It’s not part of some design-of-the-day scheme, but in other Olivia Wilde news (she also costars in the film about to be mentioned), kudos to the folks at Disney, who are smartly piggybacking on Jeff Bridges’ no-brainer Oscar nomination for Crazy Heart by pegging the release of a photo from Tron Legacy to today.
Meditative and blue-hued, it doesn’t rank up there with Comic-Con’s Iron Man photo release from a couple years back in terms of sheer pizazz, that’s for sure. But it works in counterbalancing fashion to the sheer volume of effects-intensive promo shots that no doubt await, further down the line. Tron Legacy centers on Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin
Flynn (Bridges), as he looks into his father’s disappearance and finds
himself pulled into a digital world where his dad has been
living for the past 25 years. Together, they embark on a life-and-death journey
of escape across an exceedingly dangerous cyber
universe. The film releases December 17.
A campy, sci-fi, gleefully gross-out adventure loosely in the vein of fellow budget-challenged romps like Feast or Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, Infestation is written and directed by Kyle Rankin, one of the co-directors behind The Battle of Shaker Heights — the final Project Greenlight flick, which whiffed commercially but helped put Shia LaBeouf on the path toward big screen domination on which he now seems to be. It’s not a movie that reinvents the wheel (or in any way, shape or form really desires to), but it is fun, and well done, benefiting from the jocular presence of Christopher Marquette. Genre fans will assuredly dig it.
A mundane office workday takes a sudden turn for the worse when twentysomething chronic underachiever Cooper is rendered unconscious by an earsplitting noise. He wakes up several days later, in a massive cocoon spun by mutant, flesh-eating insects. Upon hooking up with Sara (Brooke Nevin), the daughter of his deceased boss, Cooper unwraps a couple more coworkers at the downtown office park around him, forming a team of strangers to eventually strike out into the great unknown, and fight off the infestation. In addition to gruff, tough-talking Sara, there’s Cindy (Kinsey Packard), plus Al (Wesley Thompson) and his deaf son, a hulking man-child named Hugo (Quincy Sloan). A plan is forged to check on a select handful of loved ones and then work toward safety; Cooper eventually crosses paths with emotionally withholding dad Ethan (Ray Wise), who can’t even sincerely compliment his son for making it across the city, and back to his house.
In movies like Fanboys and the underrated The Girl Next Door, Marquette has provided solid comic relief, but here he anchors the entire film, in winning fashion. Rankin also plays with audience expectation and genre convention in fresh, slightly amusing ways. Sometimes the manner in which he leapfrogs story hurdles is funny right through the fog of shrugs (a character, playing a massage therapy student, uses a home pregnancy test to determine the venomous nature of a captured spider), but a couple times Rankin requires characters to nakedly intuit things that don’t entirely make sense. Efram Potelle, Rankin’s Shaker Heights co-director, scores a visual effects supervisor credit here (a big part of the duo’s short film work, for those who remember), and it’s undeniably true that Infestation‘s giant bugs — a smart, seamless mixture of practical and CGI effects — go a long way toward making one believe enough in the conceit of the film to lie back and just have a good time.
Infestation arrives on DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks, as well as optional English and Spanish subtitles. Apart from trailers for other releases, the only supplemental extra is a feature-length audio commentary track from Rankin that is fairly low-key, to the point it could be legitimately described as enervated. Rankin talks some about Wise’s penchant for improvisation, and cops to the fact that the movie’s abortive ending is a naked ploy to set up a potential sequel. In fact, he says, he has a two-film arc sketched out, if Infestation catches on as a viral DVD smash. Hey… far worse things could happen. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) C (Disc)
From The Hollywood Reporter‘s Heat Vision blog, word that Olivia Wilde is deep in negotiations to join Daniel Craig in the sci-fi western Cowboys and Aliens, which Jon Favreau is directing for DreamWorks. Wilde would play a character named Ella, who joins up with mysterious gunslinger in an unlikely uprising against an alien invasion; Craig is playing the gunslinger, taking over the role from Robert Downey, Jr., who dropped out in January to jump into a fast-tracked Sherlock Holmes sequel. This would be good news for fans of alluring eyebrows, no doubt.
For those in the Southern California area, director Arthur Hiller will appear at two separate double-dips of his films at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica — this Thursday’s double feature of The In-Laws and Silver Streak, and this Friday’s double feature of The Out of Towners and Plaza Suite. Both programs start at 7:30 p.m., and tickets range from $9 to $11. The Aero Theatre is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. Tickets for these movies, as well as other special events, are available through Fandango, but for 24-hour recorded information on directions and the Aero’s upcoming schedule, phone (323) 466-FILM.
It’s a happy birthday to Christie Brinkley, who turns 56 today. She’s no actress, although her appearance in National Lampoon’s Vacation certainly made an impression. Chiefly, though, Brinkley was known to guys who came of age in the 1980s and early parts of the 1990s as a model for Sports Illustrated‘s annual swimsuit issue (her romance with rock ‘n’ roll piano man Billy Joel didn’t hurt in this regard either, upping her profile and keeping her in the public light). No crazy-busty chick, Brinkley and her sunny persona presented a confounding and seemingly at-odds image for plenty of teen and twentysomething guys — the knockout model as relatable girl next door.
And in photos like the one above, the leggy looker (she’s 5’9″) cemented the virtues of bared neck, shoulders and more for a generation of hormonally-charged dudes. Maybe the Internet, with its readily available explicit images, has changed that for the current generation. But movies (and magazines) used to not be above trading in sexiness without any preoccupation with actual sex. The bared female back is a big part of that — a subdued and at times almost startling inversion of what men, in all our visual orientation, most typically focus on. Of course, the ass pear doesn’t hurt either.
As micro-brews continue to surge in popularity, and Americans of a certain age start to become at least a bit more invested in their ale quaffing habits (if not quite to the same degree that they typically are with wine), entertaining and informative glimpses behind the sociocultural curtain like this new-to-DVD documentary will continue to find welcome reception. Clocking in at only an hour, The American Brew doesn’t quite have the contemporary pop of Anat Baron’s Beer Wars, which examined in fascinating fashion how the three (now two) major brewer-bottlers look to trick consumers and put the squeeze on upstart competitors. Still, in exploring the rich and surprising history of beer making from colonial settlers through the present day, this movie offers up sudsy intrigue.
Writer Jesse Sweet and director Roger Sherman share the unique history of America’s favorite beverage (sorry, Coke), charting a history from the Prohibition era right on through the unending success of national breweries. The American Brew explores the evolution of beer throughout the centuries, interweaving compelling personal tales and interviews with industry experts to provide an inside look at brewing innovations, and how those changes have impacted the national palette.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The American Brew comes to DVD in widescreen, with an English language 5.1 surround sound audio track that more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of the title. Hearteningly, the DVD also features over 45 minutes of bonus footage, including conversations with restaurateur Danny Meyer, premier beer critic Michael Jackson (no, not that guy), and the editors of All About Beer. There’s also a look inside the hidden cellar of New York City’s Prohibition-era 21 Club, Paul Brady’s breweriana collection, and a cheeky short, “Cheese Wars,” which pits wine and beer against one another in an effort to determine cheese’s perfect match. To order a copy of The American Brew directly from PBS, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. B- (Movie) B+ (Disc)
