In 2005, Luc Besson penned Unleashed, which starred Bob Hoskins as a particularly nasty gangster and Jet Li, who he’s literally raised as a dog, as his feral, martial arts-gifted enforcer. It seemed a silly conceit for an action film, something just outrageous enough to serve as a juicy hook while also providing a modicum of emotional mooring so Li could crack skulls in sympathetic fashion as he moved toward becoming a self-actualized adult.
Strangely, it was Unleashed that first came to mind while watching James Toback’s Tyson, a gripping documentary about the former undisputed heavyweight champion who flamed out in a haze of drugs, car crashes and outside-the-ring violence and criminal behavior. After all, despite standing under six feet and never topping 219 pounds during his professional career, Mike Tyson comes across here as the original “manimal,” a fierce, brutal and unrelentingly single-minded boxing machine who took no mercy on opponents in part because none was ever taken on him in adolescence.
Tyson grabs viewers from the first frame. An exercise in subjectivity (Tyson is the only present-day interviewee, though others are glimpsed in archival footage), the film cuts a cursory swath through his heartbreaking childhood in poverty-stricken Brooklyn, and quickly hones in on Tyson’s relationship with Cus D’Amato. A trainer who helped rescue Tyson from juvenile detention, D’Amato became his legal guardian in 1984, taking the teenager into his own home and giving focus to his rage before dying of pneumonia at 77 years of age. With the same management team put in place by D’Amato overseeing his life, both personally and professionally, Tyson would be able to stay focused for four or five more years before spiraling wildly out of control. A turbulent one-year marriage to actress Robin Givens — which spawned headlines about car crashes, money squabbles, drunken screaming matches and worse — yielded a divorce, followed by depression, drug abuse, professional humiliation and all manner of wildly antisocial behavior.
It would be easy to open the movie with footage of Tyson’s stunning loss to Buster Douglas — perhaps the biggest upset ever in an individual sport — but Toback instead showcases the 20-year-old Tyson’s first title fight, a destruction of Trevor Berbick. This savvy reset is a smart approach, as it whets one’s appetite, no matter how much they may or may not know about Tyson or his fight career, for an exploration of exactly how the failure of this unstoppable athletic specimen came to unfold.
Using a slightly overlapping dialogue technique, as well as occasionally shifting split screens, Toback infuses the movie with a sense of restlessness and kinetic energy, which is certainly in keeping with its subject’s digressive mindset. The portrait that slowly emerges, in Polaroid-esque fashion, is a heartbreakingly conflicting one, of both wounded child and raging beast. Tyson is like the tangled mess of cords behind your television entertainment center; all raw nerve endings and intense surface feelings, he’s an emotional, unchecked id without any of the adult tools — in terms of either formal education or mooring life experiences — to substantively cope with his problems.
As a film, Tyson‘s only uncomfortable failing, really, has to do with the lens of subjectivity — otherwise a strong point — that it refuses to modify when it comes to the boxer’s rape conviction and other charges of domestic abuse. While Tyson does address each of these incidents, he has previously proven himself to be an unreliable or vague narrator (sometimes charmingly so), and the short shrift given these serious incidents feels a bit unseemly. The omission of certain biographical facts (Tyson’s father, whom he never knew, is said to have fathered 16 kids), or a bit more about the therapy, if any, that has calmed Tyson would have also helped round and deeper shade the movie, but as is it remains a fascinating portrait of an unlikely but oddly compelling modern-day Shakespearean figure. (Sony Pictures Classics, R, 90 minutes)
All posts by Brent
Trevor Moore Talks Prosthetic Genitals, Hugh Hefner, Road Trips
Rubber-faced Trevor Moore is thus far best known as part of the New York-bred The Whitest Kids U Know, a comedy collective that got snapped up for their own show by IFC. That point of reference could be changing, though. Along with fellow “Whitest Kid” Zach Cregger, Moore recently made the leap to feature films as a writer-director-star of Miss March, about a virginal guy who wakes up from a four-year coma to discover
his high school girlfriend is now a Playmate. With his hornball friend
(played by Moore) urging him to finally partake of carnal knowledge,
road trip shenanigans ensue as the pair scheme to crash a party at the Playboy Mansion. I caught up with Moore recently, to talk
prosthetic genitals, explaining slang to Hugh Hefner and the
gamesmanship involved in going Greyhound. An excerpted Q&A from the conversation is available over at H Magazine.
Harry Shearer Talks Torture, Though Not As Monty Burns
Busy multi-hyphenate Harry Shearer takes a crack at torture, pointing out that it’s not as effective as advertised, or its practitioners had other reasons for persisting. Or maybe both?
American High School
I don’t think I had unreasonable expectations. After all, any movie that claims as its top selling point the fact that it features “top MTV reality personalities and other up-and-coming celebrities” is obviously not likely a candidate for enshrinement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Still, I humbly and sincerely submit that American High School is a movie every bit as terrible as if not worse than the single worst American high school experience of any teenager of the past quarter century. It is a war crime in celluloid form.
It’s the final week of senior year, and everything is coming to a head. Distressed SoCal high schooler Gwen (Jillian Murray, in a departure from her role in Disney Channel’s upcoming TV series Sonny with a Chance) and her exhibitionist husband (yep, you read that right) Holden Adams (Talan Torriero) are perhaps headed for divorce. Gwen’s rich and popular rival, described as “a devil with a vagina,” is Hillary Weiss (Aubrey O’Day, Danity Kane pop princess turned Playboy cover girl), a scheming manipulator who’ll do anything to both nab the prom queen crown and steal Holden away. Toss in a diminutive principal (Martin Klebba, because dwarves equal automatic laughs, right?), a vapid art teacher who inexplicably dresses in lingerie (Nikki Ziering, former Playboy Playmate and jock-warmer to Beverly Hills
90210 star Ian Ziering) and two trash-talking himbos (James Foley and Brian Drolet, of The Hills) who go by the monikers Matt Mysterio and Jonny Awesome. Then mix along with a handful of other slutty associates and students, scramble nonsensically, and serve, steaming.
I don’t at all mind “dumb” comedy, and can even forgive production values compromised by a low budget, but American High School is idiotic and infuriating because there’s absolutely no interior logic to its story, nor does it work in any way, shape or form as a series of discrete hormonal sketches. Right out of the box, Gwen is pegged as “unpopular,” when there’s hearty evidence to the contrary. The movie treats her marriage to Holden as neither legitimate and sincere, nor satirical, so it never really makes any sense that Gwen would be concerned about what peers to whom she’s tethered for only one more year claim to think of her. This fact — a huge story point — is emblematic of the lack of attention and thought given the narrative. Let’s see… what else is never adequately explained? A few parts of the movie unfold in direct-address to a webcam. Male students wander around without shirts, and sometimes run assemblies. Oh, and the principal is a hornball who plays grab-ass with an exchange student, which only seems to further turn on his secretary.
None of these bits are clever, genre-tweaking satire, though, a la Not Another Teen Movie. Sometimes the absurdity is accepted, sometimes commented upon. All the jokes and dialogue, meanwhile, are uniformly awful, and there’s simply nothing here, no overall through line or purpose. To dull the pain, about halfway through the movie I started pounding rum-and-Cokes, but it wasn’t enough to summon laughter, alas. There’s only one truly funny moment in the movie, and it comes in the first 20 minutes or so and lasts all of two seconds; it’s when Klebba’s principal allows himself a moment of quiet self-satisfaction after using the school’s P.A. system, and murmurs, “Another amazing announcement.” The single other time I laughed or cracked a smile occurred when a gummy-tacked wall poster fell down in the background of a long shot, and then immediately reappeared in the next shot. Oh, and for the record, to those in the under-17 set just looking for some cheap boobs-and-butt action, Ziering provides the movie’s only nudity (though, as mentioned,
there’s lots of shirtlessness on the guys’ parts too), but her enormous, surgically enhanced breasts are matched in their unnerving nature by her plasticized face; it’s all a non-starter, fellas.
Housed in a white, regular plastic Amaray case, American High School comes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired, who’ve never had it so lucky as when missing all the lame, ADR-appended air-quote jokes crammed along this movie’s edges. The chief supplemental feature is a feature-length audio commentary track with writer-director Sean Patrick Cannon, producer Raquel Tolmaire, and actors Murray, Drolet,
Ashley Ann Cook and Nick Shakoour. Cannon repeatedly says “I like this,” scene after scene, and talks a lot about how he favors triangular composition, like he’s the next Orson Welles. Everyone else seems rather (surprisingly) genuinely stoked by the results; there’s precious little talk of budgetary compromise or production hardships, though Murray scores a few points for honesty by pointing out (the very visually obvious) microphone pack on her leg in one scene. Other bonus features consist of a TV spot and the theatrical trailer, along with 19 more excruciating minutes of deleted scenes and an alternate ending, all with optional audio commentary from Cannon and his actors. If for some reason you still feel the need to purchase the film on DVD, via Amazon, click here. F (Movie) C (Disc)
No Movie Ads for Newspapers on the Horizon
In his Big Picture blog, Patrick Goldstein underlines the slow, steady slide of movie newspaper advertising, and the (further) trouble this spells for newspapers, if/when such advertising eventually becomes, as one studio marketing chief predicts, a seasonal expenditure. I know, I know… “the sky is blue, water is wet.” What else is new? If newspapers in general are doomed, from a readership/business model perspective, of course it stands to reason that an abandonment of advertising will be a contributing cause of their demise. Still, there are some interesting details in the interstices. Pam Levine, Fox’s co-president of marketing, gives smart answers about the evolving logic behind print media ad buys, and cites notable exceptions in the form of Slumdog Millionaire and Marley & Me.
Tangentially, I would only take exception with Goldstein’s assertion that Fox is held in high regard for its marketing savvy. Fox Searchlight? Yes, absolutely. Notwithstanding its superb work on Marley & Me, however, 20th Century Fox has taken such great steps toward authoritarian “message control” that they frequently border on all-out suppression; it often seems as if they’re actively attempting to help eradicate film critics once and for all.
Fair game if that’s their druthers, I guess, whatever… except that it doesn’t really seem to be helping their movies at the box office on a consistent basis. Take, for instance, last summer’s almost non-existent critical/ancillary campaign for The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Am I to believe that more aggressive, non-TV-related outreach — including print advertising, to help reach older fans of the TV series, who might now have families, and not be surfing IGN for updates on a weekly basis — couldn’t have helped push the movie’s total domestic haul past $21 million?
A Class Apart
Part of the “American Experience” series, A Class Apart: A Mexican American Civil Rights Story runs approximately one hour, and highlights the landmark 1950s Supreme Court case that redefined civil rights for Mexican Americans in the United States. Award-winning producers Carlos Sandoval (Farmingville) and Peter Miller (Sacco and Vanzetti) tell the historic tale of how a small-town Texas murder case spurred the Mexican American civil rights movement and helped end Jim Crow-style discrimination throughout the Southwest.
In the tiny town of Edna, Texas, in 1951, field hand Pete Hernandez killed tenant farmer Joe Espinosa after exchanging words in a gritty cantina. From this seemingly unremarkable small-town murder emerged a landmark civil rights case that would forever change the lives and legal standing of tens of millions of Americans. This film tells the little-known story of a band of underdog Mexican American lawyers who took their case, Hernandez v. Texas, all the way to the Supreme Court. In the unprecedented case, the attorneys forged a daring legal strategy, arguing that Mexican Americans were essentially “a class apart,” and therefore did not neatly fit into a legal structure that heretofore recognized only blacks and whites. As various legal skirmishes played out, the lawyers emerged as brilliant, dedicated and humorous men, although A Class Apart doesn’t shy away from showing their flaws as well.
Documentaries like A Class Apart are eye-opening not the least because they exist on the edges of any sort of polite distillation of social upheaval one might typically find in regular middle and high school textbooks. With clarity, heartrending humanity and even mordant wit, when appropriate, this film dramatically interweaves the disparate stories of its central characters
— activists and lawyers, returning veterans and ordinary citizens,
murderer and victim — within the broader history of Latinos in the United States. At a time when immigrants are again being vilified in some corners of public discourse, it’s an important reminder that efforts to ensure America’s actions match its rich, inspiring rhetoric must never cease.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, A Class Apart is presented in 16×9 widescreen, and comes with a superb slate of supplemental features, anchored by a making-of featurette that includes interviews, photographs and behind-the-scenes footage. In addition to special material for educators and a clutch of bonus scenes, there’s also a slideshow of photographer Russell Lee’s iconic images of Mexican American life in the late 1940s. Naturally, Spanish subtitles and a Spanish language audio track are also included as well. To order A Class Apart, or any DVD release from PBS Home Video, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)
Kevin Smith Totally Got Laid Today
By the way, for those wondering, after pining for oral sex last night, Kevin Smith totally got laid today. So adjust your diary entry accordingly. I mean, how many other directors publicly detail their sex lives?
A Look at Look’s Banned “Obscene” Postcards
There was a brief hullabaloo a week-plus ago when it was announced that promotional postcards for writer-director Adam Rifkin’s Look (releasing to DVD May 5 via Anchor Bay) were being rejected by the U.S. Postal Service for obscenity.
These are those postcards, which eventually arrived in my mailbox in two separate envelopes, each marked as “sexually oriented advertising.” Great, so now my postwoman knows thinks I’m a perv. If you ask me, this is totally a fix-is-in publicity stunt, a feeling the above-linked video in which Rifkin allegedly first finds out about the decision doesn’t do much to dissuade. Yes, black bars cover the thong-clad butts, but there’s the impression of willful envelope-pushing, of previously tested boundaries being poked — otherwise, why go with the cost of a multi-card mailing campaign at all, instead of an embedded viral email campaign? (Not sure, incidentally, why the first postcard rates an exclamation point, but not the second one; if one legal revelation is more shocking than the other, surely it’s the latter, no?) That said, this is a smart play, and certainly a net win for all involved: Rifkin can appear aggrieved, act shocked and get publicity for his film (look, I’m writing about it), and the USPS can score a few points with all the Sam Brownback, James Dobson and Roberta Combs types.
The Poker Club
Over the last five years or so, while still occasionally taking the skulking, low-key, payday gig (Quarantine, Prom Night), actor Johnathon Schaech has quietly branched out into screenwriting, setting himself up for a chance, at least, at a successful second act in Hollywood as a reliable, single-stop peddler of low-budget, direct-to-video genre fare. I say single-stop because in his latest movie, The Poker Club, Schaech assumes multiple roles, nabbing a prominent on-screen role as well as several behind-the-scenes credits.
Directed by Tim McCann (Nowhere Man, Runaway), The Poker Club centers around secrets lies, and ill-advised decision-making. For years, Aaron Tyler (Schaech) has been getting together on Monday evenings with his three best friends to play poker. One night, though, everything changes forever; a burglar breaks into Aaron’s house, and the men accidentally kill him. Fearing the consequences, Aaron and his pals dispose of the corpse and agree to take the secret to their graves. Soon, however, they discover that someone else knows what they’ve done, and is now playing a murderous game of revenge with them.
Johnny Messner, Loren Dean, Michael Risley, Scrubs‘ Judy Reyes, Lori Heuring (with whom Schaech has a naked history), and Jana Kramer all co-star in this streamlined flick, which obviously cops moves from panic-infused cover-up tales like I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequels, as well as Very Bad Things. In fact, The Poker Club could use a little of that latter film’s wild, trippy energy, because too frequently the plotting here feels like laid track, and the twists and turns thus little but pulled levers. Perhaps there was a more acutely sketched sense of betrayal and intrigue in Ed Gorman’s popular horror novel, from which the movie is adapted. The writing team of Schaech and Richard Chizmar (who penned the sequel to Roadhouse, in which Schaech also starred) comes up with some nice wheel-spinning dialogue for when the bitterness and recrimination between friends really comes to a boil, but McCann — while piecing things together nicely in a few charged what-do-we-do scenes, and generally making effective use of music — is overall unable to come up with a compelling, unifying visual scheme for the film.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Poker Club comes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language 5.1 Dolby digital audio track and optional subtitles in only English, French and Chinese, which runs somewhat counter to both the title’s easily translated genre thrills and poker’s reputation as a burgeoning worldwide hobby. The sole supplemental feature is a feature-length audio commentary track with Schaech and director McCann, but the pair have an easy rapport that makes their chat go down fairly smoothly. It’s also an instructive listen for would-be filmmakers and on-the-rise line producers, as various means of cost-effectiveness are frequently addressed. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)
But It’s Safer than Your Typical Weekend Meth Binge…
Over at MSNBC, Alonso Duralde has a blast with the bafflingly not-screened-for-critics Crank: High Voltage, saying, “Imagine a gonzo collaboration between Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Bay and Tex Avery on a weekend meth binge, and you begin to get an idea of what writer-directors Mark Neveldine and Brad Taylor have up their sleeves.” Meanwhile, somewhere, Amy Smart throws up gang signs, and yells, “Holla!“
Is Anybody There?
A simple, straightforward and sweetly dispositioned multi-generational dramedy without much thunderclap revelation, Michael Caine‘s Is Anybody There? marks the sort of solid, unfussy, character-rooted filmmaking that Hollywood studios have mostly abandoned in their pursuit of the latest hot-shit comic book or videogame property.
Set in 1980s seaside England, the movie tells the story of gangly 10-year-old Edward (Son of Rambow‘s wide-eyed, skinny-armed Bill Milner), whose parents have turned their small house into a retirement home. While his mother (Anne-Marie Duff) struggles to keep the family business afloat and his father (David Morrissey) copes with the onset of a mid-life crisis exacerbated by the proximity of a young assistant, Edward becomes increasingly obsessed with the ghosts and potential afterlives of the residents when they die.
Naturally, this hobby doesn’t exactly make him popular with the other kids at school. In fact, Edward’s existence is a relatively lonely one until he meets Clarence (Caine), the latest arrival at his parents’ home. A cranky, retired magician and bitterly grieving widower who refuses to give in gracefully to old age, Clarence butts heads with Edward, but soon notices that the boy is growing up even more fitfully than he’s growing old. As they begin to face life together, Clarence takes steps toward coming to terms with his past, while Edward curbs his obsession with the unknown. Along the way, both are reminded of what magic is possible when life is lived to its fullest.
Written by Peter Harness and directed by John Crowley (Boy A), Is Anybody There? seems made for a comfortable, rainy day double feature with 2003’s Secondhand Lions, another film in which Caine plays a somewhat irascible mentor to a precocious youngster. His performance isn’t ferocious or wildly theatrical, but instead just rather perfectly modulated. Unselfconsciously naturalistic, Milner exhibited a tremendous sympathy in Son of Rambow, and he doesn’t disappoint here, either. He serves as a believable foil to Caine, and the two have a pleasant chemistry, whether sparring or circling one another in quietly appreciative fashion.
As the movie advances, its one story-related reveal — the card up its sleeve, as it were — might become readily evident to those searching for a narrative pivot. In the end, that doesn’t matter, because of the smart way the film is put together, the full-bodied emotions granted each character, and a wild, bloody, darkly humorous magic trick gone wrong that wouldn’t have ever made the cut in a conventional Hollywood dramedy. Maybe it’s best to leave these sorts of micro-targeted tales to the indie peddlers, after all. (Big Beach, PG-13, 94 minutes)
Cinevegas Embraces Bobcat Goldthwait’s Dad For Closing Night
CineVegas has finalized the complete lineup for its 11th annual festival, including Bobcat Goldthwait‘s World’s Greatest Dad as the closing night film, it was announced today by Artistic Director Trevor Groth. Starring Robin Williams, the dark comedy centers around high school poetry teacher Lance Clayton, who, after a freak accident, desperately tries to reconnect with his teenage son Kyle (Daryl Sabara), as well as a painfully adorable art teacher, Claire (Alexie Gilmore). Presumably, dogs are not fellated. For more information on the festival, which runs June 10-15 at the Palms Casino Resort and Brenden Theatres in Las Vegas, click here.
Trend Watch: Female Asses Waxing!
Of the five movies I’ve seen in the past 30 hours, three have featured bare female asses (or their thong-clad equivalent), four have shown lingering close-ups of said asses, and three have featured women asking men if they like their asses. (Smartly, all answered yes.) Curious, this grouping… clearly a developing trend to watch. Well, one can hope, at least.
The Girlfriend Experience Trailer Compares Hourly Rates
Slightly screwy, unadjustable embed code aside, the dialogue-tree trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience (above) really shouldn’t have the start-up freeze-capture of the above two dudes, since it’s adult film starlet Sasha Grey who plays the high-end flesh-peddler offering the film’s centerpiece transactional attraction, but what are you gonna do? Pushing the notion of an hourly-rate comparison between Gray’s character and her boyfriend, a personal trainer, is a good tack, and not at all thematically irrelevant, since the movie underscores our shared societal obsession with money and security (are they the same?), all against the backdrop of a crumbling economy.
The film itself, which I caught earlier this week, is intriguing on a couple levels — more on it soon — but also kind of an unfulfilled premise. It works chiefly as a crystal-clear, extended metaphor for Soderbergh’s view of the (legit) film industry, but it also left me wanting more. From the hip, I’d slot it somewhere between Bubble (which I rather adored) and Full Frontal (which I rather didn’t) in Soderbergh’s recent dig-vid experimental canon.
Don’t Look Now, But Scott Caan Is a Photojournalist
Wait… Scott Caan has a book of photographs coming out? And it’s described as “raw photojournalism”? No offense, but the younger Caan never much struck me as an examined-life type of guy, what with all the general carousing and Playboy mansion parties. In fact, he once showed up at the Four Seasons, where he was staying, for early morning interviews for some film, I forget which, in a long silk robe and slippers, explaining in roundabout anecdotal fashion that he’d been at a pajama party the previous evening and forgot to bring a change of clothes… yeah, seriously. Oh, the book is “directed at art connoiseurs, young Hollywood voyeurs, fashionistas and street-obsessed youth.” OK, well that explains it, I guess.
I.O.U.S.A.
A pants-crappingly important documentary about the monstrous problem of the United States’ national debt, director Patrick Creadon’s I.O.U.S.A. takes as its two crusading, point-of-entry subjects Concord Coalition executive director Bob Bixby and former U.S. Comptroller David Walker, both level-headed, entirely cool and collected Poindexter-types who could pass for affable branch managers at your local savings and loan. That’s important, and underscores the rational appeal of this alarm-bell non-fictioner: while it undeniably elicits temple rubbing and teeth gnashing in extra servings, I.O.U.S.A. doesn’t go for cheap partisan provocation.
As superbly elucidated in the bird’s-eye financial history documentary The Ascent of Money, also recently released to DVD, debt in and of itself is not necessarily a problem. But I.O.U.S.A., inspired by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin’s Empire of Debt, tells the story of a country, collectively, living a wildly unsustainable lifestyle. Faced with key deficits in budget, savings, trade and leadership, the federal government is critically overextended in many areas; increased foreign competition in the form of emerging economic markets only deepens our challenges. With the American economy already in shambles, 78 million baby boomers are expecting retirement benefits from their indebted federal government, and it’s these massive liabilities (approximately $7 trillion for social security, and another $34 trillion for combined Medicare commitments, including President Bush‘s prescription drug giveaway) that dwarf the actual debt, and push it to a staggering total of around $54 trillion.
Weaving together archival footage, economic data and candid interviews with Walker, Bixby, Warren Buffett, Alan Greenspan, Paul O’Neill, Robert Rubin, Alice Rivlin, Paul Volcker and other titans of currency, I.O.U.S.A. offers a vivid and alarming profile of America’s financial status, a surefire path toward foreign policy being dictated solely by banking considerations. An effectively stitched together opening montage comprised of various State of the Union speech clips makes sure the audience immediately grasps that this isn’t a partisan hatchet job, despite the indisputable fact that Bush inherited a projection of increasing budget surpluses along with a $5.6 trillion debt in 2000, and took it to around a $10 trillion debt, and growing, at the beginning of this year.
Creaden (Wordplay) is skilled at being able to craft a compelling narrative from and around wonkish details, but he isn’t afraid to interject both real-world irreverence and anxiety into his work– in the form of interview snippets with average retirement-age Americans, heading back to work or fretting about their kids and grandkids — which helps humanize the movie, and make its seemingly too-big-to-tackle problem something relatable, if no less unnerving. Smartly, Creaden also contrasts consumer behaviors (as encouraged by governments); America’s conspicuous consumption is contrasted with a Chinese couple who work together in a factory and earn the collective equivalent of around $20 a day, yet save more than half of that income. As much as the widening manufacturer’s gap, it’s that difference in mindset that helps explain the $260 billion trade deficit with China in 2007.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, I.O.U.S.A. includes a slew of supplemental material, starting with a five-minute, direct-address update from Walker, recorded in early January 2009. An hour-long panel discussion from after the film’s premiere includes Walker, Buffet, Bill Niskanen, Bill Novelli and Peter Peterson, and Buffet and Greenspan also pop up in a separate “economic experts” section explaining why deficits matter. (Here’s a partial hint: the massive debt accrued after World War II, when it swelled to 122 percent of the gross domestic product, was owed to ourselves, courtesy of war bonds.) A special classroom-friendly section provides viewers with Volcker’s reading list. Five minutes of on-the-street interviews with ordinary Americans are counterbalanced by fiscal update information, a three-minute, data-laden slideshow, and the movie’s trailer. To order any DVD release from PBS Home Video, including this title or The Ascent of Money, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to purchase the I.O.U.S.A. DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) B+ (Disc)
Bai Ling Talks; Transformers Videogame Site Launches
Rotten Tomatoes’ lovely Jen Yamato has up an interesting sit-down interview with Bai Ling, who I have it on good authority will be washing cars tomorrow in the Los Angeles area to help promote the sure-to-be-awesome Crank sequel. (Possibly more on that later.) In characteristically breezy, self-confident and oftentimes free-associating fashion, Ling talks about her hard-charging lifestyle and her own wacky blog, the drubbing she took in China after Red Corner, and Southland Tales‘ infamous Cannes Film Festival premiere, among other topics.
Also, in unrelated news, Activision has launched its official web site for the videogame companion for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, tagged as a place where fans can log on and “join a global Transformers community to get the latest news, images, videos and developer insight about the highly anticipated videogame set to hit shelves later this summer.”
Lymelife
“Culkins are kind of like Bebe’s Kids… they don’t die, they multiply.” Sorry… but this was the thought that surged through my mind as I settled into Lymelife, another self-satisfied, allegorical tale of the gritty dark side of Northeastern suburban paradise and its attendant loss of innocence, all as peddled by Derick Martini, making his directorial debut. A sort of facile, surface-polished lesser entry in the canon of movies like The Ice Storm, The Chumscrubber and American Beauty, in which sensible and in some regards overly mature kids grapple with philandering and emotionally stunted adults, Lymelife is a bunch of discrete, thematically similar scenes in search of a cogent narrative punch.
Centering on two deeply troubled, dysfunctional families during the dog days of the 1970s, the film revolves around an awkward, sensitive 15-year-old boy, Scott Bartlett (Rory Culkin), whose family life is ostensibly turned upside down after an outbreak of Lyme disease hits his community, spreading illness and paranoia. Scott’s parents — workaholic father Mickey (Alec Baldwin) and overprotective mother Brenda (Jill Hennessy) — are unhappy in swallowed ways bubbling just underneath the surface, and his older brother Jim (Kieran Culkin) is back on brief loan from the Army, and about to ship off for war. Complicating matters, Scott has fallen in love with his neighbor and longtime friend, Adrianna Bragg (Emma Roberts). Troubled in different ways, Adrianna’s less affluent family consists of her uptight mother, Melissa (Cynthia Nixon), who’s carrying on a not-so-clandestine love affair, and her father, Charlie (Timothy Hutton), who’s slowly slipping away from the effects of Lyme disease.
Derick Martini and his brother Steven, the writer-actors behind the winning, low-budget 1999 indie Smiling Fish & Goat on Fire, collaborated on Lymelife‘s script based on their own experiences growing up on suburban Long Island, but the movie feels too cute by about half, groomed for indie flick preciousness in certain scenes. Lymelife premiered, I gather, at the Toronto Film Festival, and truth be told it’s the warm bosom of a welcoming throng of international filmgoers that’s the best home for this decently acted but otherwise marginally disappointing domestic ensemble.
There’s something of a charismatic star spark from the young Roberts, particularly in the manner in which she captures how teenage females drive the bus of sexual experience, and set the tone for the vast majority of adolescent amorous encounters. But overall her performance is a hot-and-cold thing, a lot of which is admittedly dictated from a scattershot characterization that finds Adrianna admonishing and/or patronizing Scott one moment (“I can call your mom, she can bring you an icepack or a Yoo Hoo or something,” she says in an awkward, meant-to-be-serious moment, after a bully thumps Scott), and then flashing him her red bra in confessional booth the next.
The Martinis have a nice touch with some end-around, unexpected moments of interpersonal friction or personal introspection — there’s a great bar scene between Mickey and Charlie that ranks among the best scenes of passive-aggressiveness I can recall — but the Lyme disease-as-metaphor stuff doesn’t play, and they absolutely overreach when they aim for more overt emotional manipulation. These hamfisted instincts most reveal themselves in thunderously stupid and unrealistic behavior by cheating adults — bits crammed in to advance scenes, and feed revelation amongst minors — and reach their apex in a woefully misguided finale that feels like a straight-up gangsta rip-off of American Beauty, only without the balls of actual catharsis through bloodletting. (Screen Media, R, 95 minutes)
Running Time Set for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen?
So MTV is reporting that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will run 147 minutes, or “four minutes longer than the original film,” according to Michael Bay. Which can only mean one thing — my prayers of an even longer, more drawn-out comedy bit where Shia LaBeouf‘s parents still think he’s masturbating, despite (or maybe even because of?) the lingering presence of giant robots nearby, have been answered!
Resurrected Movieline Wades Into Online Film Coverage
Movieline launched in 1989, and was a snarky Hollywood lifeline for many of those flung across the country yet still hungry for smart, barbed film commentary and insightful, off-the-typical-beaten-path interviews with both up-and-comers and opinionated, loose-mouthed celebs. Now it’s baaaaack, entering a crowded online marketplace, don’tcha know, with a slew of newswire and review content, as well as a Q&A interview with Emily Blunt. Things will really take off once they get those old print issues catalogued, which really should have been part of any launch. And we’ll see how begging for “insider tips” plays out. Still, adjust your entertainment bookmarks accordingly… especially if Joe Queenan gets to make another movie.
Bill Milner Talks Card Tricks, Senility, Michael Caine
As the floppy-armed kid at the center of the fanciful and inventive Son of Rambow, young Bill Milner made a solid impression, conveying the electric charge of a surging imagination. In his latest film, Is Anybody There?, Milner stars opposite Michael Caine‘s curmudgeonly retired magician as Edward, a kid obsessed with what happens to the patrons of his parents’ nursing home when they pass on. I recently spoke by phone with Milner; the conversation is excerpted below:
Brent Simon: You hadn’t acted before Son of Rambow — how did that come to be?
Bill Milner:
I never said, “I want to be an actor, that’s what I want to do with my
life.” I’d always planned on going to college and living normally, I
guess, but when the opportunity came up it was mad. I didn’t really
know what to expect, but now I’ve definitely been introduced to the
film industry, and I really like it.
BS: Like Son of Rambow, your new film is a period piece, but it’s very different in how it intersects and interacts with its period. Was that interesting to you?
BM: Yeah, David (Morrissey) had the bad haircuit. I think one of the reasons you don’t really notice that the movie is a period piece is because instead of it being about growing up in the 1980s, it’s more about remembering everyone’s life, in the past. So for most of it, it’s a lot about how the residents of the old people’s home lived. Unlike Son of Rambow, it’s more about death and having to learn to let go rather than living and growing up and having fun.
BS: There are actually some intriguing parallels to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, particularly as it relates to the notion of growing up in a nursing home, and the wisdom and knowledge that can be gleaned from older people. In real life, have you had the opportunity and blessing to spend a lot of time with your grandparents, or other older folks?
BM: I never met either of my grandfathers, but during the filming I did understand the idea of Alzheimer’s and going senile. But now, after seeing the movie, I realize it even more, because I have a grandmother that’s going a bit senile, and I think it’s a really important message to get across, what that does. So the movie is approaching a kid’s view on an issue in life in a really different way, which I like.
BS: What sort of hobbies do you have?
BM: Basketball is my favorite sport, and I also like animating a bit. I just recently started that, like stop-motion animation, and I’m really enjoying it. Now that I’ve been introduced to it, I always want to be involved in the film industry.
BS: How did that introduction come to be?
BM: My uncle writes for television. Other than that I really didn’t know much about the film industry. But from straightaway I was interested in not just acting, but other areas too — that’s what’s so great about it, there are so many different parts of the film industry, and all of them are so interesting and fun to explore.
BS: A lot of times, with films that have kids as central characters directors will talk about finding someone who’s just believeable for the role. For you, is there a lot of process, or work on character details, or is it more just about learning about the whole story and how your character fits into it?
BM: I think especially with this script that it was so good that you could really learn a lot from it — there was a lot about the character and what he’d been through, just by reading it. With help from the director, it was very easy to understand how the character was feeling, and the emotions he was going through.
BS: Why do you think Edward is so interested in ghosts, and the paranormal?
BM: Just because that’s what he’s grown up with. Instead of normal kids, playing sports or drawing pictures, he’s used to the morbid side of life. Say if you’re dad was a footballer, you’d be more interested in football; I think he’s interested in it because of the way his parents have brought him up. Most kids only encounter death when they’re 10 or so, or maybe later than that — they still don’t have much knowledge about what happens. But from a young age Edward has been pushed into this lifestyle, and so it’s his curiosity.
BS: Is Anybody There? also features a good bit of magic — did you pick up any fun tricks?
BM: I thought it was great, because loads of kids buy the magic sets and read the books, and get then two pages in and get bored, or they don’t seem to work, or they break. But I think learning these tricks was brilliant. I learned a lot. The disappearing card trick was my favorite; I like it because it’s so simple, and yet effective. Surprisingly, it didn’t take much practice. They said because I was young and still have nimble fingers that I handled it quite easily.
BS: He plays quite a gruff character in the film, but what was Michael Caine like on set, just talking to and hanging out with?
BM: It was quite nerve-racking finding out that you might be working with such a great actor, but when you actually meet him he’s so normal that you get on with him really well. He’s such a natural actor that I always felt really comfortable in his presence.
BS: Did you notice any major differences between [directors] Garth Jennings and John Crowley?
BM: They’re both brilliant directors. I think from Garth’s point-of-view, Son of Rambow was about kids being introduced to new experiences and growing up, and I am a kid growing up, and that was what we were going through at those very moments, so I think he taught us to go wild, and he made us feel really natural. I think John… instead of telling you what to do, he guides you without you really knowing. If there’s an emotional scene to do he’ll talk with you in the corner for just a moment. He understands the script really well and talks you through it. I think going over emotional scenes more than once is tough, and going over them more than four times is just hell. So I do like to know that when we’re about to shoot, you’re really into it, and know exactly what we’re going to do, because if you’re not too sure and you get something wrong it can be hard to go again. But being sad isn’t necessarily the hardest thing to do in acting. It might seem easier to look happy or excited, but it might not be easier to show that on screen, and actually feel that feeling.
BS: Is acting something you’d like to stick with as a career?
BM: In general the film industry is very fun, and I think being involved in any way with that would be great, really.
Sam Rubin Clearly Has Not Seen Dragonball: Evolution
Narrative Interruptus: Life Lacks Drama’s Smooth Arcs
The AP’s Ted Anthony has an interesting take on the finale of Life on Mars, and the delicate balance forever demanded of Hollywood’s creative class — that Americans want tidy resolutions, but woe be the producer who makes things too tidy. This dovetails in semi-contrasting fashion with a piece I’m looking to place elsewhere, about movies more and more becoming about a collection of moments.
On Studio Pump Fakes and Head Games
I won’t source this further at the moment, but I will say that it’s not at all frustrating when studios insist on making films available via only one all-media screening for a large subset of legitimate working critics, despite screening the film other times for online back-slappers. Or, say, when they obfuscate a screening situation through incomplete email responses and not communicating information in a clear and timely fashion. I love that, seriously. Can’t get enough of that.
The Ascent of Money
With financial and credit markets in ruin, consumer confidence massively eroded, and the unquestioned belief in age-old economic precepts fundamentally shaken, the demand for basic, understandable answers about money, banking, lending and their relationships, both individually and collectively, to jobs and well-being in small cities and towns far-flung from world power centers is at an all-time high. Enter into the breach, then, the superb new documentary The Ascent of Money.
Based on the New York Times’ bestselling book of British-born Harvard professor Niall Ferguson (above), The Ascent of Money, produced last year, takes a prescient look at how money has evolved — from the concept of credit and debt in ancient times (Ferguson spends some time with Mesopotamian clay tablets noting grain and barley repayments) to the emergence of a global economy and the subprime crisis we face today. It’s a massive, overarching financial history tour, which I realize sounds drab and perhaps breathtakingly boring, but is in actuality just the opposite. An engaging host, Ferguson knows how to sprinkle in quick-hook linguistic asides (the root of credit is credo, the Latin word for “I believe”) and social-artistic parallels (he uses The Merchant of Venice‘s Shylock as an important example, noting how Christian laws against usury led to an understandable, correlative rise in the Jewish business class) with modern-day examples of economic strife, weaving a clear, sensible tapestry between past and present.
Running approximately two hours, the title finds Ferguson traveling from the Far East to Italy and even America’s Deep South — historic hot spots that gave rise to the evolution of money — to illuminate fundamental economic concepts such as banking, insurance, inflation and interest. As he traverses the world of money, Ferguson speaks with leading experts — including financier George Soros, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, financier Evelyn de Rothschild and World Bank Group president Robert Zoellick, among others — about the state of the world, both for established countries and emerging powers. From the rise of the stocks and bonds markets to sub-prime mortgages, from the housing bubble to the globalization of money and the concept of “Chimerica” — how the United States has, since 1981, gone from the world’s largest creditor to its largest debtor — Ferguson demonstrates that financial history is the essential backstory behind all writ-large history. It’s all enthralling… and a bit depressing, honestly. Particularly of note is information that underlines how bankruptcies, both corporate and personal, have become the defining characteristic of American capitalism.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Ascent of Money is presented in close-captioned full screen. Unfortunately, there aren’t any supplemental bonus features… or a secret cache of pre-bust Yahoo stock. C’est la vie, I guess. To order any DVD release from PBS Home Video, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. A (Movie) C- (Disc)