recovering addict who arrives like a hurricane at the Connecticut wedding of her older sister (Rosemarie Dewitt), with whom she shares a hot-cold relationship.
Sitting for a chat at a Beverly Hills hotel on a recent Monday, Hathaway — wearing a designer T-shirt, jeans, and a clutch of bracelets that jangle when she gestures or pitches forward in laughter — confesses that she’s “still in weekend mode,” though one wouldn’t know it from her unerringly pleasant demeanor and thoughtful answers. For the full Q&A, from H Magazine, click here.
Whether a product of occupational anxiety or some secret PR class in vacuous doublespeak, a lot of young, up-and-coming actors and actresses speak in carefully packaged sound-bites, offering up only smiling platitudes and generic praise for costars. Trying to nudge them off script can be a lobotomizing experience, leading to one-sentence replies or answers to questions not asked.
Amanda Crew is not one such actress. A 22-year-old native of British Columbia who plays, opposite Josh Zuckerman and Clark Duke, the most attractive member of a love triangle that gives the wild new teen road-trip comedy Sex Drive its requisite pinch of emotional mooring, Crew is warm and engaging, but not falsely ebullient, like she’s tackling an interview as another role. She’s real, in other words. There’s no guardedness or pretense, so when talk turns to matters of technology, and how keeping in touch with friends has changed radically in only a half dozen years, Crew self-effacingly chides herself for her poser past (“I remember my dad getting a pager but never using it, so I’d just walk around with it, to look cool”) and confesses to occasionally losing four or five hours on Facebook.
Instinctively, she knows comedy’s “rule of three,” joking about the manufactured distraction of fabricated list-making during the current production holding pattern, owing to the possibility of a Screen Actors Guild strike (“I’ve always enjoyed lists, but now my to-do lists are literally like: ‘shower, take the dog out, buy toilet paper.’ I’ll put ‘brush my teeth’ on there just so I feel like I accomplished something”), and then amusingly circling back to her comment at various points in the conversation.
According to Crew, she wasn’t always this personable and outgoing, though. “They used to call me Mouse when I was a kid, because I was so shy and quiet,” she says. “I think it was in third or fourth grade when I had this switch, I don’t know what caused it. I was the class clown, but not the obnoxious one getting kicked out of class; I loved to do Mr. Bean impressions, I was obsessed with him. Then in elementary school I became involved in some of the school plays, and in high school they had a film and television program in our school and I had a teacher who recommended that I take a film acting class.”
An agent saw Crew there, at a showcase, but her mother wouldn’t let her get an agent until she was a bit older, and more settled and serious. Small parts in a few films (Final Destination 3, She’s the Man, John Tucker Must Die) followed, along with larger roles on TV shows Whistler and 15/Love. Crew moved to Los Angeles in April, and seems invigorated by the plunge. “I’ve spent some time here before and hated it, but I have to honestly say I’m really enjoying it this time,” she says. “I’m living with this girl that I met on a film I did in Winnipeg. She’s in the industry, so she gets it, but she’s not an actress. It’s really good vibes to have in the house. She’s very career-oriented and Miss Independent, so I like to have that around me, because it pushes me to be more goal-oriented.”
Indecision and a bit of romantic waffling is part of Crew’s character Felicia in Sex Drive. With two guys as best friends, she can’t see the forest through the trees. Crew cops to having some personal experience with friendship-launched romance. “Yeah, there’s a few people I could think of,” she says with a reflective laugh. “I think everyone has someone like that, that you hang out with for a long time and just think of as a buddy, and then all of a sudden they do something or something changes with you, or someone will say something, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I guess he is cute. And nice.’”
Crew is physically striking, but has a relaxed demeanor and carefree sense of humor that help her give as good as she gets in a couple scenes in Sex Drive. “I connected with the character in that she gets along so well with guys,” says Crew. “I have lots of girlfriends, but I do feel comfortable hanging out with guys and being myself. Some girls feel they have to act and dress a certain way around guys, and I definitely went through that stage in early high school, but now I’m just like, ‘Whatever.’ I can kick it with the boys, which is what I had to do for the shoot, because it was all guys. It was fun because I have this side to me that’s very crude, I guess you could say. I have a mouth like a truck driver, and if someone ignites it I have the dirtiest sense of humor, so after two or three months of working with those guys I came home and my mom was like, ‘What did you just say?’”
Next up for Crew is the already completed The Haunting in Connecticut, a based-on-a-true-story horror thriller opposite Virginia Madsen. For now, though, she waits, a bit anxiously. “I do better when I have a lot on my plate, I get a lot more done,” says Crew. “Right now I have so much free time that I feel like I do nothing.” To that end, she’s taken to dabbling in photography. One gets the feeling, though, that it won’t be long after Sex Drive until the camera is turned back on Crew.
Sure, the presidential election looms, but 28-year-old actor Jason Ritter is a one-man October surprise. In the low-budget indie Good Dick, he stars opposite longtime real-life girlfriend Marianna Palka, also the film’s writer-director, as a Los Angeles videostore clerk who slowly draws a sullen, emotionally deadened young woman out of her claustrophobic cocoon of hostility and sexual antipathy. In Oliver Stone’s W., Ritter — who as the son of the late John Ritter knows a thing about family legacies — portrays Jeb Bush to Josh Brolin’s title character. I spoke with Ritter recently about Stone, traditional notions of male chivalry and Jeb Bush’s pot-smoking Socialist period. For the full Q&A interview, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here. More from the interview to follow later in the week.
Politico’s Jeffrey Ressner has an interesting interview with Oliver Stone in advance of W.‘s release this Friday, and Stone specifically addresses some of the heat he’s feeling from the far left, namely that the movie is too empathetic a portrait of George Bush: “We didn’t go against the truth. We show clearly what kind of man he is:
a simple-minded man with limited intellectual curiosity. That’s the
essence of the man. It doesn’t matter that we don’t show him doing
cocaine or drinking too much — you don’t have to dwell on his defects.
What are his crimes? He’s embraced the war on terror in the notion that
it’s a war for freedom and democracy, for good vs. bad, which is a very
Manichaean view of the world, and a very simplistic view.”
The combination of a declared open-ended war on terrorism abroad and the curtailment of civil liberties at home sets the stage for some important questions about the necessity and scale of governmental secrecy in a world without the comfortable parameters of the Cold War. A 2008 Sundance alumnus, new documentary Secrecy delves into the hidden world of national security policy and the “classification universe.” It’s big business, both in content (in a single recent year, the United States government classified about five times the number of pages added to the Library of Congress) and cost, but when does security erode, rather than enhance, democracy?
To their credit, co-directors Robb Moss and Peter Galison don’t merely indulge in easy government-bashing; they give open forum to a variety of opinions, underscoring how secrecy can neutralize as well as foster certain threats. But the messily structured Secrecy comes off as not much more than an aperitif. The three main threads here are the situation of Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen detained, beaten and held for months by the CIA; the recent Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Supreme Court case; and 1952’s United States v. Reynolds, in which the government appealed a circuit court victory by wartime widows to learn more about the Air Force crash that killed their husbands and fathers. The latter established the legal precedent of a state secrets privilege, and is the poisonous tree from which the fruit of all modern legal stonewalling falls. Secrecy, though, interweaves these strands rather poorly. Artistically inflected animation segments, meanwhile, seem mainly designed to pad the running time, and forestall a more rigorous examination of the very real ethical friction under the microscope. In the end, Secrecy never moves beyond the realm of the theoretical; it only scratches the surface of its area of inquiry, both in content and intellectual forcefulness. For local playdates and more information, click here. (Argot Pictures, unrated, 80 minutes)
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. Following their start as a traveling act in venues across the country, the trio’s film career began in
the early 1930s, reached its slapstick peak during their decades-long
tenure at Columbia Pictures, and lasted well into the 1950s. After their initial
retirement late in that decade, 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. The Three Stooges Collection: Volume Four collects 21 chronologically ordered short films from 1943 to 1945.
At the time of this material, the
vaudeville-born Stooges were no longer some mere novelty act seeking
attention in the still nascent world of filmed entertainment; they had
achieved huge 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.
Kicking things off is the violent, very funny They Stooge to Conga, which features the
Stooges, cast as handymen, going to work fixing a lady’s doorbell, only to realize that the home
they’re working on is run by Nazi spies. Similarly war-influenced, Back From the Front casts the
Stooges as Merchant Marines who go behind enemy lines after their ship is sunk by the
Germans. In Three Little Twirps, meanwhile, the guys go to work for a circus, but
get scammed on their salaries and turn to ticket scalping, with dangerous (and hilarious) results.
The set’s second disc is anchored by classics like Micro-Phonies and Crash Goes the Hash,
the latter of which casts the Stooges as investigatory reporters
assigned to get to the bottom of the plans of a prince out to marry a
wealthy widower. Testing the bounds of political incorrectness, meanwhile, is The Yoke’s on Me, which will certainly evoke a few winces at its portrayal of Japanese soldiers. Also included are Dizzy Detectives, Spook Louder, Idle Roomers, Gents Without Cents, No Dough Boys, Higher Than a Kite, Three Pests in a Mess, I Can Hardly Wait, Booby Dupes, Dizzy Pilots, Idiots Deluxe, Phoney Express, If a Body Meets a Body and A Gem of a Jam. Of the 21 shorts collected here, only the lazy, quarter-sketched cow-milking-themed Busy Buddies is a real misfire; regular bit players like Vernon Dent and Bud Jamison provide much amusement too.
As with the other releases, this fourth volume comes presented on two
discs in slimline cases that are in turn stored in a cardboard
slipcover; the unifying color scheme this time is purple, which should delight a small group of rabid Kansas State fans. The shorts
themselves are shot in black-and-white and presented in 1.33:1 full
screen, with a Dolby digital mono audio track. Apart from a small
handful of unrelated preview trailers for other Sony releases, there is
unfortunately no supplemental material, a serial fact established by the other releases in the series. As I’ve said, this
cuts two ways; the six-hour-plus running time of the celebrated
material — certainly anyone’s chief measuring stick for value — makes
for plenty of entertainment, and
its straightforward cataloging is invaluable. Still, to register
the same complaint again, 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) C+ (Disc)
Defamer craps on Ben Lyons, noting that the new co-host of At the Movies is all about photos of himself with celebrities. If it belied some vast reservoir of writing and filmic knowledge it wouldn’t much matter, but…
Well, “Inglorious Bastards” is no more, but that shouldn’t bring a smug exhalation from Michael Madsen just yet. In a press release today touting the start of principal photography on the film in Germany last week, it was confirmed that Quentin Tarantino is going the same English-mangling route as The Pursuit of Happyness, and that the film will be released as Inglourious Basterds.
The ensemble cast includes Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Daniel Brühl, Eli Roth, Samm Levine, B.J. Novak, Til Schweiger, Gedeon Burkhard, Paul Rust, Michael Bacall, Omar Doom, Sylvester Groth, Julie Dreyfus, Jacky Ido, August Diehl, Martin Wuttke, Richard Sammel, Christian Berkel, Sönke Möhring, Michael Fassbender, Mike Myers, Rod Taylor, Denis Menochet and, yes, Cloris Leachman.
The film — which will shoot at Studio Babelsberg as well as in Berlin, Saxony and Paris — begins in German-occupied France, where Shosanna Dreyfus (Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Waltz). Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema. Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish-American soldiers to engage in targeted acts of retribution. Known to their enemy as “The Basterds,” Raine’s squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of The Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquee, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own.
Inglourious Basterds reunites Tarantino with Academy Award-nominated
editor Sally Menke, Oscar-winning director of photography Bob
Richardson and production designer David Wasco; joining Tarantino for
the first time is costume designer Anna
Sheppard. The film will be released worldwide in 2009, with The Weinstein Company handling domestic duty and Universal releasing the film internationally.
Steven Seagal’s Kill Switch is perfectly terrible, which makes it perfectly entertaining. Seagal, of course, was the block-headed, quietly menacing hairdresser-turned-martial-arts star at the center of an improbable string of profitable action flicks from the late 1980s into the early 1990s. It’s been almost two decades since he had real relevance, and it’s pushing eight years since the squandered intrigue of 2001’s Exit Wounds, which could have helped carve out a comeback track as a gruff sidekick to rap stars wanting to “get their act on” in urban knuckle-dusters. Instead, Seagal wanted — and by all accounts, maintains — strict control of his screen image and material, which means impossibly heroic and one-note, straight-to-video action flicks that adhere to the same time-worn templates which first burnished his star. Kill Switch is the latest of these, but it’s a very messy affair, one that definitely ranks toward the bottom of Seagal’s filmography.
Seagal plays a Memphis streetwise homicide detective, Jacob King, dedicated to tracking down serial killers since witnessing the murder of his twin brother as an adolescent. Kill Switch finds King and his partner, Storm Anderson (Chris Thomas King), on the trail of two sadistic killers. One is a ruthless explosives expert who brutalizes and tortures victims just for the thrill of the kill. The other is a disturbed Zodiac-type killer, obsessed with the cat-and-mouse games that crime provides. Reluctantly teaming with federal agent Frankie Miller (Holly Dignard), Jacob decides — you guessed it — to take the law into his own hands, enforcing his own methods of street justice, and engaging in such delightful sidebar antics as smashing in a pimp’s face at a bar.
The script here is of course derisible, but what really sinks the movie is thunderously stupid dialogue and an intertwined lack of convincing stylistic verve or even any smirky joy. Kill Switch‘s action sequences are a wincing reminder of the star’s sartorial weight control. When not busy beating the crap out of old men and playing hand-slap games with tubby rednecks, Seagal used to actually engage in a few legitimate martial arts moves; now, he mostly likes to have guys just run into his fists and jackboot-ed feet. Kill Switch further ups the ridiculousness by indulging in repeated quick-cuts and editorial re-plays that show each bit of table-smashing action six to eight times, from several different angles. Isaac Hayes shows up in a bit role as a coroner, intoning lines from cue cards with such stilted obviousness that it sparks imaginative thoughts of a drinking game. All of this of course means that Kill Switch can on a certain level be enjoyed as a ludicrous comedy, by right-mindset action fans. Inexplicably, the movie’s ending features a tacked-on sequence that reunites Jacob with his never-before-mentioned Russian wife (Andrea Stefancikova) and two kids, mainly just so some extra nudity can be squeezed in.
Housed in a regular plastic Amray case, and presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, Kill Switch comes with a solid Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, as well as optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Unfortunately, apart from a gallery of previews for other First Look home video releases, there are no supplemental bonus features to be found here. Personally, I think Seagal should embrace the kitschy, so-bad-it’s-good vibe that these days drives the most passionate element of his diminished and/or driven underground fan base; if not puffing himself up into ironic, mock-iconic relevance, a la David Hasselhoff or William Shatner, that means at least having smart folks who know and cherish his head-cracking ways advocate on his behalf, or even sit in critical judgment of downward-slope-of-the-hill releases like this. How else will the ritual of “Seagal Movie Nights” be passed to another generation? To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D-, and therefore, in a way, A (Movie) D (Disc)
Amongst critics and within the industry, Brooklyn-born Talib Kweli is one of the most successful rappers of the past decade. Commercially, it’s never quite worked out for him. He burst on to the scene with 1998’s Black Star, alongside Mos Def and DJ Hi-Tek, but never quite recaptured the hot-burning high of that disc, at least in its fully concentrated form. In his first ever live concert DVD, though, Talib Kweli: Live at the Shrine, Kweli is joined onstage by hip hop legend KRS-One, and shows why he’s so respected.
Rocking a white Rawkus Records jacket and canted baseball cap, Kweli turns through a blistering, sharply captured, 70-plus-minute set that includes “Say Something,” “Eternalists,” “Down for the Count,” “Listen,” “Definition,” “Get ‘Em High,” “Too Late,” “Go With Us,” “One Step,” “Never Been in Love,” “Hot Thing,” “Hostile Gospel,” “The Blast,” “Move Something,” “I Try,” “Get By” and “The Perfect Beat.” The camerawork is crisp and production value tight, with high-definition color digital video intercut with just a smattering of artistically-flavored black-and-white footage. Housed in a regular Amray case and presented in 1.85:1 widescreen with Dolby digital 5.1 and 2.0 audio tracks, the DVD also includes full, uncut rehearsal footage and a collection of music videos. There are also interviews with Kweli and KRS-One, though the latter is a post-set dressing room bit interrupted by Corey Smyth and the former is interspersed liberally with inane and/or boastful patter from the likes of Jellyroll, Planet Asia, Phil the Agony, Krondon and Mitchy Slick, among others. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Concert) B (Disc)
The Aero Theatre plays host to an eclectic slate of 11 European-produced documentaries, providing Los Angelenos a unique opportunity to journey into unfamiliar cultures and subcultures as viewed through a contemporary European lens. At the core of these films — 10 of which are Los Angeles premieres — are stories of citizens of the world making their way in the 21st century, following or breaking tradition in human experiences that by far supersede geographic borders. Wine and cheese receptions are held in between films each night; for a full roster of the movies, click here.
The Aero Theatre
is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. Tickets for all of 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.
Quarantine, which opened on Friday under a cloak of typical Screen Gems-ish anonymity after not screening in advance for critics, was unable to dethrone sign-of-the-apocalypse family film Beverly Hills Chihuahua from the top
spot at the box office over the weekend, grossing $14.2 million to the aforementioned film’s $17.5 million. Still, the low-budget horror flick of containment nonetheless finished with the top per-screen average of
the three-day frame, and outgrossed fellow new openers Body of Lies ($12.9 million), The Express ($4.6 million) and City of Ember, which finished outside the top 10 with only $3.1 million.
Beverly Hills Chihuahua has now grossed $52.5 million, which should be immediately refunded to American taxpayers, I think. Rounding out the top 10 were Eagle Eye ($10.9 million, $70.4 million overall); Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist ($6.4 million, $20.7 million overall); Richard Gere and Diane Lane’s adult weepie Nights in Rodanthe ($4.5 million, $32.3 million overall); ensemble western Appaloosa ($3.3 million, $10.9 million overall); Keira Knightley‘s expanding period piece The Duchess ($3.3 million, $5.6 million overall); and Kirk Cameron’s go-fix-your-marriage-fireman-drama Fireproof ($3.1 million, $16.9 million overall).
What time is it? Why, time to work those dance grooves with Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay, Chad and the rest of the gang from East High, of course. High School Musical 2: Deluxe Dance Edition hits DVD just in advance of the theatrical bow of the series’ third flick, designed to pry a few more dollars from the wallets of tweens and their parents, in exchange for a movie ticket voucher and some celebratory, dance-along instruction. Fans of course know the story particulars of the top-rated Disney Channel original movie and its sequel, and those who’ve built up a wall of mental isolation from the flicks don’t really care, so it’s best to just note that High School Musical 2: Deluxe Dance Edition is an essential release only for hardcore series completists. More casual fans make certainly make do with the prior DVD release, while shrieking middle school devotees can dance along with the cast and learn their favorite kickin’ routines with moves actually taken from and showcased by the movie’s director-choreographer, Kenny Ortega.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a glittery, yellow-tinged cardboard slipcover with raised lettering, High School Musical 2: Deluxe Dance Edition comes spread out over two discs, and presented in 1.33:1 full frame, with complementary English, French and Spanish language Dolby digital 5.1 sound mixes. A special, three-minute sneak peek at the forthcoming theatrical release in the series kick-starts the slate of over five hours of bonus material, and is of course the driving reason behind this iteration’s existence, since a movie ticket voucher is also included herein. The bulk of the other material is imported from the movie’s previous DVD release, including four minutes of deleted scenes, a four-minute blooper reel and music videos for “You Are the Music in Me” and “Gotta Go My Own Way.” Perhaps most interestingly, various international music videos and promo clips are granted their own section, including a bizarre Japanese animated piece. Also included are a 30-minute making-of featurette, a virtual scrapbook featuring the cast
and crew, 35 minutes of choreography and rehearsal footage, and an exclusive musical number that will make “the coolest
summer vacation ever” last all year round… or at least until your tweens have to get up and manually hit replay after wearing out the DVD player’s remote control. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B+ (Disc)
A passably engaging claustrophobic horror thriller that a little more
than halfway through reveals the limitations of its mode of
storytelling and visual scheme, Quarantine is told entirely via
hand-held footage shot by one of its characters. The story — about a
television reporter who accompanies a group of firefighters into a Los
Angeles tenement building, only to get sealed in after encountering a
virulent, mutant strain of rabies — works for a while as a goosing
stylistic exercise before descending into nonsensical confusion, hamstrung by aggressively panicked camerawork, a lack of spatial
clarity and a clumsy attempt at backstory explanation.
A remake of Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza’s 2007 Spanish movie [Rec], Quarantine skips any introductory credits, opening with human interest reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter, above) and her cameraman, Scott Percival (Steve Harris), on a shadow assignment and on site with a Los Angeles fire department crew. Two firemen (Jay Hernandez and Johnathon Schaech) are assigned as their guides for the evening, and some flirting and good-natured chiding ensues between Angela and the guys.
Eventually responding to a late-night call with Angela and Scott in tow, the firefighters, as well as some policemen, come upon an elderly woman who bites one of the officers. When they attempt to get medical help, Angela and the first responders find that they have been sealed in the building. With no power, cell phone reception or immediate answers about their predicament, panic mounts. Soon some of the rest of the residents — including a veterinarian, an accountant and an immigrant couple — succumb to bites from both infected animals and humans, setting off a mad dash by survivors to try to barricade themselves away from the frenzied, foaming-mouthed diseased.
In similar fashion to The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, Quarantine posits itself as an exercise in found footage. Director John Eric Dowdle (The Poughkeepsie Tapes) does a good job blending lurking, corner-of-one’s-eye mayhem with some in-camera effects (one memorable sequence finds Scott using the camera as a blunt-force weapon), but the script has trouble establishing a clear timeline as it relates to the infected, so many times its switch-overs come across as cheaply dramatically convenient.
Also, somewhat fatally, there’s never a keen sense of space established within the building. This renders much of Quarantine‘s shaky-cam action especially unclear and unsatisfying. Finally, a finale which attempts to further clarify the origin of the strain of rabies comes across as very puzzlingly conceived, and entirely at cross purposes with the adrenalized nature of the entire rest of the story. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Sony/Screen Gems, R, 89 minutes)
I’d been behind in posting a review of the 20th anniversary edition DVD of Child’s Play, but now I’m kind of glad that I was, because I received jarring, prima facie evidence of its cultural… significance? longevity? …let’s say impact, in the form of a costumed Chucky dancing around at a Los Angeles intersection but two or three days ago. Oh, advertising costumes for Halloween, right? No, this was one of those guys that apartment complexes pay to stand outside in the heat and twirl gigantic cardboard arrows advertising their special rental rates. Except that instead of wearing sunglasses and a walkman, he was wearing a full little Chucky get-up, complete with giant overalls.
Unnerving, I know. But probably not more so than the 1988 film itself, which married slasher flick conventions with a pinch of the Cajun-inflected supernatural and a heaping helping of animatronic, talking-doll creepiness, spawning an ironic-hipster horror franchise to stand in diminuitive counterpoint to Freddy Krueger‘s Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The story, of course, centers around six-year-old Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), whose parents have recently undergone a divorce. His mom Karen (Catherine Hicks) gets him the toy that he most wants for his birthday — a cheery “Good Guy” doll whom he christens Chucky. Problem is, this particular Chucky is possessed by a notorious serial killer (Brad Dourif), who engaged in some voodoo shenanigans to temporarily put his soul on ice, until he could round up a body to return to inhabit. Scheming to transfer out of his pint-sized body and into Andy, Chucky terrorizes his ill-fated babysitter, Karen and pretty much everyone in sight. Cop Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon), meanwhile, tries to save the day.
In perfect hindsight, yes, some of the special effects work seems a bit schlocky, no doubt. But there’s also an interesting and for the most part effective mixed use of forced perspective camerawork, human stuntwork, models and animatronic mayhem, which was a nascent technology in film at the time. There’s no doubt that digital rendering has made some of this passé, but as far as deftly channeled primal kiddie nightmare stuff goes, this remains a solidly constructed film. It’s easy to understand the $33 million domestic gross, and additional $11 million overseas revenue.
Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover with a raised, slightly 3-D portrait of Chucky, and a lenticular eyeball that “dares [one] to watch,” Child’s Play is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, and comes with a slew of bonus features that give weight to its special anniversary presentation. This is no empty, cash-cow repackaging, in other words. English language audio tracks in Dolby surround and Dolby 5.1 surround sound are included, along with Spanish and French language tracks of the former variety, and optional English and Spanish subtitles.
Kicking off the special features are two audio commentary tracks. The first is with actors Hicks and Vincent, and Chucky designer Kevin Yagher, who was fresh off the success of the Elm Street franchise. While on the surface this seems like an odd pairing, it actually works quite well, since Hicks and Vincent can speak to the specifics of the actual work experience and interaction with Chucky, in all his various forms, and Yagher can explain the means by which certain shots/sequences were achieved. The second commentary track is with producer David Kirschner and screenwriter Don Mancini, who have continued a fruitful working relationship on the subsequent sequels in this series.
By far the biggest disappointment of the set is the scene-specific “Chucky commentary,” which is presented in discrete, stand-alone fashion for four or five scenes. It’s full of long silences, and not that funny to boot. Much better, thankfully, are three solid new featurettes, each running seven-plus minutes. Here, Kirschner and Mancini talk about the genesis of the project, and how Mancini’s original script — first called Blood Buddy and then, amusingly, Batteries Not Included — had a supernatural inspiration, and a doll with synthetic skin that would cut and bruise when played with roughly. (This all sounds a bit more interesting and high-minded than the “Lakeshore Strangler” serial killer element hatched by Kirschner and introduced by screenwriter John Lafia in his rewrite.)
There’s also a scrollable photo gallery, a six-minute vintage production featurette and five minutes of footage from 2007’s Monster Mania convention, where Hicks, Sarandon and Vincent field audience questions and talk about the chilly Chicago shoot. Finally, there’s a 10-minute featurette, with footage both old and new, that delves specifically into the construction of Chucky, and how an L-shaped bracket for his jaw helped open up a whole new range of facial expressions. Yagher is insightful and interesting, and special effects wizard Tom Savini helps frame the advances and from-the-hip work of the time, which is supplemented with all kinds of pre-production material, including Dourif rehearsal footage and plenty of robotic tests. About the only thing missing here is an interview with the dwarf who played Chucky in a couple chase sequences, on apartment sets specially built to a larger scale. Otherwise, this is a knife-sharp piece of horror nostalgia. B- (Movie) A- (Disc)
If New York cinema belongs to Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, no other British filmmaker of the past 30 years has chronicled London quite like Mike Leigh (Naked, Vera Drake, Topsy-Turvy),
whose renowned, hands-on style entails months of improvisatory sessions
to shape narratives and bring fuller personality to his often
working-class characters. His latest film, Happy-Go-Lucky, is centered
around Poppy (Sally Hawkins, above left), an irrepressibly free-spirited singleton
and primary school teacher marked by an unsinkable optimism — giggling
through back pain and offering up an endless stream of cheery
rejoinders and interjections, no matter the situation. When Poppy’s
bike is stolen, she signs up for driving lessons with Scott (Eddie
Marsan), who turns out to be her polar opposite — a cynical,
rage-filled bigot simultaneously repulsed and enchanted by his new
pupil. Just in advance of the film’s release, I spoke with Leigh about
his methodology, the surprise reception of Secrets & Lies in Japan,
and the fact that culture doesn’t stand still. For the full Q&A interview, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here. More from the interview to follow next week.
David Brooks nails the gear-grinding turmoil of the Republican party. To wit: “This year could have changed things. The GOP had three urbane presidential candidates. But the class-warfare clichés took control. Rudy Giuliani disdained cosmopolitans at the Republican convention. Mitt Romney gave a speech attacking ‘eastern elites.’ (Mitt Romney!) And John McCain picked Sarah Palin. She is another step in the Republican change of personality. Once conservatives admired Churchill and Lincoln above all — men from wildly different backgrounds who prepared for leadership through constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking. Now those attributes bow down before the common touch. And so, politically, the GOP is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission — because it has not developed policies to address economic anxiety. It has lost the educated class by sins of commission — by telling members of that class to go away.”
The new, full-length trailer for teen-vampire love story Twilight, releasing wide November 21, into that lucrative slot vacated by the latest entry in the Harry Potter series, is now online after an Access Hollywood (or was it Entertainment Tonight?) premiere, and I can totally see the appeal, even if some of the action seems nipped from 2006’s The Covenant, and Robert Pattinson’s ridiculous hairstyle seems curiously inspired by Billy Joel’s “Keepin’ the Faith.”
Adapted from Stephenie Meyer’s popular series of young adult novels, and directed by Catherine Hardwicke, it’s a Romeo & Juliet-type thing about an immortal bloodsucker and a regular human girl, with rampaging “bad vampires” and all the complications that presents. I’ve been told good things about the books — that they’re eminently readable, and not at all embarassingly done — and advance tracking for movie is huge, so I need to resign myself to the fact that I might be intermittently writing about this series for several years. This is great for Stewart, who’s turned in a variety of mostly good work since 2002’s Panic Room. Having not yet seen anything with Pattinson (who’s also a musician, in fall-back fashion), I’m a bit more suspicious… are there projects for which Shane West and Jared Leto are not available? OK, not fair. Pattinson’s a lot younger, I guess. Still… watch that ‘do, chief; a height of five-plus inches nudges you inexorably toward douche-nozzle status.
The runaway commercial success of 1998’s There’s Something About Mary and, the following year, American Pie, gave filmmakers and studio executives the creative license to shoehorn into R-rated comedies every gross-out gag involving saggy appendages and bodily fluids that could be conceived, no matter how convoluted the set-up. Misapplying the lessons of the aforementioned films — their tonal balance of, ahem, salty and sweet — teen movies for several years afterward became mostly just slapdash races toward forced outrageousness. Not so with Sex Drive, which may be the most reliably funny teen sex comedy since the original American Pie, and is certainly the most amiable, lived-in and casually self-assured film of its type in that time.
Lanky high school senior Ian Lafferty (Josh Zuckerman, above center) can’t seem to catch a break. Regularly humiliated by his job at a mall donut shop, he’s habitually shown up in the romance department by his younger brother and mercilessly taunted by his older brother Rex (James Marsden), who warns that his lack of a girlfriend may be a sign that he’s “getting gay.”
Actually, Ian has a crush: his longtime best friend Felicia (Amanda Crew, above left). Unable to make her see him as more than a friend, though, Ian engages in some heavy cyber-flirting, and hooks up with an out-of-town babe who seemingly can’t wait to get busy. Egged on by his wry, devil-may-care pal Lance (Clark Duke, above right), Ian “borrows” his brother’s prized vintage Pontiac GTO and, with Lance and an unwitting Felicia in tow, hits the road on a mission to lose his virginity. Car problems, a roadside carnival, trouble with the law, and encounters with both an Amish farmer (Seth Green) and some Amish youth-gone-wild all complicate the group’s journey.
Casting can totally make or break a free-spirited romp like this, and in Zuckerman, Crew and Duke, Sex Drive has a winning hat trick of fresh young faces. Marsden, meanwhile, continues his unlikely reinvention as a comedic player of consequence. Fresh off funny, engaging turns of different sorts in Hairspray, Enchanted and 27 Dresses, he plays frost-tipped Rex with a manic, swallowed rage that plenty of terrorized younger siblings will wincingly recognize.
Co-written by John Morris and director Sean Anders, the movie has an unusual source material pedigree (Andy Behrens’ book All the Way) for a teen flick, and it’s perhaps this fact that helps give it both a solid foundation and a forward-leaning energy all its own. There are broad moments, yes, but they’re both funny and well-integrated with the sort of muttered asides and comedy of self-negation that give one a deeper sense of identification with the characters.
A few of the characterizations seem to borrow a bit from other movies (Duke spins a variation on the zen sex master that Eddie Kaye Thomas did in American Pie), but Sex Drive also nails (no pun intended) the jumbled, hormonal fog of adolescence, when it was possible to pine, both strongly and blindly, for multiple people right in front of your eyes. And it does so by being gross only occasionally, when it actually fits the story. (Summit Entertainment, R, 105 minutes)
Hong Kong-born, San Francisco-bred director Wayne Wang was an influential part of the American independent film movement of the 1980s and ’90s, with movies like the groundbreaking Chan Is Missing, 1993’s unlikely hit The Joy Luck Club and Smoke. This fall, after a six-year, three-film detour into studio filmmaking, he returns with not one but two intimately scaled movies adapted from author Yiyun Li’s work: The Princess of Nebraska (premiering on YouTube on October 17), about a young Chinese college student (Li Ling) in the United States who leaves school to contend with an unwanted pregnancy, and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, in which a retired Chinese widower (Henry O) comes to Los Angeles to visit his only daughter, Yilan (Faye Yu). In advance of their release, I sat down with Wang not long ago at a Beverly Hills hotel; for an excerpt from the Q&A chat, from H Magazine, click here. More to follow from the interview in the coming days.
With its endless stream of partisan cookie cutter talking points, GOP tutors help tell Sarah Palin what to say… but now you can too, courtesy of the hilarious new interactive Palindrome site, which lets users muck around with audio snippets from her speeches and debate appearance to form entirely new sentences, not unlike those packets of tiny refrigerator magnets sold at specialty gift stores. Very user-friendly, the site, if a bit slow at times. My contribution. And another good one.
