Fret not about the future of movie criticism, says Richard Horgan over at Suite101 — it’s only a matter of time before the first A.I. film critic, “who will seamlessly inform his views with those of the braintrust responsible for the title in question.” Some would argue we’re already (almost) there, on the other hand.
Monthly Archives: April 2010
“They Can Do the Innuendo, They Can Dance and Sing…”
Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) debate President Obama’s forthcoming Supreme Court nomination on Meet the Press, opposite the very simian David Gregory, and it occurs to me that TiVo is a blessed thing, allowing me to skip past this empty political dance, in which Sessions claims not to understand simple statements, all to maintain maximum maneuverability once nominee is announced, and of course avoid admitting there’s a personal/issue-based litmus test he (and Republicans) would/will apply.
Also, apropos of nothing, it just occurred to me — if Gene Keady’s hair had a blog, I would totally read that.
Where Art Thou, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City?
Can’t stress enough how much this movie needs to happen, if only for this title to appear in advertisements and work into bunches the panties of sociocultural conservative commentators, all of whom decry it without seeing or knowing anything about it. Paul Weitz was circling/attached at one time, when I talked to him for American Dreamz.
The Slammin’ Salmon
The Broken Lizard guys — Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske — have made a career out of doing “stupid” big, knowing and affable, as in Super Troopers and Beerfest. While not huge breakout stars by any means, they’ve built up a reputation as “fratire” trailblazers, cinematic forerunners for Tucker Max. Their best effort, however, was probably the island-set murder mystery send-up Club Dread, and not merely because Brittany Daniel runs around in a bikini for most of the film, and they got the beautiful Jordan Ladd to go topless. No, that flick had a rooted story around which the jokes were all built. Their latest effort has a lot of what makes their movies of a piece (left-field humor like coleslaw down the pants and a swordfish being punched unconscious), but The Slammin’ Salmon, despite its vaguely sexual title, is a decent comedic premise only fitfully delivered upon.
Set in Miami, the movie centers around the wait staff at a pricey restaurant owned by “Slammin’ Cleon Salmon” (Michael Clarke Duncan), a former heavyweight boxing champion with a penchant for the gregarious mangling of words and the bellowing of “Whatever, motherfucker!” when someone deigns to correct him (which isn’t very often). Having racked up a $20,000 gambling debt to a group of thugs after placing bets on and taking part in catch-and-release Japanese albino hunting (yes, seriously), cash-poor Cleon challenges issues a contest ultimatum to his oddball staff via bumbling, nice-guy manager Rich (Heffernan): to turn over $20,000 sales in a single night, with the top-selling server winning a huge prize and the last-place
server getting a broken-rib sandwich. Preening Guy (Stolhanske), borderline multiple personality screwball “Nuts” (Chandrasekhar), med student Tara (Cobie Smulders), new guy Donnie (Soter), would-be ballerina Mia (April Bowlby) and disgraced actor Connor (Lemme), returning from an abortive television gig, have at it. Spurred on by greed and panic, the staff resorts to backstabbing, bribery and all sorts of indecent proposals in wheels-spinning attempts to “up-sell” patrons.
There’s enough basic structure in place for The Slammin’ Salmon to be amusing, but too large a portion of its jokes and banter feel like first-draft placeholder material, and its consistently scattershot staging and execution too often undercuts whatever comedic momentum it starts to accrue. It’s tough to really pull off comedies confined to a single space and time — the choreography has to be crackerjack, and mindful of how one screw-up or interruption or delay impacts everything around it (think Noises Off, when properly staged), which just isn’t the case here. The Broken Lizard guys go mostly big, obviously, but several of these story strands of wild escalation (Rich’s accidental ingestion of a customer’s diamond engagement ring, for instance, after gluttonously attacking a dessert momentarily left in the “send-back”
area) get left behind, or back-burned in ways that make them a lot less amusing when they return to them. The madcap tone and energy isn’t slowly and believably ratcheted up, in other words. Still, the Broken Lizard guys call in enough favors to fill out supporting roles with recognizable faces, as Will Forte, Olivia Munn, Vivica A. Fox, Morgan Fairchild, Lance Henriksen, Sendahil Ramamurthy and Jim Gaffigan all appear in bit parts.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a complementary cardboard slipcover, The Slammin’ Salmon comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Supplemental features are anchored by two separate audio commentary tracks with the Broken Lizard gang; one features Chandrasekhar, Stolhanske and Soter, the other features Heffernan and Lemme. Both unexpectedly suffer a bit from lapses in engagement, but the latter track is the livelier affair, with anecdotes about farting contests between key grips, and Heffernan pointing out a couple bits in the movie’s finale that are copped from Rocky III, from the LeRoy Neiman-inspired painting done by his brother, an artist, to his commissioned choice for a closing credits song, Earth Cock’s “Cry of the Cougar,” that is a straight-up rip-off of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” The only other bonus tidbit is a seven-minute featurette, “Hellish Kitchens: Art Imitates Restaurant Life,” that features the Broken Lizard gang reminiscing about old food service employment, shared and otherwise, all while apparently riding to set together in a noisy van. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C (Disc)
Dinner for Schmucks Trailer Gives Off Weird Vibe
Something about the very premise for Dinner for Schmucks (Paramount, July 23), starring Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, seems inherently off. Ignoring the quasi-ethnic specificity of the title, and the befuddlement it will create in swathes of the country, have we really arrived at a place where basically the plot for She’s All That can be transported to the corporate world, with yuks expected to ensue? I entirely expect that Rudd’s higher-ups and fellow employees (Bruce Greenwood, Ron Livingston, Larry Wilmore, et al) will ultimately be played for jerks, and the butt of some jokes — that’s the “reversal” that’s ingrained in studio product — but what is at all amusing about the notion of a company where this sort of culture thrives? Ignoring that, is it any way realistic in the current economic climate, even in a bio-domed, alternate-comedic world — that a company’s power brokers have this much time to devote to fiddlesticks fucking around? It feels off in a big way, i.e., out of step with the zeitgeist.
Date Night
A solid concept and the promising comedic pairing of Steve
Carell and Tina Fey fall victim to sloppy filmmaking and a needlessly convoluted mystery plot in Date Night, a disappointing comedy that fails to fully deliver the indelible stamp
of personality that makes either of its lead performers special. Screenwriter Josh Klausner, working from an idea hatched by producer-director Shawn Levy, creates a story far more complicated than necessary. At a certain point the movie essentially becomes a live-action Tex Avery cartoon, and any semblance of adult emotional connection is irrevocably severed. For the full review, from Screen International, click here. (20th Century Fox, PG-13, 88 minutes)
Nicolas Cage Explains How to Act Like You’re High on Coke
Over at Cinematical, Todd Gilchrist has a nice interview with Nicolas Cage about his work in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, and specifically both how he mapped out behavior for his character depending on what illicit substances he was abusing in given scenes, as well as his view of people that would characterize his acting choices as somehow weird, while giving folks working in other mediums an “artist pass.”
Also, still and forever true, despite the most unfortunate gift delivered unto Dook last night.
Will The Strangers Get a Sequel, With Liv Tyler?
Late to the party, but I wanted to give a tip of the cap to Ryan Rotten over at Shock Till You Drop, who has news about a potential sequel to The Strangers, which was actually one of the more effective exercises in purebred, string-pulling horror craftsmanship from 2008. He sorts through its fitful pre-production history, and examines the script, from Bryan Bertino, the director of the first film. It’d be not bad at all for this thing to go off, but as Rotten points out, it would likely have to happen sooner rather than later in order to capitalize on an already shrinking window of public memory and genre fan goodwill.
The Square
Take note, fans of A Simple Plan, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Unfaithful and (just perhaps) fellow Down Under import Lantana. A twist-filled Australian drama centering on an adulterous couple whose scheming leads to arson, blackmail and multiple deaths, The Square evokes tangential memories of the classic board game Candyland’s Molasses Swamp, because every step of attempted extrication its protagonist takes only seems to plunge him further into trouble.
Middle-aged construction supervisor Raymond (David Roberts, above) becomes entangled in an affair with a beautiful but troubled neighbor, Carla (Claire van der Boom), whose mulleted husband Smithy (Anthony Hayes) is a menacing figure up to no good. When Carla comes across a mysterious stash of cash hidden by Smithy, she proposes to Ray that they go all Steve Miller Band, and take the money and run. Though reticent at first, Ray hires criminal drifter Billy (co-writer Joel Edgerton) to cover their tracks with an arson scheme, which goes tragically wrong and accidentally fells Carla’s mother-in-law. The couple is understandably freaked… and that’s before the first blackmail note arrives. Someone knows of their illicit love affair, it seems, and as Ray tries to simultaneously get to the bottom of the extortion, finish paying off Billy and execute an on-the-fly cover-up, things only get worse for the lovers.
Director Nash Edgerton works in a sort of plain-faced, stylistically muted fashion, and doesn’t really, until the end, try to artificially goose the dramatic stakes. The Square, perhaps much to its credit, doesn’t waste time trying to get into the details of either party’s domestic unhappiness. Action instead drives the plot, which mostly works since the acting is solid across the board. There can be a certain pleasure to the mere tightening of screws, and that’s chiefly where The Square gets its kicks; weather, happenstance and bystanders’ nosiness all seem to conspire against our lovers. The movie is seeded, too, with sometimes amusing details that raise tension in peripheral, atypical ways (having watched their owners go at it, Ray and Carla’s dogs form a bond), even though many of them never conventionally pay off. It’s a case for fidelity, if only because the alternative seems so downright exhausting. (Apparition, R, 102 minutes)
Bigfoot
As a kid, sometime between elementary school and the wonder years of middle school, I went through a rather typical fascination with all sorts of things occult, mysterious and unexplained — reflective, in my opinion, of a desire to explore the world at large. The very idea of human uncertainty, of the outer limits of testable knowledge, was in and of itself a mesmerizing notion, and in so many ways much more interesting than plain old school lessons. This extracurricular interest started with aliens, the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs, extended onto the Loch Ness Monster and the case of Jack the Ripper, as I recall, and of course made its way to Bigfoot and his wintry cousin, the Abominable Snowman. (When I couldn’t find answers, or even re-framed questions to the ideas I had kicking around in my own mind, this period, pre-Internet, also introduced the limitations of books, something else that blew my mind.)
This is all to say that settling down with a copy of a low-budget 2004 film entitled Bigfoot, complete with exploi-tastic extreme close-up cover art, felt in ways both good and substantial like a field trip back in time. So I wasn’t necessarily expecting a movie that relocated the Bigfoot legend from the environs of the Pacific Northwest to… marshy Ohio? Yes, indeed. The DVD cover boasts a quote from the Cleveland Free Times deeming the flick “reminiscent of Jaws,” which is certainly a stretch. But there’s no denying that writer-director-actor Bob Gray’s film is nowhere near as balls-to-the-wall schlocky as one might reasonably suspect (and indeed desire), given the subject matter. Eschewing CGI in favor of zippered-suit marauding and other practical effects, Bigfoot spins a wan tale of homecoming and familial reconciliation around its beasty hunting, and in doing so tangentially evokes the spirits of early creature features and drive-in movies of yesteryear.
With his 9-year-old daughter Charlie (Brooke Beckwith) in tow, single dad Jack Sullivan (Todd Cox) moves back to his recently deceased father’s home in Mentor Headlands, in the marshlands of Northeastern Ohio. There, he reunites with his old friend Bob Perkins (Gray), now sheriff, where the two puzzle over a recent spate of animal mutilations. They investigate, and team up with local park ranger Sandy Parker (Liza Foster). Before long, they’re on the trail of Bigfoot (Shawn Kipp), don’tcha know. Copious shots of startled hunters ensue.
Any fair judgment rendered unto Bigfoot must take into account its limited production means. The acting is amateurish and what most forthrightly dooms it, and the execution only so-so throughout, but Gray’s script at least attempts to avoid a purely adrenalized, rib-poking take on its titular star, building the production around a quaint regionalism that is somewhat charming. With perhaps a bit more time and a few more polished actors, his modest efforts would have achieved greater value.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Bigfoot comes to DVD on a region-free disc, as a full-screen presentation. Multi-hyphenate Gray provides an audio commentary track that dispenses plenty of DIY advice, while also giving props to the local kids who serve as background extras. There’s also a three-and-a-half-minute forced-scrollable photo gallery, the trailer for Bigfoot and three other Troma DVD titles, and a 10-minute making-of featurette with a bit of behind-the-scenes footage, as well as interview material with cryptozoologist Don Keating. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) C+ (Disc)
What Darwin Never Knew
The title is somewhat misleading, since there are plenty of things that Charles Darwin probably never knew about, from Twitter, Jennifer Aniston and the rather baffling commercial success of the Alvin and the Chipmunks films to nuclear proliferation, the stunning hotness of French
TV anchor Melissa Theuriau and the cottage industry of response he would eventually provide to all those ichthus fish car magnets. Still, the new documentary What Darwin Never Knew actually sheds some fascinating light on one of history’s most intriguing and controversial scientists.
On the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, the award-winning NOVA series revisits Darwin’s (in)famous work, and fills in some of the blanks within it. As the DVD’s back cover text points out, Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals — including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish, and more than 350,000 species of beetles alone. The source of life’s seemingly endless forms was a profound mystery until Darwin’s revolutionary idea of natural selection, which he showed could help explain the gradual development of life on earth. But Darwin’s radical insights raised as many questions as they answered, both about humankind’s relationship to evolution (heresy to most organized religions) as well as what about what factors actually drive evolution and turn one species into another.
Stunning breakthroughs in a brand new science are linking the enigma of origins to another of nature’s great mysteries, the development of an embryo, and it’s at this interstice which What Darwin Never Knew exists, using cutting-edge testing to link past and present. To explore this exciting new idea, NOVA takes viewers on a journey from the Galapagos Islands to the Arctic, and from the Cambrian explosion of animal forms half a billion years ago to the research labs of today, where scientists are beginning to crack some of nature’s biggest secrets at a genetic level. It’s all quite fascinating stuff, and nicely pitched at a level which both science nerds and the average layperson can almost equally enjoy.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, What Darwin Never Knew comes to home video in both Blu-ray and DVD, the latter presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with an English language stereo track that more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of this title. There are unfortunately no supplemental bonus features, save chapter stops. To order a copy of What Darwin Never Knew directly from the manufacturer, call (800) PLAY-PBS or
click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. B (Movie) D (Disc)
Mid-August Lunch
The subject of elder care is rarely legitimately addressed or explored in American film, perhaps because creative types see what a third rail it is in politics (prescription drug benefits! death panels!) and just figure, Jesus, why would I want to get involved in that? Multi-hyphenate Gianni Di Gregorio (below right) wades into the breach, though, with Mid-August Lunch, a movie of gentle rhythms and deadpan amusements built around a dutiful adult son’s attempts to placate a group of feisty ladies.
Starring in his directorial debut, and
drawing upon events from his own life, Di Gregorio places himself at the center of a trying Roman holiday. The plot? Armed with only wine and a fatalistic sense of humor, middle-aged Gianni resides with his 93-year-old mother (Valeria De Franciscis), a fallen aristocrat, in their cramped apartment. His condo co-op debts are mounting, but building manager Luigi makes Gianni a proposition — if he looks after his mother (Marina Cacciotti) during Ferragosto (Italy’s biggest summer holiday), Luigi will wipe the charges clear. Gianni wearily accedes, but then Luigi also shows up with an aunt (Maria Cali), and soon Gianni’s doctor unloads his own mother (Grazia Cesarini Sforza) upon him as well. Can Gianni juggle the at-odds dietary concerns and fickle personalities of such lively grand dames?
Di Gregorio, co-writer of the very different Gomorrah, possesses a warm, unruffled charisma that goes a long way toward helping ease one into the sleepy tone around which this delicately balanced comedy of
manners is constructed. The leathery De Franciscis is amusing too, carping over the gift of a bundt cake by noting that it came covered by a hand towel, and isolating herself in her room after quickly deciding these interlopers don’t interest her. Watching the movie I was reminded of a truth I witnessed in my own grandmother — that settled ways and comfortable routines can be fundamentally misread by sensitive souls as more personal judgments — and the unspoken corollary to that: that we always say we want the best care for our aging parents, but the reality is that it often entails challenges entirely unrelated to immediate medical concerns.
There’s no grand drama or payoff to Mid-August
Lunch — this is essentially Polaroid-type, snapshot cinema, in which Gianni juggles and tries, and nothing exists outside the carefully prescribed boundaries of meal time, pillow fluffiness, control of the television and dietary concerns. That fact, as much if not more so than its Italian roots, may automatically limit the film’s audience. But there is truth here, and in truth there is always some value. (Zeitgeist, unrated, 76 minutes)
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
It’s interesting and more than a bit telling that the first paragraph of the accompanying press notes for Bad
Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans tout the fact that the movie “allows… for Nicolas Cage‘s performance to be truly memorable.” It’s an intriguing choice of words, one that seemingly yields, with a smirk and knowing nod, to interpretations of the film as a piece of zonked-out performance art.
Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a rogue New Orleans detective who’s as devoted to his job as he is at
scoring illicit drugs. A brief opening bit showcases McDonagh as a crusading good-guy cop. But in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and a back injury suffered during a rescue mission, he becomes a high-functioning addict who
swings from prescription meds to harder drugs. Playing fast and loose with the law, McDonagh wields both his badge as often as his gun in order to get his way, using his finely honed intuitiveness to suss out scenarios in which he can pinch both weekend partiers and low-level junkies alike. Further complicating McDonagh’s
tumultuous life are his prostitute girlfriend, Frankie (Eva
Mendes), a troublesome gambling habit, and a father in recovery with a new, alcoholic wife. When crime boss Big Fate (rapper-actor Xzibit) looks like he’s going to weasel off the hook in the brutal murder of an immigrant family, McDonagh at first tries to flip members of his crew, then seemingly throws caution to the wind and switches sides, aligning himself with Big Fate in order to pay down debts and secure personal safety.
Yes, Bad
Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is of a certain subgenre which might affectionately be called “batshit crazy cinema.” It’s a cop procedural in the very broadest sense, but instead of the typical 90-10-percent plot/color breakdown, it trends almost exactly in the opposite direction; even its very title seems flippant, a thumb in the eye of character-study convention. Cage’s devilish partner in this cinematic high-wire act, director Werner Herzog, studs his film with recognizable supporting players — Val Kilmer as Cage’s partner, Shawn Hatosy as a fellow cop, Brad Dourif as his bookie, Fairuza Balk as a state trooper fling, Jennifer Coolidge as his father’s drunken new squeeze, and Michael Shannon as an evidence room gatekeeper — but the narrative trappings of William Finkelstein’s script seems of little consequence to both parties.
In a way, this feeds the movie’s casual… well, brilliance may be too hefty a term, but effective misdirection, let’s say. Herzog truly cares not what the audience feels about McDonagh’s amorality, as evidenced by the relative lack of a superseding authority in the movie. There are a few mild professional consequences for McDonagh, but most of the tightening noose around his neck is entirely of his own creation. So in some not insignificant ways, audience identification with him starts to flicker, or wane. And yet this tack somewhat surprisingly works, both on a base entertainment level (as when McDonagh whips out his lucky crack pipe, or instructs a gangbanger to fire again into a bullet-riddled corpse, “because his soul is still dancing”) and as laid track toward a surprisingly definitive end point. Port of Call New Orleans, which has nothing to do with Abel Ferrera and Harvey Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant, save the shared moniker and bad behavior, is a woozy, rope-a-dope character study. It’s not for all tastes, certainly, but it’s further proof that square-jawed altruism can flow from complicated and often contrasting motivations.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks, as well as optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, the former of which are actually a bit spotty in their translation. Bonus features consist of both regular and red-band versions of the movie’s trailer, five other DVD previews, and a gallery of 96 set photographs taken by Lena Herzog, the filmmaker’s (third) wife. The chief supplemental extra, however, is a 31-minute making-of featurette, in which Herzog explains why he likes to operate his own sound-sync clapper, and engages in an apparent ritual in which a gaffer marks him with yellow tape on the first day of shooting. While there are good anecdotal details and tidbits scattered throughout — including on the dead alligator used as roadkill in a sequence, and how 2,400 jars of decaffeinated coffee were utilized to simulate muddy water for the flooded prison scene that opens the film, after it was determined that the caffeine of regular coffee would be too readily absorbed through the skin — thankfully Herzog is all over this material, in all his bountiful weirdness. That means plenty of his impish expounding on moviemaking in general as well as the “bliss of evil” present in this film, and how he doesn’t really care about McDonagh’s behavior, since it solves cases. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B+ (Disc)
For the Record, Craig T. Nelson is an Idiot
It’s an unhappy 66th birthday to knee-jerk, right-wing bump-on-a-log Craig T. Nelson, aka Steve Freeling and Coach Hayden Fox, who last year famously and apparently without irony asserted that “no one helped [him] out when [he] was on food stamps and welfare.” Idiotic charlatans of political engagement like this — unfeeling creatures who don’t understand the difference between socialism and a societal safety net, and reflexively bristle at social/mental health/outreach programs that don’t conform to the prescribed rigidities of the manner in which they believe others should be living their lives — are in a certain sense citizens of the worst order, because they have the means to be better educated, but almost willfully choose not to be. They put on blinders and ignore the world at large, or indeed the very notion that there could be major problems that do not (yet) immediately impact their lives. Their opinions are rooted in having achieved a certain hard-fought success, and then — instead of celebrating living in a country which ultimately rewarded all their effort with a lottery-style win — becoming embittered with taxation and/or the inability to extend control and ultimate authority across all areas of life. I mean, clueless statements like the one above almost guarantee that the guy has an alcoholic past or has been in some sort of trouble with the IRS, right? Which one is it?
Alec Baldwin (and Balls) Celebrate 52nd Birthday
Alec Baldwin turns 52 today. As do his balls. So happy birthday to all three.
Clash of the Titans
Sam Worthington is probably a perfectly nice guy. But whenever I hear some piece of casting news about him (he’s already plugged into at least three mega-franchises, possibly four), I have to quickly, quietly remind myself that they’re not actually talking about Sam Huntington. He’s perfectly anonymous, in other words — a growly, studied-intense blend of Russell Crowe, Orlando Bloom and, I don’t know… Daniel Craig? He looks the part of an Anglo-foreign movie star, sure (Australian? British? Kiwi? Midwestern soccer moms are never quite sure…), but is being plugged into Hollywood studio film leading roles at a somewhat alarming clip, seemingly before any independent commercial or critical referendum. (Even Colin Farrell had Tigerland.)
Of course that’s only one of the problems with Clash of the Titans, a competent but hardly rousing piece of effects-spectacle entertainment in which Worthington, exuding the yep-I’m-here charisma of a middleweight Steve Reeves stand-in, stars as Perseus, a demigod who sets out to settle a score between man and the gods. Standing on the shoulders of other recent 3-D Hollywood rib-pokers, and featuring choppily edited action sequences that pass the time as much as thrill, this in some respects lush but also murkily shot movie seems destined to both score a king’s ransom at the box office and be utterly forgotten in fairly short order.
For those who skipped Latin, or tuned out during those scattered middle school mythological overviews, and never caught 1981’s Harry Hamlin-starring flick of the same name, a solemn female voiceover provides just about all the specifics about Greek gods that one needs to know in order to lay back and let Clash of the Titans wash over them. Mortals, you see, are fed up with the whims of the gods, who hang around in a pillared Mount Olympus, sporting lots of guyliner and letting streams of white light bounce impressively off and around them. So they’ve stopped praying to them, and have started toppling statues and the like. This is a problem, since the gods… um, need the prayers and adoration of mankind in order to remain immortal. Why does this all sound like a pyramid scheme? Don’t ask.
Some backstory: in order to teach a lesson to mankind, his emotionally wayward whimsical creation, god-daddy Zeus (Liam Neeson, enjoying the paycheck) trick-raped a human woman, posing as her blasphemous husband, and begot Perseus. Abandoned at birth, Perseus has been raised by a simple fisherman (Pete Postlethwaite) and his wife, who dismiss Perseus’ lingering concerns over his uncertain biological lineage by noting that their love is “the love that gods and kings fight over,” whatever the hell that means. Daddy (and uncle) issues come bubbling to the surface when Perseus’ seafaring parents are killed, collateral damage in an attack on humans by Hades (Ralph Fiennes), Zeus’ scheming, banished-to-the-underworld brother.
Swearing revenge against Hades and any minions he brings to bear against him, Perseus finds a lover/guide in the form of comely fellow demigod Io (Gemma Arterton), who takes time away from a slate of Pantene commercials to drop some helpful exposition. A-questing Perseus will go! A few hearty, sandled warriors join him, and together they team up with Blue-eyed Barkface Magic Guy (I’m pretty sure that’s his name) to lay waste to some giant crabby creatures from Starship Troopers, cross the River Styx (“Come sail away!”) and lop off Medusa’s head, all so that they might then do battle with the gods’ ultimate weapon, the Kraken, which resembles a steroid-enhanced version of that monster from Cloverfield.
There is a genuine sense of whipped-up energy here that will likely connect with the adolescent set, but the skills of director Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk) are far better suited to hand-crafted, close-quarters mayhem (Transporter 2 is still his best movie), of which there’s really very little in Clash of the Titans. This is big, size-queen action, and Leterrier seems not to intuitively know how to stage these set pieces in a manner that communicates a proper sense of scope and space. And while the technical craftsmanship on display here is in sum fairly solid, there’s not what I could aptly characterize as a honest sense of knowing fun — that everyone is participating in a slick piece of goofy, escapist entertainment. Parts of the movie lumber, especially whenever Io has to deliver history lessons or shading detail, in an effort to underline the Big Stakes. Other moments in the movie just don’t fit together on a very basic dramatic level; when Zeus pops by mid-journey to offer Perseus an out, the two chat almost matter-of-factly, not as if Perseus had only recently come to know of his godly origins, and had never before spoken to his biological father.
Most damningly, it’s worth noting that the 3-D presentation of Clash of the Titans is, no lie, flat-out terrible. As with Alice in Wonderland, the effect was lacquered on after production, and it renders the entire first act far too dark and murky. This, as well as over-caffeinated editing that doesn’t jibe with the more fluid rhythms that 3-D presentation generally requires, undercuts Peter Menzies’ cinematography, which otherwise features some nice vistas. When the Kraken is finally unleashed, the movie once again roars to life, an orgiastic display of CGI-rendering. Without much in the way of personality or human connection, however, this Clash elicits mostly yawns and shrugs. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 106 minutes)
Monster House Screenwriter Calls Steven Spielberg a Moron
Trendspotters, take note. Less than a week after screenwriter J.D. Shapiro manned up and (amusingly) apologized for his part in Battlefield Earth, Monster House screenwriter Dan Harmon is dropping nuts on director Gil Kenan and executive producer Steven Spielberg in an email to a friend, calling the former a “hack” and the latter a “moron.” Movieline has the scoop, which, though a few days old and removed from its original source, is probably still eliciting apologetic emails.
Thomas Haden Church Talks Don McKay, John Carter of Mars
The 2004 release of Alexander Payne’s celebrated Sideways launched Thomas Haden Church, then toying with the idea of retiring from acting to tend fulltime to his four Texas ranches, into high demand. He’s kept busy since, with voiceover work, a litany of supporting turns and of course a high-profile gig as Sandman in Spider-Man 3. His latest performance is the quiet title role in Don McKay, a woozy adult drama/mystery, studded with moments of dark humor, whose hazy machinations are revealed deep in its running time. Church plays a janitor who returns to his small hometown, drawn by a letter from his high school girlfriend (Elisabeth Shue), from whom he drifted apart after devastating events 25 years earlier. I caught up with Church recently to talk about the long, slow haul of getting an independent film made, even in the wake of an Oscar nomination, as well as his role in the much-buzzed-about John Carter of Mars. For the Q&A, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.