Short Reviews - December 2007

"Remember me, Jen. We may meet in another life, but not again in this one."
-The Dark Crystal

It's come to my attention that cable programmers are having entirely too much fun. Four Sandra Bullock movies in a row? I hate being the straight man here paying through the nose each month for that! And on top of that, they're pointing out all the Action Movie Clichés to boot! Why, just the other day there was this muscular babe on there... well, maybe a little too muscular for my taste. I prefer a girl I could beat up if I had to. Seriously, though, there's what they call The Kamikaze, which is that Cliché Character who sacrifices himself in an oh-so-glorious cinematic way, like Randy Quaid in Independence Day. I thought he survived that! They also cited Mystery Men, but just so they could make barely scatological jokes about giving up your ball for the Greater Good (GrGo). Right, Tom Green? What was the other one? Oh yeah, T2. So-called Movie Kamikazes apparently end up living most of the time.

The cliché that this all puts me in mind of, is the Unwilling Hostage (UnH) I'll dub it for the time being. Take Tim Robbins in Nothing to Lose, or Cate Blanchett in Bandits. They're usually driving a car, and they usually say "Go ahead! Shoot me. I don't care." For some reason, you don't see too much of that anymore. The Tightly Woven Moral Fabric of the Universe (TWMFU) must not've liked that a whole lot. Plus, in the theater, some of the action sequences in Bandits were a little too blurry for my tastes. WTF, Spinotti? Shame on you! Didn't you shoot Heat (1995) ? For shame! That's it, you're out of the AIC.

Anyway, back to the Brevity. The whole Brevity thing. With the unfortunate assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Hollywood is no doubt going to respond in kind. So, who gets to play Bhutto? Jolie or Zeta-Jones? My money's on Jolie. Of course, she's probably busy with Tomb Raider 3, but we can always wish, can't we?

Levity - Billy Bob with long hair. Never saw it.

Goya's Ghosts - Shame on you, Milos! You DID direct something after Man on the Moon after all!

Man on the Moon - Classic. Man, Carrey really nailed it.

Fun with Dick and Jane (2005) - I have a feeling Kubrick would've really loved this. Best homage to The Dawn of Man he never saw.

Speed 2: Cruise Control - Worst Dorf video ever!

Two if by Sea - Denis Leary's A River Runs Through It. Say, Denis, you recall what Dr. Dre's two word review of this was? ;)

Arachnia - Not to be confused with Arachnophobia. Brett Piper not to be confused with Brett Leonard, or Steven Paul.

(http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0666999/#director)

Double Trouble - Not to be confused with the one with Van Damme. Not to be confused with Think Big, either. Right, Turtlehead? Heh heh heh ... ;)

Oh no! They cancelled Kenny vs. Spenny!

Soulja Boy? No, no. After all the years we spent trying to forget Sister Souljah... This will not stand!


Hardy Men - Finally! All those years that Stiller devoted to doing a Tom Cruise impression are finally paying off!

Banger Sisters, The - Now Goldie's Almost Famous!

"Hell date" - it's Da Bomb, so I've heard... Remember, Whitey! 'Def' is dead.

National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets - Oh great. Now Turteltaub's thinking, See Jerry? I toldja we should've filmed 2 and 3 together! Aw, c'mon, Teach! Please please please...

Short Time - Burt Simpson? Great name ...

The Rock - Goodspeed! Great name ...

Terms of Endearment - Flap Horton? Great name ...

Point Break - Johnny Utah? Great name ...

Point Blank - Man, I'm always confusing those two...

And finally, one last fond farewell to Adrienne Shelly. 'Til we meet again, my sweet. Meantime, everyone A) go to Adrienne Shelly's website and Give Till It Hurts (GTIH) and b) catch up on her back catalog: The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, Waitress, Factotum, Tiger: His Fall & Rise, Rock the Boat, Sudden Manhattan, The Road Killers, Teresa's Tattoo... um, not Hexed. You can all just skip Hexed.

Meantime, to all you homicidal maniacs out there, couldja just stop killing people for a while? Ya think? Too much to ask? Thought so.


adrienneshellyfoundation.org

... & a Happy Frickin' New Year, Goombahs!

Ah, the last one of the year. To be filled later, I've got a life to lift!...

Welp, Nat'l. Trez. 2 is #1 again. Mystery to me still, but nevertheless, never underestimate the attraction of taking the President hostage. We can't threaten the President, of course, but hostage taking? Oh, that's okay! And besides! It's being done in the name of National Treasure! I'm sure he'll understand!

Meanwhile... oh, I'm just not happy 'bout this at all. And I'm sure K. Smith ain't either. Alvin & his Chipmunks bumps I Am Legend down to #3. Now who's going to do Clerks 3??

You can do it, Charlie Wilson! You blockhead! CWW at #4. Yeah, Aaron Sorkin's fallen on hard times as of late. Can't keep Studio 60 on longer than one season, The West Wing's finally totally gone, now this! Can't get higher than #4.

And of course, rounding out the Top 5 is America's precious Juno. All I know is, that kid from Superbad's been very, very busy! Well hung for a nerd, that's all I gotta say. Doesn't that make him an Undercover Nerd? (UN) He's not a REAL NERD! Oh well, gotta leave that one alone, it says here...
-----------
Meanwhile, someone's disastrous distribution decision led to AvP2 coming in at #6. It managed to find its way into the Top 10 last week as well, but it's like it didn't exist at all. But it'll be on Sin-a-max soon enough, won't it? Maybe they'll have some sort of Alien and Predator marathon. On Memorial Day! How appropriate would that be?

At #7, it's another Dark Horse of sorts: The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep. Best thing since Wild Hearts Can't be Broken. Or that thing from 1985 about loggers... Natty Gann, was it? I swear, that's Lucy Lawless' kid. Look how tall he is!!!!!

At #8 it's P.S. I Love You. Well, it's no Living Out Loud, but given the bleakness of the season, Romantic Comedy-wize it'll just have to do. I don't know why, but after films like Million Dollar Baby and Boys Don't Cry and Karate Kid 4, Hilary Swank just ain't your typical sex symbol. Maybe if Jessica Simpson were in the movie and they have a ... you know, kinduva "kissin' sisters" kinda scene. Even if only just on the DVD deleted scenes section. C'mon, Gravenese! You gotta do a stunt like that to get people talkin'!

Man! You'd think people'd be a little more eager to see the latest Depp / Burton project. Not so, in this case! They prob'ly should've released it about the same time as No Country for Old Men. Similar themes, in a way. People would just rather not see blood right now. Dang! It's like Xmas 1999 all over again, or something.

And finally, Enchanted crossed the 100 million barrier. Well, Disney's cryonically frozen head's happy about that... but not too happy. Why not 200 million? And why do all those Pixar things make all the money these days, incidentally? This world's too strange for me. My corporate underlings aren't preparing for my Resurrection at all! Good help's so hard to find these days...

Two Hundred Cigarettes ... And Posts !!

Oh great, another damn MTV motion picture. Man, you'd think they'd be playin' this one 24/7 on the Showtime networks, but not so!
Anyway, we're about 20 posts or so past it, but my original plan was to review this in celebration of my 200th post to this blog, because a) it's fun to celebrate, and 2) I always kinda remembered this title

in the back of my mind. Or d) maybe it was just Christina Ricci saying "1982 will be, like, the best year ev-ah!" And hey, who doesn't want to go down memory lane every once in a while? For me, more like

once a week. Besides, my life in 1982 probably wouldn't make as cool a movie. Certainly wouldn't of been for adults like The Islander here; I was about ten at the time.

Yes, back when the spectre of AIDS didn't loom large over everyone, or lung cancer, apparently. But that's the genius of the film. Like being cool, to question its need for logic is to not get it. It's just a nice little slice of life, just a couple hours before and after 1981 gave way to 1982. There are no plot pretensions here, but they do attempt to weave a fabric of short films together. ...My parole officer has warned me about blatantly whitewashing the concept of movie plots. (Example: saying outright that a movie has no plot... Plot? What plot? There's no plot! It's not Shakespeare! It's just Pac-Man but with people...) In our instant case, 200 cigs, it's like someone doing a Woody Allen clone, but for MTV. For me, there's something inconveniently ironic about the negativity of all the characters rallying against the pointlessness of New Year's at the beginning, but at the end everyone finds their true love at the New Year's party, like at the end of How to Make an American Quilt, for example.

The soundtrack's okay, but where's The Buggles? Where's Like A Virgin? Or Prince? Or Born in the USA? It's not my MTV, let's put it that way. If I were Elvis Costello, I wouldn't be too proud of this one.** Also, when Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust", I was probably supposed to appreciate its placement in terms of the plot, but somehow I didn't care. Was I supposed to? Guess in general I'm just not ready for an 80s Renaissance.

-*=*-

There's a couple good lines here and there, however. Paul Rudd gives us the following gem: "It's inevitable, you know? You let somebody move in with you, you make all these little compromises to smooth things along, and the next thing you know, you're on some macrobiotic diet and you're listening to Joni Mitchell. And then you know what they say? ... They tell you you've changed! You're not the same person that I fell in love with. Well, yeah!..."

Martha Plimpton is the closest thing to a matriarch in the movie. My favorite line of hers would have to be "No one's going to show up to my party... No, the LOSERS will be here."

But the line "It's not what you think" should be banned from movies forever. Seriously. Forever and ever, amen. From real life, too.

----

As for the rest of the cast, well, it's a large cast and everyone fights to make their mark. That's why nobody wins. But there are a handful of standouts left standing, ultimately. Gaby Hoffman, for example, plays the uptight, scared best friend with Tourettes Syndrome. Every line has at least one F-word. Normally, I don't notice things like that, but after a while it became quite noticeable. Maybe David Mamet wrote her lines. Maybe she was an understudy on a stage production of Oleanna, who knows. At one point she inadvertently gives in to the Slamdancing bug. It's just temporary, though, and I kinda liked that.

Christina Ricci ends up French kissing three different guys! She should get three paychecks for that. Another critic complained about her accent, but I would say it's about as good as her accent work in Sleepy Hollow, if not better.

Kinda fun to see Kate Hudson playing the opposite of her character in Almost Famous. She starts off paired with Jay Mohr. They turn out to be perfect for one another, but end up ... well, why spoil it?

Angela Featherstone sure was hot, though. She reminded me of Margaret Colin in Like Father, Like Son. You remember her from that Seinfeld where she's the maid/girlfriend, which leads to Seinfeld's Stooge-esque line "Oh, the ol' dumping me / quitting thing, huh? Well, we're through! ... And you're fired..."

Ben Affleck tries to get a three-way going with Featherstone and her friend. Oh, he's such a nasty, naughty boy! But, can you blame 'im? I kinda liked that line that Ben Affleck gave to the two girls "How do you like your eggs in the morning: scrambled or fertilized?" I bet... nay, I KNOW Kevin Smith ghost-wrote that one. Hell, he's probably used that line in a bar a couple times...

The closest thing to a sympathetic character here is Eric, an Irish artist who draws vagina-esque flowers. And yet, he's a terrible lover; irony there somewhere... He's kinda like Matthew Modine in Short Cuts. But he's a nobody, so who cares.

Dave Chappelle plays a cab driver, but not just any cab driver. Nothing less than the funkiest, most mellow cab driver in NYC. He seems to belong more in a 70s movie, but this is a period piece, remember, taking place on the cusp between 1981 and 1982. Close enough. This is not a total whitewash of history.* Seems to be doing some of his Tyrone Biggums character but without the white lips.

Paul Rudd has the unfortunate task of fighting off the advances of Courtney Love. They end up in a philosophical dilemma similar to what Elaine and Jerry once went through: can two long-time friends stay friends after having sex?

And well, what more is there to be said of Casey Affleck? He's the man of the year here in 2007, even though he has but a small role here. But as always, there are no small parts if you're Casey Affleck. Why he didn't get to play George Harrison in Dewey Cox, I'll never know.

And Elvis Costello, well, if I were him I wouldn't be too proud of this one. Probably more than Meat Loaf in Blacktop, but still, not too proud. But like they always say, a Meat Loaf Aday doesn't keep the cardiologist at bay! ;)


***
-so sayeth the The Movie Hooligan


footnotes
* - note to self: take that line out!!
** - Redundant? Ah, who cares...

The Soderbergh Rat Pack*: Bourne Three...

Bourne Three... as Three as the wind blows
As Three as the grass grows
Bourne 3 to follow your heart ...

... nothin'? All right. Folks, the pernt is...

Yes, as the Video Game-ification of Cinema (VGC, VGiC) marches on, it finally sweeps away the Damon-Bourne Franchise. Oh sure, it's made plenty of money (about 200 million, was it?), and it's high up in the IMDb Top 250 (used to be at around #50!), but I don't know. It left me kinda dizzy. I'm kind of an old-school video games man myself: you know, Pac Man, Bubble Bobble, Time Pilot 84. Yeah, the 80s was my decade. The last of the great decades. Hell! There's even a couple movies that feature Time Pilot 84: Last Starfighter and Max. Overdrive, if I remember correctly. Oh sure, it's only in the background. TP84 was only a featured player, but still!** The point being, movies are trying too hard to keep up with video games, and are suffering as a consequence. Some people said that the success of The Blair Witch Project was in part because of all the vomit-inducing amateur camera work. Sorta the same principle at work in Bourne 3. At least Bourne 2 had a little visual clarity. I took a still frame from one of the quieter moments in the film as you can see. It's from the part where Ed Murrow spills the guts about Blackbriar... well, I won't ruin the surprise. It's still a little nebulous to me, actually. Again, video games: Damon this go-round is a little TOO aware of all that's happening around him.
...But getting back to my whole New Rat Pack Theory. I'll reiterate it here: there are now THREE new rat packs, fronted by three people whose last name begins with S: Sandler, Stiller and Soderbergh. And why the Rat Pack? Because this isn't a Lord of the Rings special effects heavy superhit. As I say up top, Bourne 3 is a Soderbergh Rat Pack production. Tony Gilroy is benefitting from the Soderbergh Rat Pack's good will this year of our lord 2007, with his directorial debut in tow Michael Clayton. Better start working on Bourne 4 as a Safety Net Day Job kinda thing. (SNDJ) Who else? Albert Finney, of E. Brock fame and O12 cameo fame, has an all-too-brief (ATB) part here as the arch bad guy. SPOILER: Brian Cox was the arch bad guy (ABG) in Bourne 2. Incidentally, how come you never see Finney and Cox in the same movie together? Answer? THEY'RE THE SAME GUY!

Final note: my close friend and I were subliminally trying to out-do each other on how much we eventually hated the movie. He wouldn't look for it on DVD at the pawn shop, but might accept it as a gift. He gives it 2 and a half stars; I'll give it three. At least Sandy Bullock wasn't in it; then it gets 2 and a half from me.

***
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

footnotes
* I'll explain later when I have better visual aides.
** To all the fans of the original Time Pilot: PLEASE STOP EMAILING ME!

M. Night Shyamalan Theater 3000: The Motion Picture

(Or, as I like to call it: MNST3K: The Motion Picture.)

I see what M. Night is trying to do*, but it still sucks. ;)

**
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan (TMH? MOOHOO?)

-footnotes
* Okay, here's what M. Night's trying to do. Perhaps it is his indictment of how Hollywood movies are made, or perhaps it's his valiant attempt to do something different, but any way you look at it, the screenplay for Lady in the Water is nothing less than the Proto-Screenplay. That Mighty Acorn that M. Night planted which ends up growing the whole damn Hollywood Screenplay Tree, with William Goldman, Paddy Chayefsky and Matthew Michael Carnahan being but mere branches. Mere branches. Mere pine cones and twigs in Louis B. Mayer's backyard. Mere footnotes unto themselves, along with Dalton Trumbo and Preston Sturges, with a little Joe Eszterhas thrown into the mix. For good measure.

Take for instance, the speech that Bob Balaban gives before he gets mauled by the Colbert bear. Very insightful! Very, very self-aware of his place in the universe in general, and in the screenplay in particular. And all that stuff about "The Council", it is true. Generally, movies show how actions relate from a Seat of Power higher up than the boots on the ground, if you will. A tradition as old as Buster Keaton, and as new as Matrix 2 & 3. But M. Night forgot The Most Cardinal Movie Rule Of All, and it is this: DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO HIDE THE RULES! Do NOT make the audience aware of the rules. Don't make the audience think: aww, I can make a movie as good as this. Do not make Self-Awareness a movie style.
Just a thought, anyhow. Also, comedy names. Cleveland Heep? Story? Well, comedy-drama names. Just give 'im the damn Oscar he should've gotten for Sixth Sense and this will all be over! Trust me...

What I want foR 'Xmas

ell, I would like to get that kick-ass new Bat Bike from the upcoming New Batman part 2 (or as it's known in the biz, Batman 6), but you know how it is. I'm getting on in years, and a thing like the new Bat-Cycle, as kick-ass as it is, it's a Young Man's Game (YMG). No more of them Crotch Rockets (CRs) for me! I'm still using those damn ice packs! Those special Retro-Crotch Fitted (RCF) Ice Packs! (RCFIP?) And besides, there's the insurance, there's the whole getting a new garage thing. Don't kid me! I know Ferris Bueller. You think those goofballs are gonna leave well enough alone? (LWEA) No! Every two-bit garage owner and mechanic's going to be lined up around the block waiting to pay a small fee to ride shotgun on that thing. Shotgun? On bikes?Anyway, that's how out of it I is. Maybe strap a nice oily sidecar to it, charge more; special extra-wide sidecar for fat chicks.

Meantime, can I have Sweeney Todd be #1 at the box office for Xmas? Is that too much to ask? ... Spoke too soon! It was too much to ask. Apparently, Nic Cage is now the nation's Uncle with war stories to tell, and he waters them down just enough for the kids... Nat'l Treasure 2. NOW can Turteltaub be in the DGA? Pleeeeeeze?

Hoh, boy. 18 pages from JWB's diary, huh? Shouldn't that be ... EIGHTEEN AND A HALF PAGES?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

While all that's goin' on, I Am Legend slightly slips to #2. Now, that's all well & good, and Smith's got his street cred back from the whole Happyness debacle, but could you have gone with a more modest title?

A & the C at #3. Jason Lee's the new Brendan Fraser, don't kid yourselfves. (DKY)

Charlie Wilson's War at #4. Let's Face It (LFI), people just don't wanna laugh anymore. I think people are burned out on any kind of comparison with our current White House Administration. Look at Lions for Lambs! Better yet, save yourself heartbreak: don't look at Lions for Lambs!

Hanks & Nichols together for the first time, I think. With Julia Roberts in tow. Are Hanks and Nichols part of The Soderbergh Rat Pack yet?*

And to round out the top 5 this week, it's my beloved Sweeney Todd. Or as I like to think of it, Sleepy Hollow 2. Only with singing, apparently. Yecch!

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Can you believe it? (CYBI?) They knocked my beloved NCFOM off the top 10. It's assassination, I tells ya! But you know what? (YKW) It's all good because it's gonna win 15 Oscars, and it's at #14 in the IMDb Top 250! All right, let's get to the rest of this garbage...

At #6 it's P.S. I Love You. This has gotta be a remake. Another one of those that sneaks in under my radar. Dayamn! And I thought I was hip! ...okay, I get what this is. Another one of those Kennedy Compound exposés, right? Right, LaGravenese?

At #7 it's Enchanted. So close to the 100 million barrier. Sorry, Barry, ol' Will did it in two weeks! Suck on that!

At #8 it's Dewey Cox. Man, the Kasdan clan sure has fallen on hard times. Even harder than Cox himself! Get it?....

Golden Compass at #9. Bet they didn't see that coming! No matter what nautical instruments they were using. Man, I haven't seen something bomb that hard since Pluto Nash. ...okay, to be fair, G. Comp's not bombing THAT badly...

And finally at #10, it's the critic's beloved Juno. I hate this movie. I don't know why, and I haven't seen it, and it's already on the Top 250, but I still hate this movie. Maybe because I've seen the trailer, like, five times already. Maybe it's perfect. Maybe it's a little too perfect, know whut I mean, Vern? Maybe I'm just jealous of Ivan Reitman's kid. Or maybe I'm just sick of abortions! Or maybe I'm still upset that Bateman got the part instead of Tucker Carlson. Or maybe I'm just sick of these Forces of Nature with names like Diablo Cody... shyeah, that's his real name... who waltz into town, go on Letterman, charm the pants off him, and get a movie deal, so they kinda tweak the autobiography in their head and turn it into one of those movies that tries to tackle a tough subject head on but end up dancing completely around it, throwing as many pre-digested clichés as they can to stick onto it, so by the end you've completely divested your Suspension of Disbelief, and caring for the characters, and just wanna get the hell out of there when the end credits roll and beat the rush of traffic exeunting the theater!

And by the way (BTW), it's The United States of LELAND!

Sorry, must just be the stress talkin'. Happy blogging to you all this holiday season. Remember! The days're getting longer again! Hallelujah! :)

footnotes

* moron that later... I'm biz-ee!

NOW we're talking!

Oh yeah. (Awe yeah?) My man Will Smith doesn't disappoint with the latest variation on... The Omega Man? I don't know. All I know is he's gone from I, Robot to I Am Legend. And with 77 million in the bank, would it kill you to throw a bone to DJ Jazzy Jeff? Why, even Kid 'n Play look out for each other!
Okay, better give a shout out to someone behind the scenes, and this time I choose Mark Protosevich. Looks like he's finally in the fold after the disastrous Poseidon, and, well, I guess The Cell wasn't a disaster, but it was like 7 years ago! WTF!? Anyway, you're the new Steve Tesich. Hope you like non-stop women and caviar! (N-S W&C) Your stomach will grow large and distended and Hollywood'll have a big bowl of Screenwriter Paté.
Meanwhile at #2 it's Alvin and the Chipmunks. It's a family film, 2B sure, and I'm just glad they didn't go for cheap laughs like about chipmunk shit in the oatmeal-raisin cookies. Oh wait....*
At #3 we got... what do we got? G.Comp: The Golden Compass. Slowly but surely making back its catering budget. And in a nod to American Pie co-director Chris Weitz there's this part where a monkey gets its tail caught in an eclair... something like that. It's cute. No, really! Then Finch goes home to use the bathroom... Total homage time.
Oh dear. Enchanted is clearly fallign on hard times, as its glass slipper has slipped to #4. However, it's the odds-on favourite for crossing the 100 million barrier. The only other film that comes close is I Am Legend.
And now, the Maxim Magazine review of our #5 entry, No Country for Old Men
Maxim sez: Normally I hate the films of those effete intellectuals the Coen Brothers. What a phony name. I bet they're not really brothers. But you know what? (YKW?) This has got to be the best date movie I've seen in a long time. And believe me, I tried. I took this black chick to see This Christmas, and she gave me a real shiner! Anyway, more about that later. Here's why NCfOM rocks: it's got the best pick up line ever, uttered by the uber-masculine James Brolin, who tells his girlfriend "You keep running that mouth of yours, and I'm gonna take you in back and screw you!" I just wept copious tears. I hadn't cried so hard or loud since my rich Aunt Mabel died and left me a fraction of her fortune. A+!
... or was it FHM? Or maybe Stuff? I always get those mixed up.
----------------------------------------------
As for 6 to 10, well, guess we just better get through it. FUBU Christmas cinema is the order of the day with #6 and #7, The Perfect Holiday and This Christmas. This gives Tyler Perry an idea! Something like, Tyler Perry's A Merry Damn Madea Kinda Christmas.
At #8, it's Fred Claus, or as I like to think of it, The Santa Crashers. Only 68.9 million in the bank? Hmm! Seems like it shoulda made more than that by now. Oh well. That's how it goes sometimes.
#9 brings us Atonement. But that's okay, because apparently it's going to clean up at the Golden Globes. Eat it, NCFOM! Well, as long as Kiera doesn't have her damn mouth open all the time like in the Pirates movies.
And finally at #10, it's Once, the little movie that could. So many movies to watch, so little time.

Ah, screw it, Grandma's Boy is coming on cable here in a second. Peace out, my peeps.

footnotes
* #2 indeed!

Close enough...

Yeah. Golden Compass, Palantir, same diff. Never enuff time 2 do this kinda stuff anymore! But the main thing is you start. But, once again, NCFoM is the lil' movie that could!.... Basically... more l8r... stick w/me; it's not worth it! ;) ...

G.Comp at #1 with 25.8 mil. Has it only been one week? Dang! Time's going by too slowly now; must be all the church I'm attending. This one features talking animals, and there's one part where this lemur-type creature gets its tail stuck in a freshly baked pie... now, THAT's waht I call a directorial Shout-Out! Oh, snap...
enchanted at #2.Yeah, this one's closest to 100 million of the current crop of the cream. Something kinda sad about that. Yeah, while I was waiting online to see NCFOM one time a bunch of pro-Disney families came out of the theater going, "Well, the movie was okay, but that finale wasn't really necessary. I mean, dragons, explosions, excitement, and I'm sittin' there goin', " Me myself, I'm waiting for that Maxim pictorial with Susan Sarandon with the headline, "Wicked Queen Sex!"
Which reminds me: time for the Maxim Magazine review of 'My Dinner with André': You know, those fags are all right!
This Christmas you might not get a chance to see This Christmas, but you can see it now. Frankly, I'm disappointed myself, but I'm one of those hardcore Preston Whitmore )II?) fans who frankly think he sold out after The Waking Dead, but more power to him. (MPTH) And that goes double for Fred Claus at #4; I'm going to wait for my real Xmas present. Now you're probably asking, why Movie Review Hooligan (MRH), what on Earth could that be? And the answer is: to find the spoof of Glengarry they throw in because of Spacey's involvement.
Beowulf - Nope, can't thikn of anything other than: This B.O. wolf is still tearing at the fresh kill that is the Box Office, to the tune of 76.1 million. Now if it had been more like Enchanted, it could've made 83.9 million by now.
As for the rest: August Rush - more like August Yawn. Besides that was at least 4 months ago!... Hitman: yawn. I've got Smokin' Aces on cable now! Why would I want to trek through the snow to the theater? Awake: Yawn. Specifically, Alba's Oscar Yawn. You've had a busy year, my pet. I think you're only allowed 3 movies a year, especially if one's a superhero movie, a funny comedy, and now an Oscar dramedy... At #10... oh Jordy Verrill! You lunkhead!!!!!
Which brings me to my favourite. #6 gives us NCFOM with $4.12M this week, for a grand total of $28.7M. And the weird part is, this is probably their most profitable movie yet! At least, domestically. We gotta do what we can to keep the Coens here, 'cuz the French are going to steal 'em away from us. Fargo made about $25 mil domestic, Ladykillers made about $40 domestic. Okay, so NCFOM's got a ways to go. They got Burn After Reading in the pipeline, Hail Caesar, and Clooney's going to direct Suburbicon. I suggest they drop Gambit and give it to either Ramsey / Stone or Max D. Adams, or get Aniston's ghost writer to take it over. Focus, guys! We need you. We need your full attention on the tasks at hand, and we need you to patch up the rift between yourselves and Deakins. No more lengthy DVD interviews for a while. Compromise. The fart of the deal. (FotD)
Guess that's all I got. Except to say that always with me, when the Coens put out a new movie, I ask myself how are the Coens going to change the face of American cinema this time? And I think they're trying to tell us to slow down. We've had a lot of fun with the quick cutting, the sped-up Vista-glide tracking shots, the 'whoosh' sound effects, but it's too much. It can all only go so fast, so we gotta slow down. NCFOM is nothing less than their indictment of the barren, infertile wasteland that has become the American pop culture landscape. Okay, THAT's all I got! Back 2 bed... ;)

***1/2: No Country For Old Men: Joel and Ethan Coen's "Pulp Fiction"

Brought to you by Miramax (now 100% Weinstein Free!*) and Paramount Vantage (and NOT Vintage!!! That's what I thought at first... Not that it's not vintage...)

Or as I think of it, the Fargo of our times. Although, as a Coen Loyalist (CL) I demand more flamboyance from their Opening Credit Sequences (OCS); for instance, Fargo just screamed Academy Award noms, didn't it? Something more comical like the complex computer animation involved in Lebowski's opening sequence, or even The Ladykillers; the Gilliam Monty-Python-esque opening for Intolerable Cruelty; the stark simplicity of Raising Arizona's opening lettering ... I think that's all of 'em. (oh yeah, the seriocomic nature of 'Man Who Wasn't There" 's lettering with their own (slightly off-axis) shadowing. To divert from my chain of thought briefly to better include the non-Coenheads out there: you may be asking yourselves, why Joel and Ethan? Because some combinations just sound better in a certain order, like Siskel & Ebert, Complaints & Grievances, and Seals & Croffts. Don't mess with what works. (DM3W?) At least, that's what Ethan says... E8-)> (beatnik Frankenstein)
Anyway, I never thought I'd find myself saying, blogging, or even contemplating this, but you nkow what? Three and a half stars from me! And I come to this decision with a heart that is clearly heavy for those of you who can see it (as long as you can't smell it or touch it, we'll get on just fine.) This is coming from a guy who gives (all the movies in) their collection 4 stars, a guy who OWNS their entire collection (except for certain bullshit re-packaged collections just because the latest and greatest studio, like Universal, recently bought 'em ... anyway, you get the idea [YGTI] ). I'm not really concerned about peer pressure on this decision, unlike my disastrous review of Clerks... Man, I'm still opening fresh hate mail 'bout that one. Passion of the Clerks, indeed!
And I hope Deakins gets the Oscar this year, if only for Robert Ford; nothing new to him, same as in 2001 when he could've gotten two concurrent noms for A Beautiful Mind and MWWT, but as chance or fate would have it, LTR had to have it. Course, it made like a zillion dollars more than either. 2001 was an interesting year for cinematography in general, (and what in particular????)
So, if you have any doubt left about Fargo being a comedy (it's a drama), or The Man Who Wasn't There being a comedy (MORE of a drama), believe it or not NCFOM dials down the humor even further if such a thing is possible; dials it right down to the opposite of 11, if you can imagine that. The biggest laugh is probably when Brolin goes back into the clothing store. But I just love that Chigurh vs. Convenience Store scene: what makes it great is that Chigurh thinks the guy is not worth killing, or even worth his time, but will give him the benefit of the coin-flip doubt nonetheless... Now THAT'S intimidation! Not your Pulp Fiction Hyperactive Time... (PFHT) (favourite single line: "You're kinda deaf, aren't you? I said, what time do you go to bed?")
Incidentally, allow me to use this platform to take a slight detour and advance my Coen-Corbin Casting Theory (CCCT). For instance, the guard that busts Brolin's stones about getting back into the US reminds me pitch perfectly of Barry Corbin at the height of his WarGames days. Also, Trey Wilson in Raising Arizona is apparently Corbin's understudy; they also wanted Kevin Costner in the Nicolas Cage role, a role still consistently cited by people I talk to: "Well, I liked Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona! ... Deadfall, not so much." And finally, FINALLY... at long last, they get to work with Barry (Corbin), and he's a guy in a wheelchair! Whazzup w/'dat? Would WTF be appropriate here? I didn't think so, just checking.
Which brings me to the great dialogue, courtesy of novelist and author and novelist Cormac McCarthy (known simply as C. McC in the Crystal Meth circles... not just MY Crystal Meth circles (MCMC, or MCx2)) I mean, the Coens already got the great dialogue thing down (just try Hudsucker or I. Cruel for lines you really need a knife and fork to get through ... Ladykillers! Everyone picks on Ladykillers! LISTEN TO THAT DIALOGUE! Who else can come UP with that kinda shit?!), and McCarthy's knack for dialogue and character backstory, basically, brings a whole new, refreshing level of intimacy to the proceedings.
Which brings me to Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). And unlike everyone else I tried real hard not to mention the haircut. It's just a racist haircut; it's just the same old Mexploitation we see from the Coens every year, but that's just me: I got some real unusual opinions on things. The best scene in the movie for me is the convenience store scene. Still, I couldn't help but think, what would Tarantino do with that? He'd probably want to be Chigurh if he were directing. OR, what would happen if Billy Bob were Chigurh in just that scene? Do kind of a Palindromes kind of experimental thing, or like I'm Not There: it just seems unfair that only one actor gets to play a great part like Chigurh. (Hint: something like "Whon't yu shut yer god damn trap and just gimme some gas and some god damn peanuts for m'car?" ;)
The reason I deduct a half a star, as opposed to all the other movie critics in the world, is that I'm kinduva real stickler about movie adaptations of novels. And my main gripe is that Chigurh in the novel is a dialogue-heavy character, and he makes it absolutely clear that he is a man of destiny who takes no chances, which makes it all the more satisfying when he gets his arm almost knocked off in that TOTALLY RANDOM car crash! That was at least one thing he didn't see coming!...
I wasn't even going to mention this, for fear of looking like a prude, but I mean think about it! The very first scene where Chigurh kills the cop with his handcuffs... I mean, that's a very violent scene! Meaning it was done well. I just don't know now if the look on Bardem's face balanced out the scene enough. I'm starting to think not. I think the Coens told Bardem: "The character is making a very specific amount of effort to choke the guy to death: no more, no less. Try and look like that." How about it, Eth? Something like that? ;) [My close friend whose opinion I trust, probably because it's dangerously close to my own, still thinks they shouldn't of opened the movie with two extremely violent scenes, and I couldn't help but agree. Thankfully, they build on this later by developing a kind of Chigurh shorthand - SPOILERS, i.e., cutting right to him hosing down the chicken truck.]
But, I'm a loyal Coen Completist, and I've rambled on quite enough for some I'm sure, and I'll watch No Country For Old Men again sometime down the road. I mean, I'm not one to complain (at great length, anywho) and I will get the NCFOM DVD yesterday. Damn those fesky Prench! They got it already, I know it. As for the films the Coens produce; for example, I'm going to wait on The Naked Man, Johnny Skidmarks et alia. I mean, what the hell, I'll probably never get to meet them anyway, and they probably won't be impressed when I ask them to sign J. Skid and ask about W.P. Robertson, am I right? P.S. The first thing I'll ask 'em: Make better trailer moments! In your movies AND your scripts!! These guys work hard enough, now they have to splice AUDIO CLIPS together with a freakin' razor blade? You konw what I'm talkin' about! ;)
That's about all I got on that one. Better stop ball-spittin' while I'm behind. ***1/2
-so decreed the Movie Review Hooligan (MRH), Whereas it brings me some Great Grief (GG, as opposed to Charlie Brown's Good Grief (GG) )... meet me at the next three 'Whereas'es...
footnotes
* - just like the Oscars. Oh, snap! Speaking Oscar noms: NCFOM should probably sweep everything it gets. Best pic (Ethan gets that one), best director (Joel gets that one). Tess Harper might not get nominated, but you've got all the acting awards set up: Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress. Best Costume, Best Music Score, but you know what? (YKW?) Best editing for Roderick Jaynes, and here's why...

Short Reviews - November 2007

Is it too late to qualify for November? All right, I'm going anyway...

Headline: Thieves steal 17 tons of Christmas ham, leave thank-you note. The simpsons couldn't have done a better job than that. Well,... (no funeral note on Moe's back was pretty good...)
------All right! On to the movies......-------------------------------------
The Evil that Men Do - Bronson does Day of the Jackal. But the movie poses an ancient Chinese riddle: Bronson brings a quiet dignity to the film, but who would want to sit through this whole movie after seeing the opening credit sequence? I thought I was watching news footage of Gitmo!
Over the Hedge - Nope. Animation's too cheap. Action sequences are too blurry. Interesting to hear Garry Shandling, though.
walk hard: the dewey cox story - so it's not an anchorman clone... is it?
Long Lost Son with Gabrielle Anwar - Good Lord, honey! Change your beautician! You got the turkey neck goin' on and you're exfoliating like crazy. Psoriasis? Or just been in the sun too long?

The Man - Oh f...... cryin' out loud.
Criminal Law - Not to be confused with that Alcatraz movie. (murder in the first) Were these made at the same time? I'm freakin' out, man!!!
Basic Instinct 2 - I get the feeling that this is the kind of thing Mae West would make if she were alive today. Now she'd be about 113 years old if she did, but hey! Sexy at any age, right?
Sextette - I love it! Mae West! Ringo Starr! Alice Cooper! Regis Philbin! And 007 Timothy Dalton. The more I learn about this guy, the more I think he's the one and only James Bond!
Off and Running - Cyndi Lauper as Bebe Neuwirth
Southland Tales - Well, if you liked Donnie Darko...
Cosi - Hey! The Darkman arch bad guy! With his original accent! Sweeeeeeeet.
Robocop - I just thought of something, and I want to append it to my previous review: A friend of mine pointed this out to me, that he was confused by the one line of dialogue where Boddicker calls the guy a "wop", when he was clearly a mick!
Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project - First of all, isn't that a working title? Second, he's got, like, 50 people working for him? Don Rickles is good for the economy! C'mon, Don, try and reach the medicine! And then you gave him a cookie... Put Daddy Dearest out on DVD! Whaddaya fraid of?
How Stella Got Her Groove Back - Angela Bassett is a goddess amongst us mere mortals.
Juwanna Mann? No thanks!
The Big White - Fargo meets A Simple Plan. Meets The Trouble With Harry? Meets Peter's Friends? Meets Once Upon a Crime, Noises Off and Blame it on the Bellboy? And I think they show clips of all those movies playing on TV in this movie! Wicked kewl!
the big lebowski - jeff bridges as sammy hagar?
Be Kind Rewind - Not to be cruel, but "A man (Black) whose brain becomes magnetized unintentionally destroys every tape in his friend's video store. In order to satisfy the store's most loyal renter, an aging woman with signs of dementia, the two men set out to remake the lost films, which include Back to the Future, The Lion King, and Robocop". And I looked at that cast list and saw Mia Farrow's name, and figured oh! Guess who's playing the aging woman with signs of dementia?
"America's Psychic challenge" - To my shame, I admit I couldn't help but think of that Monty Python sketch, "Summarize Proust" which ends with the host saying "Well ladies and gendemen, I don't think any of our contestants this evening have succeeded in encapsuladng the intricacies of Proust's masterwork, so I'm going to award the first prize this evening to the girl with the biggest tits." Furthermore and finally, the light may have won the $100,000 prize, but the darkness just might solve that 7-year old murder case.

[(p.s. : a hasty addendum, as per promised to certain curious parties: I'm not easily moved to tears; maybe it's the stress, maybe it's that I, like most Americans, have been bombarded & inundated with so much melodramtic crap over the eyars... that genuine emotion is so rare to find. And when JTWS assured the three women who were friends of the murder victim, I was moved. The tears started to flow when Jackie asked "But why .. do I see ... a child?" The child was the murder victim's pet dog whom they loved as a child. Look at me! I'm crying again! I'm crying as I type this up...)]

Okay, time to move on. [call me! ;) ]

Peace out. ;)

America's Next Top Kitten

Frazzle Dazzle! I love it. I'm back, folks. Gosh it's been a busy week. Alot of stuff happening. And it's just now starting to snow! But let's forget about all that crap happening in the real world, and focus instead on what's really important: this week's top 10 movies.

And, in a stunning reversal, something I haven't seen since Clerks 2, my favourite movie of the year No Country for Old Men is bumped off the chart to I presume #11! WTF? And on top of it, this week's Entertainment Weekly doesn't include the Coens in their latest bullshit list, what was it, the 25 smartest people in the movies today, something like that. Spielberg was #2, close enough, I guess, as they both work with some of the same cast and crew. Screw off, James Cameron!

But I guess my boys will just have to settle for the love of the French, and the fact that this thing, to me, is the independent movie equivalent of Lord of the Rings, as it is climbing another important chart, the Imdb Top 250. Easily bypassing Fargo and Big Lebowski, their other top 250 mainstays. Man, I just revel in that kind of shit myself, I don't know why. It's just how I'm wired, I guess. Oh dear, the hyperlinks are down but the swears are up.

Bearing that in mind, let's quickly go over the rest on the list to tie it all together in sort of a metaphorical torus of sorts. Sorry, Coens, but Mr. Magorium won the recount at #10. At #9, it's The Mist, and once again Frank Darabont gets Stephen King to write his movie. Is it just me, or are Stephen King movie adaptations getting less and less like the more refined ones of the 90s, and getting back to the more exploitative ones of the 80s? Just a thought.

American Gangster is a get-rich-quick story at #8 with 116 million total in the bank. Somehow ironic that a movie about a gangster does gangbusters at the box office. Maybe they should re-release Mobsters to take advantage of Patrick Dempsey's second coming. (We'll just forget about Outbreak, Pat; they left you on the cutting room floor, didn't they?) At #7 it's August Rush, the mainstream version of ... what's that independent movie, got some buzz a couple months ago, this guy with a guitar... ah, skip it. Deal w/that later.

Xmas is all over the charts, 'specially w/Fred Claus at #6 and This Christmas at #2. Are you sure Tyler Perry didn't have something to do with that one?

And so we segue to Pixar-esque fare from that other Pixar in the sky, PDI DreamWorks... are they trying to split from Disney too? Anyway, we go from Bee Movie, full computer animation, at #5, to the half-computer animation, half-real life of Beowulf at #3, to the full real-life cartoonishness of Hitman at #4. Man, I just blew my own damn mind.

After all that, I think we finally have just #1 left, which is Enchanted, and one of its 50 executive producers is ... ta-da! Barry Sonnenfeld, the Coens' old pal from way back. Small world that turns back in on itself. And I'm spent.

You'll have a Jolie old time!

Another contentious week at the Box Office this week, and there's a triumphant new B.O. Wolf that ate the lion's share of ... all those meaty box office dollars to be had from patrons eager for entertainment this Thanksgiving season. Something like that. And the big dog at #1 this week is indeed Beowulf. The movie, not the video game, available on all platforms. If you're in China, both are already on the same Blu-Ray disc. And now for some serious Movie Nerd SATs, because apparently, what Gozer was to Ghostbusters, so Angelina Jolie is to Beowulf. (My God! Did you see what she was wearing?) Incidentally, is it Ghost Busters or Ghostbusters? Because apparently, it's Ghostbusters 2 and not Ghost Busters 2. English is such a strange language. For example, as long as we're on SATs, there's the example of: aerobic is to anaerobic what atomic is to anatomic. Wait, that can't be right.

Where were we? Oh yeah, #2 is Bee Movie. Yawn. Almost at 100 million, already got space reserved for it in the Kids Section at your local video store. I ain't seen anything like it since Seinfeld alums Mandel, Berg and Schaffer were let loose on Dr. Seuss! Oh, snap!

Side by side is the other big cumulative dog, and this one actually jumped over the 100 million barrier, and it's Ridley Scott's Willie Dynamite. Follow that bird, my niggas!

At #4 it's Fred Claus. Not doing too shabby, but somehow the word on the street is keeping all the soccer moms and all the big families away who might have gone to see Home Alone so long ago. Has it been that long? Dayamn! What I want to know is, how did Kevin Spacey get roped into this? Did he lose playing poker with Bryan Singer?

Rounding out the top 5 it's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. No wait, it's The Splendiforous Zeppelin Escapades of Filliam H. Muffman. No wait, it's Joseph and the (amazing) Technicolor Dreamcoat. No wait, it's W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings. No wait, it's Chu Chu and the Philly Flash. No wait, it's Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies. Okay, that's the only one I didn't have off the top of my head. Okay, so Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium is standing on the shoulders of giants. But this time (SPOILERS), it's like if Willy Wonka was dying in the movie and had to get around to the dirty business of bypassing the Death Tax and handing down the business to either the slick, moneygrubbing assistant who plans on selling the store to the Death Gel Factory, or passing the deed on to the wholesome assistant with stars in their eyes, ready to fill the shoes of Mr. Magorium himself and carry the burning torch onward to hell or high water, whichever brings about the end of the world first. Let's face it, folks. We're so burned out with all these expensive movies with the fabulous expensive CGI special effects, so numb from all the fresh new wonderment in the world, even ten year olds are already thinking about death. Think of it as a mental inoculation. Better to get it out of the way sooner.

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And now the dregs. Well, not all of 'em. Normally I think that, especially about something like Dan in Real Life. Okay, got that one out of the way. Why, it hasn't even earned the catering budget of Evan Almighty yet! But now we get to my bread and butter. For any of you who might have read this blog earlier just might remember I said the only movie I was waiting for this year was in fact No Country for Old Men (NCFOM). Every once in a while the people's movie makes it onto the top 10. The rest of 'em? Corporate-funded Krappenfests, funded by people who just want to have a nice career in the movies, and not offend anybody by making any kind of waves. The Simpsons Movie rocketed up the IMDb Top 250 when it first came out, only to sink like a stone later. Perhaps NCFOM won't suffer the second half of that fate. It's already higher than Fargo and The Big Lebowski. Well, you can't have everything. Miller's Crossing, O Brother and The Man Who Wasn't There all had their own separate stints on the Top 250 at one time or another. They're just not there now. Oh, flunf.

All right, enough about that. You'll hear more from me on the subject once I finally get to see the damn movie. You know how it is - so many social engagements, so little time. At #8 it's Lions for Lambs (L4L). Not LOL. You won't get into a chat room and see those two in the same sentence fragment. Let's say it's the best movie since... I don't know, The Last Supper. Something like that. Speaking of lambs, Saw 4 may have finally led all the lambs to slaughter it'll lead in the theaters. Oh well. Wait a couple months, and you can buy the Quartet on video at WalMart or Costco. I'm sorry, the correct word is Quadrilogy, right? At least, for the likes of a movie franchise like Saw. How unfair the fates are when a movie like Saw spawns three more behind it, yet no one remembers Switchback.

And finally, in a contentious last-minute shuffling of numbers, Love in the time of Cholera (LTC) makes it onto the top 10. Check your Variety folks. The top 50 always has an interesting story to tell. Just shows to go you, never underestimate the pweor of a good title. Like Love in the Time of Money (LTM) or Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (WVNB), or Chu Chu and the Philly Flash. This is Javier Bardem's other film on our top 10 this week, incidentally. It's not fair. It's just not fair.

Okay, so I missed a week...

Hmm! Guess the batteries in my keyboard will hold out for a little bit longer. Better change 'em just in case. What a scam. Not all computers are made the same. Otherwise who's going to buy the one without the Blu-Ray DVD/CD burner, but with the 750GB Seagate drive?

So where was I? Felt like an eternity away from the blog, but strangely cleansing. Just discovered the song they call "I want to see the bright lights tonight." I just can't BELIEVE Wes Anderson hasn't used that one yet! Of course, he'll probably want the version recorded by Phantom Planet, am I right?

What a week to miss, too. American Gangster was at #1, with Bee Movie a close second. Apparently, America was more entertained by blood and guts than family-friendly bees. But not this week! Finally, Spielberg triumphed over Brian Grazer, and not a moment too soon. Does this mean Larry David's going to respond in kind with his own Pixar-esque fare? Maybe Sour Grapes done by PDI DreamWorks?

In a fairly distant third is Fred Claus. I'd watch out, Darren Aronofsky, if I were you. That VV is an animal! He's going to steal your Weisz away from you. Did you not see the beginning of The Break-Up? The thrill of the chase, my friend! There's no going back.

At #4, it's Lions for Lambs. Well, it made more than Rendition, anyway. Apparently, it's a shrill liberal dose of whining about the Iraq war, and that's what the Democrats think! Tom Cruise reprises his turn as a senator in ... was it the first Mission Impossible? Incidentally, doesn't Tom Cruise sound like a porn star's name? I'm just saying. I mean, if he wasn't Tom Cruise, you know. Don't let Dianetics hold you hostage, man! You're bigger than that! The American public will embrace you further! The truth shall set you free.

OTOH, you are the closest to Crossing the Bridge, or whatever they call it. Being a Full Re-Born Thetan?

Rounding out our Top 5 this week, it's Dan In Real Life (DIRL). Oh please, Mr. Carell, how many times can a man go back on The Daily Show and thank them for all the good luck he's had in his life? Unfortunately, the answer's no longer blowin' in the wind. It's time to change the act! Pick a charity or something. I suggest solar power. We gotta catch up with the rest of the world sometime.

----------------------------

Oh, six to ten, how it depresses me so. But I need something to keep me up til 3 a.m. when Bananas starts on cable. At #6 is Saw 4. And while I'm waiting for 2009 when I'll be writing about how Saw 6 is at #6, I'm somewhat comforted by the fact that thanks to this, more movies will feature audio tapes in peoples' stomachs with instructions that will fuel the rest of the film. Or reality show. The sky's the limit, really! Long live the new CGI-fueled horror film revolution.

Lucky #7 gives us The Game Plan. I'm all out of quips, but I gotta admit this turkey's got legs, and maybe a little giblet gravy left to boot. Now, The Rock's not the womanizer that VV is, as far as I know. I don't watch E! as much as some, but I'd still guard your property, Kevin Bacon, nonetheless. Why it must be five degrees of separation with all of the suitors trying to make it with The Closer. I'm just saying.

At #8 it's P2. Now, what is this? It's not called P8! It's P2, dammit! Doesn't anything work like it's supposed to anymore? And Wes Bentley, apparently it can't be stressed enough. You've come a long way, Ricky Fitts. Or have you? Couldn't you have landed a supporting role in something prestigious like Jarhead? Well, never underestimate the power of denial, like a wise man once said.

30 Days of Night is lookin' fine at #9. ...you know what I just realized? He's got his own Wikipedia entry even! What an age we live in. That photo of Danny Huston looks just like Bat Boy! Wow, I must be up too late.

And finally at #10 it's some new meat to the Top 10, and it is Martian Child, baby! And sure, to you it may look like just another Hollywood paean to parenthood, but to me it's the second collaboration between Indiana Jones screenwriter Menno Meyjes and John Cusack! Magic happens every time they get together. Or should I say... Majic? The other one is Max, about Hitler and his art teacher, something kooky like that. Why, they're practically next to each other on the video shelf! Unless your local video store finally gives Meyjes his own space in the special Director section of the store! And while we're at it, why aren't there more brothers on the wall? Peace out. :)

Short Reviews - October 2007

Not too late, is it? All right, let's just dive right in to it.

In the Valley of Elah - Is that still out?

Gone Baby Gone - or as Kevin Smith calls it, "the gayest movie ever!"

Testament - Okay, so it's an audio book. Still, quite a cinematical cast! Maybe they filmed it when they recorded it, sell the doc about it. Gee, isn't it great now that we have Sunday School 7 days a week now? The 30 pieces of silver never sounded so Oscar-worthy! Oh wait, yes they have...

"Tin Man" - Speaking of Dreyfuss, didn't he make this already?

30 days of night - Whatever. Somehow not as fun without Frank Langella and Larry Olivier.

The Story of Us - Alan Zweibel's second chance. With Monk, you're well on your way to Strike Three. Maybe for starters you can proof The Bucket List!

The Comebacks - Dodgeball's relevant after all! And it's nice to see that Fox Atomic has a sense of humor, and it isn't all just blood and guts horror.

Bee Movie - Well, should be better than Beloved, anyway. Or Bee Season. Or Akeelah and the Bee. Or will people just feel Bee-trayed?

P2 - Another inevitable movie... Oh, where have you gone, Ricky Fitts?

K2 - Never saw it... Great trailer, though!

Transformers - Oh, Optimus Prime sounds a little older...

Best of the Best - Pop it! (out of the DVD player...)

Lions for Lambs - Well, makes about as much sense as any of our other trade policies.

Snakes on a Plane - Guess Shaft's not getting too old for this shit.

The Hoax - Iraq, Howard Hughes, same thing...

Elizabethtown - Okay, Cameron Crowe. We get it. So, Dubya's a fiasco, eh? That's it... burn down his house!

The Original Kings of Comedy - So, what's Rupert Pupkin, chopped liver?

Fatal Attraction - Annoying at first, then it turns fatal...

Hitman - november 21? I can't wait that long!

Boyhood - Oh, there's an actual reason for its 2013 release. Damn! They stole my idea!... Sounds like something Lars von Trier might do, except it'd have to be 3 hours long with 40 minute takes, and it all takes place in one warehouse with chalk lines on the floor... something like that.

Fast Food Nation - Well, if you still feel like eating a hamburger after this...

Go For Broke - Somehow I don't think it'd play today.

It's A Big Country - Oh, they don't make 'em like they used to.

The Weather Man - Gore Verbinski's American Beauty.

Across the Wide Missouri - Ricardo Montalban as an Indian! I love it! Mas Macho Apache

Chairman of the Board - Let's see if YouTube links work...

Bob the Butler - I think I already said this, but Tom Green, what happened to you, man? You used to be cool. Now you've finally become the very thing you once seemed to rally against: just another part of the establishment. You can find this at Wal*Mart, stacked somewhere after Mary-Kate and Ashley, and just before the VeggieTales. Why not run for Sonny Bono's old seat while you're at it?

Box Office Torte!

Must be hungry. Well we got some heavy hitters coming up in about 12 hours, folks. My prediction? Bee Movie at #1, American Gangster at #2 - with the caveat that A.G. will drop off even further next week, because of all the disappointed people who thought it was about Finch becoming a gangstah! Whatta Ripoff!

But let's get to this week's dregs. As you can see, Saw 4 is #1 with a scalpel! Over 20 million more than Steve Carell's 2nd 2007 project, Dan in Real Life. So much for all that Oscar talk in the commercials! Maybe I'm old fashioned, but if you've had a #1 movie already in the year, you're doing pretty good. But poor ol' Carell, he's the lunchmeat in a scare sandwich, and it ain't open faced, because 30 Days of Night is the #3 slice of bread!

At #4 it's the most profitable movie this week, The Game Plan with a whopping 77 million total. Rounding out the top 5 is Why Did I Get Married, the second most profitable.

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As for 6 to 10, well, it's Michael Clayton, Gone Baby Gone, The Nightmare Before Christmas IMAX, We Own the Night, and The Comebacks, which has apparently fallen victim to this insiduous trend of comedies getting spanked by the IMDb Bottom 100. Oh sure, not as hard as Who's Your Caddy? but still, I didn't think it'd happen to my man in Amsterdam, David Koechner. I think it's time he made that movie with Mark McKinney about those two Aristocrats. (damn! Can't find an image...)

Speaking of Gone Baby Gone, where did The Darjeeling Limited go?

Mighty Acorns / When Cult Movies Attack: The XYZ Murders / Relentless --> Crimewave

SPOILERS

It's all part of my feeble attempt to go over the Coen film library before No Country for Old Men comes out for us poor American schlubs to finally see. The French probably got DVDs of it already, huh? So I'm going over all their films. Got 'em all on DVD, so I plan on re-watching 'em all... except for their twentieth of Paris, Je T'Aime; that was a little too je ne sais quoi for my taste.

Well, what can be said about 1985's Crimewave that hasn't already been said? The Maltin guide dismisses this as a mere exercise in style, and it's a statement I may have agreed with in the past. The two cartoonish crooks are kinda irritating at first, but it all goes back to that old Reverse Law of Diminishing Movie Returns: generally, the more you see a movie, the more your misconceptions of it get worn down, the more you feel like the film's editor and so on, until the more it becomes the best damn movie you've ever seen in your entire life. It's not quite at that point yet for me, but it's not without reward. There's a couple nice setpieces in it. For instance, some of those crashes on the freeway were pretty cool! Even if they were done at 3 in the morning on a Sunday. Why does everything explode twice? I still can't wrap my head around that. Also, Tango & Cash is still a cut-rate White Trash version of Lethal Weapon 2, even though I've seen it a couple times since its original 1989 release but I'll do that one later.

The film (Crimewave) was disowned by director Sam Raimi, and for the most part it fits comfortably into the Troma / Cannon vibe of most of the inexpensive, independent American films made in the 1980s. If only Gilbert Gottfried were still hosting USA Up All Night they'd maybe show it on TV. Stylistically, it's almost a touchstone of Coen visual tricks, especially their early work. There are many parallels to be found here, for instance with the use of names (Hudsucker, Odegard), but I don't have the kind of time necessary to catalogue all that crap anymore. Besides, the Coens apparently are already inundated with ravenous, bookish fans who've done more homework than even I. Personally, I thought a little bit of Crimewave when I watched The Man Who Wasn't There. Was I the only one?



The film may have been butchered by the unconfident producers but they managed to stay true to the Three Stooges theme of the picture, specifically in terms of sound effects. They got to use a lot of the Stooges' original sound effects, and some of the Warner Brothers cartoons ones, too! Emil Sitka has a small role, for Christ sake! This also seemed to be a boon in terms of dubbing lines in post, like the Fleischer cartoons where the actors were allowed to improvise lines. You sometimes get the feeling here that all opportunities for asides were used. There's a big sequence where Louise Lasser fights with Paul Smith, (that's not really his voice, is it?) who I remember most fondly as Bluto in the big screen version of Popeye, with his role as Mo in The In-Laws (1979) a close second. There is creativity in the way he handles the flying dishware, which probably influenced The War of the Roses to an extent, for one. He gets three bowling balls dropped on his head, and ends up destroying the carpet in a positively Spielbergian sequence. If this were made today, the black dude would probably get treated a lot differently, but I digress. And furthermore, it wasn't exactly a picnic for the producers. Why, Ed Pressman never acted again! (But then again, who did in Street Fighter? Oh, snap!)



Speaking of Van Damme, there's a rule in movie fight sequences which I'll claim as my own: the Rule of Constant Punches (name pending). Let's say that each fight scene in a movie has a certain number of punches thrown (z), x is the number of bad guys in one fight, and y is the number of punches it takes to subdue a bad guy. The formula is x*y=z. So, the fewer bad guys there are, the more punches it takes to knock them out. This rule seems to apply mostly to Jean Claude Van Damme, even though he's got some badass moves. A great example of this rule in action is Nowhere to Run: he's fighting five guys in one scene and can't seem to kick them hard enough! Crimewave pushes this rule to an incredulous extreme: since there are only two bad guys, they take several punches and rather uncomical baseball bat hits to finally get rid of them. And that's not what even gets rid of them!

Apparently, Bruce Campbell was supposed to play the main guy, Vic Ajax, but ultimately he seemed more suited to the Heel part he eventually got. And in Hudsucker, wasn't he perfect as the womanizing reporter? Besides, doesn't it feel good to help out others sometimes? Even if their careers don't end up as well? Even if it is against your will, Bubba Ho-Tep? Guess they couldn't get William Atherton to play the romantic lead, but that part was wrong for him too. It is worth noting that Vic's philosophy on life and love which he slowly pieces together over the course of the film echoes the innocence of Norville Barnes, that man was not meant to live alone. Not that it necessarily excludes gay marriage, but that's for other films to explore.

What else? This is nothing to be ashamed of, boys. Ultimately, I can't imagine how this picture could've been salvaged without major reshoots to make it a little less cartoonish, but never mind. The only crime here is there's no digitally remastered print on DVD! With commentary from someone. Probably not the producers, they'd spend too much time talking about what they had to change. Also, it's the only acting the Coens have done together on screen. Worth it just for that. I think Raimi stamps the box with the Uruguay stamp, but I have no way to confirm that. Frances McDormand has a small part as a nun. Don't let it go to your head, guys. Three stars from me. :)

***
-so sayeth the Movie Review Hooligan (MRH)

Box Office Confidential: I was a Teenage Vampire President.

Close enough. Yes, it's time once again for the vampires to swoop down and help themselves to their rightful piece of the box office pie. And it's a big one this time! The #1 piece! 16 million pints of money in vials around Billy Bob's neck. In this latest incarnation it's called 30 Days of Night, and apparently Josh Hartnett's along for the ride! We've come a long way from the days of Wicker Park. Normally he'd be on the marquee, but the vampires are the star this time. Especially Danny Huston, with those black eyes and all. Pretty neat stuff. And once again, behind the bloodthirsty magic is that Spielberg in his own right, Sam Raimi. Oh is he able to pick those winning horses like The Grudge et al. All those B-List things while he gets to direct the A-List things. I'm still waiting for my Crimewave New Ajax Edition DVD, buddy!


At #2 it's Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?, and it is still cleaning up, baby. It's going to be a good day at the next stockholders' meeting of the Tyler Perry Company. It's at this point where the Auteur has to decide when to take a vacation. Oh sure, you're booked till 2009, but c'mon now, even Spielberg took some time off once or twice! Of course, he started his own studio while on vacation, but I digress. In glancing over the Madea video collection, one title caught my eye: Madea Goes to Jail. You know who else went to jail? Ernest! Something to think about. Fortunately you've got a head start on the whole multiple character thing.

With the stench of the WWE far behind him, the Rock is still cooking with The Game Plan, or as it's known on the IMDb, The Rock's 2007 project. Would another Scorpion King entry be too untimely at this point? Anyway, Gridiron Gang 2 has the most money of the ten this week, with 69.2 million in the bank. Saw 4 is gonna make that its opening weekend! At this level of success, The Rock's gotta be thinking, Hell! I can direct one of these turds my own damn self. Go Fickman yourself, Rocky! Incidentally, title's too long, Fickman. Tell me something I don't know about J.Lo Hew. I mean, she's Liz, for Christ sake!

At #4 it's Michael Clayton. Now I happen to think that 2005 was a great year for Sir George Clooney with GN&GL and Syriana on the docket. But 2007's shaping up pretty good, too. Ocean's 13 did well, right? And this thing's doing gangbusters for a non-Ocean project. Plus we got Leatherheads coming up, but lamentably we have to wait til '08. So it's a great school year for Clooney, let's put it that way.

Rouning out the top 5 it's The Comebacks, the latest ZAZesque / Mad Magazine - esque movie to open poorly. Not your fault, Koechner. You da man! But you know how it is. Now you gotta become a director and a producer. Evolve or die. Can't play these goofy guys forever, right? Hey, if you can dodge a wrench...
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And now, the rest that don't deserve my attention. Hey, these entries take longer than you think, folks. Damn! How long have I been working on this? About two hours!!! At #6 it's Gone Baby Gone. Mixing the blues with kidnapping? The thrill is gone, baby. Well, that's how it works, folks. Casey Affleck of the new Rat Pack is the Out Front Contender for Best Actor Oscar 2007, and yet both of his films are tanking. And BAD! I'm still just wondering which Affleck parent he looks more like. Probably the mom.

At #7 it's We Own the Night. And a handful of pink slips, fool!

At #8 it's Blockbuster Entertainment's Best New Film of 2007, 1993's Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Must be a kick in IMAX, but that animation's a little too slick for me somehow. I know it's a classic and all, but give me a Simpsons Halloween any day of the week. Even the one about dolphins.

At #9 it's Rendition. Boy, Fox News must have told people to boycott this liberal garbage, and please watch more Bill O'Reilly, he's gotta be #1 again at some point, right? Makes me want to watch Larry King instead. Well, sort of.

And finally we get to #10, The Farrelly's new dress on the old gal, The Heartbreak Kid. Looks like the distributors aren't going to give you a Get Out of Jail Free card on this one, boys! More bodily fluids in the Stooges movie! Peace out.

Brought to you by Galeainip Alteiem MacDunelmor

Seriously! Google 'im. The H.L. Mencken of his day.

Well, it's that time of year once again for Madea to take over the Box Office and DOMINATE! Absolutely dominate. Well, not last year and not with Daddy's Little Girls. Let us never speak of it again. Let us instead focus on the brightly illuminated present, and the almost instantaneous arrival of The Tyler Perry Company's latest production called Why Did I Get Married? It beat what The Rock had cooking this week by almost 2 to 1. So when is the establishment gonna give this brutha some respect and let him make that $100 million Madea movie? He's got it in him somewhere, I'm sure!

Meanwhile, Spawn's thinking to himself: how did I get roped into this? From the commercials, he doesn't look happy to be there! In fact, Pointy Williams is going to make his own movie about his experiences working on Why Did I Get Married? It's going to be called How Did I Get Roped Into This? T(yler P)erry's gonna sue. Meanwhile, Chris Rock's shaking his head...

In other news, just yesterday there was a three-way tie for 2nd place! But there was a recount demanded, and now we have new numbers. The Game Plan slips to #2, and two newbies The Departed 2 and Intolerable Cruelty 2 come in at 3 and 4, while There's Something About Mary part 2 sinks like a stone to fifth place. Oh! An actual sequel at #6! It's Elizabeth: The Golden Age. ...and now, IMDb is acting up on me. The web page is turning into Jell-O but without tables, something like that, so every line gets its own line, see what I'm saying? So what was formerly on five pages takes up 20 pages.

And so we come to the 7-10 split: The Kingdom, Across the Universe, Resident Evil 3 and, finally, The Seeker. Which reminds me: speaking of video game adaptations, which Final Fantasy are we up to now? Twenty? And yet, only one 100 million dollar movie adaptation. So unfair.

Well, that's about all the damage I can do this week in this regard. Please let me know if I forgot anything. Over 'n out!