Mickey Mouse Clubhouse ranked as the top cable series with children under the age of 5 in February 2009, with a whopping 24 million-plus unique viewers — over 42 percent of preschool kids. No surprise, really. In an era of multitudinous and ever-expanding entertainment options for toddlers and the pre-verbal set, the show, which centers around the typical blend of genial slapstick and easy-to-digest storylines encouraging teamwork and problem-solving, has a leg up on other similar series in the form of the iconic characters of Mickey and friends.
Inspired by Disney’s animated classic Alice in Wonderland, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Mickey’s Adventures in Wonderland features all-new animation and original songs, set around a story involving Mickey, Donald Duck and other classic Disney characters. Slipping into a colorful alternate dimension full of giant mazes, mysterious riddles and zany croquet matches, Mickey and the entire Clubhouse gang encounter Tweedle Chip, Tweedle Dale, Goofy Hatter and other characters. Their zany quest becomes a race against time in order to get back to the clubhouse for Daisy’s surprise birthday party.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Mickey’s Adventures in Wonderland is presented in a 1:78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with English, French and Spanish language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks. Like a handful of other Disney DVD titles, it features interactive adventure modes, with two separate levels of difficulty. Using the remote control, kids ages 2-3 can answer fun, easy questions about colors, shapes and sizes as the story moves along. The second level, appropriate for kids ages 4-5, is slightly more difficult, with questions aimed at testing memory, logic and the ability to tell time.
While the feature presentation’s relatively scant 50-minute running time may serve as a strike in some quarters — that’s barely enough time to get small kids situated in front of the TV set, put away all the groceries and fix dinner for many parents — the DVD does also include a bonus Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episode, “Goofy Goes Goofy,” in which Goofy accidentally gets slimed with the Professor’s latest experimental goop and splits into a half dozen different Goofys. Hey, it’s no Multiplicity, but it’s a serviceable kid-friendly rendering of a shopworn concept. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. B (Show) B (Disc)
Among the many baffling moments in All About Steve, by the way, one of the most air-quote hilarious (if for perhaps reasons unintended by the filmmakers) involves two rib-nudging, aren’t-they-endearing misfits (played by rail-thin goofus DJ Qualls and The Quiet‘s Katy Mixon, who seems to have wandered over from the set of the latest straight-to-DVD Legally Blonde spin-off) who hook up with Sandra Bullock’s character. As they set out on a road trip to the next location, it’s explained that Qualls’ character carves celebrities’ faces (e.g., Mother Theresa) into apples. He then explains thusly: “Yeah, I went to school for physics but got bored, so now I just make these and sell them on AppleHeadsRule.com.” Hey… at least 20th Century Fox had the good sense to purchase that domain name, however, and kick it back to their main promotional web site.
Is it just me, or can the fact that NBC is using Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Coming” to promote Jay Leno’s forthcoming 10 p.m., five-night-a-week talk show kind of be taken as a dig at Conan O’Brien’s rocky-out-of-the-gates stewardship of The Tonight Show? Leno hasn’t been gone that long, really; it’s not like he’s a prizefighter coming out of retirement, or an actress coming back the small screen after a couple years of maternity leave. It’s just a weird song choice to me. Aimed at the segment of the old Tonight Show audience who wouldn’t know the Masturbating Bear from Comic the Insult Triumph Dog, the subtext seems to be, “Yeah, yeah… we know: but now you’ll get Jay earlier, and can go to bed at 11:10 after catching some local news, instead of 11:50, after his monologue!”
In his screenplays for Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel, Guillermo Arriaga traded in a non-linear style, jumping back and forth from different settings and through different periods of time, and interlacing emotionally charged, seemingly discrete, sometimes convoluted narrative tapestries in a manner that, to critics, made his work seem as much about the artifice and construction as the actual characters. His directorial debut, The Burning Plain, evidences all these same old tricks, but generally ranks out among the better of his works, excepting a bit of curious overwriting.
In Mexico, a young motherless girl, Maria (Tessa Ia), lives happily with her father and his best friend until a tragic accident changes her life. In the New Mexico bordertown of Las Cruces, two teenagers, Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence) and Santiago (J.D. Pardo), find love in the aftermath of their parents’ sudden deaths. In an abandoned trailer, Mariana’s mother, Gina (Kim Basinger), embarks on a passionate affair. In Oregon, restaurant manager Sylvia (Charlize Theron) masks a sexually charged storm within via a cool, professional demeanor. When a stranger from Mexico confronts her about her mysterious past, though, Sylvia is launched forward into a journey through space and time that inextricably connects her to these disparate characters, all of whom are grappling with their own tragic romantic destinies.
Stylistically, The Burning Plain is more of a piece with Tommy Lee Jones’ dusty, restrained work behind the camera on The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which Arriaga also wrote. Smartly eschewing the frantic nature of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s directing style, Arriaga also showcases a nice touch working with his actors; the performances in the movie are subdued and naturalistic.
Strangely, most of the film’s faults lay in its writing and construction. While his work is characterized by a novelistic depth where a character’s actions need not be explained immediately (or sometimes at all), Arriaga still doesn’t seem to completely trust his audience. Action is sometimes edited at odds with the emotion of a given scene. More bafflingly, Arriaga seems not content with the mere presentation of metaphor; he instead drags the movie’s subtext up to the surface, ladling on talk of capital-S scars both physical and emotional. This grates, but makes the rightness of the film’s slightly removed ending all the more acute, and striking. (Magnolia, R, 111 minutes)
He probably won’t totally go Jeff Gillooly on some of the worst peddlers of fear-mongering and outright lies quite like he should (the office of the presidency seemingly impairs one’s ability to speak bluntly, at least for Democrats), but it’s (past) time for President Obama to get back some of the steely, chill-the-fuck-out confidence of the final leg of his presidential run last fall, and deliver another oratorical haymaker when it comes time for this Wednesday’s address to a joint session of Congress on health care reform. Newsweek‘s Eleanor Clift fairly eloquently asserts the same in a new op-ed piece, the key excerpt being:
“There are some things that only can do, or will do, and Obama should stop trying to appease his critics and take them on instead. The anti-government fervor that propels Republicans began with Ronald Reagan in 1980, when he proclaimed in his Inaugural Address that, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Obama’s election should have signaled the end of three decades of conservative dogma. Instead, he and too many Democrats have been intimidated into mimicking the GOP and accepting watered-down reform on the altar of bipartisanship. It’s time to call the bluff of the cheap-shot artists who demean government. The benefits of federal intervention touch every American — Social Security, Medicare, and fire and police services, which are all descendents of socialism.”
Of course, Obama could break out a brightly colored, merrily illustrated flow chart and none of this would probably register with Craig T. Nelson, who’s asserted that “no one helped [him] out when [he] was on food stamps and welfare,” or the people that have been showing up at Congressional town hall meetings and yelling “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” at their representatives. These people, after all, are… idiots. Their opposition to reform and/or advocacy of the status quo isn’t rooted in reasoning, but rather tied up in a complicated emotional response to the fact that the United States of America is becoming less white, and more pluralistic.
Marrying their cranked-up, high adrenaline style and penchant for adult content with their most ambitiously plotted narrative yet, Gamer writing-directing tandem Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor craft a violent, wild ride that triggers all the proper demographic tripwires of sensory overload, but also fails to satisfyingly explore the intriguing story it sets out to tell. If ever a movie tired of itself before an audience, this might be the one. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Lionsgate, R, 95 minutes)
In celebration of Glory Annen’s 57th birthday, a look back — complete with photo! — at her delicious turn in John Lamond’s Felicity, known to some as the English language Emmanuelle.
I’d interviewed her a couple weeks before its release, but I didn’t get a chance to tell writer-director Marianna Palka after her movie’s theatrical bow last fall — when I saw later her headed to a screening at the Landmark, her Prius adorned with matching “Got Dick?” bumper stickers — that if Tidal-era Fiona Apple were able to spawn a movie, it would be Palka’s Good Dick. And that’s a compliment. A barbed love story wrapped inside a threadbare character drama of swallowed anger and despair, Palka’s film eschews the achingly manufactured quirkiness or shaggy desire to please of so many of its American indie brethren. It’s instead simply seeded with moments of dark humor, and a few nice supporting turns that make it seem quietly fleshed-out, pained, funny and real, all in equal measure.
Yes, the title summons forth all sorts of jokey impulses, not to mention visions of dumb Hollywood studio comedies or, as mentioned, indie projects a lot more pat and self-satisfied. But the spare, intimate Good Dick proves that, well, size doesn’t matter. Its story centers around a sullen, emotionally deadened, pathologically introverted young woman (multi-hyphenate Palka) and an equally adrift Los Angeles video clerk (Jason Ritter, above) who slowly draws her out of her claustrophobic world. At first he merely recommends more artistically satisfying pornography, but soon he’s camping outside her apartment and pursuing a relationship with her. After slowly chipping away at her sexual antipathy and deflecting her prodigious flashes of anger with Job-like patience, the two reach an impasse in their strange, partly platonic, partly romantic relationship. The question for both: is said morass permanent, or just a final hurdle en route to more firmly rooted happiness?
The characters aren’t ever named, which contributes a bit to a sense of the metaphorical heft of the story being stretched thin. But the performances, unsurprisingly, are perfectly modulated and bounced off of one another, and Palka doesn’t use a limited budget as an excuse to punt on production value; the movie is gorgeously, economically shot by Andre Lascaris, in a manner that feeds the shuttered worldview of its wounded protagonists, who are also a couple in real life. Unconcerned with and unburdened by traditional notions of both feminine centeredness and masculine chivalry, Good Dick is at its core about awakening to the notion of a life lived looking forward, and how one good, hard… friendship (what did you think I was going to say?) can serve as a tethering lifeline in a sea of intra-personal turmoil. The other stuff? Extra benefits, don’tcha know…
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Good Dick comes to DVD with a cover that features its kissing characters superimposed over a hand-sketched, art school-approved background that summons immediate comparisons to the hand-crafted nature of Juno‘s promotional game. That may or may not help draw more of a home-screening audience for the film, but it certainly isn’t a good comparison, given the lack of preciousness and precociousness in the manner in which the film unfolds. Presented in 16×9 enhanced widescreen, with English language Dolby 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks, and optional Spanish and English subtitles, Good Dick is divided into a dozen chapters via a static menu screen, and comes with two versions of its original theatrical trailer — the all-audiences version, as well as a restricted red-band version.
Its supplemental features are intriguing, anchored by a 65-minute featurette which trails Palka, Ritter and costar Eric Edelstein around the Sundance Film Festival, where the movie premiered. There’s a lot of material from post-screening Q&As, which is nice, but plenty of photo shoot, guitar-jam noodling and other random stuff as well, and the rub is that almost all of it is hamstrung by poor sound, seemingly captured only by whatever source-mic was on the digital video camera(s) being used. There’s also a 12-minute gag reel, time-code stamped and unprocessed, which features flubbed lines and crack-ups from Ritter’s character’s video store buddies (Edelstein, Mark Webber and Martin Starr), Palka’s penchant for belching, Los Angeles’ constant goddamned police and fire sirens, and an old lady neighbor wandering cluelessly through frame during a shot at Palka’s apartment complex. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B (Disc)
There’s something about Mary Horowitz, the manic, speed-freak character for whom Sandra Bullock goes dirty blonde and dons red, go-go-style boots in her new movie. In Mary’s hands, forced joy is a weapon, only it’s not nearly as charming as Sally Hawkins’ character in Happy-Go-Lucky. And yes, there’s something about All About Steve, too, a special sort of trainwreck that unfolds like some fever-dream, recycled-parts mash-up of Anchorman, Mad Love, the old Heather Graham flick Committed, and a tossed-off, drunkenly self-amused improv sketch. It’s a terrible movie — a strangely terrible one, really — meriting debate only insofar as whether personal preference rates it above, below or in between Premonition and Speed 2: Cruise Control as Bullock’s biggest career misfire.
A crossword puzzle writer for a small Sacramento newspaper, the aforementioned Mary is a preternaturally wired, possibly bipolar singleton who’s staying at home with her parents while her place is being fumigated. She chatters to herself incessantly, and walks in a funky, stilted manner that underscores her endearing wackiness. Oh, and she wears red, knee-high boots. Always. Mary’s latest blind date, with Steve (Bradley Cooper, further exercising his frost-tipped glory), a hunky cable news cameraman, lasts all of four minutes. (He’s freaked out by her sexual assertiveness.) For all her book smarts, though, Mary definitely can’t read social cues. She’s head-over-heels gaga for Steve, and somehow takes his sudden, excuse-laden departure as an indication of interest in a continued relationship.
So when Steve leaves town for some from-the-field work with Hartman Hughes (Thomas Haden Church), a blowhard assignment reporter angling for an anchor’s chair, and their perpetually exasperated producer Angus (Ken Jeong), Mary gives chase. As much for self-amusement as anything else, Hartman baits the hook, telling Mary that Steve secretly cares for her, and his increasingly vehement denials are only a sign of confusion. So, to quote early U2, if Steve walks away, walks away, walks away, walks away, she will follow. Subsequent media-swarmed backdrops for their screwball encounters include a hospital housing a baby born with three legs, a combined hurricane-tornado catastro-fuck, and a collapsed mine shaft full of deaf kids.
As penned by Kim Barker (License to Wed) and directed by British-born Phil Traill, right out of the gate All About Steve establishes itself as unfolding in a world where nothing really makes sense; just like the catch-all decor of Mary’s room (a Black Power poster, Burt Reynolds’ infamous Playgirl centerfold, a lava lamp and, oh, a guinea pig to whom she talks), the movie itself is a collection of things — characters, settings, story beats, always a bit jarring and frequently directly at odds — thrown haphazardly together. At a time when newspapers are going out of business, Mary makes a pitch for more than the single puzzle she cranks out each week, but her boss helpfully advises, “Less work, more everything else.” Later, as Mary gives chase after Steve, and he checks in with his mother by phone, there’s no mention of the latter’s connection to or opinion of Mary, which seems weird, since the movie three times mentions that the blind date was arranged by their respective parents. This is but one of many examples of things that could be easily fixed and smoothed over in the script stage, but for some reason weren’t.
Similar to something like Alone in the Dark, though, All About Steve actually does manage to wring some legitimate laughs from a willing audience member who doesn’t become surly, mainly because, against all advisable logic, it continues to try to tap into some sort of sincere emotional investment in the unfolding events. The laughs — minor chord bewilderment, really — never align with filmmaker intent, though, especially since the characters are one-note collections of tics, need or function, respectively. Ergo, when Mary finally makes the teary revelation that she wears her trademark red boots because “it makes [her] toes feel like 10 friends on a camping trip,” one might laugh… at what they’re being asked to feel.
This isn’t to say All About Steve is a total camp classic, however — a movie that can be repeatedly enjoyed with friends and the right libations. First off, it’s just lazy — the type of comedy where, in lieu of actual character development, people merely sit bewildered while Mary makes a string of inappropriate personal confessions. More than that, though, Barker’s script is downright insulting, positing, among other things, that there are chipper, wide-eyed disaster junkies that can spontaneously pop up at media-swarmed events in different states, as if they’re just following Phish around for the summer. The performances are invested, full-throttle-energy-type things, but rather quickly reach a point of diminished return, and eventually overload. It’d be the polite thing, one supposes, to say that Bullock deserves better than this sort of vehicle. But then one ponders her producer credit, and judgment in general. Mary Horowitz may not be the only one in need of some power-of-attorney advice of restraint, it seems. (20th Century Fox, PG-13, 99 minutes)
Good news for those affected by the documentary The Cove, actually: Entertainment Weekly is reporting that the annual September slaughter of dolphins just off the coast of Taiji, Japan appears to have been averted this year.
I still halfway think that this is some sort of fever-dream hallucination, and I’m going to wake up in bed next to Suzanne Pleshette, but the red-band trailer for The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, the sequel to boorish writer-director Troy Duffy‘s blustery fraternal shoot-’em-up, and an orgiastic assemblage of genre clichés seen hundreds of times before, is up and online, and now comes word that the film will even receive an October 30 theatrical release through Apparition, Bob Berney’s new distribution company. Nothing much new here (slow-mo gun discharges, squib-happy stuntwork and the like) to indicate this will play outside of the hand-clapping, beer-swilling, already converted small cult audience, and I don’t know that a Peter Fonda cameo is the key to unlocking commercial relevance, but to-scale props for the musical cue use of The Skids’ “The Saints Are Coming.” Totally obvious, sure, but it works.
Tween-targeted adventure, fun and excitement arrives on DVD in the form
of The Suite Life on Deck: Anchors Away!, a sort of fleshed-out, thematically grouped spin-off offering of the hit Disney Channel
original series The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, starring Dylan and Cole Sprouse.
Reprising their roles from the show, the twins Zack and Cody Martin hit
the high seas with hotel heiress London Tiptoe (Brenda Song, above center), enrolling in a semester-at-sea program aboard the S.S. Tipton. Much to his chagrin, dutiful hotel manager Mr. Moseby (Phill Lewis, above right) also gets sucked along on the outing, assuming responsibility for all three youngsters. Hijinx ensue, don’tcha know, as well as romance; the boys try to woo some young ladies, to the extent that “action” involves holding hands and a peck on the cheek. Ashley Tisdale, of the High School Musical flicks, even reprises her role as Maddie from the original series.
Some of the outfitting is all wrong (hipster and vintage videogame T-shirts?), but the shaggy-haired Sprouse twins serve as harmlessly charming anchors for this slice of diverting adolescent entertainment. The direction is pretty flat and straightforward, and the writing makes sure to carefully underscore each set-up, but it’s all performed with cheery enough aplomb, and thankfully doesn’t feel the need to “dual-pitch,” with coded double entendres or other jokes for adults.
Housed in a white plastic Amaray case with snap-shut hinges, The Suite Life on Deck comes presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with a Dolby digital surround sound audio track, and optional French and Spanish language tracks and subtitles as well. The disc’s supplemental features include “Much Ado About Nothing” and “International Dateline,” two bonus episodes which offer up further sea-set adventures. The latter, in which the crew enters a time warp and is forced to repeat the same day over and over, is no Groundhog Day, but probably ranks as the best offering of the bunch. There’s also a 10-minute segment, “Debby on Deck,” in which the Sprouse twins goof around with and interview Debby Ryan (above left), the newest member of the cast, as well as an additional 10 minutes of glad-handing incidental footagefrom the on-deck premiere event for the show. Yes, parents, this is a suitably wholesome distraction. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Show) B- (Disc)
Much more on this soon, but Tuesday’s meeting with LACMA director and CEO Michael Govan shed a bit of light on the state of the museum’s film program moving forward. The most heartening thing from my perspective, and likely for those who have a vested interest in the sort of current classical programming that underscores cinema’s position as a primary art form, was Govan’s unequivocal statement of belief that film was and is an art on par with the other collected and curated works of the museum, and that there was no inter-organizational opposition toward establishing a separate curatorial department for film.
Attending on behalf of the Save Film at LACMA grassroots campaign were site/petition organizers Debra Levine and Doug Cummings (far right), along with, from left, former Los Angeles Film Critics Association president Lael Loewenstein; Oscar-winning costume designer James Acheson; American Cinematheque Director of Publicity and Promotions Margot Gerber; Sony repertory executive Jared Sapolin; Shannon Kelley (kneeling), Head of Public Programs at the UCLA Film & Television Archive; yours truly, current president of LAFCA; DocFilms Programming Chair emeritus Kyle Westphal, and Michael Schlesinger (in sunglasses), a veteran film distribution and repertory programming executive.
For Govan’s perspective, and more on the museum’s announced “CineClub” endeavor, a $50 LACMA membership add-on that would give members priority ticketing and help them support a program they value deeply, click here. There’s also an op-ed in today’s Los Angeles Times which ably sketches out many of the particulars of the situation, but perhaps misstates things when it concludes: “Looking at Govan’s original decision, it’s clear the program wasn’t being canceled because elitists at LACMA don’t take film seriously; the bigger problem was that attendance had fallen by 50 percent. Ultimately, if the program is to succeed, it must attract patrons.” Knowing the numbers, that figure is a bit of an overstatement. And yes, money is key. But this isn’t a fight over patrons; big donor money is what it’s about. Underline that.
Jennifer’s Body, penned by Diablo Cody, has already started screening in Los Angeles in advance of its Toronto premiere and September 18 bow, and the advance word from three sources I’ve spoken to pegs it anywhere from the sort of bad that induces shrugs of dispirited disinterest to flat-out, aggressively terrible. Nevertheless, one can expect another surge of interest in star Megan Fox, and certainly a spike in internet searches for these sorts of photos. But will e-sex appeal translate to box office punch, when not paired with marauding robots? Hard to say, though Movieline’s Kyle Buchanan delivers a relative defense of Fox’s skills.
Nature documentaries are dime-a-dozen-type things, as any bored elementary schooler can attest. But advances in film technology have possibly impacted no other sub-genre quite like they have our pursuits of chronicling the animal kingdom, rendering laughably obsolete the 16mm Ciba Geigy filmstrips of yesteryear. Earth, which debuted Disney’s nature programming arm when it bowed theatrically this spring, is the latest documentary offering to offer up a snapshot of our changing planet, and animals’ place in it, and it’s a beautiful, engaging film, full of footage the likes of which may never be seen again.
Earth positions itself as somewhat of a macro docu-snapshot, but also smartly hones in on several storylines that help anchor and root the movie for younger viewers. In the Arctic, a mother polar bear trailed by her two cubs awakens from hibernation and searches for food as their icy hunting grounds melt away, and the father polar bear (above) swims further out to sea in search of food. A herd of African elephants slowly traverses the arid Kalahari Desert toward the water-rich Okavango Delta. A humpback whale and her calf, meanwhile, take part in a 4,000-mile, epic migration that takes them from tropical waters all the way to Antarctica. Remarkable high-definition footage captures these creatures in places that human beings rarely see, providing an enthralling glimpse of unique worlds.
A big part of this success must be credited to award-winning filmmakers Alastair Fothergill (The Blue Planet) and Mark Linfield, the latter of whom was also involved with the superlative Planet Earth miniseries, which was commissioned by the BBC and subsequently broadcast Stateside by the Discovery Channel. They obviously have a grasp of arresting natural visuals, but also figure out a way to weave together story strands in a manner that gives Earth a bit of an artificial narrative pull. Earth does toss in a few facts for narrator James Earl Jones to dole out, too, but the movie is chiefly driven by its stunning imagery, and in fact some of its writing (“This creature is the essence of wilderness” is the description of a lynx) comes across as silly and a bit indistinct. The only other big strike against the movie is its overly Disney-fied score, from composer George Fenton. The noise, only occasionally grating, can’t cancel out the power of the visuals, though.
Available in a two-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, Earth includes a small slate of bonus features that offer viewers an in-depth look at the making of the movie as well as an opportunity to learn more about our planet and its myriad fascinating inhabitants. Earth Diaries is a 45-minute making-of special that chronicles in exhaustive detail the five-year production of the film, which touched all seven continents, 62 countries, over 200 locations and spanned over 2,000 days in the field. This footage is often just as fascinating as the footage in the finished product, as is the case with watching the filmmakers deal with the challenges of navigating a low-flying hot air balloon around clusters of tree branches. Richard Burton, the movie’s aerial director of photography, speaks interestingly about the Cineflex camera used in the film, and co-director Linfield aptly points out regarding the production, “Things don’t go right all the time. And if they do, then you’re not trying things difficult enough.”
Given the stunning vistas on display, Blu-ray is definitely the way to go for this title, which maximizes the 1080p high definition and 1.78:1 widescreen presentation. (A single-disc version of Earth is also available, mostly targeted for rental.) Optional English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles are included; exclusive Blu-ray bonus features, meanwhile, consist of a set of filmmakers’ annotations that appear as pop-up facts, VH-1-style, during a viewing of the movie. Animated chapter stops and an array of trailers are also included, which slows down the disc’s tracking just a bit. To purchase the combo DVD-Blu-ray release via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) B+ (Disc)
