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February 27, 2011
A few thoughts on the Oscars (and winners)
After much anticipation about one of the tightest best picture races in years, the Oscars got off to an interesting start.
With the supporting actor categories pushed from their usual opening spot, “Inception” and “Alice in Wonderland” made the biggest splashes early, with both winning multiple technical awards.
As the bigger awards started being handed out, however, the show took the shape many expected. The best picture favorites “The King’s Speech” and “The Social Network” both won for screenplay - “Speech” for original and “Network” for adapted. But when “Social Network” won for editing, often a predictor of best picture, it seemed the movie about Facebook was showing some slight upset potential.
Best director nod, however, went to Tom Hooper, which pretty much started the sprint to best pic for “Speech.” While editing is a good indicator, directing is even better. And the fact that many expected David Fincher to win this award, pretty much assured that “Speech” would win big at the end. And so it did.
So, even after two young stars took over hosting duty, and after all of the hip comedic bits aimed at young people (the SNL-style digital short to open was nice, but … auto-tune jokes, anyone?), the best picture went to a British period piece. Don’t get me wrong, I loved “Speech,” but it felt like the night was a bit ironic in that sense.
Outside of directing, there was not an upset to be found. The acting awards were all well deserved and expected, and it would be hard to quibble with any of them.
Kudos:
David Seidler (“The King’s Speech”) for his speech after winning best original screenplay, as well as Colin Firth following his best actor win. Both men were gracious and humble. On accepting his award, the self-effacing Firth gave one of the night’s best lines : “I have a feeling my career just peaked.”
“Inside Job” filmmaker Charles Ferguson, who after winning best documentary for his film about the financial collapse, briefly noted that, “Not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that’s wrong.”
The short that opened the ceremony was funny and gave hope for promise for the show. (False promise.)
Natalie Portman gave a touching and heartfelt speech and thanked everyone important in her life, including Mike Nichols and Darren Aronofsky, whom she called a “fearless leader” and “visionary.”
Opposite of kudos:
Whoever told Billy Crystal that whatever work he’s had done on his face looks worthy of a television appearance.
The producer who had Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock (last year’s best actor winners) adding a personal touch in the first-person mentions of the nominees. I like both Bridges and Bullock, and few would ever question their sincerity, but the forced bonhomie felt a little contrived.
Franco is charming, funny and a bit of a chameleon, but his attempt to downplay the haughtiness of the august and often pretentious affair came off a little flat, making him seem disinterested and smug. Hathaway is sweet and sincere, but came across a bit corny at times.
Slight surprises:
“Black Swan” took home only one Oscar (Portman) and “True Grit” went 0 for 10.
Complete list of Oscar winners:
Art Direction: “Alice in Wonderland”
Cinematography: “Inception”
Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”
Animated Short Film: “The Lost Thing”
Animated Feature Film: “Toy Story 3”
Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, “The Social Network”
Original Screenplay: David Seidler, “The King’s Speech”
Foreign Language: “In a Better World,” Denmark
Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, “The Fighter”
Original Score: “The Social Network,” Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
Sound Mixing: “Inception”
Sound Editing: “Inception”
Makeup: “The Wolfman”
Costume Design: “Alice in Wonderland”
Documentary (short subject): “Strangers No More”
Live Action Short Film: “God of Love”
Documentary Feature: “Inside Job”
Visual Effects: “Inception”
Film Editing: “The Social Network”
Original Song: “We Belong Together” from “Toy Story 3,” Randy Newman
Directing: Tom Hooper, “The King’s Speech”
Actress: Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”
Actor: Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”
Picture: “The King’s Speech”
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February 24, 2011
My Oscar predictions: Who will win, who should win
“The Social Network” seemed to be racking up the most “friends” and “likes” when the awards season began late last year. But a funny thing happened on the way to its Oscar coronation.
Slowly, whether as a backlash to Facebook (or technology in general) or its founder Mark Zuckerberg, the more subtle and mature “King’s Speech” gained steam, taking home dozens of awards in recent weeks. Some might credit the shift in front-runner status to Harvey Weinstein, the executive behind “The King’s Speech,” who just so happened to help another British-themed movie, “Shakespeare in Love,” to a surprise victory in 1999 over the critically acclaimed “Saving Private Ryan.” But such are the ways of Hollywood. Entering Sunday’s ceremony, the two films are neck-and-neck in one of the tightest races ever.
“The King’s Speech” leads all nominees with 12. The Coen brothers’ take on the Clinton Portis novel “True Grit” follows with 10, though it seems unlikely the Central Texas-filmed Western will ride off with any awards outside of art direction or costume design. “The Social Network” and Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending thriller “Inception” earned eight nominations. Pixar’s “Toy Story 3,” the highest-grossing film of 2010 with more than $1 billion worldwide, received four nominations. And while its chances to take home best picture are slim, its win in the animated category appears as certain as someone mixing politics into their acceptance speech.
Below I look at the six biggest categories and tell you who I think will win, as well as who should win. Let the debates begin.
Best picture
“Black Swan,” “The Fighter,” “Inception,” “The Kids Are All Right,” “The King’s Speech,” “127 Hours,” “The Social Network,” “Toy Story 3,” “True Grit,” “Winter’s Bone”
One features a bunch of brilliant and arrogant young people fighting over intellectual property and untold millions of dollars. The other is a personal period piece about a man coming to grips with his fears and his father issues in World War II-era England. “The Social Network” and “The King’s Speech” could not be more different, although they both center on power and psychological motivations. The Academy loves classic dramas, but voters also want to seem relevant and hip. It will be interesting to see whether the Academy splits down generational lines with the two frontrunners. Director Danny Boyle’s breathtaking “127 Hours” was the most enjoyable time I had at the movies in 2010 (despite the horrific sounds of bone snapping), but it would be hard to see the Oscar going to a film that mostly takes place in a crevasse. “Inception” may have been too difficult for some voters to follow, and “Black Swan,” despite its originality, boldness and great performances, may have pirouetted too far into surrealism.
Will win: “The King’s Speech”
Should win: “127 Hours”
Best actor
Javier Bardem, “Biutiful”
Jeff Bridges, “True Grit”
Jesse Eisenberg, “The Social Network”
Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”
James Franco, “127 Hours”
If you had to bet the kids’ college fund on one race, this would be it. The debonair Colin Firth lost to a deserving Jeff Bridges last year in this category, but the 50 year-old Firth should have an easy time taking home the Oscar this time around — although Bridges was inarguably the best part of “True Grit.” Firth’s heartfelt performance as the stuttering prince who would be king blended humility, fear, warmth and a touch of anger that showed Firth is one of our best actors. Oscar host James Franco, with the help of the brilliant Danny Boyle, carried every second of “127 Hours.” If he weren’t so good-looking, young and somewhat overexposed, he would have a better chance, but I believe he will undoubtedly be making return trips. Jesse Eisenberg’s clipped, one-note portrayal of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg may or may not have been close to the truth; either way, it was obnoxious and distracting. Though he gives a masterful performance in the underseen “Biutiful,” Javier Bardem has little shot of pulling a Roberto Benigni (that is, winning for a performance in a foreign-language film or climbing over auditorium chairs to reach the stage.)
Will win: Colin Firth
Should win: Colin Firth
Best actress
Annette Bening, “The Kids Are All Right”
Nicole Kidman, “Rabbit Hole”
Jennifer Lawrence, “Winter’s Bone”
Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”
Michelle Williams, “Blue Valentine”
She delivered the breakthrough performance of the year in “Winter’s Bone,” but young Jennifer Lawrence must be a little intimidated going into Sunday’s ceremonies. Every other actress has been nominated for at least one Oscar. Annette Bening leads the list with three previous nominations (and no wins). The Academy favorite gives a performance that is at once steely and tender as a mother who watches her family slowly slip through her fingers. Both Michelle Williams and Nicole Kidman give gut-wrenching performances as women whose personal lives are upended, and Kidman already has one Oscar, for her role in 2002’s “The Hours.” Williams embodies the emotional and psychic pain of love lost. But the statuette probably will go to 29-year-old Natalie Portman, who plays a deeply troubled and manic ballerina tortured by her neuroses and her extremely creepy stage mother (Barbara Hershey’s lack of a nomination for supporting actress is a travesty). It’s hard to believe Portman’s great work in “Beautiful Girls” was 15 years ago.
Will win: Natalie Portman
Should win: Michelle Williams
Supporting actor
Christian Bale, “The Fighter”
John Hawkes, “Winter’s Bone”
Jeremy Renner, “The Town”
Mark Ruffalo, “The Kids Are All Right”
Geoffrey Rush, “The King’s Speech”
With apologies to the brilliant Geoffrey Rush, who gives a lovely and sympathetic performance as Lionel Logue in “The King’s Speech,” the Academy can stop this fight now. Christian Bale transformed himself into former boxer and drug addict Dicky Eklund in “The Fighter.” Bale’s kinetic and brazen performance steals the movie. In fact, he is so good, it almost becomes distracting. For those who think Bale overacted, they need only to dig into the history of the larger-than-life character he portrayed. Both Mark Ruffalo and Jeremy Renner are great and will be back, and it was gratifying that former Austinite John Hawkes was noticed for his knockout performance in “Winter’s Bone.”
Will win: Christian Bale
Should win: Christian Bale
Supporting actress
Amy Adams, “The Fighter”
Helena Bonham Carter, “The King’s Speech”
Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”
Hailee Steinfeld, “True Grit”
Jacki Weaver, “Animal Kingdom”
Golden Globe winner Melissa Leo seemed poised to walk away with the prize here, but then she got in her own way. Leo waged her own controversial promotional campaign with advertisements in trade publications. Then she backtracked and said that the studio made her do it. Wherever the truth rests, it left a bad taste in many people’s mouths. The whole dustup is a bit hypocritical considering some of the backroom deals that generally go on during awards season, but such is life in Hollywood. There is no doubt that Leo is deserving for her performance in “The Fighter,” but it will be interesting to see whether someone can sneak in and snag the belt from her. The best possibility would be Hailee Steinfeld, who impeccably delivered Clinton Portis’ classic lines in “True Grit” and arguably should have been nominated as a lead. The acting of Amy Adams gets a little too lost amid Leo and Bale in “The Fighter,” while Jacki Weaver will have to settle for the honor of being nominated. And it’s always wonderful to see the enigmatic and titillating Helena Bonham Carter (especially as the Queen Mother!), even if the nomination here is for a relatively light load. Maybe voters were just happy to see her playing a more toned-down character.
Will win: Hailee Steinfeld
Should win: Melissa Leo
Best director
Darren Aronofsky, “Black Swan”
Joel and Ethan Coen, “True Grit”
David Fincher, “The Social Network”
Tom Hooper, “The King’s Speech”
David O. Russell, “The Fighter”
This category will be one of the most wide open. Although it is extremely rare, the winner here might not correspond with the winner for best picture. The Coens could enter an elite group of directors with a second Oscar win in this category, though it seems highly unlikely. David O. Russell’s film relied mostly on incredible performances to achieve its effect, and Directors’ Guild winner Tom Hooper, while steady and more than competent, in no way dazzled with his direction. It would seem this is a two-man battle Darren Aronofsky and David Fincher. With “Black Swan,” Aronofsky created a world of passion, delusion and mystery that bordered on camp and provided a “Showgirls”-meets-“The Shining” feel. After seeing the movie, it is hard to imagine anyone else making “Black Swan.” With “The Social Network,” Fincher made a movie about nerds, lawsuits and young people sitting at computers extremely compelling and enveloping. Fincher has been knocking on the door, while Aronofsky is making his first appearance to the dance. That could be a determining factor.
Will win: David Fincher
Should win: Darren Aronofsky
The 83rd Academy Awards
Sunday, Feburary 27
Red-carpet arrivals, 6 p.m., ABC (earlier red-carpet shows can be seen on various networks such as E!)
Oscar telecast, 7 p.m., ABC
Visit www.austin360.com/movies on Sunday evening to join a live chat during the telecast.
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February 3, 2011
Will there be a 'Big Lebowski 2'?
When asked about her upcoming projects, she told Hollywood.tv that she had a movie coming out called “The Fields” and “The Irishman.” After that ho-hum news, she said, “we’ll be doing ‘American Pie 4’ this year and ‘The Big Lebowski 2’ this year.” (She also said something about getting the whole gang back together 10 years later, but since neither movie was released in 2000 or 2001, it’s hard to know what she was talking about exactly.)
In the words of Mark Ruffalo in “The Kids Are All Right,” “Shut the front door.”
Could it be? One of the greatest comedies of all time is getting a sequel?
I spoke with Joel and Ethan Coen today (look for that story closer to Oscar time) and mentioned Reid’s comments.
Ethan responded with a chuckle, saying, “I’m glad she’s working on it.”
When I asked if they actually had something in the works, Ethan said, “Well, we don’t but we’ll watch it when it comes out.” To which Joel quickly added, “Especially if Tara’s in it.”
So, apparently Tara Reid is not the most reliable person in the world. Who knew? Well, we’ll always have ”American Pie 4.”
Apparently, Tara Reid’s people have tried to clarify the misstep, as well. A spokesperson for Reid told Entertainment Weekly, “She heard Jeff Bridges say that he wanted to make ‘Big Lebowski 2’ and have all the original cast members in it, so she may have misspoke, thinking that included her based on what Jeff said.”
I guess that clears that up.
(If you want to relive the greatness that is “The Big Lebowski,” you can watch some clips on Hulu.com.)
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January 28, 2011
Review: 'The Mechanic' (Grade: D+)
Following a run of modest success with over-the-top action franchises “Crank” and “The Transporter,” British tough guy Jason Statham enters the realm of remakes as hired killer Arthur Bishop in “The Mechanic.”
Lacking the familiarity of some other rehashes that will hit theaters this year (see: “Footloose”), “The Mechanic” was originally a 1972 Charles Bronson vehicle sandwiched in between the screen legend’s more memorable turns in “The Dirty Dozen” and “Death Wish.”
The 50-something Bronson’s craggy face, ’70s mop-top and wispy mustache are replaced here by the clean-shaven and chiseled Statham, who resembles The Thing from the Fantastic Four, had the superhero mutant cleaned himself up for some high-fashion modeling work.
The resolute determination of the characters is the same, however, as is the update’s lack of dialogue early in the film that finds the steely-eyed assassin conducting a flawless and entertaining hit on a Colombian drug lord.
After his South American exploits, the lone hit man returns to his secret hideaway in New Orleans that is accessible only by boat. There, secreted away from the world in his high-tech lair, he can indulge in his appreciation for Schubert and fine automobiles. But Arthur Bishop does not even seem to enjoy the trappings that his blood money has afforded him.
That lack of passion is reflected in the way he stoically executes the work he does for a shadowy organization, one that is never fully fleshed out by the writers. When he is called upon to eliminate his mentor, Harry McKenna (a solid and intriguing Donald Sutherland), we come to realize the complete lack of human connection felt by Bishop, whose stoicism is constantly reinforced by intense tight shots on Statham’s stony visage.
But Bishop’s unquestioning dutifulness collides with a scintilla of humanity as he stares plaintively (and repeatedly) at the water as a boozy blues chord encases him like a fog of regret. His only human connection comes from a prostitute (Mini Anden) - whose feline sexuality purrs across the screen just long enough to capture a spicy shot for the trailer - but that relationship and what it indicates about Bishop are never explored.
At Harry’s grave, Bishop encounters Steve McKenna (Ben Foster), his mentor’s ne’er-do-well son who is thirsty for revenge. True to his code, Bishop responds that “revenge is an emotion that can get you killed.”
Nevertheless, Bishop, possibly out of guilt or a longing for connection, takes the erratic younger McKenna under his wing. A truncated training sequence that involves a few conversations and some manly gun play is apparently meant to be enough to convince audiences that Steve has acquired the requisite training to be a “mechanic” - a trained assassin who leaves no loose ends. This would follow the same logic that would have you believe that by spending a week bunking with Pele I could be transformed into a world-class goal scorer.
Believability aside, Foster - who gave a stirring performance in 2009’s “The Messenger” - brings vitality and a level of acting ability that, in starts and fits, injects a pulse into the movie. The protégé’s first hit - which he carries out with all of the composure of a feral rat - brings the movie its first and arguably best bit of violent action.
The cryptic organization is none too pleased with Bishop’s new teacher-student relationship, and in their anger, it becomes clear that the once-lone killer had been misled into killing his mentor. As he and his new sidekick continue to take on missions that are punctuated with the brief bouts of violence that would compel you to buy a ticket, Bishop is saddled with the duty of keeping the truth from his symbolic kid-brother while avoiding the menace of the duplicitous agency that now seems determined to destroy him.
Sound confusing? It is. But more as a result of failure than any clever design.
When you bring Statham onto a project, one would assume you want him in full-scale butt-kicking glory with a side of wry winking, but director Simon West (who has shown more than a little capacity for high-octane nonsense in “Con Air” and “Laura Croft: Tomb Raider”) never completely uses the star. The action sequences are too far and few between, and by the time the biggest explosions come, you couldn’t care less.
The disjointed movie crawls early and never finds its footing. You reluctantly stay with the tale that feels weighted by the hand of multiple writers in hopes that Statham will eventually explode, but “The Mechanic” ends up feeling less like a slow burn than an airboat with a broken fan, drifting across a slightly choppy marsh.
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January 26, 2011
2011 movie preview
Photos: Scenes from 2011 movies
The eyes of moviegoers will be on Texas talent as several filmmakers and one megawatt star with Austin ties see their movies hit theaters in 2011.
In her first directorial effort since “Twilight,” University of Texas graduate Catherine Hardwicke updates a classic fairy tale with “Red Riding Hood” (March 11). Fellow Longhorn Matthew McConaughey goes back into the courtroom as an unscrupulous defense attorney who enters a world of peril in “The Lincoln Lawyer” (March 18).
Austinite Kyle Killen received wide acclaim in Hollywood in 2008 for his script for “The Beaver” and, after several setbacks tied to the behavior of lead Mel Gibson, will finally see his Jodie Foster-directed film hit theaters on March 23.
After years of speculation and anticipation, enigmatic and elusive writer-director Terrence Malick will unveil his locally shot “The Tree of Life” (May 27), which stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. Another UT alumnus, Robert Rodriguez, gets back to family fare after last year’s “Machete” when he rolls out “Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World” (Aug 19).
Hollywood cannot, however, rely solely on Austin for its talent, so expect an abundance of sequels — “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” (May 20), “The Hangover 2” (May 27) — and comic-book movies — “Thor” (May 6), “Green Lantern” (June 17) — at multiplexes this year.
Below, we take a look at 25 of the biggest films coming to theaters in the first half of 2011. (All release dates are subject to change.)
FRIDAY
“Biutiful” (Friday)
Oscar nominee Javier Bardem won the best actor award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival for his role in this tragic tale. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu is responsible for the darkly disturbing and visceral films “21 Grams” and “Amores Perros,” so expect more of the same here.
FEBRUARY
“Another Year” (Feb. 4)
The sometimes difficult truth of growing old is examined by British director Mike Leigh, who relies on heartfelt performances by Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen and Lesley Manville.
“Sanctum” (Feb. 4)
In this movie based on a true story, executive producer James Cameron combines the two things that made him famous — movies about water and 3D technology — to inspire claustrophobia in “the last unexplored territory in the world.” But this time there are Australian accents.
“The Illusionist” (“L’illusionniste”) (Feb. 11)
This Oscar-nominated animation from the director of “The Triplets of Belleville” has already been winning over critics with both its visuals and storytelling.
“Just Go With It” (Feb. 11)
Adam Sandler plays a mischievous man-child who goes to great lengths to win the heart of a woman. Sounds like one of any number of Sandler films, right? Maybe, but none of those movies had Brooklyn Decker in a bikini. Bam!
“Barney’s Version” (Feb. 18)
Paul Giamatti dials back some of his trademark neuroses in a touching performance that won him a Golden Globe.
“Unknown” (Feb. 18)
Following a horrific car accident, one man (Liam Neeson) battles lost memories and disbelieving authorities to uncover the truth about his identity. The mystery surrounding whether co-star January Jones actually can act might also be revealed.
“Hall Pass” (Feb. 25)
Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis play two married dogs whose wives let them off the leash for a week of consequence-free skirt chasing. Maybe this intriguing comedic duo can help revitalize the Farrelly brothers, who spent most of the last decade swinging and missing.
MARCH
“The Adjustment Bureau” (March 4)
Ballerinas are hot right now, as are mind-bending thrillers that wrap around a love story, so this film starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt that takes a bit of “Inception” and mixes it with a dash of “The Matrix” should have no trouble finding an audience.
“Jane Eyre” (March 11)
Mia Wasikowska (“Alice in Wonderland,” “The Kids Are All Right”) continues her rise to stardom in the titular role of this umpteenth adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s haunting classic. British actresses Judi Dench and Sally Hawkins help round out a solid supporting cast.
“Red Riding Hood” (March 11)
Amanda Seyfried and Red Riding Hood both do some growing up in this sexy thriller from Catherine Hardwicke, who goes behind the camera for the first time since helping launch the “Twilight” juggernaut into the stratosphere.
“Limitless” (March 18)
A struggling writer (Bradley Cooper) finds that the answer to all of his material dreams resides inside a tiny little pill. He also finds that if something seems too good to be true, it likely is. It looks to be more pap than parable, but director Neil Burger still has a little goodwill left in the bank following 2006’s “The Illusionist,” so maybe it can exceed expectations.
“The Lincoln Lawyer” (March 18)
Longhorns superfan Matthew Mc-Conaughey stars as a sleazy, swaggering attorney who is more interested in cash than the truth. But when he takes a case defending a Beverly Hills playboy (Ryan Phillippe) accused of assault, he enters a high-stakes game of cloak and dagger that might cost him his life.
“Paul” (March 18)
British comedy duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (“Hot Fuzz”) team up again as sci-fi geeks who encounter an alien lifeform (voiced by Seth Rogen) while on a pilgrimage to Area 51. Austinites will get an early look at “Superbad” director Greg Mottola’s film when it bows at South by Southwest.
“The Beaver” (March 23)
A man loses his family and his business and slides into a depression that has him communicating with the outside world through use of a beaver hand-puppet. And if that isn’t enough to make you sit up and take notice, the man happens to be played by Mel Gibson, in his first role since making countless scandalous headlines. Austinites will get an early look at the film directed by Jodie Foster and written by Austinite Kyle Killen when the movie makes its world premiere at South by Southwest earlier in the month.
APRIL
“Source Code” (April 1)
After wowing critics with his 2008 debut “Moon,” British director Duncan Jones returns with this sci-fi thriller staring Jake Gyllenhall. It opens the South by Southwest Film Festival.
“Your Highness” (April 8)
It’s hard to believe that the two leads in this goofball stoner adventure — Natalie Portman and James Franco — are the same two who will grace the stage at the Academy Awards in February.
MAY
“Thor” (May 6)
The hammer-wielding god is cast from Asgard to Earth, where he does battle and (bonus!) gets to make out with Natalie Portman in director Kenneth Branagh’s take on the Marvel Comics tale.
“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” (May 20)
Johnny Depp’s swashbuckling homage to Keith Richards returns to the high seas and the big screen for the first time in four years. The franchise gets an injection of sexy from Penélope Cruz.
“The Hangover 2” (May 27)
Don’t expect much deviation from the formula that made “The Hangover” almost half a billion dollars worldwide - that would be boozy high jinks with bros, in case you missed the original.
“The Tree of Life” (May 27)
The surreal and magical trailer for Austinite Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” offers hope that movie lovers’ collective patience will be well rewarded and their expectations exceeded.
JUNE
“X-Men: First Class” (June 3)
2010 breakout star Jennifer Lawrence (“Winter’s Bone”) co-stars in this prequel that examines the origins of the relationship between Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) before they became Professor X and Magneto.
“Bad Teacher” (June 17)
Justin Timberlake continues his foray into the movie world as a teacher who is the object of affection for a duplicitous, foul-mouthed colleague played by Cameron Diaz in this film from director Jake Kasdan (“Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”).
“Green Lantern” (June 17)
After bolstering his indie bona fides with 2010’s “Buried,” Ryan Reynolds is back on familiar comic-book ground as the DC Comics superhero.
“Cars 2” (June 24)
Five years after they first captured the imagination of a generation of tykes, Lightning McQueen and his ol’ buddy Mater are growing up with their audience, as they head overseas and find themselves tangled in a web of international espionage.
CALENDAR OF OPENINGS
Here’s a tentative lineup of Austin movie releases, provided by various studio representatives. Opening dates are subject to change.
Friday
“Biutiful,” “The Rite,” “The Mechanic.”
February
4: “Another Year,” “Sanctum.”
11: “The Eagle,” “Gnomeo and Juliet,” “The Illusionist,” “Just Go With It.”
18: “Barney’s Version,” “Big Mamma’s: Like Father, Like Son,” “Cedar Rapids,” “Unknown,” “I Am Number Four.”
25: “Drive Angry,” “Hall Pass,” “Shelter.”
March
4: “The Adjustment Bureau,” “Take Me Home Tonight.”
11: “Jane Eyre,” “Mars Needs Moms,” “Red Riding Hood,” “The Last Lions.”
18: “Limitless,” “The Lincoln Lawyer,” “Paul.”
23: “The Beaver.”
25: “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules,” “Sucker Punch,” “Win Win.”
April
1: “Hop,” “Source Code,” “Of Gods and Men.”
8: “Hanna,” “Your Highness.”
15: “Rio,” “Scream 4.”
22: “African Cats,” “Apollo
18: “Crazy Stupid Love,” “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family,” “Water for Elephants.”
29: “Fast Five,” “Prom,” “Winter in Wartime.”
May
6: “Thor.”
13: “Priest.”
20: “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.”
27: “The Hangover 2,” “Kung Fu Panda 2,” “The Tree of Life.”
June
3: “X-Men: First Class.”
10: “Something Borrowed.”
17: “Bad Teacher,” “Green Lantern,” “Mr. Penguin’s Poppers.”
24: “Cars 2,” Undated: “Beginners.”
July
1: “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”
8: “One Day,” “One for the Money.”
15: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” “Winnie the Pooh.”
22: “Captain America: The First Avenger.”
29: “Cowboys and Aliens,” “Horrible Bosses.”
August
5: “The Darkest Hour,” “The Help,” “The Sitter.”
12: “Monte Carlo.”
19: “Conan the Barbarian,” “Fright Night,” “Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World.”
26: “5nal Destination.”
September
9: “The Apparition,” “The Warrior.”
16: “Piranha 3D,” “Straw Dogs.”
30: “What’s Your Number?”
October
7: “A Dolphin Tale,” “Real Steel.”
14: “Footloose,” “The Big Year,” “The Three Musketeers,” “The Thing.”
21: “Contagion,” “Paranormal Activity 3.”
28: “Now.”
November
4: “Puss in Boots,” “Tower Heist.”
11: “Immortals.”
18: “Happy Feet 2,” “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1.”
23: “The Muppets,” “Rise of the Apes.”
December
9: “Hugo Cabret.”
16: “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.” “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” “Sherlock Holmes 2.”
28: “War Horse.”
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January 14, 2011
Review: 'Blue Valentine' (Grade: A-)
The film has since been given the appropriate R rating, but that does not mean children should see it. And to be quite honest, it might be hard for many adults to sit through it as well.
The title indicates a romance that has lost its blood, and director Derek Cianfrance’s second narrative feature is an artful dissection of that cold, metaphoric heart.
The movie opens with young Frankie (Faith Wladyka) standing in her front yard calling helplessly for her lost dog. As her father, Dean (a scraggly and balding Ryan Gosling), realizes, the gate has been left open. To placate his young daughter’s fears, he suggests they leave a bowl of water out for the dog, as surely it will have to return to eat. Early on we are confronted with a symbol of something beloved that has been lost and likely will not return.
Back in the house, it is apparent that Dean has a special, tender relationship with his daughter. He playfully acts as her accomplice as they make like “tigers” and pull a surprise attack on a sleeping mommy (Michelle Williams). Later, in the kitchen, he pours oatmeal and raisins on the kitchen table, as father and daughter eat “like leopards.” Frankie relishes the playfulness of her father, but mother Cindy seems to be at her wits’ end.
“I don’t want to clean up after two kids,” she says caustically to Dean, as she reminds her daughter that she’s a big girl now who should be eating from her bowl.
“You’re a big girl now, sweetheart, so don’t have any fun,” Dean says sarcastically.
And therein lies the inherent opposition of the two mind-sets of Dean and Cindy. She is serious and constrained, while he is whimsical and free. She has apparently tired of his boyish charm, but the details of her frustration at first remain a mystery.
After the extended introductory sequence, Cianfrance cuts to a slightly younger, more handsome Dean who is sporting a full head of hair. We follow Dean through the process of applying for a job and listen in as he opines about the truly romantic nature of men versus the cold pragmatism that leads women to choose a partner, a curious and fresh flipping of gender roles.
After a few minutes it becomes clear that what we are seeing is a flashback, one of many 8- to 10-minute vignettes Cianfrance employs throughout the film to retrace Dean and Cindy’s relationship.
The juxtaposition of the nervous energy and anticipation that accompanies a burgeoning romance with the cold despair of decaying love is startling. Early in their relationship, as with all relationships, there is the excitement that comes with the discovery of a tantalizing mystery. But the blank canvas onto which we can project our hopes and desires eventually becomes muddied by reality, and the unknown becomes the unbearable.
When the movie jumps back in time to show how the young lovers met, the scenes are presented through the soft warmth of film that stands in contrast to the stark digital images used to depict the harsh realities of a marriage that is taking its final breaths.
“Let’s get out of here. We’ve got to get out of here,” Dean says to Cindy at one point as he attempts to persuade her to spend the night at a motel getting drunk and having sex. “Here” in this case refers to their house, but it also represents the place they are in their relationship. They are at the precipice, one from which Dean foolishly believes there is an escape.
Despite the lubrication of booze and the coaxing of Penny and the Quarters singing “You and Me” on the stereo, Cindy refuses to give into the myth of reconciliation. Dean’s attempts at romancing the wife who no longer loves him are painful, best illustrated by a scene in which he tries to pleasure his disaffected wife in the shower.
With Cindy back at her office after their failed fireworks, Dean makes one last flailing and violent attempt to hold onto a woman who it seems was only actually his for the most fleeting of moments. It is an intense physical outburst that works to shift the dynamic between viewer and the characters.
For much of the movie, Dean wins our sympathies with his rakish charm and devil-may-care attitude, while Cindy seems cold and cloistered. But it becomes clear that Cindy is simply trying to live a purposeful life despite the forces that have circumscribed her, while Dean is content to waste his potential and ignore any ambition. He simply cannot be the man she needs him to be, and Dean seems to sense and resent this while doing nothing to change until it is too late.
Williams and Gosling are simply incredible as they subtly capture the range of emotions that color the arch of a relationship that is not built to last, from the first butterflies of flirtation to the last dreadful stages of grief.
For all of the chatter about illicit sex, the scene that most fully captures the movie and moves the audience with its perverse irony is the musical interlude where Dean, in a playful attempt to woo Cindy on a date, plays a ukulele and sings the standard, “You Always Hurt the One You Love.”
“And if I broke your heart last night, it’s because I love you most of all,” he sings.
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December 30, 2010
My top 10 films of 2010
2. “Four Lions.” Christopher Morris’ terrorism comedy, the funniest and one of the more thought-provoking films of the year, is likely many Americans’ introduction to the British satirist’s work. The brilliantly cast story of bumbling jihadists is unique, clever and surprisingly heartfelt.
3. “The Social Network.” Trent Reznor, Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher. How could you go wrong? Though the facts of the movie might be open to debate, there is no questioning the brilliance of the storytelling. In a strong ensemble cast, Andrew Garfield as the aggrieved Eduardo Saverin shined most brightly.
4. “Winter’s Bone.” This Hillbilly noir white-knuckler took viewers deep into the Ozarks, to a world most of us have never seen and could never imagine. Newcomer Jennifer Lawrence is a revelation as an indefatigable young woman looking for answers and justice.
5. “Black Swan.” Darren Aronofsky’s over-the-top, erotic fever dream showcases the director at the height of his powers. Rarely have terror and grace danced so delicately together. Though her character here might be stunted, Natalie Portman is definitely all grown up. And Barbara Hershey is unnervingly gruesome.
6. “Let Me In.” It’s time to stop worrying about the necessity of this remake of modern Swedish classic “Let the Right One In” and simply appreciate the eerie and stirring beauty of Matt Reeves’ coming-of-age horror story. No film this year did a better job of capturing the fear of adolescence. Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz put themselves on the map as young actors worth watching.
7. “Inside Job.” Filmmaker Charles Ferguson takes a detailed look at the bad actors in the financial debacle in a movie that will leave you angry, frustrated and possibly helpless. Refusing to place the blame at the feet of one party or administration, the unflappable Ferguson proves that there is enough blame to go around.
8. “Carancho.” I knew the Argentinian economy was a mess, but this pitch-black Fantastic Fest entry made it starkly evident. What begins as a slow boil erupts and tailspins, as the foot refuses to budge from the accelerator. An apt metaphor for a movie that features one of the best car crash scenes in years.
9. “The King’s Speech.” Director Tom Hooper thankfully refuses to wallow in sentimentality in this royal tale that eschews melodrama for an intimate story about a relationship between a king and his therapist. The scenes between Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush feature some of the year’s finest acting.
10. “The Kids Are All Right.” Funny and moving, director Lisa Cholodenko’s film offers an honest look at the difficulty in maintaining a relationship and finding fulfillment. Annette Bening offers a pained and vulnerable performance as a character who moves from somewhat unlikable to immensely sympathetic.
Honorable mention: “Blue Valentine,” “Tiny Furniture,” “The Fighter,” “The Town,” “The Troll Hunter”
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December 22, 2010
Review: 'True Grit' (Grade: A-)
Some might argue about the necessity of remaking a classic film that garnered a beloved screen icon his only Academy Award. But if John Wayne’s oversized boots are to be filled, there might be no tandem more equipped for the task than Joel and Ethan Coen. And, as it turns out, they know just the Dude to help them accomplish the feat.
On the heels of his Oscar-winning portrayal of modern cowboy Bad Blake in last year’s ‘Crazy Heart,’ Bridges imbues with fresh life the dusty cliché the Duke made famous in 1969’s ‘True Grit.’
As the revenge tale begins, words from Proverbs 28:1 appear on the screen: ‘The wicked flee though no one pursues.’
Maybe out of playfulness or maybe because they simply like to be coy, the filmmaking brothers, who have proven to be skilled hands in dealing both with scripture and period pieces, decided to leave out the second half of that verse … “But the righteous are as bold as a lion.”
The cagey and proud animal in this case is 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld). Having lost her father, the fierce young protagonist of Charles Portis’ novel has traveled to Texas in pursuit of her father’s killer. We meet her as she is attempting to get her family’s affairs in order, doggedly arguing with a greedy and duplicitous funeral director.
But Mattie is no vulnerable cub. Her girlish pigtails, framing a stoic face slathered with a broad nose, belie a cunning wisdom and stern will. In both her dealings with the funeral director and later in a prolonged negotiation with a horse trader who, like most, is no match for Mattie’s intellect, the young girl engages in a precise volley of hard-boiled dialogue that feels like a game of double Dutch played with a latigo.
Having asked about town for someone who could assist her in hunting down her father’s killer, the coward Tom Chaney, Mattie sets her sights on acquiring the help of U.S. Marshall Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn (Bridges), a fearless man steeled by true grit.
We come to meet Cogburn through a wonderful piece of expository courtroom testimony. His face half-shrouded in a beard that looks as tended to as his manners and his right eye covered by a patch, Cogburn grouses and growls about the men he has killed, the swagger in his voice keeping him just shy of sounding like Karl Childers in “Sling Blade.”
Mattie is mesmerized and sets about the aggravating work of convincing the gin-blossomed Cogburn to join her on her mission to mete justice. In preparation for the dangerous journey that will take them into Choctaw Nation, Mattie happens across LaBoeuf (pronounced luh-beef), a Texas Ranger who appears more Dudley Do-Right than heroic lawman, played with a charming self-awareness by Matt Damon.
With the overcompensating LaBoeuf — who jangles his spurs like a cocker spaniel draped in Christmas bells and shows off his badge as if it had been bestowed on him by God — the unlikely trio sets out to seek Mattie’s revenge.
Most of the dynamism along the way comes from the unending humorous barbs exchanged between the two lawmen, who seemingly tussle for Mattie’s admiration.
But, in true Coen fashion, there are graphic bursts of violence that nonchalantly splatter the screen with a shrug as the hand of the law — and seemingly the Lord — exacts its toll from the wicked.
Bridges amazingly pulls off the dichotomous work of being undeniably recognizable while utterly disappearing inside the role of the lone anti-hero who is reluctantly brought to feel compassion by the pint-sized heroine. Even when you know what he is about to say, or when he says nothing at all, Bridges never ceases to amaze with the subtleties of his unique talent.
There is little doubt the actor who has quickly risen to the level of national treasure will receive another Oscar nomination, as will his bold young counterpart.
Although the Coens’ version of the Portis novel better serves the author’s comedic tone while avoiding schmaltzy sentiment, the movie at times feels a bit detached. Like the stark countryside so brilliantly captured by cinematographer Roger Deakins, a longtime Coen collaborator, the film’s heart at times feels muted, its soul taken for granted.
Despite its minor flaws, “True Grit” probably will end up being the Coens’ most accessible work, not a modern classic but still one of the year’s most enjoyable films.
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Review: 'Little Fockers' (Grade: C-)
Screen icon Robert De Niro covers the January 2011 issue of Esquire. The headline reads: “The Meaning of Life.”
I would be happy if the 67-year-old legend would scale back such ambitions and simply tell me the meaning of his latest movie, “Little Fockers.” Although I have a feeling the answer is one syllable: cash.
It’s been six years since we last spent a holiday with the Focker-Byrnes clan, and apparently the brains behind the franchise decided their specific brand of low-brow punny comedy had lost its special place in our hearts.
But they needed a gimmick to trot back out the same tired relationships and the see-‘em-coming-from-a-mile-away jokes.
“I got it,” one brain says. “Kids!”
Another slams his Blackberry to the table; pulls his sunglasses to the edge of his nose; his eyes widen. “Twins!”
Brilliant.
The third installment of the family friendly (families like jokes about needle injections in the penis, right?) comedy feels like it was conceived in 30 minutes, written over a weekend and shot in two weeks. Just another excuse to get the gang back together. Kind of like a bank robbery.
The problem with the flimsy kids conceit, however, is that the two 5-year-olds take a backseat to the ongoing drama between Gaylord “Greg” Focker (Ben Stiller, whose workout obsession has left him looking like Skeletor) and his toothless yet still terrifying father-in-law Jack Byrnes (De Niro). Maybe they just couldn’t figure another way to get the word “Fockers” into the title without introducing the kids. Because, after all, the Focker word play is still responsible for about half of the jokes here.
Having put the trauma of the early part of their courtship behind them, Greg and wife Pam (Teri Polo, who again has just a few more lines than the Byrnes’ beloved cat, Jinx) are raising their twins — a somewhat simpleton son and a strident and obnoxious daughter — in an upscale tree-lined neighborhood of Chicago.
Greg has moved from ER duty to a management position (but don’t worry, he’s still a nurse \u2026 a male nurse!). We assume Pam is a stay-at-home mom, but she’s not allowed to tell us. We do know that her mom and her dad — who has just admitted privately to Greg that he had a minor heart attack — are preparing to visit for the twins’ birthday.
Ironically, Greg’s new position has led to a smaller salary, and with the expensive prospect of his children’s private education looming, Greg realizes he needs to increase his revenue stream. In steps bubbly pharmaceutical rep Andi Garcia (Jessica Alba) with the offer to pitch a new erectile dysfunction drug that, as the box says, is safe for people with heart conditions. We can see where all of this is headed, can’t we? Alba’s almost genetically modified beauty is wasted here, as the tone-deaf actress plays the role with such saccharine enthusiasm that she comes across about as sexy as a cotton-candy-filled dump truck.
When Jack and his wife, Dina (Blythe Danner, given about as much leash as Polo), arrive, Jack and Greg manage to exist briefly inside the Circle of Trust created a decade ago. Jack goes so far as to approach Greg about the possibility of his son eventually becoming the head of the family. The moniker for this imaginary position? “The Godfocker.” And Michael Corleone spins in his grave.
Of course, the Circle cannot go unbroken, and the rest of the movie devolves into Greg trying to hide secrets from Jack and the rest of the family before finally acting out as he refuses to kowtow to the patriarch any longer.
Fortunately, Owen Wilson makes a return as Pam’s ex — the world-traveling faux spiritualist Kevin Rawley — providing a couple of much-needed laughs. But the jokes are overwrought and taken three steps too far, and the preening peacock becomes a ridiculous caricature, even for a Fockers movie. Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand also make cameos as Greg’s parents, but apparently they had too much pride or too many scheduling conflicts to linger long.
After two installations, nobody expects this franchise to deliver well-crafted comedy or truly engaging plot lines. The shame is that they couldn’t even cobble together the pieces at their disposal to make a passable whole and mine a little comedy silver, if not gold.
Are Greg and Pam really having problems at home? How do you find time to tend to love’s flame when you’re pulling toys out of mouths and making sure veggies are being eaten? How do you keep your opinionated in-laws at bay so you can raise your own kids as you see fit? Do parents see in their children grating or endearing behavior that reminds each of them of their spouse? How troubling is it that people are compelled to spend $20,000 to send their children to pre-school at a place that calls itself the Early Human School?
Who has time to answer all of these questions when there are sexagenarians with erections to deal with? Tee hee, I said “sex.”
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December 9, 2010
Review: 'Rare Exports' (Grade: B+)
Thanks to children’s books, the Salvation Army, bouncy holiday tunes and the wondrous marketing department of Coca-Cola, we’ve come to know Santa Claus as a paunchy, jolly elf whose benevolence is the hallmark of the holiday season.
But over in the endlessly fascinating lands of Scandinavia, there’s a different tale that circulates about the origin of this allegedly kind fat man who travels the world with a bag full of toys. As we come to discover in “Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale,” this dark, horned creature has little interest in rewarding good little boys and girls. He wants to punish the bad ones.
Young Pietari (Onni Tommila) lives in the barren northern parts of Finland with his single father, Rauno (Jorma Tommila), a butcher. When Rauno and his friends discover their herd of reindeer slaughtered, they blame wolves they assume have been scattered by explosions ignited by the furtive scientists of Subzero Inc., who are conducting covert blasting experiments atop nearby Korvatunturi Mountain.
But Pietari knows better. He has done his research and knows what evil lurks beneath the mountain. The fairy tales he has been reading have alerted him to the fact that centuries ago the indigenous Sami people trapped an evil Santa Claus — one who would spank bad children into pieces — in ice and buried him deep under a pile of rocks. Certainly the explosions nearby will lead to the escape of this fiendish character.
Pietari takes to reading footprints like tea leaves, as he huddles in fear of the coming holiday and the vengeance of Santa Claus.
Concerned with his failing business and mystified by the mass disappearance of reindeer, Rauno dismisses his son’s fabulous concerns until a strange, bearded man — or is he sub-human? — appears on their property. Only Pietari knows for certain the provenance of this dark magic onto which they have stumbled.
His worst nightmares realized, an emboldened Pietari transforms into an action hero as he attempts to save his friends and family from the evil Santa Claus and his horde of hideous helpers.
God bless those darkly perverse and hilarious Scandinavians.
At its core, director Jalmari Helander’s unique twist on an old folktale is a touching story about the fantastic imagination of children and the strength of familial bonds. Cinematographer Mika Orasmaa brings brown and golden warmth candied with reds and greens to the brutally stark Finnish countryside, and the sweeping score is both haunting and enchanting.
Adults tired of hackneyed and saccharine storytelling will be equally amused and disturbed by this Finnish export that is indeed rare and bizarrely wonderful.
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November 19, 2010
Review: '127 Hours' (Grade: A)
You’re probably familiar with the amazing tale of Aron Ralston, the climber who in 2003 found himself in the unenviable position of being trapped by a boulder for five days in the Canyonlands of southern Utah. Any doubts that a story revolving around an immobile and isolated character could make for a compelling movie dissipate almost immediately because of Boyle’s direction and star James Franco.
From the initial scenes, the film from the Oscar-winning “Slumdog Millionaire” director hums with an intoxicating energy as former engineer Ralston (Franco) hurriedly packs his outdoor gear for a weekend adventure.
Ralston is in a mild state of euphoria as he ignores phone calls from his family in his race from civilization toward his rocky refuge. (It’s fitting that the actor looking to unleash his barbaric yawp portrayed Walt Whitman disciple Allen Ginsberg in this fall’s “Howl.”)
Ralston scampers about the sun-splashed red rocks of southern Utah like an over-caffeinated and highly skilled child before running into two attractive young women. Like a whirlwind, he enters their lives, becoming their de facto tour guide as he leads them over the Martian moonscape and eventually to an iridescent subterranean pool. But the whimsical joy and charm of the chance encounter are weighted by the danger we know that awaits. The situational irony lurks underneath every smash cut and every crooked Franco smile.
Drawn to the next thrill, Ralston lights off on his own. As he does his best Spider-man impression, shimmying between two rock formations in Blue John Canyon, the free spirit loses his grip and in his fall dislodges a boulder that follows him on his descent to the canyon floor, where it traps his arm.
As he says, initially with a touch of humor and then with a fearful resignation, “Oops.”
At first Ralston does what any of us would do: He frantically attempts to move the boulder or forcefully withdraw his arm from the rocky vise. He bucks, he screams. He tries to use his pedestrian multitool to shave down the boulder. It becomes abundantly clear that he is stuck.
The camera pulls back from the tight space, up through foot after foot of canyon crevice, to the hot stony surface of Ralston’s natural coffin. He is alone. Very alone.
The trouble with a movie that lets you know from the beginning how long its protagonist is going to be in a stagnant situation (that’s 127 hours for those not paying attention at home) is the possibility a restless audience might begin to count the fictive minutes.
But Boyle presents us with a kinetic experience that moves from tight shots of Franco’s expressive face to the vastness of the red Utah terrain and into the dark unseen recesses of Ralston’s mind.
Using a series of flashbacks, hallucinations and ingenious filmmaking, Boyle gives incredible vitality to what has become a one-man show that is at once terrifying and touching. Imaginative shots take us inside Ralston’s canteen, which is slowly being emptied of its life-giving power. And we enter Ralston’s mind as he contemplates how long he has to live while coming to terms with the selfishness that landed him in his present predicament.
In a manic bout of reckoning, Ralston imagines - and acts out - a talk-show scene in which he is presented with his own hubris. It is this hilarious and slightly heart-wrenching scene, in which Ralston both mocks and bids adieu to his former self, where the Oscar committee will undoubtedly come to attention and recognize the complexity of Franco’s talents.
The ruggedly handsome actor who has become something of a Renaissance man par excellence might want to hurry up with his post-grad studies at Yale University, painting, modeling work, writing and play-acting on soap operas, because his schedule is about to fill up with the duties of being one of the biggest stars in the business.
Unlike the entitled and tortured Christopher McCandless presented in 2007’s “Into the Wild,” Franco’s Ralston does not challenge our ability to like him. While his more selfish tendencies at times might betray him, we forgive the young adventurer and cheer for him.
Having exhausted his options for escape and survival, Ralston’s tempestuous struggle slowly transforms into a stark realization that he is going to die alone. It is only then, in a moment of delirious inventiveness, that he realizes his sole means for survival. I won’t give away any details of the headline-making events. I will only say it is one of the most visceral and affecting moments you can imagine.
Leaving the theater, you will inevitably ask yourself, `Could I do what he did?’ The answer is: Of course you could. Because Ralston, presented with an unthinkable path to a second chance at a more fully realized and appreciated existence, did what the movie implies that we all should and would do - he chooses life.
The film’s moralizing might have felt tedious and heavy-handed if told in a more static style, but guided by Boyle’s brilliance and lifted by Franco’s incredible performance, the movie never feels anything less than urgent and vital.
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November 11, 2010
From Alba to Piven, celebrities keep popping up in Austin
“Hey, look over there … that gorgeous brunette … I think that’s Jessica Alba.”
While the stars in town to shoot Richard Linklater’s “Bernie” and Robert Rodriguez’s “Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World” might have been able to go about their business unimpeded, they certainly have not gone unnoticed.
Seven years after the success of “School of Rock,” which marked Jack Black’s emergence as a comedic star able to carry his own film, the actor has teamed up again with Linklater for “Bernie.”
Based on “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas,” a Texas Monthly article written by Skip Hollandsworth, who co-wrote the screenplay with Linklater, the film will recount the bizarre mystery involving Bernhardt “Bernie” Tiede, an assistant funeral home director in Carthage, who admitted to murdering eccentric widow Marjorie Nugent, played by Shirley MacLaine.
Principal photography for “Bernie” wrapped in Austin this week, but during the shoot, Black was seen all over town. The jolly comedian, dressed as Super Mario, popped up at the Zombie Ball at Seaholm Power Plant during the Halloween weekend and was also in attendance, along with “Spy Kids” actor Jeremy Piven, at Lyle Lovett’s performance in the final “Austin City Limits” taping in Studio 6A on Monday.
But it was the mustachioed actor’s impromptu performance at the Westlake High School public address system that probably turned the most heads.
Following introductory notes by principal Linda Rawlings on Nov. 2, Black grabbed the microphone and, speaking with a Texas accent, told students he was taking over their radio waves. He then proceeded to finish the announcements while having a little fun with the pronunciation of Pflugerville.
Black was at the campus to shoot scenes for “Bernie” at the Westlake Community Performing Arts Center. In his announcement, which apparently had surprised students scrambling for their phones to record the moment, Black called “Bernie” a “very independent think-piece.”
Local filming is scheduled to wrap next week on the fourth installment of Rodriguez’s family-friendly “Spy Kids” franchise.
Taking a break from shooting during the Austin Film Festival in October, Alba, along with actors Daryl Sabara and Alexa Vega — who have played the titular kids in each of the four movies — took part in a script reading for a forthcoming comedy by University of Texas alumna Maggie Carrey.
The ethereal Alba, who has appeared in Rodriguez’s “Sin City” and “Machete,” has turned heads all over town and raved about her time in Austin, taking to her Twitter feed to tell her fans about experiences at 24 Diner, Lambert’s, Uchiko and the band Die Anterwood’s Halloween performance at La Zona Rosa.
The unassuming star was also spotted at La Condesa and Whole Foods.
When Hollywood’s A-list actors leave town, that doesn’t mean work comes to a halt. Indie feature “Boneboys” is entering its final weeks of shooting, and another film, “Beneath the Darkness,” reportedly starring Dennis Quaid, will be being filming in the area after the holidays, according to the Texas Film Commission.
Photo by David Weaver FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN.
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November 4, 2010
Review: 'Four Lions'
So the visuals that begin Chris Morris’ “Four Lions” aren’t shocking. It’s what the men have to say that offers such a whiplash. Armed with toy guns, a group of would-be jihadists argues hilariously over the best way to terrorize.
The scene plays like something out of a “Three Stooges” movie, with the men bickering breathlessly as their leader, Omar (Riz Ahmed), shakes his head in disbelief.
With his feature debut, British satirist Chris Morris suggests that not all of these self-styled militants seen on Al Jazeera are as ruthless and intimidating as their carefully crafted image would have you believe.
Family man Omar is the frustrated ringleader of a group of four men in the north of England who are plotting a suicide bomb attack. Though we are offered little background as to the group’s motivation, Omar’s reasoning is the most grounded in any sense of reality. Having lost a family member to an attack, the Westernized Omar thirsts for revenge, and his rag-tag bunch of mates is all too eager to help him strike in the name of Allah.
After a short and unsuccessful trip to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan with his dimwitted sidekick, Waj (Kayvan Novak), who fancies himself a “Paki Rambo,” Omar returns home to harness the misguided enthusiasm of the rest of his group.
There’s Barry (Nigel Lindsay), an amped-up and aggravated Caucasian convert to Islam, who threatens to go off half-cocked at any moment — a sort of jihadi Walter Sobchak from “The Big Lebowski”; the lovable and confused Fessal (Adeel Akhtar), who attempts to train a crow to act as a suicide aviation device; and the group’s recent addition, Hassan (Arsher Ali), who fancies himself the Ali G of jihadis, rapping nonsensical threats on video.
The group moves into a small apartment beneath a freeway. But they are so disorganized — their rapid-fire bouts of brilliant and cutting dialogue are some of the funniest scenes you will see all year — that they can’t even decide why they are attacking or what to attack, let alone how to construct explosive devices.
Despite their confusion and the ambiguity of their actual intentions, they have set themselves on a course from which they cannot or will not stray.
The fun and games come to a screeching halt as one member of the motley crew loses his life. But instead of turning back, the group puts its collective foot to the accelerator. Despite the inherent absurdity, these fools are dangerous.
In an attempt to thwart the bombing, government agencies become involved, and there is enough room for fools on both sides of this pervasive and undefined war on terror. The semi-competence of the terrorists and law enforcement officials is just enough to get some people (often innocent ones) killed, while avoiding a calamity of massive proportions.
“Four Lions” might be the funniest movie of the year, but it is also one of the most puzzling and challenging, as it forces us to recognize the ambiguity of an issue that so many would prefer to see in stark and concrete terms. Morris shows that those who are the most devout and conservative are often the least dangerous, while those who might choose to do us harm are often completely devoid of any true religious understanding (or intelligence). Sometimes our inability to differentiate between what we know and what we think we know can be scary. So scary, it’s funny.
(“Four Lions” is being distributed by Alamo CEO Tim League’s Drafthouse Films.)
- Showtimes for “Four Lions”
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October 29, 2010
My AFF highlights (the top six)
Following the amazing eight-day whirlwind of panels, films and parties that is the Austin Film Festival, I look back on a few of my favorite things.
1) “127 Hours” — I simply can’t imagine an actor other than James Franco carrying Danny Boyle’s exhilarating ode to the triumph of the human spirit. Boyle’s use of flashback and hallucination was beautiful, never feeling forced or gimmicky. The film may have caused more than a few of us to cover our eyes (and/or scream) in horror, but it also left us pumping our fists, thirsty to engage more fully with life.
2) “Meek’s Cutoff” — Contrary to the throbbing pulse of Boyle’s film, director Kelly Reichardt’s story about a group of 19th century families heading west led by the delusional and comical Stephen Meek (a great Bruce Greenwood) moved with the same languid pace as its characters. Much like her “Wendy and Lucy,” the film is light on dialogue and requires a bit of patience, but Reichardt does more with less than almost any working filmmaker. The cinematography is breathtaking — with seemingly static shots slowly revealing hidden gems the deeper you looked into them — and Michelle Williams offers a fantastic and subtle display of strength.
3) Local filmmakers — With their movies “Rainbows End” and “Dig,” Austinites Eric Hueber (right) and Stephen Belyeu have put us on notice that they are filmmakers to whom we should pay attention and from whom we can likely expect great things. Their films — wildly different from one another in tone and subject matter — display the artists’ great talents for storytelling and a deep connection to the places from which they come.
4) Listening to David Simon talk — Sit for an hour and listen to the creator of “The Wire” talk and you come to get a sense that there are not many writers who care as deeply for the state of our nation — what makes us great and what is tearing us apart. The self-effacing working-man’s workhorse is modest, humble, thoughtful, funny and smart as hell. To listen to him talk about his craft and his concern for republic is to be inspired. Simon represents everything that is great about the Austin Film Festival. He also had one of my favorite lines of the festival: “I hate writing.”
5) “Black Swan” — Darren Arronofsky’s follow up to “The Wrestler” shows that the world of ballet can be much more brutal and damaging than that of wrestling. The Kubrickian psycho-sexual thriller is a fever dream (nightmare, may be a better word) that stayed with me long after leaving the theater. The filmmaker and his leading lady, Natalie Portman, will undoubtedly (and rightfully) be honored come awards season.
6) Script reading of “The Hand Job” — The funniest movie for my money at AFF wasn’t even on a screen. As I wrote in my wrap of this two-hour session, it was a rare treat to get to hear such a wonderful and hilarious script read from start to finish by a panel of great local and national talent. UT alumnus Maggie Carrey should definitely have a hit on her hands (hopefully) next summer when the comedy comes out. Aubrey Plaza is one of the best (and most beautiful) comedic actors of any sex out there, and Carrey and Hader may be challenging Amy Poehler and Will Arnett is the funniest couple in the business. (Bonus points: The movie was introduced by Franklin Leonard, whose efforts to create The Black List were rightly celebrated at this fest which champions writers.)
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October 27, 2010
Interview: Dax Shepard, 'Brother's Justice' auteur
Although he’s had what would have to be considered a successful career over the past decade, Dax Shepard has not been able to see his authentic comedic voice find an outlet. He’s either played in broad comedies (“Employee of the Month”) or served another man’s vision (“Idiocracy”).
So he decided to grab friends and collaborators Nate Tuck and David Palmer and create “Brother’s Justice,” a thoroughly entertaining mockumentary that screened at the Austin Film Festival last weekend.
The premise of the meta experiment is that Shepard has become disillusioned with doing comedies, so he has decided to break into the world of action movies, specifically martial arts, with the making of his next film. After talking Tuck into co-producing, Shepard sets out to find a director, actors and financial backing.
In his efforts to get the film made, Shepard is repeatedly rebuffed by befuddled friends (strong straight-man performances from John Favreau and Ashton Kucher and ridiculous turns from David Koechner and Bradley Cooper), pummeled by a marital arts instructor and dismissed as arrogant and delusional as he abuses Tuck’s friendship.
“It’s very counterintuitive that you’d enjoy watching your protagonist get beaten up thoroughly,” Shepard said last weekend in Austin. “Not intentionally, but we achieved this weird thing where you are rooting against the protagonist yet you care about him. It’s very weird. I kept saying while we were shooting, ‘Man, I am riding the line of being very unlikable because I’m such an ego maniac in the movie.’ But I thought as long as I lose every confrontation … I think the underdog aspect will actually override your disdain for my character.”
Indeed, Shepard makes great use of his improv training to play a pitch-perfect high status boob who doesn’t understand why his friends doubt his ability to re-position himself as an action superstar. Most probably don’t remember the incidents in 2006, but the crafty and committed Shepard even made appearances on the Teen Choice Awards and “Last Call With Carson Daly” in character, the footage from which appears in the movie.
Along for much of the ride is Shepard’s good friend, the hilariously manic Tom Arnold, who is willing to help the tall blonde get his movie made in exchange for getting to play Shepard’s older brother, age discrepancy be damned.
While the movie (possibly by accident) pokes a bit of fun at Hollywood, Shepard insists that his wacky little gem is not born out of spite. He simply wanted to see his absurd sensibility writ large.
“I’m not bitter at all,” Shepard said about his relationship with the industry. “Things have not gone the way I’ve wanted them to go. But, tough (expletive deleted); they just didn’t go the way Dax Shepard wants them to go. I sympathize with everyone in the film business. It is so hard. There’s so much magic involved (in getting a film made) … it’s 60 percent of why a movie works or doesn’t work and people are trying to crack that code and it’s uncrackable. I feel bad for everyone involved, there’s tons of money being spent; it’s high risk. I sympathize with studios. I get it. I know why you hire Adam Sandler for x-amount of money, because you’re gonna get x-amount no matter what happens. It doesn’t make me angry. That’s just how it is. I’m the one that’s been a recipient of all this … I’m the one who was on eight episodes of a cable show and they let me be a lead in a movie. If I had been acting in movies for 10 years, I would have hated me.”
Shepard expressed at Saturday night’s screening how much he absolutely loves Austin, calling it the greatest city in the country. Here are a couple more side notes on his relationship with Austin and Texas:
On Austinite Mike Judge: “He’s one of the people I became closest with that I stayed in touch with, and I just think he’s a genius and he has a voice and he stays true to it.”
On Texans Owen Wilson: “He’s my favorite comedic actor.”
On Austin via his Twitter feed: “Austin, you did it again. I feel like I’m flying home from spring break, heart broken that we don’t live in the same town.”
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October 26, 2010
AFF highlight: Script reading of Maggie Carey's 'The Hand Job'
With no visual distractions to entertain the audience, the experience focused on Carey’s vulnerable, endearing, precise and hilarious dialogue.
The University of Texas alumnus introduced the panel of 15 actors — a combination of local and national talent — who sat in director’s chairs as they read the screenplay for the movie with the title that Carey said she refuses to say in front of her mother.
In the lead role was Aubrey Plaza (“Parks and Recreation”) as Brandy Clark, a Type-A valedictorian who is determined to gain a measure of sexual experience and confidence before heading off to college. The singularly driven valedictorian goes so far as to make a to-do list charting her sexual progress and turns to a host of boys to use as practice dummies - from the dreamy Rusty (Michael Stahl) to her nervous and fawning nerdy friend Cameron (Daryl Sabara).
Plaza (who, along with Carey’s husband, “Saturday Night Live’s” Bill Hader, are the only actors actually attached to the production) played the character with her trademark deadpan exasperation coupled with a sweet sincerity. As her perpetually buzzed, underachieving boss at the local pool, Hader was desperate, hilarious and brilliant, and Colin Hanks seemed to channel Norm MacDonald at times with his great turn as Brandy’s conservative father.
In a Q&A session following the movie, Carey said she had re-written the largely biographical script after being told by some people that the first draft depicted Brandy as overly sexualized. I think those objections, while possibly valid, come from the fact that people are not used to seeing raw, funny stories like this from a female perspective. Two lines from Brandy in the most recent draft almost feel like a response to the discomfort some may have felt from the earlier versions.
“No one took advantage of me,” Brandy says in the screenplay. “Maybe I’m just a normal, horny teenager who’s curious about sex.”
After seeing countless movies about the adolescent male experience with sexual stumbling and insecurities, it is refreshing to see more females, such as Carey and “Tiny Furniture” director Lena Dunham, getting a chance to tell their compelling and amusing stories.
With several studios having passed on the script — which made Franklin Leonard’s Black List of the best unproduced screenplays - Carey says the plan is to produce the movie independently on a small budget, with shooting to take place next summer. She said producer Jennifer Todd is attached to the project that I believe will be a major indie hit when finally released.
About Todd, Jessica Alba — who read the part of Brandy’s older sister and whose beauty seems almost genetically engineered — said, “She’ll make sure you keep your creative integrity” even if the movie gets picked up by a studio.
The beauty of attending a script reading is being able to savor the language and descriptions of action and exposition that are never seen on the big screen. For instance, at one point the script refers to Rusty as “one part grunge, two parts smokin’ hot babe” with a “sensible ponytail.” Sure, you could see that in the character on screen in the finished movie, but actually hearing the thought process that goes into the physical representation is a rare treat.
Some of the most intimate moments of the reading came when Hader gave knowing looks to his wife — who was sitting in the front row of the audience — as certain jokes went over huge with the audience. Writing is a painstaking craft that requires a delicate touch and can often leave writers fretting over a single phrase for hours. Hader, who Carey said was a constant sounding board for her work, said after the reading that his wife was the hardest working person he knew. So it was revealing and touching to see him double over with laughter following a well-written line that killed, as he gave a knowing and affirming glance to his wife.
(Since a script reading truly is about the language, my only quibble from the screenplay set in 1993 was the appearance of the word “totes.” I don’t think people were using that truncation back in ’93. Then again, it’s been 17 years. Yikes.)
Photo: Austin Film Festival/Jack Plunkett
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October 25, 2010
Interivew: Edward Burns, director of 'Nice Guy Johnny'
The film’s success led to a minor explosion in indie film, a short-lived expansion that has since collapsed.
With the challenges of raising money becoming increasingly more difficult, Burns and his longtime producer Aaron Lubin decided to return to the guerrilla filmmaking style of ‘McMullen.’ And fifteen years after he helped start a boom in indie filmmaking, Burns is now proving to be an early adopter in the way movies are being distributed.
Taking a page from his “Brothers McMullen” playbook, Burns decided to make his most recent movie, “Nice Guy Johnny,” on a budget of only $25,000, while using mostly unknown actors, a three-man crew and shooting in less than two weeks.
“We decided why not kinda try and do the same thing now and not have to deal with all the headaches that go along with dealing with famous actors and financiers,” Burns said last week at the Austin Film Festival.
“Nice Guy Johnny” tells the story of a 25 year-old man living in the San Francisco Bay Area and working as a sports radio talk show host. Pressured by his fiancé to take a ‘real job’ that can afford the two of them financial security, Johnny returns home to New York City to interview for a stultifying corporate job. But a weekend with his carefree, rapscallion Uncle Terry (Burns) challenges his ideas about his road to happiness and his idea of success.
The story has deep personal significance for Burns, who at one point struggled with the idea of making more money by directing a big-budget studio romantic comedy.
“The story was born two years ago. My agent came to me and said would you consider doing an open directing assignment,” Burns said. “My dream has always been to be the Long Island Woody Allen - the guy making his little movies … And then there’s an opportunity that presents itself where there’s a lot more money … The script was good, but for me it woulda been a compromise. It would have been giving up the thing that I’m truly passionate about … Very few guys who go there come back.”
Frustrated with the standard indie platform release, where often a small movie with a tiny marketing budget has no chance of making it to a large audience and will sit for months before making it to DVD or cable, Burns decided to take a new approach to getting his movie to his fans. Building off of the iTunes release he did for his 2007 “Purple Violets,” Burns and Lubin developed a multi-tiered release that will have the movie available through iTunes, Video on Demand on cable and DVD all at the same time.
“We watched what (Steven) Sodergergh did with “Girlfriend Experience” and “Bubble,” and I thought, ‘If it’s good enough for Soderbergh to go VOD before theatrical, it’s good enough for me,’” Burns said. “People who like my movies aren’t necessarily the big art house folks, so maybe if we get the movie directly to them, there’s more money to make. And at the end of the day, it’s still a business, so the movies need to make money so I can get the money for the next one. The great thing is I no longer sell my movie to a distribution company … I own the movie, so we license it. So, in success, we finally get to participate.”
While some may be skeptical of the coming paradigm shift and how to leverage it, Burns believes the timing is perfect to directly deliver fresh film content to people. The New Yorker says the proliferation of great original programming on cable networks such as HBO, Showtime, FX and AMC, proves there is an audience for the kind of filmmaking he wants to do.
“The audience that is interested in the smaller, smarter storytelling, they’re already at home sitting on their couch looking to their television to supply them with that kind of story telling,” Burns said. “Why should we ask them to get out of the house and go to the theater? We have the audience. They like this stuff. Let’s just put it right in front of them where they’re used to watching it.”
Burns believes the shift in consumer habits and the myriad distribution channels are gamechangers that will continue to offer him the best chance to keep fulfilling his vision.
“The fact that we no longer have to go to the folks who finance films and we no longer have to deal with trying to chase down movie stars, it’s so liberating,” Burns said. “You just make the movies you wanna make.”
Photo from ASSOCIATED PRESS.
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October 24, 2010
Panel Wrap: Writing for Documentaries
Judging by the talented panelists, crowd of filmmakers and admirers of the craft in attendance at the panel Saturday, the state of documentary filmmaking is strong.
Although the title of the panel suggested a focus on writing, the discussion started out talking about general ideas and techniques of the craft before finally makings its way to the actual writing process. Which is not to say the panel missed its mark — filmmakers Paul Stekler (“George Wallace: Settin’ the Woods on Fire”), PJ Raval (“Trinidad”), Barry Blaustein (“Beyond the Mat”) and Henry Corra (“Same Sex America”) were all engaging, thoughtful and articulate in discussing their craft and individual films.
In discussing documentary subjects, Stekler boiled his philosophy down to a simple rule: “Find someone who wants to tell their story and are great on camera.” While Stekler said that the director is obviously important, the “most important person in the room” is the cinematographer, who can float around the the action without drawing attention to himself.
Fellow Austinite Raval touched on the importance of garnering a subject’s trust, with a sentiment shared by his fellow panelists.
“When you work in documentary filmmaking, first and foremost it is about trust,” Raval said.
With regard to the trust issue, Blaustein (a former head writer on “SNL” and the man behind several of Eddie Murphy’s screenplays) said that he spent two years without a camera in hand on the road with professional wrestling subjects gaining their trust and getting a feel for their world.
Raval said regardless of the personal and sometimes intimate nature of his subjects, that at their heart, all documentaries reveal a universality to which people can relate. And, as Blaustein said, “Everyone you meet has a story to tell.”
In terms of getting close to their subjects, Corra said, “It may sound corny or romantic .. but you really do kind of fall in love with your characters.”
It was nice to hear the filmmakers confess to wanting to make sure they did not manipulate the truth or exploit their characters.
“We can make any of you guys look any way we want,” Stekler said of the editing process. “The trick is making (subjects) look like they really are.”
While Stekler admitted that documentaries are really made in the editing room, there is writing involved. And while that writing can give you a structure going into a film, a good documentarian must be ready to go wherever the film takes him.
Best thing I can say about the panel: Following it, I now want to go watch every documentary each of these men has made.
Funny anecdote of the panel: Corra said that while making “Same Sex America,” a child started singing “Tomorrow” from “Annie” at a poignant and important moment in the film which could not be cut. The impromptu singing jag ended up costing the filmmaker $30,000. On another music-related note, apparently singing “Happy Birthday” on film will run you $2,500. So be careful out there, kids.
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Panel wrap: The Art of Storytelling with the 2010 Awardees
As you might expect, the ballroom at the Stephen F. Austin was absolutely packed for the panel with the three distinguished AFF awardees — David Simon (“The Wire”); David Peoples (“Unforgiven”) and Robert Rodriguez (“El Mariachi”).
Considering the resumes of the men on the panel and the grand title, the discussion could probably go a thousand directions and last for hours. Sunday morning’s talk started off on discussing violence and its appeal and then bounced around. Below are a few bulleted highlights:
Rodriguez on violence in his films:
“I never get in trouble … my movies don’t take themselves too seriously.”Peoples on the idea of black-and-white characterizations:
“Martin Scorsese solved a problem for me (in “Taxi Driver) … He wasn’t writing about good guys and bad guys, he was writing about the animal inside all of us … I just always feel we’re animals.”Simon continuing on the theme of simplistic depiction of good and bad:
“The Wire,” he said was “a rebellion against the idea that you’re gonna lock up the bad guy and fix the town … The drug war has nothing to do with the morality.”Rodriguez on his films:
“They’re all fantasies. None of them are realistic … it’s moviemaking from the ID.”Rodriguez on his sly move of making a “futuristic” version of Mexico:
The multi-hyphenate said that with only $7,000 and the idea of Mexico being undefined in many people’s heads, he simply included in the press notes he actually wrote that the movie took place in a futuristic Mexico town, even though it looked like present day Mexico. Press, he said, then took the idea directly from the notes and included it in stories and reviews, saving him the trouble and expense of actually creating a futuristic look.Peoples on the vagaries of the industry and success as a screenwriter:
“When you write a script, you just hope someone’s gonna ‘get it.’ … You’ve got no chance without a director who can stand up and know they’re doing.”Rodriguez on the writing process:
The filmmaker, who said “there is hardly anything worse than writing,” discussed writing first thing in the morning from the comfort of his bed while he was still in a quasi-dreamy state, which allowed him to possibly tap into his subconscious. He also said that the only way to learn how to write is to write, and “you have to write bad until it turns good.”Simon on the creative process with his team:
“In the healthiest institutions, arguments are encouraged … I believe in protecting the writing, but at some point you have to trust the collective to build the house.”Simon on his dream project:
The creator of “Treme” said that he wants badly to work on a story about the Haymarket affair in 1886 Chicago. He really wants to focus on the importance (and increasingly lack thereof) of labor and how it has defined America, but nobody will touch it.Simon on the myth of people liking diversity:
He said some people claim to want diversity, but said it is really lip service. “As long as they can shut up and think what I think, then diversity is great,” he said.Simon on the pain of the process:
“I hate writing.”
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October 22, 2010
Panel wrap: The Black List
Friday afternoon, Leonard was joined by four writers who have had scripts land on the coveted list. As Leonard said, it turns out he wasn’t the only one who was having a problem discovering great work, a collective problem that led to the list being so heavily sought out by development folks in the industry. Over the years, as the popularity and success rate (in 2006 and 2007 40% of the Oscars handed out in the top categories went to Black List screenplays) has increased, so has the number of participants. Last year’s list had the participation of 330 people.
One of the panel participants was Austinite Kyle Killen, creator of the recently (and unfortunately) canceled “Lone Star,” who landed on the list in 2008 with his script for “The Beaver.” Killen said the list gave him instant legitimacy.
“Getting on it means you’re instantly taken seriously,” said Killen.
Not only does the list offer industry insiders a concentrated list of talent, it also provides them some cover in that if they want to buy one of the scripts or sign a deal with one of the writers, they can point to the list as a fact that other people had shared their opinion.
When Matthew Cook’s agent told him he had landed on The Black List, the Hollywood neophyte who had gotten the script for his “By Way of Helena” noticed by Mike Simpson following a hunting trip responded, “That doesn’t sound good … what the hell is that?”
He soon found out. He also realized that with great honor comes great responsibility and admits that following his appearance on the list he felt increased pressure to produce solid work. But Cook admitted that while landing on the list is a career jumper with almost unmatched power, writers should avoid trying to write specifically to land on the list, as such calculating will destroy a unique voice.
Not everyone who lands on the list comes through a script that’s been passed around or through a chance encounter with an industry executive. Malcolm Spellman and Tim Talbott ended up being selected for the list after their script for “Balls Out” became an internet sensation. The two writers created an admittedly antiquated website and posted the screenplay for the subversive comedy. To date it has been downloaded almost 100,000 times. Their success, according to Leonard, is one indicator of the fact that over the coming decade people will be getting their work into the hands of industry decision makers through more and more varied outlets.
While some cynical folks may think of the list as a bragging contest between development folks, Leonard seems unconcerned. He simply wants to continue to help great writers get their voices heard.
“I have a deep and abiding love for storytellers,” Leonard said.
Photo of Franklin Leonard by Jack Plunkett/AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL
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Panel wrap: A conversation with Jonn Lee Hancock
Although he admitted he was worried his anecdote about his first taste of the business after leaving a legal career in Houston may have been redundant from years past, it was still informative and entertaining. The writer-director explained how he (somewhat benignly) stalked fellow Baylor grad Kevin Reynolds (“Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”) in Hollywood, who gave Hancock his first reality check. Following six months of phone calls, Hancock had lunch with Reynolds who told the would-be screenwriter that he was “not without talent,” but the director did not fall over praising Hancock. He challenged Hancock to continue writing by offering him the feigned advice to return home and practice law. If Hancock took the advice, Reynolds said it would be apparent the young lawyer was not cut out to be a writer. Hancock kept writing.
What he realized in retrospect what that most writers’ first scripts tend to be autobiographical and are generally not very good — Hancock’s was about a young lawyer conflicted about whether to follow a creative career path. Hancock stressed to the crowd that “it’s important to write what moves you.”
The director of “The Rookie” said that “writing is the fastest track” to getting into the business, although he said once you are in, there is no guarantee you can keep getting work. He compared his career as a “contract worker” to that of a house painter, always looking for another house to paint. In terms of mapping a career, Hancock said that “having a game plan is importantbut not as important as the fire in your soul.”
Hancock called the experience of working “A Perfect World”— his first major writing gig — as “an amazing film school for me … kind of a magical time …” Reflecting back, he says the fact that he’s made it now almost 20 years is a “kind of a miracle.”
The homegrown star spent a good half hour discussing his greatest commercial success — “The Blind Side.” Although it’s hard to imagine that a movie that made over $250 million at American box offices alone having trouble getting off the ground, Hancock described the painful process of getting the film made. After attaching Julia Roberts to the script just a few days after it had started circulating around the industry, he gained Fox’s interest. Then he lost Roberts, who was just coming off filming “Duplicity,” her first film in awhile, and then he had to wrestle the project back from a now-lukewarm Fox after Alcon Entertainment expressed interest.
Beyond the nuts and bolts of getting the film made, the most interesting part of the conversation was Hancock discussing the sensitive issues of race surrounding the film and his adherence to the truth of Michael Lewis’s book and the Tuohy family’s real story.
The director said he always considered the movie an “unconventional mother-son” adult drama, which he acknowledged tend to not get made much these days. He said he had to fight the desire for the industry to classify anything as a sports movie just because it has elements of sports in it.
Hancock admitted that he may have exaggerated Michael Oher’s lack of football talent, but that he did so for dramatic purposes, so there would be a contrast between where the young man started as a player and where he ended. It was interesting to hear Hancock relate that Oher’s optimistic appraisal of his own talent in 10th grade was less connected to reality than the film’s depiction.
The director also said he knew from Lewis’s experience that the race issue would rankle some people’s belief systems and make them uncomfortable, but that he was not going to shy away from the possibility of promulgating the white hero myth just because some people may find the story unbelievable or wrongly stereotypical.
Engaging, self-effacing and charming, Hancock’s 75 minutes Friday were a testament to believing in the stories you want to tell as a writer, refusing to indulge in self-pity and the resolve it takes to make it in such a youth-oriented, flavor-of-the-minute chasing business.
Success in the industry is not about getting a studio to say ‘yes,’ it’s about making it impossible for them to say ‘no.’
(A word about the Driskill Victorian Balcony room — and I know I probably say this every year — but as cozy as it is to be able to sit on the floor and listen to a distinguished screenwriter, it is pretty uncomfortable. I understand logistics may prevent a load of chairs from being easily delivered into the “Malkovich Room” (it is on some mysterious half-floor of the hotel), but I continue to hold out hope that something can be done to alleviate the stress on our rear ends and hips.)
Photo: John Lee Hancock on the set of “The Blind Side.”
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October 21, 2010
Profile: Eric Hueber, director of 'Rainbows End'
He had a school bus. He had a bunch of chickens and a cast of real-life characters he knew. So he decided to make a road-trip movie about going west.
“I’m not feeding them lines, because they cannot act,” Hueber says. “And why would you want to feed these guys lines anyway? You just want to be there to capture it. And it seemed the easiest format and structure for me to put all these people together and for us to all have a clear objective and a goal. These were all just friends of mine, and they all had these quirky ambitions.”
Thus was born the idea for tonight’s Austin Film Festival entry “Rainbows End,” an experimental narrative that’s part “Muppet Movie” and part surrealist documentary.
As a child growing up in East Texas, Hueber was inspired to become a filmmaker by the videos on MTV. But the idea of actually making movies for a living seemed impractical and unattainable until he entered film school at Stephen F. Austin University.Unlike some schools that teach film theory in hopes of weeding through large swaths of students, Hueber says, Stephen F. Austin was a hands-on, vocational education.
“They handed you a camera and said, ‘Just go make a damn film,’” Hueber says.In his first year of film school, Hueber met his future business partner and “Rainbows End” producer and co-writer, Andy Cope. After receiving their undergraduate degrees, Hueber and Cope started the production firm Alonestar Films.
Necessity played a role with the duo’s first unofficial client. Living in a warehouse and taking showers with an outdoor hose that would freeze in winter, Hueber approached Supergym in Nacogdoches and offered to exchange production of a commercial for a gym membership, which would allow the nascent filmmaker the chance to literally come in from the cold.
Alonestar slowly built a roster of paying local clients for whom they produced advertising and marketing materials. That afforded them the resources, time and equipment to focus on projects such as “Rainbows End.”
In 2004, Hueber — with a $5,000 Texas Filmmaker Production Fund grant from the Austin Film Society — loaded up his 1977 school bus and sputtered off to California.
He took along a collection of eccentric characters : the soulful, tender, baton-twirling Audrey Dean; cockfighter Brian “Birdman” Birdwell; one-man band and high school valedictorian Peter Guzzino; and country music and outer-space aficionado Country Willie and his band the Cosmic Debris. With two cameras and two roosters, the group spent three weeks on the road in a haphazard search for their individual dreams.After returning, Hueber spent six months commuting back and forth to Austin to work as an editing assistant on Terrence Malick’s “The New World.” Exhausted from the weekly travel and the months of assisting on Malick’s film, Hueber says, he was dismayed when he revisited the 100-plus hours of footage he had shot on the trip out West.
“I looked at my own footage and was just discouraged with the project. I had limited resources when I shot it. I shot it with two cameramen who had sound attached to their cameras,” Hueber says. “It was just shot under less-than-ideal circumstances. When we set out to make the film, we all had these individual ambitions in this collective journey, and none of us really accomplished anything noteworthy in the film. So I felt we had a complete anticlimax of a film.”
Hueber moved to Austin in 2005 and continued to work with his clients at Alonestar. Eventually, Hueber returned to the oddball road trip footage, and with fresh eyes and the aid of Cope’s vision, realized he had actually captured something special.
“My frustrations with it were over levels of control I felt I didn’t have … Then I realized, ‘I have some great footage here. I’m sitting on a pot of gold. I just have to let it speak its own tale.’ And once I figured that out, Andy came in and helped me nuance that. I think it took me maturing a little bit, kind of getting beat down in life and having some more failures for me to look back on it and think, ‘Hell, we did it. We tried. We went for it.’”
The lessons learned by Hueber mirror the unspoken mantra of the ragtag bunch of dreamers in “Rainbows End.”
“I believe in the creative process. You can’t determine the outcome ,” Hueber says. ” You just have to believe in yourself enough to just go for it.”
“Rainbows End” makes its world premiere at the Austin Convention Center Saturday at 5:15 p.m. It screens again Wednesday night at 10 at the Texas Spirit Theater.
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September 29, 2010
Review: 'Let Me In' (Grade: A-)
But, despite the critical and cult success of director Tomas Alfredson’s Swedish vampire thriller “Let the Right One In” — based on John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel of the same name — the simple fact of the matter is that, relative to its quality, few people saw the incredible movie that first had Austin audiences buzzing at Fantastic Fest 2008. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, the film made just more than $2 million in the subtitle-averse American market.
Fortunately for English-speaking audiences — both those who have seen the original and those who have not — director Matt Reeves found a deep personal connection with Lindqvist’s novel and decided he could bring something new to the frightening coming-of-age story.
The stark film opens in the barren winter of Los Alamos, N.M. — a creepy and isolated stand-in for Alfredson’s Sweden — as an ambulance races to the hospital with unidentifiable cargo. A newscast in the hospital informs us that we are in the throes of the Ronald Reagan 1980s, with the concepts of sin and evil casting a pall over the nation.
As a police officer (Elias Koteas) attempts to identify the recent arrival to the hospital, we flash back two weeks to an apartment complex where young Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) stands at his mirror, practicing attacks on imagined foes as his pious and divorced mother drinks in the other room. Owen’s room is decorated with images of space, offering the notion that the child would like to trade his confined worldly experience for one of liberation. Out his window, he catches a brief glimpse of a young girl moving into his desolate apartment complex.
Following the slight, pale, pubescent child to school, we discover he suffers constant harassment from a group of boys led by a near sadistic classmate named Kenny (Dylan Minnette). Every day at school for Owen is an exercise in survival and endurance.
Back in the safety of his courtyard at home, Owen meets his new neighbor, Abby (Chloe Moretz), when she comes upon him talking to his invisible enemies amid one of his revenge fantasies. She immediately cautions Owen that she cannot be friends with him. Undeterred by the news, Owen begins to take a strong interest in the enigmatic girl who pats around in the snow without shoes.
His curiosity piqued, Owen attempts to listen in on conversations emanating from the neighboring apartment between Abby and the man whom he assumes must be her father (Richard Jenkins). What Owen does not realize is that the blood relationship between the man and Abby has a shockingly literal value. Almost nightly, the beleaguered older man hunts people in town and drains their blood to return to Abby.
Obviously fatigued by the physical and psychic tolls taken by his stewardship of the vampire who inhabits the body of a 12-year-old girl, the old man begins to get sloppy, and Abby begins to hunt for herself. In the meantime, she grows closer to Owen, whose life spent in the shadows finally feels as if it has been touched by the warm, tender light of something approaching love. Abby consoles the tortured Owen and advises her new friend to strike back at his attackers at school, while he offers his fellow outcast unconditional friendship.
But Abby’s secret isn’t easily kept, and eventually Owen becomes entwined in a search for the truth his friend can no longer protect. Once he discovers Abby’s actual identity, Owen is forced into a decision that could affect the rest of his life.
Some not familiar with the original film or novel may hear the word “vampire” and immediately dismiss the work as the fantastical domain of tweens, but “Let Me In” is a universal tale about the horror of adolescence and the life-affirming and destabilizing power of love.
Both Smit-McPhee and Moretz give mature and nuanced performances of characters mired in a struggle to move beyond their limiting circumstances and take back their lives.
While he hews closely to Alfredson’s Swedish film — sometimes even shot for shot — in his equally chilling tale, Reeves amplifies the bullying that Owen undergoes in school to a level that is more nerve-fraying and panic-inducing than any of the film’s ample gore. With the help of his talented young actors, the director has created a world with which all moviegoers can likely identify and characters for whose safety and happiness we yearn.
We won’t here go into the nitpicking as to whether Reeves’ treatment equals or surpasses the original, but I will say that although the original had a more haunting beauty, the remake contains the best scene of either movie. Sure, the themes — and the story itself — are not new, but Reeves’ fresh vision and utterly compelling storytelling more than justify the making of this American iteration that could very well make a surprise appearance on year-end lists the way its predecessor did.
- Read my interview with director Matt Reeves and young star Kodi Smit-McPhee
- Showtimes for ‘Let Me In’
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September 25, 2010
'Kidnapped' plays with storytelling conventions
Though working under some budget constraints, director Miguel Angel Vivas found ways to offer a fresh spin on the home-invasion horror genre with his movie “Kidnapped.”
As they move into their new house, Jaime (Fernando Cayo) and Marta (Ana Wagener) are portraits in contrasting personalities. She is nervous and controlling, while he is calm and somewhat detached. Living amongst, though not necessarily with, them is their 18 year-old daughter Isa (Manuela Velles), who simply wants to spend time with her boyfriend. Jaime is content to let his daughter make her own choices, while Marta attempts to hold onto the young lady who is obviously ready to leave the house, literally and figuratively.
Amidst the minor familial strife, criminals break into the family’s house in a botched robbery attempt that spirals into violence and forces the mother and daughter closer.
Although the home invasion leads to some predictable, if not uniquely and graphically violent, results, Vivas provides a bit of a face-lift to the genre by using the first act of the film to develop the family as a set of original and three-dimensional characters, thus making the movie not just about the invasion but the people inside the house. In order to flesh out the characters, the director said in the translator-assisted Q&A that he rehearsed with the actors for three weeks before the two-week shoot.
In addition to the elements of character development, Vivas also found cinematic ways to lend originality to his violent film. The Spanish director said he made the movie using only 12 extended shots in an attempt to keep the hyper realism of the narrative. The result is an engaging and thrilling take on a movie that nevertheless felt somewhat familiar.
“Kidnapped” screens at 12:35 p.m. on Tuesday at Alamo South.
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'Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale' -- Seeing Santa in a whole new light
While Americans’ notion of Santa Claus (aided by the good folks at Coca-Cola) is a right, jolly old elf, many other countries have tales of a much less kind spirited fat man with a bag of toys. As we learned Friday night at the Alamo, both Finland and Iceland have stories of a scary figure that favors negative reinforcement over positive.
In “Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale,” young Pietari lives in the barren northern parts of Finland with his single father, Rauno, a butcher. When Rauno and his friends discover their herd of reindeer slaughtered, they blame wolves they assume have been scattered by explosions set off by the furtive scientists of Subzero Inc. working atop a nearby mountain. But Pietari knows better. With his fear-fueled imagination keeping him up at nights, Pietari worries that he and his best friend are going to incur the wrath of the evil Santa Claus they believe is buried inside the mountain. Rauno dismisses his son’s concerns until a strange, bearded man - or is he sub-human? - appears on their property. His worst nightmares realized, Pietari is moved to action and must try and save his friends and family before the evil Santa Claus and his horde of elves can lay waste to them.
Director Jalmari Helander’s film is a modern twist on an old folktale that at its core is a touching story about the wild imagination of children and the strength of familial bonds. If you took out some of the bad language (and all of the full-frontal male nudity, of which there is a lot in the form of Santa’s undead helpers), you could easily see this film — with its soaring score and bright, crisp colors — entertaining both young and old here at multiplexes in the states come Christmas time.
Helander’s film was preceded by the short “Unholy Night,” an Icelandic tale of one of the countries thirteen incarnations of Santa - Meathook Santa (who is a real figure in Icelandic folk tales) - who is not a nice man at all. The appropriately named Santa haunts a group of friends in a remote cabin and does quite a bit of damage.
Following the screening, “Rare Exports” co-writer Juuson Helander and “Unholy Night” writer Omar Hauksson took questions from TwitchFilm’s Todd Brown and the audience and discussed the dark Santa-related folk tales of their respective countries. By way of introduction, Brown correctly said that “Rare Exports” had the “most male frontal nudity ever included in any children’s story.”
When asked by an audience member how the filmmakers were able to convince a bunch of out-of-shape middle-aged men to run around naked in the woods for their movie, Helander succinctly responded, “I’m from Europe.”
Both films screen again together at 11:45 a.m. on Tuesday at Alamo South.
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September 24, 2010
Swedes strike again with 'Corridor'
While it likely won’t reach the cult-like status of fellow Swedish horror movie and Fantastic Fest alumnus “Let the Right One In,” “Corridor” will certainly thrill those who get a chance to see the smart, funny and anxiety-inducing movie from writer-directors Johan Lundborg and Johan Storm.
Quiet medical student Frank (Emil Johnsen) simply wants to lock himself in his apartment and study. But his needy neighbor Lotte (Ylva Gallon) has other plans. She wants to borrow laundry detergent. Then she wants to repay Frank with homemade cookies, of which he is no fan. Then she needs to let Frank know that the loud sex in which she and her boyfriend Micke (Peter Stormare) like to indulge may keep Frank up at night. Which it does.
But what starts out as an annoyance becomes a danger when Frank becomes entangled in Lotte’s relationship with her violent and jealous boyfriend. As his nascent medical career and sanity begin to spiral out of control, Frank finds himself running for his life inside the tight confines of his narrow apartment complex.
The filmmakers wonderfully mine anxiety from the easily relatable material of an inconvenient living situation and the consequences of mistaken identity, while Johnsen delivers a great performance as the young student whose self-righteous indignation gives way to dread and panic, as his orderly world of text books and science devolves into a manic fight for survival.
After Thursday night’s screening at the Alamo, the filmmakers and Johnsen took the stage for a charming and funny Q&A, a few highlights of which are mentioned here:
Johnsen, seeing the completed film for the first time, confessed that it was weird to see himself on screen.
Lost in translation: The filmmakers said that Frank is actually part Norwegian and part Swedish, so his accent is a particular dialect that label him as an outsider, making his isolation more stark.
Storm said that they were able to get Stormare for free, as he is the nephew of the actor we’ve come to laugh at and fear in “The Big Lebowski” and “Fargo.” The co-director said they wanted to use Stormare, whom we see little of in the film, like Jaws, you fear him even more due to his lack of visibility.
Despite the translation, the filmmakers said that the audience laughed at all of the right parts, which was heartening. About the bumbling Frank, Lundborg said that they thought the character was relatable because “probably more people are like Frank than like Harrison Ford.”
Doctor in the house: The choice to make Frank a medical student was inspired by the fact that Storm’s mother, Lundborg’s father and both of Johnsen’s parents are all doctors.
Following the screening I chatted briefly with Johnsen and Lundborg at The Highball about their movie, the difficulty of Swedish films hitting big in Sweden and the potential of an English remake. I suggested Giovanni Ribisi as a possible American Frank, which Lundborg said he could see, though I think Johnsen preferred by comparison of his appearance to a Scandinavian Justin Timberlake.
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September 8, 2010
Fall movie preview: The Top 25
Are you ready for some movies?
Weekends in fall don’t just mean football; they also represent a chance to take in some of the year’s best films as studios slowly build up toward the holiday season with strong offerings, many of which have Oscar aspirations.
As with the days leading up to pigskin season, we’ve decided to speculate as to the top 25 movies coming out this fall. We’ve only seen a few of the movies below, so, just like with football teams, we base our excitement level and expectations on coaches (directors), quarterbacks (stars), fullbacks (co-stars) and previous records.
Texas is always a pre-season favorite, and so it is with Joel and Ethan Coen, who trot out the most Texas-centric movie of the season, “True Grit.”
You can always expect the perennial big names to get love early in the fall, and so it is in movies, with powerhouse “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I” generating a ton of excitement in addition to “The Social Network,” the Aaron Sorkin-penned drama based on one of pop culture’s biggest names — Facebook.
Of course, you should never count out a crafty old coach (Clint Eastwood with “Hereafter” and Woody Allen with “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger”), but those guys always eventually give way to the up-and-comers (Darren Aronofsky with “Black Swan” and Ben Affleck with “The Town.”)
And although every team needs a strong leader, it never hurts to have a cut-up in the locker room to keep things loose (“Due Date” and “Little Fockers”).
Remember, if you don’t see your team here, a lot can change during the season. And, undoubtedly, the games are always decided on the field.
1. ‘True Grit’
The brilliant Coen brothers return to Central Texas where they made their first film, ‘Blood Simple.’ And they brought The Dude with them. Well, Jeff Bridges, at least, who portrays another country drunk, U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn, in this (the second film) adaptation of the 1968 novel by Charles Portis. Matt Damon and Josh Brolin also saddle up for the effort. (Dec. 25)2. ‘The Social Network’
We’ve all been ensnared by the opportunity Facebook affords us to brag about our vacations and stalk old high school classmates, so we might as well hear the genesis story of the social media site. Directed by David Fincher (‘Fight Club’), penned by Aaron Sorkin (‘The West Wing’) and starring Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, the film uses multiple perspectives to tell the complicated story of ambition and betrayal that led to the online behemoth. (Oct. 1)3. ‘Black Swan’
A companion piece of sorts to his fawned-over ‘Wrestler,’ Darren Aronofsky returns to a world of competitive athletic performance, but this time he excavates the more delicate ground of ballet. The psychosexual thriller earned praise at the Venice Film Festival. And, oh yeah, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis make out. So there’s that. (Dec. 1)4. ‘The Town’
Director Ben Affleck returns to his beloved Boston to play a professional bank robber torn between a world of crime and the desire to change his life — imagine a more high-stakes ‘Good Will Hunting’ without the avuncular therapist. Jeremy Renner continues his ascent as Affleck’s hardened partner in crime as they attempt to avoid the net of a savvy FBI agent (John Hamm, keeping busy in his time away from ‘Mad Men’). (Sept. 17)5. ‘Let Me In’
‘Cloverfield’ director Matt Reeves takes on the nerve-racking task of remaking cult Swedish vampire thriller ‘Let the Right One In.’ There’s no melodramatic tween gothiness in this film that eschews Team Edward vs. Team Jacob silliness for a dark tale full of coming-of-age ennui covered in blood. Makes its Austin premiere at Fantastic Fest in September. (Oct. 1)6. ‘Tron: Legacy’
Jeff Bridges steps back to the future to reprise his role as computer programmer Kevin Flynn in this sequel that took almost 30 years to make it to the big screen. The talented Bridges must have had his acting chops tested going from the realistic world of Bad Blake in ‘Crazy Heart’ to the hyper-surreal computer-generated one of this cult classic. Expect Disney’s 3D digital graphics to put to shame the at-the-time groundbreaking visuals of the 1982 original. (Dec. 17)7. ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I’
And so it is that we’ve come to the end for young Harry and his merry band from Hogwarts … not so fast. The cinematic adaptation of the seventh and final Harry Potter book has been broken into two parts. So, we’ll have to wait until next summer to see what happens in the long-awaited showdown between Harry and Lord Voldemort. But I would imagine fans of this juggernaut already know the ending. (Nov. 19)8. ‘The Fighter’
It makes sense that the man who produces ‘Entourage’ would have his boy’s back, which is exactly the case with Mark Wahlberg, who fought for years to get his friend Micky Ward’s story told on the big screen. Wahlberg, who has somehow maintained those six-pack abs that made him famous in Calvin Klein ads, is directed by David O. Russell, who’s been known to do a little sparring himself. (Dec. 10)9. ‘You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger’
A married man (Josh Brolin) with an unabashed crush on a dangerously beautiful woman (Freida Pinto); his wife (Naomi Watts) falling quickly out of love with him and in love with her hypnotic boss (Antonio Banderas); and her father (Anthony Hopkins) in the throes of a not-so-midlife crisis. All set across the pond. Classic late-era Woody Allen. (Undated October)10. ‘Burlesque’
Golden-throated Christina Aguilera makes her silver screen debut as a wide-eyed and earnest neophyte looking for a break in the City of Angels’ showy world of song and skin. Cher, who knows a little something about painted-on faces, plays the reluctant mentor and Kristen Bell the bitter diva. In a case of art imitating life, it will be interesting to see whether the veteran Cher can help Aguilera to her first taste of Hollywood success. (Nov. 24)11. ‘Buried’
Ryan Reynolds buried alive in a coffin with a lighter and a dying cell phone. Doesn’t sound like much, but director Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés will likely leave audiences gasping for their breath. We’re feeling panicked just thinking about it. Makes Austin premiere at Fantastic Fest in September. (Oct. 8)12. ‘127 Hours’
Following the worldwide success of his Academy Award-winning charmer ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ director Danny Boyle trains his lens on the American West, where mountain climber Aron Ralston (James Franco) came face-to-face with his own mortality and eventually had to sever his own arm to survive. Thankfully, the film paints a portrait of the wild-eyed spirit in his time leading up to his accident and does not simply make us endure the pain of the 127 hours for which he was trapped. (Nov. 12)13. ‘Due Date’
It’s not exactly ‘The Hangover 2,’ but comedian Zach Galifianakis plays another lovable imbecile in this buddy road-trip movie that pairs him with the always-money Robert Downey Jr. who hopefully can bring a little emotional weight to director Todd Philips’ boilerplate juvenilia. (Nov. 5)14. ‘Fair Game’
Stop if you’ve heard this one before: Sean Penn at the heart of a political controversy …   However, this time he’s just acting. Penn plays Joseph Wilson, who wrote The New York Times op-ed piece that rattled the Bush administration and led to the revelation of the true identity of his CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts). (Undated November)15. ‘Never Let Me Go’
Carey Mulligan follows up her Oscar-nominated turn in ‘An Education’ to lead this haunting film based on the novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro, author of ‘Remains of the Day.’ Despite October release, could garner more Academy attention for both Mulligan and co-star Keira Knightley if viewers can get beyond the disturbing content. (Oct. 8)16. ‘The Next Three Days’
With just his second film since 2004’s Oscar-nabbing ‘Crash,’ director Paul Haggis returns with one of the biggest stars in the business. Russell Crowe is just an ordinary family man going about his life, until that life is turned upside down when his wife (Elizabeth Banks) is sent to prison. Desperate, he turns to an ex-con (Liam Neeson) to learn how to spring his wife from the joint. (Nov. 19)17. ‘Love and Other Drugs’
A ‘Brokeback Mountain’ reunion of sorts finds thinking-person’s sex symbols Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway as director Edward Zwick gets back in touch with the rom-com territory he mined decades ago with ‘About Last Night.’ Gyllenhaal plays a ladies man not looking to be tamed until he meets the charming, headstrong and gorgeous Hathaway. The strength of the two Academy-nominated actors will likely elevate this from the schlock it could be. (Nov. 24)18. ‘Hereafter’
Re-teaming with his ‘Invictus’ leading man Matt Damon, octogenarian director and national treasure Clint Eastwood combines the quasi-supernatural with the tenderness of a chick flick in this movie that tells three slowly merging stories of people coming to terms with death. (Oct. 22)19. ‘Paranormal Activity 2’
Viral marketing helped the first installment of this micro-budget chiller gross close to $200 million worldwide. Now it’s up to director Tod Williams (‘The Door in the Floor’) to try and catch lightning in a bottle a second time. What do we know so far? The trailer shows a baby, a spooked dog and some vague surveillance video. Are you hooked? (Oct. 22)20. ‘Secretariat’
Behind every great champion is a great team. This ’70s-era period piece tells the story of Penny Chenery (Diane Lane), who, with the help of trainer Lucien Laurin (an eccentric — is there any other kind — John Malkovich) went from housewife to the top of the sport of kings in raising arguably the greatest non-human athlete. (Oct. 8)21. ‘Conviction’
One wonders if Hilary Swank has a problem playing fictionalized characters. The impossible-to-typecast two-time Oscar winner is back playing a real-life character. This time she takes on the role of Betty Anne Waters, a Massachusetts woman fighting to overturn the conviction of her brother (the always amazing Sam Rockwell) for attempted murder. (Oct. 29)22. ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’
Lucy and Edmund enter a world of fantasy to join Prince Caspian and some talking animals as they journey to the ends of the Earth in the movie based on C.S. Lewis’ novel. Care. (Dec. 10)23. ‘How Do You Know’
Reese Witherspoon stars in what has to be the first-ever romantic comedy about a softball player caught in a love triangle. The charming and funny Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd are the other points of the geometric romance directed by big softie James Brooks. (Dec. 17)24. ‘Little Fockers’
It’s hard to believe we’ve been meeting people in this campy extended family for 10 years now. Added to the original cast of characters, all back for the third installment, are Harvey Keitel and Jessica Alba, who undoubtedly add a little sneer and sexy, respectively. (Dec. 22)25. ‘Country Strong’
Clean-living yoga lover Gwyneth Paltrow really had to stretch for her role as a faded country star trying to regain her former luster after a stint in rehab. A after her turn in ‘Duets,’ Paltrow’s vocal chops were no no doubt aided by helpful instruction from ‘Country Strong’ co-star Tim McGraw. Not to mention the in-house assist from husband Chris Martin of Coldplay. (Dec. 22)Others receiving votes
‘The Company Men’
On the heels of his blue-collar thriller in September, Ben Affleck journeys into the white-collar world with this drama about a man trying to piece his life together after the loss of his standing in corporate America. Heavyweights Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones round out the cast, along with fellow Oscar-winner Kevin Costner, who appears here with yet another horribly butchered accent. (October)‘Life as We Know It’
After a first date from hell, Holly (Katherine Heigl) and Eric (Josh Duhamel) figure they’ll never have to deal with one another again. Then tragedy ensues (but don’t worry, its stench doesn’t last) and the two find themselves raising their dead friends’ baby. Hilarity (and love?) ensues. Date-movie bonus points: Men infatuated with Joan from ‘Mad Men’ get to see Christina Hendricks on the big screen. (Oct. 8)‘Morning Glory’
Combine the writer of ‘27 Dresses’ and the director of ‘Notting Hill’ and you’re bound to get a cutesy tale of empowerment and love conquering all. Here Rachel McAdams plays a young television producer trying to catch a break while managing the warring personalities of her on-air talent, played by Diane Keaton and Harrison Ford. And, along the way, everyone might just learn a little something about themselves. Earnestness overload. (Nov. 12)‘Red’
A different kind of graphic novel-based movie, ‘Red’ relies not on costumed heroes but on the chummy camaraderie of getting the old gang back together for one last caper. A talented cast of big names (Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren) will have their hands full juggling a stockpile of weaponry and clichés. Mirren’s reputation as a silver vixen gets yet another shot in the arm. Literally. (Oct. 15)‘Unstoppable’
Director Tony Scott and his favorite leading man, Denzel Washington, team up for the fifth time here, and as with last year’s ‘The Taking of Pelham 123,’ they’re back on a train. This time the story is based on actual events of a runaway train loaded with toxic cargo that could destroy a town. Washington plays the veteran train engineer about to be put out to pasture, but not before one last on-the-job lesson with his young charge, played by Chris Pine. (Nov. 12)FALL MOVIE CALENDAR
Opening dates are tentative and subject to change, especially when dealing with small arthouse movies. But the following list about Austin openings is the latest information made available to the American-Statesman.Sept. 10: ‘The Duel,’ ‘Everyone Else,’ ‘I’m Still Here,’ ‘Legendary,’ ‘Resident Evil: Afterlife,’ ‘The Romantics,’ ‘The Virginity Hit’
Sept. 17: ‘Alpha and Omega,’ ‘Catfish,’ ‘Devil,’ ‘Easy A,’ ‘The Tillman Story,’ ‘The Town,’ ‘A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop’
Sept. 24: ‘Lebanon,’ ‘Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole,’ ‘Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps,’ ‘You Again’Oct. 1: ‘Case 39,’ ‘Jack Goes Boating,’ ‘Let Me In,’ ‘The Social Network’
Oct. 8: ‘Buried,’ ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story,’ ‘Life as We Know It,’ ’ My Soul to Take,’ ‘Never Let Me Go,’ ‘Nowhere Boy,’ ‘Secretariat,’ ‘Stone,’ ‘Women Without Men’
Oct. 15: ‘Jackass 3D,’ ‘Red’
Oct. 22: ‘Hereafter,’ ‘Howl,’ ‘Paranormal Activity 2,’ ‘Stone’
Oct. 29: ‘Conviction,’ ‘Monsters, ‘Saw 3D’
Undated October: ‘The Company Men,’ ‘You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,’ ‘Waiting for Superman’Nov. 5: ‘Due Date,’ ‘For Colored Girls,’ ‘Megamind’
Nov. 12: ‘127 Hours,’ ‘Morning Glory,’ ‘Skyline,’ ‘Unstoppable’
Nov. 19: ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I,’ ‘The Next Three Days,’
Nov. 24: ‘Burlesque,’ ‘Faster,’ ‘Love and Other Drugs,’ ‘Tangled’
Undated November: ‘Fair Game,’ ‘The King’s Speech,’ ‘Welcome to the Rileys’Dec. 1: ‘Black Swan’
Dec. 10: ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader,’ ‘The Fighter’
Dec. 17: ‘How Do You Know,’ ‘The Tempest,’ ‘Tron: Legacy,’ ‘Yogi Bear’
Dec. 22: ‘Country Strong,’ ‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ ‘Little Fockers’
Dec. 25: ‘True Grit’
Dec. 29: ‘The Debt’
Undated December: ‘Miral,’ ‘Somewhere’Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Movies
September 3, 2010
'Machete' Q&A and afterparty
Photos: Scenes from the “Machete” red carpet and afterparty.
Multi-hyphenate Robert Rodriguez and about 20 members of his cast appeared on stage after the Austin premiere of “Machete” last night at the Paramount Theatre.
Alamo Drafthouse honcho Tim League introduced Rodriguez, by saying the movie everyone had just seen had to qualify as the “most bat-(expletive deleted) crazy” movie that had been shown in the “hallowed hall.” He made it clear that he meant that in a good way.
Donning his trademark bandana and cowboy hat, Rodriguez graciously thanked the crowd and confessed that from the moment of the film’s inception, he keeps in mind not just how audiences will react, but specifically how the Austin audience would react. By all signs, the crowd Thursday night loved it. Local filmmaker and philanthropist helped ignite a standing ovation for Danny Trejo — intimidating despite his surprisingly diminutive physical stature - as the 66 year-old was introduced.
After League asked Trejo what secret teddy bear quality Trejo had, Rodriguez described how his leading man constantly disarmed a sometimes nervous public with a warm hello. He also discussed the humor in seeing the look of shock and horror on parents’ faces as their children would run to greet the man they recognized as Uncle Machete from the “Spy Kids” movies.
Rodriguez discussed the evolution of his Mexploitation (a word he confessed to have invented) film and how Trejo excitedly called him several times a day for years, before the director, who is loathe to spend much time on the phone, kindly asked his would-be Mexican superhero to email or text him. SPOILER ALERT: That request led a faux steely Trejo to respond, “Machete don’t text,” a hilarious line the writer would hold onto until filming.
An ebullient Trejo has slid into the role of leading man for the first time in his career with an apparent joy and ease and made several third-person jokes about his character: “Machete makes onions cry … When the police stop Machete, they try and talk themselves out of it.” Just fancy him a Mexican Chuck Norris with blades instead of roundhouses (or hairpieces).
As for that cops line, it may have been born from a story Rodriguez told the crowd about being pulled over on the way to Austin. After the long trip from Venice, and having missed their connecting flight to Austin, Rodriguez, Trejo and one of the film’s producers rented a car and sped to Austin for the premiere. The group was pulled over, and when the producer in the driver’s seat informed the cop that he was with the director and Machete himself, the cop calmly (wisely?) removed himself from the situation and sent the men on their merry way.
Classic Machete.
But just to make it clear that leading-man status had not gone to Trejo’s head, Rodriguez said that on days of shooting during Austin’s historic heat wave last year, on days when the actor was not on the call sheet, he would be on set in his shorts passing out Gatorade to cast and crew.
Classic Trejo.
Anyone who has seen the film, or has an Internet connection, has likely heard that “Machete” has some political overtones, to put it lightly. Rodriguez briefly made it clear he believes the immigration issue (which he had intended to use as a backdrop well before the fiery public debates and the law passed in Arizona) is a red herring for a greater issue of corruption centered on economics.
Following the discussion, many of those in attendance headed over to the expansive Austin Studios lot for an after party featuring many of the low-riders used in the film, along with a DJ set by co-star Michelle Rodriguez (no relation), who was joined briefly at the turntables by Trejo and Robert Rodriguez as she pumped out a remix of “Cha Cha Cha” by the Tommy Rome Orchestra that served as a prelude to an explosion of fireworks.
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Review: 'Machete'
If you take immigration politics, religion or the sanctity of fictional human life too seriously, you will probably want to stay away from “Machete.” But if you like over-the-top action, blood by the bucketful, unapologetic B-movie homage and satirization of sensitive and nuanced political issues, Robert Rodriguez’s latest film will leave your head spinning with grindhouse glee.
Although `Machete’ was ostensibly born from the fake trailer in Rodriguez and pal Quentin Tarantino’s `Grindhouse,’ the director had long wanted to make a sort of Mexican action hero of the titular character played by Danny Trejo. At the beginning of the film, as Machete stoically sets out on a mission to save a damsel in distress, it is clear the craggy-face Mexican Federale knows his heroic place in Rodriguez’s world.
“If not us, then who?” he asks as he walks unflinchingly into a torrent of bullets.
Despite, or maybe because of, his best efforts, Machete is double-crossed on his mission by a Mexican drug cartel leader (played to hilarious effect by Steven Seagal, whose accent wavers more than his commitment). After seeing his wife and daughter slaughtered, Machete narrowly escapes, reappearing years later as a day laborer in what locals will easily recognize as Austin.
Much like Rodriguez once he finally fleshed out his original trailer, Machete finds himself in a hostile political environment stoked by anti-immigration fears and impassioned resentments.
Although doing his best to stay off the radar of the feds and the drug kingpins, our hero ends up in trouble, with more backstabbing - literally or metaphorically.After he reluctantly takes a large cash payment to assassinate right-wing state Sen. McLaughlin (Robert De Niro dipping into his “Cape Fear” accent and obviously relishing his irony-drenched role), Machete finds himself betrayed again. This time, he has been made a patsy by crooks on both sides of the border who are conspiring to keep McLaughlin and his immigrant-bashing policies in office.
Hunted by law enforcement officials (a robotic but somehow still sexy Jessica Alba) and the criminals who would like to finally silence him, Machete goes on the run, aided and abetted by an underground network run by a woman named Luz, aka Shé (Michelle Rodriguez playing a cross between Che Guevera and Subcomandante Marcos with an eye patch and killer body).
As he tries to clear his name and seek revenge against those who set him up, Machete goes on a blood-thirsty rampage that would make ’70s exploitation filmmakers blush. Heads roll as we follow Machete’s war path, examined in grotesque, tight close-ups and jarring quick cuts, extreme low angle shots popping up as quickly as rounds of bullets are popped off.Along the way Rodriguez introduces us to an absurdly rich cast - Lindsay Lohan playing a slightly fictionalized version of her public persona of an oversexed, addled adolescent, Jeff Fahey as The Most Interesting Henchman in the World, Don Johnson as an evil militia man and Cheech Marin as a dope-smoking, machine-gun-wielding priest.
It’s almost too much to digest, but fortunately the film does not give you the time to chew, it just continues to force-feed you with oversaturated morsels of gam-wrapped gunplay and gore. All the action and stereotyping kneecap the overtly political film to keep it from getting too high on the soapbox.
Though its heart seems definitely on the pro-immigration side of the fence - scenes of immigrant workers humbly putting in an honest day’s work speak to their humanity and quiet dignity that is often lost in the political debate - Rodriguez does not spend too much time sermonizing.
If there is an outright political message to be pulled from the bloody mess and cleansed for closer examination, it seems to be that dishonesty lurks everywhere and motivations can often be malleable and fluid as villains of all stripes thirst for power over honor.
But this is not intended to be an exercise in crafting policy or changing hearts and minds. It’s an experiment in a guilty, retro pleasure on which Rodriguez has as tight a grasp as Machete does on any number of pointed objects he uses throughout a movie that aspires to make him the first Mexican superhero.
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September 1, 2010
AGLIFF is ready to 'Howl'
“Howl,” the narrative feature about the obscenity trial against Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, will be this year’s centerpiece at the Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, which begins Tuesday and runs through Sept. 11 at the Alamo South.
The film, which screened earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, stars James Franco as the legendary Beat poet, Andrew Rodgers as publisher and City Lights Bookstore owner Ferlinghetti and Jon Hamm as defense attorney Jake Ehrlich. The high-profile 1957 court case centering on the published descriptions of drug use and homosexuality resulted in a landmark victory for free speech.
“Howl” is directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and is scheduled to open in Austin on Oct. 22.Also screening will be former Austinite Kyle Henry’s touching and subtly humorous short film “Fourplay: San Francisco,” which details a sexual encounter between a transvestite and a quadriplegic.
Other Austin connections at the festival include “Faith of the Abomination,” a documentary about two lesbians going undercover to infiltrate a local evangelical ministry. Ceil Melton and Han Nguyen direct.
The 23rd installment of the festival — which will feature more than 100 narrative features, documentaries and short films — celebrates two firsts this year. It will be holding a juried competition for narrative features, documentaries and shorts. And it will host two world premieres, “Freeing Bernie Baran” and “March On.”
In an interesting balance of feature and documentary, the life of Anne Lister — a land-owning lesbian in 18th-century England — is dramatized and examined in “The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister” and “The Real Anne Lister,” respectively.
Here’s a look at some of the highlights:‘The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls’
“The Flight of the Conchords” might be the most well known musical-comedy duo from New Zealand, but they are not the only such act deserving of international acclaim.
Opening-night film “The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls” features Kiwi twins Jools and Lynda Topp, who have made a career out of entertaining fans with their relentlessly joyful performances.The documentary, directed by Leanne Pooley, traces the roots of the yodeling lesbian twins who combine country music, oversized humor and their deep convictions to form a sort of Greater Tuna-Joan Baez hybrid.
Raised in the farmlands of New Zealand, the Topps, now in their 50s, began their musical careers busking for spare change. In recent years, they have become human rights activists and drawn praise from musician Billy Bragg and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, both of whom are featured in the documentary.
While the Topps claim to be musicians first, there is no denying their comedic chops.
Scenes late in the movie depicting Jools’ battle with breast cancer and her sister’s steadfast support further reveal that the twins’ laughter is fueled by love of life and one another.7 p.m. Tuesday.
‘Freeing Bernie Baran’
Often, a documentary that retells decades-old injustices simply leaves you feeling angered and heartbroken.Such is the case with “Freeing Bernie Baran,” which has its world premiere at this year’s festival. The documentary takes viewers back to the mid-’80s and the hysteria surrounding suspected abuse by day-care workers.
Caught up in the panic was Bernie Baran, a 19-year-old gay man working at the Early Childhood Development Center in rural Massachusetts who was accused by a parent with a questionable past of molesting and raping a child.
The documentary — which is slowed at times by its editing and reliance on choppy captioning — details the prosecution and subsequent conviction of Baran, who spent 21 years of his life behind bars. Baran was granted a new trial in 2006, and all charges were dropped in 2009.
Using court documents and interviews with Baran, his family and the legal team that would eventually come to his aid years after his conviction, director Daniel Alexander depicts the consequences of homophobia and political ambition.1:30 p.m. Sept. 11.
“The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister”
This lushly photographed costume drama focuses on the Briton Anne Lister, a well-to-do landowner who is often considered to be the first modern lesbian.In this production by the BBC, Maxine Peake plays Lister, who kept voluminous coded diaries during the 1800s, detailing her personal affairs.
Her first lover marries an elderly man for the financial security he can provide. And Lister has to navigate various relationships afterward, many of which pose threats to her social standing. She does not, however, give in to the pressures of the period.
Peake gives a fine performance of a woman determined to live her life as she sees fit.
7:30 p.m. Sept. 10. The documentary ‘The Real Anne Lister’ screens at noon Sept. 11.With additional material from staff writer Charles Ealy.
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Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival
When: Tuesday-Sept. 12
Where: Alamo South, 1120 S. Lamar Blvd.
Tickets: Individual screenings $10; badges start at $80.
More information: agliff.org
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August 28, 2010
Will Rodriguez's 'Machete' get Texas film incentives?
When “Machete” opens nationwide Friday, moviegoers will see crooked Texas politicians and a shoot-to-kill immigration policy, all wrapped up in Robert Rodriguez’s signature grindhouse style. Such a controversial topic has already spurred debate, but it’s the opinion of one man that counts the most when it comes to filmmaking in Texas.
A little more than a year after telling the producers of “Waco” that they need not apply for state film incentives, Bob Hudgins, the head of the Texas Film Commission, faces another big decision: whether to approve funds for the locally filmed “Machete,” which has a special sold-out Austin red-carpet premiere Thursday night at the Paramount Theatre.
Some opponents say “Machete” has an incendiary political message and shouldn’t qualify for funds, especially in light of the ruling on the “Waco” script, which Hudgins said was historically inaccurate. But backers of “Machete” — which, unlike “Waco,” is fictional — say critics are jumping to conclusions about the new movie’s content, mostly based on a fake trailer from earlier this year, and see no reason for a denial of incentives.
“Am I thrilled at the prospect of having to tell the most prolific filmmaker in the history of Texas no?” Hudgins said recently. “No! I wouldn’t be excited about doing that. If I have to make that determination, I have to make that determination. I am not saying I am. But, gosh, you know especially when these filmmakers have brought so much to Texas.”
As Hudgins knows, Rodriguez is one of the biggest filmmakers in Texas history.
Since his 1992 feature film debut, “El Mariachi,” Rodriguez’s movies have grossed more than $620 million, according to thenumbers.com, a website that tracks box office totals. That kind of success translates into jobs for Texas film professionals.
And that was the point when the Legislature passed in 2007 — and then strengthened in 2009 — a bill that would increase incentives for people who spend money making movies in Texas. (The new tax incentive program offers grants of 5 percent to 17.5 percent, based on the type of project and the amount of money spent in the state.)
But the law requires that productions meet certain standards and rules out incentives for movies that cast Texas in a negative light — a provision that legal scholars say can be broadly interpreted.
The debate over providing incentives for “Machete” started in May, when Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios released a trailer for the high-profile production, which stars Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba, Don Johnson and Steven Seagal. The trailer, which came out just after passage of a new immigration law in Arizona, featured one of the stars, Trejo, saying he had “a special Cinco de Mayo message to Arizona.” He then proceeded to use a variety of weapons in inventive ways.
The clip ignited a controversy about the content and potentially incendiary political message of the movie.
“Machete” producer and longtime Rodriguez collaborator Elizabeth Avellan said that she finds the uproar over the film unfounded and unnecessary and that she sees no reason for a denial of incentives.
“A lot of people made up a lot of stuff in terms of what the movie is about and who the bad guy is,” she said. “There were a lot of things that people misconstrued … without even knowing the script and pretending they have a script.”
Although the film features graphic violence and some nudity, Avellan said she does not think the movie sullies the image of Texas.
“You know, in every state there’s certainly been plenty of crooked politicians,” she said.
“Actually, the politician in the movie is actually a puppet of the really bad guys. The politician is just being fed and manipulated. There’s always going to be a bad guy, and he’s going to be from somewhere. It just so happens in this case the bad guy is a guy from Mexico who is in cahoots with a guy from Texas. The way Texas is portrayed is not bad at all; it’s actually kind of fun. Texas is cool.”
“It feels like this movie couldn’t have come at a more perfect time,” Rodriguez told the Hollywood Reporter, “even though we came up with it a long time ago.”
The movie, which was screened early for some journalists and had a Hollywood premiere Wednesday, includes a corrupt Texas politician, Sen. McLaughlin (De Niro), who advocates killing “the parasites” during a re-election campaign that focuses on stopping illegal immigration. It also features a character named Lt. Stillman (Johnson), who shoots immigrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in what he describes as “vigilance.”
KLBJ radio talk show host Alex Jones, who said he received a final script of the movie a few months ago, raised some of the earliest questions, telling the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in May that funding should be denied. However, he recently told the American-Statesman that he has changed his mind, even though he still thinks “Machete” paints white people as a “bunch of blood-thirsty, foaming-at-the-mouth killers” and “reflects bad on Texas.”
“I support tax incentives for industry and for film and the arts,” Jones said. “Robert Rodriguez has a right to make any movie he wants. If he’s putting out this hard-core, race war film — if he’s releasing it the way the script states — I think it should get its funding, but they had better remove any controls off of any other films. … If they let this go forward and give it funding but then block other things, it’s outrageous.”
Hudgins acknowledged that the immigration-themed trailer raised eyebrows and caused alarm, but he’s recommending that people not rush to judgment.
“For whatever reasons, Robert chose to make that trailer, and that’s his right and privilege to do,” Hudgins said.
“But I never thought that that trailer was truly representative of the story that was going to be in the final product. I have to make my determination on the final version of the film. I have to be Switzerland about it until they say, ‘Here is the final version of the film, and please watch, Bob.’”
Rodriguez has 60 days after the spending for the production of “Machete” has ended to submit the movie to the Film Commission for review. And Hudgins said it could take months to decide whether “Machete” qualifies for incentives. As with “Waco,” which focused on the 1993 Branch Davidian siege, Hudgins said the final decision rests with him.
“I have to do my best in making a determination on the intent of the Legislature. It’s not as cut-and-dry,” Hudgins said of his upcoming decision. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in that tidy little world where all the decisions were easy and black and white. But, you know, with this program comes this responsibility.”
Additional material from staff writer Gissela SantaCruz.
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July 7, 2010
Shooting movies on an iPhone 4
Last night over dinner, my friend Allen and I discussed options for me in my search for a camera that could shoot video. We were bandying about the idea of getting a Single Lens Reflex camera (probably too expensive) or maybe a Flip Camera (don’t know much about those) when Allen mentioned just upgrading my 3Gs iPhone to an iPhone 4. Being tech challenged (to say the least), I wasn’t sure about how the picture would look or how it would sound. Then I found this documentary short, “156 Turns,” which shows footage from the 2010 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. With the help of Owle Bubo camera mount, the filmmaker shot the following entirely on the iPhone 4. Looks pretty sweet. Now to bother the Statesman’s Digital Savant with some questions about which camera/phone I should purchase.
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May 21, 2010
Stupid, raunchy and pretty funny -- classic MacGruber
Most of the aforementioned sketch-based movies fall apart because they struggle to continually resuscitate a 90-second bit for 90 minutes. The results are generally corny and exhausting, as the paper-thin characters wither under the bright lights.
“MacGruber,” the first “SNL”-based movie since 2000’s failure “The Ladies Man,” separates itself from its comedy brethren by never taking itself too seriously — constantly aware of and in love with its own absurdity. It also goes beyond the tepid attempts to simply extend the sketch premise.
On “SNL,” Magruber plays on the fallibility of its would-be hero and ends in an explosion. It always feels like a non sequitur, with no backstory and no attempt to explain the character. The movie places the character squarely in the context of an 80s action farce — think a self-lampooning “Rambo” or “Commando” — as we discover that MacGruber, an insanely decorated war hero (16 Purple Hearts), has retreated to a monastic life following the death of his wife.
But all sabbaticals must come to an end. The maniacal Dieter Von Cunth (a role perfectly suited — if not perfectly written — for Val Kilmer) has taken control of a nuclear warhead and there is only one man who can save the world. Convinced to return to the U.S. from his self-banishment, MacGruber fails at piecing together a dream squad of mercenaries and ends up settling for Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and eager neophyte soldier Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe).
The story ostensibly follows MacGruber and his team’s heroic mission, but the purpose of the film is not storytelling, it’s a lesson in absurdity. The MacGruber from television is daft and bigoted, but we never get a greater sense of his character. In the film, Forte (who wrote the movie with “SNL” pals John Solomon and director Jorma Taccone) heightens the action zero to a hilarious high-status boob, an arrogant idiot lacking any trace of self-awareness. The unwavering commitment of Forte extends to his character, making them both lovable fools.
Likely due to her relationship with the writers, Wiig’s material lands right in her wheelhouse — her earnest, eager to please, skittish and slightly pitiful character echoing some of her stronger moments from “SNL.” Phillipe gamely plays MacGruber’s sidekick who is slowly worn down and charmed by the mulleted Miata-driving superclown. And Powers Boothe — B-movie machismo par excellence — may have finally found his niche, as the straight man in an absurd world.
But the movie belongs to the fearless Forte.
Ribald and unapologetic, ‘MacGruber’ tends to fall in love with some of its clever word play, and there is as much stupid and raunchy humor as any Sascha Baron Cohen movie, but it never pretends to be something it’s not. Classic MacGruber.Photos: Scenes from “MacGruber”
Hot or Not: Rank movies starring former “SNL” cast members
From the archives: Red carpet photos from the SXSW premiere of ‘MacGruber’ | SXSW ‘MacGruber’ panel wrap
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February 11, 2010
Worst. Date Movies. Ever.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, we built a gallery of some of the best date movies from the last 50 years or so. Which got me thinking … what would be the worst possible movies you could rent or take a date to see very early in a relationship.
While some of the movies on my list of Worst Date Movies are actually pretty good films, for the purposes of my list, they met the criteria: shocking, disturbing, violent or just generally inappropriate.
You can check out my list (compiled with help from all-too-willing co-workers) here.
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November 20, 2009
The movie theater wants to kill you
We all have our guilty pleasures, whether it’s “The Real Housewives,” Adam Lambert’s new album, the “Twilight” series of novels/movies. But none of those can kill you (at least not quickly).
As it turns out, mine can. Maybe not immediately, but it doesn’t look like it would take long.
I love movie popcorn and sodas. I can’t stay away no matter how hard I try (granted, I don’t try very hard). Even if I’m at an 11 a.m. press screening, I still need my fix. Usually, I end up in massive pain later in the evening and promise never to do it again. Until the next time. When I do.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the massive portions and artificial butter (I’m not looking at you Alamo Drafthouse) is not health food. But the first study in 15 years by advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest proves that digging on popcorn and soda at the movies not only is bad for you, it may be one of the worst things imaginable. (Not to mention the hit on your wallet is almost as bad as the hit to your heart.)
The Los Angeles Times reports today that, “A medium-sized popcorn and medium soda at the nation’s largest movie chain pack the nutritional equivalent of three Quarter Pounders topped with 12 pats of butter, according to a report released today by the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest.”
Matthew, we have a problem.
From the LATIMES.com story:
The group’s second look at movie theater concessions — the last was 15 years ago — found little had changed in a decade and a half, despite theaters’ attempts to reformulate. CSPI bought multiple servings of popcorn from the three largest movie chains, Regal Entertainment Group, AMC and Cinemark, and had them analyzed in an independent lab. It found that a Regal medium popcorn — 20 cups — contains 1,200 calories, 60 grams of saturated fat, and 980 milligrams of sodium. That’s without the buttery topping that can be drizzled — or poured — on the popcorn, which adds another 200 calories and 3 grams of saturated fat per 1.5 tablespoons. An AMC medium popcorn did better because of its smaller size — nine cups — at 590 calories and 33 grams of saturated fat, and a 14-cup Cinemark medium was 760 calories and just 3 grams of saturated fat (in both cases, before adding buttery topping). One problem is that Regal and AMC, the two largest chains, pop their popcorn in coconut oil, which is about 90% saturated fat, noted Jayne Hurley, senior nutritionist at Washington-based CSPI. Cinemark, the third-largest chain, now pops its corn in canola oil, which explains its much lower saturated fat levels. “Cinemark gets a thumbs-up for switching,” Hurley said. In two positive steps, trans fatty acids were not found in the samples, Hurley added, and theaters have stopped using hydrogenated oils in the butter-flavored toppings.
Looks like I will be sneaking in nuts and bottled water from here on out. At least, that’s the plan for now.
Read the full piece here.
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Movie review: 'The Messenger' (Grade: A)
You don’t need to witness battles on the screen to understand the horrors and complexities of war, as evidenced by screenwriter Oren Moverman’s incredible directorial debut, “The Messenger.”
Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) has returned from the war in Iraq a decorated hero, but, with multiple injuries, he must serve out the final three months of his tour stateside. Relegated to the bleak and thankless work of casualty notification, Montgomery is charged with visiting the homes of those who have lost a family member. His stern commanding officer and companion on the ominous visits, Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), explains to the disciplined but conflicted soldier that his new job is about “character” and one that must be done “before you can understand it.”
Neither of the men has the benefit of training in grief counseling and their job is simply to inform, not to engage the victims’ families with any level of sympathy.
Saddened by the loss of the girlfriend he left behind to go serve his country, and haunted by the vivid images of war, Montgomery has only two companions in his new life in rural New Jersey: a pager that goes off at all hours to alert him to his latest assignment and Stone, whom he views with a mixture of fear, incredulity and disdain. Throughout the movie, the pager’s piercing beep acts as a sword of Damocles, an audible device that leaves the audience on the same edge as the soldier.
The camera trails Montgomery and Stone as they enter each residence to notify families of their tragic loss, a view that offers the audience the soldiers’ perspective on this horrible journey of endurance and duty. Stone insists that the men speak only to the next of kin (NOK, as he regimentally describes them), as they gut-wrenchingly deliver news that will forever change the lives of the people they visit. Feeling the pull of empathy, Montgomery struggles with the rote and bloodless delivery of a message that carries the weight of death.
As he battles to reconcile his humanity with the emotional detachment required of the job — a function that Stone has assimilated so deeply that he seems to have no connection with his fellow man — Montgomery finds a kindred spirit in Olivia Pitterson (Samantha Morton), a grieving military widow and mother of one who is trying to come to terms with the death of her husband, a man whose soul she felt had already been lost to the brutality of life at war. Lodged somewhere between the world of a soldier and that of a civilian, Montgomery enters an awkward courtship with Pitterson that is an odd blend of infatuation and desperation.
The centerpiece of the film is the relationship between Stone and Montgomery, both of whom are trying to understand their place in a world of which they do not feel a part. Stone’s stoic persona is belied by a manic attitude toward women and a self-destructive tendency that has him sitting precariously on the edge of the wagon. Montgomery simply wants to feel again. As the cold relationship between commanding officer and his charge takes on fraternal warmth, both men make strides toward a deeper self-discovery and reconciliation of their part in war.
The script, co-written by Alessandro Camon, offers a loose framework for a movie that features amazing, award-worthy performances. Harrelson, who has a history of playing crazed characters, hits the perfect note in a role that displays his ability to be wildly entertaining and reflective at the same time. Foster (who has shown chops in supporting roles in “3:10 to Yuma” and “Six Feet Under”) meanwhile is simply stunning, as powerful when silent as he is when speaking.
Credit goes to Moverman for allowing the movie to unfold organically with lengthy scenes that let the open wounds of its characters breathe, as they attempt to slowly repair themselves. While its subject manner is dark and discomfiting, the movie has a robust humor, and hopefulness that glows with humanity and grace.
Moverman and his cast and crew have created a stirring masterpiece that allows audiences to inhabit a side of war we almost never see, and reveals the endurance of the human spirit and our need to find solace, love and comfort in our fellow humans even when we feel most vulnerable and conflicted.
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November 19, 2009
Movie review: 'The Blind Side' (Grade: C)
As “The Blind Side” opens, video of one of the most gruesome hits in NFL history rolls. For anyone with a passing interest in football, the scene of the maniacal Lawrence Taylor snapping quarterback Joe Theismann’s leg like a twig is hauntingly familiar. One that will make you cover your eyes in the theater.
But the most jarring thing about the opening of the movie is not the visuals, but the audio. Narrating the play-by-play and the backstory of the injury’s impact on the way football would be played in the future is the syrupy Southern female voice of Sandra Bullock’s Leigh Anne Tuohy.
Despite the classic NFL footage, there should be no mistake, however, that this movie is about the person telling the story, not the game itself. (Indeed, the paucity of actual gridiron action makes it difficult to classify this as a sports movie.)
Based on Michael Lewis’ investigative journalism that created the nonfiction book of the same name, “The Blind Side” tells the story of the Tuohy family and the young man they saved from abject poverty and the perilous streets of West Memphis.
Massive African American teenager Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) has spent his adolescence bouncing around friends’ houses, an orphan whose crackhead mother, while still living, has long since lost the ability to raise her son. He is symbolic of the failure of the Memphis public school system and seems to have run out of chances.
The last person in his corner seems to be an older gentleman who has taken an interest in saving the child and getting him enrolled along with his son in the Wingate Christian School. The overeager football coach at the private institution appeals to the Christian charity of the school’s administrators, persuading them to accept on probationary terms the kid with an IQ of 80 known as “Big Mike.”
But Mike’s salvation does not come simply from enrollment. A foreigner in the pristine world of his new school, Mike is still homeless, adrift and left with seemingly one pair of raggedy shorts and a shirt. His new classmates are almost as scared of the new mute beast in their school as he is of them.
All of that changes on a wet, winter evening when Leigh Anne and husband Sean Tuohy (an effective and subtle Tim McGraw), whose two children attend Wingate, spot Big Mike wandering the streets and decide to pick him up and take him home.
Although she has trouble ascertaining the history of Mike, the iron-willed Leigh Anne is determined to create a brighter future for the young man. Thus begins the amazing transformation of Big Mike from gentle giant to a warmly accepted member of the Tuohy family.
In the face of latent racism from her country-club friends, and with the support of her deferential and kindly husband, Leigh Anne not only helps Mike accept the love of his new family, but also teaches him how to play football, in a scene that borders on the ridiculous. Despite the accuracy of much of the story, the film still suffers from a saccharine overdose and unnecessary touches meant to lend credibility. Young actor Jae Head, who plays S.J. Tuohy, mugs with an over-the-top performance as Big Mike’s adopted little brother and best friend. And the parade of college coaches who play themselves demonstrated why these men work on the sidelines and not on movie sets. Bullock, on the other hand, plays the nouveau riche take-no-guff matriarch with equal parts toughness and sensitivity that represents a refreshing departure from some of her past rom-com fare.
Much of the feel-good film would be impossible to digest, its story seemingly cobbled from a pile of clichés, if it weren’t for the veracity of its narrative. As Lewis’ book explains, Oher suffered from extreme learning difficulties that left him years behind his peers in a developmental sense. Despite the brutal surroundings of his childhood, Oher was not filled with a rage or ferocity. Instead, he became a prisoner trapped in his own body, his heart and mind seemingly inscrutable even to himself. The love, support and encouragement he received from his adoptive family taught him confidence and gave him purpose that led him to a life in the highest realm of football. (Oher was eventually drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in the first round of the NFL draft.)
In the movie as in real life, it seems impossible to penetrate Mike’s thoughts, leaving him an enigmatic cipher. Writer-director John Lee Hancock (“The Rookie”) instead chooses to tell his story solely through the eyes of the loving but self-righteous Leigh Anne, who, in an act of false humility at the end of the film, asks if she is in fact “a good person.” By this time, it seems the answer is obvious, and the question lends her and the film more an air of self-satisfaction than altruism.
Watch the trailer for “The Blind Side” here.
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November 13, 2009
Movie review: 'Splinterheads' laughs fall flat
Writer/director Brant Sersen had a festival hit on his hands in 2004 with the ridiculous “Blackballed,” a movie that featured the comedic talents of Rob Corddry, Rob Riggle, Jack McBrayer and others. Unfortunately, Sersen’s cinematic offering this year did not offer the laughs of his previous effort.
In “Splinterheads,” Justin Frost (newcomer Thomas Middleditch) is in a mild state of arrested development. Unable to get his life on track, the twentysomething is stuck in a rut in his sleepy New York town, fiddling with delusions of karate-expert grandeur while toiling aimlessly as a yard-boy with his friend Wayne Chung — a name that is a decent indicator of the humor in the film: simple and expected.
Still living at home with his widowed mother, Justin is a bit of a man-child, full of whimsy and insecurity. His safe little world is shattered by the appearance of Galaxy (Rachel Taylor), a beautiful con artist and carnival worker who eventually introduces him to a world of mild adventure (in the form of geocaching) and risk-taking.
Middleditch, a ringer for Seth Meyers with a tinge of Jonathan Richman, is at his best when he is playing the more high-status comedic character — lampooning Chung and his mother’s ex-boyfriend, a police sergeant played by the ubiquitous Christopher McDonald.
Maybe Middleditch is too old, maybe he is too handsome, but he is just not believable, or very likeable, as the nervous momma’s boy. Additionally, the entire conceit of a boy meeting a carnival splinterhead who teaches him how to get on with his life just seems a little too absurd to swallow. It feels like a teen movie stuck between goofy adolescence and twentysomething self-discovery, not quite here and not quite there.
The movie does have a certain charm. Middleditch gives a nice if at times awkward performance, and Taylor is serviceable, although far too beautiful to be a believable “splinterhead” — but the movie struggles too often, forcing the wrong comedic note and losing the audience’s interest with its fairly ridiculous storyline. If a plot line is going to be as cute and absurd as that of “Splinterheads,” it either needs more of an adolescent feel or needs to deliver more laughs.
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October 16, 2009
Review: 'A Serious Man'
In many of their previous movies, Joel and Ethan Coen have subjected their protagonists to all manner of inanity and danger. At times these characters fall victim to their own faulty decisions, while at others they are battered by the uncontrollable forces swirling around them.
But never has a Coen brothers character suffered so greatly with so little in the way of response as Larry Gopnik (Tony-nominated actor Michael Stuhlbarg ) in “A Serious Man.” This fact could possibly be the impetus behind their tongue-in-cheek line in the credits that “no Jews were harmed in the making of this film.” That and the fact that many of the Jewish characters here are drawn as broad caricatures. But, then again, rarely are the Coens’ characters not.
Adhering to the quoted words of 11th-century French biblical scholar Rashi at the beginning of the movie, Gopnik attempts to “receive with simplicity everything that happens” to him. But even Job could only suffer so much before questioning God.
In 1967, far from the joy and liberation of the Summer of Love’s epicenter, trapped in a geometrically rigid Midwestern neighborhood, one seemingly reminiscent of the Coens’ childhood in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Gopnik is trying to live a dutiful life as a college math professor and married father of two, but he is constantly besieged by matters both trivial and serious that have left him in an existential funk.
After trying to explain the theory of Schrodinger’s Cat to his class, an apt metaphor for the ambiguity that surrounds Gopnik’s search for spiritual answers, the resigned professor admits to a student who has failed a recent exam that “the stories I give you in class are fables — even I don’t understand the dead cat.”
That which confounds Gopnik does not end with the cat. At home, his wife says that she wants a divorce, not because of anything that her meek husband has done, but simply because she has fallen in love with someone else, the pompous and absurd Sy Ableman (a pitch-perfect Fred Melamed).
Gopnik’s children, meanwhile, are doing nothing to make matters better. His young son, Danny (Aaron Wolff), in a haze of marijuana, TV addiction and Jefferson Airplane, is dragging his feet along the path to his bar mitzvah. His teenage daughter, Sarah (Jessica McManus), is consumed with vanity and the desire for a nose job, which she attempts to expedite by stealing money from her father.
To heighten the domestic aggravations, the Gopniks have been saddled with Larry’s brother Arthur (Richard Kind), who is sleeping on the couch, at least when he is not furtively and frantically working on his probability chart of the universe or hogging the bathroom to drain his sebaceous cyst. Yes, the uncle with a cyst on his neck is actually a pain in the family’s neck. Sometimes the Coens just can’t help but be cheeky.
Trapped in his familial nightmare by a hostile goy neighbor on one side and the sultry temptations of a beautiful neighbor on the other, a sin to which he will not let himself fall prey, Gopnik feels the world closing in on him. And when his wife suggests that he move with his brother to the Jolly Roger motel (more ironic winking), Gopnik hardly raises his voice in protest.
At work, things are no less treacherous. The aforementioned failing student attempts to bribe Gopnik for a passing grade.
Gopnik also discovers that an anonymous letter writer has been lobbying against his receiving tenure due to his alleged “moral turpitude.” And his office phone will not stop ringing with calls from a man at the Columbia Record Club, asking about late payments on Santana’s “Abraxas.”
Oy vey.
Confused and scared, Gopnik turns to his local rabbis for answers, but their tepid offers of assistance consist of obtuse riddles, much like the ancient (and made-up) Yiddish riddle with which the Coens begin their film, and empty rhetoric about Gopnik’s need to change his perspective.
Gopnik, who has made a living working in theorems and proofs, cannot accept that God might perpetually vex us with questions without providing answers. And there is no equation by which moral correctness plus humility equals peace or any other reward, no matter how serious a man one might be.
Despite being manipulated and deceived, Gopnik, betraying a mix of Jason Bateman and Woody Allen trapped in Joaquin Phoenix’s body, can only muster raised eyebrows and a pursed mouth in response to his many injustices. You want to grab the pitiful Gopnik by his shoulders and shake him into action.
The Coens’ script and the eye of longtime collaborator, cinematographer Roger Deakins, paint a surrealistically vivid world stuffed with symbolism and myriad spiritual dilemmas, where suffering is elevated to art.
But the overwrought sadism leaves one feeling not empathy with Gopnik and his universal struggle but disgust.
There is no doubt that the Coens, masters of this cinematic universe, want to see how much torment they can foist on one helpless man. But, after the chuckles die, the question is why?
And just when you think that Gopnik has found some respite from his many ailments, a new storm (or two) is brewing on the horizon. As it always seems to be. Why? That’s just life.
Oy vey, indeed.
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September 24, 2009
Review: 'Big Fan'
I couldn’t quite decide what to make of “Big Fan.” In his directorial debut, writer Robert Siegel (“The Wrestler”), paints a fully realized and natural portrait of a sports-obsessed nerd living in his own world, doing his best to block out the noise coming from anything besides football. Patton Oswalt, although not a sports obsessive, brings a strong understanding of fandom, thanks to his love of movies and comics, to the role, but he seems too clever for the sad-sack character at times.
While it is easy to understand the character’s disdain for the monotony of suburban Staten Island life, and even easier to laugh at the insider world of sports talk show geekdom Siegel creates, Oswalt’s is not a sympathetic character. I never really cheered for him, though I never completely held him in contempt, leaving me almost apathetic by the movie’s dramatic climax.
Siegel’s gritty direction and naturalistic script harken back to some 70s films, and his anti-hero is reminiscent of a nerdy Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver.” But the stakes are just too low here to make the conceit work.
Below is my official review that runs in Friday’s paper:
With apologies to the late Karl Marx, in modern American society, sport has become the opiate of the masses.
The common fan may find in sports fandom a refuge from day-to-day life, a chance to escape from responsibilities and obligations for a handful of hours a week.
But true junkies cannot be satiated. Unfulfilled by simply indulging a passion, they become consumed by it. They feed themselves not just on the games, but on the ancillary compulsions that come with fanaticism, such as the over-caffeinated world of sports talk radio.
In “Big Fan,” Paul Aufiero’s (Patton Oswalt) love of the New York Giants doesn’t offer a diversion from his life; it is his life.
With his directorial debut, which he also penned, Robert Siegel ventures into the dark places where the sports addict lives — in Aufiero’s case, the airwaves and his mother’s house.
Thirty-five-year-old Paul has done his best to remove any substantive distractions from his life, allowing him to focus all of his time on his obsession with the Giants and their star linebacker Quantrell Bishop.
Paul doesn’t find working in a tiny parking garage toll booth in Staten Island to be a mind-numbing endeavor, simply an opportunity for him to obsess over the tepid scripts he uses for his nightly calls to a local sports radio show.
His life might be adrift and pointless, but his calls are tight and focused. With each successive call, Paul, the public defender and champion of his gridiron heroes from the Meadowlands, feels his sense of singular purpose reinforced, a feeling amplified by his friend Sal (Kevin Corrigan), who holds him in high esteem for his trivial linguistic feats on the radio.
Paul’s obnoxious mother feels the time has long since passed for her youngest son to leave the safety of her house, from which he makes most of his late-night calls to the Sports Dog radio program. She wants him to find a career, maybe even meet a “nice girl,” but Paul explains that he is happy with his life. He doesn’t want to lead the mundane life that his family wishes for him.
Oswalt, with his sympathy for nerdy underdogs and biting disregard for the inauthentic, imbues Paul with an ironic and caustic haughtiness as he dismisses his Chinese food packet-hoarding mother and ambulance-chasing attorney brother. Though Oswalt brings a rich and tender humanity to a character for whom we reluctantly want to cheer, the script paints Paul’s family in grotesque caricature, leaving one with the feeling that Siegel has crossed the line from sardonic satire to a sort of unnecessary class warfare.
Siegel and Oswalt do begin to bend sympathies towards their lovable loser. And though he might lack ambition, at least Paul knows his place in the world, comfortable with who he is and in what he believes. That is, until a night when his sad fairy-tale life as gridiron troubadour comes crashing into the realization that, despite his imagined fellowship with the Giants, he is not a part of their world.
After catching a glimpse of their hero Bishop, Paul and Sal follow him and his entourage to a Manhattan strip club. But things go terribly wrong when Paul approaches his hero, a move of clumsy naivete that eventually lands him in the hospital courtesy of a beating from Bishop.
Just when it seems comfortable to find humor in this innocuous loser, the movie takes a turn from pitifully funny to the darker places of the junkie experience. A slave to his passion, Paul refuses to lay blame at the foot of the symbol of his sacred obsession, despite the protestations and meddling of his family and the authorities. Slowly, Siegel’s anti-hero concocts a misdirected revenge fantasy, the vague nature of which works to build a discomfiting suspense at a slow boil.
As Paul ultimately attempts to exact vengeance for a humiliating slight brought on by the public revelation of the extent of his addiction, he exclaims, “You didn’t have to be mean. Everybody’s always so mean.”
Unfortunately, Siegel’s ambivalence toward the character produces little in the way of empathy, and the audience will likely be glad to let this unfortunate junkie return to the small box he has created of his life.
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September 3, 2009
Alamo Drafthouse offers free refills. Who knew?
Apparently I have not been getting to the bottom of my sodas at the Alamo Drafthouse fast enough of late, or not reading the fine print, to notice that the beloved Austin institution now offers free refills on its $3.99 sodas.
My attention was brought to the matter during an ACL-related comment back-and-forth on Austinist. Thanks, Seth, for the heads up. The folks at the Alamo told me they’ve been offering the refills “for some time” but did not offer an exact date.
So, while I am not condoning drinking hundreds upon hundreds of empty calories at the next screening you attend (nor am I going all New York City Health Department on you), I just figured, if you’re like me and love popcorn and soda at the movies, you should have as much information as possible the next time you hit the Alamo.
And, before anyone complains about paying $3.99 fro a bottomless soda, have you seen the prices at the multiplex lately?
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August 4, 2009
Blindsided by Sandra Bullock's new movie
It’s pretty difficult for me to do this, as I am sure Sandra Bullock and John Lee Hancock, both fellow Texans, are really good people with great intentions, but …
The trailer for “The Blind Side,” the Hancock-helmed movie starring Bullock is simply astounding.
It’s like “Webster” meets “Wildcats.”
Hancock, who directed the Texas-based films “The Alamo” (underrated) and “The Rookie” (solid showing), has taken half of Michael Lewis’ deft, solidly researched book about football in America and the rise of Michael Oher, “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” and seemingly transformed it into a schlocky melodrama where the upper-class Caucasian family is portrayed as a team of superheroes in their rescue of the African-American adolescent. (It is undoubtedly a compelling story, and Oher, now plays for the Baltimore Ravens following an illustrious playing career at Ole Miss. My problem is with the telling — as previewed in this clip — not the story.)
While the trailer does seem to represent the facts of Lewis’ book, as relayed to me by a fan of the work, it has all of the subtlety of a punch to the stomach. And Southern accents as nuanced as a punch to the head. A friend of mine who has read the book and watched the trailer said, “It looks like the movie excises all the intelligence and subtlety of the book … If I were unfamiliar with the source material, I would think from the trailer that the book was some kind of inspirational novel instead of a work of serious sports journalism.”
Careful … it may give you goosebumps … on your vomit.Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment Categories: Movies
July 23, 2009
Twitter-sized reviews of recent movie releases
Let’s face it, your attention span ain’t what it used to be. Neither is mine, for that matter. So, I went ahead and cribbed this bit (pun intended) from colleague Chad Swiatecki and have decided to give you easily digestible, to-the-point reviews of several of the recent releases I have seen. Maybe I will save you $8, or maybe I will help plan your weekend. Besides, many people complain movie reviews give too much of the movie away. In this format … impossible.
If you want some full-sized reviews of recent movies, check out the excellent work of Statesman film critic Chris Garcia.
- “(500) Days of Summer”:Woody Allen starter kit for Gen “WHY?” Strong showing by JGL, but female characters unrealized. Realistic-ish but not a 1st date movie. (B)
- “Bruno”: Satire is cutting and scary. And Cohen has serious guts to pull some of it off. Unfortunately more offensive shock comedy than satire (C+)
- “Away We Go”: Writing is extremely self-satisfied. Hard to believe 30-somethings going thru 20-something ennui. Rudolph is great. Twee soundtrack (C)
- “Public Enemies”: Beautiful movie with characters I could never really care about. Acting’s strong, especially Cotillard & Crudup. Film needs more action. (C+)
- “Food, Inc.”: Important film that delivers a startling message without being doomy & gloomy. May make you take stock of what you put on your plate. (A)
- “The Hangover” As with many comedies, the 3rd act drags on a bit too long & stalls at times. Could use more editing. Still a funny shaggy-dog story. (B):
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June 9, 2009
Luckenbach is 'Pickin' for the Record'
Did you know there is a Guinness World Record for Largest Guitar Ensemble? Well, there is. And it’s not held by the Gypsy Kings. Actually, it’s held by “the Germans,” according to a press release we received today.
Regardless of who holds the record, it seems like Texas should own the damn thing. That’s why the Kerrville Folk Festival and Cheatham Street Warehouse have teamed up with historic Luckenbach to break the record while benefiting the Voices of a Grateful Nation Project, a group that assists the troops and their families.
OK, the details. The record as it stands now is 1,802 guitar players picking simultaneously. So, the folks in Luckenbach are calling on all guitar players, even those who can only play a handful of chords, to register to break the record and then head out to Luckenbach on August 23 to try and set the bar so high that nobody can top it.
The current record was set while the aforementioned 1,802 pickers played “Smoke on the Water” on June 26, 2007, in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, Germany, led by the band Party Blues in Bb. Oh, the Germans. What fairly simple tune should the Texas group select as its record setter? “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”? “Home on the Range”? Or, maybe the obvious, “Luckenbach, Texas,” led by Willie Nelson or Shooter Jennings? Register by July 15 at the Voices of a Grateful Nation Project Web site.
Check out what appears to be video of the current record holders doing their thing.
The video below seems to be of a group in Poland trying to claim the record earlier this year. And failing. Hmm. I smell a controversy. If anything it may be the Guinness Record of people butchering the lyrics of a Deep Purple song. (Be the 17th person to ever watch it … now!)
And now, just for grins … Waylon and Willie and the boys …
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April 15, 2009
First look at Tarantino's 'Inglourious Basterds'
If you saw “American Idol” last night, you may have seen “Idol” mentor-of-the-night and superfan Quentin Tarantino offer a sneak peek of never-seen-before footage from his upcoming movie “Inglourious Basterds,” starring Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson and Mike Myers (once again, Tarantino revives the career of an aging star). The movie will be out later this summer.
Today, Miramax released that clip in its entirety. Apparently it was “too hot” for prime time TV. As part of the clip’s intro, Tarantino orders another take shot of a scene in the movie because, as he has his crew chant along, “We love making movies.” He certainly does.
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April 2, 2009
"Adventureland" offers unexpected ride
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February 23, 2009
Prince throws it down Oscar-style
While I was busy throwing down a live chat here in Austin last night, my old friend (and former director in a high school musical production of “Godspell”) Whitney Pastorek was in Hollywood getting moved by The Purple One. She covered the awards show and the little Minnesotans after-party for Entertainment Weekly. I envy her, but not her feet. Below is a bit of her piece, the whole of which can be found here.
There are very few artists for whom your Aunt Whittlz will wait in a chilly parking lot for two hours, PopWatchers, but Prince is one of them. To borrow a phrase from the Airborne Toxic Event — one of the few acts the Purple One didn’t cover during tonight’s public house party — it was sometime around midnight when those of us assembled outside Hollywood club Avalon were let in from the cold, and my feet, tortured by high heels since sometime around noon, had lost their will to live. Though I’d later be given a handwritten list that included names like Eliza Dushku, Taye Diggs, Alicia Keys, and Queen Latifah, the only celeb in sight at this lonesome hour was Baron Davis, who plays basketball. And yet I waited, patiently, to be summoned inside. For he is Prince. And he operates on his own time, a time that my colleagues estimated at approximately two hours later than hip-hop time, which means approximately four hours later than the time you and I are expected to maintain. Which is fine. Because he is Prince, and I think he actually might be able to buy the Greenwich Mean if he wants.
Follow me after the jump for the rundown on the funkiest Oscar party of the night, sponsored by LotusFlow3r.com, a new website named for one of the three albums Prince is expected to release this year. Along with his own time zone, Prince is also operating in his own music industry these days, and LotusFlow3r — note also the paisley-riffic spelling— will be your home for all things purple in the days to come.
It was 1:39 a.m. when the band at last took the stage, and teased with the opening chords of “Purple Rain” before transforming them into a funky jam anchored — as was much of the night — by the extraordinarily hardcore blues-harp blow of Frenchman Frederic Yonnet. At 1:44, the tiny guitar god emerged, clad in what looked to be fancy black pajamas with mirrored embellishments at the neckline and cuffs, twirling a bedazzled cane with panache before picking up his axe for a groove that wandered through Allen Toussaint’s “Yes We Can Can” and some very “Also Sprach Zarathustra” aaaahs before bizarrely landing in a square-on cover of “Let’s Go.” Which is a Cars song. Which was pretty much how the whole evening went.
“Turn the lights down, please,” Prince asked, after sending a shout-out to Penelope Cruz, Taraji Henson, and Esmeralda Spalding, all of whom were apparently watching from a balcony where your intrepid reporter was not allowed to go. Down on the ground, the vibe was less fancy Oscar soiree, more junior prom. “I’m just gonna let this breathe,” he continued. “Y’all all right? This is what we do at house parties. I’m the DJ tonight.” And DJ he did — except, you know, with his guitar — right into a mashup of “Crimson and Clover” and “Wild Thing,” which led to “7,” the opening voiceover of which sent scads of party-goers onto the half-full dance floor to tear things up. The bar had closed, but its tenders remained, silhouetted against the mirrors, nodding their heads coolly to the music. “I’m here, and you’re here,” Prince said. “That’s all we need to have a party, right?”
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February 19, 2009
Hey, Benjamin Button, Forrest Gump called. He wants his bit back.
Although it is up for quite a few Academy Awards this weekend, there seems to be quite a bit of backlash to the old-Hollywood whimsy and nostalgia of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Beyond the cinematic gimmicks and self-indulgent length of the film, there are also the disturbing corralaries between “Button” and “Forrest Gump.” (A friend of mine, dismayed at my lack of “research,” wrote angrily, or is it high-and-mightily, to inform me that Eric Roth had been the screenwriter for both “Button” and “Gump,” a point my “sarcastic article” failed to mention. Although I feel like this fact makes it even more shocking and sad that the two movies had such similarities, my friend seemed to think it excused Roth or made me a lazy idiot. Or both. I agree with neither.)
Funny - Funny VideosPermalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment Categories: Movies
January 28, 2009
Parents of 'Slumdog' actors feel exploited
The feel-good movie of the year, “Slumdog Millionaire,” is being tainted with a bit of nastiness of late. According to The Telegraph, the parents of two of the young actors who played Latika and Salim as children believe the producers were dishonest and did not live up to their end of the deal vis-a-vis salaries.
[From the Telegraph]
“The child actors’ parents have accused the hit film’s producers of exploiting and underpaying the eight-year-olds, disclosing that both face uncertain futures in one of Mumbai’s most squalid slums.”
…
The film’s British director, Danny Boyle, has spoken of how he set up trust funds for Rubina and Azharuddin and paid for their education. But it has emerged that the children, who played Latika and Salim in the early scenes of the film, were paid less than many Indian domestic servants.
Rubina was paid £500 for a year’s work while Azharuddin received £1,700, according to the children’s parents.
However a spokesman for the film’s American distributors, Fox Searchlight, disputed this saying the fees were more than three times the average annual salary an adult in their neighbourhood would receive. They would not disclose the actual sum. “
Looks like someone should have negotiated some back-end points. I jest, of course, but it is a sticky and predictable situation. The movie is obviously making millions and millions of dollars, and now those who were paid well but not exorbitantly want their cut.
Read the full story here.
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January 27, 2009
Mickey Rourke dating his 'daughter'?
As indicated by its place in my top three films of 2008, I am a big fan of director Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler.” The stripped-down beauty of the film and the incredible performance of Mickey Rourke, who has since been nominated for an Academy Award, make Aronofsky’s low budget movie a must-see.
When I watched it, I had the feeling that the movie was littered with non-actors and tons of improvisation. Turns out, the movie was even more realistic than I imagined. Check out Terry Gross’s interview with Aronofsky from Fresh Air on Tuesday, wherein he discusses his reasons behind making the film, the process of shooting, and working with Rourke. You will come away with an even greater respect for Aronofsky and Rourke. For a good laugh, pay close attention around the 24:45 mark, when Gross has to very nervously and prudely utter the words “strip club.”
As an aside, apparently the 52 year-old Rourke was photographed making out with Evan Rachel Wood the other night following the SAG Awards. You know, the same 21 year-old Wood who plays Rourke’s daughter in “The Wrestler.”
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January 9, 2009
Mickey Rourke delivers emotional bodyslam in 'The Wrestler'
If you haven’t yet heard or read about Mickey Rourke’s performance in “The Wrestler,” you’ve likely been living under a rock for the better part of a month.
For those under the age of 30, Rourke may be known as little more than a washed-up actor with a busted face that reads like a roadmap of the history of bad plastic surgery. But 25 years ago, Rourke (“Diner,” “Rumblefish”) was considered one of the rising stars in American cinema, compared at times to a young Marlon Brando. Hard living and bad choices, however, derailed Rourke’s career, and he disappeared from major films until returning to public consciousness in 2005’s “Sin City,” in which he gave an amazing performance.
Thanks to the prescient and bold decision making by director Darren Aronofsky (“Requiem for a Dream,” “Pi”), Rourke returns to the screen now as a washed-up wrestler looking to regain his former glory. The ultimate act of art imitating life.
Randy “The Ram” Robinson was once the darling of the wrestling world, a pop culture icon along the lines of Hulk Hogan. We learn his story through a montage of old wrestling posters at the film’s beginning, but by the time the lights come up, we see that his star has fallen. Hard. He is now relegated to wrestling on a minor circuit with starry-eyed youngsters, has-beens and never-were’s, struggling to make enough money between bouts and part-time stock boy work at a grocery store, to pay the rent on his dilapidated trailer home.
Rourke’s vulnerability, self-effacing humor and intensity reveal a man who has only ever had one talent in life, and the lengths to which he will go to recoup his old life. Along the way, Robinson struggles to maintain a tenuous relationship with his daughter and find a kindred spirit in the form of a stripper (Marisa Tomei), who is also seeing a career using her body fade into non-existence. (Although, beyond the vacant eyes and self-loathing, it is a bit hard to square the incredibly gorgeous Tomei as washed-up.) Behind the steroid-infused muscle, spray tans and spandex pants, The Ram is a self-aware and wounded animal, fighting for a life in the ring, the only place he can truly feel deserving of love.
The bleak and intimate cinematography and handheld camera allow moviegoers a voyeuristic look into The Ram’s world, following this crippled warrior documentary-style in his sad slog back to the middle. While the film is a heartbreaking character study, it differs quite a bit from standard indie fare with its intense use of violence. (This is a wrestling movie after all.) So, make no mistake about what you’re getting into when you go see “The Wrestler” this weekend (which you should); there are scenes containing intense violence and no small amount of blood and gore. But the real pain lies in the heart and mind of The Ram and is brought forth by Rourke in a way that no other actor I can imagine could possibly match. (And, to think, some studio folks wanted Nicolas Cage to play the role. Yikes.)
Get showtimes for “The Wrestler” in Austin here.
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January 7, 2009
'Doubt': Streep and Hoffman at their heavyweight bests
When I heard that Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep were going to be playing the leads in John Patrick Shanley’s film adaptation of his Broadway super-hit “Doubt,” I was over the moon. What lover of acting would not freak over the idea of (arguably) the greatest actor of her generation going toe-to-toe with (arguably) the greatest actor of his? But then I read a couple of lukewarm reviews, including one from The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane, with whom I usually agree, and decided maybe I should skip it. Thank God for slow Tuesday nights, skepticism and award screeners.
I watched “Doubt” at home last night and was simply blown away by the acting. Streep and Hoffman are Ali and Frazier, raging war (here spoken and unspoken) in several scenes that leave you emotionally confused and battered. I was torn between being knocked into the back of the couch and drawn to its edge.
“Doubt” tells the story of a Catholic school in the Bronx that is having a crisis of leadership, with Streep’s Sister Aloysius playing the rigid taskmaster principal and Hoffman’s Father Flynn playing the warm-hearted, affable and avuncular leader of the parish. Aloysius is riddled with paranoia and driven by a self-assuredness that lead her to command her fellow nuns to monitor carefully the goings-on at her school. Duty-bound and gun-shy but eager, the young Sister James (the amazing Amy Adams) concocts a story, by way of very loose circumstantial evidence, that Father Flynn has acted inappropriately with a young altar boy, coincidentally the only black youth in the school.
What ensues in the cat-and-mouse game between Flynn and Aloysius is a meditation on the conflicting ideas of staunch moral certitude and doubt, as outlined wonderfully in Flynn’s opening sermon.
The movie is unadorned and feels as if it was adapted from a staged play, which generally works with this material, especially considering the tight confines of the school serving as the perfect boiling pot. Streep’s Queens accent is a bit much early and almost tends to the caricature, but her nuance, especially in her eyes, retrieve the character from that misfortune.
Despite my love for Hoffman, his characters are often unlikable sorts, living conflicted and often self-hating lives, so it is compelling and ironic that his Flynn, a character accused of the heinous crime of child molestation, is one of the most likable in his career. In addition to the lead roles, and Adams tortured and eager character, there is Viola Davis, who, in one scene with Streep, gets at the heart(breaking) core of the film. There is no point in me describing it here, it simply needs to be watched and felt to be appreciated.
The ambiguity of the characters’ moral dilemmas and the film’s ending, especially considering the context, will leave you breathless. And while “Doubt” may not be 2008’s best movie — the cinematography and direction are uninspired, and artistic attempts at camera angles in a few scenes feel forced — there was not a movie I’ve seen in the past year (at least) that features better acting in multiple roles.
Get showtimes for “Doubt” in Austin here.
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January 2, 2009
Top 8 Movies of 2008
Thinking back over last year (feels so good to call 2008 last year), it wasn’t one of the greatest movie years in recent memory. Of course, it had a lot to live up to, with 2007 bringing us such gems as “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood.”
At least that’s my excuse in only being able to come up with eight movies for my year-end list. It didn’t help that I missed out on some movies about which I have read and heard really good things. So, before I give my Top 8, I will confess I did not see the following movies, which very well may have made the list. (“Happy-Go-Lucky,” “Wendy and Lucy,” “Frozen River,” “Waltz with Bashir,” “Rachel Getting Married,” “Doubt,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and “In Bruges.”) I’m sure I’ll get to them soon, and I resolve (among several other things) to get to more movies this year.
1. “Slumdog Millionaire” - A breathtaking, unapologetic tear-jerker of a movie with amazing cinematography that gives a wonderful sense of India and tells a story of love and redemption against all odds. (Of note, screened at Austin Film Festival. Read Chris Garcia’s discussion with filmmaker Danny Boyle here and Charles Ealy’s interview with star Dev Patel here.)
2. “Man on Wire” - Slow-moving, atmospheric story of one man’s ambition and the personal costs of said.
3. “The Wrestler” - If Mickey Rourke doesn’t get nominated for an Oscar, I will eat my hat. Every self-effacing joke, pained expression, hopeful smile and desperate act of trying to reclaim past glory rings true. I can’t imagine anyone else pulling off this role. (Check it out with live wrestling at the Alamo Drafthouse at the premiere on Friday, January 9.)
4. “Synecdoche, New York” - Charlie Kaufman’s tortured and neurotic genius has never been on such wonderful display as with this script. He is once again at his ambiguous best as a writer with a movie that makes some feel tortured and others hopeful. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is simply as good as it gets in a movie that could have used a little more directorial discipline. (Of note, AFF also screened this one. Check out my interview with Kaufman here.)
5. “The Dark Knight” - Visually stunning, complex and somewhat morally ambiguous, this is the best comic book movie I’ve ever seen, and Heath Ledger gives the best supporting performance of the year. Bonus points for the IMAX experience.
6. “Milk” - I was a bit ashamed to say that I did not know the story of Harvey Milk, or the pervasiveness of the legalized discrimination of gay people in America, before seeing Gus Van Sant’s moving biopic. The use of stock footage adds great detail and texture to a movie that Sean Penn carries with heart, soul and dignity.
7. “Let the Right One In” - Vampires seem to be all the rage these days, unfortunately this vampire flick got less attention than the lesser “Twilight.” It’s a beautiful, sparse (thank you, Sweden) depiction of youthful alienation and our desire to feel connected and loved.
8. “The Counterfeiters” - Wonderful performances highlight this morally-charged tale of Jewish concentration camp prisoners and their involvement in forging money for the benefit of their Nazi captors.
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November 20, 2008
J.C.V.D. being J.C.V.D.
I told you about the film “J.C.V.D.” a while back. It’s the meta-drama (apparently fictional) about Jean-Claude Van Damme that played at Fantastic Fest and tells the story of the washed-up action hero and the trials and tribulations of his life and career. Check out what I had to say about it here.
Well, the film comes out this week, and in preparation for said, it appears the engimatic J.C.V.D. is doing the interview circuit. (Jean-Claude, you can email me here.)
It seems ol’ Van Damme hasn’t lost much of his punch, or ability to reference himself in the third person, as evidenced by his interview with Sarah Ball of Newsweek. Matthew thinks it’s hilarious.
In the words of my friend D-Rox, it appears, much like Joe Namath, J.C.V.D. is strug-a-ling.
Most of the interview from Newsweek here:
Why did you want to make a film that comments on your own life?I made this just to show some of the internal side of J.C.V.D., in a way. He’s a guy, a normal guy from Belgium with dreams, and I did well in that type of path. At the age of 47, to take chances and go back to Europe and be talking to some studios there, I’m showing them that I believe I’m good quality.
There ’ s a monologue in the film about being a washed-up action star. Did you improvise that?
I like structure—like driving: go past the school on the street, stay on the right side, no hitting the car, go in right, you’ll see a big church, stop and take a left, and you’ll have it. By doing this I’m giving a structure of life, a path of light, and showing what happens between me and me, which is something very beautiful.
Beautiful? Why?
I really opened myself up in “JCVD.” I peeled back the skin of the fruit, cut the pulp and then took that very hard seed. In this film I cut that hard seed, and inside that seed was a kind of liquid cream substance of the man I am, or the woman you are.
OK —
It was like being naked—I would love to be naked in front of you.
Well, I —
Not being naked being naked. I say such things in Hong Kong and they thought I was being a crazy Frenchman. Being naked of protection.
So you ’ ve no regrets at all?
Believe me—I’ve done very good stuff and very crazy stuff, and I don’t regret the crazy stuff. So are you in New York?
Yes, I am.
And are you 27, or 32?
I ’ m 22.
Oh, f—-. That is very young. Will you come to the premiere?
I don ’ t know. When is it?
I don’t know. You will wear all black, a black dress and high heels?
Uh —
You can come find me, I will be the one with the very broad shoulders, dark hair and a simple suit. We can have some champagne, you and me.
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November 13, 2008
'Arrested Development' movie is a go (?)
It seems like people have been speculating about an “Arrested Development” movie for years. The Fox sit-com, which was a critical smash and cult darling, had been held up due to the lack of all principles being on board, with the last one rumored to be Michael Cera. I guess the hilarious Cera (“Superbad”) had received too many scripts from his agent that had him playing the same character for the next five years.
Well, it seems the time has finally come, and fans can rejoice, as the “Arrested Development” movie looks to finally be a go.
The good news comes from comedic genius Jeffrey Tambor (“Soap,” “The Larry Sanders Show”), who plays the Bluth family patriarch on the show and broke the news at a DVD release party for “Hellboy II.”
“We are doing it. We are going. It’s a go. I just this week talked to (series creator) Mitch Hurwitz,” Tambor said. While there doesn’t seem to be a date set for shooting, Tambor added, “When the writer and the director and the executive producer calls you, that’s a pretty good sign.”
Frozen Bananas and Never Nudes for everyone!
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September 19, 2008
Jean-Claude Van Damme: Last action hero
Once the laughing stock of the movie world, Jean-Claude Van Damme, who made a living kicking ass and speaking broken English in late-eighties and early-nineties action films, seemed to disappear from the public consciousness. Until now.
He returns to screens at this year’s Fantastic Fest in ‘JCVD,’ a film in which he plays a washed-up 47 year-old action hero struggling through action scenes and enduring even more abuse in a custody battle for his child. Sound familiar?
The movie begins with the chiseled but aging Van Damme struggling to make his one through an over-the-top action scene — in which he dismantles seemingly an entire army of ‘bad guys’ — that is filmed in one long-running shot. The director is a young Asian seemingly full of ennui and antipathy toward Hollywood. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. But such is life when you have legal bills to pay.
The film follows Van Damme in a series of flashbacks from his family court battle in L.A. to an outlandish scenario in which he finds himself as a hostage in a post office in his home town in Belgium. In both the filmmaking and the storytelling the violent comedy shows serious influences of Guy Ritchie, Simon Pegg, the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino. It is an absurd, highly stylized shaggy dog story but also touching in its portrayal of a man who has become a prisoner of his own fame and a forgotten punch line in Hollywood, forced to sell out his body and his creative vision in order to work. Where reality begins and ends is hard to tell in this film, but it does a good job of reveling the human side of the thoughtful karate master in an entertaining and meta screenplay.
Apparently it humanized and highlighted Van Damme, who displayed some pretty decent dramatic acting chops in the film, to the point that since the film first screened at a festival earlier this year, he has started to receive more acting work, and is currently working on a project in which he is starring and directing. Only in America. Or Belgium. Or whatever.
‘JCVD’ screens tonight at Alamo South as part of the Fantastic Fest.
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September 12, 2008
Take a pass on new Coen brothers' film
It was with a mixture of excitement and low expectations that I entered the screening for ‘Burn After Reading,’ the new Coen brothers’ film. It turns out that the latter of my two motivations would be rewarded.
The film starts with a satellite image that slowly descends on CIA headquarters until we are thrust into the halls of power. As we come to learn through the film, those halls hold about as much cognitive power as a disorderly junior high, with lying, backstabbing and buck-passing at every turn. Though the film’s early sequences may seem to suggest that movie will be about the misuse of power and the oxymoron inherent in ‘Central Intelligence,’ and the buffoonery therein, it quickly spirals into a shaggy dog tale centering on people who can’t find satisfaction in their fractured personal lives.
Although it bares some similarity to the Coens’ ‘Fargo’ and ‘The Big Lebowski,’ the film is neither as dark as the former or as funny as the latter. John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton give wonderful performances that are deserving of better material, but the other performances fall flat. Brad Pitt’s quirkiness is not as trite as Tom Cruise’s profanity-laden character in ‘Tropic Thunder,’ but it comes close. The always charming George Clooney’s character waffles between unbridled neuroticism and shotgun-splayed Don Juanism that is disjointed at best, and even the usually wonderful Francis McDormand struggles to endear on any level. In fact, none of the characters are lovable or even likeable, much less entertaining, making the absurd plotline somewhat tedious.
Considering the brothers entered this endeavor fresh off of ‘No Country for Old Men,’ I guess this piece of fluff, despite some seriously dark scenes, can be excused for falling short of both the ‘dark’ and ‘comedic’ elements of a ‘dark comedy.’ Save this one for the Netflix list or a rainy matinee.
Read the Statesman film critic Chris Garcia’s review here.
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July 28, 2008
Oliver Stone's 'W.' trailer
The trailer for Oliver Stone’s new film “W.” has hit the Internets. I am sure the White House and Republicans in general will be thrilled at the depiction of the 43rd president. From the trailer it seems as if Stone will portray the former Texas governor as a rudderless young man hooked on booze, women and general good-timin’ who failed his way upwards, disappointing his family at every turn before finally getting his act together and ascending to the nation’s highest office. Sounds like one of those it-would-be-funny-if-it-wasn’t-true type stories.
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July 25, 2008
Is 'Wall-E' overrated?
Statesman film critic Chris Garcia and I both coincidentally ended up seeing the Pixar film “Wall-E” Thursday night, about a month after its release. I had pretty high expectations going in, as the film had received boffo response from critics and audiences alike. Leaving the movie, I was mildly entertained and maybe a little touched, but I was puzzled by the incredible response to a film I thought to be only a little above average. With that in mind, I e-mailed back and forth with Garcia today (Friday) to get his take. What follows are the printable parts of our conversation.
Matthew Odam: OK, so maybe something is wrong with me, but I don’t quite understand all of the fuss surrounding “Wall-E.” Critics were uniformly wow’d and Rotten Tomatoes has it as its highest rated film, just barely beating out “The Dark Knight.” Wow! I appreciated the message, and the lack of anthropomorphism, but I thought it was kinda boring. Is something wrong with me?
Chris Garcia: First, yes, there is something wrong with you. You possess a heart of coal. Second, forget Rotten Tomatoes. They gauge on a “thumbs-up/thumbs-down” system, so even if you sorta liked a movie, it registers as a positive review. I would give “Wall-E” three stars, despite experiencing yawning (and I use that word deliberately) chasms of boredom watching it. I started thinking of the weather and moose during the middle part of the film, not a good sign
M.O.: I would agree with three stars. The first part did not have dialogue for maybe 15 minutes, save for Fred Willard’s character doing that speaking billboard thing. It bored me a little, but I did like the neo-realismo slant to things: A war-ravaged country in which people (a robot) searches for human connection and identity. Maybe that’s a stretch, but I liked the post-apocalyptic visuals, although was bored by the lack of dialogue. But the second and third acts spiraled into the expected.
Chris Garcia: I’m a little tired of the knee-jerk hosannas for all things Pixar. “Ratatouille,” in my estimation, is pretty lame, yet the critics and crowds went equally gaga over it as they are on the charming if emotionally hackneyed “Wall-E.” Don’t get me wrong: Pixar makes MIND-BLOWINGLY quality films — I adore both “Toy Story” movies, “The Incredibles,” “Finding Nemo,” “Monsters, Inc.” Still, I expect a little more critical vigor applied to them, not just responses guided by sheer gut delight. Now, I think the first 20 minutes of “Wall-E” are by far the most hypnotic, charming and conceptually interesting. (Small correction, MO: It’s not a ‘war-ravaged’ Earth; it’s just been polluted and poisoned by its own inhabitants for livability.)
M.O.: You say ‘tomato’ … I KNOW it’s not actually war ravaged, but the idea in the sense of destruction is somewhat similar, despite the thematic importance in both of how that ravaging ocurred. I have not seen an animated movie in the theaters since “Ants,” but I did like how this one was not about cutesy animals talking and going for cheap laughs. But between that (fortunate for me) absence and the fact that the movie is very a much a meditation on how humans are becoming lazy and absorbed in and by technology and losing our ability to relate to others, and even ourselves, I don’t see how in the world this movie was attractive to children. I know it should be G-rated because there is no real violence or lewdness, but I can’t imagine how or why a 9 year-old would like this film. Maybe kids are a lot smarter and more conscientious of socio-political and psychological matters than I was at that age, but, I just don’t see its appeal to kids, especially with the plodding open and its complete lack of dialogue.
Chris Garcia: And also let’s make it clear that we are only having this discussion out of MILD puzzlement over the angelic choruses we’ve been hearing about “Wall-E” and how it doesn’t quite live up to such blinding, high-wattage enthusiasm. That said, I do think kids are more aware and downright smarter about these things today. And I think the film’s message is nicely integrated into good old fashioned storytelling. Maybe it’s the pacing that’s off and could possibly bore kids. For me, it was when people entered the story that things got predictable and followed old cartoon story patterns and my sense of wonder waned. Suddenly even the robots were acting like people and the film stopped taking chances.
M.O.: Sure. I only thought it worthy of a little bit of discussion because we both saw it on the same night several weeks after it came out to some serious, serious praise. I did think there were some interesting similarities between the “Buy-N-Large” world in “Wall-E” and Mike Judge’s film “Idiocracy.” Yet, with one, “Wall*E,” the stuido gets behind it and pushes it like crazy, and in the other, “Idiocracy,” the studio did everything it could to prevent the film from being finished and distributed. Maybe Judge should stick with animation.
Chris Garcia: The analogy to “Idiocracy” is unavoidable and germane. Pixar’s lucky NO ONE saw the (underrated) Judge flick.
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July 17, 2008
'The Dark Knight:' This comic book movie ain't no joke
Leaving a comic-based action movie, it is rare that the first thing you find yourself discussing and marveling over is not the mesmerizing action sequences, the incredible set designs, the tongue-in-cheek humor or the special effects. Such was the case with ‘The Dark Knight.’ Upon exiting the screening with Statesman film critic Chris Garcia, we immediately began to ponder the complexity of the morality play unfolded by co-writer/director Christopher Nolan.
As we attempted to untangle the web of messages and their allegoric intent, I began to wonder whether our struggle was a testament to Nolan’s accomplishments or failings as a filmmaker. In the end, I would say it was a little of both, although more the former than the latter. For as much as ‘The Dark Knight’ causes us to think about virtue, villainy, and human nature (wrapped in a dazzling and, for a comic book movie, very realistic visual package), it also confounds at times, partly because Nolan jumbles myriad complex ideas into his overly-lengthy film and introduces and removes said ideas, plot devices and characters at break-neck pace.
That said, the film, while falling short of the absolute masterpiece for which the talented Nolan, whose skills of labyrinthine storytelling are legend from movies such as “Memento” and”The Following,” seemed to be aiming, is fantastic … the best comic book movie I have ever seen. Rare is the movie that can hold up a mirror to the audience and make us ask questions about the choices we make as a society, questions regarding our safety, our perception of virtue, our honest with ourselves and our need to be protected to the point of being coddled. There are certainly overtones of terrorism that pervade the movie, almost all in the form of the sadistic Joker played by Heath Ledger.
In the months leading up to the movie, there were whispers of whether Ledger could be nominated posthumously for an Academy Award for his portrayal of the character played most famously in film by Jack Nicholson. I was skeptical to say the least when I heard what I considered must be sentimental postulating. After seeing the movie, I would almost be surprised now if he doesn’t get a nomination, although it is obviously early in the race to project. Ledger plays the sadistic villain whose past is an ever-evolving string of meaningless lies that vary depending on the intent of his manipulation with a psychotic’s glee, but relies more on subtlety in his mannerisms than did Nicholson. A flick of the tongue here, a crooked giddy-up in his step there, a face covered in make-up that looks like it was applied by Dameon, all riding shotgun to the perverse, intriguing and slightly effeminate lilting that reminds one of Marlon Brando doing a straight imitation of Jimmy Cagney. Straight up creepy.
Ironically, despite his sociopathic behavior, the Joker is one of the few characters who appears as he is. He is the least troubled and the most self-aware. His purpose is to be a catalyst of chaos, not to scheme and deceive or struggle with questions of right and wrong. I can not remember a character in recent cinema who has amused and disgusted simultaneously as Ledger’s Joker does. And, considering the serpentine philosophical quandaries in which the other characters in the film find themselves, the Joker’s honesty, lack of vulnerability and certitude are somehow a breath of fresh air. Air that just happens to be filled with sarin gas.
Read Statesman film critic Chris Garcia’s excellent review here.
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July 8, 2008
Sacha Baron Cohen as 'Bruno' fires up Arkansans with gay gag
Say this about British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, dude is brave. After making a mockery of some pockets of American society (and inspiring lawsuits) with his movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” the satirist is back at it with filming of his new movie based on his character Bruno, a gay Austrian fashionista made famous on Cohen’s “Da Ali G Show.”
Cohen has refocused his aim on familiar ground fertile for satirizing, the South. The hoax this time was perpetrated on over 1500 people in Forth Smith and Texarkana, Arkansas, who were “lured by $1 beer and the prospect of prospect of ‘hot chicks’ and ‘hardcore fights,’” according to The Smoking Gun. Using ads on CraigsList, Cohen’s team promoted an event called “Blue Collar Brawlin’ Cage Fights.” Nothing like cheap beer and capitalizing on anything “blue collar” to draw out a big crowd.
According to the post on The Smoking Gun, “both cards ended with two male grapplers (one was identified as ‘Straight Dave’ and wore camouflage) tearing each other’s clothes off and, while in underwear, kissing down their opponent’s chest. This man-on-man action triggered Fort Smith fans to throw chairs and beer at the ring, according to one cop present at the city’s Convention Center.”
Attendees, who were told they were being filmed, with some being asked to sign releases, were not allowed to bring in cameras or cell phones, so there is no footage floating around the Web, as far as I can gather. One can only imagine the scene.
It’s a wonder Cohen, who ironically co-starred in the Will Ferrell comedy about NASCAR, “Talladega Nights,” has not yet been jumped by any of the targets of his wit and derision. It probably helps that the only time he ever ventures into middle America is when he is in character.
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July 1, 2008
Online documentary about tree removal to make way for Barton Place condos
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably heard about the debate raging over the 100 year-old pecan grove in South Austin that is being partially felled for the Barton Place condos.
The debate over how the land is being treated by developers even led to an indictment of the developers and Austin Java (owned by one of the co-developers and located amidst the chaos on Barton Springs Road) by musician Marcia Ball at Blues on the Green last week, which in turn led to a written response from Austin Java owner Rick Engel to Ball.
Well, it turns out Ball and her suggested boycott of Austin Java, which Engel said led in part to a 50% drop off in business at the restaurant last Thursday, is not the only one raising a stink over the tree removal.
A documentary about the tree removal is making its debut online today. According to a press release:
“At What Cost?”, a short film about the demise of a 100-year-old pecan grove in the center of Austin, debuts today on the internet. The film, by Tom Suhler, takes the form of an obituary for one of the 50 trees that were toppled to make room for the Barton Place Condominiums.”
Shuler goes on to say, “I don’t consider myself an environmental activist. I’ve owned land; I believe in property-owner’s rights. But once I started documenting the land-clearing I was surprised how much the take-down affected me and those of other Austin residents. So I put this piece together to try to resolve some of those feelings.”
Check out the film’s Web site here.
The truncated “trailer” of sorts is below:
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April 28, 2008
Iron Man flies in South Austin
I headed over to the Alamo Drafthouse Monday afternoon to see a man fly. With a little help of course. As part of a promotion by Ain’t It Cool News and the Alamo Drafthouse for a sneak preview of ‘Iron Man,’ the folks from Jet Pack International showed up to demonstrate their sweet backpack flying mechanism. Eric Scott donned a 135 lb. pack that runs on 90 percent hydrogen peroxide and provides 325 pounds of thrust, equal to about 800 horsepower. For those of you who were not math or science majors, let’s just say that’s some heavy-duty power, as evidenced by the ridiculously loud sound emitted by the machine. The 150 decibels wasn’t enough to blow out ones ears, but it was damn close. I thought I felt my heart stop, but apparently I was wrong, according to this Web site. I can’t imagine what it was like for Scott, who blasted from the parking lot surface for a 14-second flight that took him over the Alamo’s marquee before returning him to Earth.
The stunt I saw was for press, random passers-by and film geeks, but the Alamo and Ain’t It Cool had a 7 p.m. repeat performance (with a few surprises) scheduled for later in the evening before a special sneak screening. The lucky couple hundred who will get to see the sneak include those who competed in an ‘Iron Man’ costume contest, along with some AIC insiders and Fantastic Fest badge holders. AIC boss Harry Knowles was at the Alamo Monday and admitted to being just slightly disappointed. He had hoped that the Iron Man lookalike would fly from the Alamo to the UT Tower, land and then return. Now that would have been cool. Unfortunately, the pack only provides six seconds of flight time per gallon, so the 5.5 gallon tank only allowed for 33 seconds of flight. Maybe in the future. The future…
Check out my video and see Eric Scott take flight. Also, see this shot from a different angle.
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January 24, 2008
Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood did not get robbed after all
If you are like me, you may have been shocked to see Radiohead’s Johhny Greenwood’s searing epic score for ‘There Will Be Blood’ missing from the nominations for an Academy Award. Turns out the reason is not that the Academy is stupid, but that Greenwood’s composition was not entirely original and not written specifically for the film. According to the Associated Press, “some of the score came from a performance Greenwood had done for the BBC, titled “Popcorn Superhet Receiver.” Some of it came from Estonian composer Arvo Part; still other parts came from a Brahms violin concerto.” Well, that explains that. I could not imagine how on Earth a score that provided such incredible tension, drama and horror, leaving the film feeling like a work by Stanley Kubrick or Terrence Malick, could not get an Oscar nod. Now I know.
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January 7, 2008
Texas All-Star Nobelity Dinner
On the heels of the fantastic work of his debut documentary film “Nobelity,” local author and performer turned global activist Turk Pipkin is ramping up fundraising for his second film “One Peace at a Time.” The film functions as a companion piece to ‘Nobelity,’ which uses interviews with nine Nobel laureates to raise awareness about concerns facing the global community.
Whereas the widely seen and critically tauted “Nobelity” searched for questions most important in stewardship of the global environment and community, Pipkin’s new film searches for answers that can spotlight necessary efforts for fostering a better planet to leave for future generations.
In an effort to raise money for his ongoing filming, Pipkin is hosting the Texas All-Star Nobelity Dinner at the Four Seasons on Sunday, Jan. 27. The night will feature a sparkling array of Texas talent with 25 great artists who will each host a table of 10 guests at the dinner. Participants will include Owen Wilson, Ricardo Chavira of “Desperate Housewives,” Kinky Friedman, Martie Maguire of the Dixie Chicks, Greater Tuna, Mike Judge, Harry Anderson, Shawn Colvin, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Lawrence Wright and many more.
Tables are $10,000 for 10 people (with $500 and $1,000 individual seats available), and include a cocktail reception with all the celebrities, dinner with one of the host artists, and a show with Ely, Bob Schneider and actor/magician Harry Anderson.
The evening’s guest of honor is Nobel laureate Steve Weinberg, who participated in “Nobelity.”
For more information on the Texas All-star Nobelity Dinner and to find out more about the film and the Nobelity Project, visit nobelity.org.
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December 28, 2007
Top 10 movies of 2007
Just what we all needed, one more Top 10 list for 2007. So without further ado, here are my Top 10 films of 2007, with 10 (plus or minus)-word descriptions of each.
- “There Will Be Blood” — Kubrick-esque parable of greed and corruption in America. P.T. Anderson’s masterpiece
- “No Country for Old Men” — Beautifully shot film with one of the scariest villains in recent memory
- “The Savages” — Touching and darkly humorous look at living and dying with dignity
- “King of Kong” — Very human portrayal of good vs. evil set against cartoonish backdrop
- “Michael Clayton” — Riveting thriller and moral tale with a classic feel
- “Into the Wild” — Stomach-punch of a movie about one man’s search for self
- “Knocked Up” — Runs too long but dialogue and acting makes it funniest of year
- “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” — Lumet returns to his brilliance of 70s. Hoffman and Linney don’t miss a beat.
- “Hot Fuzz” — Genre-bending laugh riot with equal number of laughs and thrills
- “Sicko” — Heavy-handed and obvious but still a powerful indictment
Honorable Mention
“3:10 to Yuma”
“Gone Baby Gone”
“The Ten”
“The T. V. Set”Most Overrated
“Juno”Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Movies
October 17, 2007
Interview: Emile Hirsch journeys 'Into the Wild'
In “Into the Wild,” which opens Friday in Austin, Emile Hirsch portrays Christopher McCandless, the young man immortalized in John Krakauer’s best-selling book of the same name. Disillusioned with materialism in the world, McCandless rid himself of most of his earthly possessions, and at 22, headed out on a journey of self-discovery. Though McCandless has been both praised for his rugged individualism and criticized for what some call a juvenile narcissism and carelessness, the movie directed by Sean Penn, which should get considerable attention come awards season, offers an honest, nonjudgmental portrayal of its protagonist as a gregarious if conflicted young man dedicated to living an authentic life. Indeed, “Into the Wild” is a stomach-punch of a movie, probably my favorite of the year to this point.
Hirsch visited Austin a few weeks ago, and we met at the Four Seasons to discuss his experience with making this poignant film. The young actor was both affable and thoughtful, at times affecting a measured rumination reminiscent of a young Johnny Depp or Sean Penn.
Sean Penn said he wanted you all along for the role, but what was the vetting process like with him and how he felt you out for the role?
You know, I think he wanted to get to know me. He called me up and said, ‘I was intrigued by your performance in “Lords of Dogtown.” ’ I go, ‘Wow, wow, wow, that’s Sean Penn on the other end of the line;’ then that’s the end of the conversation. And I thought that was the last I’d ever hear from him. And then he called me a week later and said, ‘Let’s go have lunch.’ We go have lunch, he brings up the book, I read it that night; I love it. I’m blown away by the concept of being able to do this film. It would be the dream come true for me to get a part like that and be able to work with someone of the caliber of Sean. But then he never brings it up again, even though we get together every three weeks for the next four months. He never really talks about the movie anymore. Occasionally he’ll say something, but not like, ‘You have the part,’ or even like, ‘I’m makin’ the movie.’ So I started to think, maybe he just, you know, thinks I’m cool or something. Of course, I figure out later that’s definitely not the case. Sean Penn does not think I am cool.
He was feelin’ me out as a person. Because he knew that whoever this cat was gonna be that he was gonna work with was gonna be a year of close contact, of editing, shooting, you’re gonna have to stare at this guy’s face. And if he didn’t like him, it was gonna be really hard for him. So I think he wanted to make sure that I had the right stuff for the part. You know, it was almost like they say about the astronauts, ‘Do you have the right stuff?’ He really needed to make sure that for all the different challenges the part was gonna have that he thought I could do it. And I gotta give him credit; you know, he believed in me more than I believed in me, at the time. I was completely gung-ho, completely committed in doing it, but he really was like, ‘I think you can do this.’
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August 24, 2007
Best of Public Radio: Pierson talks with Spike Lee
Indie film guru and UT film professor John Pierson has become legend in the film world for discovering and promoting a slew of filmmakers, from Spike Lee to Michael Moore. His chronicle of life in the independent film world is documented in his book ‘Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes.’ This Sunday at 11am, KUT and Best of Public Radio present Pierson’s latest ‘Master Class,’ in which he sits down to speak with Spike Lee.
From KUT’s Web site:
Throughout his twenty films in twenty years career, Spike Lee has entertained us, challenged us, angered us and, above all, made us think. With a body of work that unflinchingly explores race, class, sexuality and culture, Lee has been a bold and prolific presence in modern American filmmaking.Starting out as an outspoken young man hawking tube socks to market his debut ‘She’s Gotta Have It,’ Spike had his biggest commercial success with last year’s ‘Inside Man.’ At the same time, he continued his occasional foray into non-fiction with the epic and heartbreaking ‘When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.’
The Spike Lee Master Class coincided with his acceptance of UT’s William Randolph Hearst Award for journalistic excellence for this documentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and its devastating effect on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. It has been nominated for six Emmy Awards. Here on the second anniversary of Katrina, John Pierson sits down for the full hour to talk with Spike Lee about his remarkable career, Don Imus, 50 Cent and spoken-word poetry.
Speaking of ‘When the Levees Broke,’ if you have not seen it, I highly recommend it. Here is my response after viewing it.
Image of Pierson (c) Kelly West/AA-S. Image of Spike Lee (c) AP.
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August 20, 2007
At the movies: 'The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters'
So many films come through SXSW that it is easy to highlight one you intend to see, forget about it 10 minutes later and never think of it again. Such was the case with me and ‘The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters’ at this year’s festival.
Fortunately, the film was released over the weekend at a few cities around the country, and, naturally, Austin was one of said cities, thanks to our love of indie film, the strong film community here, Matt Dentler and Co. and the Alamo Drafthouse.
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the documentary about obsessive video gamers is the best movie I have seen all year. Regardless of whether you enjoy classic video games, which I do not particularly, you will be amazed at the compelling human drama staged by two competitors, Steve Wiebe and Billy Miller, as they compete for the world record in Donkey Kong.
Early in the movie I feared that the filmmakers would take the easy way out and take yet cheap shots at it subjects, adding to the list of myriad documentaries that work only to make us laugh at its subjects. I was relieved to realize that this certainly was not the case in the hilarious and touching movie from director Seth Gordon (cinematographer of the award-winning doc about the Dixie Chicks, ‘Shut Up and Sing’).
Without giving away too much of the film, I will say that the film tells the story of two men who have taken very different routes to their place in arcade lore. Wiebe’s is a touching story of a gifted young athlete and musician who seemed to always come up short in his attempts to reach the pinnacle of his chosen fields of endeavor. A committed family man, Wiebe decided to make one last stab at glory after losing his job. Combining a desire to be the best with an understanding of strategy and mathematics, Wiebe attempted to take down one of the most untouchable records in all of arcade history.
The man holding that record, Miller, is a feather-haired wing sauce impresario who has made a name for himself in the gaming world for over 25 years as being one of the most respected and feared competitors of all time. He is the Bobby Fischer of arcade games, minus the social awkwardness, hermetic lifestyle and anti-Semitism. Miller goes so far as to compare himself to the Red Baron, but stops short of making the correlation between his omnipotence and God’s.
Using archived footage of the two men, as well as interviews with Wiebe’s family and friends, and Miller’s allies and idolaters, Gordon truly paints a story of good vs. evil, as one man deviously and maniacally attempts to maintain a veneer of greatness while another humbly searches for his life’s crowning achievement, a moment of redemption for all of the times in his life where he came up just short. In a great thematic nod to the ’80s, Gordon even utilizes classic songs from ‘Rocky’ and ‘The Karate Kid’ in the score to heighten the drama without seeming flip.
It is a story that has to be seen to be believed. Here’s hoping that Ben Stiller does not buy the movie and cast himself in the role of Miller. As the old saying goes: Sometimes fact is stranger (and funnier and more heartbreaking) than fiction.
[Official site for ‘The King of Kong’]
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August 16, 2007
'Superbad': Is there an editor in the house?
I have received hundreds of e-mails in recent days asking where I (and my blog) have been for the past two weeks. Truth be told, when the brutal Austin summer kicks in to high gear, I usually retreat to Turks and Caicos for a couple of weeks to gorge on lobster and surf. But, fret not, I’m back. (None of the above is true, except for me being here.)
Now, on to the task at hand. I could not be more pleased about the success of Judd Apatow and his motley (and merry) crew of filmmaking buddies. Ever since the success of ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin,’ Apatow seems to have carte blanche in making hilarious adult comedies (read: Rated R) without much impeding by the studio. His films do not rely on expensive special effects nor are they burdened with exorbitant salaries from stars, so it seems as if the studios just let him run wild, have fun and make the movie he wants to make.
The minor problem I have with his films, ‘Superbad’ included, is that because he does not seem beholden to studios, he feels no need to curtail the length of his films, leading to stories that lack precision. To confuse the situation, despite his original storytelling, he still conforms to Hollywood by often concluding his films with endings that you can get in any romantic comedy. After an amazingly funny and strong start, ‘Superbad’ spirals out of control with unnecessary sequences, only to eventually be wrapped up in a nice little saccharine bow.
At the helm of this particular project is director Greg Mottola, a collaborator of Apatow’s dating back to ‘Freaks and Geeks.’ But the film is as much Apatow’s (his penchant for the sweet and charming, despite a veil of filth, permeates the film), as it is the neophyte director’s (this is Mottola’s second feature-length film). ‘Superbad’ features realistic dialogue with naturalistic performances, most notably those of the disarming Michael Cera and manic Jonah Hill. Raunchy, raw and fearless, the young characters in the film, thrilled and mortified by the maturation process, talk the way every kid wishes he was smart enough and gutsy enough to get away with.
Much as in ‘Knocked Up,’ after a rapid-fire open in a land of language and characters in which any kid (or kid at heart) would love to find himself lost, the story takes the hackneyed turn of movies that could only hope to aspire to Apatow and Co.’s intelligence, movies such as ‘Super Troopers’ or ‘Harold & Kumar Go to White Kastle.’ There is even a specific scene in the film where you find yourself thinking, ‘Oh boy, here we go.’ Two story lines diverge, and you know they are going to find their way back to one another. The only question is how long will they take. Unfortunately, the answer is ‘terribly longer than they should.’
You can tell from the writing and the performances that Apatow’s posse loves making movies together. And that is fabulous. But his joy of cooperative filmmaking also seems to be his biggest challenge. How do you take all of the great scenes and performances and whittle them down to a more digestible story and, eventually, movie? At almost two hours, ‘Superbad,’ just like the 129-minute ‘Knocked Up’ and 116-minute ‘40 Year Old Virgin,’ is just a few sequences longer than it needs to be.
No film, regardless of the brilliant writing (here by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who started the script together as teens) or bravura performances, can maintain the frantic hilarity for two hours while still trying to fit in a serpentine (yet still contrived) plot. My advice: Lose the meandering and divergent story lines and stick with the jokes. They’re amazing.
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July 13, 2007
At the movies: 'Broken English'
At a certain point in life, after the illusions of youth have faded into the recesses of memory and the hard truth of coming to terms with one’s actuality crashes in, a look into the mirror can reveal a loathsome stranger. Such is the case for Nora Wilder (Parker Posey) at the beginning of ‘Broken English,’ the feature debut of writer/director Zoe Cassavetes.
In the film’s opening, Nora fusses nervously with her hair, trying to make herself presentable for the fifth anniversary party of her best friend Audrey (Drea de Matteo), a celebration that brings to bear the point that Nora, adrift somewhere in her 30s, is still not married (or happy), a fact her overbearing mother (Gena Rowlands) is wont to reinforce.
Nora has graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a degree in art and dreams of entering the glamorous New York art world, but her ‘Sex in the City’ fairy tale has faded into frustrated resignation. Instead of attending celebrated art exhibitions, she finds herself working as concierge manager for visiting elites at a Manhattan boutique hotel, her love life shipwrecked by failed relationships and bad dates. Determined to find idealized love, Nora retreats to the arms of a movie star (played to amusing effect by Justin Theroux), only to be poisoned once again by lost love’s remorse.
Read my full review here.
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July 2, 2007
More 'Sicko'
It seems America’s love affair with Michael Moore, or (and hopefully this is the real reason) citizens’ interest in public policy and health care in particular is extremely high.
‘Sicko’ had the second-highest opening weekend of all time for a documentary (behind Moore’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’), grossing $4.5 million on 441 screens for a per screen average just over $10,200 - third highest of the weekend.
Following the success of its first week and its exclusive open in New York the week before, according to a press release, “The Weinstein Company plans to add the film to 200 additional screens and will continue to roll out the documentary to theaters across the country in the weeks ahead.”
In the release, Harvey Weinstein said, “We are thrilled that in addition to playing strongly in cities like N.Y. and Los Angeles, ‘Sicko’ played to sold-out audiences in mainstream commercial theaters in markets like Chicago, IL; Dallas, TX; and Atlanta, GA., as well as smaller markets such as cities in Vermont, Hartford, CT; Sacramento, CA; Austin, TX; and Madison, WI, showing the breadth of interest among all Americans. We are excited to continue expanding the film so that more and more people will be able to experience the film.”
As I stated in my write-up of the film last week, I believe the film properly diagnosed the problem with health care in America: Too many Americans are taken advantage of by a for-profit health care system that is generally pandered to by Congress. While feeling outraged and saddened by the picture Moore painted of our broken system, I did not feel, however, that he came up with a prescription for how to fix it. I did not necessarily believe that was his job or purpose in making the film, but I have felt his rosy depiction of health care in other nations made it seem as if a cure was simple — just give everyone free health care and access to medicine and have the government pay for it. Oh, if it were only so easy.
Reading Slate today, I saw an interesting response from an economist who works as an adviser to the Obama campaign, Austan Goolsbee, with a much better grasp than I have on the economics of the situation. He contends, as I did, that Moore did a fine job of portraying the problem, but Goolsbee goes into much better detail, dissecting where Moore’s solution has its faults. Obviously this is just one man’s opinion, but I found it interesting and thought I’d pass it along, especially considering many people’s knee-jerk reactions to the film. If you want to read a review of ‘Sicko,’ there are myriad resources online (such as here and here), you can also Google the film and find a plethora of responses (both positive and negative) to the movie’s policy ideas.
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June 29, 2007
'Sicko': so obvious, yet so alarming
“This is Allen,” Michael Moore says in a voiceover to the image of a man sewing up his own badly wounded knee. “This is Rick,” he continues as the screen shows a man missing the tip of his middle finger after suffering a band-saw injury. Allen and Rick are two of nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance. But ‘Sicko,’ Moore’s new film, isn’t about Allen or Rick, Moore tells the audience (nor is it about Moore this time, fortunately), it is about the 250 million Americans with insurance who are continually victimized by the for-profit health care system in America.Following his cinematic diatribe against the Bush administration with 2004’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ Moore decided to focus his attention on a problem that seems less divisive and even more obvious.
More than a year ago, Moore put out a request on his Web site asking Americans for their personal horror stories in dealing with insurance companies and health management organizations. Within a week, he received more than 25,000 e-mails. Compelled to act as the voice for those who are so often unheard, Moore set out to make ‘Sicko.’
Instead of putting himself and the hunt for his movie’s antagonist at the center of his story, as he has done in his previous documentaries, with ‘Sicko,’ Moore wisely chooses to focus on his subjects’ stories. The result is a movie with more heart, and while still relying on his smug, tongue-in-cheek attacks on those in power, more substance than style.
As the narrative bounces from one story of a woman denied coverage because she is declared too young to have cervical cancer to a once upper-middle class family that has gone bankrupt because of medical expenses, Moore seems genuinely disheartened by the state of health care in our country and the fact that Americans would allow their fellow citizens to suffer so gravely, all for the sake of the almighty dollar.
Overwhelmed by their tragic stories, Moore takes the audience through the history of how we as a country reached the sad state of affairs in which we find ourselves. Not surprisingly, Moore found an easy villain in Richard Nixon and his former assistant John Ehrlichman, using rather sinister-sounding archived tape of the two discussing what would become Nixon’s national health care plan. After Ehrlichman easily persuaded President Nixon to pass legislation allowing large companies to make enormous profit off of Americans’ illness and attempts at preventive procedures, the main corporate culprit being Kaiser Permanente, insurance companies and HMOs instantly reaped the financial whirlwind, accumulating millions while Americans paid the price.
Instead of using the rest of the film to diagnose more precisely how this private system came to be, Moore decides to investigate the national health care systems of Canada, Great Britain and France. Using anecdotal stories told through the rosiest of lenses, Moore depicts Canadian, British and French citizens living in an idyllic wonderland of socialized medicine. While eschewing attempts to give a complete picture of these Western nation’s health care systems, Moore makes it quite clear that other countries give medical help regardless of a patient’s ability to pay, ensuring that truly no citizen is left behind. In his most heavy-handed bit of grandstanding, Moore even takes volunteer workers from New York’s ground zero to Cuba to prove that even citizens and tourists in a communist regime can receive quick and free medical care.
As is his wont, Moore’s work as an artist does not endeavor to show both sides of the story. He does not speak to the fact that funding nationalized health care for a country of 400 million people is much more difficult than doing so in a country the size of France; nor does he speak directly and thoroughly to the issues of taxes in Europe or the wait times in the Canadian system.
But Moore does not pretend to have the answers in ‘Sicko.’ In this, his most mature and least self-important film (he does not appear on camera for the first 40 minutes), the director who has found fame (and infamy) as a provocateur, simply speaks with an unbridled sympathy. He has looked into the heart of a system that would rather save $500,000 than a human life, and he is horrified and saddened that the country he loves would so blatantly ignore its own. After viewing ‘Sicko,’ I imagine you will feel the exact same way.
No matter your politics, there is no denying that we live in a country with a system that is broken seemingly beyond repair. The question now becomes, can we fix it, and if so, how?
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June 27, 2007
Last night at the Alamo screenings: maybe you can go
As you might have read, tonight is the final night at the original Alamo. While the events for the night are sold out, the Alamo has released a statement saying there might be standby tickets available for the ‘Earthquake’ and ‘‘Night Warning’ double bill beginning at 9:45 p.m. Standby tickets for will be first-come first-served and cost $75. Tickets for only the Midnight ‘Night Warning’ screening will cost $30.
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June 20, 2007
Alamo Drafthouse trailers
In honor of the final week of the original Alamo Drafthouse, we are highlighting a few of their most memorable trailers from years past, taken from their YouTube account.
If you talk during the movie, Ann Richards will take you out…
Master Pancake Theater takes aim at ‘Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome’…
At Open Screen Night, the Alamo will screen anything you bring. Anything…
Blast off with the Hoff, only at the Alamo…
Celebrating the Oscars in true Alamo fashion…
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June 12, 2007
At the movies: 'The Foot Fist Way'
I don’t know if I’d go quite that far, but there was definitely a similarity in the two experiences. Both movies are extremely low budget films, written with an incredible ear for dialogue and feature very naturalistic performances.
As I mentioned yesterday, Oswalt introduced the film even though he had nothing to do with the production. He’s just a fanboy who had been given a DVD of the movie a month ago by Will Ferrell. Ferrell and his producing partner Adam McKay have purchased the rights to the film and plan to release it as-is in late February or early March next year and hope for it to take off via word-of-mouth a la ‘Napoleon Dynamite.’
‘The Foot Fist Way’ (a literal translation of Tae Kwon Do) tells the story of Fred Simmons (Danny McBride), a tae kwon do instructor in a small North Carolina town, whose 15 minutes of martial arts fame passed him by about 15 years ago. After discovering that his fake-tanned, silicone-enhanced, opportunistic wife has cheated on him with her boss (and seemingly every man at her office), Simmons sees his life head down a self-destructive road fueled by his myopia and complete lack of self-awareness. The aging instructor unleashes his torment in a series of hilarious attempts of redemption that make the self-serious, overweight, mustachioed Simmons a lovable loser very much in the vein of Ricky Gervais’ character in ‘The Office’ or Cliff Claven in ‘Cheers.’ As Oswalt said following the movie, Simmons seems to take to heart the major tenets of tae kwon do (courtesy, self-respect, perseverance, integrity and indomitable spirit) but filters them through his simple-minded, self-involved worldview, the result of which makes him a perfect fool.
McBride, who helped pen the script with writer/actor Ben Best and director/actor Jody Hill, obviously knows this Southern-fried lovable loser character intimately. The trio’s love of the local dialect and the pacing of the characters’ language and delivery make the movie a charming gem. One can easily imagine Stiller or Ferrell wanting to play the McBride character (and they have, to varying degrees, with Stiller in ‘Dodgeball’ and Ferrell in ‘Talladega Nights’), but their interpretation of the character would come off over-the-top, hack and disingenuous. But McBride, along with Hill and Best, knows this character and empathizes with him; the makers of this film live in the world of these types of characters, making their portrayals come across as comic and endearing, but lacking the self-satisfied sneer of mockery and disdain with which Ferrell and Stiller approach such roles. Instead of playing a role as caricature, McBride develops a real character.
His work has not gone unnoticed, as, according to Oswalt, ‘The Foot Fist Way’ has made the rounds in Hollywood and is currently riding a wave of tremendous buzz among those in the comedic film world. In fact, Oswalt recently sat in on a production meeting for Stiller’s 2008 film ‘Tropic Thunder,’ and among those in the meeting were Owen Wilson, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr….and McBride. But McBride is not the only one from the film enjoying positive feedback from the industry. Best, McBride and Hill are currently back in the Southeast shooting a pilot for their new HBO series ‘East Bound and Down,’ a show about a pitcher who enjoyed one inning of World Series fame before seeing his career disintegrate, sending him shamefully back to working as a P.E. coach at his former high school.
Keep an eye out for ‘The Foot Fist Way’ next spring, along with ‘East Bound and Down,’ as this trio of Southern boys look to become the next hot thing on the comedy landscape.
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June 11, 2007
Patton Oswalt pimps 'Foot Fist Way' at Alamo South
Über fanboy and hilarious comedian and actor, Patton Oswalt will be popping into two locations of the Alamo to say farewell this evening.
I will be heading over to the Alamo South Lamar tonight at 10 to check out ‘Foot Fist Way,’ presented by Oswalt. Patton is in town as part of the Ratatouille Comedy Tour and it actually presenting that film at the Original Alamo at 7 p.m. But, as I am not one for animated anthropomorphic cinema, I will be checking out the underground ‘Foot Fist Way.’ Although Oswalt had absolutely no hand in the production, he is apparently a huge champion of the indie film. The folks at the Alamo paraphrased Oswalt’s sentiments (for the young and impressionable out there) this way on their Web site:
“Another film to look out for is ‘The Foot Fist Way.’ … I watched this yesterday morning and nearly laughed myself into a kidney stone. I’m not sure how that works, but the film’s (freakin’) funny. Danny R. McBride, Ben Best and Jody Hill have crafted a low-budget, Southern flavored ‘The Office,’ if Ricky Gervais’ character taught tae kwon do — badly. I don’t want to spoil the surprises, the cringe-inducing moments of hilarity, and spot-on dialogue… .”
Sounds like something the kids at the ‘Ratatouille’ screening will probably need to avoid. Just another send-off at the Alamo from one of their favorite guests, and a testament to the importance of the theater on Austin’s cultural landscape.
Patton Oswalt presents ‘Foot Fist Way’
Alamo South Lamar
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May 30, 2007
At the Movies: 'Zoo'
I got a call from a friend (let’s call him ‘Sam,’ or better yet, ‘Sam Armstrong’) saying he wanted to check out a film over Memorial Day weekend but didn’t want to go alone for fear of being labeled a pervert or a freak. A porno, you say? No, it was a documentary. You might wonder why a man in his 30s would be fearful of being labeled a freak for seeing a documentary in a mainstream theater. His concern came from the subject matter of Robinson Devor’s new film “Zoo.”
The movie goes behind the scenes to tell the story of a group of men in rural Washington who practice ‘zoophilia,’ the act of sharing love with nonhuman animals. Now do you understand his nerves? I was happy to oblige, as was Tami, and what we saw was a film that is nothing short of visually breathtaking though often obsessed with its poetry of image and less with its narrative or purpose.
In July 2005, the Seattle Times broke a story about a man, named ‘Mr. Hands’ for the purpose of this documentary/re-creation, who died from a perforated colon following a sexual encounter with his stallion ‘Strut.’ The LA Times’ Kenneth Turan reports that the stories about the death were the most-read in the Seattle paper’s history. But Devor wanted to tell not the graphic story of animal-sex obsessed men and their acts of ‘love’ but reveal these men as living, caring human beings who happened to have rather twisted sexual proclivities.
The film opens with a shot of coalminers’ lights emerging from a dark shaft, an image that seems symbolic of the fact the Devor was endeavoring to bring these men and their once-buried perversions to the surface for more thoughtful analysis. Not a documentary in the truest sense, the film uses voice-overs from three fellow ‘zoos’ (the moniker given to zoophiles) along with dramatic, and often nonverbal, re-enactment of Mr. Hands’ and his cadre’s ritual bonding with their animals.
Shot mostly in the Pacific Northwest, and washed in enchanting blues and greens, the cinematography of Sean Kirby is some of the best I have seen in years. There is a strange disconnect with elegiac lighting that looks like it could have been painted by Caravaggio and the perverse nature of the actual story. Devor does not use graphic imagery of sex with animals and strays from discussing in too great of detail the physical acts engaged by these men and what they call their lovers. Instead, he paints a very real picture of troubled men from a wide array of socio-economic backgrounds (from truck driver to biospace engineer) who have come to realize that they simply relate better to animals than they do humans. As Coyote, the only zoo who actually physically appears in the film (the other two living zoos lent only their voices to the production), says early in the film, “I don’t need a high level of emotional interaction, be it human or otherwise.” He defends his passion for the animals by saying “you’re connecting with another living being who is very happy to participate.”
As you come to realize that neither the men nor horses were hurt in any of the acts portrayed in the film, for a split second you catch yourself wondering what the big deal is, such is the beauty of the film’s imagery in lulling you into this ethereal world of shadows. Then you remember, ‘Wait, these guys are having sex with horses!” In the end, the film does not attempt to manipulate viewers into seeing these men as sympathetic characters, it simply offers that they are well-intentioned perverts with a love for animals that anyone who is not ‘zoo’ could never fully understand.
As we briefly discussed the movie on the way out of the theater, we came to the conclusion that the subject matter was not anything we would ever think of again. And this is kind of the problem with the film. The choice of subject is so controversial and surreal and told in such abstractions thanks to its majestic visual beauty that you wonder why the filmmaker even bothered. Did he just want to show off his ability to create gorgeous images or was he actually hoping we would come away with a better understanding of these men? We were mildly perplexed, if only briefly - look, we all are human and we all have perversions, so who are we to cast aspersions at people who live such different lives than us? But, of course, we always came back to the thought - Come on…they’re having sex with HORSES!
If you want to see an exceptionally made movie with little to offer in the way of narrative (and guffaw at the sexual peccadilloes of others) check out “Zoo” while it’s still at the Dobie. But don’t go alone. You don’t want people thinking you’re a freak. Right, “Sam”?
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April 26, 2007
"When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts"
Last night I watched one of the most powerful and moving films I have ever seen in my life.
It’s been about 20 months since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, and much of the region, especially New Orleans, is still in shambles. Following the hurricane, director Spike Lee took cameras into the region and began filming a documentary (“When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts”) that tells the underreported story of a region and its people still reeling from the effects of the worst natural disaster in American history.
I realize that watching or talking about a film that came out 8 months ago may seem pointless, but I could not avoid sharing my thoughts on the film and strongly encouraging you to view it. You may ask what took me so long to watch the movie, which is a point well-taken. One of the reasons I had been postponing of late is the fact that my girlfriend evacuated to Austin from New Orleans, and the events and fallout surrounding Katrina were the most heartbreaking thing she has ever endured. Having seen bits of the film, she needed some time before she could return to the pain she had mourned since the destruction of her hometown of New Orleans. Last night, she decided it was time to revisit the life-changing event.
In the film, Lee avoids any heavy-handed proselytizing, adding almost no commentary or voice over of his own. Instead, he allows the people, the pictures and the sounds of New Orleans to tell the story for him, as any great documentarian should. The film ends up resembling a traditional New Orleans funeral, scored beautifully by New Orleans musician Terrence Blanchard.
This space is not the place for me to point fingers or make accusations laying blame at people’s feet, but witnessing the movie, you realize that there is plenty of blame to go around, from the local government to President Bush. The massive, historic failures and incompetence of the government (especially the federal government) are given facts at this point, and Lee generally spends less time casting blame and more time allowing the people to tell their stories. The pain, outrage, and hopelessness of the disenfranchised people of New Orleans are palpable in almost every scene.
The citizens portrayed in the film from the “city that care forgot” span the socio-economic spectrum, eliminating any cynical viewer’s loathsome opportunity to asperse any particular group. While the first half of the movie generally rehashes the tragedy that most of the public saw on television in those weeks (although delving deeper into the malaise with more graphic and heartbreaking original footage along with British television coverage) the second half of the movie tells the woefully disregarded tale of the reasons behind the levee breeches, the attempts of hundreds of thousands of people to rebuild their lives both in and out of New Orleans, and the unfortunately bleak prospects for the future of the most authentic culture and city in the United States.
The film had originally been commissioned to be two hours, but after nine trips to the region, the director felt compelled to double the length. At four hours, you will need to set aside an entire evening (and box of Kleenex and possibly a punching bag on which to release your anger with the horrific treatment of the storm’s victims) to watch the magnum opus.
Spike Lee has made some wonderful and topical films, but he has never made anything with this much heart, subtlety and soul. And it shall be his legacy. All Americans owe it to themselves to watch this film and recognize the plight of, and devastation and indignation suffered by, their fellow brothers and sisters.
(Almost everyone to whom I have mentioned this film in the past says, “Yeah, I hear it’s an amazing and heartbreaking film. I want to see it.” I, too, used to have that response when the movie was mentioned. Well, it’s readily available. Watch it.)
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April 23, 2007
'Hot Fuzz' takes comic aim at Hollywood's buddy flicks
After dinner at Athenian Grill (705 Colorado St.) on Friday night (a pretty good Greek restaurant with a relatively small dinner crowd but robust lunch following), my former boss (ok) Allen Y. Chen and I headed over to Alamo South to check out ‘Hot Fuzz.’
The 60-person line 30 minutes before show time was a testament to the positive buzz surrounding the new comedy from the creators of 2004’s zombie hit ‘Shaun of the Dead.’
The loyal fans of creative partners Edgar Wright (writer/director), Simon Pegg (writer/actor) and Nick Frost (actor) were not disappointed with the trio’s latest venture.
America’s big budget, buddy-cop blow-‘em-up films have been asking for a send-up for years. The clichéd action films almost satirize themselves with their homosexual innuendo, chest-puffing and cinematic explosions. But leave it to the British to perfect the tongue-in-cheek spoofing, in what seems to equate to both homage and lampoon.
The lads who so wonderfully spoofed zombie flicks in ‘Shaun of the Dead’ take dead aim at all of the tried-and-true Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer buddy action flick devices to hilarious effect. Even the editing and sound design, almost deafening at times, is straight out of big-budget Hollywood.
Nicholas Angel (Pegg) has been performing his job as a London copper a little too well for the likings of his superiors in the big city (played with nod-and-wink cameos by Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy and Steve Coogan), so he is shipped off to the place where action goes to die — the fictional Sandford.
Upon his arrival, Angel sets about applying his no-nonsense policing tactics to the small country village, cracking down on underage drinking and arresting a man for driving while intoxicated. A man who, as it turns out, is one of his fellow officers of the law.
Angel’s background as a ‘real cop’ who has been involved in high-speed chases, as well as shot at and stabbed draws the instant admiration from Danny Butterman (Frost), an overweight, bumbling buffoon who idolizes the cops he has seen portrayed in films such as ‘Point Break’ and ‘Bad Boys 2.’ Butterman finds in Angel a real-life action hero, and he constantly peppers the increasingly aggravated Angel about real stories from the force. Frost’s hilarious, deadpanned lines should be enough (at least in my eyes) to warrant a Golden Globe nomination for actor in a supporting comedic role. His puppy-dog attachment to Angel and wild-eyed emulation of the Hollywood action heroes are fodder for the best lines of the film. And despite the fact that you know when and where most of the jokes are coming, they still kill. All of them.
The story takes on a bizarre turn as Angel discovers that all in sleepy Sandford is not as it appears. Here the movie takes a bit of a dark twist, bending genres with head-scratching aplomb, but the third act seems a bit unnecessary or at least prolonged. But when a cast is having as much fun making the movie (and making fun of countless other films referenced throughout) as it seems this lot had, one can hardly blame them for wanting it to never end.
Final grade: B+
Read Statesman film critic Chris Garcia’s interview with Pegg and Frost here.Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Movies
April 19, 2007
Cine Las Americas recommendations
So, once again a major Austin film festival coincides with a meaningful basketball event. SXSW occurred at the same time as the NCAA Tournament, and now Cine Las Americas, Austin’s premier international film fest, will be taking place during round one of the NBA playoffs, in which my Houston Rockets will battle the loathsome Utah Jazz. Oh, gods of scheduling, you rascals.
Nonetheless, having seen a preview of the festival’s wonderful opening night film, “El Violin,” I am very excited about this year’s lineup, which has expanded to some 80 films. The fest will feature films from Brazil to the U.S., and many points in between. In hopes of getting a better idea of where to direct my film-going focus, I asked Lacey Pipkin, director of media relations for Cine, her recommendations for the festival. They are listed below:
Features
“Que Tan Lejos” (‘How Much Further”)
Tania Hermina, Ecuador
Friday, April 20, 7 p.m. at Regal Metropolitan“Madeinusa”
Claudia Llosa, Peru/Spain
Monday, April 23, 7 p.m. at Regal Metropolitan“36 Pasos” (“36 Steps”)
Adrián García Bogliano, Argentina
Wednesday, April 25. 9:45 p.m. at Alamo Drafthouse South
Shorts
International Shorts Program
Saturday, April 21, 4 p.m.at Regal Metropolitan
Documentaries
“Olhar Estrangeiro” (“Foreign Eye”)
Lucia Murat, Brazil
Sunday, April 22, 6 p.m. at Regal Metropolitan“En El Hoyo” (“In the Pit”)
Juan Carlos Rulfo, Mexico
Tuesday, April 24, 7 p.m. at Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum IMAX Theater“Ghosts of Cite Soleil”
Asger Leth, Denmark/USA/Haiti
Wednesday, April 25, 9 p.m. at Regal Metropolitan
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Movies
April 12, 2007
ATHF: Not enough laughs to fill 90 minutes
There is a reason why fans of legendary shows like ‘Strangers with Candy’ and ‘South Park’ hold their breath when they learn of a pending big-screen adaptation of their favorite television programs — making the leap from short form to long can be quite difficult.
Several years ago, my friends and I would meet up at my buddy Pope’s house, fire up the grill, crack open a frozen bottle of Tito’s and sit back and laugh to the point of tears at the absurdity that is Adult Swim’s ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force.’ The ritualistic gathering celebrated the rapid-fire, bite-size portions of ridiculous hilarity of these anthropomorphic food items. Unfortunately, the attempt to stretch that tasty morsel of comedy gold into a 90-minute meal with the new ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters’ fails rather miserably.Fans of the show will certainly be the only folks lured into paying $8 to go see animated fast food endure an intergalactic journey to discover the nature of their origin/defeat the evil mastermind behind a Frankenstein exercise machine/do whatever the hell it is the supposed plot of this film purports to be, but even they will most likely be disappointed.
The joy and beauty of the ATHF cartoon has always been the strong characters writers Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis concocted in their twisted minds, and the relationships between these victims of unknown circumstance. The sweet, confused Meatwad (voice by Willis) and uncontrollably sardonic, sex-crazed Master Shake (Dana Snyder) constantly wear on the thin patience of blaxploitation-influenced Frylock (Carey Means), the elder of the group who must repeatedly keep his outrage in check. The frenetic dialogue of the three characters harkens back to the interplay of the Three Stooges.
Sadly, in “ATHFCMFFT” the dynamic among the three is generally lost in a sea of confused narratives — the writers seem to have written one sequence, woken up the next morning and written the next without ever having gone back to look at what they had written previously. Unlike most television shows-cum-movies that exhaust one contrived bit for 90 minutes, “ATHFCMFFT” schizophrenically skips from one plot device to the next, never fully engaging the audience. To their credit, I guess, the filmmakers remained true to the intention of the show: always be ridiculous and make as little sense as possible. But, as with most pyschedelia, it is more palatable in smaller doses.
There are few moments of the brilliant, caustic, and generally deadpan, wit that make the television show such a joy, but they are too few and far between. In fact, the biggest laughs probably come in the title sequence, which had me laughing out loud. So, if you go, get thee to the theater on time, a task I would imagine may be asking a bit much from this film’s target demographic.
If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll probably see the film regardless of my advice, but I suggest you wait for the movie to come out on DVD. And in the meantime, fire up the grill, break out the beverage of your choice and take in some Adult Swim to get your ATHF fix.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Movies
Turk Pipkin continues down a Nobel path
Tuesday night, I had the opportunity to be part of a special evening to kick off pre-production and fundraising for Turk Pipkin’s follow-up to his critically acclaimed documentary “Nobelity.”
A few years ago, one of Pipkin’s young daughters asked him about the overriding problems facing the world. Somewhat at a loss for an answer, Pipkin set out to ask (and film) some of the greatest minds in the world about the challenges the human race faces as we enter the 21st century. The film, “Nobelity,” became, in effect, Pipkin’s legacy project. He was intent on finding out how he and the rest of the world could leave the planet and its inhabitants in better shape for future generations.
The overwhelming success and positive feedback Pipkin (and his wife and producer Christy Ellinger Pipkin) received in making the film led to the establishment of The Nobelity Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing awareness and education about global issues. Inspired by his talks with the nine Nobel Laureates featured in the film, and backed by the outpouring of support and from people across the country who were moved by the documentary, Pipkin has set out to make a follow-up documentary titled “One Peace at a Time.” As the filmmaker/author/actor said Tuesday night, “Some roads, when you get on, there’s no turning back.”
The film, the title of which is a nod to sage advice Pipkin incurred from laureates Bishop Desmond Tutu and Wangari Maathai, seeks to find answers and solutions to the problems posed in the first film. Instilled with the belief that humanity is a t a crucial turning point, Pipkin hopes to express to audiences that one individual can indeed affect change on the world in which we live.
To that effect, among the celebrities and power-brokers in attendance Tuesday night’s reception at 501 Studios was Matthew Dowd, former chief strategist for the Bush campaign in 2004. As you are probably aware, Dowd, and his disenchantment with the Bush administration, was featured on the front page of the New York Times (subscription) on April 1. In his interview with Jim Rutenberg, Dowd stated that he may well be done with working in politics and mentioned that he senses a greater calling in his life, possibly as a missionary or working to help development of third world countries. It was very telling to see that Dowd made an appearance to hear Pipkin discuss and screen examples of the work he has done in the troubled parts of Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Despite having to shake hands and accept pats-on-the-back of encouragement regarding his defection from the Bush camp, it seemed to me that Dowd listened and watched with intention, as Pipkin spoke about issues that Dowd had so recently discussed as being near to his heart.
In addition to Dowd, other notable Austinites in attendance at the event that featured delicious food from local providers Hudson’s on the Bend, Maneul’s and Cissi’s Market, included Asleep at the Wheel frontman Ray Benson and his date KXAN’s Michelle Valles (camera crew in tow), Mayor Will Wynn and John Paul DeJoria (of Paul Mitchell fame).
Although Pipkin stopped short of Red McCombs’ famous fundraising tactic of locking the door until people pulled out their wallets, his message came across loud and clear, as I overheard verbal commitments of financial support from many in attendance who expressed a desire to be a part of Pipkin’s latest project.
If you want to learn more about the Nobelity Project or Pipkin’s first film, “Nobelity,” read my interview with Pipkin from last year’s SXSW and visit the film’s and non-profit’s Web sites.
Permalink | | Categories: Movies
April 2, 2007
The worst of the worst
The film critic aggregator RottenTomatoes.com has compiled its list of the 100 Worst-Reviewed Films in their site’s history, which seems to span about seven years. I am happy to say that I have not seen even two minutes of any of the movies listed here; although I know my dad can probably not say the same thing. I know for a fact he watched one of these films. On a plane. Where other people could see. For shame, Mr. Odam. For the rest of you, take a look, and see if you have anything of which to be ashamed.Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Movies
March 29, 2007
Moviemaker Dialogues: Film Bloggers Are Your Friends
The Internet has become a powerful force in film production, distribution and marketing. From Ain’t it Cool News to Film Threat, the Internet is awash in people discussing, critiquing, dismissing and pimping films. Blogs have become a tremendous resource for filmmakers, especially those living outside of the New York or L.A., to get feedback on their films and promote their projects. “Brick” director Rian Johnson, like many directors, even set up a blog and message board to correspond with fans of his work.
To this end, the Austin Film Society will be hosting a moviemaker dialogue titled ‘Film Bloggers are Your Friends,’ which will cover ‘tricks of the trade and the vital details on how you can navigate the ever-growing world of film blogging and reviewing online.’
The panel discussion moderated by Matt Dentler (producer of SXSW Film and blogger for IndieWire) will include Aaron Hillis (editor, Cinephiliac.com & contributor to Premiere.com, IFC.com, TheReeler.com), Joel Heller (editor, DocsThatInspire.com), Jette Kernion (contributor to Cinematical.com) and Mike Curtis (editor, HDForIndies.com).
Tickets are free. Attendance limited to Austin Film Society Filmmaker-level members and above. Visit AFS’ Web site for more information or click here to register.
Moviemaker Dialogues: Film Bloggers Are Your Friends Tuesday, April 10 - 7pmPermalink | | Categories: Movies
February 6, 2007
Filmmakers with Ausin ties score big with SXSW
SXSW announced its list of feature films for this year’s festival. Among the slew of movies honored to participate in the festival are a handful of films and filmmakers with ties to the Austin Film Society.
“As the SXSW Film Festival has developed into one of the top film festivals in the U.S., it has always served as an importance showcase for the vibrant independent film community of Austin and Texas as a whole,” AFS Director of Artist Services Bryan Poyser said. “That tradition continues this year with a whole new crop of exciting work made right here at home.”
The following is a list of films and their AFS ties, as disseminated by today’s AFS press release:
‘Hell on Wheels,’ the first documentary feature from Bob Ray (1997 Texas Filmmaker’s Production Fund recipient), will have its world premiere as a Spotlight Premiere.
The new documentary feature ‘Inside the Circle’ from Marcy Garriott (AFS Board Member, former Board President) will have its world premiere in the Lone Star States section.
‘Third Ward, TX,’ the new documentary feature by Andrew Garrison (2001 TFPF recipient), will screen in the Lone Star States section. This film was screened as part of the Docs-in-Progress series.
‘The Unforeseen,’ the new documentary feature from Laura Dunn (1999 TFPF recipient), will screen in the Lone Star States section, continuing its festival run after its world premiere at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
The new documentary feature from Bennie Klain (2002 TFPF recipient), ‘Weaving Worlds,’ will have its world premiere in the Lone Star States section. This film was also screened as part of the Docs-in-Progress series.
‘August Evening,’ the first narrative feature from Chris Eska will have a Special Screening. ‘August Evening’ was awarded TFPF grants in 2005 and 2006 and screened as part of the Narratives-in-Progress series.
Congratulations to all of the films and filmmakers accepted into one of the nation’s finest festivals, and big thanks to the Austin Film Society for their continued support of the local film scene and its creative members.
Click here for more information on Austin Film Society.
Permalink | | Categories: Movies
February 1, 2007
Looking good, Billy Ray
The Austin Film Festival may be nine months away (give or take), but even in the “down months,” AFF stays busy with free member screenings that are also open to the public for just $4.
Next Thursday at the Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, they will be screening one of the greatest comedies of all time. As you may have deduced from the headline, that film is “Trading Places.”
In addition to having the pleasure of seeing Eddie Murphy in his prime, Dan Aykroyd and others on the big screen, attendees will be treated to an introduction to the film by its screenwriter, Herschel Weingrod.
In true Alamo fashion, the menu for the evening will be themed in relation to the film. Next Thursday night’s menu theme will be “prince and pauper.” Whatever that is.
[from the promoter]
“Trading Places” kicks off a new monthly screening series at the Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek. Each month the series will feature either an audience favorite from the festival, local premieres, shorts collections or retrospectives of great films.
AFF presents “Trading Places” Thursday, Feb. 8 @ 7:30 p.m. Alamo Lake Creek [Tickets at the door]
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Movies
January 26, 2007
David Lynch talks
The always enigmatic David Lynch was in Austin this week promoting his latest film and movie projects. Touring for a film and meeting film-goers and theater owners for the first since the debut of ‘Eraserhead’ 30 years ago, Lynch screened his latest, ‘Inland Empire,’ at the Paramount Wednesday night. He followed that appearance with a signing of his latest book, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity,” at Barnes & Noble today. Thursday afternoon he shared his thoughts on filmmaking, painting, the process of writing a book and meditation with Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith and a studio audience at KLRU.
Lynch admitted to not having spent much time in Texas, but, as with most folks who roll through town, confessed that he has “really liked being in Austin. Not since Eraserhead have I met the theater-goers or owners and set the levels on the sound.” When asked to compare the experience of being on a book tour versus a press junket for a film, Lynch, in typical ambiguous fashion declared the processes to be “different but the same.” Naturally.
While the soft-spoken director, who, but for the shock of finely coifed gray hair greatly resembles an overgrown film school nerd, was typically reticent in discussing the meaning behind his films or people’s interpretations of said, he was more than happy to go preach the gospel of meditation. And I, along with most of the rest of the 300 or so in attendance at the Austin City Limits studio, was rapt with attention.
Critics and the general public for years have debated whether Lynch’s abstractions get in the way of being able to tell a strong story. Viewers vociferously debate the meaning of Lynch’s films, and he seems content to let them each have their own interpretations. “I love a story, but a story that holds abstractions,” he said. “Interpretations when things get abstract vary. Sometimes greatly.”
Though Lynch strayed from giving any revelations about his films’ meanings, he was more than happy to discuss his personal experience with the restorative power of meditation. Lynch began practicing the art of meditation 33 years ago after seeing its positive effect on his sister, and realizing that the best way to find inner-happiness was through mediation. He believes that going inside of ourselves is a process that leads to renewed energy, heightened consciousness and greater creativity.
He called meditation, “the only experience that utilizes the whole brain,” and posited that inner-happiness, love and creativity all come from a heightening of consciousness. For years Lynch “never talked about, [he] just did it,” but after decades of experiencing the joy of this re-creation, he felt it was time to share his insight with the public.
As Lynch gesticulated with lithe hands while discussing the “eternal ocean inside every being,” it was evident that his mind was piqued with the excitement of turning inward, listening to the pluckings of the strings of his soul and returning with another dreamwork.
The Texas Monthly Talks episode with David Lynch will air at 7 p.m. Feb. 22 and at 8:30 p.m. Feb. 23 on KLRU.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Movies
