So Judd Apatow‘s super-secret new film Funny People — with Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Eric Bana and Apatow’s wife Leslie Mann — is being shot by… Oscar-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski? Yes, it appears so, and at the express insistence of Apatow, I’m told. (Which makes sense, really, as his name assuredly wouldn’t have come up via other channels.) Solidly sourced word also places the film’s budget around $90 million, leading one to wonder if Universal learned their lesson with Evan Almighty, namely that mega-budgeted comedies are often a recipe for disaster. Oh, right, it’s a co-production with Sony. Spread the damage, then, I guess it makes Hollywood sense.
All posts by Brent
Roger Ebert Calls Out Sarah Palin
Film critic Roger Ebert has been more or less vocally silenced by complications from cancer of the salivary gland, but that hasn’t stopped him from assessing Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin as “the American Idol candidate” (i.e., good-looking, translates well on TV, has a sunny
personality, and is fiercely competitive) in this stinging piece. Pointedly: “You don’t need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need
curiosity and a hunger to see the world. What kind of a person (who has
the money) arrives at the age of 44 and has only been out of the
country once, on an official tour to Iraq*? Sarah Palin’s travel record
is that of a provincial, not someone who is equipped to deal with
global issues.”
* – Kuwait, actually
Bra Boys
Narrated by Russell Crowe, Bra Boys is a documentary film about the real-life brotherhood, murder and family loyalties of Australia’s warring surf gangs — most notably the chest-thumping, title-indicated clique from Maroubra, an economically depressed beach-side suburb 14 kilometers from the Sydney Harbor.
Written, directed and produced by Sunny Abberton, himself a childhood
resident of Maroubra’s public housing projects, the film traces the
cultural evolution of the tattooed, much maligned youthful
surfing community. Abberton uses his own brothers as a narrative point of entrance for the subcultural study. In addition to himself,
there’s Koby, Jai and Dakota — one charged with murdering a Sydney “standover
man” (Australian slang for an extortionist who uses threats or physical violence
to extract payment on behalf of another), another pursuing
a professional surf career but charged as an accessory in his brother’s
murder trial, and another trying to hold the family together. Then there’s Sunny, whose sole inheritance is his siblings’ national infamy.
Using archival shots, new on-site footage and interviews with all sorts of local figures, Bra Boys presents a dynamic portrait of the current “surf vision,” a story that is at once compassionate, compelling and confrontational: fights for against-the-odds success, predictable failures. The centerpiece of the film details a massive incident in which Bra Boy members tangled with a bunch of off-duty coppers at a birthday party. “Just a good, old-fashioned brawl,” demurs one participant, but it’s this easy, reflexive embrace of knuckle-dusting that comes across as most unnerving. One sees how this shrugged-off behavior calcifies into justification for further violence when an older member says of the area’s rampant carjackings and shootings: “It’s good, it turns us into what we are.”
Grim stuff, it sounds like, and that’s not entirely untrue. Ultimately, though, part of the film’s narrative illustrates how even amidst the burdens of a stigmatized legacy, a new generation can hope and strive for better, and work to try to end violence. If other surf documentaries like Dogtown and Z-Boys and Bustin’ Down the Door only whetted your appetite for international glimpses at the cultural surrounding dedicated beach life, this film is definitely worth a look.
Housed in a regular Amray case with an attractive accompanying cardboard slipcover, Bra Boys is presented in a non-anamorphic 1:78 aspect ratio, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks.
Unfortunately, and somewhat surprisingly, there are no supplemental extras, which seems quite curious for a boutique release whose maker is obviously so passionate about, and personally involved in, the movie’s subject matter. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) D (Disc)
Fox Searchlight Pins The Wrestler
Fox Searchlight Pictures announced today that the company acquired U.S. rights to the buzz-heavy The Wrestler, which won the Golden Lion at the recent Venice Film Festival and just had its North American premiere last night at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky and written by Rob Siegel, The Wrestler centers around Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke), a tough guy who in the late 1980s was a headlining professional. Now, twenty years later, he ekes out a living performing for handfuls of diehard wrestling fans in high school gyms and community centers around New Jersey. Estranged from his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) and unable to sustain any real relationships, Randy lives for the thrill of the show and the adoration of his fans. When a heart attack forces him into retirement and his sense of identity starts to slip away, though, Randy begins to evaluate the state of his life — striking up a blossoming romance with an aging stripper (Marisa Tomei) and trying to reconnect with his daughter.
Said Fox Searchlight Pictures President Peter Rice: “Darren Aronofsky has created an
unbelievably electrifying and compelling tale with tour de force
performances. We are delighted to be releasing this brilliantly
executed film, and thank Wild Bunch for choosing Searchlight.” A December release is being scheduled.
Ryan Reynolds Joins Fight Against Parkinson’s Disease
The Michael J. Fox Foundation announced today that actor Ryan Reynolds has joined the foundation’s mission to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease. Reynolds will serve as the first Celebrity Chair of Team Fox, the foundation’s grassroots fund-raising arm made up of hundreds of volunteers across the country. Reynolds, along with 130 Team Fox members, will run the New York City Marathon on November 2 in honor of his father, who has Parkinson’s disease. “I’m proud to be a part of this team of dedicated and motivated people who are getting out there and making a difference,” said Reynolds. “The Michael J. Fox Foundation is doing whatever it takes to improve patients’ quality of life and deliver a cure to people living with PD, like my father.” For more information, click here.
Bangkok Dangerous Proves Existence, Tops Box Office
I’ve wondered if it actually exists, but Nicolas Cage’s Bangkok Dangerous proved its state of being — or at least extended a good ruse — by pulling in an estimated $7.8 million over the weekend, good enough to take the top spot at the box office during the weakest weekly frame of overall moviegoing in five years. No other new releases cracked the top 10.
Ben Stiller’s R-rated ensemble comedy Tropic Thunder held onto the second spot, adding an estimated $7.5 million to its coffers, which now stand at $96.8 million overall. Anna Faris’ The House Bunny placed third, with $5.9 million, and $37 million overall. Director Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight
finished fourth for the weekend, with $5.7 million, and its $512.2 million overall domestic gross pushed closer to Titanic‘s $600 million record. Rounding out the top 10 were Don Cheadle’s Traitor with $4.6 million ($17.7 million overall); Vin Diesel’s City of Men Babylon A.D., with $4 million ($17.2 million overall); Death Race, with $3.6 million ($29.8 million overall); the aptly named Disaster Movie, with $3.3 million ($10.9 million overall); the ABBA-inflected stage musical adaptation Mamma Mia!, with $2.7 million ($136.3 million overall); and, lastly, Pineapple Express, with $2.4 million ($84.2 million overall).
In limited release, Hamlet 2 grossed $819, bringing its haul to $4.4 million; Randall Miller’s ensemble wine dramedy Bottle Shock took in around $579,000, moving its total to $3.3 million; Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz’s Elegy added $482,000 to its five-week total, which now stands at $2.4 million; Kingsley’s wintry strangers-on-a-train mystery Transsiberian, meanwhile, grossed $385,000, and has taken in $1.4 million in just under two months; and the solid arthouse hit Brideshead Revisted added
$186,000 to its cumulative gross of
$6.2 million.
Heckler
Jamie Kennedy is an interesting celebrity case study. When his most recent film came out, I received an amusing email from a friend, baffled that — more than a decade after Scream, and despite ample evidence rejecting a widescale public embrace of him as a comedic leading man — Kennedy could still headline a film in which he gets to kiss Maria Menounos. Tonally, the email was one of awed respect. A bit tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, but tinged with true amazement. Kennedy, though, is undeniably fairly shat upon; a quick perusal of message board threads on IMDb turns up: “Annoying and not funny,” “Nothing worse than a dude who thinks he’s black,” “How did he sink so low?,” “Horrible comedian” and “Cancer is funnier.” Only Carrot Top and Dane Cook may currently serve as the targets of more vitriol amongst comedians.
All of which brings us to Heckler, Kennedy’s two-headed, ramshackle documentary examination of show-interrupters and professional critics. Directed by Michael Addis, the movie is packed full of revelatory interviews with other comedians, which form the backbone of the film and are inarguably its highlight. Bobby Lee recounts getting punched out by a guy. Louie Anderson jokes about shooting a single heckler, to end it all. (Word would quickly spread, he reasons.) Patton Oswalt, meanwhile, advocates for a que sera sera mindset, saying, “Eroticism and comedy you really can’t argue. If there’s a comedian I hate but everyone else is laughing at him, then I’ve lost the argument.” Other interviewees include Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, Lewis Black, Jon Lovitz, Dave Attell, Carrie Fisher, Henry Winkler and Craig Ferguson. Arsenio Hall probably gets in the best sideways crack, assaying Michael Richards’ infamous moment of profane heckler snap-back thusly: “That’s some other kind of problem — like, ‘I need therapy,’ or ‘Somebody from the Raiders fucked my woman.'”
There’s also some semblance of intellectual inquiry, with Dennis Prager, Christopher Hitchens and Drew Pinsky offering up their thoughts on why hecklers heckle. More of this line of social examination and evaluation would have been welcome and edifying, particularly at the expense of the baffling talking head inclusions of ex-football coach Mike Ditka, singer Jewel Kilcher and a random transsexual.
Coming off a nasty critical drubbing in Son of the Mask, Kennedy obviously feels aggrieved, and that he has an axe to grind, but the connection that Heckler tries to make between live, in-person stage heckling and film criticism (however poorly written, and/or driven by ad hominem attacks) is a fairly tenuous one at best, and it doesn’t make its argument very convincingly. The movie succeeds rather smashingly as a piece of lightweight entertainment, but it suffers from this bifurcated focus. Kennedy should have either made Heckler much more of a personal journey — meaning even more interviews with dissatisfied club patrons and (published) critics of his work — or gotten out of the way. As is, Heckler is caught in a weird limbo that mitigates its effectiveness.
Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with a Dolby digital 2.0 audio track, Heckler was sent to me on a bare-bones screener disc, sans bonus features. Touted supplemental extras include a feature-length audio commentary track with Kennedy and Addis, and more than 35 minutes of deleted scenes and extended material, including footage of director Uwe Boll‘s boxing challenge matches with critics. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) I, for Incomplete (Disc)
Chris Matthew Assays John McCain’s “Mrs. Doubtfire Strategy”
Anyone who watches his weekend NBC show knows that Hardball‘s Chris Matthews is a big movie fan, and today, just now, he rather amusingly dubbed John McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention the “Mrs. Doubtfire strategy.” Offering up a quickie synopsis of that film, in which Robin Williams dresses up as a British nanny after, in Matthews’ words, failing as a father and husband, he said McCain is pitching the same strategy: “We failed the last eight years, but we’ve put a new costume on — accept us and give us custody of the country again because we look different.”
Mister Foe
A warped coming-of-age tale that connects courtesy of the unfussy straightforwardness and charm of its lead performances, British import Mister Foe delivers audiences a much different portrait of star Jamie Bell than American audiences will remember from his feel-good debut film, Billy Elliot.
Hallam Foe (Bell) is a troubled young man whose penchant for voyeurism and regressive dress-up paradoxically reveals his darkest fears and his most peculiar desires. A 17-year-old misfit, Hallam spends lonely days spying on others at the Scottish Highlands estate of his father (Ciarán Hinds), haunted by his mother’s suicide. When his beautiful new stepmother Verity (Claire Forlani) starts asserting herself with respect to his father’s business affairs, Hallam begins to suspect that maybe she even played a hand in his mother’s death.
Confusing matters even more for Hallam, he finds himself attracted and repelled by Verity in equal measure. When the tension brewing between the two erupts, Hallam runs away, fleeing the countryside for the big city. With no money and no friends to speak of, he crashes down into reality in Edinburgh. Adept at fading into the background and peering in on the lives of others to escape his own every day life, Hallam soon becomes obsessed with Kate (Sophia Myles, above), a hotel middle manager who bears an uncanny resemblance to his deceased mother. Landing a job in the hotel’s kitchen, Hallam finds himself drawn to the older Kate but unable to confess his secrets to her. When the reality of life back home finally catches up with him, Hallam is faced with betraying the memory of the mother he longs for or using his one last chance to grow up.
Co-written and directed by David Mackenzie (Young Adam), Mister Foe trades in plenty of the filmmaker’s familiar staples (clutchy, inappropriate sex that’s hardly erotic or titillating; rain and/or water as a motif; hand-held camerawork and a paucity of color). Mackenzie is also keen on peddling half-frames — obscuring our view of Hallam, to parallel the blinkered fashion in which he views the world. This lurking, nonjudgmental camerawork also has the benefit of muddying the narrative waters with regards to Hallam’s feelings about Verity, and some of the more radical assertions about her nature — a facet of the narrative that is otherwise, through no particular fault of Hinds or Forlani, the weakest part of the movie.
Bell has played wounded, emotionally withdrawn figures before, as in The Chumscrubber, but there’s a core warmth and decency to Hallam that here tugs one along, past some of the more outré inclusions of the story proper. A soundtrack powered by Franz Ferdinand, King Creosote, Orange Juice, Hood, Woodbine and other up-and-coming Brit rockers definitely helps lend Mister Foe (or Hallam Foe, as it was released elsewhere, a title deemed too abstruse for American audiences given the exotic nature of its name) a certain young-boy-in-the-big-city gravity and weight. Parts of the movie feel strangely Dickensian, other moments feel like a Smiths song come to life. Regardless, adolescence is a time when feelings often govern decisions more than reason, and Mister Foe is powered by that same sense of forceful capriciousness. Apart from some closure on the familial story strand that feels somewhat forcibly tacked on, that modus operandi serves this little curio quite well. (Magnolia, R, 95 minutes)
Virgin Territory
A sort of laboriously “hip,” teen-pitched re-interpretation of a literary classic, Virgin Territory is adapted and directed by David Leland from Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, and bills itself, weirdly, desperately, as “a freewheeling mix of Monty Python’s historical absurdity with American Pie‘s teen raunch.” In reality, this period piece comedy — packaged by executive producer Dino De Laurentiis and produced by his wife Martha — is an atonal mish-mash that star Hayden Christensen probably took on for the several scenes in which he gets to make out with various topless nuns (as shown below), in some weird dream fetish realization.
In the aftermath of the “Black Plague” in 14th century Florence, the city’s lusty young men and chaste maidens flee to the countryside. But for charming scoundrel Lorenzo di Lamberti (Christensen), the only woman that sets his heart ablaze is orphaned beauty Pampinea Anastagi (Mischa Barton), who is betrothed to an obsessed Russian nobleman, Count Dzerzhinsky (Matthew Rhys), but also being pursued by Gerbino de la Ratta (Tim Roth, playing the Rufus Sewell role), a conniving countryman and business associate of her late father who has vowed to take Pampinea’s virtue. With Gerbino trying to kill him, Lorenzo escapes to to countryside, where he feigns being deaf and mute in order to be taken in at the Sacred Sisters of the Blessed Heart convent. Naturally, these nuns turn out to be quite lusty, so they make Lorenzo their kept boy, and take turns satisfying themselves on/with him.
As Pampinea escapes to the countryside and Gerbino and Count Dzerzhinsky square off, Lorenzo’s adventures are intercut with another band of wayward travelers, including a guy whose chirpy, proper redheaded girlfriend (Rosalind Halstead) is making him wait until marriage to savor her carnal delights. (Think of him as the film’s Jason Biggs character.) Pampinea soon comes across Lorenzo, and things come to a head when he has a chance to confess his feelings to her, and eventually win her over in swashbuckling fashion.
Made in 2005 and screened last year at the Toronto Film Festival, the sumptuously costumed Virgin Territory has trouble connecting in large part because it
can never settle on a convincing tone. It partially desires to be a
twisted look at 14th century love and angsty sexual repression, but it’s staged, written and shot with an eye toward decidedly modern tropes, set-ups and visual flourishes — hence very straightforwardly presented nudity, characters falling face down in piles of feces, and a terrible, surf guitar-infused score from Ilan Eshkeri. The movie is also saddled with a strange, rib-nudging narration from a supporting character, painter Tindaro (Craig Parkinson), that is far less clever and essential a guide than director Leland clearly thinks.
Christensen and Barton — frequently bagged on by critics for their star turns in the Star Wars prequels and on the small screen in The O.C., respectively — are individually fine, but never really given the chance to generate quite as much lead-character heat as this movie needs to sustain its fallow passages. The air-quote wit here is pretty thin, which makes the whole thing feel like a time-warp episode of your average high school small screen serial, recast in period-piece fashion in Florence for sweeps, or a fourth season kick-off. On the upside, there is plenty of nakedness, but 15-year-olds no longer need faux-arty film rentals to glimpse such things, do they?
Virgin Territory comes housed in a regular plastic Amay case stored in a cardboard slipcase with alternate cover art, and is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with a Dolby surround 5.1 audio track. A cover sticker touts the movie as being part of Anchor Bay’s new “Unzipped”
label, whatever that means (presumably films with copious nudity). A 13-minute behind-the-scenes featurette includes interviews with Christensen, Leland and cinematographer Ben Davis, but also leans far too heavily on long scene snippets for such a short production overview. In addition to the movie’s trailer, a preview of Rock of Love that starts automatically upon insertion of the DVD, and a three-minute spotlight of David
Walliams — the star of TV’s Little Britain, USA, who has a bit part here as a doofusy cart pusher who Lorenzo happens upon — there are about three-and-a-half minutes of material billed as “censored scenes of sexuality.” These are for the most part extended/alternate takes of material already in the movie, including a scene in which Kate Groombridge emerges from a river and showcases her landing strip. Though unbilled on the back cover, there’s also a scrollable picture gallery of Roberto Cavalli’s costume sketches. C- (Movie) C+ (Disc)
Does Bangkok Dangerous Actually Exist?
I caught a TV ad today for Nicolas Cage’s Bangkok Dangerous, and joltingly realized that it’s becoming more and more likely this movie actually exists. Since Lionsgate is again hewing to its seemingly standard policy of not screening the movie in advance (see Disaster Movie, The Midnight Meat Train), I had fallen into a half-belief that the film was a hallucination on my part — that the trailer was pieced together from National Treasure outtakes and maybe footage from a honeymoon vacation and the Asian swing of an international press tour Cage did with the aforementioned film.
Professionally, when a movie isn’t screening in advance, sometimes I’ll still nab a review on opening day (see above examples), but, on a more personal level, I find that mentally I start to write these films off, and just discount their very existence. Wonkish, profit-protecting studio number-crunchers would obviously disagree, but I tend to think that a sizeable portion of the film-going public actually thinks like this as well. Yes, they see the TV ads and billboards, but when the free-media onslaught includes absolutely no reviews, they smell an attempted put-on.
Sophia Myles Talks Mister Foe, Unsexy Sex Scenes
For English beauty Sophia Myles, 2006 represented a sort of coming-out party, with the period piece romance Tristan & Isolde and the vampire-and-werewolf action sequel Underworld: Evolution releasing within a week of one another, and a plum role in Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential following five months later. Myles’ latest film is writer-director David Mackenzie’s Mister Foe, in which she stars opposite Jamie Bell as Kate Breck, a middle-management hotel employee who enters into a warped relationship with a mixed-up kid, Hallam, who starts spying on her because she reminds him of his dead mother. I spoke with Myles recently about working with a pervy, adult Billy Elliot, Mackenzie’s deft touch with sex, and fan reaction to the recently canceled CBS vampire drama Moonlight. For the full Q&A interview, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.
Robert Englund Doesn’t Remember Neville Brand Trying to Rape Anyone
I spoke to the loquacious Robert Englund recently, for a feature piece about both Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer and his career as a horror icon. Wrapping up, out of left field I couldn’t resist asking him about how insane Neville Brand may or may not have been, since on the audio commentary track for the DVD release of Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive — the movie that sparked Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill homage of Englund’s character and his signature sleazy line, “My name is Buck, and I wanna fuck” — costar Roberta Collins talks about Brand trying to sexually assault her.
“I’m not sure,” says Englund, seemingly genuinely stumped. “I don’t even remember him being extremely eccentric. He was Neville Brand, but I think he might have been having problems with his family in Malibu — that’s something in the back of my head, that he was going through a bad divorce or maybe some problems with his daughter. I don’t know, I vaguely remember that. And he may have freaked out after I left the project.”
Community Organizers Punch Back at Palin
Community organizers were understandably irked by Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin‘s comments last night in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, in which she mocked Barack Obama’s experience as a community organizer thusly: “I guess a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer — except that you have actual responsibilities.” This being the digital age, they’ve quickly created an outlet for their push-back, via this web site.
It’s worth noting that this wasn’t just some off-the-reservation one-liner, either; it was part of a sustained line of scornful Republican attack, with former New York Governor George Pataki saying, “[Barack Obama] was a community organizer — what in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job,” and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani playing to an eager crowd’s laughter, offering up, “[Obama] worked as a community organizer. What? I said, ‘OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume.'”
Even before the Internet, this is the sort of mass-agitable detail — wherein a campaign really steps in a big pile of it with a certain constituency, but seeks to move forward and drown out the clamor of disaffection by denying any attack and taking mock-offense at those who raise it as an issue — that even the best films about political campaigns have a hard time cramming in. Watch for it over the next 72 to 96 hours, in particular.
College
By all accounts the randy new teen comedy College should have been a solid late summer performer — the movie that kids either just back at school or gearing up to head back to class went to check out over the weekend, in order to get primed for some autumnal partying. Instead, the movie was stillborn at the box office, debuting to just $2.15 million in its first weekend — failing to crack the top 10 in the same slot that the party-hearty Accepted grossed eight figures en route to a total domestic haul of $36 million just two years ago.
As if designed by checklist, College has all the most essential ingredients of a low-budget teen comedy: an R rating, an eye-grabbing poster, a cost-efficient cast comprised of mostly new faces, cartoonish antagonists in the form of frat-boy jerks, and plenty of nudity. About the only thing College misses the mark on is the inclusion of a henpecking or ironically hip parental presence. (Fred Willard wasn’t available, apparently.)
And yet… it doesn’t gel. And a general audience screening on opening day afforded a unique opportunity to witness firsthand viewer dissatisfaction with College. At an afternoon show with 20-25 people, someone actually threw a drink at the screen — something I didn’t think really happened anymore, what with their $6-plus cost. The group later left, and not too quietly. Teen braggadocio, sure, but still… if your core constituency will effectively surrender as much money filing a flamboyant protest as to the quality of your movie as he did actually patronizing it, that’s probably not a good sign.
Somewhat belying the title, College centers mostly on three high school kids, and the weekend roadie they take to Fieldmont University in order to acquaint themselves with the institution and its academic and social climate. Having just been dumped by his girlfriend, buttoned-up Kevin Brewer (Superhero Movie‘s Drake Bell, above center) is inclined to loosen up a bit and start taking some risks, especially when he meets Kendall (Haley Bennett), a sorority gal who shares his interest in photography. Gangly, bespectacled Morris Hooper (Kevin Covais, above left) is even more bookish and tightly wound, which makes him the perfect punching bag (verbally and quite literally) for Carter Scott (Andrew Caldwell, above right), the requisite motor-mouthed fat oaf of the bunch. When the student at their assigned dorm housing seems too weird, the trio head to a nearby frat house, where Carter’s (never-met) cousin was once a member. There, the guys are put through hell for their room and board, with the threat of revelation of their “pre-freshmen” status always being used as an instrument of bullying and torture.
Debut feature filmmaker Deb Hagan injects a lot of energy into the proceedings, but College‘s main failings are twofold. First, the story requires that Kevin and his pals constantly re-engage and keep on some level trusting the jackass fraternity members who take all their money and generally make their lives hell for a couple days. By the time the revenge element of the screenplay kicks in, during its last 10 minutes, you’ve ceased looking at these guys as anything but doormats, collectively and individually.
Second, and there’s not particularly a polite way to put this, College just doesn’t pass its personality exam. Seminal teen flick American Pie launched and/or solidified a couple careers, including that of Jason Biggs, Seann William Scott, Alyson Hannigan and Shannon Elizabeth. It even secured steady work for Chris Klein and Chris Owen, for Pete’s sake. This October’s Sex Drive, by point of further comparison, has a cast that elevates the material in delightful ways. Its three leads — Josh Zuckerman, Amanda Crew and Clark Duke — all make hay, delivering not only the laughs in the script, but also comedic moments of their own devising.
While College has the minor-chord titillation of seeing former American Idol contestant Covais drop a couple F-bombs and eventually roll around in some mud-caked tighty-whiteys, there just isn’t ever any pop here on the screen — a feeling that something special is happening, or a star maybe being born. The best teen sex comedies feel at some point dangerous and reckless, as if one or more characters might just do anything, but the wackiness and outrage in College feels never less than manufactured. Caldwell merely comes across as the guy cast when Jonah Hill quickly passed without reading, and Bell, a huge Nickelodeon star courtesy of Drake & Josh, is a milquetoast lead. I wouldn’t waste a $6 drink, but I understand that teen’s irritation. (MGM, R, 94 minutes)
Juneau What I Mean?
Whatever one thinks about the pregnancy of the 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, you have to give it up for the above poster, taken from a post on Perez Hilton, a site which I most assuredly do not frequent. Rarely do satiric conceptualization, actual execution and PhotoShop persuadability so nicely intersect. Solid. Though the idea of McCain in yellow short-shorts spawns its own, entirely different level of howling discomfort.
Steven Soderbergh To Appear at Schizopolis Q&A
Following Christopher Nolan’s announced West Coast appearance at a special Q&A for Following, his first film, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh will submit to similar navel-gazing at a special benefit screening of his already very inward-looking 1997 Slamdance entry, Schizopolis. The event will take place in New York City at the IFC Center on Tuesday, September 16 at 8 p.m. Tickets will be $20, and are available through IFC’s web site, or by clicking here. Following the screening there will be a Q&A with Soderbergh moderated by author Anthony Kaufman, and a hosted reception for ticket holders at The Post Factory.
Hounddog
Hounddog first attracted acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007, as the movie in which a 12-year-old Dakota Fanning is raped. Nearly 20 months later, it’s finally seeing a theatrical release, with plenty of evidence as to the cause of its lengthy delay.
An amorphous blob of clichéd Southern gothic, where thunderstorms rumble portentously and there’s seemingly only one or two pairs of shoes in the entire town, Hounddog is a pretentious, mildly terrible period piece drama of random, falsely weighted dramatic signifiers and vaguely defined personal triumph — the type of movie where air-quote catharsis is achieved by someone screaming, “Leave me alone, I hate you!” several times at another person before finally collapsing into their arms.
Written and directed by Deborah Kampmeier — who previously mined some of the same loosely related thematic territory with Virgin, about a pregnant teenager who has no memory of ever having sex, and is thus convinced she’s carrying the son of God — Hounddog unfolds in rural Alabama in the 1950s. Young Lewellen (Fanning) lives with her stern, religious grandmother, Grammie (Piper Laurie, spinning a warmed-over variation of the same stiflingly overhearing nut-job that she delivered 30 years ago in Carrie), just up the hill from her no-account father (David Morse), a heavy drinker prone to disappearing for stretches of a couple days at a time and bringing home strange women, like one played by Robin Wright Penn.
Lewellen loves Elvis (not Schmelvis), and when she finds out he’s scheduled to make a stop in her small town, she makes plans to try to get a ticket to attend, along with her friend Buddy (Cody Hanford). After the aforementioned rape, by an older boy dangling the promise of an Elvis ticket, nearby neighbor Charles (Afemo Omilami, suffering the screen caricature of the “mystical Negro”) tries to help Lewellen get her spirit back by teaching her to tap into the blues. There are also a few obligatory third act revelations regarding a tangled family lineage, but they hold much more shrug than pop.
Hounddog is rather gorgeously shot (cinematographers Ed Lachman and Jim Denault share credit), but the film’s mossy beauty soon wears thin — done in by characters that are defined broadly, by race, socioeconomic class, terrible wig, or some combination thereof. For the full review, from H Magazine, click here. (Empire Film Group, R, 98 minutes)
Trend Watch: Interracial Film Relationships
I’ve previously touched upon the predominance of mixed-ethnic relationships in this summer’s The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, and in Mirrors, Paula Patton and Kiefer Sutherland play a married couple, with nary a word about their relationship.
This goes beyond any sort of stunt casting, obviously, and it’s no lazy, shrugging toss-off, either, since the pairing then necessitates the casting of two two mixed-race kids, shared by the actors’ characters. I don’t know if this can be called a bonafide trend, really, but there’s something interesting in it — especially in a genre picture like Mirrors, which conceivably could face commercial prospect blow-back from the uncultured slice of the horror base. It’s not like that’s a multi-million dollar difference in gross or anything, but you can bet it flipped a switch or two at the executive level, because these are the types of things that get discussed when studio movies are green-lit. Regardless, the winds they are a-changin’, that’s for sure; younger generations both see and care (which is to say, less) about race in radically different ways than their parents. Heck, this helps explain a large part of Barack Obama‘s appeal to young voters, ages 18 to 30.
The Best of Comedy Central Presents 2
A stand-up compendium, The Best of Comedy Central Presents 2 groups together feature specials from eight comedians — most from the past several years, and each running about 20 minutes apiece. The end result is a nice buffet spread/sampler pack, something to allow a nice cross-section without forcing the consumer to go all-in on a single performer’s catalogue.
The roster here, listed alphabetically, includes Dave Attell, Mike Birbiglia, Frank Caliendo, Zach Galifianakis, Stephen Lynch, Patton Oswalt, Nick Swardson and Daniel Tosh. Attell’s set is I believe the oldest, dating from the late 1990s, or early 2000; he’s funny (introducing himself by saying, “I have an Andre Agassi-with-a-drinking-problem kind of look”), but it’s before he really found his stride. He talks some about mock-sexual bonding with his dog, but the funniest bit from him is when he talks about how summer weather is not the right fit for fat guys.
Caliendo, of course, currently in heavy commercial rotation sending up everyone from William Shatner and John Madden to George Bush, trots out plenty of impressions, and Lynch breaks out the guitar for some silly ditties. Swardson, performing in front of a picture of himself at six years of age, jokes about teeth whitening and wanting zoo animals in his one-bedroom apartment. His funniest bit, though — about the outdated pictorial representation of bombs on airport security signs — draws mostly uneasy and indifferent reactions from the live crowd.
The very funny Oswalt’s show isn’t among his best, necessarily. He talks about watching old movies in L.A. and losing both love and hate in his “old” age (he recently turned 30 before this set), and there’s an extended riff about a pot-fueled trip to Amsterdam. The biggest shocker of the disc, though, may be Tosh, with whom I wasn’t too terribly familiar prior to settling down with this DVD. Exuding a zonky energy that turns familiar stage riffs (the difficulties of unhooking a woman’s bra) into screwy high-wire acts, Tosh has a rapid-fire imagination that crams jokes of accompaniment all around his main anecdotal bits. His best bits involve a laboriously set-up joke about collecting change in cargo pants and then paying off a homeless guy in lottery-winner fashion, and befriending seventh graders to boost one’s self-esteem.
The Best of Comedy Central Presents 2 comes presented in 1.33:1 full screen. Trailers for the first season of Kenny Vs. Spenny and South Park‘s eleventh season are amongst the preview gallery that comprise the only bonus supplemental features on the disc. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Concert) D+ (Disc)
Presidential Candidates Get (Paper) Dolled Up
Are paper dolls your thing, for some reason? Then by all means get collectible versions of both Barack Obama and John McCain, via Dover Publications’ site. The resemblances are a bit off, but McCain’s does have the stiff-arm thing going on. Looking at these, I’d love to see a film done with paper dolls, in the mold of Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Team America: World Police. Well… a short film, maybe… more along the lines of Todd Haynes’ Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, I guess.
Absolutely Irish
There’s no Bono, alas, but the new concert DVD Absolutely Irish brings together the brightest stars of traditional Irish music for a once in-a-lifetime concert that will leave folk music fans appreciatively awed by its virtuoso performances.
Filmed live at the intimate Irish Arts Center in New York City’s famed Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, this disc finds Irish music impresario Mick Moloney presenting three generations of brilliant musicians as they display their mastery on much-beloved jigs, reels and airs, then rock the hall with contemporary takes on favorite traditional tunes. Clearly shot and crisply captured, Absolutely Irish includes
performances by whistle player Joanie Madden; fiddlers Liz Carroll,
Eileen Ivers and Athena Tergis; flute and banjo player Seamus Egan;
guitarist John Doyle; singers Karan Casey, Robbie O’Connell and Susan
McKeown; concertina player Tim Collins;
accordionist Billy McComiskey; dancers Niall O’Leary and Darrah
Carr; and piper Jerry O’Sullivan. There are also special guest appearances by two living legends — 80-year-old flute player Mike Rafferty and 85-year-old Irish dancer Jo McNamara — and a heart-tugging rendition of “Leaving Liverpool” performed by the entire ensemble. Absolutely Irish belies the sometimes misguided notion that folk music is an utterly American tradition, and showcases some of the best talent on the Irish music scene today.
Housed in a regular Amray plastic case, Absolutely Irish runs around 70 minutes, and is presented in anamorphic widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions. The DVD also includes bonus footage of eight additional performances taped at the same venue. A bit of commentary or interview footage would have been a nice inclusion as well — just to get a chance to better know some of these personalities — but for those already heartily interested in the trad-Irish music scene, this is a nice value. To order any DVD or VHS release from WGBH Boston Video, including Absolutely Irish, call (800) 949-8670 or click here to visit their web site. B- (Movie) B- (Disc)
Cinematheque Plays Host to Fetish Cinema
Barbet Schroeder’s 1976 film Maitresse, about a burglar (Gérard
Depardieu) who falls for a dominatrix (Bulle Ogier) when he breaks into
her apartment, kicks off a special “Fetish Film Series” when it screens at the Egyptian Theatre at the American Cinematheque on Friday, September 12 at 7:30 p.m.
The once-monthly series will take place at the Egyptian’s Spielberg Theatre, and will be hosted by Rick
Castro of Antebellum Gallery. All screenings will have fetish as the main theme and subject matter, and each film will be followed by an
informal discussion and debate with the audience. Slated for October is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 film Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. The historic Egyptian Theatre is located at
Hollywood Boulevard
between
and
in
Tickets for this and all events at the Egyptian are available through Fandango, but for 24-hour recorded information on screenings,
directions and other matters, phone (323) 466-FILM, or visit the Cinematheque’s eponymous
Web site.
Smashing Pumpkins Debut Tune on New Guitar Hero
Acclaimed rock ‘n’ rollers The Smashing Pumpkins, who’ve sold over 30 million albums, is coming to Activision’s Guitar Hero World Tour in a groundbreaking way, as the band will debut their new single “G.L.O.W.” exclusively in the game. This marks the first time a band has recorded a new song exclusively for the franchise that will then be released afterward, giving Guitar Hero fans exclusive access to Smashing Pumpkins music before anyone else. The new track, bundled with two of the group’s other hits, “1979” and “The Everlasting Gaze,” will be available after launch of the game as a three-song downloaded content pack. For more information, click here.
In Regards to the Relatability of 3 A.M. Moose Hunting…
Republicans have fired up the “One of us!” tom-toms over John McCain‘s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for the vice presidential slot on his ticket, and now they’re saying that having an
unmarried teenage daughter who is pregnant, a state ethics investigation stemming from a nasty child custody
battle involving a former family member, and blue-collar husband who racked up a DUI citation as a 22-year-old may all help solidify the national newcomer’s reputation as a regular American, according to this Politico piece by Charles Mahtesian.
“The media doesn’t understand life membership in the NRA; they don’t understand getting up at 3 a.m. to hunt a moose; they don’t understand eating a mooseburger; they don’t understand being married to a guy who likes to snowmobile for fun. I am not surprised that they don’t get it. But Americans get it,” says Florida Rep. Adam Putnam, who surely knows of 3 a.m. moose hunting. “A mooseburger means she is like one of us. She is not some jackass who’s ‘gone Washington.'”