Prof Wagstaff Test

BoogieNights/The Ice Storm

admin — Mon, 17 Nov 1997 18:00:00 +0000

Well, this has been a busy week for me. I got to see two really good movies in the theatre. That doesn't happen very often, but I'm going to try to go at least once every week or two from now on. The first movie I saw this weekend was Boogie Nights. In case you don't know, this is the one with Mark "I'm Not Marky Mark Anymore" Wahlberg and Burt Reynolds about the 70s porn industry. It wasn't quite as shocking as I thought it was going to be. There was some sex and nudity (of course), but it wasn't as graphic as we were led to believe. The most shocking part was seeing Julianne Moore naked. A friend of mine, who thinks she's really attractive, even said that it was kind of like seeing your mom naked. She just doesn't have the kind of reputation that lets her do stuff like that. Especially not with Marky Mark. (Even if he doesn't like that name anymore, and even if he is a pretty good actor, he'll always be Marky Mark. Once you've rapped, there's no turning back.) I guess the big surprise in the acting area was Burt Reynolds. He said that after he saw the movie he started re-thinking his involvment in it. He really did not like the film! Pretty strange considering that people are talking about Oscars for him. You know, ten years ago if you even mentioned "Oscar" and "Burt Reynolds" in the same paragraph you would be laughed at and then skewered. Now everyone's doing it. He was very good as a porno director. His character seemed to want more than he ever wanted in real life. He wanted to be remembered for one of his movies. That's never seemed to be one of Burt's goals in life. Anybody remember The End? I didn't think so. This film was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson who also brought us the little seen Hard Eight. It looks like we've got another great indie director coming up. Hard Eight deserved more than it got. It's about a life time gambler (Philip Baker Hall) who finds a young man (John C. Reilly, who will apparently be in all of Anderson's films) to teach. After a while John meets Gwyneth Paltrow (lucky guy) and they fall in love. They (of course) get in trouble and Philip takes care of them. It's more than it sounds like. I highly recommend both of these films. The only problem I had with Boogie Nights was the great unveiling at the end. It seems to only be there as a pay-off or for shock value. The thing is that it's not really that shocking. (Well, maybe to the teenage girls sitting behind us, but they also seemed to think that it was real.) We knew it was coming the whole time. After the semi-surprised looks from everyone on the camera crew and Heather Graham (homina, homina, homina) we knew the size was the shock. Why not just get it over with somewhere early on and let us go on with the rest of the movie? The other sort of shocking thing about the movie was the violence. Near the end it started to look like Pulp Fiction! There were heads being blown off and shot guns being blasted everywhere. It was done well and didn't really seem too gratuitous, but it was still kind of weird. I guess I just didn't expect the porn industry to be so violent. There are quite a few moments that reminded me of Scorsese's gangster films. The long, long, long tracking shots through the bar and Burt's house and some of the fast shots (such as the camera going straight to the phone when it rings and following it up to the person's face, and the camera following a person's glance--not cutting to what they're looking at, but panning to what they're looking at) were very indicitive to these films. Not that Scorsese has a patent on either of these techniques, but they seem to be used mostly in his films now. Boogie Nights was a very good film. Not exactly a family movie...or even a date movie for that matter. At the end I doubt that a girl would ever look at her boyfriend the same again. We guys definitely won't look at ourselves the same way again. The other movie I saw was The Ice Storm. Once again, it was a very good movie. It was also one of the most depressing movies I've seen in a long time. I would not suggest going to see this if your family has been getting you down lately. It's another movie that starts at the end. It's kind of hard to understand this at first because they don't explain it to you at all. The Hood family is waiting for their son, Paul (Tobey Maguire), to get off the train, he gets off, and suddenly he's calling from school. Huh? Oh, ok. I get it. I really liked what he said about the family being a void that you are constantly drawn back into. I can relate to that pretty well. I guess I should start with the story. The Hoods are a typical suburban family of the early 70s. (Funny. I saw two movies about the 70s this weekend. I don't think that's a good thing.) Ben (Kevin Kline) tries so hard to be a good dad who doesn't come down too hard on his kids. Elena (Joan Allen) is a pretty cold woman who is too busy trying to be good that she doesn't catch on to her husband's affair with Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver), their next door neighbor (who appears to live pretty far away for being right next door--everyone has to walk for days to get there). Wendy (Christina Ricci, who is blooming quite well, in my opinion) is approaching womanhood. She desperately wants to lose her virginity, but she's not really sure who with. Is it Sandy Carver(Adam "I hope he grows into that nose" Hann-Byrd from Little Man Tate and Jumanji) or his older brother Mikey (Elijah Wood). Paul, her older brother, is in the same predicament. He's been away at school for a while and his roommate sleeps with every girl that Paul shows interest in. He goes to New York for a night to meet a girl from school to find a surprise waiting for him. Now there's the Carvers. Janey is colder than Elana ever could be. When Ben tries to talk to her after sex she says, "I already have one husband. I have no desire to have another one." Jim (Jamey Sheridan) is her husband who doesn't realize that she has affairs until it's too late. Mikey is kind of a geeky 15 year old who is more innocent than he thinks he is and, by the end, realizes that he kind of wants to stay that way. Sandy is the younger brother who idolizes Wendy. The tension culminates in the title storm and a wife swapping party at a friend's house. This, of course, leaves the kids home alone and the parents finding out something about themselves. Everyone in this film did a great job of being icy (Ah-ha! Ice Storm...they're icy to each other--get it?) to their family members and friends. Even the kids tend to be cold to one another. Wendy has her near-trysts and then treats them like they never happened. Everything about this film is cold. Sometimes it seems like overkill to show so much ice, but overall it's to good effect. The music is an interesting mix of tribal drums and pipe with the occasional piano. It's a very icy score. The colors also bring out the cold. There is very little red or orange. The only charactersto wear them that I remember are Wendy and Mikey. Perhaps this is to show the feelings that they won't show. A running theme throughout the film (besides ice) is the loss of innocence. There are really only two innocent characters in the whole film and one of them inadvertently brings the Hood family back together. I guess the real surprise in this one is Christina Ricci. She still looks like Wednesday Addams, but she's grown into a very good actress. She shows the confusion of the times and the age. She seems to want to lose her virginity, but she doesn't really want to be there when it happens. (Her "experience" with Elijah Wood shows this. She wears a Nixon mask through the whole thing. It's really quite funny.) She's caught somewhere between womanhood and girlhood and doesn't know how to be either. She shows this conflict very well in her scenes with Elijah Wood. In her scenes with Adam Hann-Bryd she seems to want to corrupt him. It's hard to be both innocent and corrupt at the same time, but she pulls it off. Kevin Kline is also very good as the almost doltish Ben Hood. He knows that what he's doing is wrong, but what can he do about it? His wife isn't showing the feelings that she should. His kids don't really seem to care. His scene in the car with Paul trying to talk about the facts of life a few years too late is classic Kevin Kline. He wants to be serious, but he also wants to have a sense of humor. He ends up sounding like an idiot who really doesn't know how to connect with his kids. I've always liked Kline because there's something inherently funny about him. Even in his serious films he seems want to have a laugh. I think he's a great actor who deserves more roles like this one. He usually gets stuck with the sarcastic one-liner king parts. Not that he's not good at those. He won an Oscar for one in A Fish Called Wanda. (Did he deserve it more than River Phoenix did for Running On Empty? Well, that's a different story.) The thing is that he has become known for those roles. He needs to do more dramatic roles so that people realize that he's a great actor. He and Micheal Keaton should be in a drama together some time. We could get both under-rated actors to be great together. Another actor who I think is under-rated because of his age is Elijah Wood. I realized he was a good actor when he was the only good part of The Good Son. (Well, Macauly Culkin's demise was pretty good, too, but that's a given.) Roger Ebert has called him the best child actor of any generation. I'm not sure about that, but I think he's better than most in his generation. This part gave him a chance to show the confusion of his own age. Most of his roles lately have been pretty much dumbed-down versions of teeanagers. Did anyone see Flipper (I didn't) or North (I did)? North wasn't as bad as everyone said it was, but it still wasn't very good. Flipper I'm sure everyone involved would like to forget about. Anyway, just watch the scene where he's just figured out that Christina Ricci has pulled an "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" on his younger brother. He rides his bike out to her and says, "I never want to see you again." Her response, without looking back: "Then why'd you come out here to get me?" He thinks for a beat, turns his bike around and goes back home, all the time looking like "What did I just do? What did she just do?" Or the scene where she tells him to drop trou for her. He's confused by his own feelings. "Should I or shouldn't I?" Or even the scenes where he's in the middle of the ice storm acting like a kid. He's really enjoying himself even though he's in danger. He just wants to be a kid for a little while longer. This is a very good film from Ang Lee. The only other movie I've seen from him is Sense And Sensablity, but I plan on seeing more as soon as I can. I just have to get the Blockbuster I work at to get Pushing Hands. Or any foreign films for that matter. His other two are The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman. Maybe I'll review them in another post. There's already been talk of an Oscar for this film and I can see why. It is a deeply affecting and moving piece of cinema and deserves a longer theatrical run than I have a feeling it's going to have. Go see it while you still have a chance!

Contact

admin — Tue, 16 Dec 1997 18:00:00 +0000

Ok, so it's not a really recent movie, but I don't care. I just saw this movie and I think it deserves a page of its own. I didn't get a chance to see the very beginning because I saw it at a friend's house and he was already about 20 minutes into it. He had to bring me up to date, but I was involved as soon as it started. This movie completely amazed me from the editing to the wonder of the story. I have always been kind of an amateur astronomer, but I've kind of slowed it down lately. I've just had a lot of other stuff going on. This film brought it all back out again. The basic premise is that Jodie Foster is an astronomer who is looking for life on other planets. Her father (David Morse) helped her along by buying her telescopes and other tools. One day he asked her if she thought that there was life by other stars. She said that she didn't know. To this he uttered the recurring line of the movie: "If there isn't it sure seems like a lot of wasted space." After he dies she dedicates her life to finding this other life that takes up all that space. One day she finds it. She's hanging out at the VLA (Very Large Aray--it sounds stupid, but that's really what it stands for. It's those huge dishes in the New Mexican desert) with her colleagues and hears some strange noises. It turns out to be an alien life form trying to communicate with us. Tom Skerrit plays her bastard "boss" who starts hogging all the credit. Matthew McConaughey plays a theologistic author who becomes her love interest. James Woods is the government man who wants to control it. The communication ends up being instructions on how to build some kind of machine which is later known very creatively as The Machine. To tell you very much more would probably take away from the movie, so I'll try not to say much about the plot. Besides the stars in the sky there are a lot of stars in the cast. Most of them seem to have near cameos, though. James Woods part is pretty small. David Morse is only in it for about 20 minutes. Angela Bassett is a government agent who seems to come and go whenever she pleases. John Hurt is a mysterious and strange trillionaire who follows Jodi's every move. Rob Lowe is a religious leader a little more fanatical (and Southern, no less) than Matthew. And Jake Busey is an even more fanatical realigious zealot. They all seem to pass in and out of the film faster than a bran muffin. I'm not going to say that the film is without problems. I've never said that about any film except maybe Citizen Kane. Jodi Foster does give some nearly over the top pleas to officials. Then there's Matthew's character. What was his purpose? He does some things that could easily have been done by one of the other characters. Jodi just needed someone to fall for besides her blind boyfriend. The good points, though, far out-number the bad. First, there's the direction. I never really used to think about Robert Zemeckis as being a first class director. Oh, sure, he did some great movies. Back To The Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? are a couple of my favorites. Lately, though, he's been on a rampage of great films. Forrest Gump was awesome (but I still think Pulp Fiction should have gotten the Oscar) and this one (I think) might actually top Forrest. It has the same awe about it. The feeling that one person, no matter how insignificant, can make a difference. The editing and special effects are also amazing. There's the scene where Jodi's father dies. She's about nine or so and she comes down to see her father's body on the floor at home. She runs back upstairs to get his pills. Let's see if I can explain this. It's actually kind of hard to notice. She goes up the stairs which now appear backwards from how they were before. The shot is a tracking shot only showing her face. She runs to the bathroom to the medicine cabinet. As she reaches for it you realize that we've been looking in a mirror the whole time. Somehow it has travelled up the stairs with the girl and stopped just as she reached the cabinet. If you watch the movie you'll see what I mean. It's hard to explain. There are other great moments like that throughout the film. There's one shot near the end where Jodi's face is suddenly and subtly morphed into the face of the girl who played her as a child. There are shots where the camera goes through a closed window. And, of course there are scenes with people speaking who aren't really there. In other words, Pres. Clinton makes an appearance or two in the film, but, of course, it's all computer trickery. Just like Forrest Gump. Besides the direction, though, there's a great story. It almost seems like a great mix of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. I don't know that it is greater than it's parts, but it is definitely the sum of them. Foster does a great job as the astronomer who has never lost touch with the child who wants so badly to believe, but science has taught her to be skeptical. There's a lot of playing with the God theories in this film. Most scientists ask for proof of a Supreme Being. They don't really believe that there is a God. Jodi's character is no different. Matthew, of course, is on the opposite side, but somehow the same side. He believe deeply in religion, but he loves Jodi. What to do. At some point in the movie the tables are turned on her. She becomes the person that no one believes. She asks them to take it on faith, the faith she never had, that she is telling the truth. This, to me, is the main point of the film. Should we believe without proof? Should we take it on faith? That's up to each of us. No one can tell us that we are right or wrong in that respect. The actual journey into space is very reminiscent of 2001. It's more of a journey into self than a journey away from home. It brings the movie to a rather meta-physical conclusion. (Almost. There's more after it, but it is definitely the climax.) I was in awe of the special effects here. There are few films that I would actually call beautiful, but I think this is one of them. The galaxies and worm holes created for it belong in frames. With this film I have started to look at the stars like I used to when I was younger. As a place of wonder and hope. We'll make it there someday. And when we do I want to be there. It doesn't matter how small of a part I play in it, I'll still be able to say, "I made that happen." As Jodi says, it takes a film like this to make us see that we are not small and insignificant, but beautiful and rare.

Scream 2

admin — Fri, 19 Dec 1997 18:00:00 +0000

I just saw one of the best sequels of the last few years. All those people who say it sucks are wrong as far as I'm concerned. Of course it's not as good as the original. If people were expecting it to blow the original away I can see why they wouldn't like the new one. I doesn't play with the conventions as much as that one. They only talked up the sequel genre for the first thirty minutes or so. One of the better scenes is when Randy (the film buff in the original) is in his film theory class and the subject comes up. He says that sequels always suck, which starts people talking about good ones. Of course The Godfather comes up, but they missed the obvious at that point. The Empire Strikes Back is better than Star Wars. Later it comes back when a guy is at a party and comes up to him and mentions it. Randy says that it was part of a trilogy and not an official sequel. Of course, Scream itself was concieved as a trilogy, so is this not a real sequel? What little of the story I can tell you without giving anything away goes like this: It's a couple of years after the events of the last movie. Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) wrote a book about it and it's been made into a movie called Stab. Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is in college with Randy (Jamie Kennedy). She's got a new boyfriend, Derek (Jerry O'Connell--yes, fat boy from Stand By Me--and everyone knows he's not fat anymore) and a whole new set of friends. Gale finds a new adversary in Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf from "Roseanne") and she has a new cameraman, Joel (Duane Martin), who is a little squeemish after reading about her first cameraman. She puts his mind at rest--he wasn't gutted like the book says...his throat was cut. What a relief. We also get Dewey (David Arquette) and Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) back for another chance at being killed. Somehow Dewey lived through the first one. Now Cotton's out to add to the suspect list. More than that I can't tell you. Sorry. There are also quite a few cameos. Jada Pinkett has the Drew Barrymore role in this one, Lewis Arquette plays a police chief, Sarah Michelle Gellar ("Buffy The Vampire Slayer"--she's really getting to be a scream queen lately) is a sorority pledge, Tori Spelling plays Sidney in Stab, Heather Graham (Swingers and Boogie Nights) is Drew in Stab, and Kevin Williamson (the screenwriter/producer) plays a talk show host. Whew! It's a pretty good movie. There are some really funny parts and a few good scares. The first scene isn't quite up to the Drew Barrymore standard of the first one, but it picks up after that. (Did I actually say that Drew has standards? Where did that come from?) The scene in the film school building is one of the best of both movies. The last scene is also really good, but I can't tell you about that one. You'll have to see for yourself. And you should if you like horror movies.

Titanic

admin — Mon, 29 Dec 1997 18:00:00 +0000

Forget just about everything you've ever thought about James Cameron. I know that everyone knows he's a great action director. He's made them so many times that he has pretty much got his own formula. He's also never really been thought of as a "human story" director. The closest he ever came to that was in Terminator 2 when we were supposed to cry for the bad guy from the first one. He came close. He's better at it than most action directors, though. This movie redefines Cameron's legacy. If you never thought he could do it, you were wrong. If you thought that big budget and behind dead-line meant disaster, you were wrong. If you thought this was just a way to cash in on the recent disaster movie craze, you were wrong. Cameron is an amazing director (in my book, anyway) and this film is worth every penny of the $200 million plus spent on it. If you read my review of Contact you know that I tend to gush about movies that I like. It's hard to keep myself from doing that. I don't think I'll even try on this one. If I embarass myself, at least it's for a good cause. Everything about this film is amazing. First, there's the story. It's about the Titanic (I put this here as if you couldn't guess from the title and the hype), but it's also about so much more. It's about class struggles. It's about women's place in their own classes. It's about one of the greatest disasters of all time. But, most of all, it's about love. The kind of love that seems to only be written about. The undying love of two young people who know that it just can't be, but they want it to be anyway. Jack, a young American artist (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose, a young aristocat (Kate Winslet) meet by chance. Jack wins a couple of tickets aboard the Titanic for himself and his friend. When they get on board they stay with their own poor group. They are mainly the ethnic groups of the day. Rose is on board with her mother and her fiancee, Cal (Billy Zane in one of the most hated roles in recent memory). They are the upper class and they believe that the lower class should stay where they are. Rose is a bit different, though. She is a rebel and she really doesn't love this abusive and hateful man that she's supposed to marry. Along the way we meet some other colorful characters. There's the "unsinkable" Molly Brown (yes, I believe it's the same character you might be thinking of) played perfectly by Kathy Bates. There's Captain E.J. Smith (Bernard Hill) who is pushed into making the ship go faster than he knows he should. There's the ship's designer (I can't remember his name or the man who played him) who seems to see the disaster coming before anyone else does. There are many other minor stories going on throughout the film that would take up way too much space to tell. The real story begins when Rose becomes so distraught by her position that she decides to jump off the bow of the ship. Jack, who saw her once before and was already slightly smitten, saves her life. Of course, in doing so, he is accused of attacking Rose. This is cleared up, but Cal and Rose's mother never really forgive him for the "attack." He is, however, invited to dinner for one of the funniest scenes of the film. As time goes on Rose realized that she is in love with her dashing savior. The most romantic scene (and the most erotic in a PG-13 movie) is when she poses for him in the nude. It is handled much more tastfully than I ever would have expected. Even though they did show her almost completely naked, it was not gratuitous at all. The truth of their love comes in full bloom when the ship starts to sink. (I hope I'm not giving anything away there, but if you didn't know that the Titanic sank you probably shouldn't have access to a computer.) Jack sacrifices himself for Rose at least three or four times in an increasingly dangerous way, something that she knows Cal would never do. All of this is framed by the story of Rose as an old woman. She sees the sketch that Jack drew of her on the news one night and decides to take a visit to the place of her destiny. There, Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton in his one millionth role for Cameron) is trying to find the "Heart Of The Sea." This is the necklace that Rose was wearing in the sketch. Before he can go down again Rose calls him and comes to the ship. She then tells her amazing story. Then, there's the acting. (You forgot we were doing a list, didn't you?) Everyone is perfect. There is not one mistep through the whole film. Even Billy Zane and Bill Paxton are in excellent form. (Paxton is cool sometimes, but I'm tired of seeing him all over the place. Zane, well, I don't really have an opinion of him. A friend of mine hates him, though. Go figure.) Of course, the real stars are DiCaprio and Winslet. Strangely enough they even out do the ship. I've been a fan of both of these actors for at least a couple of years now. Kate was first seen by most people in Ang Lee's Sense And Sensablity. This one is really good, but check out Heavenly Creatures, also. This was her first role and it's a great movie. Very strange, but where else can you see a claymation scene with Orson Welles? Leo is one of the best actors of his generation, if not the best. Even if the movie isn't very good (Total Eclipse, The Quick And The Dead--although I thought it was cool in a cheesy sort of way) he is always great. To think he came from such training grounds as "Growing Pains." What a way to start. Even though I have always liked them a lot, this movie made me fall in love with both of them. These are the kind of people that I would want to be around me. I don't know that I would want to love Rose because she is so perfect with Jack. They would be my best friends and I would be inspired by their love. Kate Winslet, on the other hand, I would want to love. She has a certain elegance about her. There's a reason why she's been in so many period movies. She has the look for it. What other actress her age could do it? She's beautiful and ethereal. It's hard to sum up how I feel about her. She definitely has a place in my favorite acresses book. And Leo, well, I don't know that I would get along with him. I hear he's pretty much just a punk. He might be a little too modern for the part, but by the half hour mark I didn't care. It only showed itself a couple of times, and it was more in the writing than in his acting. At one point Jack and Kate are running behind a man who is saying the "As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" prayer. Jack says, "Why don't you walk a little faster through that valley." Well, it's not a great line, but he delivers it well. One thing about Leo, he's got the "troubled teen" down. I can't think of a role he's had that wasn't a "troubled teen." He's a great actor, though. I think that at some point (if not for this film) both Kate and Leo will win an Oscar. They've both been nominated before (for Sense And Sensability and What's Eating Gilbert Grape?). Both of them and the movie itself have already been nominated for Golden Globes. How far away could it be? I can't imagine his acceptance speech, though. "Yeah. Thanx. Whatever." Then there's the direction. (We're still in the list.) Cameron has outdone himself this time. There are shots of Kate Winslet that make her even more beautiful than she's been in other films. He made both Kate and Leo shine out over the special effects. He realized that the human story of the lovers was more important than having huge action scenes with a lot of people being killed. (Although, I think there are more people shown dying in this one than all of his earlier films put together.) There are only a few times where he falls into his old traps, and even then it is done to further the development of character. There are guns used, but only by the "bad guys." They are used as weapons of evil or panic instead of shooting a way out of a situation. For the most part he keeps his action tendancies at bay and lets the story and acting speak for itself. If I were on the Academy this would be at the top of my list for Best Picture and Director. There have been few movies recently (and especially this year) that have affected me the way this one has. I saw it with two friends of mine and we all agreed. One of us cried and two of us came very close. (I'll let you guess which one I was.) One of my friends said that he probably wouldn't watch it again. There's no way he could get the same affect out of it the second time around. Especially not on the small screen. At three hours plus it is a daunting exercise in sitting down, but it's worth every pain in the butt and every cent you spend on the ticket. I think everyone should see this movie if only to see the greatest love story of the year. The special effects are great, but it's the fireworks that make it the best film of the year.

Good Will Hunting/Jackie Brown

admin — Tue, 06 Jan 1998 18:00:00 +0000

In case you haven't guessed from all of the reviews I've been writing lately, I'm trying to see all of the Oscar contenders before they are nominated and before they leave the theatres. My quest continues, but the list has shrunken. On Monday, I saw Good Will Hunting. This film was directed by Gus Van Sant and written by stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. It also stars Robin Williams, Minnie Driver and Stellan Skarsgard (from last year's Best Picture nominee, Breaking The Waves). It centers around Will Hunting (Damon) who is a genius, but he doesn't know how to handle it. He is a janitor at MIT and has never gone beyond a high school education. One day he solves an unsolvable problem that Prof. Lambeau (Skarsgard) left on a board for his students. That's where it all starts. He bails Will out of jail after a brawl and gets him probabtion in his custody. The catch is that Will has to see a therapist. The next few scenes with him against a line of therapists are hilarious. He knocks them down as they are stood up in front of him. Then comes Sean McGuire (Robin Williams). There's something different about him. Will knocks him down, but he comes back for more. He proves that the best therapy is when both patient and therapist learn from eachother. Considering how young Damon and Affleck are (just around 26) it's surprising that they wrote such a great script. That's not to say that young people can't write well. I think Kevin Smith is a great writer and he's not much older. This script is very mature, though. I'm only 22, but I can't imagine that four more years would give me the insight that these guys seem to have. There's a scene between Williams and Damon where Williams is telling him that he doesn't know anything about life. Something along the lines of "If I ask you about love you could quote me a sonnet or talk about it from the standpoint of a scholar, but you've never known what it's like to wake up next to someone who you really love. Someone who stays in your mind all day. Someone you would die for." That's not how it goes. It's much deeper than that. I can't write like they can and it shows. Someone at the age of 26 would not really know to write this way unless they had had a lot of experience in love. The driving force of the film is, of course, the characters. These are real, living, breathing people. We learn so much about them in the two hours we're with them. We learn about Will's past and why he is the way he is. We learn about Sean's wife and why he can't seem to move on from her death. We learn that Chuckie (Affleck), Morgan and Billy are some of the best friends that Will could ever have. They may make fun of eachother, but they're always there to back eachother up. There's a great scene where Chuckie tells Will that he wishes he would get to Will's house and Will would be gone. Not because he doesn't want to hang out with him, but because he know that Will will waste his gift if he doesn't get out of Boston. If you've ever seen any of Van Sant's other movies you're in for a surprise. This is nothing like anything he's done before. Drugstore Cowboy was a classic of non-flinching drug cinema. It was completely unapologetic towards anyone, drug culture or not. It doesn't condemn or promote the lifestyle, it just says "Here it is. Pass your own judgement." My Own Private Idaho was tough to watch the first time. The second time I found out that I really liked it. It even made Keanu Reeves look like he could act. Sort of. And it's one of River Phoenix's best performances. To Die For was a great piece of cynical theatrical moviemaking. It would have worked well on the stage, I think. It was brilliantly written and very well directed and acted. It seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it film, though. I know a lot of people who really hate it. I've never seen Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, but I hear it sucked. No point in bringing up old wounds. Good Will Hunting is nothing like any of those. It's not cynical or hard to watch. It's not depressing or theatrical. It's good filmmaking and great writing. It's almost sentimental and definitely sympathetic. The performances are just as good as his earlier films, with Williams as the typical standout. I have always thought that Robin was one of the most under-rated actors in Hollywood today. He's always thought of as the frantic comedian, but he's a great dramatic actor. Just watch this one or Dead Poet's Society and you'll see what I mean. Even some of the more dramatic moments in Mrs. Doubtfire will prove me right. The other film I saw in the past couple of days was Jackie Brown. It's another Tarantino film and it shows. It's based on a novel by Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty) called Rum Punch and revolves around an airline stewardess, Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) who is bringing gun money back for Ordell Robi (Samuel L. Jackson in another great performance). She is caught by a couple of ATF officers (Michael Keaton and Michael Bowen) and put in jail. Robi bails her out through the help of a bail-bondsman named Max Cherry (Robert Forster). Robi also has his cronies Louis Gara (Robert DeNiro) and Melanie (Bridget Fonda, the little vixen). The plot takes too many turns to mention here, but let's just say we never really know who's playing what games with who until the very end. A friend of mine was really disappointed in this movie. He's tired of Quentin's schtick. I haven't gotten sick of it yet, so I really liked it. It's not nearly as violent as Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs, but it's got just as many plot twists. There's even a scene that we get to see three times from three different perspectives. I was really impressed with the film, but I can't say that I liked it as much as Pulp Fiction. The characters were just as alive as PF's, but PF had a bigger sense of fun. Not that Jackie Brown didn't have it's laughs. It wouldn't be a Tarantino movie without that. But it was darker. Jackson's character is pretty much pure evil. He hates everybody and they don't usually know it until they're dead. The other characters are great, too. DeNiro is hilarious as a stoner screw-up (hard to imagine, huh?) and Bridget is great as his bong pal. (Not to mention the fact that she looks great in the bikini tops she wears throughout most of the film!) Keaton puts in a fairly one-note performance as the ATF guy. That's unusual for him. I think he's another very under-rated actor. I can't wait to see him in Desperate Measures as a serial killer. That should be great! Forster is the real surprise, here. I don't think he's been in a good movie since 1969's Medium Cool (which I've never seen, but it's a classic apparently) and now we find out that he's a really good actor. What a waste of two and a half decades. All we could find for this guy was The Delta Force? Come on! I'm sure I didn't catch all of the in-jokes for blaxploitation fans in the film. One guy told me that one of the characters is named for the actor who played Huggy Bear in "Starsky And Hutch." I don't know from Starsky and I don't know from Hutch. The only way I know Huggy Bear is from So I Married And Axe Murderer. Personally, I think he misheard Bargas as Fargis. Maybe I'll need to see some of Pam Grier's older movies like Foxy Brown and Coffy. If they're as cool as this movie I'll probably like them. I wouldn't call this one an Oscar winner, but it's definitely probably in the top ten films of the year.

Tomorrow Never Dies

admin — Sat, 17 Jan 1998 18:00:00 +0000

I've seen a lot of movies in the last week or so, but I haven't been around my computer, so I'll have to remember what I can. Bear with me if I don't get as detailed as I usually do. This is the latest installment in the James Bond series. I have to tell you right now that I'm a big fan, so I'm biased. I was surprised by this one, though. It was really cool. Even better than GoldenEye. Pierce Brosnan is growing into the role and the casting directors and writers are finally learning what we want from these movies. We don't want PC. We want Bond to get all the women and use all the gadgets as he can. We also want action. We got it all in this one. The story (there isn't quite as much as there should have been) is about a man (Jonathan Pryce) who wants to start a war between England and Japan. He almost does this with the use of his amazingly big newspaper/media chain and a stealth submarine. Bond, of course, comes in to save the day. Along the way he meets Pryce's wife (Teri Hatcher) who he "knew" at one time and Michelle Yeoh who is an agent for Japan. She's got to be one of the best Bond girls ever. She's kicks as much butt as James does and she doesn't have as much screen time! One thing I really like about the new Bond movies is that they're turning him into more than just a woman-loving secret agent with a bunch of gadgets. He's getting a background and a personality. The last time we really saw James have real emotions was when he got married (On Her Majesty's Secret Service, not one of the better ones) and when he's at the grave of his wife (I think that was in the beginning of Octopussy). In GoldenEye they have a scene between him and Natalya where she confronts him about his problems with women. She tells him that he's too distant. He says something like "It's what keeps me alive" and she says, "No. It's what keeps you alone." That scene was probably one of the most dramatic in the series. This time he has some scenes like that with Teri Hatcher. We've learned a lot about James from these scenes that we didn't really know before. He has a conscience. He keeps his emotions hidden. It's all for England and none of it is for himself. But it's the action we came for. This entry has plenty of it. Michelle gets a lot of it, but Pierce does his share of butt-kicking. We also finally get to see more gadgets. He actually uses the car in this one! That scene was awesome. The Q sequence introducing the car wasn't quite as funny as the one in GoldenEye, but it had its moments. Michelle has a lot of gadgets of her own that James gets tangled in. Jonathan Pryce, I thought, was great as Elliot Carver, the maniac at the helm of the media of the world. He's probably closer to the old Bond bad guys than any of the recent ones. He's actually doing something that will affect the world instead of robbing a bank. He's also more insane than Sean Bean ever could have been. That might be because he's a better actor than Bean will ever be. The jokes in this one are the usual bad puns, but they're funny for some reason. Let's see, there's the "cunning linguist" joke, the "edifice complex" joke and the "The Empire Will Strike Back" headline. I don't know of many other Bond flicks that reference other movies, but this one had two: Empire and Citizen Kane. Go figure, huh. Anyway, it's a great movie for Bond fans. Pretty good for Kung-Fu fans, too.

Wag The Dog

admin — Sun, 18 Jan 1998 18:00:00 +0000

There are three groups of audience members for this movie: those who love the satiric humor, those who get it, but don't really think it's that great, and those who just don't get it. I saw it with two other people and between the three of us we represented all three groups. I happen to be in the first group. I've always loved satiric humor. As far as I'm concerned Wag The Dog is a masterpiece of this genre. Basic sum-up: The president is in trouble. He's been accused of molesting a girl who's just a bit too young. We never really know if he did it or not. That's up to us. His head spin doctor decides to get people to forget about it. Robert De Niro plays this part perfectly. He's got the almost gangster quality, but it's far enough away that you think that he actually could be a government worker. Conrad Brean (De Niro) calls in Stanley Motts (Dustin Hoffman), a big Hollywood producer. He's going to produce a war. Not a real one, but a staged one where no one is really in battle. This is just to get people on the side of the president. Just so no one can really check on it they go for a country that no one really knows about...Albania (all I really know is that it boarders on the Adriatic, and that's only because of a "Cheers" episode). They pull out all the stops. Kirsten Dunst plays a girl who plays an Albanian girl running for her life in a staged villiage. The scene where they try to figure out what kind of kitten she's running with is hilarious. She's actually running with a bag of potato chips! We even get a "We Are The World" type song. They call in Johnny Green (Willie Nelson!) to write it. After a while things get out of control and we have to have a hero. They choose Sgt. William Schumann (Woody Harrelson). I can't say too much about his character without giving something away, but it's pretty funny. The cast of this film is amazing. Anne Heche plays the stressed out assistant to Brean, Winifred Ames. There's also Denis Leary as the Fad King, one of Motss's friends who helps him with his style choices. Andrea Martin (from SCTV) is another tag along of the producer's. Craig T. Nelson is the President's nemesis. William H. Macy also pops up a few times. (It's been about a week since I've seen this movie, so I can't remember what he did in it.) I really liked Wag The Dog a lot. Not many satirical movies hit the bullseye like this one does, especially not political satires. Just look at Canadian Bacon, which this film has a lot in common with. I haven't seen Canadian Bacon, but I've heard nothing but bad reviews of it. I've been wanting to see it because I like Michael Moore and John Candy, but I'm afraid that I would either hate it and be disappointed by them or I would like it and be ridiculed forever. Well, go see the movie and see for yourself which group you belong to. No shame in any of them. Not everyone follows politics, but it doesn't take a lot of political knowledge to follow it. Even so, I'm sure I didn't get all of it. Just think back to the Gulf War and you should get most of the jokes.

Amistad

admin — Sun, 18 Jan 1998 18:00:00 +0000

It's taken me almost a month, but I finally saw the new Spielberg movie. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed. It was not a bad movie at all. In fact it was very good, but it wasn't as powerful or moving as I thought it would be. I'll get to that later, though. First, the synopsis. We start off on the Amistad, a Spanish slave ship that is taken over by the Africans it picked up. Then, of course, tragedy strikes when they trust a couple of the Spaniards that they spared to get them back to Africa. They betray them and turn them in as mutineers to the next ship they come across. In America, Theodore Joadson and Tappan (Morgan Freeman and Stellan Skarsgard) take up the cause of the Africans. They are the editors (I think) of an underground anti-slavery newspaper. They try to get John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins in one of the best performances of his career) to be their lawyer, but he decides to let them go it alone. Along the way Mr. Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey) pops up and he becomes their lawyer. He's a young upstart (what was that again?--sorry, Marx Bros. reference) who is pretty inexperienced, but he's got what it takes. They choose a leader for the Africans in Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), but he says that they don't really have or need a leader. They are all different people who have different needs. McConaughey wins the case, but the President, Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne) wants to be re-elected, so he gets a new judge for the case. Eventually, they make it to the Supreme Court and Adams has a moving soliloquy. The cast is, of course, great. Freeman is amazing as is Hopkins. He's the only person who could beat Robin Williams as Best Supporting Actor in my opinion. Skarsgard does a great job as the slavery-hater who only seems to want the Africans to be martyred. It's good to see McConaughey in a real role after Contact. (As much as I liked that movie he had not place in it.) Anna Paquin (the little Oscar winner from The Piano) has a small (and I do mean small) role as the 11 year-old Queen of Spain. Pete Postlethwaite also shows up as a prosecuting attorney. He's really getting to be one of my favorite character actors lately. The other big surprise is that Darren E. Burrows has a small role as one of the people who claim the slaves as their own. All you fellow "Northern Exposure" fans should at least recognize the face, if not the name: It's Ed! As soon as he showed up I almost yelled out, in "Cheers" fashion, "EEEEDDD!" I guess the really big surprise in this one is the African leader, Djimon Hounsou. He really is fairly amazing. If the rumors are true that he was found on the street, I would be pretty surprised. A friend of mine is an actor and he doesn't believe this for a second. He figures he had an agent and, he may have been living on the street, but he wasn't found on the street. Anyway, he's a great actor and deserves to get more big roles like this one. I'm sure he will, too. Anyone who gets lead billing in a Spielberg movie is bound to become big. As I said, the movie is very good, as are most of Spielberg's films. The problem is that he uses his usual style. There's a scene in one of the courtrooms where Cinque stands up and starts shouting, in very simple English, "Give us free! Give us free!" The music swells and we are supposed to tear up and think, "Yes! Give them free! Let them go!" Instead, I was thinking, "Hey, Steve! This is cool in your sci-fi and adventure movies, but not in a movie this important." It kind of undermined the whole point of the film. One think that was kind of strange was the amount of violence. Spielberg usually tries to keep this to a minimum. Even Schindler's List was pretty non-violent, if I remember right. I haven't seen it since it's theatrical release, but I don't remember being shocked by graphic violence. (Well, I'm not shocked by it hardly ever, but I don't expect it from Spielberg.) I guess it was needed, just different. It was a great movie and is definitely worth seeing. No doubt about that. I don't mean to dog it at all. I just wanted it to be better than it was. It's an important movie, nonetheless. It's another one that should be seen by all Americans, African or otherwise.

U-Turn

admin — Mon, 26 Jan 1998 18:00:00 +0000

If Dashiell Hammett and David Lynch had a love child of a movie, this would be it. It's modern film noir with a really strange twist. This is the latest Oliver Stone movie, though, so it has some definite Stone-isms. Let's start with the basic plot: Sean Penn plays Bobby Cooper, a man running for his life into the wrong town on the wrong day. He's driving through the Arizona desert on a hot summer's day in his 1964 1/2 Mustang. Suddenly, his radiator hose blows. He pulls into a small town called Superior (which is probably alluding to Stone's attitude) where he meets every weirdo in the world. The first one is Darrell (Billy Bob Thornton in his dirtiest role yet), a dim-witted mechanic. Then he meets a blind man (Jon Voight) who spouts out his own brand of philosophy. By the way, this is Stones third weird Indian dude that I know of. If things go the way they've been going his next film will be either about Vietnam or a dead president and then we'll get another weird Indian dude. (Actually, according to the IMDB his next film is The Planet Of The Apes. Whatever.) Anyway, he then meets Grace McKenna (Jennifer Lopez). She is a cool seductress who is married to an older, dominating man named Jake (Nick Nolte). There's also a whacked-out sheriff played by Powers Booth, a little girl who wants to have Bobby's love child (Claire Danes) and her stupid, not quite so tough boyfriend Toby N. Tucker (Joaquin Phoenix). "Everyone calls me TNT! Cause when I go off people get hurt!" Of course, Bobby gets involved with Grace and gets offers from both sides of the married couple to kill the other. He switches sides more times than Benedict Arnold. (Hence, the title.) But, then again, so does everyone else. Oh yeah, Bobby's also on the run from a bunch of thugs that he owes $30,000. And Darrell won't give him his car back until he pays him $200 for the hose. Bobby's last line to Darrell is a classic. After Stone's last ultra-violent movie, Natural Born Killers, I was ready to hate this one. As far as I'm concerned, NBK was one of the worst movies ever made. It disgusted me in every way possible. It didn't offend me because of the violence or anything like that. It offended me because it ruined Quentin Tarantino's story and it was so STUPID!!!! I hated how it kept going from black and white to cartoon to crud. Not to mention the fact that it was one of the most pretentious films in recent memory. Ok, I've ranted enough. Let's move on. This movie was actually good! I was really surprised. It didn't dip too far into Stone's pretentions (only one b&w shot in the whole movie and no cartoons) and it told an interesting story. It was basically a strange version of a film noir. The seductress gets the man involved in a plot that will go against his values. The man can either lose by throwing his values away or win by keeping to them. This one has a twist, though. (Of course, I won't tell you what that twist is because I'm smart.) The acting was great, too. No Woody Harrelsons or Juliette Lewises to screw this one up. Now we get Sean Penn (one of the best actors of the 30-something generation) and Jennifer Lopez. We also get Nick Nolte, Jon Voight, Joaquin Phoenix (who is cool by default because of his better looking and more talented older brother) and Claire Danes. There's a few small roles taken by cool people, too. Julie Hagerty plays a waitress named Flo (she actually breaks out of her nervous schtick for a while), Laurie Metcalf shows up as a teller at a bus station and Liv Tyler has basically a walk on in the same bus station (due probably to the fact that she's going out with Joaquin). Oliver puts his son in another role, too. He shows up in the grocery store just before it gets robbed. This movie is everything that NBK should have been. It doesn't take itself too seriously, first of all. Stone knows that the characters aren't redeeming, so he makes them all look like schmoes. He also doesn't kill us with editing. It definitely has the NBK look to it, but it doesn't go too overboard. There are a lot of edits and shots with someone talking without their mouths moving, but it doens't get annoying like it did in NBK. It's also not just an excuse for violence. There's actually a story going on behind the shooting. It's not trying to make a big statement with small characters. It's just showing us the characters and letting us make our own decisions. No media there to make heroes out of them. It shows a small town with some of the most eccentric people in the world. Maybe David Lynch should have directed it.

BASEketball

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 1998 18:00:00 +0000

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm a South Park fanatic. I have all the episodes on tape. I've memorized half of them. I do all the voices. I'm a frightening individual. So it's no surprise that I was first in line to see Trey Parker and Matt Stone's movie. Actually, it was by accident that I got to see the sneak preview. A friend of mine had tickets and she asked me to go. I never would have even known that it was playing otherwise. Ever since the first preview, though, I knew I had to see it. This movie is about two childhood friends who make up a new game that brings back sports-mania to America. We've all had enough of baseball players going on strike and football players dancing in the endzone. Now we get a new sport that combines baseball and basketball. You stand in one place, shoot the ball and, depending on where you stand, you get a certain amount of points. The other team can try to psyche you out by insulting or surprising you. (Trey's psyche-outs are hilarious. Matt does beat him once, though. "Got milk?") They make up the game on the spot when a couple of guys at a party challenge them to a game of two on two. After a while everyone on the block is interested. Then a big shot named Theodore Denslow (Ernest Borgnine) gets interested and he gets them to start a real team and a league. They head up the Milwaukee Beers with their long suffering Squeak Scolari (Dian Bachar who's been in all of Trey and Matt's movies). They keep coming very close to winning the Denslow Cup, but always get beat by their main rivals, the Felons. Along the way they meet Jenna Reed (Yasmine Bleeth--WOW!!!), a care-taker of health impaired and survival challenged kids (think about it), Baxter Cain (Robert Vaughn), the owner of the Felons who wants to change the rules of BASEketball which include keeping teams from moving and a cap on the players' wages, and Yvette Denslow (Jenny McCarthy), Denslow's young wife (she gave him the best three months of her life). This movie isn't quite as disgusting as There's Something About Mary, but that would be hard to top (but boy does it try). It is, however, more consistently funny. Not all the jokes hit (even some of the ones that were really funny in the ads didn't go over so well with the audience), and some seem a little too obvious, but that doesn't matter. It's a very funny movie. I don't think there was a two minute period that I wasn't laughing about something. There's a great hospital scene that rivals the one from the Marx Brothers classic A Day At The Races mixing in a little bit of the dog jump-starting scene from There's Something About Mary. There's also a lot of spoofs of other movies: Boogie Nights and The Natural (naturally) are just two of the targets. And who can resist seeing Ernest Borgnine dancing to "I'm Too Sexy"? I know that Matt and Trey didn't really have much to do with the movie (they only starred in it and got the jobs before South Park hit), but I saw a lot of their influence in it. There were a lot of references to South Park ("anal probe night," there's a team called the Cows, not to mention all the non-PC humor, Squeak's real name is Kenny and he's constantly being knocked around, the constant use of the words "sweet," "dude" and "weak"), and Matt does some voices! At one point or another I heard Stan, Mr. Garrison and, of course, Cartman. I'm surprised there wasn't a "Oh my God! They killed Kenny!" They also make fun of a lot of celebrities. (I didn't realize that drunk people smell like Christian Slater and Robert Downey, Jr.) Lots of cameos to look for. Reggie Jackson, Robert Stack, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who was in Airplane! which David Zucker also directed), Zigfried and Roy and a Playboy Playmate of the Year. I forget which one, though. Bob Costas and Al Michaels are hilarious playing themselves and saying some really weird stuff. It's hard to imagine Bob Costas talking about his nipples. Jenny McCarthy (who would talk about her nipples) gets a new respect from me, though. She has a great sense of humor about her reputation. She really knows how to lay carpet, too. Through it all Matt, Trey and David Zucker get a great movie for their first big release and the SP boys get to make out with some gorgeous women! Unfortunately, if you've seen their Fireside Chats on the SP videos and wondered about their looks at each other, they carry it a little too far at one point. These guys must be REALLY good friends. We get to see a little more of them than I really wanted to see, too. It's a hilarious movie, though. Lots of sick jokes and disgusting sight gags. Watch out for "Free Range Chicken Night," though.

SXSW1998--Dancer, TX Pop. 81/Cannibal! The Musical

admin — Fri, 13 Mar 1998 18:00:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've been in here, but I've been really busy lately. I've only had time to watch videos. Those almost count for these reviews, but I'd rather put theatrical movies in here. Anyway, I'm helping out with the South By South West Film Festival here in Austin, so I'm going to get to see a lot of movies!!!! And you guys and gals who decide to tread these waters get to hear about all of them!!!!! HA HA HA HA!!!!!! (That's supposed to be a maniacal laugh. I'm not sure if that comes across on a webpage, but I'll try just about anything once.) The first movie I saw today at the festival was called Dancer, Texas Pop. 81. If you've ever wondered what it's like to live in a small town as a teenager, this is a good way to find out. It's about four high school graduates: Keller (Breckin Meyer from Clueless), Terrell Lee (Peter Facinelli from pretty much nothing), John (I think that's his name, anyway he's played by Eddie Mills, soon to be in the tv show "Push") and Squirrel (Ethan Randall from Empire Records, White Squall, That Thing You Do! and Vegas Vacation). When they were 12 they made a solemn oath that they would all go to LA together when they graduated. That's a lot to promise at that young of an age. Soon they start to learn that. Keller is the main one who wants to go. He wants to get out of Dancer so badly that he can taste it. He's sick of working at the gas station and thinking that a good time is sitting in lawn chairs in the middle of the highway that no one travels. Terrell Lee's mother wants him to stay and take over the family business: oil. Her father owned the oil fields before her husband took over and now she's taken over the family. No one goes against her wishes or else. John wants to own a ranch, but he feels obligated to go to LA. His dad can't quite tell him that he wants him to stay. His sister, Josie (Ashley Johnson, the little girl from "Growing Pains") helps out as much as possible by leaving Saul Ross course catalogs all over the house. Squirrel is pretty insane. He's a complete nerd, but they all love him anyway (of course, because we're so loveable). His dad's a drunk who can't even get their trailer to stay completely vertical. Meanwhile, the whole town has bets on how many of them will actually make it out of the town. I really liked this movie. The characters were real and the dialogue was great. If Scream shows how teenagers wish they could talk, this shows how they actually do talk. Sometimes they're witty, but usually they're just talking. They say the same things that everyone else does, but it's funnier because it's on the screen. The atmosphere in the movie is so thick you can cut it with...well, you know the rest of that cliche. I felt like I grew up in Dancer. It was filmed in the same town that all of those crazy Texas Revolutionaries set up fort. In fact, that almost stopped the filming. The DP and Director (Tim McCanlies) make good use of the location. We see all sorts of beautiful shots of the West Texas landscape. This is Tim's first feature and I hope it's not his last. He's from Austin and worked in LA as a screenwriter. He then came back here to write this one and got it made with the help of a few friends and Tri-Star Pictures. Even though it's got a big studio backing it, it's still and indie film. Go figure. It's a great movie and very well written. It's opening on May 1, so go see it if it comes around to your town. Tim was there and he said that he wasn't sure how they were going to distribute it. I would figure that they would platform it and go on word of mouth. That's how most of these kinds of movies get out there. Watch for it. The other movie was a little bit different. It was Trey Parker and Matt Stone's first feature, Cannibal! The Musical. If these two names don't automatically ring a bell, think "South Park." Now you know what to expect from the movie. It's not animated, but it may as well be. It's from the only production company that could tie these guys down: Troma. Yes, the same guys who brought you The Toxic Avenger, The Class Of Nuke 'Em High and Tromeo And Juliet bring you Cannibal! The Musical. The first screen of the film is a placard that says that this movie was originally made in the 50's, but, due to the success of the other cowboy musical Oklahoma!, it was shelved. All of the violence was edited out "for you viewing pleasure." Yeah. Whatever. It starts with our hero, Alfred Packer (played by the auteur) biting the hell out of a bunch of people in the snow. "But that's not how it happened!" Actually, Alfred is just a yound man who needs nothing but his horse by his side. His life is as full as a potato. (What great lyrics from Mr. Parker.) He meets some miners who want to go from Utah to the Colorado Territory. Unfortunately, their guide is sort of dead. (He actually looks quite a bit like Kenny.) Now one of the guys speaks up and says that Packer was from the Colorado Territory. Well, he only worked there for a few months, but that's not important. He ends up leading his band of willing (and, in Matt Stone's case, completely unwilling) explorers. On foot. All the way across the desert. And snow covered mountains. And the Green River. And the Colorado River. Eventually, they meet some Indians who are strangely Asian looking, and some trappers who keep tormenting them. They also end up lost in the snow. This is where the finger-licking fun begins. "You're cutting from the butt!" "Well, what kind of piece do you want?" "Well, not butt!" I've never seen a Troma movie all the way through, but I've seen enough to know that this is not really a typical one. There are no mutants! It's got the same weirdo violence, but no radio active idiots to go with it. It also has a more sophisticated sense of humor. That's not saying much, but how many Troma movies actually would know to make a joke about Mr. Ed? A friend of mine after the movie said that it was the best one he had seen so far. I really liked it, but then again I'm a "South Park" freak. It was fun to see how many times I heard Cartman's voice throughout the movie. Anyway, it's good, tasteless fun. If you're looking for high entertainment and filmmaking, don't come here. If you're looking for something to disgust you and make you laugh at the same time, look no further.

SXSW1998--Chicago Cab/The Newton Boys/Six-String Samurai

admin — Sun, 15 Mar 1998 18:00:00 +0000

I'm still at the South By Southwest festival. I'll be there all week, so watch for new reviews all the time. I saw three movies between yesterday and today and all three were pretty cool. Two of them were awesome! The first of the movies was Chicago Cab. It was an interesting little movie about a cabbie in Chicago, hence...Chicago Cab. It didn't really have much of a plot, of course. Just people getting in and out of Paul Dillon's cab. The riders start to take a toll on the cabbie, though. He does something that cabbies shouldn't do: he gets involved. Not as involved as Travis Bickle, but involved nonetheless. He wants to help these people, but he doesn't really know how. Some of the riders are hilarious. Laurie Metcalf gets in and tells him to wait for a little bit. Then another guy slickly gets in the cab. They drive for a while and then the two decide that they can't wait for the motel. One guy at the beginning tries to tell the cabbie that he can't drive. A couple of other guys from New York try to get to him by constantly saying that the Cubs suck. Other riders are a little more serious. Gillian Anderson is a woman who is tired of her boyfriend joking about her past. She was apparently pretty loose at one time, but now she's a one man woman. Someone brought it up at a party and her boyfriend agreed with them instead of defending her honor ("Which is more than she ever did." Sorry. Groucho took over for a second). It's kind of funny, but the seriousness is much more important. And no, she doesn't smile. Two other women are verbally abused by their boyfriends. John C. Reilly plays a man who is using a woman who the cabbie doesn't think deserves to be used. In the most poignant scene in the movie Julianne Moore plays a woman who has been raped just a few minutes before the cabbie got to her. She had been talking to the cops, but they, for some reason, didn't take her home. He wants so badly to do something more for her than say "I'm sorry," but there's really nothing more he can do. There's also one really weird, almost frightening scene. John Cusack (who also executive produced) plays a total psycho who never really specifies where he wants to go. He makes the cabbie take him down an alley, and, well, I don't like to give things away. Let's just say that Cusack is great in this part. The last rider sums up the whole movie. This movie is not about endings or beginnings. It's about a man who wishes he could help the whole world. He's a good hearted man who doesn't quite know what to do with it. He gets too involved with his rider's lives and then can't follow through with it. Basically, it's a day in the life of a cabbie. That's all. It's a pretty good movie, though. Not a masterpiece, but it's worth seeing. Especially Cusack's scene. He's awesome. The Newton Boys was the next movie I saw yesterday. It was one of the two really good ones I mentioned earlier. It's the new one by the slacker himself, Rick Linklater. He heard a story about a gang of brothers back int he late teens and early 20s who pulled off the most successful bank robberies in American history. They did almost all of their jobs at night when there was no one in the bank. What a concept! The movie stars a cast of young Hollywood heavyweights and near heavyweights. Matthew McConaughey plays Willis, the smartest of the brothers. This, of course, means he's the leader. Ethan Hawke plays Jess, the craziest of the brothers. He stops drinking and fooling around just long enough to rob the banks. Skeet Ulrich plays Joe, the youngest and most moralistic of the brothers. He always wants to stop pulling the jobs. To get him to do it in the first place Willis has to tell him that he's really stealing from the banks before they can steal it from the farmers. Vincent D'Onofrio plays Dock. He gets out of prison in the middle of the movie and then follows Jess on his drinking binges. Dwight Yoakum plays Glasscock, the ballistics expert. He's not one of the brothers and doesn't really understand why Willis wants the others around. The movie starts with Willis getting out of prison and going back home to see his family. After a while he's back to his old tricks and falls in with Glasscock and Slim (Charles Gunning). They rob a bank in broad daylight and are chased by the cops. Slim gets caught and the other two barely get away alive. Glasscock gets the idea to use nitro to get into the safes at night, but they need a crew. Enter Jess and Joe. This starts the official career of the Newton Boys. They rob banks from Texas to Omaha where Willis meets Louise (Julianna Margulies) and quickly falls in love. She winds up on the road with them and their spree makes it to Canada. Anyway, the big heist of the movie is one of the biggest train robberies in American history. They got away with three million 1924 dollars. Not too much more can be said that wouldn't give the ending away. I'll just say that a mistake is made and that's what starts their downfall. This movie has more universal appeal than any of Linklater's other movies. It's not just about a bunch of slackers hanging out and talking. It actually has a plot! Not only that, but all of the actors are really good. We don't have any Wiley Wiggins in this one to ruin it. Ok, Skeet might not be the greatest actor in the world, but he plays his part pretty well. Vincint is a great actor, but he's the only complaint I really have about the movie: he doesn't get to do anything. He's just sort of there. Dwight is a much better actor than he is a singer. (Ok, ok. I don't like country music at all, so I'm not a very good judge.) I'm always impressed when I see him in movies. Without his hat he's almost unrecognizable, though. You can actually see his face. It's a great movie. When it opens on April 17 go see it. I got to see it at the world premiere (COOL!!!) with Rick, Matthew, Ethan, Julianna and Dwight. The five of them did a question and answer afterwords that was almost as entertaining as the movie. They talked about the two scenes that were shot in the Paramount theatre where we were seeing the movie. Someone asked Dwight why he was the only singer who can act. He, of course not wanting to put anyone down, said that he was lucky in that he always gets good material. He actually wanted to say, "Becauce I'm awesome and everyone else sucks!" Of course, Ethan was the most at ease and the funniest of the five on stage. He was back home, after all! Now for the really cool one. Six String Samurai. It is exactly what it sounds like. It takes place in an alternate universe where the Russians dropped the bomb in 1957 and took over America. The last real outpost for freedom was a place called Lost Vegas. Elvis was crowned king, but he's just died. Now everyone with a six string is trying to make it to Lost Vegas to become king...even Death, who looks quite a bit like Slash. Our hero is Buddy, a bespectacled guy in a tuxedo ("Nice tuxedo to die in!"), who looks amazingly like another Buddy from the 50s. He meets a kid who doesn't seem to want to stay behind. After a while they form a bond pretty much like Harry Calahan and his partners. "This doesn't mean that we're together." Through a series of amazing kung-fu and sword play scenes they make it through a fight with some cannibals (a really weird scene with a Cleaver-wannabe family), a Richie Valens lookalike, some windmill people in space suits, and, of course, Death. ("Bow to the power of heavy metal!") There are so many influences and references running around this movie. Lance was spouting a bunch of them at the screening. One of the biggest influences, surprisingly enough, is The Wizard Of Oz. There's also, of course, the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa and the speghetti westerns of Sergio Leone. There's even a cameo by a Clint Eastwood lookalike. There's a lot of really cool music playing through the whole thing performed by the Red Elvises. These guys are a band from Russia who seem to know what rockabilly is. The director (Lance Mungia) said that there is a soundtrack coming out at some point, so I'll have to pick that up. As small as the movie was originally, it is very professional. The action scenes (directed and choreographed and actually acted by Buddy, Jeffrey Falcon) were absolutely amazing. Lance and Jeffrey were both at the screening and had a lot to say about the film. Jeffrey said that he has been studying martial arts for 20 years. He's also been in the Far East for the past 15 years making movies. I can only find one in the IMDB, though, called Lethal Contact. It's actual title is in Cantonese, so he at least made the one. All the experience shows through the action we see in this one. Not to mention the fact that he really does look like Buddy Holly! I only have two little complaints about the movie. Two tiny little anachronisms that were pretty glaring to me. Near the beginning of the movie Buddy fights three bald guys in bowling shirts called the Pin Pals. They are flipping Kennedy half-dollars. If the bomb was dropped in 1957 there's no way that Kennedy was on a coin. Also, the Red Elvises make an appearance in the same sequence. One of them is wearing a Rolling Stones tie. I know the Stones weren't around in 57 and that the tongue symbol didn't come around until the mid-70s. Oh well. They're just little things, but they stuck out to me. Everything about this movie was really cool. It's definitely going to be a cult classic if it gets a big enough distribution. I hope that the distributor they got knows what they're doing. Lance said that there is already a prequel running through their minds. I can't wait.

SXSW1998--God Said, Ha!/Men With Guns

admin — Tue, 17 Mar 1998 18:00:00 +0000

I saw two more movies at the South By Southwest Film Festival yesterday. Both of them were pretty good. The first was God Said, Ha!, Julia Sweeney's new one-woman show. It's all about her family and how they dealt with her brother, Mike's, cancer and her cancer. Just her on a stage doing what basically amounts to an hour and a half stand-up routine with a heart. As with all movies like this it tends to be hit or miss. The difference is that it hits more than it misses. She does a very good job of not going off on too many tangents. Some people won't be able to take the way she talks about cancer, but that's how her family dealt with it. Her brother had a very dark sense of humor about it. When she announced her cancer he said, "You just couldn't take it, could you? I had all of the cancer spotlight." When he was getting really bad and was taken to the hospital because of his vomitting and other symptoms he told her, "It's not so funny now that you've got it." It's hard to know how people will react to something like this. I've never really known anyone with cancer, so I can take it in the manner that it was meant to be taken: a cathartic release of feelings and a wish to help other people who are going through the same thing. Maybe if I did know someone I would take it differently. In my opinion it was handled very well. Not to mention the fact that her story about her Pat character is hilarious. Oh, and all you Tarantino watchers out there, he executive produced this one and makes an appearance at the end. I hear he also talked Julia into doing it. The second movie I saw yesterday was John Sayles' new one, Men With Guns. Once again Sayles has made a great movie that's hard to sum up in just a few lines. Let's see if I can try. A doctor, Dr. Fuentes (no relation to Daisy), in an unnamed South American country is looking for some of his students that he sent to help the poor Indians in the less inhabited parts of the country. He starts to find out that all of the students have been killed by the mysterious "men with guns." He has been in the city all of his life, so he really doesn't know how to deal with the elements. Every time he tries to talk to people in the villages they run away. They think he is part of the Army that is taking their friends and families. Along the way he meets up with Conejo, a young boy who has no one in his village and guides him through the jungle, and Domingo, a soldier who sort of forces his way into their lives. There is also Padre Portillo, a priest who has lost his faith. Together they find out exactly what is going on in the poorer part of their country. Sayles is notorious for making very slow moving movies that tell a winding tale of dramatic twists and turns. This one is no different. The main difference here is that it is all in Spanish and different dialects of Indian languages. The announcer before the film began was a friend of Sayles'. He said that he equates this film to Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Reed had just put out "Walk On The Wild Side" and had his biggest hit. Everyone knew and loved the song. His next move was to put out an album that no one could understand. It has since gone down as one of the worst albums ever made. That's not the comparison we're making here. Lone Star, Sayles' last movie, was his biggest hit. Now he's made a movie that no one can watch without subtitles. Even if you speak fluent Spanish you can't understand the Indians. Indians would only understand about four scenes because of all the Spanish and the different dialects of the Indian languages. And then there's some English thrown in for good measure. (Mandy Patinkin plays an American tourist who wonders why there are no fajitas in this country.) All of the performances are great. Federico Luppi is a veteran Spanish actor who is pretty much completely unknown in the states. He shows the pain of the doctor who has lost almost everything on his trip and yet keeps the dignity that a doctor would have through it all. Dan Rivera Gonzalez plays Conejo with just the right sarcastic twist that a boy of his age would have after going through as much as he has been through. He does a great job with a demanding role. I expect to see him pop up in some more movies soon. Damian Delgado plays the soldier with enough heart to make you care about him but enough harshness to make you not quite trust him. Damian Alcazar plays the priest with very strong reminders of Robin Williams in his dramatic roles. Think of Dead Poet's Society and Good Will Hunting and you'll see what I mean. This is not the live wire Robin I'm talking about. This is the sensitive "I'm trying to teach you how to live with yourself" Robin. Alcazar is excellent. When this movie makes it to the theatres in a few months, go see it. If you like John Sayles at all you'll really like it. It may not be his best work, but it's still a very thought prevoking film. Just try to keep up with the subtitles.

The Man In The Iron Mask

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 1998 18:00:00 +0000

Well, my first movie outside of SXSW wasn't too bad. It definitely wasn't as bad as most of the critics have been saying it is. This is the Alexandre Dumas story of the Four Musketeers in their middle ages. Jeremy Irons is the pious Aramis who has found God and wants to help spread the word. Gerard Depardieu is Porthos, the lustful and life-loving Musketeer. John Malkovich is Athos, the familyman of the group. His son, Raoul (Peter Sarsgaard), is unlucky enough to be in love with a woman, Christine (the beautiful Judith Godreche who won me over in the French film Ridicule) who the king has his eye on. We lose him early in the movie, which sets Athos off on a revenge kick on the king who sent Raoul to the fronts of the war. Gabriel Byrne is D'Artagnan, the Musketeer who still works as a Musketeer. He is in service to the king, who is an unmitigated bastard. The part of King Louis is played by, of course, Leo DiCaprio. He also plays the title character, Philippe, Louis' twin brother who was put in prison with the mask so no one would ever know that he looked just like the king. Anyway, Aramis gets the idea to break Philippe out of jail and switch the two brothers. D'Artagnan isn't sure what he should do. He's sworn to protect the king who hates his subjects and uses women like tissue. Meanwhile, we meet Philippe and he is the kind hearted man everyone wants to be king. This movie was directed and written by Randall Wallace, the man who helped to bring us Braveheart, one of my all-time favorite movies. This one isn't that good, but it's entertaining. The first thing you have to consider is that it's really hard to fit a Dumas novel into a two hour movie. They're usually about 1,000 pages or so and very descriptive and flowery. I started to read The Count Of Monte Cristo, but so far I've only made it about 150 pages into it. It's very good, but it's so daunting that I gave up for a while. I'll pick it up again sometime because I really want to finish it. Taking that into account we know that we know that we aren't going to get the full story. Another thing is that I have never really seen another version of any of his novels. I almost saw the Charlie Sheen version of The Three Mousketeers (hey, it's Disney), but I was at a party, so that doesn't count. When D'Artagnan and Queen Anne started making eyes at each other I didn't really know what was going on until later. It explained it all right, but it would have helped to have some background. Another thing is that this is the first international version of the Musketeers. All of the actors keep their real accents, so we have one genuine Frenchman, one American, one Englishman and one Irishman. France also has and American king. I guess it's better than Kevin Costner every once in a while trying to be British. The cast was amazing, though. It's probably the only reason that Wallace got the budget that he did. It made me with that these guys had been making Musketeer movies all through their careers. It would have been pretty cool to see a young Malkovich playing Arthos about 15 years ago. We could have had a series to rival Richard Chamberlain's, who, it seems, was in a version of every one of Dumas' books. The only thing that I found really wrong with the movie is that the fighting scenes were kind of messy. There were times during the last swordfight scenes that I couldn't really figure out who was killing who. If you're a fan of any of these actors, you should probably go see this one. They all put in great performances. Go for it.

The Big Lebowski

admin — Sat, 02 May 1998 17:00:00 +0000

This is another video review. I usually try to keep from doing those, but this is a special occasion. First of all, I think that the movie is still in theatres. I saw it on a screener tape, so it's not offically on video yet. And second, this is a Coen brothers' movie. It deserves special attention. So the Coens have a new one. That's always a reason to get excited. The only difference now is that they've almost gotten into the mainstream. Usually that's not a good thing. It means that more people like them and can control the content of their films. Look at John Waters. Look at John Woo. Yeah, their movies are still really cool, but are they as good as their underground/foreign movies? Well, no. It's cool that more people know about them, but, to quote the last new "South Park" episode, at what cost...at what cost. I guess we wouldn't have had Face/Off if Woo hadn't come to America. Well, we would have, but we would have had it set in the future and it probably would have been some straight to video trash with Ray Liotta playing both parts so it would be cheaper. Anyway, I was talking about the Coens, right? Yeah, somewhere back there I was. Let's get back to them. I'm happy to say that the boys haven't let themselves be sucked into the mainstream too far. All they really have is a bigger budget and bigger actors. Well, one bigger actor if Jeff Bridges counts, which I think he does. The Big Lebowski is just what you would expect from the Coens, which is to say, nothing that you would expect. Jeff Bridges is a loser named Jeff Lebowski, but he hates his name so he goes by Dude, The Dude, Duderino, whatever. He's kept his life simple. He drinks. He bowls. He smokes out. He bowls. He drives around. He bowls. Oh yeah, and he bowls. His bowling buddies are bigger losers than he is. Coen stalwart John Goodman plays Walter, a crazed Vietnam vet who thinks that everything has everything to do with the war. He wants to help the Dude with his problem, which we'll get to later. Steve Buscemi is Donny, the tagalong who just keeps asking what's going on. This gives Goodman his tagline, "Shut the fuck up, Donny." Buscemi's kind of wasted in this one, but he deserves a break from being the main character in all of his movies lately. He's still cool. We also get to see John Turturro in his strangest role yet. He plays Jesus, a sicko bowler who was once arrested for exposing himself to an eight year old. He only shows up for two scenes, but he steals both of them. This guy needs more roles. The plot is a little harder to explain. Basically, Dude is mistaken for a millionaire. These guys come into his apartment and shove his head in the toilet and soil his rug, which really ties the room together. I was quite impressed with that. After he explains himself he decides to go to the real Lebowski to ask for a replacement rug. Here we meet him (David Huddleston, Grandpa from The Wonder Years!), his butler or manservant or whatever he wants to be called, Brandt (Philip Seymour Hoffman from Twister and Scent Of A Woman in his first role that I didn't make me want to hit him in the face), and Bunny Lebowski, his trophy wife (Tara Reid, who I can't wait to see more of in I Woke Up Early The Day I Died, a film written by Ed Wood!!!). Then we get Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore) mixed up in things. She's Lebowski's avant garde artist daughter who tries to not have any connetion with him anymore. Then there's Peter Stormare (Buscemi's partner in Fargo) who's a weird nihilist who may or may not have kidnapped Bunny. Oh yeah, there's a kidnapping in here, too. Confused yet? I was, too. that doesn't really matter, though. First of all, The Stranger (Sam Elliot) is there to explain it all. And second, the movie's hilarious. It didn't beat Raising Arizona, but it's great. I really liked the Busby Berkley musical number with all the bowling pin women. The ball-cam is amazing! The movie does slow down a little near the end where the characters actually start getting too caught up in the plot, but stick with it. The very end is just as good as the first hour or so. And, remember, no matter what life deals you, strikes and gutters, ups and downs, The Dude abides.

Deep Impact

admin — Mon, 18 May 1998 17:00:00 +0000

And with a quiet blast the Summer Blockbuster/Event Season begins. I'm trying to imagine the makers of this film all sitting around trying to think of ways to make it a hit. One guy says, "We gotta have big effects." Another says, "Well, that's a given." "What made that Titanic movie so great?" "Hmmmm...A love story!" "That's it! Teenage love! It works!" Well, nearly. The movie wasn't bad. I actually really liked it, but it's an interesting version of the old adage "Too many cooks spoil the broth." There's so many stories going on you're not really sure who to care about. And my problem was that each one had cool people! Who do I choose?! We all know what it's about. Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood) discovers that there's something strange going on out there with his astronomy club. He's in love with Helen Hunt...I mean Sarah Hotchner (Leelee Sobieski from Jungle2Jungle and the upcoming Eyes Wide Shut) who never does much but say goodbye to people throughout the whole movie. A relationship like that can't last too long. She'll keep wanting to leave. Anyway, a year later Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) finds out about the comet pretty much my accident. She's looking for the story of about a government official (James Cromwell in what amounts to a cameo). From that she meets President Beck (Morgan Freeman, who I would elect anyday) and the rest is somehow inferred by her. (When she looks up E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event) she somehow knows exactly where to go even though she has no idea what it really stands for. Ain't the Internet great!) She has her problems, too. Her parents are long divorced and her dad (Maxmilian Schell) has married a much younger woman. Her mom (Vanessa Redgrave) is kind of a wreck, but we never learn too much about her. Oh, by the way, Te'a is trying desperately to become the late night anchor on MSNBC. Why, we're not sure. Why not a channel that someone watches? Then there's the astronauts. Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner (Robert Duvall) is the elder statesman of the mission. He was the last man to land on the moon, so he's got the experience. Gus Partenza (Jon Favreau) is the commander who has only been on simulated missions. The rest of the crew consists of Ron Eldard (Sleepers, "ER"--and looking a lot like Tim Roth), Mary McCormack (Private Parts), Blair Underwood ("LA Law"), and Alexander Baluyev (The Peacemaker--Mimi Leder's other movie). I don't know too much about the old 70s Irwin Allen disaster movies. I've only seen The Poseidon Adventure (about 167 times and it keeps on gettin' funnier every single time I see it!) This one is set up how those were. A lot of big stars in small roles making you care about them because they are big stars. The the disaster hits. For the most part it works. Like I said, I did really like the movie. There were a few too many goodbye scenes, some worked (Sarah's parents saying it to eachother--Denise Crosby comes back from the "dead career" pile to play her mom), some didn't (Leo's parents saying it to him as he goes to find Sarah--"You take care of yourself, you hear?" That's all you can say, Dad? I'd be pretty ticked off, personally!) The stories are all fairly good. The acting is great. Even Te'a gets some good emotions going. She's got good support, though. About half of her scenes are with her parents and they're awesome actors. Robert Duvall, of course, was great. And how often do you get to see Bob Duvall running around a spaceship in socks? Morgan Freeman is one of the greatest presidents I've ever seen. I still haven't seen Air Force One, but all Harrison had to do was kick butt. He's good at that. Morgan had to deal with the entire world being destroyed on his shift. How would it feel to be the last President of the U.S.? Elijah Wood, once again, does the best he can with what he has. He's a great actor, but he seems to always get shafted when it comes to characters. This one, he's the humble high school astronomer who marries his girlfriend to save her life. (That scene, by the way, reminded me a little too much of the marriage scene in Braveheart. I kept expecting them to go out in the woods--where it looked like the scene was filmed--get it on and then she gets her throat slit by an Englishman.) Basically, he's the young lover in trouble. The whole story seemed kind of tacked on. They could have done the same thing if they had kept Charles Martin Smith's character in it longer. (He was the real astronomer (Marcus Wolf) who realized where the comet was headed, hence the name Wolf-Biederman.) Then they could have kept the Twister element out of it (Leelee looking just too much like she should be running from a tornado) and cut out some of the dead wood (Denise Crosby). It's not that I'm trying to take a job away from Elijah, but he's just wasted too much. Let's hope for another Ice Storm soon. (Hmmm. There's seems to be a recurring theme in his movies lately. Natural (near) disasters. Ice storms, comets, Flipper. Coincidence? Read the book.) The movie was pretty good, though. Like those old Irwin Allen flicks it's a good event movie. More substance than some (Twister, Con Air, etc.) less than others (Jurassic Park, Jaws, most other Spielberg movies). I'm not going to say it's a fun movie. It's more of a drama than you would think. There's action in it, but it revolves (and revolves and revolves) around the stories of the people. There were a couple of times that I laughed at the wrong thing, but that was mainly because I kept thinking of other movies. And I just can't get "South Park" out of my head when I think of Vanessa Redgrave. And then there are some of Elijah's lines, but that's a whole other page to leave unwritten.

Godzilla

admin — Thu, 28 May 1998 17:00:00 +0000

There comes a time in every actor's life where he must say "No! I will not say that dialogue!" There were times that Elijah Wood should have said it in the last movie I reviewed, Deep Impact. More than any other movie, though, Godzilla shows that this is a rule. The boys who brought us Independence Day (Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin) have done it again. They've brought us a special effects laden ball of virtually nothing with small roles for everybody in Hollywood. Maybe one product placement too many ruined my experience, too. Apparently, Blockbuster paid a lot of money for this one. Just one more mistake that they made. God figure. We all know what the plot of Godzilla is. A big monster comes in and destroys a town until the scientists can stop it. In this one, the main scientist is Dr. Niko Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick), "the worm guy." He starts off picking up worms at Chernobyl thinking that it's incredible that they've grown to something like 15% bigger. Then he's shown Godzilla's footprint. The worms are forgotten. Enter Audrey Timmons (Maria Pitillo) and her band of reporters. Harry Shearer plays her sexist boss and Hank Azaria is her cameraman friend. It's not long before the Simpsons meet Godzilla. To further "complicate" things we have Jean Reno and his band of French agents who want to...do... something. They're kind of in another movie filled with coffee jokes until about 3/4 of the way from the end. From the first time I saw ID4 I knew that Emmerich and Devlin wanted remake Jurassic Park. Think about it: Jeff Goldblum plays the same part and makes at least two references to his role as Ian Malcolm. Spielberg wouldn't have given it to them, so they did the next best thing, remake the inspiration for their favorite movie. They want you to know why they're doing it, too. Nik is a weakened version of Ian. At one point he devises a plan to lure the beast out with a pile of fish. He looks at the pile and says, "That's a lot of fish." Dead silence for at least thirty seconds while the joke sinks in. Finally, nervous laughter from the audience (there weren't many of us, but it was a late Wednesday showing) because we understood what was really going on. I was really expecting the fish plan to not work because Godzilla "doesn't want to be fed, it wants to hunt." There's also a scene in Madison Square Garden that reminds me just a bit too much of the museum kitchen scene from the good movie. The "homages" to Jurassic Park would have been tolerable if the script had been better. It seems that the only thing the French team could do is sit around and make jokes about how bad American coffee is and call each other Jean-Something. This also shows how the screenwriters feel about French people: they're not very creative with their names. There were a couple of bright spots in the movie that made it worth seeing. (Definitely not $6.50 worth, but maybe $1.50.) Maria Pitillo is quite beautiful if a little hard to accept as a newswoman. Maybe that's why she's been kept as a copy girl all these years. Maybe it has nothing to do with the jerk boss. Maybe she's just too stupid! For the first time in an American version of the movie (as far as I know) we hear the real Japanese name of Godzilla: Gojira. Harry Shearer mispronounces it giving us the Americanization of the name. Also, it's always fun to watch Matthew Broderick. There's something very cool about his "neurotic little guy" acting. After seeing this movie I want to see him in a Woody Allen movie. I also see that (according to the IMDb) he's up to play Inspector Gadget in an upcoming live action version of one of my favorite old cartoons. It just might work. We also get a pretty good running joke involving the mayor of New York, Mayor Ebert, and his assistant, Gene. And, yes, they do look like everyone's favorite critics. I doubt it helped the reviews, though. The best thing about the movie was the final battle with the monster. (I think most people know how the movie ends, but if you don't you might want to skip this paragraph.) If the whole movie were as exciting as this scene it probably would have been a really fun movie. Even the final homage to King Kong was pretty well done. There's only one thing I might have done differently in this scene. Throughout the movie Nik had seemed like he was in awe of the monster. Not just because it was a huge beast, but because it was a new species created inadvertently by man. He seemed to almost want it to live. As the planes are blasting the monster for the last time he's watching the monster almost with tears in his eyes. I expected him to say "I'm sorry" just before the final blasts hit. It may have added a little bit of poetry to an otherwise banal movie. Then again, maybe they figured that Broderick's expression was enough. And maybe it was. Basically, we get the same movie that we got on July 4, 1996, just on a smaller scale, without as much excitement and in dire need of someone like Will Smith. More great promos, though. These guys are masters at that. The problem with their tagline (Size Does Matter) is that it's caused at least two movies to use the less inspired Size Doesn't Matter. By the way, we're not out of the woods yet. I hear the Matthew has signed on for two or three sequels. NNNNNOOOOOOO!!!!!!! GOD, WHYYYYYYY!?!?!?!?

Deconstructing Harry

admin — Thu, 28 May 1998 17:00:00 +0000

I saw this movie a few days ago, and this is the second time I've had to write this review because, for some reason, Geo-Cities decided to not take my first one, so it's going to be very short. (Yeah, right.) This is Woody Allen's latest to video. It centers around Harry Block, a writer who writes what he knows: his ex-wives and friends. This does not please any of them. The thing is that Harry doesn't really seem to care. He needs to write these stories to keep himself sane, or insane, however he feels at the moment. One ex-wife (Judy Davis) almost shoots him. Another (Kirstie Alley) tries very hard to keep their son away from him because he talks about anything to the kid. Mariel Hemingway is quite shocked one day in school when she hears him talking about sex to his son. Basically, we meet all of the people in Harry's life and see a lot of the stories that he wrote. They all seem to come together. Some of the stories end up being the best parts of the movie. The first one with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Richard Benjamin getting caught by her grandmother is hilarious. The one with Robin Williams as an actor out of focus was pretty good, too. It was strange to see Tobey Maguire with an Oriental prostitute, though. Of course, the best one was the one with Billy Crystal as the Devil. "You have air conditioning?" "Of course. It messes up the ozone layer." Well, that's the preview version, anyway. The real version had to be edited. Overall, this movie was pretty good. I know a lot of people who think that it's one of Woody's best. I think they just aren't big fans, so they aren't used to hearing about the scandals and stories of his life. Since I am a big fan I've heard it all. Enough already! It's pretty much just an overview of his life. I still liked it, but I don't think it was as good as his last three. All the cameos were kind of strange, too. It seemed like they were just written in so that all of these people would have a chance to work with Woody. How else would Demi Moore and Robin Williams get in here? I think it would have been more interesting if the people who played the "real" people also played the story characters. It would have driven the point home a little bit more. I don't know, maybe it would be overkill, but it would have been interesting. Of course, Woody can't really pass for 20-something, so Tobey would still have to be brought in--he was a pretty good Woody, too. If you're a fan, go for it. It's worth it. If you're not, avoid it at all costs. Woody is at his least Woody-ness (I've never heard him cuss so much!), but he's more Woody than ever.

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

admin — Wed, 03 Jun 1998 17:00:00 +0000

Now I know what it's like to be in the middle of a bad acid trip. I've been waiting all year for this one to come out. I'm a big Terry Gilliam fan (I really don't think he's ever made a bad movie--Jabberwoky not withstanding). I also think that Johnny Depp is a great actor and Benicio Del Toro is really cool. Then I decided to read to book before I saw the movie. Usually a good move, and it was this time, too. The book is awesome. If you have ever wondered about the drug culture of the dying end of the hippie generation, read this book by Hunter S. Thompson. It's funny and strangely poignant at the same time. Nothing quite compares to the "High Water Mark" speech. (That's what I call it, anyway.) Then there's the movie. I saw the one with Bill Murray playing Hunter (Where The Buffalo Roam) a long time ago and I remember thinking that it was pretty cool. The problem was the Bill was better than the movie was. This new one almost has the same problem. Johnny Depp is awesome as Hunter (aka Raoul Duke), but the movie itself is just ok. In a nutshell, the movie is about Thompson making a trip to Las Vegas with his attorney (Dr. Gonzo in this particular story--played by Benicio) to cover the Mint 400, a big motorcycle race. After a while they lose interest and get in all sorts of trouble through the drugs that they consume. Then they move on to the DEA convention. Wrong place for these guys. They then decide to look for the American Dream in the middle of the place everyone thinks they will find it: Las Vegas. Along the way we meet all sorts of other eccentric characters, pretty much all played by famous people with nothing better to do. The first is a young hitchhiker (Tobey Maguire, looking quite bald) who gets too much of a taste of the guys' psychosis. We see Katherine Helmond (a Gilliam regular) go through all sorts of shape shifting as a receptionist. Michael Jeter (the little guy from "Evening Shade" and the transvestite from The Fisher King) is a misinformed drug agent. Cameron Diaz as a near elevator fling for Dr. Gonzo. Mark Harmon as a bar bud at the Mint 400 for Duke. Penn Jillette as a circus hawker. Lyle Lovett as a drug pusher in a flashback. Flea as a guy who licks Duke's arm in a bathroom. Ellen Barkin (I never noticed how much she looks like Carmeron Diaz) as a disturbed waitress. Gary Busey as a nearly sympathetic highway patrolman (in one of the best scenes). Harry Dean Stanton as a judge. Christina Ricci as Lucy, the damaged innocent who likes to paint Barbara Streisand. And, in the coolest cameo of all, Hunter S. Thompson shows up as himself looking at his younger self. That's a big cast for a movie to live up to. The book is a big concept to live up to. The movie doesn't quite make it. The problem is that people always look at movies based on books like they should be exactly like the books. Fear And Loathing is a very important book. One of the most important to come out of that era. No movie could really do justice to it. This is probably the best we could hope for. I wasn't expecting it to be as great as the book. I was just expecting it to touch on some of the issues and aspects, and it did. I was expecting it to be a trippy experience. It was. Maybe it's a book that should never have been made into a movie. Well, it was, so we have to deal with it. It was a long time in coming, too. Originally Alex Cox (Sid & Nancy, Repo Man) was supposed to direct and John Cusack was going to star. As soon as the head of Rhino Film dropped the ball Gilliam and Depp got interested. This interested Thompson who said that if Cox and Cusack came back into the production he would pick up his ball and not play anymore. The head of Rhino Film is no longer the head of Rhino Film and is now supervising the soundtrack, or something like that. The movie itself is not really all that great. It just has a really cool feeling to it. You feel like you're right there with them trying to hide from the cops while being right among them. Right from the first shot of Duke and Gonzo in the car through a nearly fisheye lens I knew I was in for an experience to remember. It was a very strange movie and not for all tastes (obviously, hardly any critics have liked it at all). There's a lot of puking in the last half and, if you don't like seeing people do drugs, avoid it at all costs. However, if you want to see one of the most accurate portrayals of Hunter S. Thompson ever, proceed with all speed. Johnny said that he still has some of Hunter under his skin. He found it hard to stop using the cigarette holder after filming and he kept talking like him for a long time. He still finds himself using Hunter-isms. He even called Bill Murray to find out how long it took him to get out of the role. About two years. I can see it. After seeing the movie I started to think like Hunter, too. He's a great character, but he really gets hold and doesn't let go, much like his writing. Benicio did a great job, too, but we'll probably never know how accurate of a portrayal it was. Hunter's attorney has disappeared a couple of times since they met and he hasn't resurfaced in years. Del Toro almost looked like a 300 pound Samoan, though. A little light, but he did gain a lot of weight for this part. Let's hope he can lose it again. The other problem with this character is that he's not very sympathetic. I would have knocked him out a couple of times during the trip. I guess Hunter was much more accommodating than I am. The scenes with the lizards was much better than anything in Godzilla, though. Good movie. You just have to be ready for it. This review has been pretty schizophrenic, but so is the movie, so I figure it all comes out at the end. Hunter S. Thompson's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas is an awesome book. Much better than any movie could ever do justice to. Order it at Amazon if you're interested in one of the best and strangest books ever written. I only hope the version you get still has Ralph Steadman's illustrations. I can't imagine anyone taking them out. They are too integral to the experience of the book.

Bulworth

admin — Sun, 07 Jun 1998 17:00:00 +0000

I decided to go against the grain today. I've been seeing all the big, monstrous Summer Blockbusters lately, so I figured it was time to go see one of the "smaller" films of the season. Most people will probably give it a miss, but that's probably a mistake. Warren Beatty has been trying to get this movie made for a few years, now. That's pretty much the story of his life ever since Bonnie & Clyde. This time he took matters into his own hands. He wrote, produced, directed and starred in this political satire (the third since December). Well, Warren, all the work and waiting paid off. It's the story of Jay Bulworth (Beatty), a California senator who is pulling on his last rope. The movie opens with him watching his promo spots and crying. He hasn't slept or eaten in days. When his spin doctor, Dennis Murphy (Oliver Platt), gets ahold of him for his appearances he goes crazy. He starts to tell people what he (and other politicians) really think of their groups. As time goes on he turns more radical, more paranoid (someone is trying to kill him) and turns into a political rapper! His spin doctors start going insane right along with him, but for different reasons. They try to keep him in line and make the whole thing look like a new strategy even though they don't even understand it. The problem is that America is going for it! Along the way he meets Nina (Halle Berry)-a mysterious young woman whose brother (Isaiah Washington) owes a gangster (Don Cheadle from Boogie Nights and Volcano) money, Graham Crockett (Paul Sorvino)-an insurance agent who will do anything to get a bill from becoming a law, Mimi (Laurie Metcalf--always cool to see her)-a C-SPAN reporter, and Gary (Sean Astin--he's only got two or three lines--I guess they know, too)-Mimi's cameraman. Eddie Davers (Jack Warden) is a friend who can contact Vinnie (Richard C. Sarafian, who seems to be good at playing gangsters (Bound and Bugsy), but not too great at directing lately (Solar Crisis)), a gangster that Bulworth has a deal with. Meanwhile, all is not right with the family life. Mrs. Bulworth (Christine Baranski--Maryann from "Cybill") is having affairs with Billy Baldwin while their 17 year old daughter is a no show. I see this movie as Beatty both making fun of his image and also telling his story. He's always been seen as kind of a rebel filmmaker who will do anything to make his films perfect, no matter how long it takes. He is also seen as the perennial lady's man who will never really grow up. His marriage to Annette Bening slowed those kinds of rumors down, but he still has the reputations stuck to him. In this film his character is making things up as he goes along, taking lines from people he's met and growing older. At one point he asks Nina how old she thinks he is. When she hits the nail on the head (about 60) he looks disappointed a bit embarrassed. He also seems to know that he is no longer part of the young generation of Hollywood filmmakers. When he was getting Bonnie & Clyde made he had to beg to get it. There was nothing of its kind before that. He was right on the edge of American film and he knew it. As time has gone on he's started to realize that he can't fit in with the independents anymore. He's (big gasp) and elder statesman of Hollywood! This film almost has an independent feel to it. The film is not the highest quality and it has an almost documentary style. It's as if Beatty knows that he's posing by making it this way. His character can't really fit in with the people he's with, but he's trying. Beatty himself can't fit in, but he's not really trying anymore. He's just making a point. This movie is almost the exact opposite of Wag The Dog and Primary Colors (which I saw, but didn't review--it seemed a little late by the time I saw it). In all three movies the candidates did something kind of outrageous (affairs, becoming a rapper--what's the difference). In the two earlier movies the spin doctors control all. There's nothing that they can't handle (especially Robert De Niro). In this case, though, they can't do anything about it. The decisions that Bulworth makes are so spur of the moment that no one can make sense of them. Murphy can't stop him and he ends up going crazy right along with his boss, just in a different way. It's a great movie. Bitterly funny (his jabs at Hollywood seem personal) and strikingly poignant. If you're into the whole satire game, go see it. Just remember, this is what it sounds like when white people rap. It's sad, but true. (Personally, I don't like it when people of ANY color rap.) It's a bit off-putting to see Jann Carl as a real reporter. Then again, maybe I'm sick of seeing her on the Blockbuster/Entertainment Tonight "Network" that customers are supposed to believe is really being broadcast to each store. If it was, don't you think they would pay more attention to the fact that no customer really cares? With all the money they pour into the stupid thing I would think that they would realize that no one pays any attention to them. Only the employees really know what's on them and we've all stopped buying Coke products because of them. But, I digress (often). It's an awesome and affecting movie. And it's great to see Nora Dunn. geovisit();

The Spanish Prisoner

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 1998 17:00:00 +0000

It's always a little disconcerting to go to the theatre and see a really good movie with only two or three other people in the theatre with you. In this case I almost saw the movie entirely alone! Two people finally came in...late. I hate that. Anyway, I went to this movie not really knowing anything about it. I just knew that it was a David Mamet film with Steve Martin and a Hitchcockian plot. All of this was true, but it didn't prepare me for what I saw. Campbell Scott (in his best Egon Spengler mode) plays Joe Ross, a free-lance employee of a major corporation. He has just invented some process that will help the company make millions. He takes a trip with his constantly quoting friend, George Lang (Ricky Jay), to present the process and do some relaxing. There he meets one of the secretaries of the company, Susan Ricci (Rebecca Pidgeon), who promptly starts to fall for him. Now Joe is a real Boy Scout. He carries her bags for her and even buys her a 1st class plane ticket! This endears him to her even more. Somewhere along the way during the trip they also meet Pat McCune (Felicity Huffman), an FBI agent who looks amazingly (in certain angles) like Gillian Anderson. Then there's Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin), a mysterious rich man who befriends Joe. Sometimes their friendship seems to take some weird turns with their parting glances. I'm not sure if that was intentional, but I think it was there. Back in America Joe meets up with Jimmy again and always tries to meet his sister. She's sick, though, so no romance there. He'll have to settle for Susan. Anyway, Joe ends up in a con game involving the FBI (including Pat and Ed O'Neill), Jimmy and the new process he's invented. Things get more complicated when people start thinking that he's stolen the process to sell it and the only man who can sort of clear him ends up dead by his (rather large) pocket knife. One thing to remember: you never really know who anyone is. Except me. I'm exactly who I look like. This is an amazing homage to Hitchcock. The "everyday Joe" stuck in an extraordinary situation, the strange plot twists, the friendly enemies and the Maguffin (the thing that is so important to the characters, but means nothing to us). Everyone does a great job, especially Steve in one of his increasingly frequent dramatic roles. The dialogue is sometimes a little stilted, but it really fits the film. And it's all Mamet in it's strange believability. He really is an amazing writer. The look of the film is interesting, too. The offices that Joe works in are very cramped and small. Quite dark, too. Even his boss's office is very small. When he crowds Joe and his two lawyers in there it's almost like the stateroom scene in A Night At The Opera. However, Jimmy's offices seem to be spacious. A little brighter, and you could comfortably fit all five (there were five before the movies started) of the Marx Brothers and their friends in one of his rooms. The windows add some light that is missing from Joe's offices. All the more reason to trust Jimmy. I will have to give this the "All-Time Worst Last Line Award." Someone is sarcastically asking Joe to help them as they are being loaded into the police wagon. He looks at them as says, "You're going to have to spend some time in your room." What was Mamet thinking?!?! Did he want Der Ahnold to play the part originally? Not enough to ruin the movie, though. It's a rare suspense film that makes you happy to see more twists. The only thing that made me want the movie to end was the 20 or 30 ounces of Mr. Pibb pressing down on my bladder. Otherwise I would have wanted Joe to get into even more hopeless situations. Not bad for a nearly two hour movie. By the way, watch for Jonathan Katz (the voice of Dr. Katz) as a short, balding lawyer of the head of the company.

The Truman Show

admin — Tue, 30 Jun 1998 17:00:00 +0000

So I finally saw The Truman Show. It took me long enough, but here it is. The movie started late (the previews didn't start until 10 minutes after the start time--the latest I've ever seen), but I had good company, so it didn't matter much. I saw a preview for Snake Eyes, the new Brian De Palma, Nic Cage, Gary Sinese movie. If you want to see the movie avoid the trailer. I have a feeling that it gives away the whole thing. I just had to get that off my chest. Now, on with the movie. I've always liked Peter Weir. I haven't seen all of his films, but I also haven't seen a bad one, yet. His last film with a man known as a comic performer earned that performer an Oscar nomination. You remember it. It was a little movie called Dead Poets' Society and the guy was a little known actor named Robin Williams. He also did Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Fearless, Gallipoli and The Year Of Living Dangerously. We'll forget about Green Card, but most have. Now, he's done it again. He's taken a comic actor (Jim Carrey) and given him a real dramatic role. It's the story of a man who's life has been contrived since birth. He doesn't realize that he is living in a dome where every person, every weather condition, every emotion is brought to him by a producer with a God complex. His name, appropriately enough, is Christof. He's played to perfection by Ed Harris. This guy has to win an Oscar soon. The only thing that Christof couldn't create was Truman. He never realized how Truman could find out what was really going on. Truman is married to Meryl (Laura Linney from Primal Fear and Absolute Power) who really doesn't seem to care about anything but product placement. This is done to hilarious effect by quite a few people. Meryl does whole commercials for hot chocolate. Truman's best friend, Marlon (Noah Emmerich from Beautiful Girls and Copland) says things like "Now that's a beer!" These two twins push Truman up against a billboard everyday so that he's in the shot with it. Then there's the girl who got away, Sylvia (Natascha McElhone from The Devil's Own and looking a lot like a cross between Meryl Streep and Jane Seymour). She came a little too close to telling Truman the truth and became more than an extra. Now she's on the outside spearheading the "Let him out" groups. I really liked this movie. It was heartfelt drama and social commentary all in one. What would we do if this really happened? How would the world react? Would we let it go on forever? Or would we cry out to set him free? The scenes with the viewers were written much the way I could see it really happening. They wanted it to go on forever, but they also wanted him to escape. They just didn't know the means to the end. I found myself feeling the same way. I wanted Truman out of his fake life, but I wanted the movie to last longer than its hour and a half running time. I kept thinking, "No! He can't find out yet! It has to last longer!" Christof's world seems as contrived as Truman's. The end credits were even sectioned off into "Truman's World," "Christof's World" and "The Viewers." There was no "Real World." Anyway, Christof lived in the walls of the dome. He never ventured out. He surrounded himself with mainly yes-men (except for Philip Baker Hall--the gangster from Hard Eight and the librarian from "Seinfeld") and guarded his privacy with an iron fist. I also really liked the way we never really knew what was real or planned. There are scenes that start out sounding like they were supposed to be driven by real emotions. Then we find out that the person is being fed lines by Christof. This makes us realize that nothing is predictable in a supposedly predictable world. The only problem I had with the movie is, strangely enough, the same problem I had with St. Elmo's Fire, of all movies. Everything fell apart at once. Within about a month Truman sees four or five "seams" in the dome. Why did these seams just show up after thirty years of perfection? They sort of explain this when Christof says something like, "We accept the world we live as truth, no matter what." There are a lot of people who think that Jim Carrey should get an Oscar for his role. He shows great versatility that no one really knew he had. There were only a few shots that looked like typical Jim Carrey schtick and we didn't see any talking butts (although there was a close up of it, but we saw that in the trailer). He really did put in a great performance. I won't say if I think he deserves an Oscar or not because I'm not sure myself. He was awesome, though. One cool in joke is that all of the characters in Truman's life are named after famous actors. Meryl (Streep), Marlon (Brando), Vivian (Leigh), Kirk (Douglas), Lawrence (Olivier) and Spencer (Tracy). There's a Sylvia, too, but I can't think of the actress that goes with that one. There's also the fact that the opening credits are done as if we were watching the actual show. Truman Burbank is credited as playing himself and it's directed and created by Christof. I love finding things like that in movies. When my movies come out, look for them. They'll be there. So far, this is the best movie of the summer. Then again, it's not hard to beat Godzilla. Deep Impact is a little harder to beat, but not a whole lot. But this was even better than Bulworth. A better ending, too, if still vague. Don't watch this if you're wanting more Jim Carrey stuff. He doesn't give that. He also doesn't sing the "Trumania National Anthem." The scene is in the movie, but it stops just before he starts singing. Great poster, though.

Armageddon/The Haunting (1963)

admin — Sun, 12 Jul 1998 17:00:00 +0000

Well, I actually saw this yesterday, so I've probably forgotten some things. I just remember sitting in the front row of a nearly packed theatre and seeing one of the LOUDEST movies I've ever seen. I've been seeing movies at the Paramount lately. For those of you who have never been to Austin, that's our main "revival house" type theatre here. It's a restored theatre built in the 20s or 30s, I think. Every summer they have a classic movies series. The night before last I saw The Haunting, a 1963 horror film about a haunted house. It was one of the scariest movies I've ever seen and it never even showed the ghost! I saw a lot of influence on the Evil Dead movies from this one. Definitely an amazing film that probably needs to be seen on the big screen, but always in a dark room. Anyway, I went from seeing this and the classic Gaslight to seeing Armageddon. Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay are at it again. If you didn't like The Rock or Con Air stay away from this one. It's not as violent, but it's just as big. I think everyone knows what it's about by now. A big rock is barreling towards Earth threatening to destroy every trace of life on it. Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) and his team of oil drillers are sent by NASA head Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) to nuke it from the inside out. On the team is A.J. Frost (Ben Affleck) who is in love with Harry's daughter, Grace (Liv Tyler). There's also Rockhound (Steve Buscemi) who got his name because he's horny. That pretty much sums up all the real wit that this movie has. The first thirty minutes of the movie almost gave me motion sickness. There was so much quick editing that I wasn't really sure what was going on. I think Entertainment Weekly said that it looked like it was edited with a Quisenart. That's a pretty good analysis of the style. A lot of jump cuts, almost overlapping lines and not many shots with a stable camera. I don't think there were more than two or three shots in the whole movie where the camera wasn't moving around. That's fine for some movies, but this one needed an occasional still camera so we could know what was going on and who was getting killed. The love story between Grace and A.J. was, of course, a little stilted. Not that it wasn't believable, but it was just a little, well, badly written, I guess. There's a scene where the two of them talk about animal crackers and we're supposed to believe that they're being cute. I enjoyed the shots of Liv in her bra, but come on! What's with the crackers?!?! I think the writers were trying to be hip. They wanted to put some cultural reference that everyone would understand. After all, this movie is geared towards the lowest bidder (just like the people that built the rocket), so we can't have a really intelligent or obscure reference. We want to be like Quinten and Kevin, but we aren't smart enough. I like Ben and Liv, though, so I'll forgive them for saying what the writers gave them. This time. Then there's Bruce. I have to admit right here that I'm a Bruce Willis fan. Yeah, he's obnoxious, but he's supposed to be. He's an action star. I am sort of in shock that he and Demi broke up, but it doesn't keep me up nights like my manners do. (There's one for you movie buffs.) He's shown quite a few times that he can act. Watch Pulp Fiction again. There's also The Jackal. It wasn't a great movie (although I liked it more than most people did), but he was really good in it. He had the "cold assassin" thing down perfectly. Much better than listening to Richard Gere try his Irish accent. Then you see movies like Last Man Standing. I think he just kind of walked through that one. Not much else he could do. The story's been told so many times that there's really not much new stuff you can do with it. Bruce showed his acting in this one a few times. There were scenes with Liv that brought it out and even a few scenes with Ben and Billy that showed some ability. He may never win an Oscar (if he does I think the Academy will be skewered in more ways than one) but he can do it when he wants to. He just really has to want to. And we've got Steve. He's a great actor. He's at his best when he's supporting other great actors in small weirdo roles much like this one. This, however, was not really his best performance. He was definitely comic relief here. Not much other reason for his character. If you saw Con Air you saw a version of him. He's toned down a lot for this one (not much danger of him killing any little girls--he'll do something to them, but he won't kill them), but it's pretty much the same character. And now Billy. Some say that he's the only actor who keeps his dignity in this movie. I don't think that's entirely true. Maybe he's the only on to maintain dignity, but he's not the only one to have it in at least a few scenes. He's a great actor (as we've seen in Sling Blade and One False Move) and he probably deserves better than this, but he does a great job and his material is better than most in the movie. There are a lot of cameos here, too. In the first destruction scene in New York Mark Curry is a cabbie. Udo Kier is a psychologist. Lawrence Tierney (from Reservoir Dogs and, of course, Dillinger) shows up as, apparently, Harry's dad. I didn't notice him, but he's on the IMDb, so he must be there. Charlton Heston is the narrator. (Ironic, don't you think? Moses narrating the end of the world?) The director shows up as one of the NASA guys in Houston. I think it's him. It looks like him, but he's not mentioned in the IMDb. Even Godzilla shows up in New York. There are also a lot of holes here. Some small, some you could drive Texas through. First off, if every nuke that the U.S. has wouldn't do one thing to this bohwemeth of a meteor, how would one nuke blow the thing in half. I understand that one is more powerful inside than it would be outside, but come on! Every nuke we've got would do an awful lot of damage. They would blow a lot of chunks off of it. According to the movie they wouldn't even take a couple of mountains off. The next one involves spoilers, so highlight the next seemingly blank part if you don't mind. If they blew the meteor in two as late as they appeared to wouldn't there be some gravitational effects on the Earth? The scientists made it look like it would still destroy the world if it was blown even one second too late. It was blown at the very last second. Wouldn't the surfaces of the Earth that the meteors passed be pretty much destroyed? Details, details! The little ones go something like this. Would NASA bother to paint "X-71" on the top of the shuttles in mile high letters? They don't have much money as it is. Why waste the money on paint that really doesn't serve any purpose except to remind the viewers what the heroes are riding. And, the biggest question for me, why would they ever bring a machine gun on this mission?!?! None of these guys are murderers, so they can be trusted, but what's the use? Why did they think they needed a machine gun? Maybe it was the monsters that we heard as the astronauts stepped off the ship. Some really weird noises on that meteor. I really don't mean to rip this movie up. I did like it. It was big, loud and fun. Everything you ever wanted from a summer action flick. Nothing more. Nothing less. Probably the best action movie of the summer. Not as good as The Rock. Not as much character development as Con Air. Still a lot of fun. And, strangely enough, Bay knows how and when to push all the emotional buttons. A lot of them were clichés (kids with toy airplanes, thousands of people praying, families saying goodbye to each other, etc.), but they're still oddly effective. I have to admit that there were a few times that I got caught up in them. Then there's Deep Impact. Remember that one? It did pretty well. I think Armageddon is going to kill it, but I liked them both. I felt closer to the characters in Deep Impact (probably because there were more good actors) even if they weren't too well written. The both had weak love story subplots. They both had really cool destruction scenes. There were more in Armageddon, but we got a cool shot of the Statue Of Liberty in Deep Impact. I think what was really funny between these two movies was the theatre I saw Armageddon in. There were about six or seven screens of Armageddon, all showing it about fifteen minutes apart from each other. Then there was one lonely little Deep Impact screen being drowned out by the volume of Armageddon. Poor Tea and Elijah. Too bad he didn't discover the meteor instead of the comet. Armageddon's worth seeing, but only if you're up for a lot of explosions. It's great for that.

Mulan

admin — Wed, 22 Jul 1998 17:00:00 +0000

I haven't seen a Disney movie in the theatre since The Great Mouse Detective back in 1986. After that I went through that period that we all go through at the age where we think Disney is just for kids. It took me until Aladdin in 92 to get out of the faze, and then I just watched them on video. I've never seen The Little Mermaid (never really had much desire to--way too much hype for a Disney movie) or Beauty And The Beast. Then, just as suddenly as they regained their grandeur, they lost it. They've had a real dry spell, lately. Let's see, we've had Pocahontas (a badly animated bastardization of history--but Mel Gibson was in it), Hunchback Of Notre Dame (a well animated dry plotted movie--but Demi Moore, Kevin Kline, Tom Hulce, Jason Alexander and Charles Kimbrough were in it--what a cast!) and Hercules (a 90 minute commercial for Disney--but Danny Devito and James Woods were in it). Truth be told, I haven't seen any of these down period movies. I never really had an urge to see any of them. Aladdin and The Lion King were too good to be followed by this stuff that no one really seemed to like. But now there's Mulan. My faith in Disney is restored again. This is one of the best movies they've put out in years. The story is about a young Chinese girl whose father is supposed to fight the Huns as they invade China. The problem is that he is too old and weak to fight. Since the government won't let him out of it Mulan decides to take her father's armor and sword and fight for him. She cuts her hair and takes off for the base camp with her horse. This is punishable by death, so, when her family finds out, they just have to keep quiet. All they can do is pray to the ancestors who try to send a guiding spirit to bring her back. Instead they are forced to send Mushu (Eddie Murphy), a very small and almost pathetic (but very funny) dragon who has been demoted to gong ringer. The ancestors are also pretty funny, and one of them is voiced by none other than George Takei (Sulu from Star Trek for all you non-Trekkies out there). At the camp, Mulan meets some new friends (of course). They aren't very accepting to her at first because she inadvertently gets them all clean up duty. After a while, though, they come to accept the new recruit they know as Ping. Shang (B.D. Wong--and his singing voice comes from Mr. Teeth himself DONNY OSMOND!?!? They got the whitest guy they could, I guess), their captain and son of the army's leader, is the "love interest" of the story. And what a strange one he is, too. We also have Yao (Harvey Fierstein in a strangely "manly" role), Ling (Gedde Watanabe, Donger from Sixteen Candles) and a whole bunch of other people who I don't know. Basically, Mulan stays to fight (Mushu decides to help her fight instead so that he can be promoted to Guardian again) with her friends and try to save China. As with most of the new Disney movies there are a lot of modern references here, most of them from Mushu (he gets to act like Rambo at one point). The ancestors get in on the fun, too--during the celebration scene one of them is dancing like Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Who'da thunk it? Tarantino influencing Disney. We also have a reference to their second animated feature: a cricket who doubles as a conscience! He doesn't sing "When You Wish Upon A Star," or talk at all actually, but he is pretty much Mushu's conscience. (Pinnochio is still my favorite Disney movie, even though I fell asleep when I saw it as a kid in the theatre. Much better than Snow White.) There's also some really weird stuff going on here. First off, Mulan is a girl trying to pass herself off as a man. As time goes on and she's still not found out Shang starts to almost look like he's interested in her/him. Remember, this is before he knows she's a girl. Then there's old Harvey Fierstein prancing around. (Thanks to Mark (not myself--different Mark, what kind of a weirdo do you think I am?) for telling me about this before I went to see it. It's fairly obvious, though, even if you weren't looking for it.) Then we've got a lot of sexual overtones going on. Stuff like Yao standing naked (we don't see anything but his legs) on a rock saying "I am kind of the rock!" Think about it. There are a lot more lines like this that I bet the Disney people were secretly snickering over. There are also a lot more "butts" than in other Disney movies. I don't remember them saying "butt" too much in others, but Eddie says it at least three times. One of the better ones is when they about to attack some of the Huns. "Let's go kick some Hunny buns!" Then there's the animation. Wow! I was really impressed. I noticed parts of it looked like they were rotoscoped (drawing over live action footage to make it look animated, like in The Hobbit and a lot of other Ralph Bakshi movies). That's something I haven't noticed in other Disney movies. The closest I can think of is, I think, parts of Anastasia were rotoscoped. (Disney may sue me for mentioning that movie in a review of one of their movies. Oh well. I don't have anything for them to take from me.) The rest of the animation reminded me a little bit of Pocahontas. For this movie it's not a bad thing. That one was really angular. Too many sharp angles for a movie about Native Americans and nature. This movie seemed to fit that style. They really toned down the angles, but there was something reminiscent there. It was really cool. A lot of parents were in an uproar because they gave the men nipples. I have one thing to say to them: GET OVER IT!!!! We've all got them, so why can't we have them in cartoons? It looks weird without them. We all know that it was one of God's little mistakes. We've all seen Time Bandits. But they're there, so deal with it. It just goes to show you, it's always something. If it's not one thing, it's another. They've got to find something to gripe about. Those aren't complaints. I like that kind of stuff in Disney movies. It keeps the parents interested and the kids wondering what their parents are laughing at. My complaints are more trivial. Such as when Mulan's grandmother (voiced by the immortal June Foray--better known as Granny in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons and Witch Hazel in a couple of Bugs Bunny cartoons) started to sing it was obvious that they changed voices. Suddenly, Grandmother Fa sounded 20 years younger and not as fun. Also, at the end when the leader of the Huns is in the Emperor's palace (the Emperor, by the way, is voiced by the near-immortal Pat Morita) Mulan locks him in a room with Shang, who is knocked out. That's about when a real life villain would have taken advantage of the situation. Mulan doesn't think about that, though, because this is a Disney movie. And then there's DONNY OSMOND!?!?!? What were they thinking?!?!?! The Hun's leader was a little weak, too. He didn't seem too menacing. I guess he shouldn't be since he's a cartoon character in a kids' movie, but Disney's had much more frightening bad guys than this. The Witches in Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, Monstro in Pinnochio, Jafar in Aladdin, Shere Khan in The Jungle Book, Scar in The Lion King... We got to know all of them pretty well through the course of the movies. (Well, maybe not Monstro, but he was only a small part of the movie. But he made a great impression, though.) This guy we only saw in a couple of scenes and we were supposed to be frightened by him. I didn't quite buy it. He was almost scary at the end, but not too much. I guess the point of the story was Mulan overcoming adversity, but we could've done with a better villain. Anyway, this was a great movie. Boys will like the dragon and the fighting and girls will (hopefully) like the fact that a girl gets to kick some butt. It's a good message for them. A good sign for me with animated movies is if I start to forget that I'm watching a bunch of drawings. There were times that I did with this one. I was interested in the story and most of the characters. If Disney makes Tarzan this good they could be on the verge of another Golden Age. One of the best posters they've had in a long time, too.

There's Something About Mary

admin — Sun, 26 Jul 1998 17:00:00 +0000

Remember the Three Stooges? They were gross. They were stupid. They were violent. They were funny as hell. Now imagine the Three Stooges made in the 90's. They would be grosser. They would be dumber. They would be more violent. They would still be funny as hell. They would probably be directed by Peter and Bobby Farrely. I saw this movie in one of those gigantasaur theatres that they only see fit to build in Dallas and other big cities like that. (That's where I was this weekend when I saw the flick.) You know what? That's fine with me. Give me a quaint, personal little 15 screen theatre anyday. There's a problem when movie theatres get too big. They become like malls. "Let's see. What movie should we see today? Let's go movie shopping!" Movies become less like events and more like a way to pass the time when you happen to be at that end of the mall. That's just wrong. Anyway, I was in Dallas visiting friends and watching another friend at Six Flags for the first time. (If you get a chance to go, ride the Mr. Freeze coaster. It's awesome! Strange how such a bad movie can make a great ride. Not that the ride really had anything to do with the movie. Probably a good thing, though.) Seven of us went to see this movie. Of the seven of us there were only two of us who really liked it. A couple people thought it had really funny moments, but didn't think it added up to much. That may be true, but the funny parts made the whole thing worth it for me. This new freak show of a movie is about Ted Stroehmann (Ben Stiller) and his overpowering love for Mary (Cameron Diaz just before she got way too skinny). It all started when she asked him to the prom (even though he was a complete dork with bad hair and she was a beautiful and popular girl). Then things go all wrong when he goes to pick her up. He meets her mom and step-dad (Markie Post and Keith David) and her retarded brother (W. Earl Brown--Kenny from Scream). After an accident with a zipper ("How'd you get the beans above the frank?!?!" Every man in the theatre was in pain for this one) the prom is ruined. Years later, Ted hires Pat Healy (Matt Dillon--Cameron's real life boyfriend) to find her in Florida. Pat's name was given to Ted by his friend Dom (Chris Elliott). Pat's not exactly a good guy. He falls for Mary and decides to tell Ted that she's bloated up, in a wheelchair and has four kids by three different guys that she never married. He, of course, finds out that she didn't bloat up and she's still a fox and he goes to find her. Chaos ensues in the most ridiculous and disgusting of ways all the way to the end with a surprise cameo and a lot of people coming out of the woodworks who find that something in Mary. Ted is basically a loser all through high school. He hangs out with the idiots who no one else would touch. (Story of my life.) Then Mary comes into his life. She's perfect. She's beautiful, smart, funny, loves sports and is completely unbiased about looks. She's the perfect woman. The Farrelys were trying to create a woman who didn't exist. Then (according to one interview) they found out that Cameron really is this person. Who'da thunk it? Pat is the bad guy of the movie. (Well, one of them, anyway.) He's a dirtbag P.I. who will do anything to get the girl. Including using spying devices to find out what Mary wants in a man and using her neighbor's spying devices to tell her what kind of guy he is. He's the kind of guy you want your worst enemy to go out with. Through it all are Jonathan Richman with his guitar and some dude with a drum who comment on the action of the characters. A friend of mine got annoyed with him, but most of the audience loved it. Richman was also in Kingpin--he was in the band in the bar. He's also the founding member of the Modern Lovers, an influential punk band of the late seventies who only put out one album. They're kind of like the Velvet Underground. Not many people know about them, but they influenced everyone. Go figure. We also get to see the landlady from Kingpin again. Her name is Lin Shaye and she plays Magda, Mary's neighbor who can't stop tanning. She looks something like a side of bacon. (I think I might have stolen that, but I can't remember from whom.) These guys don't know when to quit. They take one joke and take it to the extremes and then past those extremes. Kingpin was one of the funniest movies of the past couple of years. It was also one of the most disgusting and R-rated PG-13 movies ever made. Dumb And Dumber was dumb (you saw that one coming), but still funny with a sick edge to it. They topped themselves in their sickness. Kingpin was more consistently funny, but the five or six parts of this one are funnier than any scene from either of their earlier movies. I don't want to give too much away (as most of the other reviews have already done), but some good scenes are the dog jump-starting scene, the hair gel scene and the zipper scene (one of the more painful scenes in recent memory, too). Not everyone will like this movie. In fact, I would warn some people to stay away from it. It's very gross, twisted, disgusting, non-PC and just overall repulsive. For some of us, though, that's not a bad thing. I am, after all, a John Waters fan. It doesn't begin to touch the sickness of Pink Flamingos. It's about as close as a mainstream movie will probably ever come to it, though. You may be worried about Mary's brother. Do they make fun of retarded people? Not really. His condition isn't really used to get laughs, but he does things to get laughs. I guess it's a fine line. He does things like attacking people who touch his ears. It's something a retarded person may do, but it's not making fun of them. The only person who says anything bad about him is Pat, and he's supposed to be a slimeball, anyway. The guy in the leg braces is a different story, though. He's there for laughs. He doesn't always get them, but that's what he's there for. The thing is...well...I can't tell you any more about him. Let's just say, it's ok to laugh. Chris Elliott, on the other hand, only gets a few of the laughs he was supposed to get. I think he can be funny. I even thought Cabin Boy had it's moments (most of them involving either stop motion animation or David Letterman--or perhaps both--and there's a reference to it in this one), but he just wasn't very funny here. Every once in a while he was, but I almost could have done without his character. Until the end. Then it's ok to have him. So, if you're up for this sort of thing go for it. Just think of it this way: there are five or six great scenes in this movie that will keep you laughing after the credits have rolled. Those scenes go on for a long, long time. How many "comedies" these days have even one scene like these in them? Not many. Stick with it through the dry spots. It's worth it. Also, stay through the credits. They have some semi-outtakes of the cast doing the old classic "Build Me Up, Buttercup" by the Foundations. And then there's Cameron saying, "Ted, I'm just fucking with you." about five times. Somehow, it's cute. By the way, don't let my friends' reaction scare you away from it. Everyone else in the theatre seemed to be having a pretty good time. My friends just have no taste. Look who they hang out with.

Saving Private Ryan

admin — Tue, 28 Jul 1998 17:00:00 +0000

Devastating. That's about the only word I can think of to describe this movie. Imagine every war movie ever made, multiply it by 3 and that's about the intensity of this movie. And if you think that Spielberg can't top Schindler's List, you may be wrong. This is as good, if not better than his previous masterpiece. It's about Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) and his men who are sent into hostile territory (was there any other kind in this war?) to save one man, Private James F. Ryan (Matt Damon just before he became Hollywood's new pin-up boy). Ryan's three brothers were killed in action and his mother got the notices on the same day. Now they have to get her last living son out of there. They didn't want another Sullivan fiasco (the real life brothers who all died in action). With this movie Spielberg makes a more dramatic WWII version of Apocalypse Now. These men are on a mission to find a man. On the way they meet up with different soldiers, enemies and obstacles that change them forever. They are all kind of cynical about their mission, but they know that they have to do it. Their captain says so. The men are Private Reiben (Ed Burns), Sergeant Horvath (Tom Sizemore), Corporal Upham (Jeremy Davies from Spanking The Monkey and an episode of "The Wonder Years" (his character was, coincidentally, named Eddie Horvath)), Private Caparzo (Vin Diesel), Private Mellish (Adam Goldberg from Dazed And Confused and The Prophecy), Private Jackson (Barry Pepper) and T/4 Medic Wade (Giovanni Ribisi from "My Two Dads," SubUrbia and That Thing You Do!). These eight men are sent to save one and they all question whether it's worth it. They could all die for one man. If they died for twenty or even two it would be ok, but this is ridiculous. A lot has been said about the first battle scene, so I'll keep it short. Let's just say that it's the most realistic scene I have ever seen in a movie. The bullets are literally whizzing past my ears. The camera gets splattered with blood and dirt. The bodies go limp before me. The body parts are thrown in my face. The blood washes up on the shore and colors the water. It feels like I'm right there with them watching their buddies get their heads blown off and just being glad it's not me. I have never seen a more harrowing bit of history in my life and I hope I never do. After that we go on the mission with the two Toms. We get to see Ted Danson (yes, you read that right, the guy from "Cheers") in a good, small role. We also see Dennis Farina without his usual pompadour. Also, watch for Dale Dye (the real sergeant who helped get the actors into shape for this movie and other war movies like Platoon) in a small role in the war offices near the beginning. The movie, of course, borrows from other war movies. There was Apocalypse Now, at times Kelly's Heroes and The Bridge On The River Kwai. The thing is, it goes one better. Maybe even two. Instead of glorifying the war as Kelly's Heroes and most other WWII movies have done, it made it real. It brought us down to the level of the soldiers. We all thought that Vietnam was the first war that had our boys doing terrible things to their men. This shows that we were all wrong. The reason we didn't know about our men killing POWs and people who had surrendered in WWII is that there wasn't a camera crew following them. TV wasn't as big a deal back then. Even if it had been they wouldn't have shown that kind of stuff. It happened, they just didn't want us to know about it. The direction is, of course, amazing. Spielberg put his camera right in the middle of the action. It's almost like a documentary at times. The film changes to a more realistic, grainy stock and we go in. There are times that we can't really tell what's going on, but that can be forgiven in this movie. That's how war is. You never really know. He didn't want us to be passive observers. He wanted us to be there. He knows when to lighten up and still keep it from being obtrusive. He also puts framing scenes around the real story, just like he did with Schindler. A lot of people feel that it was extraneous in that movie, but I think most are affected by this one. It shows one of the survivors visiting the graves of the ones who were lost at the Arlington National Cemetery. (I don't think I gave anything away, here. That's one other truth this movie tells: people die. Even heroes. There's no way around it.) The acting is also great. Tom Hanks should get another Oscar. His character is a hard man with a soft heart. He has to keep it together if he wants his men to get out alive, but no man is an island (except for Paul Simon). He breaks down once and you can feel the pain through his performance. He was supposed to break down again, but Tom said that he didn't want the character to be revealed too much. There has to be some hard edge left to him. Ed Burns is pretty much himself in this one. I know there are some who don't like him, but I think he's great. He's very natural and true to himself. A guy I work with says that his pauses sound fake and he can't take that. The thing is, that's how he talks. He gets into his character, but leaves part of himself there. He even gets a few Ed Burnsish lines in here and there. Tom Sizemore is a lot better than I remember him being in any other movie. The other guys give heart-wrenching performances. They're just kids stuck in a man's war. In fact, Jeremy Davies looks like he's wearing his dad's uniform. If this movie doesn't get the Best Picture Oscar there better be a damn good movie on the horizon. I don't see a better movie coming out anytime soon. Of course, I am going to see a sneak of BASEketball tonight, so maybe we'll have some competition.

Disturbing Behavior

admin — Sun, 02 Aug 1998 17:00:00 +0000

Remember all those jocks in high school? Did you ever wonder why they were so Naziesque? This movie tries to answer that all important question. When I was looking for movies to go see with my friend toady I had a choice: we could see BASEketball again (which I would have gladly done), we could see Mafia! (which can wait for video) or we could see another Scream-type flick. Guess what we chose? Another friend of mine thinks that "wake movies" are interesting. For the most part they are. When Star Wars came out hundreds of big sci-fi flicks came out in its wake (hence the term). You had Battlestar Gallactica, The Black Hole, Star Trek: The Motion Sickness (it would have never been made if it hadn't been for Star Wars), and a whole bunch more. When The Sound Of Music came out there were hundreds of big musicals like Doctor Doolittle coming out. Now, with Scream, there are hundreds of slasher/horror flicks coming out. There are even wake movies from the wake movies. Dead Man's Curve with Scream's own Matthew Lillard (which I saw at SXSW, but didn't get to write a review for--I have no idea when it came out, but it was pretty cool) begat the soon to be released Dead Man On Campus from MTV. What a prodigal son that is. Now we have another wake movie. It's not exactly a slasher flick, but it's definitely a teen horror flick. Disturbing Behavior is about a small town called Cradle Bay where a lot of the teenagers at the local high school are succumbing to a strange affliction called the Blue Ribbon Club. They've all given up on rock and roll, rebellion and all the urges that teenagers get. They are a little too perfect. This is where Steve Clark (Jimmy Marsden from Bella Mafia and the first few episodes of Party Of Five) comes in. His family has just moved into the town to help them get over the loss of their oldest son (played in flashbacks--and I do mean FLASHbacks--by Ethan Embry). Steve meets Rachel (Katie Holmes from The Ice Storm, Dawson's Creek (big surprise) and the upcoming Killing Mrs. Tingle--and she looks good! I could do without the nose ring, though.) and Gavin (Nick Stahl from Man Without A Face and Safe Passage) and Edgar Winter. Well, ok, it's not really Edgar Winter, but he's some albino dude who tags along with them. Gavin seems to know what's going on, but he can't really prove it. He saw the sheriff let one of the jocks go after finding him with a dead girl and seeing him kill another cop in the woods. There's also a counselor who has something to do with the conspiracy and a janitor who's smarter than he appears played by William Sandler from Die Hard 2, Rush and Bill And Ted's Bogus Journey. The movie's ok. It's at least entertaining. I do wonder what's up with the sheriff, though. He covers all this stuff up, but we never really know why. Is he trying to help the counselor? Is he trying to keep the football team going? What's his deal?! Then there's Gavin. He's a little too intelligent to be the stoner that he is and he spouts some really long lines about semi-obscure literature for no apparent reason. In other words, he's a show-off. Nick, of course, did a good job. He's a good actor (just watch Man Without A Face), but he needs better part than this to show it. And what's Steve doing hanging out with these guys? He looks like one of the cheese-balls in blue. There's no way a guy like this would actually take these losers seriously. Maybe he's not so preoccupied with how people look that he'll stay away at first glance. Then again, he is in high school. And while we're talking about characters, what's up with all of the adults? They're pretty much non-existant. We're supposed to be afraid of the counselor, but we hardly ever see him. He shows up in about five scenes. How do we really get to be scared of him? I guess Scream didn't really have many adults, either. They're just trying to go all the way with the emulation. There's also a couple of references that are worth mentioning. (You know how I love references.) There's the obvious Pink Floyd reference. I should have seen it coming a mile away. Think about it. Teachers reconstructing kids. Then there's a weird one. I'm not much into sports, but a friend of mine tells me this one is really a sports thing. To me it will always be connected to Caddyshack. "Be The Ball." It's plastered all over the place. If you mean for us to take something like this seriously you'd better make sure that you don't use a line from an actually popular movie. Especially if that movie happens to be on of the funniest movies ever made. So the movie is entertaining, but not worth much overall. It's all been done before. It's got a good twist because of how they get there, but it still gets to the same place. If you want to see a well written, good movie that's not some weird cross between A Clockwork Orange and The Stepford Jocks, don't see this movie. If you want a movie that may give you a few unintentional laughs and a fairly good time (not to mention a pretty good--and weird--nude scene--remember the preview with the girl cracking her head in the mirror?), this is the movie for you. Either way, don't see it at full price. If anything, wait for video and see it with a big group of MST3K fans.

Halloween H20

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 1998 17:00:00 +0000

So here's what happened today. I went into the theatre not knowing what I would see. I decided to take a look at Jamie Leigh Curtis's semi-dream project. I ate some popcorn, I drank some DP and the movie was over. That was about it. It was probably the shortest movie I've ever seen in the theatre. About a year or so ago, I guess, Jamie decided that she wanted to see what was up with her old alter-ego, Laurie Strode. Actually, it was probably more like, "Well, Scream made a lot of money. Let's see if I can, too." We catch up with Jamie's character 20 years after her second battle with her human-Quisinart brother, Michael Myers. She's changed her name to Keri Tate (maybe a grisly homage to Sharon?) and become the head-mistress of a posh private high school. This serves one purpose: lots of fodder for Michael's knife. Laurie also now has a son, John, played by semi-newcomer Josh Hartnett who will also be in Rodriguez's The Faculty later this year. John has just turned 17 (the same age that Laurie was in the original) and is trying to get out of his mom's shell. She's still pretty broken up about her brother killing everybody she knew. That's understandable. She's a near-alcoholic and very paranoid. Everytime someone is walking towards her she thinks he has the mask on and a knife in his hand. John is sick of it and wants to hang out with his friends on Halloween night without his mom on his back. Typically this wouldn't be a problem, but this year John has made a big mistake. He holes himself up in the basement (or something--I never really could figure out where they were) with his girlfriend, Molly (Michelle Williams from Dawson's Creek) and their two friends, Sarah and Charlie (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe from Nash Bridges and Adam Hann-Byrd from Little Man Tate and The Ice Storm--did he really grow up that much in less than a year?!) That's where the killing starts again. Well, ok, it starts near the beginning of the movie back in Laurie's home town (Joseph Gordon-Levitt from 3rd Rock is the first and most creatively killed victim--later there's a missed chance with a corkscrew and a disposal), but that's not important. Also in Laurie's life are Will Brennen (Adam Arkin), her school counselor/boyfriend, and Norma (Janet Leigh) her nosy secretary. It's good to see that Jamie keeps the family ties strong. It's also good that Janet can make another slasher flick after being killed in a shower. Note the irony of her name: Norma...Norman. Hmmm. She also has the same kind of car that she drove in Psycho. Pretty cool in-jokes for us film nerds. Now, if only she could get a movie with both Janet AND Tony. Then there's Ronnie (LL Cool J), the not so secure security guard. At one point John and Charlie ask him to open the gate for them so they can go out and buy some booze. First off, the gate is far enough away from the ground to be crawled under. Second, he's not that good of a guard. Just sneak out! By the way, what's LL (is that what you call him?) doing acting? I guess his brand of rap isn't selling anymore. (Actually, he's not bad, just not great, either.) If you're a fan of the series you should probably see this one. It's always good to see Jamie in a horror role (especially the one that started it all). I haven't seen any of the non-Jamie sequels, but it seems that you really don't have to see them. They pretty much ignore the fact that they ever happened. Laurie doesn't seem to have any idea that other people have died at Michael's hand. What about the other three movies?! (We'll ignore the third one. There's not a Michael in site there. It shouldn't have even been called Halloween.) Luckily, the characters are still kind of interesting in this one and it's cool to see Laurie face her monster (they really point out the Frankenstein reference early on). It actually probably could have stood to be a little longer, though. A couple of fun facts: Jimmy (Joseph G-L) and his friend are watching Plan 9 From Outer Space--the worst movie of all time. In a homage to the return of Halloween-type movies, when Will comes in to check on Molly and Sarah they're watching Scream 2. The movie is also co-produced (and co-written if you believe the IMDb) by Scream-scribe Kevin Williamson. Unfortunately, his hand isn't heavy enough to make anyone smart in this movie but Laurie. Everyone else is dumber than bricks. (If you walk into a dark house, what's the first thing you do? Walk further into it? No--turn the light on, idiot! At least try it! Also, if you see a strange car outside the gate, don't open the gate to check it out.) It isn't a horrible movie, but it's not great, either. I would have liked to have seen a better movie with the same ending. (That was pretty cool. Can't tell you about it, though.) It was probably worth my 3.50. Not much more. I also would have liked John Carpenter to have had something to do with it. Steve Miner (the director) has had experience with this sort of thing, but not good experience. Friday The 13th Parts 2 and 3 don't count. He ruined what little he had for horror movies by doing Forever Young (not a bad movie by any means), episodes of "The Wonder Years" (great show) and "Dawson's Creek" (yeah, right, forget I mentioned it). Two out of three are good, but they don't get you ready for a big horror movie like this. Well, maybe Dawson's Creek. It's pretty horrific. By the way, what a terrible title! Yeah, I know, it's really Halloween: 20 Years Later, but come on! Why would they stick it with H20? That just takes away all credibility as a horror movie. And could the poster look a little more like Scream? It rivals the Phantoms poster. That one had Scream-stars in it, though, so it wins.

Dead Man On Campus

admin — Tue, 18 Aug 1998 17:00:00 +0000

I didn't really figure that I would see this movie. It wasn't really on my list of movies to see, but here I am writing a review of it. It was free, what can I say? It's a movie about a couple of college guys who find out that, if their roommate commits suicide, they get straight A's. We've all heard this rumor. We all also (hopefully) know that it's not true. The thing is that Hollywood hasn't really figured it out yet. This is the second movie that I know of to be made about this subject in the last year. The first one was Dead Man's Curve, with Matthew Lillard and Michael Vartan, where they try to kill their roommate and make it look like suicide. That one was heavily inspired by Scream (even Matthew's character was similar to his in Scream) and it seems to have disappeared since I saw it at South By Southwest, never to be heard from again. It wasn't bad. There was a great Deer Hunter spoof and a really twisted, out-of-nowhere ending. Now we have Josh (Tom Everett Scott--the Tom Hanks lookalike from That Thing You Do) and Cooper (Mark-Paul Gosselaar--the Jim Carrey lookalike from Saved By The Bell) trying to find just the right roommate who is emotionally unstable enough to kill themselves sometime during the semester. You see, they both have figured out that this is their last chance. If Josh fails (which he is) he loses his scholarship. If Cooper fails (he never goes to class) he has to work with his dad in the toilet cleaning business. Now they have to choose out of a bunch of people they've seen come out of the counselors office looking depressed. Among them are Cliff (Lochlyn Munro), Buckley (Randy Pearlstein)) and Matt (Corey Page). Cliff is the one that's in all the previews, the one they know will bring people into the theatre. He's really in it less than you would think. But, he's completely insane. He shoots at cops. He humps couches. He uses beer bottles instead of toilets. They say he has a death wish, but I just think he's stupid. He does dangerous things not really realizing they're dangerous. Buckley is paranoid. He's constantly on the computer and he thinks that Bill Gates is trying to get his brain. If that were true the last place I would be is anywhere near a computer. He's pretty funny. Matt is probably the best one. He's a British rocker who may not be what he says. Remember Robert Smith from The Cure? He looks just like him. He sings depressing songs about bodily fluids. He wears black and talks about death. He curses people for being to happy. He laughs at tv. Well, maybe there's more to him than we know. Along the way, Josh meets Rachel (Poppy Montgomery from the failed tv show Relativity and a very flowery family). Rachel starts off loving him. ("It was so easy. I didn't have to do anything. It was just like, 'It's time for sex!'") Then, as he starts to ignore her in favor of spraying dorms with imaginary chemicals to drive Buckley insane, she starts to hate him. Go figure. The movie itself was better than I expected, but I didn't expect much. So far MTV has made some pretty surprising movies. Beavis And Butt-Head was much better than it ever should have been. (The tv show was not one of my favorites.) Joe's Apartment was pretty cool. It actually made roaches cute. This one is just as strange and light as the others. I'm not sure if it succeeds as well, though. As far as the "dead roommate" genre goes, I still liked Dead Man's Curve better. This one wasn't as dark, but the other one was a little smarter. This was like National Lampoon goes on a killing spree. And I mean recent National Lampoon, not the one that made Vacation and Animal House. It really did have it's moments, and Mark-Paul (why does he have two first names? What do his friends call him?) was pretty funny, but I don't know if that really made it worth a full price ticket. Not bad, but wait for video if you're into this sort of thing. I'm glad I saw it for free. It didn't bore me, though.

Paths Of Glory

admin — Wed, 19 Aug 1998 17:00:00 +0000

This is a movie about World War I that was made around the time of the Korean War, but it may as well have been about the Vietnam War. It's Stanley Kubrick's first big anti-war film and is one of the best of that genre. Kirk Douglas stars as Colonel Dax, a French soldier who is ordered by General Mireau (George Macready) to take his men on a suicide mission out of the trenches up Ant Hill. Mireau realizes it's suicide, but he's been told that it will further his career by General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou). Dax knows that it's suicide, but he does it because he sees that he has no choice in the matter. The "battle" is very short-lived. They make it a few meters and then have to fall back. During the battle Mireau orders the shellers to fire on their own men to get them out of the trenches. The order is refused and so the men in the trenches are thought to be cowards. There's no way for them to win and everyone knows it, but someone must be punished for making Mireau look bad. He orders Dax to order his charge to choose one man from each regiment to execute. These three men are Corporal Paris (Ralph Meeker), Private Ferol (Timothy Carey from Kubrick's earlier The Killing and East Of Eden) and Private Arnuad (Joe Turkel, also in The Killing, The Shining and Tyrell from Blade Runner!). These men are all picked for different reasons. Paris was with his regiment leader, Lieutenant Roget (Wayne Morris), and knows that he killed another soldier, Ferol was considered a social undesirable and Arnuad drew the short straw. Dax, who was a star lawyer in his private life, decides to represent his men during the court-martial. It's a fight he's not meant to win. That's obvious all through the trial. I don't want to give away what happens. Let's just say it's not what you would expect. I will tell you that the very end of the movie features the future Mrs. Kubrick singing a song in German. It doesn't matter if you understand the words or not, it's a touching moment. She cries with the soldiers she's singing to for different reasons, but they are somehow connected. The more different we are, the more we are the same. This is one of the greatest war films ever made. That's not just coming from a Kubrick fan (although it is). It's one of those rare war movies made before Vietnam that showed how war really was. It was a bunch of old men sending young men off to their deaths. The generals are always eating in fine dining halls and having parties with socialites while their men are dying in the trenches. The generals do visit the front, but that's all it really is, a short visit. They try to give moral support but just end up telling them things like, "There is no such thing as shellshock! Get this man out of here!" The acting in this movie is amazing. All three of the court-martialed men go through all of the emotions of knowing they are about to die. One starts off strong and ends up blubbering. One starts off weak and ends up as the resident oak. The other one becomes an atheist and spends a good portion of the end of the movie unconscious. There's the normal Kubrick dark humor showing its head, too. At one point Paris starts talking about how a cockroach in their cell will have more chance of seeing his (Paris's, not the roach's) wife and kids than he will. He'll be alive tomorrow. Ferol then smashes the bug and says, "Now you're one up on him." One of the more harrowing parts is when Dax orders Roget to head up the execution squad. All he has to do is tie them to the posts, order the fire and then put a bullet in each of their heads. "Request permission to forgo this position." "Request denied!" Dax knows exactly why Paris was chosen and he won't let Roget get away with it. Anyone who thinks Kirk Douglas can't act needs to see this movie. He's pretty amazing. I had seen this movie before, but this time I saw it on the big screen. It doesn't really matter where you see it, just see it. Give it all your attention, though. It's only 88 minutes long. So what if it's a 1957 black and white movie? They knew how to make them back then. And Kubrick has never forgotten how to make them...I hope. By the way, this movie is the reason for Kubrick directing Spartacus. Douglas said that he would do the movie if Kubrick was allowed to direct. Good choice, even if it is one of the least Kubrickesque movies in his list. After Spartacus, I think Douglas said he would never work with Kubrick again. Go figure. He's a bit of a maniac. Just ask Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. I think they've had to reshoot at least 30-40% of Eyes Wide Shut again because someone dropped out or Kubrick wasn't happy with what he had. I guess you can't rush genius. It's been over a decade since his last movie (Full Metal Jacket). Give him a break.

Lawrence Of Arabia

admin — Sun, 23 Aug 1998 17:00:00 +0000

I've got an idea. Let's make a 4 hour movie about a war. We won't really show much of the battles. It'll just be scenes of the English leader of the Arabian army going crazy in the desert. Somehow David Lean got a movie deal out of that. And somehow the movie turned out to be one of the greatest films ever made. I just saw this movie for the second time, this time on the big screen, the way it was meant to be seen. Every shot is a classic. Every scene seems like it should go on forever. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this movie. Not even the length. Peter O'Toole, in his first big role (the credits say "introducing," but he had three roles before this--no one remembers them, though), plays T.E. Lawrence, a British soldier during World War I who is sent to North Africa to "appreciate the situation." There, he meets Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), the leader of one of the Arab tribal armies, Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif), the second in command of Feisal's army and Auda abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn), the leader of one of the other tribal armies who end up joining forces with Feisal's army. Before being sent we learn a lot about Lawrence's character. He has great self control (shown in a scene where he puts a match out very slowly with his fingers--"The trick is to not mind that it hurts.") and he doesn't really deal with authority very well ("It's my manner, sir. It seems insubordinate, but it doesn't mean to be"). Somehow he still gets sent on his mission. His first guide is killed by Ali because he is from the wrong tribe. This, of course, angers Lawrence--go figure. ("My name is for my friends, none of which is a murderer.") He finally makes it, on his own, to Prince Feisal and becomes a nearly reluctant leader to the army. As he makes plans for the army he starts to like the control. He even finds out that he enjoys killing a little more than he would like to admit. The thing is that he's a natural leader. He's charismatic. He's intelligent. He's got a God complex. ("They could only kill me with a golden bullet.") He goes on a crusade against the Turks who are oppressing the Arabs. At one point he crosses the Sanai with two kids who have taken it upon themselves to be his servants. "Are you crossing the Sanai?" "Moses did!" "With children?!" "Moses did!" After severe humiliation at the hands of the Turks he decides to go back to being a British soldier again. Unfortunately for him someone talks him into going back. This causes his complex to get even more complex. He starts blowing up Turkish trains (some of which were the actual trains that the real Lawrence blew up). The reporter who is following him takes some heroic pictures of him here. (The shots of him walking across the top of one of the trains is an indelible vision. Even his shadow is ethereal.) After one battle, though, Lawrence and the reporter both realize that things have gone too far. ("You dirty, filthy man. Let me take your dirty, filthy picture for the dirty, filthy papers.") I may have already given away too much, but the point of this movie isn't really the story (although that's pretty amazing, too), it's the spectacle. It's the cinematography. It's Peter O'Toole and David Lean. Only once in a great while do roles like this come along for actors. This is the best role Peter O'Toole will ever have (unless he can break himself out of the Phantoms mode). All of his other great performances (Becket, Lion In Winter, The Ruling Class, My Favorite Year, The Last Emperor, The Stunt Man, Supergirl)--they're all child's play to this one. There's so much going on with this character that you can't keep up with it all. He's at once heroic and sick, amazing and sad, life giving and destruction making. It's a wonder that Peter ever got out of the character. Then there's all the other performances. All those decidedly non-Arab guys playing Arabs did a great job. It was hard to realize that Alec Guinness wasn't an Arab. And Anthony Quinn? He may as well have been born in the sands of Egypt. Omar Sharif? He should have...oh wait...I guess he is Egyptian. Actually, being the age I am and the kind of person I am, it was hard for me to not think that Sir Alec would whip out his light saber and do some damage. "Orince? That boy was our last hope." And what was with Anthony's nose? I really don't remember it being that big in any other part. And why is it lighter than the rest of his face? Anyway, the film is amazing. Lawrence stands alone. There's really not much else to say. If you get a chance, see it on the big screen. If not, then get the widescreen version (the only version I know of in existence) and see it on a big tv. There's really no other way to see it. I did see it for the first time on a little 12 inch screen, but now I've seen what I was missing. Try not to do that. There's too much lost. You don't quite get the majesty of that two minutes of sunrise from the first scene in the desert. (Bet you didn't know the desert could be this beautiful, huh?) Since Lean is dead (Never say that! Never say he's dead! Say he's unavailable.) we'll probably never get another movie like this. But we can watch his other epics like Doctor Zhivago, The Bridge On The River Kwai and A Passage To India (the only one I haven't seen). David Lean/Alec Guinness count=6 (Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Bridge, Lawrence, Zhivago, Passage) Lean/Omar Sharif count=2 (Lawrence, Zhivago) Lean/Pauly Shore=000000000000000 Lean film Oscar nomination count=38 (9 for Lawrence) wins=23 (7 for Lawrence) These are both ballpark figures--I looked through a book that doesn't give all the nominations in little categories, only winners. Lean AFI 100 count=3 (Bridge, Lawrence and Zhivago--although I don't know if they count as American movies--I thought they were British) I'll stop counting now. I was never good at math. Just thought I'd bore some people with useless facts...like I always do.

Blade

admin — Sat, 29 Aug 1998 17:00:00 +0000

So Wesley Snipes wants to play a comic book action hero. So let him. Let's make him a vampire action hero. They all said Brandon Lee couldn't do it, either. (Well, some did.) This movie is about a half-breed vampire named Blade, played by Wesley. His mother was bitten just before his birth and died just after. He can do a lot of things that most vampires can't. ("All of our strengths. None of our weaknesses.") He's joined the ranks of others who are trying to rid the world of vampires. Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) builds his weapons and helps him out. Karen (N'Bushe Wright from Fresh and Dead Presidents) is a young nurse who is bitten near the beginning. Somehow she reminds Blade of his mother, so he spares her life. She becomes a hunter with Blade and Whistler. Then there's the other side of things. The non-sugar coated topping of the world. There's a whole league of vampires lead by Dragonetti (Udo Kier from Ace Ventura, Armageddon and Suspiria--even though he's in some weird movies he must be a good actor, after all, he's got a foreign name) trying to live with the humans while still eating them. Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff from Backbeat) is a young upstart (Yeah. I still like 'upstart' the best) who wants to take over the world and treat people (not just actors) like cattle. Blade, of course, wants to stop him. I was very surprised by this movie. I was expecting just another comic book version of a horror movie, but it was REALLY cool! The action was very well done. Snipes did a great job as the hero who didn't really want to be what he was. Even Kris put in a pretty good performance as the ragged old man who knows maybe a little too much about vampires and alloys. And I've never seen N'Bushe (how do you pronounce that?) before, but she's pretty cool, not to mention nice to look at. The much abused Allman Brother looking sideman of Deacon was stupid, but in a funny way. ("Oh, come on, Deacon. My hands just grew back!") I can't remember his character name, though. I don't even know if he had one. Stephen Dorff was pretty menacing in his first good bad guy role. He was a bad guy in City Of Industry, too, but it wasn't very good. I couldn't see him as a bad guy, then. Maybe it's because he still looked a little too much like Stu Sutcliffe and River Phoenix. He did a great job in this one, though. Ex-adult video star Traci Lords shows up, too. She plays Racquel, but I don't remember which one that is, and not really knowing that she was in it until the end didn't help, either. If she was the blonde she's undergone some MASSIVE reduction surgery. The movie itself reminded me a lot of The Crow. It's very dark and full of action. It's pretty gory and violent, but it's a fun sort of violence. Most of it isn't very realistic and you can tell that a lot of the blood is computer generated. Remember Star Trek VI when the Klingon was killed in zero gravity? That's about what it looks like. I really only have a couple of problems with the movie. First of all, Dragonetti and his crew are supposed to be pure vampires. That means that they were born vampires. They weren't bitten and turned. Does this mean that vampires can suddenly bear children? If not, then Blade would be a pure vampire because he was born one. But that would mean that he's not really half-man, half-vampire. Then there would be no movie, therefore, no review. So, let's move on. Second, as cool as Wesley was I think he should have been cooler. If you've seen the previews you've seen the scene where he throws the curved, Krull-like blade and then catches it on the other side of the room. Until fairly lately they've cut it just as he catches the blade. Now they go all the way with it and he gives a little smile at the end. I really think that this guy should have been like Batman. Totally serious. Totally dark. Not necessarily no heart, but very cold when it comes to the business of killing vampires. It's kind of like a friend's opinion of the end of Schindler's List. Schindler should not have broken down. That would have made him a more cynical hero. I don't necessarily agree with it in that movie, but definitely in this movie he should have been more cynical. He wasn't laughing like an idiot the whole time or anything like that, but he smiled a few times too many. That scene is only one of them. I'd say that there were at least five or six others. The other problem I have is the director's (Stephen Norrington) first movie: Death Machine, but that's another story. I never saw it and I don't plan on seeing it. Somehow I doubt that it's any good, but this movie shows that he has some talent at directing action sequences. There are a lot of really cool action bits. The first one in rave club (with the smiling Krull blade) is amazing. The sword fight at the end is pretty cool, too, complete with Duellist-like sparks. (I personally don't remember seeing any sparks in The Duellists, but maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention. Everyone else remembers them.) Anyway, it's a great movie if you're into vampire/martial arts/action flicks. I'm not sure that there are a lot of those, but, hey, we can start a new genre.

Alien (1979)/Aliens (1986)

admin — Sat, 29 Aug 1998 17:00:00 +0000

I just saw both of these classics at the Paramount tonight. I had seen Alien before on video, but I had (believe it or not) never seen all of Aliens. Go figure. A big James Cameron fan not seeing one of his most popular pre-sinking ship movies. We all know what these movies are about. A strange alien race with hot dog shaped heads are killing off members of ship crews one by one and Ripley (Sigourney Weaver's best role yet) survives (usually). The first one, directed by Ridley Scott, was very slow. That's not taking anything away from the movie because it builds its tension very well. It's a great movie and one of the classics of the sci-fi horror genre, not to mention one of the first. It has a wealth of mostly unknown at the time actors. Yaphet Kotto (who was much thinner in Live And Let Die) played Parker, a workman for hire who happened to be on the Nostromo when all hell broke loose with his friend Brett (Harry Dean Stanton). Dallas (Tom Skerrit) is the commander of the ship. Lambert (Veronica Cartwright who was in The Birds and not much after that) is the weak link of the ship. She just kind of screams when things go wrong. Kane (John Hurt from The Elephant Man and the ultra-failure Heaven's Gate) is the first victim of the alien. He's the one that loses his lunch and so much more when the alien pops out of his stomach. He reprised his role in the funniest scene of Spaceballs. ("Oh no. Not again!") Then there's Ash (Ian Holm from The Sweet Hereafter, Chariots Of Fire and The Fifth Element). I can't really tell much about him in case you haven't seen it, but he's the suspicious science officer. This movie is what a friend of mine and I call a "wake movie." It was made in the wake of Star Wars. Think of all the sci-fi movies that came out after Star Wars. This is the best (even over Star Trek: The Motion Sickness) and probably the most popular. (Star Trek as a phenomenon is more popular, but would you rather watch ST:TMP than Alian? I thought not.) There's a lot of influence from the Holy Trilogy, too. Before Star Wars the future was a very clean time to live in. All the ships were nice and shiny and there was no dirt anywhere. Now it's hard to make a sci-fi movie like that. Everything has to look lived in. The Nostromo is a beat up old commercial tug. It's a worker ship and you can tell. There's also an obligatory Star Wars shot at the very beginning of the movie. The camera hugs the bottom of the Nostromo as it sails by just like it did to the Star Destroyer in the opening scene of Star Wars. I bet they didn't scrape the camera lens, though. As I said, the movie is very slow. The tension is built very deliberatly and very well. It has it's splatter-ish parts and is pretty graphic, but it's still not as gory as the second movie. Which brings us to that one. It also has a bunch of no-names that turned into names. Paul Reiser plays Burke, the Company worker who is supposed to be helping to kill the aliens on the planet that Ripley and the Nostromo crew found them on in the first movie. They're taking a whole army with them including Hudson (Bill Paxton in one of his better roles, even if he is kind of annoying), Hicks (Michael Biehn in pretty much the same role he played for Cameron two years earlier in The Terminator), Biship-a "synthetic person" (Lance Henriksen) and Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein who worked with Henriksen agian in Near Dark and Cameron in T2 and Titanic. Along the way they find Newt (Carrie Henn in her only role to date), a girl whose family was killed by the aliens. This movie is much more intense than the first one and I actually liked it better. It just doesn't let up for the entire 2 hour and 17 minute running time. They actually did a good job with keeping the plots in line between the two movies. There are some sequels that just don't quite match up (Evil Dead being a great example, but I think it's a running joke with that series). This one actually picks up where the last one left off. Ripley is floating through space for 57 years in a cryogenic state with her cat until The Company finally finds them. The Company is an interesting entity, too. We never really hear the name of it, but they're always wanting to bring back an alien so they can breed them for war. Why not? Giant beings that know no mercy. We haven't seen the likes of that since Barbara Streisand's nose. (Well, now we have Cameron's ego, but who's counting?) It's a pretty typical device for these kinds of movies (The Company, not the nose...unless we're talking about a Woody Allen movie), the big, evil corporate entity that doesn't care about people, only money. Cameron used it again in T2 and even Titanic to some extent. Ridley Scott used it again in Blade Runner. Everybody uses it. That doesn't mean it's a bad plot device, though. The other really interesting thing is Ripley's character. She's not really the badass that we all know now. In the first one she's sort of a survivor by luck. The second one, though, she starts to let the badass out. As soon as those maternal instincts kick in for Newt she lets it all hang out. Nobody's getting between her and her adopted daughter. (Sigourney was nominated for an Oscar for this one. With good reason, too. She's great in it.) Seeing these two movies really lets us know how far downhill the series has come. She's become a characature of her former glory. Now she's a comic book character with one-liners and big muscles. Back then she was just a normal woman who rose to the challenge. (By the way, my critiques of the third and fourth ones are: Alien Cubed=pretty bad--I like David Fincher (the director of Seven), but he couldn't save this one. Alien Resurection=not bad--very gory and stylistic, and Winona Ryder was pretty cool. Ron Perlman was pretty good, too, I guess. The style was probably better than the movie was. Leave it to Jean-Pierre Jeunet (director of Delicatessin and City Of Lost Children) to bring a lot of style to a project.) If they do make a fifth one (and they're planning it) they need to watch these first two and draw from them. Some IMDb trivia: There are a few Joseph Conrad references in both movies. Nostromo (the ship in the first movie) is one of his books, which takes place in a town called Sulaco (the ship in the second movie). Narcissus (the escape pod in the first movie) is another one of his books. There was a sex scene in the script for Ripley and Dallas (which confirms the fact that there was something going on there--watch it again and you can tell), but it was cut. The front part of the alien head was an actual human skull. Ridley Scott wanted the movie to end with the alien biting off Ripley's head in her cyro-chamber and talking to Earth with her voice, but 20th Century Fox didn't go for it. There's a line in Aliens about Vasquez signing up for the mission because she thought it was for tracking down illegal aliens. This was an inside joke for the cast and crew. Jenette Goldstein showed up to the casting calls with long hair and a lot of make-up thinking that the movie was about immegrants. By the way: H.R. GIGER RULES!!!!! He designed the aliens for these movies and for Species (they're pretty similar). He also did the album cover for Emerson, Lake And Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery. His style is pretty distinct. It's always easy to tell when he's involved in something. It's always very dark and almost humanesque if you look at it in the right way. Anyway, he's awesome. And so are these movies in their own ways.

Wild Things

admin — Sun, 06 Sep 1998 17:00:00 +0000

Ok, we've all heard the phrase "guilty pleasure." This movie brings a whole new meaning to it. I felt dirty after watching it. I thought that I should sit in the shower for hours just to cleanse myself to the very soul. But I would do it again in a minute. The only other movie that came close to this was Starship Troopers (also starring the lovely and "talented" Denise Richards). It's about a guidance counselor named Sam Lombardo (Matt Dillon), who works at a rich (and nearly non-existent) high school who is accused of raping two female students, Kelly Van Ryan (Denise Richards) and Suzie Toller (Neve Campbell). Kelly is from the "right" side of the tracks and is the daughter of the richest and most powerful woman in town (Theresa Russell) who Sam had an affair with a while before. Suzie is from the "wrong" side of the tracks and would rather smoke out and beat people up than go to school. (I never really like the whole "right side" "wrong side" thing, but I'm glad it exists if only for one bit in South Park where the boys actually have to cross railroad tracks to get to Kenny's house. Sorry, just had to get SP in here somewhere. I could see them doing a whole episode about this movie.) The rape charge only comes after we see Kelly basically throwing herself at Sam. She tries to get him to give her rides home. She washes his car, for charity, of course. In the process she soaks herself in her white clothes making sure to hit all the right places. Then she tells her friend to leave and she waits at his door. The scene cuts and she's running away from the house with her shirt ripped. After her initial charge Suzie comes out and says that he did it to her, too. So Sam needs a lawyer who won't care that he's going up against the most powerful woman in town and her big lawyer boyfriend (Robert Wagner, who seems at home in strange roles like this--just watch Austin Powers again). Enter Ken Bowden (Bill Murray in another great supporting role). He's a sleazy lawyer who wears a neck brace around insurance people. Enter also Ray Duquette (Kevin Bacon) and Gloria Perez (Daphne Rubin-Vega), two cops who specialize in sex crimes. They think that something else might be going on. At the trial things get weird. We already pretty much know that the two girls are putting everyone on. At the trial we find out for sure and start thinking, "Well, how much farther can they go? We already know everything, right?" Oh, so wrong. There are many more plot twists after this. Are the girls playing everyone together? Is Sam playing everyone on his own? Is he in on it with the girls? Will Kevin Bacon stop being in movies with everyone in the world? Trashy novels were en vogue back in the 30s and 40s. Writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett were big back then. They were writing books about sex, drugs, crime and murder before Tarantino was a glint in his grandfather's eyes. These books have been made into classic films (The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep--which even Hammett didn't know who killed one of the guys, Out Of The Past), near parody films (The Long Goodbye), dry remakes (Against All Odds) and new classics (L.A. Confidential). Then there's Pulp Fiction that turned trashy novels on their ears and twisted the plots even more. The time line was so messed around that you couldn't follow it unless you saw it a couple of times. Now there's this one. Writer Stephen Peters (a few non descript piecer movies) and director John McNaughton (Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, Mad Dog And Glory and Normal Life) have now turned the trashy novel (even though it's not based on a novel) into a cheesy sex flick with one of the most twisted plots since Pulp Fiction. There's almost no way you could see the end coming. There were bits that I could figure out. It was film noir, so there had to be a femme fatale (I couldn't figure out which one it was until the very end--I even started thinking maybe it wasn't a FEMME fatale) and I knew what would happen with Matt. (After all, he did say, "Before I had principles. They used to mean a lot to me." Bad idea.) I was really surprised at how complicated the plot was considering how 90210-ish the movie was. The acting was mostly bad (except for Bill and Neve--even Kevin turned in a pretty bad performance). There's some pretty erotic sex scenes (the first one being a close-up I really didn't need). There's one scene that I heard people would pay just to see the one scene. They would go in a minute before and leave a minute after. $7 bucks for one scene. Wow! Take a cue all you aspiring directors out there. That's all you need: one really hot sex scene. Although I've noticed that we get to see an awful lot of Neve's back in movies. Never the front. But we see plenty of Denise's front. We also see a little too much of Kevin's front, so if you REALLY like Kevin Bacon, watch for Little Bacon here. (Time to start a new game. Can you link Little Bacon to Little Schwarzenegger? Maybe Little McGregor?) So the movie's total trash, but I liked it. Any movie with this many plot twists that actually make sense is ok in my book. (They really explain them at the beginning of the credits. Keep watching. My friend and I were wondering if they would show more sex scenes...but they didn't. Alas.) Just keep watching it. It starts off horrible. I've seen better acting on a Wheaties box and heard better dialogue from Wisconsin (a lot of cheese up there, you know). Nothing could save it, but it is saved. Just let yourself be carried away by the world where people talk like this and act like this. It's not the real world, it's a world that's totally contrived for this movie and it works if you just don't take it even a little bit seriously. Just like Starship Troopers. Wild Things comes out on video Tues. Sept. 8th. Then you can see for yourself what I mean, if you dare.

A Titanic Sized Backlash

admin — Sun, 06 Sep 1998 17:00:00 +0000

This is coming a bit late, but, what the heck, I'll do it anyway. It still peeves me. So, anyone who's read my review of Titanic knows exactly how I feel about that movie. It's one of my all-time favorites. I loved every minute of it. I really didn't think that there was much wrong with it. I thought that that was how a lot of people felt about the film. After all, someone had to be going to see it. It did break all box-office records and become the highest grossing film of all time. (Over a billion dollars!?!? How is that possible?!?! I didn't know there were that many moviegoers in the world!) Now it seems that everyone is sick of it. The people who saw it in the theatre don't really want to see it again. The people who didn't think it's a waste of time. I'm even a little sick of it. I work at Blockbuster, so I had to ask everyone (some people twice a day) if they wanted to buy the stupid thing. We had people threaten to not come back if we asked them again. The people who have gotten sick of hearing about it aren't really the people I have a problem with. The media has really overplayed it. Everyone knows about the movie (if they don't then they've been living under a rock that's buried in the basement of a government building underneath a file cabinet in a room with live tigers guarding it). Why do we have to inundate them with more images of Kate and Leo kissing and holding eachother as the great ship goes down to live with Ariel under the sea? I totally understand those people. I am, to an extent, one of those people. The ones that I have a problem with are the ones who are too pretentious to even realize that a movie that Hollywood spent a little money on can be good. I work near the UT campus here in Austin, so there are a lot of students and professors and (they think) educated people who shop at my store. Unfortunately, they are also extremely closed minded. And considering the fact that there are a lot of people who live the so-called "alternative lifestyle" around here, that's a pretty strange thing to say. They can take gay people and people who choose to live their lives on the streets, but they can't take the fact that James Cameron has made an Oscar-worthy movie with two attractive young leads. Let me tell you about a few of the people who have come into my store. One guy said (and he's not the only one): "It's too predictable. I know how it ends. The boat sinks." Ok, Sherlock. Tell me this: how does Apollo 13 end? How does Schindler's List end? How does Braveheart end? All of these are based on true events with some embellishment (some more than others). We all know that the guys on the Apollo get back home. We all know that America won the war and the Jews were freed. We all know that William Wallace was killed by the English army and became a martyr. Ok, maybe we didn't all know that, but we could have if we had done a little research before we saw the movie. All movies based on real events are predictable. Who cares? You don't watch these kinds of based on fact movies for shock value, you watch them for entertainment and information. You learn something about the event if the movie is accurate. If it isn't then you get a good laugh. Titanic has been said to be the most accurate retelling of the story yet. The reconstruction of the ship was closer in decoration and size than any of the previous movies. It showed the lower classes being stuck in the bottom of the ship. It showed all the inhumanity that was present and all of the different people pushing the ship beyond what it could actually do. Everything was pretty much right. There were a couple of things that weren't right, such as the fact that (I believe--someone tell me if I'm wrong) Molly Brown did the her boat to go back for some more people. There were scenes that Cameron wanted to do with that, but the movie was already 3:15, so he decided to take some artistic license with it. That's all I can really think of. By the way, I used the Apollo 13 bit on this guy and he shot back with the uber-witty "Well, I didn't like that movie, either." I decided to not go any further. I was obviously talking to a lower form of life who happened to be twice my size. Funny how that works. Besides that, I've never met a real man who didn't like Apollo 13. We all wanted to be astronauts at one point and that movie brought me about as close as I'll probably ever get. The second big complaint was the supposedly anachronistic behavior of the characters. At one point Jack says, "Can I bum a smoke." That phrase is used today, but was it used back then? Just like the word "Cool" being used since the 50s, "bum a smoke" has been used for a long time. It started in the lower classes (such as Jack) and worked its way up to the more common usage today. Then there's the fact that Rose flicks off the ex-cop dude who's chasing her for Billy Zane. People thought that this was a little too much even if the gesture was used back then by the lower classes. Why would she be using it? Well, maybe she's going into Jack's level. Did these people thing about that? She's sick of being the prim and proper little girl, so she shows her insolence with this gesture. Remember, she seemed pretty giddy and almost proud that she could do it. So, that explains that. Another lady came in and said that the story of the Titanic was dramatic enough. Why did we need a teenage romance to make it more dramatic? Well, watch some of the other movies (A Night To Remember, the 1953 version also called Titanic). They may have young lovers, but we really don't get to know them very well. They're just another couple of characters on a boat that goes down. They get lost with the rest of the poor saps who die. That's not saying that these movies aren't good, because they are, but they aren't as emotionally involving. They're pretty much just docudramas (especially ANTR). We get the story of the ship and why it goes down, but no one to really connect to. With the Cameron version we get two young lovers who meet, fall in love and promise themselves to go on if either one of them dies, all in the course of a few days. We get two full hours to get to know them and feel the love that they feel. Then the iceberg hits and we feel crushed right along with them. We connect with them, even if we aren't in their positions. The other two are only two hours and an hour and a half respectively. Not much time to really get to know anyone. I think a big problem most people seem to have with the movie is the fact that it's Leo and Kate and Jim. Let's pull back a little bit. Let's have the same dialogue, the same characters, the same special effects, the same direction and the same length. Now let's put Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep in the leads. They're older and more well respected as actors (although Leo and Kate have both been nominated for Oscars and are more respected than other actors of their age). And we can have Steven Soderbergh (sex, lies and videotape, King Of The Hill and Kafka) direct. Nothing has changed except the names, mind you. Acting styles, direction...everything is the same. (Well, I guess Jack and Meryl would have to be made a little younger.) Suddenly everyone has respect for the movie. They love it. It's the names that have brought the prestige. That's how petty I think these people are. Our store sold less copies than any other store in town. One customer said that there were too many students in the area who know the difference in a good movie and a bad movie. First off, there are two of us working there who are film students and we both loved it. Second, the store on campus sold twice as many. (I'm not saying we didn't try. We ticked customers off with it.) I guess we students are dumber than we look. I think we just have more pretentious people running around our store. Now, I guess I have to talk about my pretensions. If people have seen the movie and sincerely don't like it that's fine. Everyone has their own taste. Hey, if everyone had the same taste it would be a pretty boring world to live in. It's the people who won't even give it a chance that make me mad. They don't want to see it because it's too popular, too trendy, cost too much money, whatever. The problem is that they're just following trends. They just want their friends to think that they're above such a popular movie. "Oh no. I wouldn't watch that crap. It made over a billion dollars." It's kind of like people suddenly disowning a band because they suddenly got popular and started selling albums. They're not underground anymore, so they obviously can't be cool. I'm also not just trying to sell videos. I could care less if BBV sells another video. Just don't tell them that. (You can tell I love my employers.) Don't fall into this trap. If you haven't seen the movie, rent it. Make sure it's letterboxed, though. It won't make much sense, otherwise.

54

admin — Wed, 16 Sep 1998 17:00:00 +0000

So I was going to a friend's place so we could go to a movie. We didn't know which one. Just any movie. I drove all the way across town to for him to not answer the door! Imagine my surprise when I showed up on his doorstep to find him not there. That's a fine way to show respect! That'll add a lot to my credibility as a leader! I hold out my hand and he refuses to accept it. THEN IT'S WAR!! I wasn't happy. So I figured, forget him, I'm going anyway. After getting a sandwich from Thundercloud (and almost getting it for free--I shouldn't be so honest) and finally getting my snacks at the theatre (the guy couldn't find the right buttons on the register for the life of him), I finally got to sit down. I saw a pretty cool preview for Ronin. I'm always excited about a new De Niro movie. Then there's another one that looks like a sequel to The Color Purple. Oprah and Danny Glover are in it, anyway. Then there's My Favorite Martian. Oh, how far Christopher Lloyd has fallen. Now the real movie. I'm kind of confused as to why the 70s are so big now. First there was The Ice Storm. Then there was Boogie Nights. Then there was "That 70s Show." Then The Last Days Of Disco. Now we have 54. I wouldn't be interested if it weren't for the casts in these movies. (The tv show doesn't really interest me at all.) Think about it. The fashions were terrible. The music was worse. The women, for the most part, weren't as attractive. (Oh, there was the occasional Farrah and Cheryl, but Twiggy? Come on. Even her name says it all.) So what's all the fuss? No idea. It's a nostalgia thing. Even McDonald's is getting into it. If you're going to go back to some decade, go back to the 60s. At least there was some good music to go with the ugly clothes. So this is the story of Shane O'Shae (Ryan Phillippe from White Squall, Nowhere (yech) and I Know What You Did Last Summer), a young man who wants to be somebody in New Yawk instead of nobody in Joisey. He makes it to Studio 54, the most hap-hap-happenin' place in New York. It's run by Steve Rubell (Mike Myers), a guy who's only real wish is to make everyone happy. He goes about it in kind of a weird way, though. He goes from being a cool guy to being a total bastard in a matter of minutes. Along the way Shane meets Anita (Salma Hayek from Desperado and From Dusk Til Dawn) and her husband Greg (Breckin Meyer--Travis in Clueless and Dancer TX, Pop. 81). He also meets up with his dream girl, Julie Black (Neve Campbell). She's also a Jersey kid, but she's made it into soap operas. Unfortunately he loses touch with his real family because his father finds out that he's been using drugs. This makes his little sister (Heather Matarazzo from Welcome To The Dollhouse--gotta be the least attractive younger girl in Hollywood today) want to intervene. So he has a lot of adventures within the club and falls in and out of grace with different people until the end comes for Steve and the club. I have one big thing to say about this movie--MIKE MYERS ROCKS!!!! I really liked the Wayne's World movies, So I Married An Axe Murderer was great and Austin Powers has become one of my favorite movies. This is his first dramatic role and he was awesome! He really makes Steve into a strange tragic figure. (The last couple of shots of him fading in and out of the darkness with a sad look on his face were amazing.) It was a little weird to hear him say some of these lines (Steve Rubell was gay, so there's a couple of requests that he makes of Greg that don't really fit his previous reputation). He's pretty much a supporting character here, but he deserves an Oscar nomination, I think. The rest of the cast, for the most part, does its best. Salma is sexy, as she's supposed to be. She plays a prospective singer who just wants her demo tape heard. She's pretty good. Breckin was pretty good. Neve wasn't in it very much, but she pretty much played her normal character. Not that that's a bad thing, she's good at it. She appears to be a sultry star-type at the beginning, but she transforms soon enough into the Neve that we all know and love. (She bowls! That's what I need! A woman that bowls and watches Hong Kong films.) Ryan Philippe is something else entirely. All these girls have been coming into my store looking for Homegrown because "that cute bartender guy in 54 is in it." What they don't realize is that HE CAN'T ACT!!! He gets pretty annoying with his "I'm always innocent and wide-eyed even though I wake up next to a different woman every night and sniff cocaine faster than the Colombians can make it" act. By the way, how bad was his drug problem? They never really pay much attention to it. His family finds out and that's about it. It's over. We see him start and end, but we never see him degenerate. Not like Boogie Nights where everyone looked like they were on drugs. It made a semi-cartoony movie that much more realistic. One surprise was Ellen Albertini Dow (the old lady from The Wedding Singer). If you thought it was strange to hear her rap in that one, wait till you hear her cuss like a sailor in this one. She proclaims to Shane that she's "the best f--- that you'll ever have." Whoa there grandma! She also snorts coke faster than Chevy Chase in the 80s. She's still cool, though. The movie itself is kind of choppy. We cut from story to story so fast that we never really get to know too many of the characters. I think Mike Myers does the best job of showing us his character in a short amount of time. I didn't really feel for anyone, though. I was just kind of detached. Not a bad movie, though. Just kind of cold, I guess. It was almost worth the matinee price just to see Mike, Salma and Neve...which were the only real reasons I was seeing it in the first place. But if I could find a place like that these days I'd probably be there every night, too. And I guess that's what Steve Rubell was doing. There's one lady who isn't let into the club (Steve hand picks his crowd every night) even though she had spent every holiday there. The doorman said, "Why don't you go home?" "This is my home." Pretty sad, but I can see how it can happen. People are addicted to fun. And the party never ended at Studio 54. Until, that is, the IRS got involved. ("Even from up here their suits look cheap.") If it weren't for the drugs (and the money laundering) it would have been a great place and would probably still be open. And there would be thousands of people like me outside trying to catch Steve's eye dying to get in and be one of the beautiful people. Just no disco. Please.

Rush Hour

admin — Fri, 18 Sep 1998 17:00:00 +0000

What's the deal with Hong Kong guys lately? They can't seem to make really good movies over here. John Woo has done a pretty bad movie (Hard Target--actually I haven't seen it yet, just heard it's not worth it), an ok-but-stupid movie (Broken Arrow), a couple of cheesy TV movies (Once A Thief--terrible--and Blackjack--ok Dolph Lundgren flick) and one really cool, but not as deep movie (Face/Off). Chow Yun Fat has done an ok, but pretty shallow action flick (The Replacement Killers). Stanley Tong (Supercop, Supercop 2, First Strike, Rumble In The Bronx) has done a really bad kiddie movie (Mr. Magoo). Sammo Hung (usually paired with Jackie) has a tv show (Martial Law). Jet Li (Once Upon A Time In China series) gets a one-more-time-to-the-well sequel (Lethal Weapon 4). Now Jackie Chan gets a movie with Chris Tucker. Chris Tucker? You mean the guy from Friday and The Fifth Element? Yeah. That guy. The guy that can't keep his mouth shut for more than ten seconds at a time. So the movie is about the end of England's reign in Hong Kong. The chancoler (or whatever he is) gets a bunch of artifacts back from a hijacker with a lot of help from Jackie. A few years later, the chancoler moves to America and his daughter is kidnapped by whoever was masterminding the hijacking ring back in Hong Kong. He calls Jackie for help. Unfortunately, the FBI doesn't want any help.They call on loudmouthed Chris to babysit him. You see, Chris is a Beverly Hills Cop type of LA cop. He blows stuff up. He accidentally on purpose kills people. He beats people up. All the stuff that you're not supposed to do as a cop, and that movies make seem like part of the job. His chief (Philip Baker Hall from Hard Eight the librarian episode of Seinfeld) gives him to job just to get him out of his hair. Then there's Elizabeth Pena who has the typical ticked off cop who tries to get Chris to realize that he needs a partner. It's one of those love-hate relationships. Well, that's what Chris thinks, anyway. Personally, I think it's just an excuse to get Elizabeth to look like Laurie Metcalf. (Watch the preview again. Especially when she's talking to him about Kojak's partner.) So these guys are stuck together just to keep them away from the action. The thing is neither one of them want to be away from the action, so they go after it. They get in all kinds of trouble. They get in fights with each other and other people. It's a buddy flick. It also occaisionally turns into a Chris Tucker movie that happens to have Jackie Chan in it for fight scenes. That was probably the biggest problem with it. We got too much of Chris's mouth and not enough of Jackie's hands. There was one really cool scene in a restaurant (that's the one in the previews with Jackie kicking the gun around and Chris getting kicked in the face--but why would a kitchen explode?) and another cool scene with Jackie sneaking (sort of) into the chancelor's house. The one in the pool hall isn't bad, either. Basically, any scene with Jackie fighting is cool. Any scene with Chris talking is pretty dumb. Maybe it's just because I think Chris Tucker SUCKS!!!! He's just not funny. When will Hollywood figure this out. He's a one note character who's one note is flat.The Fifth Element was a pretty fun movie until he showed up. That was the first time I saw him. It was really the last time I wantd to see him. I've been told that Friday is really funny, but I can't imagine how a movie with Chris and Ice-T could be any good at all. The best part about his role in Jackie Brown was when he got shot. It was kind of like Steven Segal in Executive Decision except the audience didn't cheer like they should have. (I heard tale of people cheering like a football crowd when Segal got sucked away in ED. It was pretty cool. Too bad it doesn't happen more often.) Maybe another reason I'm kind of lukewarm about this movie is that I've been watching a lot of his older movies lately. I've seen Drunken Master (awesome), Project A II (really cool), Strike Of Death (a really old one that John Woo directed in 1975--not bad, either) and Twin Dragons (pretty bad, actually--I don't like seeing Jackie get his butt kicked at the end of a movie). After seeing DM and PAII, this one seemed like a light stroll down I wish you would forget how cool I was lane. I guess it was worth the matinee price if you're a fan of either one of these guys. I'm just kind of tired of the whole buddy cop movie where they start out not getting along and end up being the best of friends. Doesn't anyone in Hollywood hate each other throughout their time together? Don't any cops ever say, "Dude. I don't ever want to work with you again"? Do they always ride off into the sunset together? Why can't one ride off into the moonrise? Not bad for his first American movie in a while. (He tried this before with The Protector and The Big Brawl, both of which he now hates because of their gratuitous violence and profanity. Why do you think most of his movies are PG-13?) Hopefully his next one will be better, though. The out-takes, of course, were great. A few too many of Chris flubbing his lines, though. I had enough of him talking throughout the movie.

Tricky Billy

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 1998 17:00:00 +0000

Parental Warning: This rantish type writing contains harsh and descriptive political content. It should not be read by anyone under the age of 30 or over the age of 31. Anyone else can read it with sunglasses while looking the other way. But, then again, that's the way all politics should be handled. And a happy Rosh Hashanah to you Billy Clinton! So everybody's up in arms about Bill Clinton and where he puts his cigars. You know what I wonder? Why?!?! The guy's the President Of The United States. He's a pervert, but he's still the President. That doesn't make him Jesus Christ. He's not perfect. I'm not condoning what he did. I think it's a bad thing to cheat on your wife. Or even your girlfriend, for that matter. Or even your mistress. If you're thinking about it DON'T DO IT!! It's bad. Let me tell you a quick story. This guy walked into my BBV store. He was a delivery guy. Just making his living, but he stopped to ask me what I thought about the whole Clinton affair. Now, this was before the Starr Report had made it to the top of the New York Times Bestsellers List. He was just making conversation. The thing is that I think he wanted me to disagree with him (which I pretty much did) and start an argument. His side was, "Well, he lied on the stand. He got someone else to lie on the stand. He should be thrown in jail just like any normal guy would be." My point of view was, and still is, if he were a normal guy we wouldn't be in this mess. It never would have gotten as far as it has. Why would we put a normal guy in front of a Grand Jury just because he stuck a cigar up a girl's hoo-hoo-dilly? (South Park fans got it.) I mean, come on. He did things that frat boys have been doing for years. He just happened to be married. A normal guy would just be on Lovelines or Penthouse Forum for everyone to laugh at. If it came out, then he might get a divorce. That's it. End of story. The world wouldn't have cared. Just another guy getting caught with his pants down. Now, I have to admit something here. I haven't read the Starr Report. I didn't watch the circus, I mean, tapes today on tv. I also didn't really care if OJ broke on the witness stand. And I didn't shoot JR. I'm not into train wrecks. If I see a car overturned on the highway I get a little miffed when people are sticking their heads out the car windows like dogs trying to get a breath of air. Why is it that schadenfreude is so popular in this country? Why do we always want to know exactly how other people screwed up? Why do we want to see Bill run around the issue like a verbal chicken with his head cut off? I don't know. No one does. I think it has something to do with the fact that we're glad it's not us. I know I'm glad everyday that I'm not the President. One of the biggest problems with all of this is that it's turning into a joke. Jay Leno is doing all kinds of cigar jokes on his show. (Not that I watch it. Only the headlines are funny. But he should refrain from commenting on them.) Entertainment Weekly made the Starr Report out to be an ironic statement of how far out of hand the Big Brother-ish government has gotten even though it has weak characterizations. (They gave it an A-, by the way.) We have couples using it as some kind of political Kama Sutra. ("Oh, look honey, we haven't tried this!") None of this really helps the credibility of Monica, Starr or Clinton. Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't joke about it. That's how we, as Americans, deal with stuff like this. If we didn't Saturday Night Live wouldn't have been popular at all and we wouldn't have Dennis Miller. (You think he's an influence on me? I have no problem admitting that I'm ripping off his entire shtick. As long as I'm not as funny, it's ok.) We would basically be the Soviet Union. Just call us the former United States. (By the way, I think they're going by Prince, now.) Personally, I say, Hillary, kick him out of bed. Chelsea, shun your dad for a while. (A LLLOOOONNNGGG while.) People, LAY OFF!!! Get the President off the witness stand. You don't fire the CEO of a company because he's diddling his secretary. You cover it up like Kennedy did. And like every other President did. Except Nixon, of course. There was NO sex in the white house for those years. And there are some people out there who think that it's terrible that he "defiled the Oval Office" for such hedonistic pleasures. Come on. Don't you think that some of the first words to come out of every President's mouths are, "Hey, you wanna?" What bigger rush than...well, you get the picture. He's the President! He can do anything he wants in that room as long as it's not illegal. And I'm sure it's all been done in there. You know. Late at night, he and the First Lady feel a little daring. And there you go. The only problem here was that he did it with the wrong woman. (Why her, by the way?) He took advantage of an intern (I'm sure that's the first time that's ever been done) and they had a little fun. I figure Monica blew it. (Pun maybe intended.) Since she wrote all those notes and gave him all those presents, she can't make it seem like she didn't want it. She should have hidden all that stuff and made it seem like he raped her. Then we would have had a problem. But, no. She had to keep the cigar as a souvenir. ("Yeah, Josie. That's the one he used! Isn't it great?") So, now we have a book written by a right-wing lawyer that reads like the most boring pornography ever written. (That's not mine. I give full credit to my friend Mark. Especially if you didn't laugh.) We have a President, not to mention a pretty good President, who looks like more of a joke than most others do. (And, yes Virginia, they all do.) We have a 20-something year old girl who has had sex with the President (but not really, mind you) and lived to tell about it, as Marilyn didn't. And we have a lawyer who has made his career by making a President look like a pervert. And, the saddest part of all, we have a nation of kids who don't want to be President. They're all scared that their lives will be broadcast on tv. And, Jimmy, they will. Nothing is safe. You'll have no private life. There will be cameras outside of your bedroom. There will be microphones in your bathroom. There will be surveillance systems following you. But only if you're President. Because nobody would care if you were just another jerk on campus. Then there are the other kids who still want to be President. Those are the ones we gotta watch out for. So everybody's at fault. I think we're all a bunch of idiots that should be punished for wanting this to go on. (And we do. Don't deny it.) And, to end it all, here's a little something that I got through e-mail. Thanx to Flatbush Escapee for sending it from the Top Five List. September 14, 1998 The Top 13 Chapters In Ken Starr's "Clinton Report" 13> Chapter 7 -- "Lewinsky" Becomes a Verb 12> Chapter 51 -- A Few Other Things I Can't Prove but Wish Were True, So I Leaked Them 11> Chapter 4 -- Pilferage of Pens, Post-Its, and Other Government Property by the First Family 10> Conclusion -- Why I, Kenneth Starr, Should Be Your New God 9> Chapter 22 -- Wherein Our Hero, Overwhelmed by the Duties of Office and Beset on All Sides by the Forces of Evil, Looks About Him and Decides, "This Would Be a Good Time for a Little Oral Sex." 8> Chapter 1 -- Liar, Liar, Career on Fire 7> Chapter 23 -- The CLUE Conspiracy: Miss Lewinsky, in the Oval Office, with the Cigar 6> Chapter 6 -- With All Due Respect Mr. President, Why the Fat Chick? 5> Chapter 39 -- So Who's Screwing Who Now, Huh, Mr. Bigshot? 4> Chapter 28 -- Other Things the President Did While Getting A Hummer 3> Conclusion -- "Hey Ken Starr, you've spent millions of tax dollars of the years preparing your report for Congress. Now what are you going to do?" "I'm going to Disney World to investigate those rumors about Minnie Mouse and Goofy." 2> Appendix -- Links To Other Hot XXX Sites on the Internet and Top5's Number 1 Chapter In Ken Starr's "Clinton Report"... 1> Chapter 8 -- $40 Million, Same As In Town And this is from Erica Brett: The Clinton scandal was all a terrible misunderstanding... ... as what he actually said was "Monica, come in here, hold my calls and while you're at it, sack my cook" See. We're all laughing at him. And, one final question. When it was all over, did Bill tell Monica to "Listen, cause I'm giving you pearls"?

Pecker

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 1998 17:00:00 +0000

You know, I never tire of hearing old women say words like Pecker. Neither, apparently, does John Waters. I'm a pretty big fan of the Waters-man. Since he's gone mainstream he's also gone downhill. Not all the way downhill, mind you. He's still got some shocks under his belt (pun definitely intended), but not as many. Polyester was interesting, but kind of slow. Odorama was a good idea and a few of the other gags were good. Serial Mom I liked, but no one else really did. I just liked the idea of a sweet little mom (played perfectly by Kathleen Turner) going insane and killing anybody who crosses her kids. I haven't seen Hairspray or Cry-Baby, so I can't say how they were. A friend of mine says that Hairspray is her favorite movie of all time. This scares me. For her and the movie. Pecker is the story of a kid named Pecker (Edward Furlong). He got that name not because of any Boogie Nights-ian physical endowment. He used to eat like a bird. He also takes pictures around Baltimore. And that's the point. He lives in Baltimore. He loves Baltimore. He lives, eats and breathes Baltimore. He takes shots of his family (Mary Kay Place and Martha Plimpton among them) and his girlfriend, Shelly (Christina Ricci). His family is a little strange, but somehow perfect in a Cleaver sort of way. His mom (Mary Kay) runs a thrift shop that sells homeless people "fashionable" clothes for a quarter. His dad runs a bar that serves Crab's Beer. He's also an advocate against the the Pelt Place (or something like that), the lesbian strip club across the street. Pubic hair causes crime, you see. His sister (Martha) works as a gay strip club called the Fudge Palace where teabagging isn't allowed, but it still happens. His little sister is a sugaraholic and is rarely seen without some kind of candy or coke or at least begging for it. Shelly is obsessed with her job at the laundromat, The Spin 'N Grin. She yells at customers who sit on the machines. She bans people who dye their clothes. She worries about it when she's not there. AAUUGGHH!!! I shouldn't be here! I should be with my store! Those people wait for me to leave so they can break my rules! (Sounds like my manager.--Sorry, Jess.) Then there's Matt (Brendan Sexton from Welcome To The Dollhouse), Pecker's best friend who also happens to be a thief. Pecker takes pictures of him while he does it and the aftermath. Their best bit is when they shop for others. This is basically throwing stuff into other people's baskets when they aren't looking. Some are funny, some are just there. One guy gets Preparation H. "There's nothing wrong with my butt!" Anyway, Matt is a thief with a heart of gold type of guy even if he is rather freakish looking. His grandmother, Memama (Jean Schertler in, I guess, her first role), has a statue/puppet of the Virgin Mary that she makes talk, but she doesn't really let on that it's her being a ventriloquist. To her it's a miracle. Just another way for Waters to get at the religious right. By the way, the press even calls her Memama. At a show that he puts on of his work at the burger joint he works at. One of the pictures (a close up of one of the lesbian stripper's, uh, privates, I guess?--strangely enough it's not as graphic as it seems like it would be) catches the eye of Rory (Lili Taylor), a New York art dealer. She helps him put on a show up there where his family and friends make a mockery of the upper crust. After a little bit after that Pecker decides (of course) that Baltimore is the place for him. Pecker's an interesting character. He hangs out at the gay bar with his sister (no, he's not) and takes pictures there and through the window of the lesbian bar, but he has the mind of a little kid. He's not stupid, but he's totally naive. He has no idea why his pictures are the talk of New York. After all, they only show everyday life. But every day life is art. It's there all the time, you just have to see it. And Eddie Furlong has come a long way since his debut in Terminator 2. He's a pretty good actor. He's not as annoying as he was back then. He seems to have a wider range than just the young punk whose heart comes out at the end. (I saw a preview for another one of his movies before this one. It's called American History X and stars Edward Norton. Norton is an ex-neonazi who tries to keep his little brother out of the life. It looks really good.) Of course, Christina was great. She looked really good, too. I've liked her ever since The Addams Family, but I really noticed her in The Ice Storm. She's a great actress even if she is totally insane. Everyone else does a good job, too. Campy without stupidity as most people seem to try to be in Waters' movies. The movie itself is alright. Nothing to really write home about. The first 30 minutes or so were really pretty funny. That's mainly because we're getting to know the characters and their town. We're seeing their strangeness and eccentricities. After we get used to them we get used to the movie. That's not really a good thing. It gets better again towards the end, though. Waters seems to be at the point in his career where he is becoming sentimental about his hometown. We all know that he loves it there and now he wants to show us how much. Maybe it's a little too much for the movie. I'm all for sentimentality (I never want to leave Austin. I'll probably make all of my movies here. Why go anywhere else?), but does Christina Ricci really have to kiss the ground when she comes back? Yeah, it was kind of funny, but it was a little too far, I think. (And yet, showing a close up of a lesbian's crotch isn't. How do you figure that?) It's worth a matinee (that's how I saw it) and should be seen by any John Waters fan if only for the first 30 minutes and the first shot: a shot of a statue in Baltimore at just the right angle that his arm looks like it's coming out of his pants. Then we pan down the rather phallic looking column that the statue is on. And the word "Pecker" is on the screen the whole time.

Wicked

admin — Sun, 04 Oct 1998 17:00:00 +0000

Well, it's Festival time again. This time it's the Austin Film Festival and Heart Of Film Screenwriting Conference. I'm never quite at impressed with this festival as I am with South By Southwest, but I don't think anyone else is, either. It's smaller, not as well organized and usually doesn't get as many big names. This year, however, it seems to have gotten some huge ones. The Coen Brothers are in town showing off their new remastered version of Blood Simple (which I didn't see because it cost ten bucks to get in even if you have a pass--why? Because they have Oscars). John Landis is in town with new prints of An American Werewolf In London and Animal House (which I didn't see). Pleasantville debuted (which I didn't see because I didn't hear about the festival until two days after it started--what's hype?). Sandra Bullock is in town (big surprise) showing off her short, Making Sandwiches, with her just friend Matthew McConaughey (which I didn't see). And Apt Pupil is also debuting later (which I'd better get to see or else). Anyway, there was a movie that I did see. Time for a review. All is well in middle class suburban America! This movie is about a typical family in the "nice part" of America. Both the mother (Karen--Chelsea Field) and father (Ben--William R. Moses from a bunch of Perry Mason TV flicks) are having affairs (with the married next door neighbor and the nanny, respectively). The oldest daughter (Ellie--Julia Stiles from The Devil's Own) is falling in love with her father and threatening to run away every couple of days. The youngest daughter (Inger--from Ulee's Gold) seems to be normal, but looks can sometimes be deceiving. The nanny, Lena, wants to marry Ben, but dear ole mom is in the way. Apparently, Lena needs her green card, but her accent doesn't show up until she mentions it. Next door neighbor, Lawson (Patrick Muldoon from Starship Poopers and Melrose Place), is a sleazebag with eviction notices piling up in his trash can. After a while, mom is brutally clubbed to death in the house after a golf ball crashes through the kitchen door. Who dunnit? Detective Boland (Michael Parks--the Texas Ranger in From Dusk Till Dawn and the old man in Niagra, Niagra) is trying to figure that out. He's also falling for semi-nosey neighbor Mrs. Potter (Linda Hart--Kevin Costner's girlfriend in Tin Cup and his quickie at the Squat 'N' Gobble--great name--in A Perfect World). The plot is not quite as confusing as it seems like it would be until the end. For most of the movie you're wondering who did it. We're supposed to believe that Ellie killed her mother because she wanted to be closer to her dad (and I do mean CLOSER!!) Then things turn around. Did Lawson do it because Karen called it off? Did Lena do it because she wants to stay in the country? Did Mrs. Potter do it because it was in the script? To tell you the truth, I still don't know. It's one of those movies that you think you know who did it at the end, but there's always a question even after the credits roll. New motives pop up. New clues unbury themselves. Dad marries early. You know, the usual. It was a pretty good movie, though. It was directed by Michael Steinberg, the director of The Waterdance and Bodies, Rest And Motion and producer of There's Something About Mary. Michael is obviously a Hitchcock fan. There are so many weird angles and Vertigo inducing shots that I couldn't have fallen asleep if I had wanted to. It's worth seeing if it ever comes to your town or to video. It kind of reminded me of To Die For. There are a lot of scenes that are done in one color and very stagy. There's a reason for everything, though. It works in the surrealness of this movie. Not a perfect movie, but it's really cool in a dark, sadistically comic way. It's got to be one of the darkest comedies I've seen in a long time.

Went To Coney Isand On A Mission From God...Be Back By 5

admin — Mon, 05 Oct 1998 17:00:00 +0000

I hate to bad mouth a film festival, especially if it an Austin film festival, but something has to be said. The Austin Film Festival is second to none in screw ups in the middle of films. I missed the premiere of Pleasantville, but I hear that the film broke six times. SIX TIMES!!!! Then the sound didn't quite synch up. The first movie I saw, Wicked, screwed up twice in the first five minutes. This time the film melted less than an hour into the movie and it took 20 minutes to get back on track. And these are Union guys! What's going on?!?! The director of Went To Coney Island (Richard Schenkman--The Pompatus Of Love) was pretty cool about it, though. He joked around saying that they were thinking of putting intermissions into all of their films from now on as a homage to Gone With The Wind. He also said that Austin audiences were amazing because we actually sat through it. New York audiences would have walked out or thrown things at the screen. My friend that I was with put it succinctly. "We're used to it!" Why's that, you might ask? And well you should. We shouldn't be used to it! Why can't we get people who know what they're doing to run our festivals? Well, at least the one that bears our fair city's name. South By South West does it (for the most part). Where do they all go in October? Come out, come out wherever you are! Well, enough ranting. On to the raving. This is the second feature that Jon Cryer (yes, Duckie from Pretty In Pink) has co-written and the first that he's co-produced with his friend Richard Schenkman. I haven't seent he first one (The Pompatus Of Love), but I hear that it's pretty good. Nothing too special, though. Went To Coney Island is about two friends in New York. One is a part time loser named Daniel (Cryer), andhis friend who's working at it full time, Stan (new guy Rick Stear). They get word that their third friend, Richie (Rafael Baez from Sea Of Love and Hangin' With The Homeboys), has gone insane and is now living at Coney Island off of the trash from the carnival grounds. Richie had had a history of mental instability (lying about his sexual exploits, clinging to his little sister, etc--nothing really major, but sort of telling) and now he's gone off the deep end according to someone who saw him. So Stan gets his friend to walk out of his job at a jewelry trader's and look for their long lost friend. Along the way they talk about the old days of how they all met, how they met their current girlfriends and the good old days. Then the darkness comes. We see how Stan really is. He's a drunk. He owes people money. (Bad people.) His girlfriend, Gabby (Ione Skye from Say Anything and Dream For An Insomniac), is always finding him peeing in the closet and hanging his clothes in the bathroom. She threatens to leave him many times. You think she has cause? Just wait. There's a lot of funny stuff in this movie, too. Frank Whaley pops up as a caustic Skee-Ball direktor. (Yes, I meant to spell it that way. He's actually credited as the Skee-Ball Weasel.) He's hilarious, annoying voice and all. "Go back out there and read the sign." "It says 'Skee-Ball.'" "Not 'Information'? Then don't ask me." There's also a freak show with one of the funniest unbearded bearded ladies ever. The director has a cameo as the guy who runs the freak show. Then there's a guy who is tatooed and pierced all over the place. "So he's pierced. What's the big deal?" That's where the film broke. Richard said that we missed the single funniest bit in the movie and he re-inacted it for us. That was pretty cool. This movie was really good. I was amazed that this kind of thing could come from Jon Cryer. There's a lot of depth to the characters, the dialogue is good, the direction is good. The only problem for me was the sound. It could have been the theatre, but there were parts that I couldn't understand because there was a weird noise in the wind that was over-powering all of the dialogue. The characters ask about the sound, so I know it isn't a film glitch. It's just way too loud. The cinematography is pretty cool, though. The film is very gritty and grainy and it works. These guys are working class. This is probably how they see the world. After seeing this movie I started to feel these guys' pains. What if my dreams don't work out the way I planned? What if I end up stuck in a dead end job with no real hope of succeeding? (Oh, yeah. I'm already there.) What if I turn into just another one of life's losers? Is there a way out once you're there? Can we break our routines and turn success out of failure? Hopefully this film gets a good distribution and is seem by a lot of people in the Gen X age range. It deals with the problems that we all have in a way that we can understand. We have problems, but so do our friends. And, sometimes, their problems outweight ours in our minds.

Apt Pupil

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 1998 17:00:00 +0000

And finally, this movie gets out. After about 10 or 15 years of trying (not to mention recasting and staffing). The film version of Stephen King's novella has been a long time in coming, but here it is. It's the last movie of the Austin Film Festival. And, strangely enough, it came off without a hitch! Bryan Singer and Brandon Boyce were there to do a Q&A after the film. Let's start with what the movie was originally going to be. Back in 1988 Ricky Schroeder (back when he was still Ricky) and Nicole Williamson were attached to it. They shot about an hour's worth of good film and then got caught up in legal troubles. When they were ready to start again Ricky's voice had changed so they couldn't go on. Luckily, the rights went back to King just in time for Bryan Singer to get them. King sold them to him for a dollar. (I'm calling him next week for one of his short stories. I might actually be able to afford a dollar. I hear he'll give rights to anybody, too. He figures that in 100 movies made out of his books, at least a few have to be winners--and he's right.) Singer got his old friend Brandon Boyce to write it. (They met when they were about 11 years old. Brandon was delivering papers (or something like that) and met Bryan at one of the houses on his route. They talked about movies for two hours and have been friends ever since.) Both of them were big fans of the novella, so they really wanted to do it justice. They got Brad Renfro to play Todd Bowden and Sir Ian McKellen to play Kurt Dussander. So anyway, Todd Bowden is the All-American Boy. He's blonde-haired, blue-eyed...wait a minute. Brad Renfro? Blonde-haired and blue-eyed? Well, there's one difference. That's cool, though. I guess Brad can be the All-American Boy even if he does look more like a punk than Ricky did. Then again, who doesn't? Brad is a better actor, though. So Todd becomes very interested in Nazis and the Holocaust. Not too uncommon. I know quite a few guys who were interested in it as kids. Some of them still are for one reason or another. It's not something we should ever be uninterested in. The problem is that Todd gets interested for the wrong reasons. And he gets too interested. So much so that he stalks a neighbor named Arthur Denker who he figures could be ex-Nazi officer Kurt Dussander. He's much older than his pictures (this is, after all, 1984), but it's got to be him. It is. He confronts him in his home and makes him admit who he is. Then he forces him to tell all of his stories. Slowly, ever so slowly, Todd starts to become the monster that Dussander once was able to be. He gets distracted by the stories: he can't think straight, straight A's turn to D's, sports go to the wayside, wakes up in cold sweats... Things get so bad that his girlfriend, Becky Trask (Heather McComb--Maggie from Party Of Five), starts to wonder if maybe he doesn't really like girls. It's not really that. It's just that he's more interested in torture. (There's an interesting scene in the book telling a dream Todd has about the only way he can get excited. It involved an electrified toy. I'll leave it at that.) Then Edward French, the guidance counselor, (played by David "I'm so bland I could put a cup of water to shame" Schwimmer), sends a fatal note to Todd's parents about his grades. The cast does a great job. There's really only two characters that we pay any attention to at all, Todd and Dussander. Brad Renfro is a pretty decent actor. I heard his old Southern accent showing through a couple of times, but he kept it pretty well under control. He seems to be best when he can be a punk. Probably because that's his own character. (I hear that, after The Client, Susan Sarandon sent him a letter saying that she hoped he learned something and had fun on the set. He replied, "I didn't really learn anything. This acting stuff is easy." Tell it like it is, bud.) This movie required him to go beyond punk, though, and he pulled it off pretty well. Ian McKellen is, of course, awesome. He pulls off the German commander perfectly. Just the right flair and stoicism. Schwimmer, well, he's Schwimmer. A dork. An idiot. A milquetoast. But it works. That's the character. Sneaker Ed (well, that's what they call him in the book) is constantly made fun of in the school. He tries so hard to fit in that he doesn't realize that he's going overboard with it. Singer said that he's never seen an episode of Friends, so he doesn't see Schwimmer the way everyone else does. He saw him in a play once that showed what a good actor he can be. He still thought of him for the part of Ed, though. He's also there to give people a familiar face to see after seeing these two main characters played by actors that most people don't know too well. He didn't care if people laugh when Schwimmer comes on the screen (they did), as long as they don't laugh when he leaves the screen (they didn't). Oh, and Joe Morton (Blues Brothers 2000, numerous early John Sayles movies) shows up as an FBI man, Joshua Jackson (Mr. Bland, Too from Dawson's Creek) is Todd's best friend, Elias Koteas (Fallen, Gattaca, The Thin Red Line) is a doomed bum, Bruce Davison (Six Degrees Of Separation, The Cure) and Ann Dowd (Nothing Sacred) are Todd's ever unknowing parents. The music was cool, too. It was written by John Ottman who also wrote the score for The Usual Suspects. It's pretty obvious, too. The two scores sound a lot alike. By the way, Ottman also edited these two movies. Singer says that it helped when it came to working with him in both aspects. This way, if he wanted to change something he didn't have to go to two different people and change everything. All he had to do was tell John that it needed to be changed and it was done in minutes. The problem with Ottman is what happens after he writes the main themes. He calls Singer and says, "I hope you like it. If you do, great. If not, I'll kill myself and take all of the music with me." He said that he wasn't exaggerating. Sometimes I wonder about Hollywood people. The movie itself moves a little fast. The pacing of the book was perfect. The transformations of Todd and Dussander into killing machines is so gradual that you almost don't notice it. It's really one of King's scariest stories because it could have happened. (It would be harder now since the leftover Nazis are in their 90s. Can't do too much damage anymore, I guess.) It really is a great story. The movie isn't quite so good because it moves so fast. They have to get it all done in less than two hours. They changed the ending, but that's fine. I kind of like the ending better this way. Singer and Boyce said that they tried to use the original ending, but they couldn't get there without it being trite. It worked well in the novella because it took place over four years of Todd's life. The movie was only a few months (I got kind of tired of reading "One month later" in the beginning.) After all, they didn't want to make an epic. Considering that flaw, the movie was pretty good. Not as good as Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption by any means (they are also from the book Different Seasons). I seemed to be one of the few who liked it, though. A lot of the people I saw it with didn't like it. I think it really helps to have read the book. So, read that (it's not that long), then go see the movie. By the way, for all you X-Man fans out there: Singer is directing the live-action movie. It should probably be out by the end of next year (I'm guessing) because they finally have a script that he's happy with. He hasn't been happy with any of the drafts until now. Who wrote it? Why, Chris McQuarrie, of course, the writer of The Usual Suspects! Should be a great movie. Probably better than this one. Can't stand up to Usual Suspects, though. That was too amazing to beat right now. It's a shame that the Academy didn't think so. Dumb-dumbs. All of 'em.

What Dreams May Come

admin — Mon, 26 Oct 1998 18:00:00 +0000

This one started off with a trailer for the new movie with two of the best actors of the Baby Boomer generation: Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins. It's called Arlington Road and concerns a professor who teaches a course in, I guess, the psychology of terrorists and his next door neighbor who may be a terrorist. The preview seemed to give away a little too much, but it looks pretty intense. I can't wait to see the two of them in a movie together. So it's time for Hollywood to do angels again. I guess it's been that time for a few years now. First there was Angels In The Outfield (ok family flick with Christopher Lloyd). Then The Prophecy (a pair of, I hear, really cool horror flicks about Gabriel and a war between Heaven and Hell). Then we had Michael (ok romantic comedy with John Travolta). Then there was The Preacher's Wife (a remake of The Bishop's Wife with Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston--why?). Then A Life Less Ordinary (sadistic angels--COOL!!) and City Of Angels (a remake of Wings Of Desire--why?). Enough of a list? I thought so. Well, maybe it's over now because It's A Wonderful Life. They weren't. Now comes What Dreams May Come, the one that, I think, comes closest. Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams in another Oscar caliber performance) starts the story off by meeting the most beautiful girl in the world on a lake. She is Annie (Annabella Sciorra) and just happens to be an American near the border of Switzerland. They keep meeting up and, of course, fall in love, get married and have kids. Chris becomes a pediatrician and Annie becomes an artist. The kids, Ian and Marie, grow up a little bit (13 and about 9 respectively) and then are killed in a car accident. Four years later, after Annie and Chris have rebuilt their lives, Chris stops to help someone in a car wreck and is killed himself. This starts his, and our, journey into the afterlife. Albert (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) shows him the ropes and tries to keep him out of trouble, a hard thing to do after he learns that Annie has killed herself out of grief because Chris now wants to find his soul mate. Whereas he is in a private Heaven, she is in a private Hell where she can never admit that she is dead and will never know anyone who comes to see her. Chris and Albert enlist the help of a Tracker (Max von Sydow) to help them, what else, track her down. That's the basic plot. I don't want to give too much away, but it's hard not to. It doesn't really matter too much because this is a journey whose resolution doesn't really matter too much. It's the journey itself. Kind of like The Odyssey. Who cares what happens when Odysseus gets there, it's what he does and what he sees before he gets back home. The movie is full of some of the most beautiful cinematography I've seen in a long time. When Chris first builds his version of Heaven he does it in the image of one of Annie's paintings. The world is literally made out of paint. I'm not sure how they did it, but it's amazing. Robin and Cuba actually interact with a world of paint. The images of Hell are pretty amazing, too. I wouldn't say that it was beautiful, but it was definitely an interesting place to visit. There are a lot of great performances, too. Robin, as I said before, at least deserves another nomination. Cuba is really gaining my respect. Jerry Maguire was a little too stereotypical for me, but he was funny. As Good As It Gets was great and against type. This is just an all around deep performance. Even the usually non-responsive Annabella Sciorra does pretty well. Max von Sydow was made for roles like this. Of course, most people now know him for movies like The Exorcist or (shudder) Needful Things, but at one time he was known for Igmar Bergman films the most famous of which is The Seventh Seal (no, not the one with Demi Moore and devil worshipers, this is the one with death playing chess without having a bogus journey). He was known for playing characters who were torn between God and Godlessness. Is there life after death? Is there anything up there? The person casting this movie was obviously a fan. Vincent Ward (the director) did some pretty interesting stuff with this one. All of the scenes on Earth and in Hell were pretty grainy (could this be a comment on society? hmmm.) while Heaven is very colorful and crystal clear. Then again, maybe the film was just out of focus. The credits at the end seemed pretty grainy, too. But he did the same kind of thing with an earlier film, Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey back in 1988. That was a pretty cool sci-fi movie about Scottish people in the Mediaeval times coming through a wormhole (or something) to 1988. The modern times were in color while the ancient scenes were grainy black and white. Aside from quite a few pretty glaring continuity errors it was technically handled really well. (Make sure that, if you hand someone a sandwich with a bite taken out of it, the bite stays out of it.) A lot of people haven't liked this movie because it was so dark. It is a pretty dark movie compared to what they show in the previews. That really doesn't bother me, though. I haven't read Dante's Inferno, but someone told me that it had pretty much the same storyline. That automatically tells me it's going to be very dark. Where's the problem? The movie posed some pretty interesting ideas, too. The afterlife as an individual image instead of a collective place. Re-incarnation is optional. God isn't necessarily in Heaven. We can be anything we want to be after we die. Suicide ISN'T painless. Then there's what Dr. Laura said about it. Highlight the blank line for her thoughts. It sort of gives away the end. She said that Chris and Annie gave up their kids for good sex. I really don't think she saw the same movie I did. If she did then she completely missed the point of it. They never once even mentioned sex through the entire movie. A critic at the Daily Texan (our newspaper at U.T.) said that it was an ok movie that was hampered by a stupid title. Two words: Ham-let. That's all I've got to say. Basically, it's a great movie. It's not your typical Robin Williams fare, but he's been pretty atypical in the past few years. Anyway, if you want to see a movie that will make you think about what's to come go see this movie. Oh, and, Dr. Laura: The kids were well taken care of.

Wild Man Blues

admin — Sat, 31 Oct 1998 18:00:00 +0000

Yes, I sat at home on Halloween and watched a movie. I did something earlier, though. My friends just decided to do something that I didn't want to do, so I left. End of story. Bye bye. Wild Man Blues is a documentary about Woody Allen's European tour with his New Orleans jazz band. Not everyone knows about his musical tastes or his musical talent, or his weekly gigs in New York. Those of us who watch his movies regularly can figure out what his tastes are, though. Most of his movies are soundtracked (is that a word?) by old jazz, big band and classical music. One interview (can't remember where I heard it) said that he thinks that no music written after about 1955 is worth anything. Even Sleeper, which takes place in the future, has music written by Woody in the vain of New Orleans jazz. He found this style of jazz when he was a teenager and has never looked back. He and his band have been playing weekly gigs for over 25 years. He practices his clarinet every day. I never did that even when I was supposed to. The movie is pretty insightful into Woody Allen the man. He's constantly saying that his characters are not him and that the films are not autobiographical. Yeah, right. He's pretty much just like his characters, he just isn't on all the time. He still comes out with little quips like, "This being Milan I just hope that our laundry doesn't come back breaded" or "This level of intelligence comes with responsibility. It's lonely at the top." At one point he gets sick and says that he really wanted his show in London to be one of the best because "these people can hate me in my own language." It was directed by Barbara Kopple who also did Harlen County, USA. I've never seen that one, but it's supposed to be a classic of the documentary field. She filmed Wild Man Blues at the tail-end of the Soon-Yi controversy, so we also get a look at their relationship. It's interesting to see him with a woman like Soon-Yi. She's very strong willed. She tells it like it is. At one point she tells him that she thought Interiors was long and tedious. That's not something you say to a guy like Woody Allen, even if you do feel that way. Especially not about a film that he is particularly proud of. She's very blunt and doesn't really care what Woody thinks because she knows that he'll still be with her. I truly feel that she will be his last wife and I don't feel as grossed out by the whole thing. Yes, she was his adopted daughter, but I don't think she would have gone through with the relationship if she didn't want it. She really doesn't seem to be that kind of girl. She'll keep him young until he grows old. Even though he's traveling to many different European countries his love of New York still comes through. He says that the only place he can be himself besides New York is Paris. He likes the idea of being able to do anything at any hour. He doesn't do it, but he likes the fact that it's there if he needs it. When he gets back home he visits his parents. At 60 years old he's still a kid to them. They still think that he would have been better off as a druggist. And why does he want to date Asian women? Why not a nice Jewish girl? It's a great scene that makes an icon into a human being. I thought that this was a really cool movie. It didn't get very good reviews, but it did what a documentary is supposed to do--bring you closer to the subject and let you into a day (or a week or a year) in their lives. I feel like I know Woody a little bit better after watching this movie. I'm not like his best bud or anything, but I know a little more about who he really is. His characters are close, but they aren't really him. Not completely. There's a whole other side that we don't get to see. There's definitely even a side that we don't see in this movie, but we don't need to see all sides of our heroes. That's what makes them heroes. They aren't quite touchable. Wild Man Blues comes out of video Tues. Nov. 3. If you're a Woody Allen fan or a fan of New Orleans jazz you should definitely see it.

Pleasantville

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 1998 18:00:00 +0000

I finally got some more time to see another movie on the big screen. Before I get to the actual review, let's go over some trailers, shall we? Ok. They played a trailer for Stepmom (after being ten minutes late starting anyway), the new one with Susan Sarandon, Julia Roberts and Ed Harris. First off, what's Julia Roberts doing with this cast? She's just going to blind them with her teeth and be blinded by their acting. But I was with the trailer until the end. I looked pretty good. Then they made a fatal flaw. "Sometimes the person you can't live with becomes the person you can't live without." Is it just me or is that the tagline of EVERY movie these days. I'm really sick of hearing it. They lost me as soon as I heard the first half of that line. Then there's A Bug's Life. Looks pretty good for an animated version of The Seven Samurai. Think about it. It's the same story. No difference except that they are bugs instead of Japanese or cowboys. They also played a trailer for Star Trek: Insurrection. I have to admit: I'm a minor Trekkie. I'm looking forward to this one. Jonathan Frakes did a great job on the last one, so why not try again. I think it looks really good. The thing is all these other Trekkies and Trekkers are mad because they've sprouted a sense of humor. THE HORROR!!! You mean this one may be like The Voyage Home?!?! NOOOOOO!!!! Did anyone stop to consider that that one is still the best one of this increasingly benign series? Also, they must be getting a lot of stuff off the net, because I don't see a bit of a sense of humor in the trailer. Looks pretty serious to me. There is supposed to be a romance in it, though. Then there's the big one: Prince Of Egypt. (No, not Star Wars...That one gets a whole page of its own if I ever see the real thing.) Now, I love Spielberg and I love animation. I'll probably see this just because of the combination of the two. The problem is that, at first anyway, they're alienating two birds with one basket. Adults won't care because it's animated history. Kids won't care because it's Biblical history. Who's left to go see it? The religious right and animation freaks. Those two groups will really get along. I think it's kind of weird that Dreamworks SKG is putting it out. Moses is a distinctly Christian figure. It's like if Spike Lee decided to put out a movie about George Washington. No doubt that he can do it, it just kind of goes against type. (Great. Now I'm going to get letters.) So, enough about trailers. How was the movie? And the word was...great. This is the movie Stay Tuned should have been. (Remember that one?) For those of you who don't know, Pleasantville is about a couple of high school kids, David and Jennifer (Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon), who get pushed through some kind of portal with the help of a tv repairman (Don Knotts looking really bad) and his magical remote control. They are stuck in the place of the two kids in the 50s sitcom Pleasantville, Bud and Mary Sue. They're both freaked out (of course), but David is sort of at home because he's seen every episode a hundred times and has every detail memorized. Jennifer, though, is a slut and wants to get back for her date with some punk boy (with the same name as a friend of mine--I'll never let him live it down, either). Bud and Mary Sue's parents are played by Joan Allen and William H. Macy. They're both pretty repressed, but they don't show it until Jennifer starts talking about sex with mom. ("What's sex?") Jennifer has just gotten back from Lover's Lane where she has just "educated" the captain of the basketball team. Soon everyone is asking "What's outside of Pleasantville?" much to the consternation of the mayor, Bob (J.T. Walsh in what unfortunately ended up being his last role). Meanwhile, David is working at Mr. Johnson's (Jeff Daniels) soda shop and teaching him that it's ok to do things differently every once in a while. Now people start seeing color. (OH GOD, NO!) They start to want big beds. They want to paint. They want to live outside of Pleasantville. Things change. Dad come home and dinner isn't ready. It rains. The fire department is for something besides saving cats in trees. Books get words. They all start to live. The movie is really good. If you've ever felt like you life is stuck in a rut, you'll know what Joan Allen's character is going through. If you've ever wanted to show that you have some talent, but it's been suppressed, you'll know what Mr. Johnson is going through. Everybody has their own stories and you can relate to someone. It was very well written and directed by Gary Ross who also wrote Big and Dave. Now I can't wait for is next one. The performances are great, too. Tobey Maguire reminds me of Bill Pullman now for some reason, though. He's a good nerd. Reese Witherspoon has gotten good at the slut role (maybe not such a good thing, but she's still nice to look at.) Joan Allen has also gotten good at playing the repressed wife since playing Pat Nixon. William H. Macy is awesome anyway, no matter what role he's in. Jeff Daniels was great as the rather simple soda shop owner who just wanted to paint. J.T. Walsh was good as always. So was Marley Shelton (Trojan War--not bad--and Warriors Of Virtue--pretty bad) as Margaret, the girl who helped Tobey get out his black and white doldrums. The special effects were amazing. The sitcom world is black and white and slowly becomes color piece by piece. This wasn't just colorization, which would have been an easy way to do it. There was something else going on here, I'm just not sure what. There was a scene where a fire broke out in a tree in front of the Parker's house because Joan was (ahem) pleasuring herself in the bathtub. David walked out to see it and you could see the reflection of the yellow fire on his black and white shirt. I was thoroughly amazed by the mixture of color and black and white. There was a deeper meaning to the film, too. When people start to show their true sides and become color the black and white people start to shun them. They still want the old repressed world where nothing ever changes and there is no road out of Pleasantville. We start seeing signs that say "No coloreds." The color people sit in the balcony of the courtroom. Mr. Johnson's store is smashed in a scene that almost turned the movie into a Spike Lee joint. (By the way, if he or anyone else get on the makers of this film because there are no African Americans, I have one thing to say to them. Watch 50s tv. There weren't any there, either. If you want to make it as close as possible to the real thing you can't change it that much. The same kinds of people told Tarantino that he should have had a woman in Reservoir Dogs. Where?) I know this review is a little late, but there still are some people out there who haven't seen this movie (I'm living proof). If you haven't, go see it. It may get a little serious at times, but that's ok. It makes its point and doesn't totally belabor it like some movies do. Some people have said that it was almost three hours long. Uh...no. It's only a little over two. I could have stood it being a little bit longer. There wasn't quite enough pre-color scenes in there. I kind of wanted more reactions of Jennifer's to the world that she really didn't want to be in and David's of the world that he thought was perfect. They just kind of threw us in there with them pretty suddenly. Still, it was a very good movie that I would recommend to just about anyone. Especially those of us who feel like we need to break out a little. Things have gotten better. I think that's the main point of the movie. We see the news all the time with war torn countries and people being killed on our own streets. The thing is, no matter how pleasant we all used to be, we have broken out of our shells now. We can live. Artists can be famous before they die. Don't look at the past and say, "Whatever happened to the good ol' days?" Look at it and say, "We've come a long way." We don't have to have our dinner on the table at six every night. We don't have to treat women like slaves in high heels. People can do what they want. We can even have double beds and talk about sex in the open. Imagine that.

Orgazmo

admin — Mon, 23 Nov 1998 18:00:00 +0000

The guys from South Park have done it again. They've made a movie that isn't quite up to the standards of their tv show, but is still pretty funny. The jokes tend to be pretty obvious (I called probably about half of them), but they found a way to make them funny. So far I've seen all of their movies in the theatre and I'm not about to stop now. First off, I have to warn you: keep your kids away. Even though it's not a harsh one it is NC-17. I probably could have dealt with an R-rating, but there are a lot of sex toys shown all over the place. There's actually no graphic nudity, which is the first thing you think of with a movie about the porn industry. Everytime a woman is about to get undressed a naked man's butt gets in the way. There are a lot of naked guy's butts in this movie. Between this and the last scene of BASEketball, I'm starting to wonder what's up here. The story is of a young Mormon named Joe Young (Trey Parker) who is on his mission in L.A. He finds all sorts of people who aren't interested in the Word Of God and then stumbles into the porn industry. Oops. Maxxx Orbison hires him to be the super hero in his new series of movies called Orgazmo. He uses a weapon called the Orgazmirator Ray that gives the bad guys the best...well, you get the picture. Think of the Orgazmatron in the Woody Allen movie Sleeper. Joe Hung (his screen name) meets his new best friend and sidekick, Ben Chapelski (Dian Bachar, the little guy from Cannibal and BASEketball), who plays Choda Boy in the movie. Ben also happens to be a genius and has invented a real Orgazmirator Ray. One of the funniest scenes follows the guys on their first adventure with the new Ray. Old ladies with walkers should probably never get ahold of this kind of technology. Joe also meets Orbison's henchman, Clark, played by none other than the infamous Ron Jeremy. Apparently there are a lot of porn stars in this movie. I didn't know any of them, but my friend did. He's a bad, bad Mormon...er, Catholic. Along the way Joe gets in trouble with Lisa, his fiancee, who shows up on his doorstep one night only to discover that he's not making a sequel to Death Of A Salesman playing Biff's twin brother. He also gets mixed up in some mob story that involves everyone he knows including the sushi bar owner. Oh, and then there's Dave, the lighting guy (Matt Stone) who has some of the funniest lines in the movie. "I don't want to sound like a queer or anything, but unicorns are really cool!" As I said before, the movie isn't as good as South Park can be, but it's still pretty funny. If you're into SP, porn or just Trey Parker go see it. If you don't like any of those things or low humor, avoid it. Avoid it like the plague. Personally, I laughed pretty much through the whole thing, but I will admit it was probably the weakest of their movies so far. (By the way, they all were made before SP made it on the air. They didn't mean to saturate the market.) A lot of people in the audience seemed kind of embarrassed to laugh at some of the jokes. It's hard to not laugh at a guy with a twelve incher sticking out of his head, but it's also hard to let out a full blown laugh in the middle of a theatre that other people aren't cracking up in. If you see it as a midnight movie (probably the only way you WOULD see it) it'll be great. Just lay back and enjoy it. Big SP fans: listen to the opening song--you'll recognize it if you listen closely. This time, though, we get to hear the whole thing...and it's worth it. Also, listen for Trey's voice coming out of one of the most disgusting women this side of a Farelly Bros. movie. One more thing: keep an eye open for a lot of (hopefully) intentional continuity errors. Especially in the sushi bar scenes.

Very Bad Things

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 1998 18:00:00 +0000

Let's start with some trailers, shall we? Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace. Need I say more. What an amazing piece of cinema that is going to be. Heck, even the trailer is amazing. I'll be in line for months on that one just to watch the credits roll. I can't wait for Memorial Day 1999. On that day, I will party like it's...well, you know the rest. Oh, and, Sussudio. If you want more info on Star Wars go, well, anywhere on the net. We're all nerds for this movie. We're all also heavily into Star Trek and The X-Files, so LAY OFF!!! Rushmore-I had never heard a thing about this movie until I saw the trailer. Even though I didn't know anything about it, the trailer actually did what it was supposed to--it made me want to see the movie. I would have wanted to see it if only for one shot in the trailer--a shot of a sign that says Rushmore with Max Fischer (the geeky hero of the movie) standing defiantly next to it as if he had just climbed the Mount with his bare hands. Max is a total dork genius who is failing every class at the school he desperately wants to be in because he has taken up too many after school activities. He meets Bill Murray and a beautiful teacher and starts hanging out with both of them. Things, of course, go awry. Looks like a great second feature from the director of the moderately funny Bottle Rocket, Wes Anderson. Ok, now a rant about how much Siskel and Ebert suck. I just saw their review of Very Bad Things (I'm getting to my review eventually). They gave it two thumbs wwwwaaaaayyyy down. Apparently they were appalled by the darkness of the movie and thought that Christian Slater's character was undeveloped. They would rather see a sequel to a movie about a pig in the big city with special effects that don't look as good as the original. You know, I've got nothing against pigs, but there's just something wrong here. One Babe movie was enough. Now S&E think that this one is even better than the original. This coming from one of the same guys who said that Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was better than Road Warrior. Bubkus. Just to show you how far things have come, the Mad Max movies and the Babe movies were directed by the same guy!!!! How far the mighty have fallen. We should have seen it coming when there was a hit song in Thunderdome. (Not that it's a bad song, but what's it doing in the movie? While we're at it let's have Mariah Carey sing the theme from Star Wars.--I'll be burned at the stake for that one at my next nerd convention.) They also thought that Home Fries was really good. Yeah, whatever. Looks like another romantic comedy starring Drew DareMeMore. So, in other words, S&E like movies about pigs and ex-drug addicted sluts. (I actually do like Drew, it just sounds funny--no offense Drew! I loved The Wedding Singer!) So, whatever. Let's move on. Very Bad Things was one of the sickest and darkest movies I've seen in a long time. I loved it. Kyle Fisher (Jon Favraeu) is marrying Laura Garrety (the lovely and mostly talented--especially in movies like this--Cameron Diaz). Kyle's best friends are throwing him a bachelor party complete with drugs, alcohol, Ultimate Fighting Championship and stripping prostitutes. Michael (Jeremy Piven from Grosse Pointe Blank ("TTTEEEENNNN YYYYEEEEAAAARRRSS!!!!), seven other movies that John Cusack at least had a small role in and TV's Cupid) decides that he's going to partake of the fruits of the prostitute's labor, but he's goes a little too far. He hangs her up on a door hanger in the bathroom. (Her dad did that to her once. ONCE!!!!) Once was enough here. She died. Robert Boyd (Christian Slater) gets an idea. We can't call the police because we've got drugs and a prostitute--dead or alive that's bad--not to mention the UFC crud. So, let's lower her out the window, we'll take her to the desert and bury her. No one will ever know the difference. Then a house detective comes up because of the noise they were making. He sees the body. Chaos ensues. Chainsaws come into play. We need Harvey Keitel. Throughout the entire movie Adam (Daniel Stern) is yelling about how they're all going to get caught and Moore (Leland Orser from Saving Private Ryan and Alien Resurrection) is keeping pretty quiet, but he's nervous. As the guilt builds up in all of them (except, of course, Mr. Slater--hey, you'd call him that too if you saw him with a chainsaw) so does the tension. Will one of the spew forth the truth? Will one of them kill one of the others? Will more people have to die? Tune in next week when... Peter Berg (from "Chicago Hope" and CopLand) has written and directed one of the darkest comedies in years. Remember Shallow Grave? Think about that one and you'll see about where this one comes from. Even Adam's kids are dark. (They cuss like prepubescent sailors.) And there's a pretty painful bit(e) between Christian and Jeane Tripplehorn, who plays Adam's wife. It takes some twists and turns that you really don't expect. The first shock came when...you thought I would tell you didn't you. Yeah, I knew I couldn't trick you. Anyway, there's at least one point where I thought, "Oh my God! They just did that!! Now I know I shouldn't expect this movie to follow any rules.) That's what I want from a movie. Christian Slater was awesome. He's gotten back to his roots with this one. Back to the days of Heathers when he could really make you cringe with fear. Now he's having a hard time keeping water scared. (I never did see that one.) It was kind of weird seeing him around all the cocaine in the beginning after all the trouble he's been in. Cameron Diaz goes for another Something About Mary type movie with this one by way of The Last Supper (great movie). I think she's going to be the queen of the gross-out/dark comedies. That's fine. She's great in them. Check out The Last Supper, A Life Less Ordinary and Feeling Minnesota. But I hated her character in this one. She's the kind of girl you don't want to marry because that's all she thinks about. "I'm getting married tomorrow and that's final! I don't care how many bodies are in the desert! If I have to put more there I will!!!!!" I hope you're supposed to hate her. I know you're supposed to hate Christian's character, but you're also supposed to kind of see where he's coming from. So, if you're one sick individual and you're just a little bit (or a lot bit) twisted you'll love this movie. I, for one, am both and I loved it. If you don't have a strong stomach I definitely wouldn't suggest it. It gets pretty gross. This will be a love it or hate it cult movie. It's not for everybody by any means. If you get into it, though, you'll hate yourself in the morining, but you'll love every minute of it. As far as the end of it goes: it defies explanation. No one comes out unscathed.

Star Trek: Insurrection

admin — Sun, 13 Dec 1998 18:00:00 +0000

South Park Rules!!!! I just saw a preview for the SP movie. It doesn't show any scenes or anything, but it does have Cartman singing some cheesy metal song and an announcer saying that it cost $600,000,000 and is the culmination of the best animators in America and Japan. And this is what they came up with: Cartman. They also showed a preview of some really bad looking movie called Varsity Blues or something lame like that. Some terrible football movie like The Program where Dad wants Son to play college ball and Coach wants Players to be the best that they can be, but still SHUT UP!!! What's the point? We've all seen it. Stop making it. I missed the Austin Powers preview. Damn. Gotta go see it again, I guess. Now, on with the real movie we're here to talk about. I'm always weary about writing about Star Trek stuff. I've heard all kinds of thing about Paramount telling people to take down their web sites that talk about ST or they will sue. So, Paramount, if you're out there, don't sue me. I'm just an amateur at this. I'm just one voice who seems to be more positive than most towards your new movie. LEAVE ME ALONE!!!! The movie starts off with Data going crazy. The Enterprise, of course, comes to the rescue. Picard and crew get wind of what this planet where Data was really is: a society on a planet where the people never age (except the kids) and they have all forgone their technological advancements in lue of a life of simplicity. However, there is another race that wants them all moved so that they can have the eternal youth that the good guys have. The bad guys have faces that are stretched across their skulls and all look like extras from Brazil. F. Murray Abraham plays their whiny baby leader and, really, he doesn't look any different. The first thing that I must say about this movie is that, no matter what I say about it, no matter what you hear behind that door, I did like it. It was not the best Star Trek movie, but it was pretty good. It was doomed from the start because it's an odd number, but it still wasn't as bad as The Final Frontier. That's probably because Shatner didn't direct it. But still, as my friend said, it's Star Trek Lite. Ok, first off, notice that there is no number in this title. That is always a bad sign in a series like this. It means that they don't want you to think about how many times they've been to the well. The problem that all Trekkies who read the script before hand (those bad little boys and girls--hey, there are some girls) had was that Picard and Riker find romance. Not together, of course. Star Trek hasn't come that far. Picard finds it with one of the women in the colony and Riker finds it with Troi. He also shaves his beard. In a bathtub. With Troi. Whoa. You se, not only do the people on this planet stay young, they feel younger. They also seem to feel randier. I didn't really find that a problem as much as the "Cute Factor." There was a kid in it (not that that's bad--there have been many movies where you think a kid is going to screw it up, but he adds to it, such as Blues Bros. 2000). That automatically brings in the cute factor. He's initially afraid of Data because of the problems in the beginning. Then, of course, he starts to befriend him and tries to teach him what it's like to be a child. That alone is kind of funny. The problem starts when the kid takes a small computer generated animal out of his pocket. Half the women in the audience (and there were some, SEE!!) went, "Awwww!" Now, when has a Star Trek movie ever made women say "Awwww!"? Mmmm, NEVER!!!! It never happened before and it probably shouldn't have ever happened. Also, as soon as I saw the animal I knew how it would come into play later. If you think about it, you do, too. Then there's the trick that Riker uses to hide from the bad guys. He takes the Enterprise into something they call "The Briar Patch." It's a spot in the part of the galaxy they're in where scanners don't work and there is flammable gas flying all over the place. Very dangerous. Hmmm. Sounds like The Wrath Of Kahn which already kind of sounded like The Empire Strikes Back. Then there's the whole story line. One man who will stop at nothing to get to the ultimate Happy Place. Much like Sorin (Malcolm McDowell) in Generations. There were way too many things going on that just really didn't need to be going on, too. Such as the fact that Worf had a pimple. Why? Comic relief that doesn't need to be there because there's so much more of it running around. I was all for it in The Voyage Home. That was a great movie. The best one so far, but there's a point where it ceases to be Star Trek and becomes Lost In Space. The script really needed to be darkened up a little. Not to the point of Very Bad Things or anything, but at least to the point of First Contact. Especially since Jonathan Frakes was directing it and First Contact (his theatrical directorial debut) was the second best of the series. (By the way, he's also slated to direct Total Recall 2. Maybe it'll be better than the first one.) Basically, not a bad movie by any means. It's also not a great movie. It's good for Trekkies and such, but most other people probably won't like it. Unless, of course, they want a cute little movie with lots of action. It'll be interesting to see where the series goes as it hits the double digits.

The Faculty

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 1998 18:00:00 +0000

Robert Rodriguez. Kevin Williamson. Need I say more. Well, maybe. This movie ROCKED!!!! This is yet another "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" type movie. A bunch of kids in a high school in Iowa (I think) figure out that their teachers are being taken over (quite quickly) by aliens. No idea why. No idea how to stop it. No weapons. Just the smarts that movie kids always seem to have. And the knowledge that their teachers are just what we all thought they were in our schools: a little different from us. Let's go through this rather large assemblage of characters. Casey (Elijah Wood) is the "freaky Stephen King kid." You know, every high school has one. When we meet him he's being run into, pushed down, made fun of and, generally, getting the crap beat out of him. Have you ever seen someone racked with a flagpole? I hadn't either. AAAAHHH!!!! Later, while he's eating lunch alone in the bleachers of the football field he discovers a bug or something in the grass. (Elijah can't help but discover stuff in his movies lately.) That's what sets the whole thing in motion. Then there's Stokely (Clea DuVall from Little Witches and Can't Hardly Wait), the freak girl who happens to be in love with the star football player, Jasper (I think that's the one--he's the only one left on the IMDb--he's played by newcomer Joe Hatton). Jasper decides that he doesn't want to play football anymore. Of course, this puts a damper on his relationship with Delilah (Jordana Brewster from the soap As The World Turns). She's the head cheerleader and editor in chief of the school paper. She can be pretty cool when she's not being a total b-, well, you get the picture. Oh, and Casey's in love with her. He just doesn't want anyone to know it. Not that anyone would ask. Then there's Zeke (Josh Hartnett from Halloween: H20) He's another freak-type. The difference here is that he's a genius. He just doesn't want anyone to know it, so he hides behind bad grades and drug deals in the parking lot. He meets Marybeth (Laura Harris from Habitat, Kitchen Party and Suicide Kings), the new girl from the South. She's trying to make friends with Stokely who everyone thinks is a lesbian. And so on and on. Oh, and Usher shows up from time to time as one of Jasper's jock friends. He's not in on much action, though. Confused? That's because I'm a terrible writer. The faculty is peopled by some pretty interesting folks, too. Principal Drake (Bebe Neuwirth--Lilith from Cheers and Frasier) gets the Drew Barrymore part in this movie. After all, this is a Williamson script. Couch Willis (Robert Patrick) seems to be the toughest of the Lost Teachers in this one. He takes a pretty harsh beating in the beginning. I mean, he doesn't get racked on a flagpole or anything, but it's pretty bad. Mr. Furlong (Jon Stewart) is the cool teacher that everyone likes. Miss Burke (Famke Janssen from GoldenEye) is the nerdy teacher who can barely get her words out in class. She also sees the way that Zeke is going, but when she tries to stop him her feelings get in the way. (Yeah. You read that one right.) Miss Olsen (semi-legend Piper Laurie from The Hustler, Twin Peaks and Carrie) is a meek older teacher. Or is she? Nurse Harper (the goddess-like Salma Hayek) is, well, the school nurse. She's always sick. Go figure. Harry Knowles, Austin's own Ain't It Cool? News webmaster, gets a small part as the film teacher. Christopher McDonald (Shooter from Happy Gilmore) shows up a couple of times as Casey's dad. Most of the teachers don't get too much personality, but that's how most high school movies are, so I can't hold that against them. The movie is about the kids. This should have been called Little Lije Gets Some Action. And I don't necessarily mean sex action. I mean he's gets pretty much all of the action scenes. He handles it pretty well, too. Anyone who read my reviews of The Ice Storm and Deep Impact know that I have a lot of respect for this kid. He's one of the few actors of his generation who actually has that little thing that we in the industry (how's that for pompous) call talent. He and Christina Ricci. I've been watching out for Elijah ever since he was the only talent in The Good Son. He's a great actor who is finally getting roles in big movies. And it's kind of weird, after seeing him for so long in movies like Radio Flyer and Forever Young, to hear him cussing like a sailor. I guess everybody grows up, huh? He's apparently got a pretty big fan base here, too. He got more cheers when he came on screen than even Salma did. I don't know if that's the way it should be, but I'm glad he's finally getting some acclaim. The rest of the cast doesn't do too badly, either. Josh Hartnett seems like he's about to become the next Matthew Lillard. He's got the tall, lanky thing down and he seems to be stuck in horror movies for now. He's going to be in a couple of comedies soon, but what will we always know him for? The crazy horror kid. Williamson has cut a lot of the pop references in this one. There are still a few (Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, The X-Files, Sigourney Weaver, etc.), but not the machine-gun fire of them like in Scream and Scream 2. There's still a lot of talk about the rules of the game, though. When they talk about IOTBS, Stokely says stuff like, "Where are the pods? There are supposed to be pods." The kids are still too smart to live, but that's what we've all come to expect from ol' Kevbo. Of course, George Huang had a hand in the script, too. Apparently there were a few things that Miramax didn't like about Williamson's original script, so they called in George. It's still a pretty good script, though. I also heard that some of the kids asked Uncle George to get some beer for their underage butts. His answer? "Go ask Robert." No telling what Papa Robert said, but kids are resourceful. Rodriguez puts his spin on the flick, too. He makes it great in a sci-fi cheeseball action sort of way. It's not as over the top as From Dusk Till Dawn, but what is? It's a great action flick. Even better than Desperado. It may even be my favorite of his so far, but time will have to tell. My mind changes all the time. Either way, it has some great special effects. I didn't notice it, but, when a girl walks around naked at the end, the special effects show their seams. You can tell that they've put her head on someone else's body. I was too busy trying to see through the strategically placed shadows. It was all filmed here in Austin, too. His first movie to be filmed here. He plans on doing more because, well, it's his home town and he loves it. It's great to see your home town on the big screen. Unless, I guess, you're from L.A. or New York. Then it's just another movie made in the cities that try too hard. So I was at the world premiere of the movie. (WOOHOO!!) That's why this review is here before Christmas when the movie comes out. It was great. Rodriguez was cool as always. He said that his next one may be a family comedy. He's ready to make a movie that his kids can watch. They're close to the age where they can ask him "Why can't we watch your movies, Dad?" That's ok. As long as he keeps his style and makes a cool horror/action flick like this one every once in a while. I heard that Laura Harris was there, too, but I didn't see her. Of course Harry Knowles was there with his dad and sister. I saw them at the party afterwards, too. (Ah, the joys of living in Austin. The party wasn't bad, but the band sucked. Some freak-boy band with cheerleaders from hell. They were at the Paramount, too. There's just something inherently wrong with cheerleaders with tattoos.) They gave away the GTO from the the movie at the end. Every time the car came on the crowd went wild. Some 16 year old kid's mom won it. Suck. The movie was awesome, though. Great for sci-fi and horror buffs. Check it out. Stick around for at least the beginning of the credits, too. Jon Stewart has a pretty funny bit there.

The Siege

admin — Mon, 21 Dec 1998 18:00:00 +0000

This may be a short review (I can hear all of the applause now) because I saw this movie late last night just before everyone I saw it with started babbling to each other and embarrassing the couple who just got engaged. It was an interesting night. All that and we were late to the movie, so no previews this time. So this movie is about Middle Eastern terrorists in New York. Denzel Washington plays Hub, an FBI agent who is out to stop the recent ring of terrorism in his city. Annette Bening is Elise Kraft, a CIA agent with some strange ties that may link her to the terrorists. Tony Shalhoub is Frank Haddad, Hub's partner who also happens to be from the Middle East. Bruce Willis is General William Devereaux, the Army general who does not really want to take over the city, but when the President tells him to he does it without question. That's all I can really tell you about the plot. If I say very much more I'll give too much away. I'll just try to leave it at this: the main part of the trailer still comes as a shock even though you know what's going to happen. That's how good this movie is. Denzel is awesome. You can usually tell when he cares about the movies he's in. Those are the ones he really tries in. Fallen, well, he just didn't really care. Ok movie, ok performance. Anytime he gets with Edward Zwick, though, he's with it the whole way. Annette is also good as always. Bruce, who is always hit or miss (Pulp Fiction, The Jackal--hits (his acting was, anyway), Bonfire Of The Vanities, parts of Armageddon--BIG MISS), was able to hold his own against the other two. There were scenes between the three of them that amazed even me. (That's not hard to do. After all, I thought Very Bad Things was pretty cool.) Someone on the IMDb said that they thought this movie was going to be ID4 with Iraqis. He obviously didn't pay attention to who was directing it. As far as I'm concerned, Ed Zwick hasn't made a bad movie. Then again, I haven't seen Leaving Normal, so I could be wrong. But Glory, Courage Under Fire, Legends Of The Fall...those are great movies. Even About Last Night was pretty good. (Ok, it wasn't great, but it was good.) In The Siege he keeps you interested with a slowish pace, humor in the right places and some great action sequences that are realistic. They aren't the typical Hollywood, over-the-top, hero gets the girl type action bits where everything gets blown up. They're very real. Real people die. There's only one scene where a lot of guns go off and only bad guys die (that I noticed, anyway). And, even though I predicted part of the ending, it didn't happen exactly like I thought it would, so it did surprise me. I remember there being a lot of talk about how the Iraqis were mad about how they were portrayed as the bad guys in this movie. As far as I'm concerned they had no reason to be angry. The writer acknowledged the fact that it was only about 20 people in a population of about 20,000. There were some pretty disturbing scenes after martial law was declared where all Iraqi men between 14 and 35 were herded into a stadium. (This kind of turned the whole thing into Schindler's List.) This was not because they thought that all of these men had something to do with it. It was so they could go through them one by one and see who did do it. I'm not saying this was a really good idea. It was, after all, Devereaux's doing, and he represents the corrupt side of the military and abuse of power. Basically, the movie was showing us how even the good guys (the government) could be bad guys when it comes to finding that needle in the haystack. It did not portray Iraqis in a bad light unless they have something to do with terrorism. This was not Lethal Weapon 4 (which I just recently saw and thought was VERY racist against Asians. What happened to Riggs? He was never like that!). This was probably the best movie I've seen in the theatre in a couple of months. (Ok, maybe Orgazmo was better. ;) ) It won't win any Oscars, but it is a very good movie.

A Simple Plan

admin — Tue, 29 Dec 1998 18:00:00 +0000

I had barely heard anything about this movie before I decided to go see it with a friend of mine. I hadn't really heard of it until about a month or so ago when another friend of mine (I have at least two) told me that it was good. Then someone else told me it was good. Word of mouth travels pretty fast. Hopefully it will travel fast enough to save this movie. This is the story of three men who are just trying to make their way home one day. Two of them, Hank and Jacob (Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton), are brothers. Hank is your everyday small town guy. He's married to Sarah (Bridget Fonda) who is very close to having their first baby. He's scraping by working at the feed store while she works at the library. He's also the only one in his family to have a real education. Jacob, on the other hand, is a very simple man. He's pretty much all alone in the world except for his brother and his friend Lou. (We'll get to him later.) He seems like he's almost a little bit mentally retarded. I'm not sure about that, but he is pretty much considered the town fool. Lou (Brent Briscoe from U-Turn and Sling Blade), Jacob's best friend, is the town drunk. He's obnoxious, loud and married to a woman who is just like him. One day the three guys are on their way to visit the grave of Hank and Jacob's parents. Lou is just along for the ride home. Then a fox runs out in front of the truck and sends them into a tree. The dog runs after the fox and leads the guys to a downed airplane with $4.4 million. What to do? What to do? Should they keep it? Should they leave it there? Should they call the cops? Well, they keep it and chaos ensues. They decide that they're going to keep it at Hank's house (after a lot of arguing) and wait until the snow thaws and the plane is found. At any threat of discovery Hank will burn the money and it will all be over. The movie is very slow, but don't let that dissuade you. It's very good. Sam Raimi (yes, Sam Raimi...director of Evil Dead, Army Of Darkness and The Quick And The Dead) is branching out. It's been a while since his foray into Westerns with Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman and Leo DiCaprio. While that one was a totally over the top homage to the speghetti Westerns, this is a very normal (not in a bad way) movie. There is only one really weird Raimi-ism in the whole movie. Not to mention a few Hitchcock homages. (Remember that birds are always harbingers of doom.) It's a very restrained movie when you figure who directed it. I'm a big fan of Raimi's and I almost let this one get by me. I didn't know he directed it until his name popped up in the opening credits. Pretty cool. Bill Paxton did a pretty good job at playing the normal guy stuck in a not so normal predicament. Go figure. I've always thought of him as a pretty normal guy. I've also heard that he's very nice. That's cool. At least there are a few of them left in Hollywood. Billy Bob (who, I hear, isn't so nice) also did a great job at playing the not so bright moron with a heart of gold who tends to get them in more trouble with the help of his doubly moronic friend. He seems to be perfect for the stupid redneck roles like this. Hence U-Turn, One False Move, Tombstone, Dead Man and The Apostle were all very well acted movies. Bridget is pretty cool as the calculating wife who seems to know exactly how to make everything work. By the way, Raimi worked with her before in Army Of Darkness. She played Ash's girlfriend in the sum up at the beginning. Speaking of which, the absense of Bruce Campbell was, well, actually kind of unnerving. All in all, a very good movie that brings to mind Fargo (made by Raimi co-horts in Crimewave (and Hudsucker Proxy) the Coen Brothers). There was an awful lot of snow in this one, too, and it was supposed to wash away the sins of the characters. This is probably the best movie of Raimi's career. Not the most enjoyable (it is quite depressing--the IMDb calls it a comedy, but I only saw a little bit of humor in it), but it is the most restrained and well made. It wasn't made to be cheesy, in other words.

Gods And Monsters

admin — Sat, 02 Jan 1999 18:00:00 +0000

A friend of mine suggested that we go see this movie. I had heard that it was really good, but I didn't really think that my friend knew what it was about or what it dealt with. I was a little nervous about going to it with another guy. Maybe I should explain that. The movie is about James Whale, director of the original Frankenstein and Bride Of Frankenstein, and his almost boy toy/gardener. Now, I'm not homophobic and I like to think that I'm pretty secure in my sexuality, but there's just something kind of unnerving about seeing a movie like this with another guy. Especially when said guy is wearing a biker jacket and looks like a reject from the Village People Movie. I just had to keep telling myself, "These people don't know us. I'll never see them again. It doesn't matter. WE'RE JUST MOVIE BUFFS, DAMMIT!!!!" That seemed to work. Well, now that I've revealed a little of myself, it's time for the review proper. Ian McKellen is James Whale in the 1950's, a used up old director who everyone seems to have forgotten about except for his two most famous movies. He's retired and happy for it. He really doesn't want the attention that he used to have. All he wants to do is start painting again like he used to. He's happy leading his current existence. If he could only stop the flood of memories of WWI and his family brought on by his recent stroke. Brendan Fraser is Clay, Whale's gardener. Clay is just a regular Joe. He's single and really kind of pushing for the local bar girl (Lolita Davidovich from Blaze). He's already gotten her, but now he just can't seem to make the right moves. He takes Whale's offer to sit for him. He apparently has a perfect head, so Whale wants to paint him. Of course, the 8-inch pythons probably have something to do with it, too. Lynn Redgrave is Hannah, Whale's long suffering German maid. She knows all about her "master's" lifestyle and his habit of luring young men in just to have them somehow strip for him. (The first one we see him do it to is even more flamboyant than he is.) She doesn't approve of it at all ("I know he will burn in Hell."), but what can she do? So everyone has their place until Clay starts to figure out exactly what's going on with his relationship with Whale. Is he just using the painting as an excuse to ogle him? Probably. Is he lonely? Definitely. One of the funniest scenes is when he invites Clay to a party at George Cukor's house. Cukor was gay, too, but he's trying to cover it up by marrying Princess Margaret (I think that's what's going on...either that or she's just marrying into the family. I couldn't really figure it out). When George sees Clay his eyes pop out of his head. Whale says something along the lines of "He's never met a princess. Only queens." The director, Bill Condon, does a great job of bringing the classic horror film feel to the lives of these two men. He's a veteran of the genre, himself. Some of his magnum opuses are Sister, Sister, Dead In The Water, Deadly Relations and Candyman: Farewell To The Flesh. I'm surprised this one came off as well as it did. I haven't seen any of his other movies, but I've heard. Oh, I've heard. There are a couple of scenes that are particularly affecting. One is when Frankenstein is playing on tv one night. Both Clay and James are watching, Clay at the bar with his friends and James at home with Hannah. Clay's friends laugh at the "hokeyness" of this masterpiece of horror while Clay is totally into it. James is reminiscing about the making of it while Hannah is saying that it's too scary and not her "teacup." Others are the recreation scenes. Brendan plays the doctor in one to Ian's monster. Pretty funny stuff. The other one shows some of the making of Bride. Apparently the two lead actors (not Boris Karloff) were gay, too. (Was all of Hollywood gay at this time?) That led to some pretty funny dialog between the two of them, the Bride and Whale. Pretty well recreated, too. When they started filming it almost looked like the original movie until they panned out to show Whale and the crew. I don't know if they got to use the original equipment (Mel Brooks did!), but it looked pretty authentic. I must confess right here that I have only seen Bride. I've got a poster of Frankenstein in my room, though! Does that count? I'll get right on seeing that movie, though. Bride was awesome. So anyway, the performances were amazing in this film. Ian, who seems to be making a career out of screwed up war veterans with strange relationships with young men (see Apt Pupil) put in his usual great performance. Lynn Redgrave also had a great shot with her Hannah who thinks of James as the husband she lost years ago. Brendan was not bad, either, as the young man who gets caught in the middle of it all. There's something really cool about him. He's not a great actor, but he has an ease about him on the screen. It really brings life to his characters, and this one is no different. He holds his own against his superiors. This was a very good movie. The only complaint I have with it is that Clay's life really doesn't seem to have much to do with the story. We see his friends fleetingly and then they disappear. His life really doesn't serve much of a purpose. I almost think it would have been better (and cheaper) to let him just tell about it and leave it at that. Until the end. The last scene works very well. I think Brendan would make a great monster. Oh, and I think I saw just a little too much of the Brendster. There's got to be a limit to everything. But, I guess if Heather Graham can bear it all for my half of the world in Boogie Nights, the other half of the world can have Brendan in this one. By the way, this is based on a book called Father Of Frankenstein. I haven't read it, but if anyone has drop me a line. I'd like to know how it is. If it's as good as the movie I'll definitely have to read it.

American History X

admin — Sun, 03 Jan 1999 18:00:00 +0000

Happy New Year, everybody. I decided to start the year off right with one of the most depressing movies of the season. Not that that's a bad thing in this case. This was a very, very good movie. So Edward Norton got out of the Andy Kaufman movie to do this. I guess I'll forgive him even though I think he would have been perfect for the role. I can definitely forgive him since his performance in this film is one of the best of the year. He was absolutely amazing! If he isn't at least nominated for an Oscar I will give up on the Academy. Not that I hadn't already, but this will put the nail in the coffin. Ok, I guess I should explain the movie. Derek Vinyard (Norton) is a Neo-Nazi skinhead who is thrown in jail for killing two black guys who were boosting his truck. His brother, Danny (Edward Furlong in one of his least annoying roles), is headed down the same path. He turned in a paper about the positive aspects of Mein Kampf. This, of course, get him in trouble with his teacher (Elliott Gould) and his principal (Avery Brooks). Brooks tells him that, if he meets him everyday for a class he calls "American History X" and re-writes his paper, he will let him stay in school. The paper has to be about how his brother influenced his life and the community around him. The effects were not good. Derek is let out of jail to a new way of life. He's changed his ways. He sees the things that he started and wants to make it all right, much to the consternation of his girlfriend (the uber-freaky Fairuza Balk) and, most importantly, his mentor, Cameron Alexander (Stacy Keach). Cameron is the head of the entire Nazi movement in Venice Beach. This causes all kinds of problems for the whole Vinyard family (which includes Beverly D'Angelo as his mom and Jennifer Lien (Star Trek Voyager's Kes) as his oldest sister). There really isn't very much surprising stuff that happens in this movie. In fact, I saw a lot of it coming. The real surprise was the frankness with which it was dealt with. The racism is so strong that it almost made me sick. There's a rape scene in the prison that is so graphic that I'm surprised the movie held it's R rating. The thing that really makes the movie is the direction and Big Eddie's performance. Tony Kaye holds the suspense throughout the film, especially in the final scenes. The only problem I have with this guy is his attitude. I didn't read the entire Rolling Stone story about this movie, but he apparently is really mad at New Line. They supposedly cut the movie up to suit their needs. That's not good and he has a right to be mad, but he went a little overboard. Humility is not his strong suit. He said that, if they had left it alone, it would have been the best movie ever made. He's a self-proclaimed genius. He also said that Norton was the biggest prima-dona ever to come out of Hollywood and that he hoped he never worked again, no matter how good he is. What a bastard. Anyway, Edward was amazing. If there was ever a man alive who could play Charlie Manson it's Edward Norton. There were scenes (especially the opening murder scene) where his eyes delve into the souls of everyone in the theatre. His speeches in the black and white sequences (those are the ones in the past where he actually believes all the Nazi crap) are so riveting that you can start to see how someone would be seduced by the words. Then he gets turned around and you just start to think that he's one of the nicest guys alive. To go from one of the most frightening characters in recent cinematic history to "such a nice guy" is amazing. If you can stomach some graphic violence and racism, go see this movie. It's a very important experience that everyone should see. It probably won't be nominated for anything (except, hopefully, best actor), but that doesn't make it any less good.

Life Is Beautiful

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 1999 18:00:00 +0000

This ilets the first first-run foreign film I've ever seen. I'm glad I saw it, but I don't know if I'll see another one in the theatre. The movie was very good, but it seems that there are some people who think that, since you can't understand what they're saying, you don't need to hear what they're saying. So, anyway, 's start with previews. Dancing At Lugnasa...Lughihasa...Loserasa...skip it. It looks good and it has Catherine McCormick (Murran from Braveheart). Cool. Central Station looks really good. A little boy and an old woman form a friendship after the boy's mother is killed right in front of him. Can't think of anything more uplifting than that. Little Voice also looks really good. A young woman who never speaks is hit on by Ewan McGregor and becomes a mimic of famous singer's voices. Looks like the story of my life (except, of course, I'm male and I've never been hit on by Ewan McGregor). I'm very quiet and I do Cartman's voice all the time. So, on with the flick at hand. Roberto Benigni (Italy's answer to Chaplin according to some) is Guido, an Italian Jew at the beginning of WWII. He meets a teacher named Dora (Nicoletta Braschi--Benigni's real life wife) who literally falls into his arms. They keep meeting accidentally until they finally fall in love. This part of the movie is a very funny romantic comedy. There's all kinds of slapstick and wordplay (that actually makes it through the translation). The funniest joke involves a riddle, a key and a hat that brings everything to a head. (All puns are thoroughly intended on this page.) So anyway, Guido and Dora get married and have a little boy. Their life is good. Guido has opened his bookshop and everything is right in the world. This, of course, is where things go wrong. Guido and his son are sent to a concentration camp one day while Dora is away. She comes home to an empty and wrecked house. When she tells the German officials that there has been a mistake they tell her that there hasn't and she decides to get on the train with her husband and son. Throughout the rest of the film Dora is separated from her family and Guido has to make it seem like it is all a game so that his son will not be too upset by the horrors going on around him. Even when his hope is dying he keeps the charade going. There was a lot of controversy over this film because it is a comedy/drama about the Holocaust. You can't make anything in the Holocaust funny. Benigni was very careful about it, though. There was nothing that made the atrocities funny. What was funny sometimes was the way he protected his son. Death was very real as was the threat of the German soldiers. And, besides, this is not totally a comedy. It is a movie about surviving with imagination. How do kids survive a high pressure situation? They pretend. The same people didn't understand Radio Flyer (one of my all time favorite movies). Guido is an overgrown child and he wants his son to grow up without knowing exactly what he went through. I only had a couple of problems with the movie. First off, where were the Germans' subtitles? They did a lot of talking, but we never could understand what they were talking about. I guess it wasn't that important, especially since the Italian characters didn't know, but it just seemed kind of strange. Another thing is that they just happened to be thrown into the camps near the end of the war. They must have only been in there for a few months because the kid didn't grow up. Those are just nitpicky things. The big problem was the German soldiers. They were way too nice. There were a lot of things that Guido did that would have gotten him killed a real camp. He sends out a message to his wife over the PA system at one point and is caught. I really think that they would have shot him right there. He also had his kid with him who was supposed to be in hiding. (How long can you hide a kid from German soldiers, anyway?) But, all in all, this is a very good movie. Benigni is a master at weaving humor with a very serious subject like this. It's a comedy with a lot of heart and more touching moments than anything I've seen from Hollywood lately. It's also not as gruesome as most Holocaust dramas. It's not out for the realism of Schindler's List. It wants the heart, not the sympathy. I would definitely suggest this one to anyone who has the patience for subtitles. My pick for Best Foreign Film of the year. Then again, I don't think I've seen many others from this year except Artemisia, which was also very good.

Shakespeare In Love

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 1999 18:00:00 +0000

I just saw a preview for the other new Sean Connery movie. The first preview I saw not too long ago was for the action flick Entrapment. Looks pretty cool. Now I've seen a preview for what looks like a romantic comedy (but someone on the IMDb who's seen it says that it's very dramatic, so maybe their pushing it to the wrong audience). It's called Playing By Heart. The reason I didn't remember hearing about this one is because the title's changed. It used to be Dancing About Architecture. I actually like that one better, but who am I to judge. I did see a preview for it when it was still called DAA and I remember wanting to see it just because of the cast. Connery, Gena Rowlands, Angelina Jolie, Jay Mohr, Jon Stewart, Madeline Stowe, Anthony Edwards, Dennis Quaid, Ellen Burstyn, Natasha Kinski and GILLIAN ANDERSON!!!! Woo-hoo!! I've only been an X-Phile for about six months, but I've been a Gillian fan since about a quarter of the way into the series. Definitely one of the most beautiful women on tv today. Pretty good actress, too. Now, if we could just get her and Jenna Elfman in a movie together... Anyway, the movie looks good. Great cast (except for Ryan Phillipe, but there has to be at least one bad performance) in a "strange intersection" movie. (That's what I call those movies where people's lives intersect in strange ways. Clever, huh?) I always like those movies. I even thought 2 Days In The Valley was pretty cool. So, what about Shakespeare In Love? Historically, total BS, but so was Braveheart (one of my all-time favorites), so I can't really fault it for that. There are other ways to fault it...but I did like it. Joseph Fiennes (from Stealing Beauty and Elizabeth and the brother of the more prolific Ralph) is a rather Jason Patric-looking Bill. He's a rogue. He's short of money. He wears a blue leather jacket that looks like it would have fit into Michael Jackson's wardrobe. Gwyneth Paltrow is Viola, a richie who wants to be an actor (even if she has to dress as a man to do it) and falls for Bill through his plays. Fortunately (for a while, anyway), he falls for her, too. Geoffrey Rush (Shine) is Phillip Henslowe, the harried manager of the Rose Theatre, so called so that a preacher can say, "A Rose by any other name has the same stench!" (What happened to the Globe?) Tom Wilkinson (Rush Hour) is Hugh Fennyman, a creditor that Henslowe owes money to. He doesn't really think that theatre is a good way to make money. Can you guess what happens to him? Ben Affleck(!) is Ned Alleyn, the Tom Cruise of the day, apparently. The only way Shakespeare can get him to play Mercutio is to tell him that the play is named after him. Judi Dench (Mrs. Brown, M from the new Bond movies) is Queen Elizabeth. No intro needed. This is, of course, a romantic comedy, so there has to be a "bad guy." That would be Colin Firth (the little seen, but should have been, Apartment Zero and the much seen, but apparently shouldn't have been, English Patient). He is the man who Viola is betrothed to against her wishes. He needs money and she comes with the package. This is also a movie about a playwright, so there has to be a rival playwright. That would be Rupert Everett, who plays Christopher Marlowe, the Spielberg of the day. At every turn Bill hears, "He's no Marlowe." Before I start my actual critique I have to tell you something. It's very hard for me to get into period movies like this. Unless they're written by Shakespeare, I usually get bored with them. Restoration was a good movie, but I wouldn't watch it again. Same with Emma. As much of a Scorsese fan as I am, I have never seen The Age Of Innocence. They just don't really appeal to me that much. The only real exception is Sense And Sensibility. That was a great movie. It was fun and not overly pretentious. This one does a good job of giving the same feel. It's a lot of fun and I didn't feel like I was being talked over. (Although, being a super-genius, it's hard for a mere film to do that to me.) Tom Stoppard, who wrote it, is the best modern-day Shakespeare copycats around. Rosencranz And Gildenstern Are Dead was great. (I've never seen the play, though. Only the movie. I've heard that if you have seen the play you'll hate the movie.) Anyway, his dialogue was almost worthy of the Bard himself. Great script. There was comedic innuendo, talking around the subject and many other tricks of the trade. There are a lot of parallels with Romeo And Juliet, which is the play that Will is trying to write. Star crossed lovers. Strange coincidences. Missed messages. Spontaneous swordfights. You know, the usual. A problem that I really could have had with this movie is the fact that it deals with Romeo And Juliet, probably my least favorite Shakespeare play. Great story, but boring, boring, BORING!!! There's actually a tie going on in my head between R&J and Julius Caesar. Maybe it's because I had to read them in high school. I did, however, love King Lear. I've never read Hamlet or MacBeth, but I like both of those plays. The comedies I've always liked (even the ones I read in high school). So what's wrong with R&J? I don't know, really. It's been years since I read it and I don't plan on doing it again for a long time. It just didn't really sit right with me. The great thing about this movie is that the performance of the play is very good. The thing that makes it good is that it's SHORT SHORT SHORT!!!! Only the essential scenes. We get the point and it moves on. The performances are great (in the play within the movie and the movie itself). One of the user reviews on the IMDb says that the parallels between this movie and R&J show that great art reflects real life. Now, remember what I said at the beginning? Historically, this film is complete BS. The names may be right (I think that there was a Marlowe and most of the people Will has contact with are real), but, according to an article I read (I don't know a lot about Shakespeare's real life--and most historians don't, either), there was no Viola that we know of, which means that this plot never happened. It is all a figment of Stoppard's imagination. That means that art is imitating art. Just because a plot is similar to the plot of a story that is the center of the first plot, does not mean that the original plot is universal. I will give them the fact that, yes, some of it is universal. There is true love in the world and it should conquer all. There are tragedies in the world that involve true love. Feuds are stupid and should stop before someone gets hurt. War is bad. Love is good. Only a few of these are represented in this film. There is a feud between the Rose and the Curtain, but it's not nearly as intense as the Montegue/Capulet feud and they aren't brought together by a death. (Not really, anyway.) Am I just really shallow? Or am I missing the point? Or am I just, like, the smartest man in the world? (Yeah, whatever.) Enough ranting about my Shakespeare inadequacies. He was a genius and I'm not...that's all there is to it. Every genius has his occasional falter (look no further than 1941--the movie OR the year). As I said before, all of the performances are great. Even Ben Affleck does a good job of getting into the groove of the 1500s. Pretty amazing considering the fact that he's a very 90s kinda guy. Judi Dench may as well BE Queen Elizabeth. She seems to have been made for the role. Geoffrey Rush is awesome as the befuddled manager who desperately needs a comedy so he can make enough money to pay off his debts. The problem is that Bill is having a pretty strong bout of writer's block and needs to find his muse. When he finds her we get one of the more magnetic couples of the year. Joseph and Gwyneth were very good together. No wonder she and Ben broke up. The one thing I wonder is, how does it feel to kiss a chick with a mustache? The main problem that I had with this movie involves the fact that Shakes was a genius. Stoppard would almost have you believe that he wasn't. It seems that all of his ideas came from other people! I realize that a lot of his stories were based on other stories and Greek tragedies, but this goes a little too far. There's a scene between Will and Marlowe where Marlowe basically gives him the plot to R&J almost scene for scene. All the way down to the deaths of Mercutio and Tybolt. It was kind of a "Why don't you do this?" scene. At the end, Viola gives him the plot of his next play, Twelfth Night. He helps a bit, but she gives most of it. Then there's always the preacher at the beginning who give him his "rose" line. Are we to believe that William Shakespeare got all of his ideas from other people?!?! I realize that writers get their ideas from real life, but this is ridiculous. Does this guy ever get an original thought of his own? My other little problem involves some spoilers, so highlight the next section if you don't mind them. Now that's we've gotten rid of all of those people we can talk about them. Those idiots. Why do they look for a review if they don't want spoilers?!?! Well, shall we begin our plan to take over the world from all of those "non-spoilers" out there? I think that, if we give away ending to every movie ever made, we can do it! What do you think? Oh yeah! My problem. It's a small, nitpicky thing, but that's what I'm known for, right? Right. Would Queen Elizabeth have ever gone to a real theatre at that time? Now, think about this one. She has shown, earlier in the movie, that she does not really think too much of theatrical types. She falls asleep during a performance that's been brought to her so she doesn't have to go out amongst the cake-eating people. She thinks that no play will ever show true love through words. Yet, at the end of the movie, she shows up at a dirty, grimy, common theatre to see William Shakespeare's (someone she didn't really know, mind you) new work. Where did she hear about it? It had never been performed before. No one had seen it outside of the troop, who would have no way of getting into the palace. How did this happen? She just changed her name to Deus Ex Machina and stepped into a theatre! All in all, though, this was a very good movie. I guess I was just a little disappointed after constantly hearing that it was the greatest movie ever made and such. It was good, but was it that good? I don't know. It was a fairly predictable romantic comedy that just happened to involve William Shakespeare and one of the most loved love stories of all time (God knows why). Luckily, it was written by a very talented writer and was acted by some very talented actors. There was nothing wrong with the dialogue or the acting, it was certain plot points that confused me and got me thinking a little too much. And, in review of my review--IT SUCKS!!!! Remind me to never submit this review to a publisher or editor of any kind. They would laugh in my face. What a badly written piece of bullcrud.

The Thin Red Line

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 1999 18:00:00 +0000

SHOW ME THE PREVIEWS (sorry, I needed a new way to bring them up): Entrapment--The new Sean Connery flick. Connery, big budget action AND Catherine Zeta-Jones. What more can you ask for? Looks pretty cool, if formulaic. Midsummer Night's Dream--This one looks really cool. Lot's of great actors (and Calista "Can-I-Eat-Now?" Flockhart) and special effects. Pretty strange for Shakespeare, huh? You know, I acted in this play once. Well, sort of. Just some little middle school class thing. Not even on stage. My teacher's response to my one line? "At least we could hear him!" What rave reviews. Inspector Gadget--I actually saw this one on a tv at the concession stand. It looks like it could be fun. I watched the cartoon all the time and still remember quite a bit about them. If anyone were to bring Gadget to life I think it would have to be Matthew Broderick. No one else can be as dorky/cool as him. I was surprised by the number of sexual innuendoes that are apparently in this Disney movie. Then I thought about the recent scandal with The Rescuers. Question answered. There were others, but now I can't remember what they were. Oh well. If I remember I'll...remember them, I guess. Now for the movie at hand: This was definitely the prettiest war film I've ever seen. (If that's not a backhanded compliment, I don't know what is.) The cinematography was absolutely stunning. The images of the beautiful Asian countryside meshed perfectly as the backdrop for the horrors of the war. If this movie is worth anything it's seeing these images. There is no real plot to the film, just like all of Terrence Malick's films. (And when I say "all" I mean both--Badlands and Days Of Heaven--both very good and should be seen by anybody who loves film.) Basically, it's about the men who helped take Guadalcanal during WWII. Sean Penn is Sgt. Edward Welsh, who tries very hard to watch out for all of them, but he has serious doubts as to whether it's all worth it. Nick Nolte is Lt. Col. Gordon Tall, who wants to take the hill no matter how many men it costs the lives of. Elias Koteas is Capt. James Staros, who leads the men, but only as far as he thinks is humanly possible. Ben Chaplin (The Truth About Cats And Dogs, Washington Square) is Pvt. Bell, a man who misses his wife, who we see in multiple flashbacks. John Savage is Sgt. McCron, a man who is on the edge of his mind. John Cusack is Capt. John Gaff, a young man that Lt. Col. Tall has taken under his wing and wants to push to go farther than maybe he wants to go. There are a lot of other people who drift in and out of the film (George Clooney, John Travolta, Jared Leto, Nick Stahl, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson), some of which seem to only be in there so that they can say that they were in a Malick film. I was rather disappointed in some of the 90 second parts, but I guess it would be hard to make the film longer than it already is. The characters had numerous voice-overs that told us exactly what they were thinking at that point in the story. After I got out of the theatre I felt like I had just witnessed a very long poetry reading. This is not really a bad thing. The thing is, I really don't think that all of the thoughts were really those of the characters. There were times that I really didn't know who was doing the voice-overs. This kind of bugged me until I realized that it really didn't matter. They might not even be thinking these things. It's more of what was going on in the mind of Malick than anything else. Some fit the characters. Some didn't. Either way, they were very poetic and very real. They spoke truths about war and the waste of it all. This movie could never have been made twenty years ago. (Although there was a filming of the book it was based on in 1964. I doubt that it was this existential, though.) The thoughts of the filmmaker are not exactly glorifying the act of war, which is what WWII movies have always done in the past, rather they condemned the act and the men who made the act happen. Why should the young men fight the wars that the old men make up. It's all about property. Is it really worth it? Probably not. If it is, how many lives is it worth? The performances are amazing. Sean Penn may get an Oscar nomination out of this one (if he doesn't for Hurlyburly--I've heard he's very good in that one, too--then again, when isn't he?). Nick Nolte was doing a very good John Wayne impression near the beginning of the movie. He then slipped into the "Nolte Bad Guy" character that we all know and love. The character, however, rose above it's usual limits. Very good performance. John Savage did a pretty good Brando impression throughout the film. Not sure where that one came from. And now, the inevitable question: The Thin Red Line or Saving Private Ryan. And to this I would have to say...Saving Private Ryan. Malick's film is flawed in ways that don't make it bad, but make it not quite as affecting. I, personally, didn't really get into any of the characters. I cared a little bit about Ben Chaplin's character because of the flashbacks to his wife, but there were three actors (including him) who looked very similar. I thought that one of the character's death scenes was actually another's, which brought a different meaning to the death that wasn't really there. Maybe I'm just not very observant. Then again, maybe I'm a little too observant. I can find very small things that remind me of someone else and, from then on, I get the two people confused. Like Robert Plant and Robert Palmer. Anyway, there were some very effective scenes in this film. One involved an old native man who walked right by the soldiers without even really noticing their presence. These two cultures clashed so much that the soldiers became a normal part of the natives' lives. The soldiers were dumbfounded by this old man, though. The audience laughed, but I think the deeper meaning hit a few of us. Other scenes involving a soldier who constantly went AWOL and the natives that he stayed with were also very effective. Then there's the treatment of the enemy. If you thought that the Germans were faceless in SPR, for the first half of this film, the Japanese are much like the Zombie Shooting Gallery scenes at the end of all zombie flicks. They just walk in, kill a few people and die. They could have been played by caucasians for all I know. Then, suddenly, we start to see their side of it. We even hear one of the dead bodies thoughts (?!?!). We see them hold each other with fright. They are just like us after all! Then, just as suddenly, they become just The Enemy again. No more faces. Just shoot them and be done with it. At least when SPR showed the face of The Enemy there was one guy who kept popping up and they pretty much kept to one view of them. It's strange to be made to feel sorry for people and then be forced to go back to thinking of them as faceless people again. How does that work? Is that what he wanted us to do? Only Malick knows. Another comparison: Where SPR was a very visceral film about the tangible horrors of war and what it can do to a man, TTRL was more about the intangibles. We saw into the minds of these men and saw HOW the became shell-shocked. We saw what kind of men they were (to some extent) and why they felt the way they did. Even if we didn't know enough about the character to really care about him, we understood how he could be driven from reality and become like Savage's character. We understood exactly where post-traumatic-stress-syndrome comes from. (Let's just call it what it is--SHELLSHOCK!! As George Carlin says, if it were still called that, our Vietnam vets probably would be getting the treatment they need. Funny how comedians can make serious points look so easy.) This film was more about the feelings of these men. It was slower and more of a drama than SPR. (Not that SPR wasn't dramatic, but if I were to classify them I would call that one a real War movie whereas this one would be a War Drama.) It was poetic in every sense of the word, from the dialogue to the visuals. Nothing was wasted and everything was important. A very good movie, even with it's flaws (just like Malick's other films). I do have one question, though: Were all soldiers on the Eastern front from the Deep South? geovisit();

Varsity Blues

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 1999 18:00:00 +0000

With that line, James Van Nerd Deek writes his legacy. Let me just say right now that I have not been this excited to write a review since, well, since BASEketball. For a totally different reason, though. That one was a really funny flick that got a bad rap at the box office and from the critics. Varsity Blues, however, is a different story...all together. "Varsity Blues, however, is a different story." Ok, enough with the Airplane jokes. Remember what I wrote when I first saw the preview for this flick? I do. "They also showed a preview of some really bad looking movie called Varsity Blues or something lame like that. Some terrible football movie like The Program where Dad wants Son to play college ball and Coach wants Players to be the best that they can be, but still SHUT UP!!! What's the point? We've all seen it. Stop making it." Word for word, this is exactly how I felt. This movie was only slightly better than Godzilla. This one had a few naked women, but at least that one had some action. Ok, plot....uh....well, let me think. First, let's count the stereotypes. James Van Der Geek is John Moxon, the guy who always sits on the bench. He is the Football Player with the Heart of Gold. He turns down every advance of Head Cheerleader because she was Star Quarterback's girl (natch). By the way, the x in his name should have been an r. John Voight is Bud Kilmer, the most evil of all beings, the West Texas High School Football Coach. He is the Godfather of the town. He owns the cops (don't ask). He can break down good grades with a single bound (again, don't ask). I know it's bad in these small towns, but COME ON!!!!!! This guy looks worse than John Gotti! Paul Walker (who?--oh yeah, he was in Meet The Deedles--whatever) is Lance Harbor, the Star Quarterback with a difference. Not that difference. He revels in his celebrity. He has a sign in his front yard that has his picture on it. He has a big ego. That is, until, he's put on the sidelines because he gets a really bad injury. Ok, there's no difference. I just wanted to put that in here. Ron Lester is Billy Bob. After all, this is West Texas and everyone is named Billy Bob. He is Fat Boy. He's almost too stupid to live, but somehow manages to forget plays in the middle of the game. (That actually makes about as much sense as the script.) He cries a lot because he is not only Fat Boy, but he is Sensitive Fat Boy. He also calls his pet pig Bacon (and calls it a dog) and drinks syrup straight out of the bottle while in his pickumup truck. Don't drink and drive, bud. On second though, please do. Scott Caan (yes, James's son) is Tweeder, and just what you would expect from a guy named Tweeder, he's a criminal. He pops pills, gives them to other players, drinks a lot, steals cop cars and exposes himself. ("Wangers on the glass"?) He's kind of funny, but still, he's Stupid Bad Boy. Ali Larter is Darcy Sears. She is Head Cheerleader. She's also Stupid Slut, although she's supposed to be smart. Grades-wise, maybe. Real smarts, not a chance. She changes sides faster than Benedict Arnold. Although, she does have a pretty nice scene involving whipped cream. Oh, and she was also apparently on Dawson's Creek. She's a better actor than the title dude, but I hear that she was playing herself in this flick. Amy Smart (yeah, right) is Julie Harbor, Star Quarterback's sister and Football Player with the Heart of Gold's girlfriend. She also changes her mind quite a bit, but in more unbelievable ways. First she says that she doesn't date football players. (Dawson was something different---hmmm, I wonder what that means.) Then, by the end of it, she only kisses heroes. Huh?!?! There is also Black Player (I can't find him on the IMDb). He wants to go to college to play, but the coach is racist, so he won't let him get anymore touch downs. Until, of course, James Van Dork Deek comes to the rescue. Then we have the parents and cops of the community. Anything goes with these guys. The coach owns the town, as I've said before. He has been coaching for 30 years and has won 22 championships. That means he's a big man. That also somehow means that he coached all of the parents in the town. I don't really know how that is because he's not much older than any of them. Mr. Moxon is so obsessed that he gets his nose broken for the principle of it. "Throw the damn ball, son!!" Idiot. Oh yeah, then there's Eccentric Little Brother played by Joe Pichler. The first scene we see with him, he's got himself tied to a cross. This is the kind of thing that we watch MTV movies for. Really weird comedy that really doesn't make any sense, but it's funny. Watch Joe's Apartment if you don't believe me. Or even Dead Man On Campus. They were both pretty funny because they were so out there. When you hear lines like, "Did you start a cult? Oh, that's so CUTE!" You know you're in the right place. Unfortunately there weren't enough of those kinds of lines. This one was full of insights like, well, I don't remember any other lines really. They just weren't good enough to remember. Who cares? The performances were pretty sad, too. John Voight was the only real talent on the showy side of the camera and I really hope that he was paid well by MTV Productions when they bought his soul. The other talent was the d.p. There were some pretty cool shots, such as the one where Voight was standing alone in the hall leading out to the field. Also, all of the football scenes were pretty well directed and photographed. It actually looked like a real football game. Grainy film and all. Except that the "good guys" didn't get their uniforms very dirty. Speaking of directors, Eric from Head Of The Class directed this one. He's also known as Brian Robbins, but who cares? He's Eric, the smart rebel who was still a dork. He also directed such luminous pieces of film as The Show and Good Burger, but who cares? He's Eric, the smart rebel who was still a dork. A friend of mine who was on the set said that it took them hours to get the last shot. It's of the shadows of a line of people walking along the side of the field. I've never really directed anything and I could probably do it in about 5 minutes. See? He's Eric, the smart rebel who was still a dork. The writer, W. Peter Iliff, did so much better with Patriot Games. He probably also did better with Prayer For The Rollerboys. Maybe he should stick to Corey Haim/Nicole Eggart flicks. And I want you all to know, MTV DOESN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT TEXAS!!!!!! "Austin Stories" sucked!!!! We are nothing like that bunch of losers that they chose for that stupid show. There's quite a bit of slack down here, but really not much more than any other city. We just have the reputation because of Richard Linklater. We're not all idiots. We don't all work at Happy Burger and The Austin Chronicle. We aren't all pretentious morons who don't really know what we're talking about (only some of us). Basically, we don't suck! And Texas football is not this bad! Oh, don't get me wrong, it's a big deal. I was in the high school band (yes, a self-confessed Band Geek), so I was stuck with football for four years. I'm not much of a fan, but it's hard to not get caught up when you're with the right bunch of people. And there are those (lots) who take it a little too seriously. But, here's the deal: for some of these more mentally challenged kids, it's their only ticket out of their nowheresville towns like Midland/Odessa. I feel for them. They shouldn't kill themselves like a lot of the stereo...er...characters in this movie almost did, but they have a reason to be serious. It's sad to think that there are people out in L.A. and New York who actually buy this crap. They've never been to Texas, but they think that we all have hick accents and do nothing but sit around the house getting high watching 'toons all day. DON'T BELIEVE IT!!! The thing is, we don't hold our coaches up to be gods. (Well, ok, maybe Daryl Royal, but there's a reason.) We certainly don't really care about a 3A team. 5As are big deals, but 3As? Whatever. I can't even name a 3A high school. Basically, this movie is WAY over the top and really, really, REALLY bad. Don't believe the stereotypes that MTV pushes on us. It's a bunch of propogandist b.s. And, for the last time, AVOID THIS MOVIE AT ALL COSTS!!! MAKE MTV SEE THAT WE DON'T CARE!!!! WE WILL NOT GO FOR THE LOWEST COMMON STUPIDITY!!!! WE WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT...crap, maybe I'm talking to the wrong people. This movie has been no. 1 for a while. WHY, GOD, WHYYYYYY!!!!

Rushmore

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 1999 18:00:00 +0000

Previews first, shall we? Ok. 8mm looks really good and very disturbing. The only problem that I have with it is the director. I like Joel Schumacher and all, but is he up to the challenge of directing something written by the same guy who wrote Seven? Well, he's surprised me before. He didn't do too badly with Batman Forever (Batman And Robin is a different story, though--what a waste!) and A Time To Kill was very good (I thought). But it's hard for me to think of him as anything but "That St. Elmo's Fire And Flatliners Guy." Nothing against those movies, but they aren't exactly artistic triumphs. 8mm looks like it needs an artiste's touch. It's been about 10 or 15 years, though. And hopefully Nic Cage can do something with the character. From the previews it looks like he has. Mystery, Alaska looks like another heartwarming comedy drama about a small town's obsession with their hockey team. Wait. Have there been very many of those? Well, not many starring Russel Crowe, Mary McCormack, Colm Meaney, Burt Reynolds, Hank Azaria and Ron Elderd. And who better to direct than M. Jay Roach, director of the heartwarming...Austin Powers?!?!? And they sell it on this point! Great cast, not much else. Ok, the movie. Ever since I saw the first preview for this back in November when I saw Very Bad Things, I knew I had to see it. The pose up above did it for me. Rushmore is about Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), Rushmore's worst, but most ambitious student. He's a genius, but he can't seem to find time to study between all of the extracaricular activities that he's taken up or invented. (Did your high school have a Beekeeper's Club?) He's about to be kicked out when he meets Herman Blume (Bill Murray) and Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams--Costner's "love" interest in The Postman--don't blame him). Blume is a millionaire whose home life is on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Miss Cross is a first grade teacher who doesn't fall in love with Max, no matter how much he tries to get her to. When Blume and Rosemary cross, sparks fly that don't come out of Max's gun. Then things get really hectic. Max is a great character and is matched by the actor who portays him. Jason Schwarzman (son of Talia Shire and Jack Schwartzman--which makes him one of the many people in Hollywood related to Francis Ford Coppola) rises above what a lot of actors would do. There's nothing cheesy about this guy. He's a nerd and he revels in it. He lives in his own little world, but he brings other people into it so he can play with them. He and his Revolutionary beret wreak havoc on pretty much anyone who gets in their way. He's awesome. I wish I had been like him in high school. Just with better grades and a couple of chicks my own age. Bill Murray is probably my favorite (live) actor from Saturday Night Live. I've always thought that he saw his characters as being, not really in the movie, but off on the sidelines commenting on what's going on around him. Watch him the next time you see one of his movies. He has some of the greatest reaction shots ever. Even in the duds (like Where The Buffalo Roam) he's worth watching. Strange thing is, he's made a career lately of great supporting roles. From Ed Wood to Kingpin to Wild Things to this he has stole every scene he's been in. Too bad he can't get a good starring role. His last one was Groundhog Day. That was, what, five years ago? Longer? All we have now is The Man Who Knew Too Little. What the heck was that? I just can't bring myself to watch it. Anyway, he plays this role with his usual comic genius and a touch of tragedy. The rest of the supporting cast is cool, too. Seymour Cassel (John Cassevetes' Faces, Trees Lounge, Honeymoon In Vegas), Brian Cox (Braveheart, The Long Kiss Goodnight) and Luke Wilson (Bottle Rocket, Home Fries--boy, that one died) all show up in smaller roles. Not to mention the kid who did a great impression of Macauly Culkin in Spy Hard, putting in the funniest part of that stupid flick. Wes Anderson (UT alum and writer director of Bottle Rocket) has written one of the best comedies of the year. The script brings us around from the beginning of Max's expulsion to the end of his Miss Cross adventure in one tight little package. He adds all sorts of little bits like the Max Fischer Players' version of Serpico, complete with shootouts and drug deals. (Would your high school let that happen? Mine, either.) It gets a little slow towards the end, but all in all it's a great movie. I remember that Ebert gave it a thumbs down because of this. Uh. Why? It was only a little slow. It didn't ruin the movie. Idiot. Whoever edited this deserves some mention, too. He didn't take the normal approach (which, I guess, is really up to the director, so here's to you, Wes). The editing was really choppy on purpose. There were scenes where someone was in one place and then, in the next shot, they were in a totally different position. This seems like it would be annoying, but it's not. It really fits with the movie. I also don't remember a scene like that with Rosemary. I guess she was the image of perfection, so she shouldn't be choppy like that. Even the music was great. Mark Mothersbaugh (from Devo and, more recently, the writer of all of the music in the Rugrats cartoons) did the score which fit in really well with all of the semi-cheesy British Invasion stuff. Then they threw in some Cat Stevens and John Lennon just to keep things going. (If you can believe it, "Oh Yoko" was the JL song. Who else would have the guts to do that?) It all worked very well with the theme of young love crashing down around you. I'm getting the soundtrack as soon as possible. But, then again, I'm into cheese...and Devo. (Do those go hand in hand?) For one of the best and most original coming-of-age comedies in years, I highly recommend Rushmore. Awesome flick. A friend of mine (who hated Bottle Rocket) saw a rough cut in Telluride last year. He even loved it then. That says a lot when a rough cut is great.

Payback

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 1999 18:00:00 +0000

Let's do some previews. Well, ok, just one. I saw one for the new De Niro flick, Analyze This. It also has Billy Crystal in it as a psychiatrist who is trying to help De Niro's gangster with his personal problems. Looks like a not too bad movie, but I doubt that it will be really good. The only good comedy De Niro's done is Wag The Dog. I never saw We're No Angels and I really don't know that I should. I have too much respect for the man. A few good moments, though. The pillow shooting scene looks pretty good. And the movie: The old jokester is at it again. Mel Gibson is back as a charming yet violent anti-hero. He plays Porter, a man who was left for dead by his wife and best friend over $70,000. Now, after healing, he wants it back. And that's all he wants. No more, no less. He's willing to do anything to get it, too. He goes all the way up to the top of "The Outfit" (Kris Kristoferson). Not just a whole lot more plot to this movie than that. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. It doesn't need a lot more. The original (1967's Point Blank with Lee Marvin) apparently did ok with just that. I've never seen it, but I really wanted to before I saw this one. Does that count? Unfortunately, this was the only movie that I was really interested in seeing tonight. So, the best friend is Val (Gregg Henry from Star Trek: Insurrection). He's trying to buy his way back into the syndicate (or outfit, whatever). Val, Porter and Porter's wife, Lynn (Deborah Unger from Crash and The Game) were just supposed to steal a case full of money, split it two ways and be on their marry way. But Val got greedy and palled up with Lynn (who was mad because of Porter's affair) and took it all. Then Porter comes back from the dead, looks for his wife (who is now a heroin addict), Val (who is now a semi-made man), and his girlfriend, Rosie (Maria Bello from ER, the stuttering tv show). Along the way he meets Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn and William Devane (Tongue-Boy from Knots Landing--explanations later). These guys are the heads of the Outfit and they are all just kind of there. When Porter can't get the money from Val he goes to them because they are who Val paid. Then there's a couple of dirty cops who enter into it. Then there's David Paymer from City Slickers. Then there's Lucy Liu from Ally McBeal who really doesn't do anything but make Val into a sado-masochist. Oh, she also shows off her body a lot. Not that I'm complaining, but could she have a little more character? Maybe? Now I have to make a disclaimer here. I don't want to sound like a queer or anything (Hey! Quit it! I'm quoting!), but I could watch Mel Gibson in just about anything. He's no Pacino or De Niro, but he's really, really cool. He can make any role fun. Even Braveheart, one of my all-time favorites. He's always likable. (In fact, he re-directed some of the scenes in this movie because he wasn't likable enough.) He's one of the biggest practical jokers in Hollywood. (The roach in Julia Roberts' hand was a classic.) He's just an all-around good guy. Anything where he gets to make jokes and kick butt is good for me. This movie was good. Not great, but good. Some of the minor characters were a little weak. Ok, they were a LOT weak. As I said before, Lucy Liu looked good, but she didn't do anything. Although it was pretty cool when she kicked Val's butt. James Coburn had a totally stupid character. ("That's just MEAN!!" Huh?) Kris Kristofferson was not very threatening as a syndicate head. There were a few plot holes, too. The main one (and I'll try not to give anything away) was this: how long can a bomb stay in a hotel room without a) going off or b) being discovered? Probably not too long. And the ending was very abrupt. They almost may as well have ended it just by blacking out in the middle of sentence. It would have been just as shocking and only a little more anti-climactic. Anyway, it was entertaining. Mel was cool (as always). The action was good. The story wasn't bad. The supporting characters were just weak. Then again, who cares? Mel got to kick butt. And that's what he's great at. He's good at Hamlet, but he's great at Martin Riggs. And this is the most violent movie Mel's made since Braveheart. That's saying a lot considering Lethal Weapon 4. (What a disappointment that was. What's up with the racism, Mel?) And I don't really see how he's a "bad guy." I mean, yeah, he's robbing people, but we're supposed to feel sorry for him because he was left for dead by his best friend and wife. That makes him a guy looking for revenge for a good reason. He's also an adulterer, but they really make him out to love both women equally. It wasn't like he was using either one of them. Even if one of them was a heroin addict and the other was a hooker. Well, I guess adultery is bad, but Mel can't be a bad guy! Not even in Tequila Sunrise! He's the most charming drug dealer in the world. So I did enjoy this movie. It's worth a matinee, but don't pay full price like I did. Not a bad way to waste an afternoon. Oh, and my Tongue-Boy explanation: Somehow U.T. got hold of some raw footage from Knots Landing. We edited it together in one of my classes and got to see William Devane's acting totally out of sequence. ACK!!! What's with the tongue, dude!?!? My prof said that that was his trademark. Huh?!?! Who sticks there tongue out like that? Mick Jagger can't help his lips. They became his trademark because of God's cruel joke. This guy did it on purpose! Not only that, but he's just bland. Maybe that's why he stuck his tongue out so much. He needed to call attention to himself somehow.

Oscar Time '99

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 1999 18:00:00 +0000

On March 21st the Academy for Motion Picture Sciences pats themselves on the back for the 71st time. That's a pretty long time for one group to be dominating the "What's Good" business. Is it time for someone else to take over? Most likely. Maybe someone who Tim Robbins likes. Well, for now we (and Tim) are going to have to wait. The Golden Globes are gaining strength, but not quickly enough. The Emmys and Grammys are for the wrong industries. The Raspberry Awards are, well, they're just too much fun. They can't be taken seriously...and I doubt that they want to be. The last few years they've chosen the right movies to win (although I still haven't seen The English Patient), but not necessarily the right ones to nominate. Babe? The Full Monty? As Good As It Gets? All good movies (except I refuse to watch Babe or it's failure little brother Gordy...or it's stupid sequel, Idiots In The City, for that matter.) What about Wag The Dog or The Ice Storm? Those were awesome movies. This year has its share of Babes. It has two, in fact. And one really weird one that seems slightly out of place even though it deserves its place. Let's go backwards, shall we? I'll start with the most important one first. BEST PICTURE: ELIZABETH LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL SAVING PRIVATE RYAN SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE THE THIN RED LINE Well, three out of five ain't bad. But where are The Truman Show, Bulworth and A Simple Plan. All good movies, but they were almost completely ignored. This is the year of the WWII and Elizabethan flicks. That's a pretty strange combination, but that's ok. The Academy is a strange combination. Elizabeth is, amazingly, the only nominee that I haven't seen yet. I'm working on it, though. Maybe I'll have a real review for you soon. A friend of mine said that it was her pick for Best Picture. Life Is Beautiful was awesome, too. It's the one that almost doesn't belong, though. It's a foreign film, which have their own category. The same thing happened with Il Postino, also a great Italian flick. It's also nominated for Best Foreign Film. Uh. What if it wins both? Is that fair? Well, don't worry, it won't. But it does deserve to be here. It's an amazing film about hope in the face of the greatest adversity. How do you keep a little boy smiling through the Holocaust? Easy. Make it a game. How do you make it a game? Not so easy. Become Roberto Begnini, the Chaplin of Italy. His movies, like Chaplin's, are full of laughter, tragedy and heart. It's a controversial combination when you're dealing with one of the biggest atrocities of all time. But all the great works of art brought controversy. Saving Private Ryan is my pick this year (of course. If you bet against it you're an idiot). It's one of the most amazing films I've ever seen. With two of the most gruesome battle scenes ever filmed and a dramatic plot that drives it through its entire three hour length, it makes all other war films almost obsolete. I'm not much into war movies (except for Vietnam flicks), but this one made me realize that I really didn't need to see the rest. It makes them all look like Pee Wee's Little Adventure. It's the "War To End All Wars" Movie To End All War Movies. Of course, I could be biased. After all, Spielberg is my all-time favorite director. Shakespeare In Love was a very good movie. It had a great script, good acting and a pretty good premise. Does that make it Oscar material? Nope. It's good, but it's not that good. When it's all said and done, it's just a romantic comedy. It just happens to have a famous character who could write a little. It also happens to be somewhat of an art film. It's also written by one of the greatest Shakespearean writers of all time, Tom Stoppard. That makes it a great movie, but not an Oscar-worthy movie. After all, Ronzencrantz And Gildenstern Are Dead was written by him, too. The Thin Red Line is also a very good film. It's the most poetic war film I think I've ever seen. After seeing it I felt like I had been in a two and a half hour poetry reading. Lots of voice-overs that told us what the characters (read: director Terrence Malick) were thinking. Really, the characters didn't matter. All that mattered was the scenery and Malick's thoughts. That's not really a bad thing, as it made a great movie that told us about the atrocities of war in an intelligent way. Is it better than Saving Private Ryan? No. Is it as good as Saving Private Ryan? No. But it is a little bit better than Shakespeare In Love, which makes it still a good movie, but not quite Oscar-worthy. That's not taking anything away from these two films. Lots of great films weren't good enough for Oscar. No, this one is getting it because it's Malick's first film in twenty years. He's a legend in his own time for giving up on the industry that made him. That's fine. Nothing wrong with that. Basically, he made the money off of Badlands and Days Of Heaven back in the 70s and decided that the movies were getting bloated, so he quit making movies. Now, after being thoroughly begged, he's back in the director's chair and they want to award him for it. Yes, he revolutionized (sort of) film making, but this film didn't really. BEST DIRECTOR: ROBERTO BEGNINI--LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL JOHN MADDEN--SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE TERRENCE MALICK--THE THIN RED LINE STEVEN SPIELBERG--SAVING PRIVATE RYAN PETER WEIR--THE TRUMAN SHOW We all know that the best director winner almost always wins best picture, too. Not always, but it's pretty much a shoe-in. And there's always a dark horse in the running. One director who's movie isn't in the Best Picture line-up. Of course there's one this year. And at least he deserves it. Roberto Begnini and Steven Spielberg are the main runners here. Of course, as I said before, Spielberg is my favorite director and I have no doubt that he'll win. Both of these guys, though, are in the right place. Terrence Malick probably also belongs here. This doesn't exactly go along with what I said about his film, but he did a great job with The Thin Red Line. The direction was pretty amazing. It's the rest of it that doesn't quite add up. But I went over that before. no need to belabor already boring points. John Madden. I didn't even know the guy directed. How can a football announcer direct! Ok, enough bad jokes. He did a very good job, too. Maybe he deserves the nomination, maybe he doesn't. This one's borderline. And like Madonna, it's hard to tell either way. (Huh?) Peter Weir gets one of the three nominations for The Truman Show. He definitely deserves the nomination. This movie was awesome and he directed a straight-out physical comedian through the best performance of his career. Without Weir and this movie, Jim Carrey would still be just another rubberfaced, live-action cartoon, although he's one of the best. (And there are so many of them out there.) That's no small feat. Of course, Weir also directed Harrison Ford in the movie that made him an actor (Witness) and the movie that made Robin Williams a real contender (Dead Poets' Society). Maybe not enough to win him Best Director, but enough to get a nomination. But where is Sam Raimi for A Simple Plan? Think of the change that this guy went through from Army Of Darkness and The Quick And The Dead to the amazingly subdued drama of this film. Not to mention putting Billy Bob Thornton in one of the best performances of his career. And what about Warren Beatty for Bulworth? This guy has been trying to get this movie made for a couple of years and he finally got it. Ok, maybe that's not enough to nominate him, but I just thought I'd mention him. He deserves a mention. BEST ACTOR: ROBERTO BEGNINI--LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL TOM HANKS--SAVING PRIVATE RYAN IAN MCKELLEN--GODS AND MONSTERS NICK NOLTE--AFFLICTION EDWARD NORTON--AMERICAN HISTORY X At least three great performances here. (Well, ok, four, but one doesn't really rank up here IMHO.) Begnini gets his triple threat here. Best Picture, Director AND Actor. Not many have done that before. Woody Allen for Annie Hall is the only one that comes immediately to mind. He was amazing in his film. He brought pain and laughter all in one scene. He works well with himself. Tom Hanks gets yet another nomination. It's his fourth nomination and could be his third win. I doubt it, though. He did a great job, but there were better performances this year. Gotta love Tom, though. He the All-American Boy for the 90s, but I think this is more of a nomination for the movie than the actor. Ian McKellen was awesome as classic Frankenstein director James Whale. He, like Begnini, brings laughter and heartbreak together in a way rarely seen in acting today. An amazing performance from an always amazing actor. Not bad ones from Brendan Fraser and Lynn Redgrave, either. Wouldn't give ol' Brendan a nom, though. I haven't seen Affliction and it doesn't really appeal to me. I heard that it wasn't all that great. Didn't hear too much about Nolte, though, so he could be great. He certainly was better than expected in The Thin Red Line...even if he was doing a John Wayne impression. Edward Norton is my pick for this category. This had to be the biggest stretch of the year except for maybe Jim Carrey. Weenie little Edward Norton plays a buffed up neo-Nazi in one of the most frightening performances in years. He plays him in all stages of his development: from skinny little high school kid to evil-hearted bastard to ex-Nazi nice guy. If he doesn't win this one I think I'll give up a lot of my already tattered faith in the Academy. He actually scared the hell out of me. Norton is always great (check out Primal Fear, Rounders and The People Vs. Larry Flynt--even in Everybody Says I Love You he did a great Woody Allen impression), but this performance put him into the category of people like De Niro, Pacino and Hoffman. Seriously. The movie was very good, too, but he was better. While we're here, where the hell is Jim Carrey? He won the Golden Globe and he's not good enough for Oscar? I don't necessarily want him to win because of Edward Norton, but he could have at least gotten a nomination. That would have been cool. BEST ACTRESS: CATE BLANCHETT--ELIZABETH FERNANDA MONTENEGRO--CENTRAL STATION GWYNETH PALTROW--SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE MERYL STREEP--ONE TRUE THING EMILY WATSON--HILLARY AND JACKIE Ok, I'm not exactly qualified to make any picks in this category. I've only seen one of these movies and I didn't think it deserved to be in the running. Gwyneth was great, but she's always great (pretty much). She did a good job in Sliding Doors, too. Actually, I think I was more impressed with that than I was with this performance. Here she just speaks in Shakespeare-ese and gets a little rebellious. In Sliding Doors she's playing the same woman in two different realities. Both versions of the woman are slightly different in very subtle ways. The movie wasn't quite as good as she was, though, so maybe they just kind of glossed over that performance. I'm going to have to go for Cate Blanchett, though. From what I hear, she's amazing in Elizabeth. Not to say that the other three weren't, but I really haven't heard anything about them. Streep is always great, but she's in a pretty run-of-the-mill weeper. Emily Watson is a virtual newcomer, but she plays a disabled woman, so she may have a leg up--so to speak. Fernanda Montenegro I've seen in plenty of previews, but not the film. It looks very good, but I'm kind of sick of hearing about it. No word on her performance, though. Funny. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: JAMES COBURN--AFFLICTION ROBERT DUVALL--A CIVIL ACTION ED HARRIS--THE TRUMAN SHOW GEOFFREY RUSH--SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE BILLY BOB THORNTON--A SIMPLE PLAN I've seen three of these and I thought all three were great performances. I didn't see Affliction (see Nick Nolte's entry under Best Actor) or A Civil Action. Duvall was probably great. He usually is. Coburn was probably really good, too. As long as he wasn't nominated for his stupid performance in Payback (which was actually released this year, so I guess it's out of the running). That whole character was terrible. Ed Harris was very God-like as Cristoff in The Truman Show. I was scared of him yet somehow drawn to him. How could one man have this much power? Was he like this before he bought Truman or did it come with the power? Not many chances to answer these questions, but his performance makes us ask them. A friend of mine (who is an actor, so he has some authority) thought Harris was terrible. I don't agree at all (obviously), but the character was pretty unrealistic. The only people this close to God are doctors. And some of them do act like this. Geoffrey Rush was very funny as a harried and sort of greedy manager of the theatre that owned Billy Shakespeare. Not as amazing as his performance in Shine, but still very good. I hated him and then felt for him. (Lots of those this year.) I could have almost seen Robin Williams in the role, though (and I think I have). Billy Bob is my pick. He was so heartbreaking as the dimwitted brother to Bill Paxton's smarter small town guy. He remains stupid throughout the film until he finally sees the light. Then his fate becomes clear and we go right along with him. Great performance from a guy who's full of them lately. Ever since Sling Blade (and actually before that--check out One False Move) we've been watching this guy try to rise above the white-trash mark. Funny how his best characters seem to be stuck in that mode. By the way, where the hell is Bill Murray for Rushmore? He was awesome in that one. Billy Bob would still win (in my mind, anyway), but it's always nice to be mentioned. Bill showed some real depth in his role. Pretty big stretch from Kingpin and Ed Wood (great performances in and of themselves). He had me feeling sorry for a jerk. That's pretty damn good. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: KATHY BATES--PRIMARY COLORS BRENDA BLETHYN--LITTLE VOICE JUDI DENCH--SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE RACHEL GRIFFITHS--HILARY AND JACKIE LYNN REDGRAVE--GODS AND MONSTERS Kathy Bates would probably be my pick here. She was awesome as a political adviser who can't quite seem to control her candidate's pants. They just keep coming down every time a picture is taken. Her character took us from the strongest of women to the lowest of fates. (Did that make sense? Who cares? It's late.) Didn't see Little Voice, although I do want to. I heard it wasn't too good except for Blethyn and Jane Horrocks (the title character actress). Still sounds like a good story, though. Judi Dench was great in what almost amounts to a cameo. Eight minutes does not a supporting character make. She plays Queen Elizabeth in her later years to Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth in her younger years. (Man. We got the whole life of the woman this year.) She had about as much screen time in the last James Bond movie. She was very good, though. I believed her. I guess this just goes along with Anthony Hopkins' Best Actor award for Silence Of The Lambs. Twenty minutes there. Supporting role in the lead actor category. Huh? Didn't see Hilary And Jackie, either. Not a lot of interest there, but I do like Emily Watson. She was awesome in Breaking The Waves. Lynn Redgrave was great as a caring but disapproving house keeper to Ian McKellen's openly gay James Whale. His "sins of the flesh" drive her crazy, but she loves the guy. What are you gonna do? The problem with this role was that it was bordering on stereotype. Not quite there, but close. Still a very good performance, though. Glad to see her here. CINEMATOGRAPHY: REMI ADEFARASIN--ELIZABETH RICHARD GREATREX--SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE CONRAD L. HALL--A CIVIL ACTION JANUSZ KAMINSKI--SAVING PRIVATE RYAN JOHN TOLL--THE THIN RED LINE This is a tough one. I didn't see Elizabeth or A Civil Action, so I have no comment there. But the cinematography in Elizabeth looks great. Shakespeare In Love. Huh? Why is that in here? I think they just kind of got a little happy with the nominations. "We need one more for Cinematography. What should we do?" "How's about Shakespeare?" "You got it! It's the big nominee this year. Let's make it bigger!" Good photography, but nothing too special. It's just a romantic comedy, guys! Watch it again! This is the tough part. Which war movie to give it to. SPR was an amazing attempt to get us right in the action. The camera work was frighteningly real. I thought I was going to get shot. TRL was also amazing. The scenery was beautiful and the camera seemed to capture every bit of it. The horrors of war put against this backdrop was jarring. If I had to decide, though, I would probably have to go with SPR. Sorry, Terrence. You're not doing too well this year. EDITING: LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL OUT OF SIGHT SAVING PRIVATE RYAN SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE THE THIN RED LINE Wow! I've actually seen all of these! I'm tempted to give this one to Out Of Sight just so people will see it, but there's a better one to give it. I'll have to go with SPR again. Go figure. VISUAL EFFECTS: ARMAGEDDON MIGHTY JOE YOUNG WHAT DREAMS MAY COME This is always a hard one. They'll usually put some movie that no critic liked (Armageddon) along with something they all loved...well, maybe not this year. Where's Private Ryan? Armageddon looked kind of weird every once in a while, so I won't give it to that one. Although it is interesting that one of Siskel & Ebert's worst movies of the year is up for four Oscars. Go figure. It wasn't that bad. Mighty Joe Young, even though I didn't bother to see it, looked like it had some amazing effects. That monkey looked awesome! I remember when they said that they couldn't do hair with CGI. Now look at 'em go. I'll go with What Dreams May Come. The painted afterlife was amazing. I'll go for that every time. SOUND: ARMAGEDDON THE MASK OF ZORRO SAVING PRIVATE RYAN SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE THE THIN RED LINE Gonna have to go with SPR again here. Armageddon was just loud. Good sound and all, but the volume was the best special effect. Mask of Zorro? I don't even remember. Of course I saw it on video, so that didn't help. Shakespeare In Love? Huh? Here we go again. What's it doing here? The Thin Red Line was cool, but there wasn't much going on with the sound. It was just kind of there. A couple of bullets whizzing by, but not much else. SOUND EFFECTS EDITING: ARMAGEDDON THE MASK OF ZORRO SAVING PRIVATE RYAN Once again, SPR. The sound effects shook me all the way. I was ducking bullets. That's how real it was. Not much more of a compliment is necessary. BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: CENTRAL STATION--BRAZIL CHILDREN OF HEAVEN--IRAN THE GRANDFATHER--SPAIN LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL--ITALY TANGO--ARGENTINA Ok, I only saw one of these, but what's it doing here and in Best Picture? Give someone else a chance! Life Is Beautiful will win this one. It better, anyway. I can't imagine that any of the others were as good or thought provoking. If it wins Best Picture (yeah, right) I'll go for Central Station. Whatever. SCREENPLAY (ORIGINAL): WARREN BEATTY AND JEREMY PIKSER--BULWORTH ROBERTO BENIGNI AND VINCENZO CERAMI--LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL ANDREW NICCOL--THE TRUMAN SHOW MARE NORMAN AND TOM STOPPARD--SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE ROBERT RODAT--SAVING PRIVATE RYAN I'll go with Bulworth on this one. LIB, TS and SPR had good scripts (and so did SIL), but Bulworth needs the Citizen Kane award here. SCREENPLAY (ADAPTED): BILL CONDON--GODS AND MONSTERS SCOTT FRANK--OUT OF SIGHT TERRENCE MALICK--THE THIN RED LINE ELAINE MAY--PRIMARY COLORS SCOTT B. SMITH--A SIMPLE PLAN They really use these two Screenplay categories to give everybody a nomination that they totally forgot about in the Best Picture category. Go figure. I would have to go with Out Of Sight here. GAM, PC and ASP were great, but not as quick. TRL was more of an original screenplay than an adaptation most likely. I think Malick put more of himself in there than James Jones put of himself in the book. So it's Out Of Sight with flying colors. Awesome script. ORIGINAL MUSICAL OR COMEDY SCORE: A BUG'S LIFE--RANDY NEWMAN MULAN--MATTHEW WILDER/DAVID ZIPPEL/JERRY GOLDSMITH PATCH ADAMS--MARC SHAIMAN THE PRINCE OF EGYPT--STEPHEN SCHWARTZ/HANS ZIMMER SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE--STEPHEN WARBECK You know, Patch Adams struck me as more of a drama from the previews. (I didn't see the movie. And I call myself a Robin fan. Puh!) Anyway, I'll have to go with Mulan for this one. Of course I only saw two of these nominees. A Bug's Life, though? Come on. I heard that the movie really wasn't that memorable. ORIGINAL DRAMATIC SCORE: ELIZABETH--DAVID HIRSCHFELDER PLEASANTVILLE--RANDY NEWMAN LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL--NICOLA PIOVANI SAVING PRIVATE RYAN--JOHN WILLIAMS THE THIN RED LINE--HANS ZIMMER Hmmmm. What to do, what to do? I'll go with Pleasantville just because I really liked the movie and thought that it would have been nominated somewhere else, too. All of the scores were good, though. (Didn't see Elizabeth, of course.) Maybe John Williams will get it....again. MAKEUP: ELIZABETH SAVING PRIVATE RYAN SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE Once again, I'll have to go with SPR. Amazing death make-up here. I bet one of the Elizabethan ones will get it, though. COSTUME DESIGN: BELOVED ELIZABETH PLEASANTVILLE SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE VELVET GOLDMINE What's that last one doing on here? All they had to do was go to the local Goodwill. Not much challenge there. No, this will go to Elizabeth. No contest. (Can you tell I'm getting tired? My explanations are getting shorter and shorter. Soon it will only be the title of the winner.) ART DIRECTION: ELIZABETH PLEASANTVILLE SAVING PRIVATE RYAN SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE WHAT DREAMS MAY COME As much as I love SPR, I'm going to have to go with WDMC here. The sets and everything were too beautiful to pass up. Although, SPR was amazing in this aspect, too. It'll probably go to Elizabeth, though. Go figure. ORIGINAL SONG: I DON'T WANT TO MISS A THING--DIANE WARREN--ARMAGEDDON THE PRAYER--DAVID FOSTER/CAROLE BAYER SAGER/TOO MANY--QUEST FOR CAMELOT A SOFT PLACE TO FALL--ALLISON MOORER/GWIL OWEN--THE HORSE WHISPERER THAT'LL DO--RANDY NEWMAN--BABE: PIG IN THE CITY WHEN YOU BELIEVE--STEPHEN SCHWARTZ--THE PRINCE OF EGYPT Maybe I don't listen to the right radio stations, but I've only heard one of these songs, and I can't believe that one's up for an Oscar. When was the last time Aerosmith was up for anything?!?! They used to be a great rock band. Now they're doing movie music. Quest For Camelot? Does anyone remember this movie? A Soft Place To Fall? It's written by someone named Gwil. I don't think so. That'll Do? What's Randy Newman doing writing songs for bad sequels to so-so movies? He used to be so cool! Now he's Movie Music Guy! What happened?!?! When You Believe? Does anyone remember Prince Of Egypt and its three soundtracks? No one bought them, I know that. Don't know who to pick here. I guess the Armageddon song. I just wish that I could get the picture of Ben, Liv and the animal crackers out of my head. (shudder!) It's not a bad song, but I've heard it way too much. Every five minutes it's on the radio and every two minutes it's on our trailer at work. WHY, GOD?!?! WHYYYYYY!?!?!?!?!?! So, those are my picks on the big ones. I skipped stuff like Documentary and Shorts just because, does anyone really remember those next year? I guess the winners do...maybe. I remember Nick Park just because he's won so many of them and it's plastered all over his cover boxes. I'll see if I'm wrong on any of these in a couple of weeks. If I'm not working I might even try something new with the broadcast. Nothing revolutionary or anything, but something new. Good luck, Steve!

Gene Siskel January 26, 1946-February 20, 1999

admin — Sun, 28 Feb 1999 18:00:00 +0000

And we all thought Ebert would go first. Ok, now that the tasteless joke that everyone has used is out of the way, let's get on with my rather paltry attempt at a tribute to one half of the most important critical duo of all time. As a movie lover, I've been watching this guy for years. When I heard that he had died last Saturday I felt it a little deeper than I thought I would have. I took him and his partner, Roger Ebert, more seriously than most critics. Of course, that's not saying a whole lot. The pairing of these two guys, though, was an inspired one. They kind of looked like Jack Sprat and his wife. Total opposites in looks and, sometimes, tastes. They would argue over the most minute details of movies, but there was something lying under the fights that told us that they were really good friends. After all, who hasn't had a discussion like that with their best friend? I know I have them all the time. I think my best friend is deranged when he doesn't like a movie that I thought was brilliant. (This is one reason that I think we would be great on a review show. Anybody got a station they want to fill up?) Siskel and Ebert started out as rival reporters for the two big papers in Chicago, the Tribune and the Sun-Times. They were pretty fierce rivals, too. In fact, Siskel was pretty unscrupulous in his tactics. He once fell asleep under a table at the tv station they worked at. When he woke up he overheard Ebert talking on the phone and stole the story from him. When they were offered a show together they didn't want to do it. They hated each other. That was 1975 and the show was Opening Soon. A year later it became Sneak Previews and they were still not really speaking outside of work. At some point they started using Spot, The Wonder Dog to show the "dog of the week." Soon, though, in 1982 they would change the title to At The Movies and they were already friends and they replace Spot with a skunk. In 1986 it became Siskel And Ebert At The Movies and they dropped the animal act. Probably a good idea. This is also when they brought aboard the infamous "thumbs up/thumbs down" icon. The show was nationwide and and broadcast television. Soon they would become two of the most important people in Hollywood without actually living there. Siskel and Ebert would go on for minutes (and probably could go on for hours if it wasn't just a thirty minute show) about how stupid the other one was. There was a clip on tonight's tribute show where Ebert gave Cop And A Half (!) a thumbs up. Now, that's the movie with Burt Reynolds as a cop who has to take care of a precocious little kid. Yeah. That's gotta be good. Ebert said that it had a connection between an adult and a kid that he missed in movies like Home Alone 2. Siskel looked at his friend and said, "Where's you red hat and beard, Santa? You just gave them a great big gift." It was repartee like this that kept the show going for over twenty years. They even got personal a few times, as only good friends can. The great thing about these two is that they have a sense of humor about themselves. They showed up on Late Night With David Letterman and The Tonight Show back when Johnny Carson was the master of late night. They took their act with them, often arguing about movies or just life in general. They would also have fun with parodying their own image. Their one appearance on a non-talk tv show was on The Critic. The episode featured the duo breaking up and getting back together on the Empire States Building. Their review of Sleepless In Seattle brought them back to each other. And then, of course, there was their duet. Awesome. They somehow kept themselves from being annoying, too. That's an important feature when it comes to tv personalities. One the Bob Saget and Gene Shalit could use a lesson on. First off, don't laugh so much at your own lame jokes. Second, don't rhyme every stupid line. Third, don't make stupid faces unless you're going for the Jim Carrey thing. There's a way to do it without making yourself into a fool. You have to learn the art of Foole. (Note the semi-silent e.) I had always thought of Ebert as the less pompous one. He was actually my favorite of the two. I don't really know that I agreed with him more, but he always had the connections between the older flicks and the ones that he was reviewing. He also wrote Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, which gives him a great big thumbs up in my book. But Siskel was really the more fun-loving. Watching movies made him feel like a kid. And that's what we all want from them, really. We want them to make us feel good. We want them to make us think We want them to entertain us and even change us in some way, and every time Siskel found one that did that he brought that feeling to us. He explained it to us in clear terms that almost gave us the same feelings that he had. He really cared about movies and he loved reviewing them. By doing it he was doing his part for the rest of the world and for himself. After his initial surgery he came back to the show, at first over the phone, and then in person. Not many people would do that. They would just quit for a while. He had to come back, though. He had to give his opinions and tell people what movies amazed him and frustrated him this week. I can definitely see why he had to come back. There's no telling if I would have done the same thing and I hope I never have to find out. (Big ol' knock on wood.) He also cared about basketball, which I don't really agree with him on. He was just about as passionate about the game as he was about movies. He became an expert as soon as he learned to like it. He went to every Bulls game he could, and, in fact, made his first public appearance after his surgery at one of their games. That's dedication. He hung out in the locker room with the players, interviewed them and became "one of the guys." That's pretty good for a movie critic. (Not quite as impressive as his interview with President Clinton, though. Wow! How did that happen?) All of this makes me sound as if I think I knew the man. Well, no. It's all gotten from other sources. Yes, I plagiarize, but I figure that the two of you who read my pages would maybe read it here first. Yeah right. It's hard to think of one of them without the other. I guess we'll have to from now on. The show will go on. Ebert will stay, but others will come and go for a while. I didn't see the last one with a replacement, but I heard that it didn't have the same feeling to it. I wonder how long it will last without that chemistry. That would really make the whole thing stranger. Ebert will even have left us in a different, less permanent way.

SXSW99-Desert Blue/Mating Habits Of The Earthbound Human

admin — Fri, 12 Mar 1999 18:00:00 +0000

Well, it's that time of year again. Time to take off some time from work and work in a different world. The world of agents and filmmakers. The world of "go forward" and "move ahead." The world of the South By South West Film Festival. Now, granted, there is more to SXSW than just movies. There's also music and interactive stuff going on, but I don't know much about computers (more than some, much less than others) or local/upcoming music (most people will say I don't know anything about music when they look at my CD collection). So I won't say anything about those festivals. I mainly care about the movies. Today's opening day screenings were pretty good starts. Desert Blue is the new film from Morgan J. Freeman (director of Hurricane Streets--not to be confused with his J-less counterpart who starred in Seven and Deep Impact). It's a small town ensemble piece about a truck wreck. Brendan Sexton III (Welcome To The Dollhouse) is Blue, a young man whose father made their ultra-small town what it is today (not much) by building a huge ice cream cone in the middle of the desert. While he was trying to build a water park, he was killed in a hotel fire. Blue and his friends basically fill their days by hanging out, drinking beer and playing Galaga (which seems to be broken because the enemies fly right through the player's ship--anyone who plays Galaga knows that this is way wrong). There's Cale (Ethan Suplee from American History X and Kevin Smith's three post-Clerks movies--remember the guy staring at the stereogram?), a way overweight/dumb dude, Haley (Isidra Vega), an Indian girl who is secretly in love with Cale (?!?!), Pete (Casey Affleck), a four-wheeler racer whose race is bigger than his brain, and Ely (Christina Ricci), a pyromaniac with a heart of gold. One day, Skye (Kate Hudson from 200 Cigarettes and Goldie Hawn's daughter--just as good looking, too) and her father (John Heard) come to town from L.A. Skye is an actress and can't wait to get away from her father's field work (he studies roadside attractions) and get back to her power meetings and sitcom work. Soon, though, she has to learn to like the town for a while. While everyone is busy talking to Skye's dad, a truck going to the local Empire Cola factory overturns. The driver escapes with minor injuries but mysteriously dies. Enter the FBI and Michael Ironside. They quarantine the town and Sandy (Sara Gilbert) starts trying to figure out what's going on. No one is saying anything. After a while, of course, Skye finds a reason to want to stay longer--Blue. I remember a little movie that premiered here last year about a small town. Dancer, TX Pop. 81 was one of the best small town slice-of-life movies I've seen in a long time. Desert Blue doesn't quite live up to that one, but it's pretty good. The characters were real and well acted. The situation was maybe a little over the top, but still interesting. The dialogue was great in some cases. The direction was pretty good. Nothing wrong with it, really at all. It was a lot of fun to watch these kids work with each other. The love story may have been a little trite, but it still worked (much better than some big-budget asteroid/comet movies of late). Morgan J. Freeman was at the screening along with Brendan, Sara, Ethan and Isidra. Christina was supposed to be there, but she supposedly got caught up in England. (Truth? Who knows.) Morgan seemed like a nice enough guy, but he didn't really seem like he was all there. He reminded me a lot of Crispin Glover. Scary. Sara looked like a typical black wearing freak chick, but I still think she's really cool. She looked bored to death to be there. Or maybe she was just thinking, "Please don't ask me about 'Rosanne'!" Brendan seemed a little smarter than he seems on screen, but still just a big dork. Really, he's not that good. Why is he getting all these parts? There was a group of girls who screamed when he came out on stage before the movie. I don't understand that, either. He looks like a guy we all would have made fun of in high school. And this was the "cool guy" in Welcome To The Dollhouse. I dunno. He didn't do too badly in this one, though. And he's been in three things directed by Freeman, so there must be something there. They said that, even though it was filmed in the desert, it was really cold the whole time. The average temperature was something like 5. There was at least one scene that you could really tell it was cold. Watch Kate. (Heh-heh-heh.) The weather (and budget constraints) made them cut out a water fight, too. Oh well. Also, apparently Michael Ironside is a Canadian angel! Morgan said that he was as unlike his characters as you can get. The second movie I saw was really cool. (Not that Desert Blue wasn't, but this one was funnier.) Mating Habits Of The Earthbound Human is a documentary about men and women on Earth. It was made by aliens. Well, ok, it's a movie done in a documentary style as if it were made by aliens about human beings and the way we procreate. MacKenzie Astin (Dream For An Insomniac, "Facts Of Life" and let's not forget Garbage Pail Kids-The Movie) and Carmen Electra (I think we all know who she is) are a typical couple who meet at a night club and go through every aspect of a relationship on alien cameras. They, of course, don't know that they're being watched. David Hyde Pierce ("Frasier") is the alien narrator who sounds like he's been watching a lot of Mutual of Omaha shows. This couple really do go through everything, from meeting, to living together to meeting the family to...well, see the movie. And, yes, MacKenzie does spend most of the movie saying things like, "What does she see in me? She's perfect! Look at me!" The narration is what really makes this movie. It shows little things that we wouldn't notice in our relationships and makes them into ridiculous rituals. There's a part that really reminded me of Swingers where MacKenzie is talking to his best friend after he's met Carmen. He wonders when he should call her and his friend says something like, "Wait a few days. At least five. Then you make her seem like your not really interested. You're just calling because you found her number. Whatever you do, don't act interested." To this, David says, "Do not adjust your translation controls. This is what was actually said. We don't understand it, either." Then there are films intercut with the film. When the couple have sex (yes, you do get to see a lot of side views of Carman naked), there are short films of men wearing white body suits and swim caps running on a track. On their backs they have tags that say x and y. They demonstrate what it looks like when sperm hit the condom. Then there's Sperminator: Protector of the Uterus. Awesome. I really do think that the writer-director (Jeff Abugov who worked on "Cheers" and "Grace Under Fire") is from another planet. His insights into how these people would see us were perfect. Not only that, but he found one of the most beautiful women in the world to play the female here. I don't care if she is Mrs. Dennis Rodman (Ack!), she's amazing. She's not a bad actress, either. She had me believing that she was innocent. That's pretty damn good. Anyway, both movies were very good. I would recommend seeing them as soon as they get wide release. Desert Blue is coming out in June. I'm not sure when Mating Habits is coming out, but it may be a direct to video thing. Look for it either way.

SXSW 1999--Best, Texas Grocery/Spider Baby (1964)/Standing On Fishes

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 1999 18:00:00 +0000

We're still in the midst of South By Southwest here in Austin, so I'm still seeing lots and lots of movies. Not as many as I would like since I have to work all the time, but more than I would if I weren't working, so I guess it's a fair cop. The first flick I saw today after a long work day (whine, whine) was Best, Texas Grocery. As I said in my last review for Desert Blue, I remember seeing a smallish Texas film about a small town last year. That movie was Dancer, TX Pop. 81, one of the best representations of small town life I've seen in a long time. Desert Blue wasn't bad, either. Best, TX was made by U.T. students, so I really wanted it to be good. It wasn't. This was actually one of the worst movies I've seen at the festival either year. It's about an old man who runs a grocery store in Best, Tx. Don't look for it on a map because I think he and his wife may be the only people there. There is, however, a question on whether there are one or two people living there. You see, she keeps popping up alive and dead throughout the whole movie. We never really know what the reality is. The main character seems to be senile and is seeing things and making up his own life. When two young men come into his life and rob his store (for $12) he finally has to start facing facts. But he doesn't. He just keeps jumping from reality to fantasy, but what is the fantasy? Are these guys real? Is the old man real? Is his wife rotting in their bedroom? Is she killing snakes under the house? What the hell is going on here?!?! I don't know. I couldn't figure it out. Even it's "And you were there" ending didn't help. (You will probably never see this movie since it's a student project. Don't worry about seeing it. You really don't want to.) Basically, the whole thing is put together like a Tarantino film without any good dialogue or acting. And it all ends (sort of) with the prerequisite bloodbath. The short they showed before the full-length (all 70mins. of it. Does that count as full-length anymore?) was pretty good, though. It was called Unstable Chemicals and was about four kids in high school who want to hang out after the Friday night football game. The girls have to sneak out of the house and the boys have to steal one of their parents' cars. One couple gets drunk and the other just sits around and looks at stars. It was pretty true to life until the end. The kids played off all of the nervousness that kids show when they're trying so hard to act cool. Then one of the girls' fathers finds out and it goes a little over the top. It was, however, pretty cool to see my high school on the big screen! Yes, someone used Westlake High School in their short. Woohoo!! We're in print! (Stop it! You haven't been there in six years. What are you so excited about?) The second movie was a classic of weirdo flicks. Jack Hill, who directed some of the big exploitation flicks of the 70's (Foxy Brown, Coffy, Switchblade Sisters, Swinging Cheerleaders), is one of Quentin Tarantino's gods. Just watch Jackie Brown again. Where do you think he got Pam Grier from? Anyway, Spider Baby is about a strange family, headed by none other than Mr. Wolfman, Lon Chaney, Jr. (There's even a pretty blatant tribute to his old movies in here.) He was the chauffeur for the Marrye clan who all suffer from a degenerative brain disease. The two little girls are murderous demons. One of them likes spiders, so she plays Spider with a mailman in the first few scenes. She saves his ear in a box. Then there's good ole' Sid Haig (a Hill staple) who plays the lustful moron. He basically runs around in his shorts all day making grunting noises and funny faces. He does, however, get to play out his fantasies on one of the women who come to stay. Oh, what about those people? You see, a man and his sister are coming over to take the children away from Lon. They are distant cousins and, since the parents are dead, they have a right to take them. The problem is that Lon is the only one who can control them. He doesn't have much control, but he's got more than anyone else. Then a slimy, Hitler-looking lawyer and his beautiful secretary get into it. Anyway, it's a great horror flick that knows that it's not being taken seriously. It's awesome in its cheesyness. Everything on the screen is intentional. Nothing is serious. Just the way I like 'em. Check for it on video along with some of Hill's other movies. He and Sid were there, by the way. Jack is a very nice man who looks like an English prof. He came out to see us all waiting in line and told us that he hoped that we enjoyed the film. The night before they showed two other of his films (Big Bird Cage and Big Doll House--Tarantino is hosting a retrospective--but he's sick, so he can't really host it. Once again I am kept from meeting the man). I heard that the place was only half full. The guy who was taking care of Jack and Sid was frantic trying to come up with reasons to give them of why there was such a terrible turn out. First off, the theatre they're showing them in sucks. That's one really big reason. The last film for tonight is a small movie called Standing On Fishes starring Bradford Tatum, Meredith Scott Lynn, Jason Priestly (ack!) and Kelsey Grammer. Bradford is a sculptor who is pretty much whoring himself out to movie people making plastic (ah-hem) female sexes. His girlfriend (Meredith) is an out of work actress. Jason is his best friend and partner in his special-effects business. Kelsey is the guy who is hiring him for the special part. The couple are in trouble right from the beginning. They've both had rough days (especially her--her audition was terrible) and they try to console each other in bed. The thing is that she starts to order him around like some Nazi-esque Dr. Ruth. They sort of give up for the night, but things get reconciled. Then his job starts wearing on him and a new girl moves into the room he is renting out. They almost start an affair upon first meeting. Things go downhill from there. This was a pretty good movie. I don't think I liked it as much as some people did, but it was still definitely worth seeing. Jason actually wasn't too bad (between this and Love And Death On Long Island he's won some respect in my book) and Kelsey was hilarious as a freaky yet mellow director as was Pamela Reed as his hairied agent. There was some really good dialogue flying around, but it sometimes went on a little too long. I think the running time (89 mins.) could have been cut down even more. Maybe put some more important stuff in there. Spread out the dialogue scenes a little bit. Break it up some how! Come on. Do we need to see these people droning for this long? Meredith and Bradford, who co-directed (Bradford wrote it), did a pretty good job. Nothing too flashy, but very competent. Some good jump-cuts in the car scenes that didn't make me mad like some of them do. Still it's worth seeing and will probably be coming to a theatre within the next year. It hasn't gotten sold yet, but I think it will. If you do see it, watch for some of the sculptures. They're pretty cool and Bradford did all of them. The short (also directed by Meredith) was pretty good, too. It was called Demo Reel (A Tragedy In 10 Minutes) and was originally done as just that, a demo reel. They were going to use it only to send to agents, but they ended up sending it to festivals. It was about an actress who was trying to get with an agent (Nora Dunn) and kept putting herself into different shows for her reel (Seinfeld and NYPD Blue--which was really funny--were two of them). It was very well made and very funny. Probably funnier than the movie, but the movie was going for dramatics. Success on both films, though.

SXSW 1999--The Adventures Of Sebastian Cole/EdTV

admin — Wed, 17 Mar 1999 18:00:00 +0000

The first of these two flicks I saw yesterday, so it's not really fresh on my mind. Sebastian Cole is a high school kid in 1983 who just wants to be a writer. His parents are divorced, his dad is rich and remarried, his mom is a dysfunctional English woman and his ex-step father is a man who wants to be a woman. He meets a girl just before he leaves with his mom for England when she comes up to him while he's lying on the ground one night. She jumps on him and kisses him claiming that she thought he was someone else. Well, maybe...maybe not. He comes back to America to live with his step-father, er, mother, but things aren't easy. You see, he's a punk kid (back when punk was cool) and his step-dad doesn't like that. He puts all kind of rules on him and generally wants him to be a useful member of society. The whole movie basically boils down to Sebastian having a bunch of adventures that he wants to write about. These adventures involve relationships, family, school, sex, drugs and rock and roll. It doesn't matter what they are just so they make a life. It's a really good movie that shows the 80s in a different light than most of the movies that have come out lately. It takes place just when new wave was really hitting it big, so the music they use is a mixture of Blondie, Flock Of Seagulls and punk bands. Adrian Grenier (Hurricane Streets and Next To You) plays Sebastian with a mixture of dark loneliness and light humor. I can't wait to see where this kid's career goes. He was awesome. Clark Gregg (Usual Suspects, Clear And Present Danger, Spanish Prisoner) has mainly had small parts up until now, but the role of Hank/Henrietta, the transsexual, is his and his alone. I don't think a transsexual has been played this well since John Lithgow in The World According To Garp (which this movie reminds me a lot of). He was harsh but compassionate, and that's not easy to pull off. If this one makes it to theatres (which I'm thinking it will) go see it. It's got a little of everything: comedy, drama, sex...what more could you want? Maybe some good facts. The only problem I had with it was the errors with the transsexual surgery. At one point Henrietta tells Sebastian to get some tampons. Why does he need them? He hasn't gotten the final surgery yet, but even if he had he wouldn't need tampons. Transsexuals can't have babies, nonetheless have periods. Besides that, it's a great movie. One of the best I've seen at SXSW. I just saw EdTV today at the world premiere. Yeah, I know. When I first saw the previews I thought that it was just another Truman Show. I really didn't see much point in it, but I knew I would see it because it's a Ron Howard film and it's got Matthew McConaughey, and you gotta support the local boys. Boy was I surprised! This is one of the funniest movies I've seen in a few months, new or old. Matthew is Ed, a guy who gets his life put on tv 24 hrs a day by a small cable station called True TV. Ellen DeGeneres is Cynthia, the producer of the show, but, of course, the owner of the station, Dr. Whitaker (Rob Reiner in his best role in years) takes all the credit. He's a self-proclaimed genius. Clint Howard (in his biggest role for his brother since Grand Theft Auto) is the director of the show who eats three meals a day in a truck. He's got some monster hair plugs, too. Meanwhile there's Ed's family. Ray (Woody Harrelson), Ed's brother, is not exactly the nicest of guys, but he's got heart somewhere down there. You just have to dig. He's planning on using Ed's celebrity to open up a gym. His girlfriend, Shari (Jenna Elfman) seems to want to pay more attention to Ed. Ed and Ray's mom, Jeanette (Sally Kirkland of Private Benjamin and The Sting) seems to be a little bit insane, but generally ok. She's living with Al (Martin Landau), a crippled man who loves the boys as if they were his own. When asked about his real father, Ed just says, "He ran out on us when I was twelve. I haven't seen him since. That's my dad. Next question." His dad does show up for a couple of scenes (of course after Ed gets famous) and is played by Dennis Hopper! So, they're just a normal, everyday family. They just look crazy when they're on screen. Elizabeth Hurley shows up as a short term fling of Ed's (almost playing herself with the sluttish tendencies turned WAY up--she's an exhibitionist!!) and the two of them have an awesome table scene! One viewer is even shown on the toilet trying to face his tv so that he can watch the scene while in the bathroom. Hmmm. All of the characters were well drawn and believable. The cast was awesome and perfectly matched. After Ransom (which I actually liked--is that so wrong?!) it's good to see Ron back in the right saddle again. It's interesting to see a movie like this. It deals with fame and the pressures it brings on in a way that really cuts close to home, but stays really funny. We can all relate to it, but we still kind of see it through a filter. How would we feel if we were Ed? Would we revel in it or crush under the weight of it all? I think we would do both, just like Ed. The comparisons to Truman Show aren't really fair, either. Truman Show was about a man who didn't know that he was on tv. He was blissfully unaware of a world outside his own. To Truman, he's just another guy in a world built for one. Ed, however, is being paid for his time and knows exactly what's going on. He can even watch himself on tv. (It's pretty funny when he checks out his own butt. Who wouldn't do that when faced with the opportunity?) This film deals more with the fame/fishbowel aspect of the whole thing whereas Truman deals with the escape of the subject. As I said, I saw one of the premieres here in Austin. This was made possible because of a new sound system in the Paramount theatre. Ron didn't really want to premiere it here because of the ancient system we had in the old theatre. But Matthew and Harry Knowles got him to do it if they could get a good one. They usually have to truck a whole system in for premieres (like they did for The Faculty), but Matthew asked Richard Linklater why they did this and how much it would cost if they bought a new permenant one. He said that he would put up a starter donation so that other people would match it. He put in part, Universal Pictures put in part and Ron Howard himself put in part. That's pretty amazing. A director as bit as Ron Howard decided that it was worth his money to renovate the sound system in an old theatre like the Paramount. I already had respect for Ron, but this made it quadruple. This guy really loves film and its history. I hope to see him in Austin again. Ron and almost all of the cast were here to see the movie and talk to us afterwards. We had Matthew (of course), Woody, Ellen, Sally, Martin, Elizabeth (yes! yes! yes!--and she looked awesome...no Hugh, either. What happened?), Clint and Viveka Davis who played Ed's sister. This was one of the best Q&A sessions I've ever been to. They all seemed to be having a lot of fun, even with some of the stupid questions. One lady asked if Ron could tell her what the last line of Backdraft was because she couldn't understand the tape. Lady, look on the internet! I'm sure the script is there somewhere! Then, another lady asked if there was any way that she could find out if Matthew was as good of a kisser as she had heard. She got to find out when Woody motioned for her to come on stage. Then, of course, some guy started his question out with, "I heard that Elizabeth was a really good kisser..." Matthew picked up his mike and said, "She is. She is. She is. She is." The high point of the session, though, was the Chicken Dance. In the movie Ed and Ray have a dance that they do when they're happy about something. It's called the Chicken Dance because, well, they look like chickens. Woody and Matthew actually did it onstage. How awesome is that? These guys have no reservations about making themselves look like idiots in front of a real audience. I love that! Ron talked about the casting (he read the script and immediately thought of Martin Landau for Al) and how he puts his brother in all of his movies. He's not in all of them, though, and apparently he took a lot of crap (his words) for not putting him in Ransom. Maybe that's why everyone hated it. No Clint bit. Clint's one of those guys who, no matter how bad the movie is, he's still cool. Why, I bet he's even cool in The Ice Cream Man. Well, I guess that's all the gloating I'll do. The movie was awesome. The Q&A was fun. It was a good time had by all. Go see EdTV when it comes out on the 19th.

SXSW 1999--Clutch/A Walk On The Moon

admin — Thu, 18 Mar 1999 18:00:00 +0000

So I saw these yesterday, but didn't have any time to write the reviews. These may be short. (Yeah. Whatever. Shut up and write your long winded review.) The first flick is Clutch, a low budget suspense comedy with a lot of characters that all come together for some reason or another. The main character is a thief who steals antique books for a living...right now. He's in someone's house when he gets caught and accidentally kills the owner of the book with a coat hook. Oops. Then, when he's trying to get the book to the guy he stole it for, his car breaks down. He goes to a mechanic and she lets him borrow a bike. Then he tries to call the woman he stole the book for and...well, it's too long to explain. Basically, his brother and his brother's intern (or whatever) get involved along with the mechanic and some guys who look like the Men In Black. This is a very strange movie that has as many twists and turns as a typical Tarantino flick. It's also Canadian, so it has that really weird humor that no one really gets. (If you think I'm wrong, just watch Strange Brew.) It also has a lot of dark humor that everyone gets and everyone likes. (At some point someone is threatened with becoming someone else's "personal zombie slave.") It was a really good movie. I really suggest you go see it if it gets a wide release. Also, if you're a Tom Green fan, he has a really funny cameo as a "Computer Gimp." I've only seen about a minute of his show, but this cameo was better. The only thing wrong with this movie was that it was kind of confusing (especially if you're so exhausted from running around for a week and are falling asleep even during the best movies) and there was a BOOM MIKE IN THE SHOT!!!! I swear this is the SXSW Year Of The Boom Mike. Mating Habit Of The Earthbound Human and Best, Texas Grocery both also had them. Can these people not get their frames right? Oh well. A small price to pay for a good movie. The second movie was a little slower, but still good. A Walk On The Moon is about a Jewish family in 1969 who go to a lake resort every summer. This summer Woodstock is going on right next door pretty much and the teen aged girl, Alison (Anna Paquin--The Piano), wants to go. She also has found her first boyfriend and a lot of other trouble to get into. Mom, Pearl (Diane Lane--The Outsiders, Jack), has found bigger stuff to get in trouble with. She's happily married to Marty (Liev Schreiber--Scream, Daytrippers), but they've gotten too comfortable. Especially with the sex. His idea of something new is putting on his son's cowboy hat and toy gun holster. Pearl's idea is to have an affair with the traveling blouse salesman, Walker (Viggo Mortensen--A Perfect Murder, The Passion Of Darkly Noon). This, of course, leads to quite a few sex scenes and complications in the family unit. Marty already seems like an outsider because he can't be at the resort all the time. He still has to go home to work at the tv repair shop. It takes him a long time to get to his family when he wants to. Anyone who knows me knows that I'll eat up anything about the 60s. I think that they were the most creative and revolutionary decades of recent times. Everything about them changed something: movies, music, politics, society. This movie shows all of those changes. Mom starts to wear tie-died blouses. Alison starts to experiment with sex (as does her mom). Dad is stuck in the 50s Dad mode, but he tries to break out of it. The performances were pretty good all around. Even Liev was impressive. He didn't play the same character he usually plays. Diane was very good with the New York Jew accent. Everything fell together for me. Good romantic movie. Also, keep an ear open for Julie Kavner's voice. She has some of the best lines of the movie. ("Attention! The knish man is here!") A Walk On The Moon is coming out on April 2nd. Look for it then.

SXSW 1999--Splendor/Go

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 1999 18:00:00 +0000

These are the last two movies that I'll see at SXSW this year. I have to work tomorrow night, so I'll miss out on all of the closing festivities. Well, I can use a night of sleep for a change. The first movie is Splendor, the new Greg Araki flick. Now, I saw The Doom Generation. It was terrible. My vote for the worst movie ever made. There was no good dialogue, no good acting, no good direction, no good anything...except for Rose McGowen's...well. Let's not take that one on. I really didn't want to waste my time with Splendor because I had heard that all of Araki's movies were the same. Badly placed cultural references ("I just wanna go home and listen to my Smiths' tapes!") and profanities that are supposed to sound realistic but just sound retarded. A friend of mine, however, told me that this one was different. It actually had a good story that was well written. Luckily, I agree. (I'm not sure who that's lucky for. I'm sure a bad review from me wouldn't change a damn thing for Araki's future.) Veronica (Kathleen Robertson--90210), Abel (Johnathon Schaech--That Thing You Do!, Doom Generation) and Zed (Matthew Keesler--Last Days Of Disco) are the members of a threesome. Veronica meets Abel first at a club, but then meets Zed, the drummer in the band. She gives Abel her phone number and Zed her body. Well, it all evens out in the end. She can't decide who she loves more, so she decides to love both of them. They can live with it and then they all move in together. Their lives are perfect until an unexpected visitor arrives--a baby. Then there's a third guy, Ernest (Eric Mabius--Welcome To The Dollhouse and the new Crow), a successful director of tv-movies who has his eye on Veronica. He offers her stability whereas Abel and Zed (great alphabetical naming) offer her good sex, but not much in the way of security. I'll stop there. It's a pretty good movie, even if it's not very original. Go back to 1961 to Truffaut's Jules And Jim. Same exact story, only more revolutionary because it was the first. And it's a really good movie. This, however, updates the story pretty well. And it actually has some good dialogue! Sooprize, sooprize, sooprize!!! Oh, it still slips every once in a while, but overall Araki keeps the cultural references to the good opportunities. There's also some pretty good acting. These guys all surprised me. It still had that really weird color thing going that Araki seems to have in all of his movies. He always uses really bright, almost blinding color in his party scenes (and even some that shouldn't be party scenes). It almost looks like he may have watche a Kubrick movie. I doubt it, though. I don't think he's that smart. Of course, it also surprised me that, even though there's a lot of sex going on, they manage to keep Kathleen covered. Amazing. Go was the second film of the day. This is the new one from the director of Swingers, Doug Linman. It's the story of teen aged ravers in the 90s and how their lives intertwine with a drug dealer, three cops, a Vegas strip bar owner and a couple of actors. Most of these people have ever met before this day, but they will all have their lives changed in a really weird turn of events. The movie starts off with Ronna (Sarah Polley--Sweet Hereafter) being very tired after a 14 hour shift at the grocery store. Then Simon (Desmond Askew) gets her to take his shift so he can go to Vegas (Baby!). She takes it so she won't get evicted, but then she's approached by two guys who usually get drugs from Simon. She sees an opportunity and tells them that she'll see what she can do. Drugee friend, Mannie (Nathan Bexton--Nowhere) and sex-starved virgin(?), Claire (Katie Holmes) tag along for the ride. From here on out I really can't tell you anything without giving away too much. All I can say is that Scott Wolf, Jay Mohr, Breckin Meyer (Dancer, TX, Pop. 81) and Timothy Olyphant (Scream 2) all have pretty substantial roles in it. The construction is a lot like Pulp Fiction. (Go figure. Doug Linman doing another Tarantino reference.) It starts out with Ronna's story. Then, after it finishes hers, it starts on Simon's in the same place we started Ronna's segment and go through his trip to Vegas. Then there's Scott and Jay's story. Then Katie's. Then they all come together to finish the complete story. I've always liked movies that do this (not that there are a lot of them...Pulp Fiction, this one and a Spanish film with Salma Heyak called Midaq Alley), but I know that a lot of people don't. If you don't like it or movies about teenagers taking drugs and going to raves, avoid this movie. On the other hand, if you like a good movie that keeps your interest and has a lot of cool characters, go see this one. It's got all the fun of Swingers, just on a bigger scale. He's got a budget this time. And yet he still casts James Duval. What's up with that? The only other problem I had was the Breakfast Club reference. They do it, then they explain it. We all got it the first time. We didn't need Katie to come right out and say it. Did we? Well, I didn't, and neither did the audience I saw it with. Anyway, Go opens on April 9th. Go to your local theatre! Go see it!!! It's awesome!

Full Metal Jacket(1987)/Fear And Desire (1953)

admin — Wed, 31 Mar 1999 18:00:00 +0000

I finally got to see a Kubrick film on the big screen! Two, actually. Well, ok. Two and a half. They were playing these films at the Alamo Drafthouse. For those of you who aren't in Austin (like anyone who doesn't know me reads this), the Alamo is a really cool theatre where you can order real food and beer while watching a movie. They like to show old cult movies and new movies for discount prices. It's one of the most fun places to see a movie here. (Uh, grammar? Huh?) So, anyway, they also play some fun things before the features. When they played Raiders Of The Lost Ark they played one of the funniest Star Wars parodies I've ever seen called Troopers. Tonight they played The Making Of The Shining. Kubrick's wife took her camera around behind the scenes of that movie. You haven't lived until you've seen Nicholson do a Boris Karloff impression. They cut that short (DAMN!) and started Full Metal Jacket. This isn't (imho) Kubrick's best movie. That, of course, doesn't make it bad. It's great. For those of you who have never seen it (who are you?) it's about Vietnam. Private Joker (Matthew Modine) is a semi-sensitive Marine who starts the film as a trainee. His Drill Instructor, GySgt. Hartman (R. Lee Ermey--a real life DI who was also in The Frighteners, Prefontaine, Toy Story and Dead Man Walking), is a sadistic bastard, but that's pretty normal for a DI. Pvt. Leonard (Vincent D'Onofrio in his first big role--and I do mean big, he gained 70 pounds for it) is an overweight trainee who the DI has it in for. After a while, though, Leonard finds his true calling: sharpshooting. (This is all started with a scene that really puts Texas and the Marines in a great light. Lee Harvey Oswald and Charles Whitman both learned to shoot in the Marines and were in Texas when they went off. Thanks for the vote of confidence.) When Leonard meets his fate we start the second part of the movie. Cut to Vietnam. Joker is a journalist for the Stars And Stripes. He doesn't like his current job because there's no action in it. He wants to be on the front lines. One smartass comment gets him sent there. There he meets lots of interesting characters (like the superior who asks him why he has a peace symbol button on his uniform and Born To Kill on his helmet: (I guess it's supposed to be about the duality of man. The Jungian Thing, SIR!) He also meets his old friend, Cowboy (Arliss Howard from The Lost World), who suddenly is ranked higher than Joker. His platoon includes Animal Mother-a crazed man who doesn't lead the women and children too much (Adam Baldwin-the Baldwin who isn't a Baldwin), and Eightball-who apparently isn't too beucoup (Dorian Harewood who mainly seems to be doing voices now). They go on a trek and get sidetracked by a sniper. This is the best sequence of the second part of the movie. It's taught with tension and violence and makes you feel as if you're actually stuck in their positions. (Remember the sniper scene in Saving Private Ryan? Pretty much the same thing. I still liked Private Ryan, though.) While the movie is not perfect it is still very good. The first part is pretty amazing and shows off Kubrick's style. Severe close ups. Three sided action. Long tracking shots. Crazed people. It's awesome. It also has some of the funniest lines in any war movie. Most of them aren't repeatable here, but ask anyone who has seen the movie and they can quote half of the DI's lines. He's great. On the IMDb they say that he never blinks. That's actually not true. He blinked once. The second half isn't quite as good, but is still affecting. We are put into the action and really get a taste of the most unpopular war in history. Still some great Kubrickian moments. And some really weird music from Kubrick's daughter. There are also a couple of really funny prostitutes, and that's worth it's weight in gold. (Remember Cartman in the Cow Days episode of South Park? This is what he's based on.) The final scene, with all of the Marines marching through the burning city singing "The Mickey Mouse Club Theme," is pretty surreal. Very unnerving, too. After the first feature we were treated to part of an early documentary called Flying Padre. It was a pretty good flick about a priest who brought a Mexican community together while getting a lot of flying hours in. They cut this short to show the second and most interesting part of the night. The second feature was Fear And Desire, Kubrick's 1953 first feature. It's about an hour long and involves four men trapped behind enemy lines during WWII. Besides Paul Mazursky I didn't recognize any names involved in this flick. The four guys build a raft to escape, but they constantly get sidetracked. First it's a house full of men eating. Then it's a dog. Then they meet a woman who doesn't speak English. What other horrors can they face? How about a General (played by one of the Americans trapped in the woods. Don't confuse us!!) with guards? After a while Paul Mazursky goes crazy and one of the other guys wants to be a hero. So this is Kubrick's first feature. Wow. There's still some hints of the future genius (close ups, weird voice-overs, strange and crazy characters), but this is so far from even the worst of his later works. The worst thing about this movie is the script. With lines like "There's nothing nicer than a beautiful day behind enemy lines," what can you do? The voice-overs were even worse. There were times that I just couldn't figure out what these people were thinking about. I don't think they knew, either. They definitely weren't thinking about what they were doing. There was quite a bit of bad acting, too. Mazursky had a ways to go before he became the actor/director that we all know. Then there was the fact that Kubrick had no sound equipment. He had to dub the whole movie later. This led to him making sure to show someone else while a character was talking. This caused some interesting confusion, too. There were lines said while the dog was on screen. Whole patches of dialogue, actually. The fight scene in the cabin with the men eating was really weird. There was no contact made with fists. The men just hit at the camera. Then we saw close ups of the bad guys squishing their beans while being beat to death. Then the good guys ate. But what did they eat? I'm hoping that they ate the stew that was left in the pot. The thing is that some of the dead guys were shown in light that made it look like you could see their rib cages. Are these guys cannibals? WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?!?! I guess war does funny things to you. You'll eat people even when perfectly good food is right in front of you. None of this was helped by the copy we saw. There's a story about George Lucas and his 1979 Star Wars Christmas Special. He said that, if he had a hammer and the time, he would personally go around and destroy every copy of this fiasco. This is pretty much what Kubrick did to Fear And Desire. He was so embarrassed by it that he made it nearly impossible to find a copy and discouraged the showing of any copies that existed. The copy we saw was a copy of a video that was made from a 16mm copy. The guy who made the copy messed with the tracking throughout the entire film to "mark the copy." I don't know why he felt the need to do this. It pretty much ruined the copy. The copy wasn't very good in the first place (pretty washed out), but this just made it nearly unwatchable. If you ever get a chance to see this and are interested in Kubrick at all, you probably should see it. It wasn't quite as bad as I'm making it out to be. It's actually a lot of fun to watch if you're watching with the right audience (which I was). It's probably the only Kubrick movie that you can laugh at because of it's quality. It's more interesting and historical than it is good.

Never Been Kissed

admin — Sat, 03 Apr 1999 18:00:00 +0000

No, this is not an admission. This is a movie. But you all knew that. So, I saw another preview for Entrapment. Catherine Zeta-Jones is naked! Ok, you don't see anything because it's just a preview, but still, there might be more in the movie. (Yeah. That's exactly what they want you to think. I know. She's really a prude.) This movie better be good. I almost lost faith in Sean Connery after seeing The Avengers (what a disappointment! Horrible!), but I don't want to say it officially yet. Now, on with the movie. Never Been Kissed is another in a slew of 80s meets 90s high school romantic comedies. Ok, not many actually take place in high school, but it plays a big role. Grosse Pointe Blank, Romy & Michele, Wedding Singer, now this one. So far they've all been pretty good. In this one Drew Barrymore plays Josie Geller. Her nickname in high school was Josie Grossie. Now she's a very plain looking copy editor for a Chicago paper. She's kissed guys (she says), but she's never really been kissed. Kissed like the penguins that know their mates when they first see them. (See the movie. You'll understand.) She wants so badly to be a real reporter, but her boss (John C. Reilly from Boogie Nights and Hard Eight) doesn't think she's ready. She's also the best copy editor he's ever had (which is constantly shown when she corrects people's speech). His boss (Garry Marshall of Penny fame) has other plans. He wants a really good story, so he sends his youngest looking employee (Josie, of course) back to high school. Josie's brother, Rob (David Arquette) warns her of her old high school days (he started the whole Josie Grossie thing), but she does it anyway. Now she's having a hell of a time trying to fit in, especially when the first person to talk to her is the school geek, Aldys (Leelee Sobieski--Helen Hunt, Jr. from Deep Impact and A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries). Now she has to build her reputation up from the ground and become popular with the three Heather-type characters and the "dream-guy" who looks like the lead singer of Matchbox 20. (Why are these girly boys so attractive to women these days? It's like, the sissier you look and the more make-up you wear, the more manly you are? Huh?) Then there's Sam, the teacher that all the girls are after (Michael Vartan from The Curve (aka, Dead Man's Curve) and The Myth Of Fingerprints--looking a lot like Breckin Meyer). He has a girlfriend, but he starts to get attracted to Josie. This is where John and Garry want their story to come from. Can Josie bust the man that she thinks is finally going to kiss her? Will he kiss her? These questions and more will be answered in the next installment of Drew's Dilemma. When we started this movie I thought that it was going to be just like Drew's last movie, Home Fries: stupid. It moved in the opposite direction, though. Home Fries started out good (with a really dark beginning that was actually pretty funny) and just got worse with the exception of Catherine O'Hara. Never Been Kissed started out really slowly (and kinda stupid) and ended up getting better as it went along. As she started getting closer to coolness and Sam and farther from Aldys and her Denominators Club, it got better and better. The prom was really funny. The theme was Famous Couples Throughout History. I don't think any high schooler would have to guts to dress up as one of the Village People, though. But I did like the Hunter S. Thompson/Ludlow duo. Nice touch. As for the actors, it's always good to see Drew. She's definitely getting better. Ever since Everyone Says I Love You and Scream I've really liked her. She was just another Hollywood weirdo before that. Now she seems to have reached her pinnacle with The Wedding Singer and Ever After. Hopefully Home Fries was a one time drop. She produced this one, too, so maybe she's branching out. Could we be adding Director to her credits soon? Hmm. Anyway, it's weird seeing her look so plain in the pre-back to high school days and so gross in the flashbacks. She's a really cute girl (and my age--You out there Drew?), so it's hard for me to see her look like that. But, even though she's supposed to be a character from As You Like It, she starts looking like Cinderella at the end. (Hey, haven't we been here before, Drew?) And I also know now that she can act. There's a scene where she eats some pot cake. When she starts acting crazy (dancing on the stage with the band, slapping bongos and her butt--ya know, regular druggie stuff) I forgot until much later that this was her life. She spent much of her life doing worse drugs and marijuana and did worse things than act crazy. You would think that, in a scene like this, someone with that kind of reputation would make you remember those times. I was so engrossed in her performance that I didn't even think about it. And that's not like me at all. Anytime I can make an embarassing connection like that, I do it. It's also always cool to see David Arquette. He's probably certifiably insane, but he's still awesome. When he shows up in the high school things really pick up. Leelee Sobieski was the real surprise here. I didn't even know that she was in it until she showed up as the "Alpo Girl." Why anyone would think that she's a dog, I dunno. That's like saying that Helen Hunt is ugly. I don't think so! She's also a very good actress, by the way. I haven't seen A Soldier's Daughter, but I hear she's great in it. Although, how could she ever beat her role in Jungle2Jungle? Then there was some pretty cool music. Any movie that has "Watching The Wheels" (my personal favorite John Lennon song) has to be good. Then they played "At My Most Beautiful," one of the best songs off the latest album by one of the best bands of the 80s, R.E.M. (Yeah, they've come downhill. This isn't one of their best songs, but it's still one of the best ones on Up.) Maybe I like it because it was written as a homage to one of the best bands of the 60s, The Beach Boys, which show up later with "Don't Worry Baby." Good song choices and lots of references to Josie and the Pussycats. What more can you want? Maybe I liked this movie so much because I can totally relate to it. I was one of the biggest dorks in high school. (For my friends now, multiply my current dorkness by about 5 if you can imagine it.) I was in band and technical theatre. And I spell theatre with the e at the end! What a dork! Then there's the fact that I'm still looking for "the one," but who isn't? (Is there anybody out there?) So, for all you high schoolers out there (I know there are a lot who read my page--yeah. Right.) the main message of this movie is: Don't be so cruel to the geeks. They'll grow up to rule you. And some of us are pretty cool once you get to know us. Not to mention pretty good looking in Leelee's case. (Down boy! She's too young!) And, if you're a geek, don't let the popular people get you down. All you really need is one popular person to like you and you're in. But, if you do get in, don't lose sight of your old friends. Bring them in, too. Remember them? They were your friends first. Anyway, enough semi-preaching (can you tell I'm close to this subject?). It was a good movie. Just get through the first half hour and you'll be rewarded.

Life

admin — Mon, 12 Apr 1999 17:00:00 +0000

I got to see a sneak preview of the new Eddie Murphy/Martin Lawrence flick. They showed a preview for the new Mummy movie with Brendan Fraser and...really no one else. Oh, well there's the guy from Sliding Doors and Four Weddings And A Funeral (John Hannah), some dude from the last two Dark Man movies and Zeus And Roxanne (Arnold Vosloo) and a girl from Chain Reaction and Stealing Beauty (Rachel Weisz). It was directed by Stephen Sommers, the man who brought us such epics as Deep Rising, The Jungle Book (the live action one from a few years ago that no one saw) and The Adventures Of Huck Finn (actually, this one was pretty good). He wrote all of those and Huck Finn's sequel-of-sorts, Tom And Huck. Not much of a track record. This one looks like more of the same: big, cool special effects with nothing supporting them. At first I thought it was a fourth Evil Dead movie, though. They kept talking about a book that brought the dead to life. Then there were rotting zombies running around, so I thought it was a movie of the game House Of The Dead. But no, it was a Mummy movie. And Brendan lost his accent. I'm not looking forward to it. Ok, maybe just a little. I'm always up for a Mummy flick. Life, on the other hand...I was waiting for this one. Eddie and Martin are really funny comedians who can make really funny movies. Ok, from 1988-1996 Eddie was in a major dry spell. I still haven't seen The Nutty Professor (I know, I know. I'm way behind. Maybe I'll rent it this week.), but I heard that that was his big comeback. Then Metro was pretty good, I thought. Mulan was great. Then Dr. Dolittle ruined it. That was pretty bad. I heard that Holy Man wasn't much better. Martin's track record hasn't even really been that good. Bad Boys was great. Good action, great comedy. Thin Line Between Love And Hate, I heard, wasn't very good. Nothing To Lose had a few moments, most of which came from Tim Robbins. His tv show was pretty good, though. This is a step up for both of them. Not a complete staircase, but still a step. This is the story of two men, Ray and Claude (Eddie and Martin) in 1930s Harlem (returning Eddie to his Harlem Nights period--is that such a good thing?). Ray is a petty thief and Claude is trying to make a go of it in a banking job. They both get thrown out of a local bar and end up being sent by a mobster to Mississippi to get some whiskey. Unfortunately they get caught with the dead body of a cheating poker player who happened to cheat Ray out of his father's watch. The thing is, the sheriff put the man there. He sees a chance to put two black men up for the murder and they are sent to prison for life. They spend the entire movie getting accustomed to prison life, trying to find a way out and getting to know everyone as they come and go. We see them go from vibrant young men to cantankerous old men. It's pretty cool seeing them as 90 year olds. The makeup is awesome and they do a great job of acting old. The supporting characters are pretty stock, but they get the point across. We have a couple of wardens with hearts of gold (the later one being Ned Beatty), a gay couple that everyone loves, a Forrest Gump type character (Bokeem Woodbine) and an old man telling the story. This is a good movie, but The Shawshank Redemption it ain't. But look for Ted Demme stalwart Noah Emmerich (Beautiful Girls, Monument Ave., The Truman Show) as a baseball scout. Eddie and Martin are pretty funny in it. Eddie gets all of the good lines, but Martin gets a couple of good ones in. Not many, but they're there. They do both get better as they get older, though. Eddie ends up looking a little like Bill Cosby (his real life near arch nemesis). There's even a part where everyone but Eddie gets excited about eating Jello. Hmmmm. Jonathan Demme's nephew, Ted, does a pretty good job of directing. Not as good as he has in the past, though. I loved The Ref and I even thought that Beautiful Girls was pretty good. I never saw Who's The Man?, but no one else did, either. I doubt I'm missing much. Life, though, has a couple of really messy scenes. There were a couple of times that the camera was moving so fast that I couldn't figure out who was talking where. Then you add to that the fact that you can't understand what half of the cast is saying and you've got a pretty big problem. The one that I really remember was when Ray is trying to keep a particularly big prisoner from taking his and Claude's cornbread. The camera changes angles so often that it looks like Ted didn't know which one he liked better. It makes it seem like we're watching a rough cut. One scene worked with this style, though. There's a dream sequence (sort of) where Eddie is describing his bar that he hasn't built yet. He puts all of his prison friends in the roles of waiter, bouncer, pianist, singer, etc. They intercut those shots with shots of the men in the prison. It comes out being a fast and really cool scene. One big problem is the way that racism is dealt with. It all goes alright at first (scenes of Ray and Claude trying to eat at a "Whites Only" cafe, the Mississippi cops beating on black men just because they're black) and the message is clear: Racism is bad and only practiced by morons. Then you start to realize something: All of the people in the prison are black. This isn't really a problem in the 30s when they probably would be separated. Then the 70s come around and they're still all black. They want us to believe that not all black people are violent criminals, but it seems that prison is only populated by black people. Aren't there any white criminals? There should be a few. I see an awful lot of them on the news. We don't see any until they are moved into the old age prison in the 90s. Kind of bizarre. Overall it's a good movie, though. I enjoyed watching Ray and Claude's friendship change through the years as they grew to like, hate and love each other. It ended up being a pretty sweet natured movie for Eddie and Martin. That's rare from these guys. Maybe Disney softened Eddie. Maybe all of Martin's legal problems have softened him. Then again, maybe they just paid them enough.

The Matrix

admin — Wed, 21 Apr 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Saw another Star Wars preview. WOO-HOO!!! Can't wait! Also saw another preview for The Mummy. I've heard that they're putting this one out so close to Star Wars so that people who can't get in to SW will have something to see. They're hoping that people will want to see this special effects laden flick as a replacement for the sold-out SW. People, go home. Rent the original trilogy. Do anything but go see this movie. Just from the preview I can tell that it's really, really bad. Even Brendan Fraser can't save it. Then again, that's not saying much. I also got to see the first (as far as I know) preview for Wild Wild West. Looks like another fun bit of fluff from Barry Sonnenfeld and Will Smith. Lots of comedy and special effects. This time, though, we get Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh instead of Tommy Lee Jones and Linda Fiorentino. One thing, though: I've seen a few episodes of the original tv show. Correct me if I'm wrong (which I probably am because it's always described this way...now) but there was NO sci-fi in the show at all. It was a Western. That's it. And Jim West was white, but that doesn't really matter. Oh yeah, Salma Hayek is in this one, too. WOO-HOO!!! So Canoe Reeves has another hit. Why is this, you may ask? Could it be that he found a role that didn't ask him to stretch...at all!? Could it be that he found directors who knew not to ask him to act? I think so. The Matrix is the story of a computer hacker (Keanu) who is woken up one day by a man named Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) who is the leader of a group of resistance fighters. Who or what are they resisting? Well, that I can't tell without giving something away. Let's just say that it involves machines and a guy named Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving from The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert--yes, he was a cross-dresser in that) who reminds me of a weird cross between Kittridge from Mission: Impossible and Ben Stein. Needless to say I really wanted him to hurry up and say what he was trying to say. Getting words out of the guys was like pulling nails out of your foot. Oh, there's also the darkly attractive Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss from the totally unrelated tv show "Matrix"--definitely an in-joke), who happens to be a smarter computer hacker than Keanu. Go figure. She's also the center of the first scene. This is one of the best sequences of the movie. She is picked up by a bunch of cops and quickly kills all of them with some pretty amazing kung-fu moves and wall walking. Then she runs up to the roof and does a quick Jimmy Stewart impression as she jumps from roof to roof. The only thing missing is the Hitchcockian zoom. The Matrix is the second film from the Wachowski Brothers (Andy and Larry). Their first one was the underappreciated (by the general public, anyway) Bound. If you haven't seen this movie, go rent it. It has Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon and they fall in love with each other. If that doesn't get you, it also has lots of mob violence in it. It really is a good movie, not just every man's fantasy. Both films use some pretty tricky camera shots that almost make you dizzy just sitting in one place. These guys have a place in film history as the new Coen Brothers. Not so much with characters as with camera-as-character. Can't wait for their next one. They saw The Matrix as a trilogy (COOL!), but the second one won't be the next one for the boys. They worked on this one too long, so they need a break from Keanu, er, The Matrix. The cast, with the obvious exception of Keanu, is pretty cool. Hugo Weaving is very menacing (if a bit too ssssssslllllloooooowwwww) as the leader of the bad guys. Joe Pantoliano (Bound, The Fugitive, Bad Boys) is sufficiently slimy as Cypher. (Go see the movie and you'll see why.) Keanu, however, is still the worst actor in the history of A-list actors. (James Duval is worse, but he's hardly A-list.) He, amazingly enough, didn't manage to ruin this one. He doesn't have to try too hard. The main problem with the movie (besides Keanu) is the script. There are a few (a lot) of obvious references to Alice In Wonderland that kind of beat the point home. (And with lines like, "I bet right now you're are feeling a bit like Alice" we get the point very soon. In the same scene Morpheus asks Eon to take one of two pills. One stops the LSD trip he's about to go on and one continues it. Guess which one he took.) These kind of bugged me. Then there's some things that even Keanu wouldn't be dumb enough to do. He gets ahold of a phone near the beginning and is soon chased by Agent Smith and his cronies. He climbs out on the ledge of the high-rise he's in. My first thought was "Put the phone in your pocket, Moron!" Guess where the phone went. Also, they seemed to be able to make doors materialize whenever they wanted them to, unless it's convenient. If they really need a door and it would make the movie end faster, they lose that ability. (I'm still not sure about this one. It was pointed out by a friend. I didn't notice that they were making anything. Anybody know?) But that's not why we go to this movie. We go because of the special effects, and they do not disappoint. The FX were amazing! Even the GAP Commercial pause/shift angle thing worked in this one. They didn't over use it, either. That's a good thing. The overall look of the movie was really interesting. Very dark. Kind of grainy. Just weird. I liked it. The fight scenes were pretty amazing, too. Best ones I've seen since Ronny Yu quit making movies in Hong Kong. They used most of his tricks, too. (Watch The Bride With White Hair and you'll see a lot of them.) Of course all of this goes to figure. The stunt coordinator/martial arts teacher was Woo-Ping Yeun, director of Drunken Master and Drunken Master 2 (two of the best movies Jackie Chan has ever been in) and The Wicked City (the 1992 live-action version). Watch for Drunken Boxing to go by when Neo is "learning" kung-fu. (Yes, I noticed this without the help of the IMDb. I keep an eye out for Hong Kong influence.) Under all the flash, though, this movie is pretty much a combination of Hong Kong kung-fu (complete with neck popping bad guy), Western (complete with knuckle-popping bad guy and shoot outs), Tron (complete with computer/machine vs. man in a computer program) and the Alien series (complete with H.R. Giger inspired sets). I pretty much knew what was going to happen every step of the way because I've seen quite a few of all of these kinds of movies. I've also seen Dark City, one of the more intelligent sci-fi movies to be made in the last 10 years. That one has a lot of the same themes going through it. It may not be quite as eye-popping (although it does have some cool special effects AND Jennifer Connelly), but it's still very good. In fact, Roger Ebert put it on the top of his best movies of the year list last year. I wouldn't go that far, but it's really good. (And, if you liked The Crow, you'll probably like it. They're both directed by Alex Proyas.) These two movies aren't as close as, say, ID4 and War Of The Worlds (can you say "Rip Off"? I knew you could.), but they're still pretty close. So, pretty much, this movie was pure eye-candy. Don't think too much about it, just see it. And revel in the special effects, stunts and feel. It's a super hero sci-fi flick without any real moral value except maybe "live your own life." Ok. I will. And I'll see the next Wachowski Brothers movie. But, then again, any movie that refers to Keanu Reeves' character as "The One" can't be all good. Now for my non-PC part of the review. In light of the recent shootings in Colorado there has been a lot of flak given to Basketball Diaries because of a scene involving a kid wearing a black trench coat and a shot gun killing people in his school. According to "parents" (note the quotes), the scene influenced their kids to do what they did. While I was watching The Matrix I knew that someone would say something about it being an influence since there are people in long black trenchcoats and guns. Sure enough, when I got home I heard that it was mentioned. Come on. Do we really think that the world got this way because of movies? If that were true the Starkweather killings in 1958 would not have been as shocking to anyone. There would have been plenty of movies building up to it. Natural Born Killers would have been made 30 years ago. And here's my thoughts on that movie. First off, I thought it was a horrible movie, so I'm not defending it as a film. I'm defending it as a piece of art. (Sort of.) The media has also been siting it as an influence. The problem with that argument is that the movie is a commentary on the media and their sensationalization of violence. If there had been no media, that movie would never have been made and these kids, supposedly, would never have killed anyone. So, can we blame the media? Oh no. They have a right to say and show anything they want to. If they want to make killers into heroes, they can. I guarantee you that if these killings had been spread out over a week we would have been on the road with the kids. We would have been counting the death toll like they did in From Dusk Til Dawn. Shouldn't we put the blame where it belongs? The kids and their parents. These kids are building bombs in their back yards, bedrooms and garages and the parents don't even notice. "Hey, Mom? Can you get some gunpowder at the store?" "Sure, hon." If they had taken an interest in what the kids were doing maybe this wouldn't have happened. Then again, maybe it would've. Maybe these kids would have gone off, NBK or no NBK. Maybe they didn't need to see Basketball Diaries and wear black trenchcoats to start shooting. Maybe they would have gone off soon anyway. In fact, most likely they would have. Maybe not the same day. Maybe even earlier. After all, what would they have done with the time it took to watch the movie? Worked harder on their bombs! What else? I'm sorry for the parents who lost their kids to this horrible incident. But I'm not as sorry for the parents of the kids who did it. This may not be a popular opinion right now (just wait a couple of weeks), but it's partly their fault. I'm not saying that they deserved to lose their kids, no one deserves that, but they should take some of the responsibility. It's called parenting. Learn it. I know I'll probably get some flaming for this, but I don't care. This is my opinion and I can have it if I want to. That's the great thing about this country. We can feel anyway we want about anything we want. AND we can say it in any forum we want: movies, media, internet, whatever. It's all out there, people, and we have to learn. I know, I know. You just came here for a movie review and you got a life review. Sorry about that. I just needed to vent and this is my only forum for now. So live with it. And go see The Matrix. Keanu doesn't manage to ruin it and it won't make you kill anyone.

Entrapment

admin — Sat, 01 May 1999 17:00:00 +0000

245 days until Millennium. (Actually it's 605 days, but let's not get too technical.) I had to see the new Sean Connery movie. No way I could miss it. Especially since Catherine Zeta-Jones was going to be in it. Can't be anything wrong with that, right? That remains to be seen. Entrapment is about Robert MacDougal (Mr. Bond), expert art thief. He no longer steals because he needs to. It's also about Gin Baker (Ms. Perfect), expert insurance investigator. She goes undercover to catch Mack in the act. She finds him a new score and then forces her way along. The training involves some of the sexiest laser avoidance I've ever seen. There are three heist scenes that are pretty amazing. The last one, especially, is really intense. (That's the one in the previews where they're swinging on the electrical cord.) And it's always fun to see Sean Connery in an action flick unless, of course, it involves big colored bears. It's also cool that I got to see him use some cool gadgets again that don't involve weather machines. Overall I enjoyed the movie, but I couldn't quite get into it until about half an hour into it. When Ving Rhames showed up as Thibadeaux, Mack's tool supplier, he brought some much needed humor that, somehow, Sean couldn't quite give us. Ron Bass (writer of this, Rain Man, My Best Friend's Wedding and What Dreams May Come) couldn't quite bring himself to make this funny for a while. What humor was there didn't make it for me. Michael Hertzberg, the other writer, hasn't written anything else, but he produced Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Silent Movie and Johnny Dangerously. Shouldn't some of that have rubbed off on him? There was a pretty good bit, though, in the first scene. A building is being broken into and they show the security code. 1007. As long as we can always see cheesy little moments like that in Sean Connery movies, I'll be happy. Also there wasn't much tension until the final score. The first one was ok because it was an opening stunt (like all good Bond movies have--heh heh). Then the second one was pretty much killed because they showed us all of the preperation for it. We knew every move that they were going to make. It was cool to watch it in action, but we had already seen her dance her way through the lasers back at Mack's house. Did we need to see it again? (And, yes, there's a part of me that says, "Yes! We need to see her bend like that again!" That's the part that can't review movies, though.) And another strange thing: it took her about two and a half minutes to get to the mask, but less than 30 seconds to get back with it. Huh? The final break in, though, made up for all of it. Very cool. One really good thing is that Connery is finally getting to play a Scotsman! I've seen him play British (Bond and almost every other movie he's been in) and Irish (Untouchables), but I can't remember him being Scottish. He has a castle in this one that is amazing. I want one like that. Anybody got any money? Of course, the best thing about the plot was the fact that everyone was playing everyone else. I love those kinds of movies. Remember Jackie Brown? I'm one of the few people I know who really liked that movie. In this one you really didn't know who to trust. Is Gin really a good insurance agent? (By the way, why do insurance investigators have guns?) Is her contact back home taking her for a ride? Is Mack working for someone else? And what's with Thibadeaux? Oh, and Sean got to travel a lot and nearly sleep with a beautiful woman again. That was cool. Anyway, this movie kind of reminded me of Ronin. (Not as good, though.) It was kind of slow between the action sequences and I barely understood what was going on, but when the action started I was with it all the way. Enjoyable movie. Worth a matinee. Big improvement over The Avengers. Then again...most are. Ok, so this wasn't that great of a review. Hey, they can't all be good.

10 Things I Hate About You

admin — Fri, 07 May 1999 17:00:00 +0000

I got to see a longer trailer for Inspector Gadget at this one. I know it looks really cheesy, but I really want to see it. I loved the show as a kid (which, yes, I still am at heart no matter what the law says), so I have to see the movie. Plus Matthew Broderick is awesome in these kinds of roles. And this time he gets to play a bad version of himself. Cool! I also saw a trailer for Big Daddy, the new Adam Sandler flick. As long as he isn't playing total idiots his movies are funny. Happy Gilmore and The Wedding Singer were great. Billy Madison was weak and The Waterboy was, well, it sucked. No getting around that. I laughed maybe three times and the jokes involved bad special effects. This one looks good, though. He has fun at the expense of a child, so that's always cool. A little W.C. Fields action there. Now the real movie: We all know that I like teen flicks. I just have a soft spot in my heart for them. Ever since seeing The Breakfast Club for the first time (only a couple of years ago), I've been into them. I try to see all of them that I can, even if I know they'll be bad. That's why I knew I had to see this one. A teen flick based on Shakespeare. What could be better? 10 Things I Hate About You is based on The Taming Of The Shrew. I've never read the play (for shame!) and I've never seen the Liz Taylor movie, but I've seen a Moonlighting episode based on it, so I have a loose grasp of the plot. (Er. Um.) What happens is this (can you tell I still think like a teenager? I definitely write like one. Yech!): Bianca Stratford (Larisa Oleynik from "3rd Rock From The Sun"...but wait! She's not the only one!) is the most popular girl in school. Every guy wants her, but none can have her. Her dad has a rule about dating: it doesn't happen. Enter her sister, Katarina (Julia Stiles from Wicked--a little indie flick where she plays a psycho little girl--good Hitchcock homage). She's, well, difficult. No one likes her and she doesn't like anyone else. She has a smart-ass line for everything and is generally pretty evil. (I liked her from the start.) After a while, Kat and Bianca's dad (Larry Miller--the nice clothing store clerk in Pretty Woman, the boss on Dilbert, the dean in The Nutty Professor and lot's of other cool supporting roles) amends the rule: Bianca can date when Kat dates. Fat chance. Then there's Cameron James (Joseph Gordon-Levitt from "3rd Rock"...see, I told you). He's the new kid who has to hang out with one of the biggest geeks in the school. He falls for Bianca on his first day and gets the idea to make Kat date. His forced friend, Michael (David Krumholtz--Slums Of Beverly Hills, Addams Family Values and The Ice Storm), tries to help, but gets them in more trouble as they go along. First they try to get Joey (Andrew Keegan--Camp Nowhere, Skateboard Kid II...in other words, nothing--well, he was "Older Boy" in ID4, does that count?) to find someone to find for Kat. Joey is the most popular guy in school and he wants Bianca for himself. Of course, Bianca wants him, too. Cameron is just hoping for the best, but since she doesn't even know his name (even though he's tutoring her in French...a subject he knows nothing about) things don't look too good. Joey finds the criminal of the school, Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger from Roar...remember that tv show? Neither do I.) to take Kat out. He pays him all this money just so he can get at Bianca. Will it work? Will Cameron get her first? Will Kat fall in love? These answers and more are already written in your brain. We all know how it will turn out, but I guess getting there is half the fun, right? Yeah. It is. this is a pretty good movie. Along with the more obvious jokes (a guidance counselor named Ms. Perky who writes romance novels as her main career, a nearly abusive English teacher played by Daryl "Chill" Mitchell who is trying to teach Shakespeare--get it?) there are some really good ones. Such as David Leisure's career. Actually he does have a pretty funny cameo that involves a bag of pot, Cheetoes and Kat's "plans." Then there's the fact that a lot of the names and places are taken out of the play and Shakespeare's life. (Stratford, Verona, Padua (the name of the school and the town the play took place in)) It's always good to see Larry Miller, too. He's great at playing dads, teachers, principals and such. The problem here was that Larry was the only parent. Ok, maybe it's not a problem, but it's a little weird. These kids don't just stay in one place like the kids in The Breakfast Club. They go home at night. They go to parties. No mention of parents. Patrick, I think, says something about his dad, but it's in such a joking manner that you really start to wonder if he exists. The other thing, and I don't know if this was intentional or not, but I really liked Kat better than Bianca. I thought Bianca was totally empty. She was a lot like Alisa Silverstone's character in Clueless...but not as smart. Cute, but nothing but air. Even at the end. Kat, on the other hand, had a real personality. She wasn't a bad girl, but she had the reputation. I liked her. She was the kind of girl that I would have been friends with in high school. Probably nothing more because she would have scared me, but friends. Plus, between her, Michael and Larry there were no more good lines to go around. They got just about all of them. That's ok, though. That's where they belonged. All of the other characters were pretty good. We didn't really get to know Cameron too well. He just kind of drifted whenever he was needed. Michael was pretty funny. Patrick was cool, but I think he betrayed himself by the end. He started out as pure criminal, but when he met her he suddenly became "the good guy." A little too quick, I think. (Apparently he had a nice smile, though. The two girls sitting behind me wouldn't shut up about it.) And I could never figure out, until near the end when the refer to it, if he was supposed to have his accent or not. It seems to come and go even though it's really Heath's accent. Joey was a jerk. Maybe a little too much of one, but that's how high school was. Also, is it just me, or is just about everyone in this movie too old for high school. The girls and Joseph G-L were the only ones who looked young enough. The rest of the cast was about 5 years too old looking. All in all, a good flick. Good for a matinee. Good to get kids interested in Shakespeare (maybe). By the way, don't leave until the credits are finished. The best part is the outtakes. David Krumholtz steals them. This kid has a future somewhere. I'm not sure where, but somewhere.

Countdown To Episode 1

admin — Sun, 09 May 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Have you ever felt that things might be getting a little out of hand? Naah! I recently read an article in the Austin American Statesman by the movie critic (who pretty much sucks) saying that he really wants to like the new Star Wars movie, but he will do his duty as a critic to see it from a Sweden-like standpoint. And the kicker was this: he said it wouldn't be that hard! Apparently he lost a lot of excitement for the movies by the time Jedi came out back in 1983! How is that possible?!?! Star Wars was and is one of the most important things to ever happen to film. No, the movies aren't Citizen Kane or anything, but they're a lot of fun and very, very well made. They also changed film about as much as Kane. Let's rewind to 1976. Sci-fi was a vast wasteland. Oh, there were a few good ones, but no one saw them. Logan's Run, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Futureworld (well, I guess a few people saw that one). But, for the most part, there was just stuff like Embryo, Ape, At Earth's Core and a bunch of bad (yet, somehow compelling) tv shows: Wonder Woman, er, well, that's the only one I recognize. 1977 hits, and, on Memorial Day, so does Star Wars. Sci-fi is suddenly a hit again. Everyone jumps on the bandwagon. TV, film, everybody. Sure, most of it is bad (Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, etc.), but there's the occasional great things that come from the Star Wars wake. Close Encounters, the Star Trek revolution, Superman, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, Hardware Wars, KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park. Then there's the effect it had on filmmaking in general. The special effects, for 1977 (and some even for now) were pretty amazing. The camera had never been so close to a prop as it was in the opening shot of the Star Destroyer flying just over us. And there were Tie Fighters flying all around us. Not just in one direction, but in all directions. And you couldn't see the strings! Everything was shocking people. Movie special effects would never be the same again. The public changed, too. Jaws started it. The "Summer Blockbuster" was born in 1975. In 1977 the cult movie was born. (Well, Rocky Horror Picture Show was back in 1975, too, but that was a pretty small cult.) People were seeing the movie, getting back in line and seeing it again. This had never happened before. Theatre owners didn't know what to do. They want to make money, but they also want new people in the theatre. They got them in droves for a long, long time. Everyone knew the story. Young man wants adventure, but can't find it on the farm. He meets an old man who takes him to adventure. He finds someone who helps him save the princess and falls in love with her (before he knows that she's his sister). Then he saves the free universe. It's a pretty classic fairy tale. It ended at the end of Star Wars, but there was something left unresolved. No one really knew it at the time, but there were questions left unanswered. More adventure to meet. More Storm Troopers to kill. In 1980 we got it. The Empire Strikes Back. And what a strike! It was even better than the first and a bigger hit (if that's possible). The only time that ever happens is with The Godfather. Lucas still had some tricks up his sleeves, too. The asteroid field scene blew people away. (Especially the ones who were looking for other things hidden in the asteroids. Supposedly there's a potato somewhere. I've never seen it, though.) The asteroids moved in all fields. The Tie Fighters in the first one seemed pretty mobile, but these asteroids were going all over the place. They came towards us! Short of a 3-D movie no one had ever seen that. Here we also meet one of the most profound characters in movie history: Yoda. With sage words of wisdom like "Do! Or do not. There is no try." and "Adventure. Ha! Excitement. Ha! A Jedi craves not these things." When he lifts the Luke's X-Wing out of the swamp and Luke says, "I don't believe it!" he offers up my credo: "That is why you fail." If Luke would only believe in his own powers, he could triumph. And who wasn't scared when Luke chopped off Vader's head in the cave? Luke saw himself and we saw ourselves. (Oh boy. Did I actually just type that?) Then came the biggest revelation in recent movie history: "Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father." "He told me enough. He told me you killed him." "I am your father." Just thinking about it still brings me a slight chill. The most evil person in the universe is Luke's father!? I felt the same way he did. "No. That's impossible!" "Search your feelings. You know it to be true." "Nooooo!!!!" Even the people on the set didn't know that was going to happen. David Prowse actually said, "Obi-Wan was your father." Lucas has always known how to keep a secret. (Until recently. I know too much about Episode 1.) The dark tone of the movie was different, too. The first one was not really light, but there was more humor and it ended happily. Empire, on the other hand, ends with the bad guys winning. Han is frozen in carbonite. Luke has lost his hand. Vader and crew are off to build another Death Star. What can happen to our heroes next? Lucas and Spielberg finally collaborated to make the third best trilogy (so far) ever. (Star Wars is #1 and Godfather is #2.) Raiders Of The Lost Ark was another triumph. These guys could do no wrong. Then a strange thing happened. E.T. came out in 1982. It broke the SW records. Why God? Why?! I love Spielberg, but come on. That's not that good of a movie. It's too freakin' sweet. Then Lucas even went a little soft. Return Of The Jedi, in 1983, was the softest (and weakest) of the three movies. It's still damn good, though. There's nothing really wrong with the movie (except maybe the Ewoks and that damn "Yub-Nub" song--thankfully edited out of the Special Edition), it's just not as ground breaking as the first two. The Rancor scene even looked bad then. The Rancor itself looks ok, but it looks bad when it's put into the film. They couldn't even fix that in the Special Edition. Too bad. And the Ewoks are still annoying. But remember, nobody exploits midgets like George Lucas. (With the possible exception of Adam Sandler.) There were, however, two amazing sequences in this film. The Jabba part was awesome. I love the idea of a space gangster. Especially one that looks like a giant slug. We're mixing two of my favorite genres here. It's got to be good. Yeah, it's been called a redo of the Cantina scene in the original, but that was a great scene. It deserves a redo. Then there's the battle between Luke, Vader and the Emperor. Intercut between the space battle with Lando and the fish people and the battle on Endor with Han and the Ewoks, this comes out being one of the most thrilling sequences of the series. There are a few things that grate on me (how many times does Vader say "complete"?), but it's a harrowing scene. The Emperor constantly pushing Luke to fight him or Vader. Vader pushing him into betraying his feelings. ("Sister! You have a sister. Obi-Wan was right to hide her from me. Now his failure is complete.") Luke almost finding the Dark Side. Then he pulls his father back to where he belongs. The only regret that I have for this bit is that the Emperor didn't live to see his own failure. I wish that he had lived up to the explosion like Grand Moff Tarkin in the first one. The themes weren't new. They were only mixes of many different genres: Sci-fi (Metropolis), Western (The Searchers), Samurai (The Hidden Fortress) and War (Dam Busters, 633 Squadron). Not to mention the aforementioned fairy tale aspects. The characters were even pretty stock. The young and naive hero (Luke), the rouge yet charming hero (Han), the tough princess (Leia), the old sage (Obi-Wan), the older sage (Yoda), the dark evil leader that turns out to not be as bad as all that (Vader) and the pure evil leader (Emperor Palpatine). The difference was that we really cared about these people. They became real through their dialogue and humor. We wanted Han and Leia to get together. We wanted Vader to be defeated. Then, at the end of Jedi, we wanted him to live. In 1997 Lucas did it again. After many years of not really having much of a hit without Harrison Ford, he re-released the Star Wars movies with a difference. The first one had a Jabba scene added (it only reiterated what Greedo said to Han earlier), and the Greedo scene was changed. These two changes were pretty much unneeded. The only thing the Jabba scene adds is a nice moment where Han steps on his tail. The Greedo scene is almost ruined. Han should shoot first. He's ruthless. Besides, the angle isn't right for Greedo to shoot. It just looks weird. The new Stormtroopers and animals in the desert scenes look a little weird, too. There are some cool ones in Mos Eisley that make it look a little bigger than it used to. The good addition is to the Battle Of Yavin at the end. These battle scenes look so good now that I've almost forgotten that the movie is over 20 years old. New shots of the X-Wings complete with tiny faces on the pilots. Then, when the Death Star is destroyed, they added an explosion ring that was first used in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. I don't know if this adds to the movie, but it looks a little better than the fireworks display from the original. Then they got rid of the cardboard cutouts in the awards ceremony. They still couldn't edit out Luke's "Carrie!" when he gets out of his X-Wing after the battle. Empire didn't have as much added. The Wampa scene (the snow-monster to the non-insiders) is made a little bit more suspenseful (and grosser). There's a scene added with Vader's transport ship. Bespin (Cloud City), however, looks a lot better. No more white walls. Now there are windows everywhere. You can see things going on outside. It looks amazing. As the Falcon is flying through there is a lot more scenery. Cool! A couple of lines are changed for no reason, though. When R2 is spit out of the creature on Degobah Luke says "You're lucky you don't taste good" or something like that. Now he just says "Are you ok?" Whatever. He also screams all the way down the shaft at the end. This makes him seem weaker than he is by this time. I liked it a lot better when he was quiet there. Jedi is probably the one with the best Special Edition. The song in Jabba's Palace is jazzed up and there are some new characters. The Rancor isn't cleaned up at all, but the Sarlac Pit looks a lot better in some shots. There are actually more tentacles and a large worm-like mouth that comes out of it. There are still quite a few shots where the new stuff suddenly disappears (such as the burp shot). There's also a cool Bantha herd, overhead shots of the Speeder Bike scenes, new shots in the space battle and a better song at the end along with celebration scenes. (Yeah, I know. Coruscant wouldn't really find out about the Emperor for a while, but it looks cool to see the statue topple.) So now, 15 years after the last movie was originally released, we're finally getting the first chapter in the story. This will make it Anakin's story more than Luke's story. I'm graduating from college on the 22nd and I'm more hyped about the 19th. After all, I've only been waiting six years to graduate. The biggest question about the new ones is, of course, will it stack up? I've heard it's only a little better than Jedi. That's cool. I can handle that. That still makes it pretty damn amazing. The problem with it is that most of the people in it already have pretty substantial careers. In 1977 no one had heard of Harrison Ford, Mark Hamil or Carrie Fisher. Everyone knows Liam Neeson since Schindler's List. Most people know Ewan McGregor since Trainspotting. (He's cool and all, but is he really right for Obi-Wan Kenobi? I mean, I've seen him naked one too many times. What's up with that? Can you say Harvey Keitel?) A lot of people even know Jake Lloyd and Natalie Portman. And, of course, everyone knows Samuel L. Jackson. (He was on a talk show once saying that he would play a Stormtooper and be killed in five seconds to be in a Star Wars movie. Look what happened.) Everyone thinks that Jake Lloyd is the luckiest kid on Earth. Well, that's true. He's about the age that everyone is when they discover and start to love these movies. But think about this: Ewan is in his late 20s. He was Jake's age when the original came out. He's living out everyone's dream that remembers seeing the movies in the theatre. He's the guy that I want to be in the shoes of. He's gotta be loving every minute of it. (He's even been reported to have made Light Saber sounds while filming the fights. Lucas had to edit them out.) These movies mean so much to so many people. I was only two when the first one came out. I barely remember when Empire came out, but I was just at the right age for Jedi. I remember getting a bunch of magazines and toys and stuff in 1983. (Another thing that Lucas is a genius with: merchandising...but we all know that.) The problem with The Phantom Menace is that I already know too much about it. I read half of an article in Vanity Fair about three months ago and found out who one of the characters ends up being. I stopped reading and vowed to not read another article until the movie came out. Now I'm going so far as to not listen to the soundtrack. Lucas has been giving an awful lot of "exclusive" interviews. He wouldn't tell anyone about the movie...except Vanity Fair, Entertainment Tonight, 60 Minutes, E!, Playboy, The Saskatchewan Review... I've learned an awful lot about this movie that I really didn't want to know yet. Still, every time I walk by a toy store now I have to go in. I want all of the action figures. I feel like a kid again. That's what these movies are really good for. Even when I see them on video I feel like I'm ten years old. For those of you out there who hate these movies (and I know there are at least two of you), what's wrong with feeling like a kid again? Do all movies have to make you think like Sling Blade? Can't we just go to a movie to be young? That's what George Lucas is really here for. I've always said that there are two guys who would be the greatest dads on Earth: Robin Williams and George Lucas. Wednesday the 19th needs to get here fast. I may not see it opening night (probably won't), but I'll see it as soon as I can. Hopefully it will fulfill our expectations. My guess is that it will break records again. Titanic can't stay afloat forever. (I still like that movie, too.) Hopefully we'll all be 12 again. If only for a couple of hours. Review of Episode 1

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

admin — Thu, 20 May 1999 17:00:00 +0000

I actually saw this a couple of days ago. (I'm writing this on the 23rd.) I can't let this one go like I did Election, though. Let me just get that one out of the way real quick: Good movie. Lot's of voice overs. Reese was great. Matthew Broderick was cool. Best movie MTV has made yet. Definitely made up for Varsity Blues. Yes, there were previews. Not as many as I expected, though. And they all looked pretty good. One for the new Travolta movie, The General's Daughter. Looks pretty intense if not wholly original. The new Austin Powers movie looks great (and so does Heather Graham--Oh behave!) Yet another Star Wars bit in the new trailer. Dr. Evil and Austin have a showdown Dr. Evil: (breathing heavily in his space mask) Austin, I am your father! Austin: NNNooooo! That's impossible! Dr. Evil: Well, maybe not. I have no proof to back that up. Do it in their voices and with a small amount of pinky and it's really funny. And now, the moment we've all been waiting for: Dum-dum-duum-duuuum-dum-dum-dum-duuuum-duum! The first part of the Star Wars Legacy has finally come to us! George Lucas has graced us with his presence! The full story is coming to us! We will know the whole truth! But not yet. Right now we only know a little bit about how Anakin (er, Ani) grew up. He's just a little slave boy on Tatooine who occasionally races pod racers in what I think was probably Beggar's Canyon. Soon a couple of guys in robes come to his home planet to hide a queen from the Trade Federation. The Federation is getting too greedy and Queen Amidala is against them, so she has to run. Her protectors are, of course, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Oh, I almost forgot: somewhere along the way, just before they meet the queen, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan meet up with Jar Jar Binks. He's a weird looking rabbit type creature who generally says things like "How rude!" Not too intelligent or interesting. But he's computer generated, so that's pretty cool. For some reason (probably because it's a Star Wars movie) I really liked the film. The special effects were amazing. I've never seen so many computer generated characters who actually looked real. Jar Jar, Anakin's owner, the Battle Droids, Jabba, etc. They all looked perfectly real this time. Much better than even the Jabba in the Special Edition. And then there's Jar Jar's home. Wow! It's an underwater world that rivals the one in The Abyss for the beauty of computer graphics. The battle scenes were also pretty amazing. From the pod race (which kind of counts as a battle scene) to the final battle between Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Darth Maul (one of the best sword fights I've ever seen with or without light sabers). The acting was pretty good. Jake Lloyd wasn't as annoying as I thought he was be as Anakin. But I really wish people would stop calling him Ani. I kept waiting for him to come out and say, "Listen! My name isn't Ani! And if you don't stop calling me that you can bet your bottom dollar that, when I become Darth Vader, the sun ain't gonna come out for you!" I was kind of annoyed with how many times he said "Yippee!", though. No one says that. No one ever said that. I'll bet that, when George was looking at the dailies, he said to himself, "Why did I have him say that so often? I'm a moron." Anakin was still more grown up than Luke was in the first two movies. Liam Neeson was pretty cool as Qui-Gon. Think of a cross between Spock and the original Obi-Wan. I was pretty concerned with the number of lines he recycled from the original Obi-Wan and Yoda. "I feel a great disturbance in the Force." I guess it's kind of an all purpose line, though. Natalie Portman was a perfect mix of regalness and Princess Leia-ness as Queen Amidala. The problem was that we never really knew who she was until half way through the movie. (Well, some of us did because we had seen the action figures and heard them "talk.") Then there's Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. I didn't know if I would like him in the role, but now I know he was perfect. He does a great Alec Guinness impression. I've never heard anyone else do the voice so well. He's also great with the action. He handles his saber well. In fact, according to the IMDb, he was so good that he kept making the noises as he was filming the fighting scene. Imagine being a 20-something in this movie with a light saber. You'd be making "vsh-vsh-CHKCHKCHK!" noises, too. Lucas, alas, had to edit them out. Oh well. No onomatopoeias for Ewan. Samuel L. Jackson (as Jedi Council member Mace Windu), C-3PO and R2-D2 really didn't have much to do. They appeared and disappeared, especially Mace and 3PO. R2 was pretty cool, though. And his first scene is a classic. It's like playing pool with R2 units. And some "look for"s: Warwick Davis (Wicket W. Warwick and Willow) makes his fourth appearance in a Star Wars movie. He's a face in the crowd at the pod races. If you know he's there you'll see him. He's hard to miss and he's shown twice. Also, from what I've heard, E.T. makes an appearance in the Federation trial scene. His people are in one of the floating jury boxes or whatever they are all the way at the bottom of the screen. We'll probably have to wait for video for that one. Also, an R2 unit gets knocked over in the junk shop on Tatooine by, you guessed it, Jar Jar the Annoying. The bottom of the droid says THX-1138. I didn't see the second two things, but I've heard that they're there. I'll look for them the next time I see it, though. Now the problems. And there are a few. What's up with the characters? I really didn't get a sense of any of them. Even Anakin, who was the most developed, was a little weak. Granted, having a movie full of Jedis is kind of like having a movie full of Vulcans: a lot of people walking around controlling their emotions and bowing. I still would have liked to have gotten to know Qui-Gon and Darth Maul. They just kind of drifting in and out of scenes (especially Maul) and didn't do much to let us in. I think I knew Vader better by the end of the first one than I did any of the bad guys in this one. Then there's the fact that a lot of the aliens had very Earth-like accents. Jar Jar was Jamaican. The flying slave/junk shop owner was French. The two main bad guys were Asian/Transylvanian (don't ask). Who knew that we had traveled that far that long ago. Also, a lot of the stuff looked more advanced than the originals. The ship that they fly around in, though it doesn't have as much character as the Falcon, looked like it was from a much more advanced universe. (Kind of like, well, ours. It looks like a Stealth bomber or something, as opposed to a hamburger with an olive beside it.) Why are they using droids in the new ones when they had to use humans in Stormtrooper uniforms in the originals? What happened to their technology? I guess the Clone Wars really wreaked havoc on things. Also, how did they get through the core of a planet when they went from Jar Jar's home to Naboo on the other side of the planet? That doesn't make a lot of sense, but I guess maybe it's a world full of water. Someone complained that the Tatooine landing scene looked like it was taken shot for shot out a documentary that they saw. Well, the Battle of Yavin was taken almost shot for shot out of (depending on who you talk to) Dam Busters and 633 Squadron. And the scene where Luke finds his dead aunt and uncle was strongly reminiscent of The Searchers. At least this time he found something a little more obscure to copy. It gets a little political at times, too. We get a lot of discussion about the problems of the Trade Federation and the Naboo vs. Jar Jar's people. A lot of this could have been avoided. The next one won't need to be so talky. We'll know what happened before. And speaking of talky, there was a scene between Qui-Gon and Anakin that kind of annoyed me. Anakin asked, point blank, what something was. I, personally, figured it out from an earlier scene between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. You see, the Jedi have more of a certain kind of cell in their blood. Qui-Gon took a sample of Anakin's, sent it back to Obi-Wan and found out that they were off the charts in the kid. About half an hour later Anakin asked Qui-Gon what they were. Qui-Gon went into great detail about these cells. Lucas should have had his old buddy Lawrence Kasden look at his script to take out all the useless stuff...like Jar Jar. Which brings us to the biggest problem. Jar Jar was really annoying. Oh, I laughed at him a couple of times, but not enough to make him useful. And, you may ask, what's wrong with a character who says "How rude!" every other line? And to that I say, "Full House." Say no more. As much as I did like the movie, I can see where people who didn't like it are coming from. There are a lot of flaws in it. It's not nearly as good as the other three, but it's still a major part of the Star Wars Universe. That's what makes it worth seeing. For a geek like me, that's what makes it worth seeing six or seven times. The way I figure it, it'll make a lot more sense in the grand scheme of things. It'll be one 12 hour movie. Even the weak parts will be necessary and we'll learn to love them. After all, we learned to love Return Of The Jedi. And besides, it spawned one of the best movie posters of all time. So, overlook the flaws and just enjoy the ride. Jar Jar or no.

eXistenZ

admin — Fri, 21 May 1999 17:00:00 +0000

I saw some pretty interesting previews tonight. First off, I saw the new Austin Powers preview again. I really wish that movie would hurry up and come out so I don't get sick of the preview that I've been seeing hourly at work lately. Of course, I REALLY hope that it's not a big disappointment. That "Zip it" joke may be going too far back to the original. Not to mention the fact that he's recycling Smothers' Brothers stuff with the "lower your voice" gag. Mom always liked that one best. There was also one for the new Bruce Willis flick, The Sixth Sense. Kind of Mercury Rising 2. It's about a kid who sees dead people all the time and Bruce is trying to help him through it. Just the preview kinda creeped me out. Looks pretty good. The kid is played by none other than Forrest, Jr. (Haley Joel Osment). I wonder if he'll watch a lot of TV. Also there's a new Claire Danes movie, Brokedown Palace. She and Kate Beckinsale (who is quite a bit older than Claire) are best friends in high school or college and they go to Bangkok for the summer. (You see, Bangkok means freedom and that's what they're searching for. Uh-huh.) They get caught smuggling drugs that were planted by someone and get thrown in jail. Then comes Bill Pullman to save the day. Morale of the story? Never take drugs from a guy who says his name is Nick Parks unless he is molding clay. (Well, some of you got it.) The preview was pretty intense, but I kept expecting Claire to start vomiting pea soup. (Some of you got that one, too.) Oh, and one more thing: Spike Lee does a white joint! Summer Of Sam, as far as I could tell, didn't have a black person in frame. Weird. It looks really good, though. Gotta see that one. Anyway, back to the matter at hand: eXistenZ. David Cronenberg once again brings us one of the strangest movies of the year. This one is about Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh...not Sarah Michele), the top game programmer of the time, which is somewhere in the maybe near future. She is premiering her new game, which involves living game pods that people plug into their spines. Allegra is shot by a disgruntled Realist and has to run away with Ted Pikul (Jude Law--Gattaca, Wilde, Music From Another Room). Apparently, everyone has a plug for these games now except for the Realists and Ted. He's scared of penetrating his body in any way. Don't blame him. Along the way we meet all kinds of weird creatures (a two headed salamander/frog thing) and people (Gas, played by Willem Dafoe and Vinoker, played by Ian Holm). We also get confused (as do the characters) as to whether what we're watching is real or part of the game. I like David Cronenberg (even though I haven't seen Scanners or Naked Lunch--or Crash, for that matter). I came into this movie expecting quite a bit after hearing that it was Cronenbergs and it had Jennifer Jason Leigh in it (one of the greatest actors ever). Then I heard really good reviews. Awesome. Gotta see it. Oh boy. How many times has that gotten me in trouble? The idea behind this was really cool. I living game that plugs into your spine and makes you think that you're really there. The problem is that it's also an easy subject to screw up (see Strange Days). You need good actors and a good script. Cronenberg was about a quarter of the way there. Jennifer was great. She was a shy cross between goth and nerdy. Then, when she turns sexual in one part of the game, she goes off. WOW! There was no skin, but it was still pretty, er, stimulating. She's lost a little weight since last I saw her (Mrs. Parker...around that time). I've always liked her, though. Even before I saw Fast Times. I thought she was perfect for Dorothy Parker AND Amy Archer in Hudsucker Proxy (damn the critics). She's a great actress as long as she doesn't try to play too normal (Backdraft). She does wonders for this film. Jude Law, on the other hand, doesn't. He's getting by on his looks and his Britishness...which he doesn't even get to use here! Although, you can tell he's British because he slips up every once in a while. I was pretty much annoyed with him throughout. This guy seemed to have talent in Gattaca. What happened? The minor actors did pretty well. Ian Holm was great as always. So was Willem Dafoe. (He scares me, anyway. He's got to be the ugliest guy in Hollywood. Then there's the script. Oh, the script. Too many obvious lines. Too many repeated lines. Too much stupidity on the part of the main characters, one of whom is supposed to be a genius. Because of this I really didn't give much of a damn about any of the characters. I'm not sure why so many critics have liked it so much. The problems are pretty glaringly obvious. Cronenberg seems to be losing a little of the directorial touch, too. At least as far as coverage and editing go. There were scenes where people would be in one position in one shot and then in a totally different one in the next supposedly equal shot. And it wasn't meant to be like that. It was, at least, interesting. I will give it that. Plus there was some really cool gore scenes (especially the Chinese waiter) and an awesome, but gross, gun. Cool ending, too. It may be worth seeing if it's cheap time and you're bored with everything else. For Cronenberg and Leigh fans it's probably a must, though. If not, rent The Fly or Dead Ringers instead.

Instinct

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Anthony Hopkins. Cuba Gooding, Jr. What can go wrong? I've been waiting to see this movie since I first started seeing previews a few months ago. I love seeing Hopkins in roles like this. Roles where he gets to stretch his acting legs AND kick butt. Instinct is about Dr. Ethan Powell (Hopkins). He was lost in Africa about five years before and, when he was found with a family of gorillas, he killed two men and injured three. He hasn't spoken since. Now it's up to Theo Caulder (Cuba) to break through to him. Why did he do it? Why did he leave his family behind? What did he see with the gorillas? The main problem with this movie is that I've seen Silence Of The Lambs. It's almost an exact copy. Cuba plays the Clarice Starling character all the way down to the fact that he's a psychologist in training. Why did he get this job? Good question. We had the same question about Clarice. Luckily, they explain why in both movies. You see, Clarice was kind of a last resort. They needed someone that Lecter wouldn't suspect. Not the most plausible explanation, but it works. Caulder, on the other hand, wants to write...a...book. Oh. Ok. Sure. So Donald Sutherland (in almost the same role he had in A Time To Kill) sends him to the asylum at Harmony Bay (nice name for a prison), I guess because he wants to read the book. Then, of course, Lecter, I mean Powell, gets into Caulder's head without him really knowing it. The problem here is that we don't get to know anything about Caulder. He has no family, no friends, no life. All we know is that he is after Powell's daughter (Maura Tierney--Liar, Liar and Primary Colors), but he won't admit it to anyone. I don't blame him. I know I'd be after her. Hopkins is amazing. There's no other way for him to be. I've never seen him put in a bad performance. He's incapable. He's menacing. He's caring. He's mean. He's everything you could want in an evil-hero. Cuba, on the other hand... I like the guy. I think he's a good actor. He was, for the most part, good in this one. He just had a problem with the emotions. He went WAY overboard sometimes. Especially at the end. He's standing on top of the bleachers in the asylum talking to a non-responsive Powell. After about a minute of babbling he starts blubbering. We really had no indication that these two guys had gotten this close. They learned a little about themselves through their sessions, but they weren't really buds. Now Caulder is suddenly crying over him. He was asking Powell to open up to him again. What was really going on we Cuba was begging Hopkins. "Please help me get another Oscar, Anthony! I've got an empty space on my mantel." Then there's the fact that he does a Tom Cruise stance when he goes to visit Powell's daughter. She answers the door and there he is, with his arm up and his head hanging against it. Hey, Cuba! Don't learn from Tom! He can't act! Another problem I had was the fact that the message seemed to be a little pushed. It's always best when the message isn't really mentioned in the dialogue. It's just there and we can figure it out for ourselves. Powell has to tell us this one. He is seen drawing a map of the world in his cell complete with the migration of man throughout the ages. He spells it all out to us. "The Takers" (people who think they have control) have been pushing the more natural world too far. We have been paying too much attention to our careers and our possessions and too little attention to what's inside of us. We don't need control because we never had it. Apparently we should all live with monkeys for a while. That seems to be the only solution. They don't give us another one. It's not always bad to not give a solution in a case like this. Let us come up with our own. That's fine, but at least give us a message with a solution. They even tell us that there isn't one. Ok, I guess it's hopeless. Nevermind. Then they try to be too many things at once. This movie is Silence Of The Lambs meets 12 Monkeys meets The Shawshank Redemption meets One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. We've discussed SOTL. 12 Monkeys/Cuckoo's Nest is pretty obvious. It's in an asylum and they try to make everyone into different characters that we care about. And then Caulder tries to reform the prison and make it a nice place to live. There's even a shot of him standing in the rain with his arms up in the air. Wow. Could they rip off a little more? There were some really good moments in the movie. Most of them were between Cuba and Anthony. The psych sessions near the beginning were great. There were some funny moments in the asylum. There are two characters that reminded my friend and I of characters from a Disney movie. The best friends who are too stupid to know that they're stupid. My friend liked this movie a lot. I thought it was ok. Nothing special at all. The best thing about it is Hopkins. If you're a fan or an actor, go see it in a matinee or wait for video. Either way, you should see it for him. Otherwise, go rent one of the movies that it rips off. They're all much better.

Evil Dead Trilogy (1980, 1986, 1993)

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Let's rewind six years. February of my senior year of high school. (Dates me, doesn't it? Don't worry. I'm dating other people, too. I'm not exclusive.) To be exact it was February 19th, 1993. Opening night. 8:15 pm. (I know this because I still have the ticket stub. How sad is that?) Two friends of mine, Jeremy and A.J., tell me that we have to go see this movie called Army Of Darkness. I had seen previews of the movie, but hadn't really heard anything about it. I only knew that it looked like one of the stupidest things I had ever seen in my life. "No, man. We're not going to see that thing. Look at it. It's got talking skeletons! It's awful!" "No. We're going. You're coming with us." "Whatever. It's gonna suck." We go. We see it at the Riverside Theatre. For those of you in or from Austin--which would be all three of you--you know what kind of audience I'm seeing this movie with. Lots of people screaming and yelling. Occasional gunfire. You know. The classy part of town. I'm already a little on edge. I'm seeing a movie I have no interest in. I'm going to a really bad theatre. We're going in a car that starts with the push of a button. (A.J.'s car didn't need the key. Don't ask. It also drank a quart of oil about every 4 miles and threatened to break down every three. Interesting car, that.) What happens that night is amazing. I go from skeptic to fanatic within less than an hour and a half. From the time Bruce Campbell comes on screen and says, "My name is Ash and I'm a slave," I'm hooked. I shouldn't be, but I am. This movie is bad beyond all reproach. The great thing about it is that it's bad on purpose. Until then I didn't know that movies were ever made like that. I hadn't heard of Italian horror films or Waterworld. I kind of knew who Ray Harryhausen was, but I didn't know Sam Raimi or Bruce Campbell. It started a whole new chapter in my life. I started to love bad movies. I started to learn more about all kind of directors and actors. I became a film geek. The rest of that school year became the year of Ash. We never stopped quoting him. A favorite was, of course, "Gimme some sugar, baby." If Jeremy and A.J. are out there (I have since lost touch with them) I hope you're happy with what you've done to me. I know I am. I owe you guys a lot. I saw the other two movies a couple of years later after getting my job at Blockbuster. I annoyed plenty of people with "that Army Of Darkness" movie that they had never heard of. I was excited when it came out on video (sometime after I got the job). I now own AOD and EDII. Still need the first one. I'll get it soon, though. Don't worry. Anyway, that was my introduction to the world of the Necronomicon. Now, six years and hundreds of horror flicks later, I'm still a fan of these movies. Now I've seen the man himself. Bruce Campbell was at the screening of these three classic schlock/shock flicks. He talked to us for about half an hour before the first one and then talked again after it for about half an hour. We found out just how crazy Raimi is. He takes great joy in tormenting poor Bruce. All those stones that are thrown at him at the beginning of AOD? Sam's. He threw them as hard as he could because "that's what they would really be doing!" He also threw dog food at him at the end of the first Evil Dead. When the zombie gives its final explosion, Sam actually threw it in Bruce's face. Alpo, to be exact. In EDII, he put him on a spinning X and worked him like a video game. Bruce was dragged through trees and bushes and spun faster and faster while Sam smiled and pushed buttons. In AOD he yelled at Bruce so much that Bruce finally asked him, "Is this how you're going to direct Gene Hackman? Yell at him, belittle him, make him feel like crap? I'm sure that'll work, Sam." Sam's kind of a freak. We also learned about the hardships of the MPAA. They let the first two movies slip by them. They're unrated. As Bruce put it, "They were taking notes for seven years. 'There goes Evil Dead. That's one. There goes Evil Dead II. That's two. Oh, Army Of Darkness? NC-17!!!' Yeah. Talking skeletons. NC-17." Needless to say, it didn't get that rating. Why should it. It's barely PG-13. They gave it an R, though. We also found out about Sam's car. It's in pretty much all of his movies and has maybe one piece left of it's original self. The car that Ash drives in all three movies is Sam's. It's also the car that Dr. Westlake runs into in Darkman. It's the car that's driven in Crimewave. It's somewhere in A Simple Plan. He's even working it into his new one. It's pretty doubtful that it's in The Quick And The Dead, though. Bruce, however, was almost in TQATD. The actor who played the announcer of the gunfights wanted to defend his daughter, who was turned into a whore. Sam finally decided to shut him up when Bruce came to visit. He had the makeup people make him look dirty and disgusting saying, "It's not much of a stretch." Then he had Bruce say something to her like, "Hey, baby. Let's go back to my place." Then the father comes up behind him and puts him in a choke hold. Sam told the guy that he could really do it because "this guy's a stunt man." He shot it, told the guy he did great and yelled at Bruce because he didn't do it right. He had been getting it from Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman all month, so he had to give it to somebody. Why not ol' buddy Bruce? Oh, and the origin of THE LINE? They were about to film the kissing scene between Ash and Sheila and he wasn't supposed to say anything. Just kiss her. Before they started shooting they couldn't find Sam. Bruce finally heard some maniacal laughter off in the corner. Sam was looking very pleased with himself. "I know what your gonna say to her!" "Um, 'Kiss me'?" "No. 'Gimme some sugar, baby'!" More maniacal giggling. Apparently most of this movie was filmed like this. With Sam off camera giving them lines as they filmed it. Hey, if it works... Just so you guys know, Bruce is just as much of a smartass in real life as he is on screen. He made fun of Sam. He made fun of people in the audience. He made fun of e-mails that he got from fans. He made fun of fans in general. He's awesome. I want to be him. So, Evil Dead. One of the grossest horror films of all time. You thought the pea soup was disgusting? Wait until you've seen oatmeal and dog food. A group of friends go up into the woods to an abandoned cabin. (It was actually an abandoned cabin, too. So abandoned that it was falling down. It burned down in 1980, two years after the movie was filmed.) Only one comes back...maybe. If you have a weak stomach you definitely don't want to see this movie. It's a lot of fun, but it's as gory as anything that Dario Argento dreams. The acting, on the other hand, is awful. So is the dialogue. With great lines like "We can't bury Shelly! She's our friend!" Bruce brings a new level of acting to the screen. He told us that what we were really seeing on the screen that night was twelve years of acting lessons. I can believe it. He's not the only bad one, though. They're all bad. And two of them were SAG members! How'd that happen? Well, I guess Keanu Reeves is SAG, too. (By the way, Hal Delrich and Sarah York aren't their real names. SAG found out and fined both of them. It's not nice to fool with Mother SAG.) Other than the gore, watch for a ripped The Hills Have Eyes poster (Raimi's statement that THIS is the most grueling horror film ever made, not Craven's cannibal hillbilly flick. Craven retaliated by having Heather Langenkamp watching The Evil Dead when she's trying to stay awake in Nightmare On Elm Street. Of course Craven started the whole thing with a ripped Jaws poster in The Hills Have Eyes. Who is this guy thinking he's made a better film than Jaws?), and the scene where Shelly gets raped by trees. Don't ask, just watch it. I hear she got Dutch Elm's Disease. (That was Bruce's, not mine. Send your hate mail to him.) The one really strange thing about this movie is the fact that Ash lives (maybe). Think about it. Who lives through most of these flicks? The Jamie Leigh Curtis/Neve Campbell character. The virtuous young girl. This one has the weak guy surviving. One audience member said that this series makes Ash the first horror super hero. Works for me. Generally, it's just a fun, gore-filled time. Not much in the way of story or other artistic stuff. The only talent seen here is the special effects and the occasional direction. But that's all it takes for this one. Awesome. One of the best of it's genre. Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn starts all over. It has about 10-15 minutes of Ash and Linda (nobody else this time) coming to the cabin in the woods. In a few minutes Linda is dead and Ash is thrown into a puddle. He wakes up as a demon and then is magically cured (huh?). He does, however, lose his hand in one of the funniest scenes in any horror movie. (How many plates do we have?) After a while the cabin's owner's daughter, her friend and two bits of white trash who are tagging along show up and think that Ash killed her parents. They throw him in the cellar not realizing that her mom is in there waiting to carve some Ash. And the movie ends up pretty much how the first one did. Everyone dies but Ash and he gets sucked into a vortex taking him into the Middle Ages setting up Army Of Darkness. The great thing about this one is the mix of gore and comedy. The first one had more gore and a little comedy (most of it unintentional), but this one pushes the comedy envelope. Some pretty good gore, but not nearly as much. That's ok, it's still awesome. Some things to look for: After Wes Craven put the original in Nightmare On Elm Street Raimi felt he had to retaliate again. This time Freddie's glove shows up above the door of the work shed. (I actually saw it this time, so I know it's there.) Raimi's brother, Ted, shows up in this one, but you wouldn't recognize him even if you knew what he looked like. He's the Possessed Henrietta. He's got so much makeup on that he doesn't even look human. (Go figure.) When they talk about Henrietta they say that she's in the fruit cellar. Is there any fruit down there? No, it's just a way to reference Psycho. And then there's the book that Ash puts on the bucket that he throws over his severed hand: A Farewell To Arms. Only the Marx Brothers could do better. The cabin in this one has a story behind it that Bruce told us. The original burned down in 1980 (as I've said before), so they had to rebuild one in a studio. The designer watched the original and did a very faithful copy not realizing how bad it looked in the original. They had taken a wall out of the cabin to make a bigger living room. (They also had to dig a hole for the trap door.) That's why there's a plaster wall on one side of the room and a slated wood wall on the other. The designer just put it all back the way it was. Of course, this strangeness makes the Haunting-like bit with strange noises coming from all sides look really cool. This is probably my favorite of the trilogy. It's hard to say, though. I'm a big comedy hound, but I'm also a pretty big gore hound. (After all, some of my favorite horror flicks are Italian.) By the way, Stephen King had a lot to do with getting this one made. He accidentally saw the first one and said that it was the "most ferociously original horror movie I have ever seen." This made other critics take notice. They thought it was just bad. Now they knew that it was an original bad movie. When the second one was being made Stephen was making Maximum Overhype nearby. Dino DeHorrendous (again, Bruce's words...along with New Lies Cinema) didn't want to give Raimi any more money for this stupid little horror flick. He went to visit Stephen who heard that they were filming EDII. "Oh! You'd better give them some money! They'll turn something great out!" "Of course we will Stephen! We were just going to!" That was the best thing that came out of King's directing debut. Now we get to the first one I ever saw, Army Of Darkness. Bruce Campbell became a much better actor and got a lot more one-liners. (There was "Groovy" and "Swallow this" in EDII. Now we've got about twenty more.) The beginning of this one is a little different from the end of the last one. In that one he had just killed a demon in the medieval times and the soldiers were worshiping him. In the beginning of this one he is a slave. Bruce said that they couldn't get the rights to EDII so they had to reshoot the entire beginning. That explains the parts with Linda (this time played by the only really famous person in the entire series, Bridget Fonda--a fan of the first two--no, really!). But why is it that the scenes in the cabin look exactly like the scenes from the end of the second one? So much so that they have to be from that movie? Who knows. So Ash is now stuck in the middle ages. He has to get the Necronomicon without waking the Army of the Dead (Klaatu Barada Necktie!), but he, of course, fails. Then they have to fight the talking skeletons. There are some movies that you can watch over and over and over again without ever getting tired of them. Ghostbusters. Duck Soup. I have found out the hard way that AOD is not really one of those movies for me. I still love it and what it's done for me (as mentioned above--I'm a freak, aren't I?), but I didn't have as much fun this time around. I knew everything that was going to happen and every line that Ash was going to say. The other two were just more exciting, I guess. This one was pure comedy that tried really hard to work. And it does as long as you don't watch it too much. I've seen it about 10-15 times and it's kind of lost its magic for me. The first two were just as much fun this time as AOD was the first time. I'm not panning the movie at all. It's a great flick. It holds a special place in my heart. Nothing will take that away. And I suggest that everyone rent it. Everyone, that is, who loves horror, comedy or bad movies. Not for gore-hounds, though. There just isn't much of that here. This one relies on (bad) special effects and one-liners. So, there it is. All three Evil Dead movies. Back to back to evil back. I will leave you all with some final words of wisdom from the man himself. (They're paraphrased, though. I don't have THAT good of a memory.) "Don't go see a movie just because it's Summer and you think you have to. There's no such thing as a 'Must See Movie.'" In a way, I agree. Don't go see Armageddon unless you think you'll enjoy it. In that case, there is no such thing. Although there are movies that should be required viewing for everyone mature enough to see them. Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List are two of those. Movies that make you sick because they actually happened and we can stop it from happening again. On a lighter note he also said, "We need some real horror movies again. I want a horror movie with a score instead of a soundtrack. One that's scary, not funny. Scream is not a horror movie." This, I agree with. Any of you starving filmmakers out there need to take note. (I count myself among you still. I may have to put my plans on hold for a while, but I'm still there.) If you want to make a horror flick, watch movies like Evil Dead, The Haunting, Alien (yeah, it's a horror movie), The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, Poltergeist...the real horror movies. The ones now, fun as they are, aren't real horror movies. They're thrillers with knives. Even Sam Raimi "took his teeth out and put them on his dresser." (Again, Bruce's words. Don't blame me, Sam.) Army Of Darkness is great, but it's not a horror movie. We need gore. We need scares. We need movies that will keep us awake at night. Scream almost had it with the first 15 minutes. I was scared as hell when Drew Barrymore was running around the house looking for her soon-to-be killer. After that it was just fun. That's not what a horror movie is all about. If anyone knows of an actual horror movie that really scares you that has been made in the last ten years, e-mail me. I'm still looking. I've seen most of the major ones (especially the teeny-bopper ones--Scream, I Know What We Killed Last Summer Two Years Ago, Urban Legend, etc.), but I'm ready for a real horror movie. What've you got?

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 1999 17:00:00 +0000

It's that time of year again. Time for me to start watching a bunch of classic movies at the Paramount Theatre. This is the second one that I've seen this Summer. The first was To Catch A Thief. That one didn't quite merit a review. Great movie, don't get me wrong, but it's not the best Hitchcock movie out there. I'll be seeing a lot of better ones later in the season. This one, on the other hand, I knew that I had to see on the big screen. As most of my friends (all three of them) and some of my readers (all two of them) know, I'm a big fan of epic films. That's why I love Braveheart and Titanic so much. I also love all of David Lean's films. Some of you may not know who Lean is, but you've at least heard of his films: Bridge On The River Kwai, Lawrence Of Arabia, A Passage To India, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Brief Encounter, etc. etc. Lots of Oscars in that list. His third big epic (after River Kwai and Lawrence) was Doctor Zhivago, a sweeping epic about the two loves of a man and the revolution of a nation. The movie starts out with General Yevgraf Zhivago (Alec Guinness in his fifth and second to last role for Lean), talking to a young lady in a work camp who he thinks may be his half-brother's long lost daughter. She doesn't remember her parents hardly at all, but she can't disprove her relationship to Zhivago and Lara, the woman he wrote about. Flashback to many years ago when Zhivago was growing up and lost his mother. He is taken in by a friend of the family and introduced to Tonya, his future wife. After a very short while, Zhivago is grown up enough to be played by Omar Sharif (in his second role for Lean) and Tonya by Geraldine Chaplin (Charlie's daughter). Also enter Lara (Julie Christie), and Lara's Theme--the main reason for the Oscar this film got for its music. She is in the process of being continuously raped by Komarovsky (Rod Steiger) who happened to be the executor of Mrs. Zhivago's will and Lara's mother's lover. Confused yet? Just wait. Lara is in love with Pasha (Tom Courtenay), a young, idealistic man who Komarovsky, of course, doesn't approve of. They are married anyway. Meanwhile, the Russian Revolution is very close to breaking out. The slaughter of peaceful protesters ends what little peaceful conflict there can be. Pasha is wounded at this massacre and vows to help the Revolution along. Then Zhivago enters Lara's life. He saves the life of her mother at the behest of Komarovsky. Zhivago sees her and instantly falls in love. Later, she is caught at a Christmas party trying to kill Komarovsky and Pasha pulls her out of the room. Zhivago, knowing exactly what's going on between Lara and her forceful lover, bandages Komarovsky and vows to never let the secret out. Things get worse for Lara and Zhivago as the film goes on. They are both thrown out of their homes and Pasha disappears from the WWI front. Later we learn that he has changed his name to Strelnikov and has become a leader of the Red Army. Then there are a lot of train sequences with Zhivago and his family and they constantly keep meeting up with Lara and their forbidden love blossoms. I have, of course, only touched the surface (badly, I might add) of what really goes on in this huge film. There is plenty of romance, action and general epicness going on throughout its three-hour length. (By the way, I really did like this movie. I was just a little uncomfortable in the Paramount's not-so-posh seats.) The main things to watch in this film are the acting and the photography. there are shots that live in the memory forever, such as the "ice palace" scene. This is where Zhivago brings Lara to Tonya's childhood home after it has been locked up by the Red Army and snowed in. Lean made this Russian mansion look both beautiful and forbidding at the same time. Then there is, of course, the snow. It's interesting that this was Lean's next film after Lawrence Of Arabia. That film was pretty much just four hours of desert landscape. Not much else going on. Just a lot of sand. (And yet it's Lean's best film. Go figure.) Now he makes a film with a lot of political stuff and romance going on against a backdrop of mostly snow. Funny how the love of Zhivago for his two women and their children can even make snow seem warm. Then there's the massacre scene. It's pretty harrowing when the protesters are singing a Revolutionary song and then the soldiers start shooting. Zhivago sees the whole thing and can't fathom that this kind of horror could happen. When he goes out after it's over and sees the splotch of blood in the snow, it's a horrific sight for him and us. It is, of course, difficult for someone in my generation to see Alec Guinness in a role outside of the Star Wars films. There was a part at the very beginning where he says, "Yours is a very impatient generation." I leaned over to my friend and said, "He will learrrn patience." The guy on the other side of me laughed. There's always a way to connect Star Wars. The main problem I have with this film is its length. While Lawrence seemed justified in its four hours (the director's cut, anyway), this film could do with some paring down. There were times that I almost dozed off because nothing was happening. That seems like a strange complaint from someone who loves Lawrence Of Arabia so much, and I know there are a lot of people who won't agree with me. The problem is that I can't really back it up with scenes because I don't remember them off hand. I just know that the movie could have been cut down by about a half hour and it probably would have been better. My biggest problem with it, though is the fact that some characters just disappear. Tonya, her father and son just drift away after Zhivago is taken by the army. What happened to them? (And, by the way, what's up with their son's voice? He sounds like a woman trying to sound like a little boy. Could the kid not speak, so they had to dub his voice? Couldn't they have done better? Get Nancy Cartwright to do it or something.) Also, Strelnikov/Pasha is forgotten about two/thirds of the way through. We finally find out what happened to him, but we don't really care because he's barely in the movie. Maybe the movie isn't too long, it just spends too much time on the wrong things and not enough on the right ones. Some people have had a problem with Romeo and Juliet stories in movies like this. Yeah, it's an old story, and it can seem old at times. The thing is, when you have an epic story going on in the background like, oh, say, the Russian Revolution, you need something to hold on to. Instead of a bunch of people running around that you never really have time to care about, you get two or three people that you really get to care about and a few other characters that don't mean as much. Then you see how the big picture affected the small picture and it means that much more to you. That's why this movie works. That's also why Titanic works. (Yes, it does. And, yes, I'll keep defending that damn movie even after the hype annoys the hell out of me...which it did.) That's why movies like The Poseidon Adventure end up being cheese after ten years. That's also why movies like The Longest Day (while it is a very good movie) aren't as emotionally affecting as Saving Private Ryan. Am I belaboring the point? I think I'll shut up now. Doctor Zhivago was one of the most popular movies of 1965. It was beat out of the Best Picture Oscar by some movie called The Sound Of Music. It's hard to say which one I think should have won. They both had their weak points. They were both a little too long, but at least Omar Sharif didn't break out into song every five minutes. I can see why this movie would have been popular in the mid-sixties. America was on the verge of revolution at the time. The younger generation was trying to tell the older generation everything that they were doing wrong. The problem was that no one was listening. Not even the young people. There's a scene in the movie that exemplifies what was going on in our nation at the time. Soldiers from the front (including Pasha) were marching home while new soldiers and their commanders were marching towards the front. The "used up" soldiers encircled the new ones cutting them off from their commander. Soon the relievers and relievees were on the same side and beat the old men to death. Then there's the aforementioned slaughter in the town square. If you don't think that that kind of thing can happen here, just think back to 1968 at Kent State. It may have been three years after this movie came out, but the groundwork was already being laid. The first time I saw this movie was on video. It was widescreened, but I wasn't too impressed. I liked it, but I didn't really see too much special about it. Now, after seeing it on the big screen, I'm very impressed. Even though it's a little long, it's an important film and should be seen by anyone interested in film and history. But (and this is true of all of Lean's epic films) see it on the big screen if you get a chance. It's much more interesting and impressive.

Austin Powers in The Spy Who Shagged Me

admin — Sat, 12 Jun 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Austin Powers is back!!! And it's about time. I remember seeing the first one only on the strength of how much I loved So I Married An Axe Murderer. My friend and I ended up having more fun than we had had in a theatre in a long time. (Not that kind of fun...it was a guy.) About as much fun as I had seeing Army Of Darkness the first time. (Nice link, huh.) It was kind of weird, though. When the jokes went on for too long (as they often do, but it's all part of the joke) the audience would stop laughing. Then, after they stopped the joke, we would laugh at the fact that we stopped laughing. Not many movies can make you laugh at the fact that you're not laughing. It's definitely one of my favorite movies of all time now. And now there's a sequel. This time around Austin (Mike Myers, of course) has to follow Dr. Evil (Myers again) back in time to rescue his Mojo. Along the way we find out that Number 2 (Robert Wagner) used to look like Rob Lowe and that Scott Evil (Seth Green) may not have been a test tube baby after all. There's also the little problem of Vanessa (Elizabeth Hurley), Austin's new found love from the first movie. How do we get her out of the picture so that Austin can go after new 60s vixen Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham--"Shagwell by name. Shag VERY well by reputation"). I don't know that I totally agree with how they did it just because I liked the original character. It does fit, I guess. It doesn't make any sense and makes Austin give us a look of utter confusion. That makes it work somehow. The other problem is one of the new characters: Fat Bastard (Myers yet again). First off, there is a lot, and I mean A LOT, of gross humor in this one. This character goes a little too far with it. Especially when he's naked. (Shudder.) He says things like "Where's you're crapper. I got a turtle head pokin' out." That has to be one of the dirtiest images in film history...and I'm glad I could share it with all of you. Basically this guy is a very fat, disgusting, sickening, gross, ill-tempered Scottish guy who starts working for Dr. Evil. He just gets grosser and grosser as the movie goes on. I don't know if I liked him or not. I have a higher threshold for gross humor than a lot of people, but this guy wasn't always funny with it. That's where I have to draw the line. If it's funny, go for it. If it's not, stop. Dr. Evil's clone, Mini-Me (played by the under 3-ft. Verne J. Troyer), brings us some pretty good moments. He's slowly taking the place of Scott, so they're jealous of each other. And Dr. Evil doesn't help things by doing new renditions of "Just The Two Of Us" with his new-found "son." Then there's all the Jerry Maguire bits. Pretty funny. Felicity had a few problems, though. I love Heather Graham. She was great in Boogie Nights. She was cute in Swingers. She's not very good in this one. But, you know what? She looks absolutely amazing and that makes up for her acting. Wow! If I were Mike Myers I would have chosen her to be with me, too. Especially with all those cool nearly see-thru clothes. Unfortunately we didn't get a scene like we did at the end of the first one with her walking around naked. Instead we get Austin walking through a hotel naked through the opening credits after he finds out that he's single again. Funny, but not what I really wanted. There are a lot of cameos in it, too. Kristin Johnston from "3rd Rock" shows up early as Ivana Humpalot. This woman has no shame at all. She and Mike Myers together are almost too much shamelessness in one scene. Clint Howard shows up in the same role he had in the original, just the 60s version. Tim Robbins (yes, that Tim Robbins) shows his sense of humor again. For some reason I was really glad to see him in there. Jerry Springer gains a little bit of respect because of his role. (Ok, he plays himself, but Donahue probably never did anything like this.) Of course Mr. Burt Bacharach shows up. This time with special guest Elvis Costello! Cool! They do "Never Gonna Fall In Love." Not bad. And watch for Fred Ward in a very tiny part. Oh yeah, the gross humor. They almost go too far sometimes, but that's the point of the series. There's a scene with Austin and Felicity in shadowy silouhette that puts them in pretty compromising positions. Then there's all those penis jokes. You thought that the warhead in the original was phallic. There are more phallic symbols in this one than Rocky Horror. They make reference to one of them in a string of scenes with people saying things like "That looks like a big..." cut to another scene "Johnson! Get over here." This goes on for a while. One of the funniest ones involves Woody Harrelson and yet another cameo. Willie Nelson shows up in this part, too. Then there's those Star Wars references. The problem with those is that, in ten years, even in five years, we'll forget why they were all there. We totally understand now, but do we all remember that Face/Off and Con Air were released in the same summer? Or that Godzilla and Armageddon were in the same summer? Well...ok...some of us remember. But some of us are geeks. They'll still be funny, but why is a spy spoof spoofing Star Wars so much? Kinda weird. They also seem to get confusing with the time thing. Whenever they want someone in a scene they pop up in the different time that they didn't travel to. Scott shows up in the 60s even though he never needed to be there. Fat Bastard shows up in all time zones in all parts of the movie. When did he get to the present time? Dunno. Who cares, though. If we think about it too much our eyes will cross. Of course there's the prerequisite Bond spoofs: Dr. Evil wants his secret evil lair in an active volcano, there's a fight in space, Austin and Felicity row up to the beach and are suddenly in bikinis (Oh, Heather!!) It really is a good movie, it just gets confused occasinally (just like this review), and just too freakin' gross with that bastard...who...happens to be...fat. (The last time he's in the movie, though, there's a very subtle joke. I thought it was funny even if it was pretty obvious. He's disguised as a UPS delivery guy and, instead of UPS, his uniform says FBD. Pretty good, huh?) Not as good as the first one, but what did we expect? But, the more I think about it, the more I liked it. I laugh at things that hang with me. That's the sign of a groovy movie, baby!

The Thirteenth Floor

admin — Wed, 16 Jun 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Ok, I knew this was going to be pretty weak, but it's got Gretchen Mol in it! This is the story of a new game-like program that creates a virtual-reality environment. But the thing is, it goes beyond virtual-reality. It creates lives. It's creator, Hannon Fuller (Armin Mueller-Stahl from Shine), found this out. Or maybe he found something else out. Something even more devastating. Unfortunately he gets killed before he can tell anybody. He did, however, leave a message inside the new world for one of his co-workers, Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko from The Long Kiss Goodnight and Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas). He barely gets to call him and leave a message about the message (don't ask) before he sees someone he knows in the bar and gets killed by them outside. So now Doug has to go into this world (a really cool version of 1930s L.A.) and find this message. The problem is that the bartender Fuller gave it to, Ashton (Vincent D'Onofrio), is nosy. He reads it and finds out a little bit too much. Meanwhile, in the real world, Fuller's daughter, Jane (Gretchen) shows up. Funny thing is, no one knew that he had a daughter. So where did she come from? Is she as innocent as we all think? Is she going to take advantage of the situation and take over the company? When the movie started out I thought it was going to be some techno film noir. It started out with a lot of close-ups on cigarettes and a voice-over and all that stuff. Then, when it gets back to our time, it went on to the girl being introduced to the man out of nowhere. They start to fall for each other right away and he starts to be fingered for the murder of his mentor. Then it starts to go off. He suddenly wonders where he was the night of the murder. Was I in bed? Did I get the message that I didn't think that I got? Did I kill the poor old man? Why am I worrying about this? I really have no reason to wonder about it. There's nothing in the script until this very moment. The other thing that really bugged me about this flick is that it was very simplistic. My friend that saw it with me said that it seemed like it was written for a junior high mentality. It followed a map and we never got off the road. There were no surprises at all. It was very easy to figure out. Of course, then there's Miss Mol. Absolutely nothing wrong with her. She's another one in the Jewel/Renee Zelwegger/Joey Lauren Adams vein. Especially in this movie. Are all of these girls the same person? I beginning to think so. How can there be so many girls in Hollywood who look the same right now? Craig, on the other hand, was an actual mixture of three other people. He looked like some kind of cross between Brendan Fraser, Tom Sizemore and Vince Vaughn. Pretty weird mix, to tell you the truth. Oh wait. Back to the movie. Basically, it kinda sucked, but in an almost cool way. Pretty much the same as eXistenZ. In fact, it had almost the same ending. Just with a better script. I really liked the story, though. It's a cool idea (just like eXistenZ). A program within a program. What is real? How do we affect the characters that we draw? How do they affect us? I really like these kinds of movies that play with reality and bring the unreal to the real. (How else do you explain my affinity for Wes Craven's New Nightmare and The Neverending Story? Never thought those two movies would be written in the same breath, did you?) The coolest image in the movie (besides the city at the end that looks like something out of a 50s comic book--when the writer of the novel, Daniel F. Galouye, was writing I think. The book is called Simulcron 3, by the way.) is on the poster above. And it gives away part of the movie! I guess it's not too much of a giveaway, though. At least it doesn't tell us that everyone died. DOH! (Just kidding.) I really wish that the movie had been better. The idea was awesome (something new for producer Roland Emmerich--producer of such brainstumping fare as Independence Day and Godzilla, which director Josef Rusnak was 2nd unit director for), but it needed some complications. It needed some real twists. I guess it wasn't too bad, it just wasn't very interesting. It could have been a really good sci-fi flick. Instead it was just mediocre. And I hate mediocre sci-fi. Even bad sci-fi is better. At least you can laugh at it.

Big Daddy

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 1999 17:00:00 +0000

So my friends from school are going to be pretty mad at me if they happen to remember that I have a website. They'll surf on in and find out that I already saw the movie that we were supposed to go see this weekend. But, you see, I saw it with another more persuasive friend. (Not female, unfortunately. No one that persuasive.) Anyway, Adam Sandler is back in form. I (and most college aged males) have been watching this guy's movies for a while. Billy Madison was ok. Kinda stupid, but not too bad. (Ok, REALLY stupid.) Happy Gilmore was great. Best golf comedy since Caddyshack. Bulletproof was pretty funny, if not much of an action movie. And it's the one I remember the least about. (Everyone always forgets that one.) The Wedding Singer was more subdued, but still great. More heart than anything he had done up to that point. Then came The Waterboy. Oh my God. What a waste of everyone's time. It wasn't worth the hour and a half that I used to watch it, much less the cast and crew's six months to film it. It made me re-think my Adam Sandler fanhood. And what made Kathy Bates and Henry Winkler decide to do this to their careers? It certainly wasn't a good sense of humor. So I was kind of scared going into this one. Will it be a return to form? Will it actually bring him a good part again? Luckily, the answers were yes. In this one, Adam brings his frat-boy humor to the softer side of Sears. He's still a loser--works one day a week at the toll booth, has a beautiful girlfriend (Kristy Swanson)--but she wants more, and has a pretty high IQ--but he doesn't want to use it. No, he would rather live off of the $200,000 he made off of a taxi accident two years ago. (He went to law school, so he knew how to get that kind of money from nothing.) This pretty much explains why he can afford to live off of a one day a week salary. Then his girlfriend leaves him for an older man ("He's got a five year plan!" "What is it? Don't die?") played by one of Adam's teachers from The Actor's Studio (!?!? Are they letting anyone in now?). She just says that Sonny (oh yeah, that's Adam's character) doesn't have any responsibility. Then responsibility is dropped on his doorstep, Three Men And A Baby style. Kevin (Jon Stewart), Sonny's roommate, apparently had a kid that he didn't know about and now his mother is dropping him off. Sonny poses as Kevin and takes the kid on for a while to show his ex that he can grow up. Hilarity ensues. Sonny (and, in effect, Adam) starts to show maturity that he never had before. He was always open to other ways of doing things (especially when two of his college buddies fell in love, a fact that another one of the buddies can't quit get a handle on), but he just couldn't handle growing up. Now he has to. He has to show his dad that he can do something with his life. He has to win the girl (the always radiant Joey Lauren Adams--who is starting to rival Julia Roberts for the biggest smile in Hollywood). He has to keep Julian (the kid played by twins Dylan and Cole Sprouse) from the not quite evil Mr. Brooks (Josh Mostel also in Billy Madison) from the adoption agency. (By the way, is it a coincidence that Josh's character name is the name of the man who directed his father, Zero, in his best role, The Producers (Mel Brooks) and that they feature Mel's best movie, Young Frankenstein, in this movie? Hmmm.) Anyway, the movie kind of reminded me of Jim Carrey's Liar, Liar. That, too, was a broad comedian calming down to do a sweet little story about an irresponsible guy's love for his son. They both showed that these guys have a little talent behind their constant mugging (Jim maybe more than Adam, but still...) I don't see any Truman Show's in Adam's future, but we may see a slight downsizing of his humor. That's not always a bad thing, but let's hope he doesn't lose site of things like Happy Gilmore. After all, look at Tom Hanks. Yeah, he's got two Oscars and a third nomination, but what has it gotten him, really? Ok, a bigger fan base. Ok, more respect. Ok. Ok. Ok. But wouldn't we all like to see him in Bachelor Party 2? Behind all the funny stuff in Big Daddy, there's a big heart. Even bigger than the one in The Wedding Singer. Sonny really does grow to love Julian and he would stop at nothing to keep him in his life. The final courtroom scene is maybe a little out of place (would they have bothered to take him to court for everything he did? Probably not.) but it worked. It made everyone in the theatre want to call their dads. That is, until everyone on the screen started to call their dads. I think we could have done without that. Then there's Leslie Mann (George Of The Jungle) and her fake Hooters' breasts. (They couldn't get enough jokes in about Hooters. Hearing Adam say "Hooters" is kind of like hearing Norm McDonald say "hooker" or "dirty whore." It's inherently funny.) She's got a nice body, but those can't be real. I've seen scenes from GOTJ. Kristy Swanson's are real, though. She still looks good. Good movie. If you liked Liar, Liar you'll like this one. And, if you liked Adam's other movies, you'll like this one, too. You'll also have fun watching for people you recognize from his other flicks. He keeps his friends around him. Also, Steve Buscemi has a pretty good Steve Buscemi role. (No one else can play these guys like him.) And Rob Schneider is actually funny again! That hasn't happened in a while. (Peace out!)

South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 1999 17:00:00 +0000

FINALLY!!!!! After a year of waiting, my Kenny mouse pad actually has a reason to exist again! The movie has come. And the people are content. But foist, some previews: DEEP BLUE SEA: Er, Jaws 5: The Swarming of Electric Boogaloo. To tell you the truth, this movie doesn't look too bad. It actually looks kind of scary. The sharks are smarter and more viscous than the one in Jaws, but that's just because we have better special effects now. There's a scene with a guy standing on the ocean's floor and a shark comes down and just scoops him up. Pretty cool. I don't think it's going to be a great movie or anything, but it looks like it could at least be better than all the sequels to our favorite shark flick. Not to mention a great cast: Samuel L. Jackson and Stellan Skarsgard can make just about any movie worth watching. And then there's LL Cool J! DROP DEAD GORGEOUS: Looks like another Election...sort of. This one has a couple of girls who would do anything to win a beauty contest in a small town. Kirstie Alley plays Denise Richards' mother who wants her to win at all costs. And if that means killing Kristen Dunst, then so be it. Looks pretty good. I always like dark teen comedies like this. Just look at my affinity for Heathers. Then again, Jawbreaker wasn't all that great. That was just a rip-off of Heathers. Even the characters were the same. This one has Denise and Kristen in it, though. They're great. Well, Kristen is great, Denise is just nice to look at. Not a whole lot of talent there. Except she can take off her clothes. She's great at that. AMERICAN PIE: Wow! I can't wait to see this one! It looks awesome. When Eugene Levy walks in on his son with the pie..."Well, we'll just tell your mother that....we ate it all." This movie will be a hit. No doubt in my mind about that. And now, the big event. SOUTH PARK RULES!!!!! So the kids go see the Terrence and Philip movie and come out potty mouths. (Apparently this is before the tv show because the kids are totally innocent and clean when the movie starts. Or maybe continuity doesn't mean anything to us. Maybe it's just funny.) They learn all kinds of new words and start using them at school. Mr. Garrison and Mr. Mackey decide to put a stop to it, but Kyle's mom finds out and starts World War III with Canada to stop Terrence and Philip from warping any more children's minds. So that's the basic outline. If you think that Trey and Matt could go over the top with that plot, you're wrong. They raise the top, go over it and then obliterate it. They got an R-rating and they're using it. No holds are barred. No bars are held. And any more than 80 minutes of this and I think that the theatre managers would have had to clean the seats. I have, so far, seen every Trey Parker/Matt Stone movie in the theatre. (That's pretty good considering the fact that not all of them were really released in the theatre.) Cannibal: The Musical was pretty cool. Not a great film or anything, but really pretty funny. Orgazmo was about the same way. Sick, twisted and funny. BASEketball, I thought, was hysterical. Everyone in the theatre had a great time. I really wish that it hadn't bombed the way it did. Now the boys have topped themselves. This movie is the funniest movie I've seen in at least two years. You thought that There's Something About Mary was funny? This one blows it away. They take every taboo that Mary crossed and kill it. From kids cussing like sailors to moms doing German porn to Saddam Hussain and Satan in a lover's quarrel to Terrence and Philip slapping Brooke Shields. Nothing is sacred. Not even God. Someone stormed out of the theatre as soon as The Mole started to curse God. (That's what I like to see--the offended person, that is, not the cursing God bit. Don't strike me down!!!! But it was funny. sssshhhhhh) I think I saw it with the right crowd, though. After the previews someone belched really loudly. It was quiet for a little bit and then people started laughing. Right crowd, right time. There were no kids in the theatre that I saw, and that's a good thing. Parents: Don't take your kids to go see this movie! Just because it's animated does not make it a kids' flick! Take them to Tarzan instead. I've heard that's very good. This movie, however, should be seen by all parents. It may show them just how stupid they look when they leave their kids alone so that they can protest something like South Park. What happens to the kids while you're gone? They go off and get caught up in WWIII that you started! Well, ok, maybe it never goes as far as this movie does, but don't you think that parents should start taking a little responsibility towards their kids and their actions? Don't you think they should pay attention to their kids and not things that their kids aren't even supposed to be seeing? If your kids see the movie somehow, talk to them about it. Don't go on a rampage and keep other people from seeing it. Some of us think it's pretty damn funny! Yeah, so the movie is pretty much a bigger version of the Death episode where Mrs. Broslofski goes to New York to protest T&P, but it's raunchier and funnier. (Yes, I'll say it. It's funnier than any of the episodes. Even the first Mr. Hanky episode which is my favorite.) For all you star watchers out there, pretty much everyone has a cameo in this movie. George Clooney ("We've accidentally replaced your heart with a baked potato. You have about three seconds to live."), Minnie Driver ("I farted once on the set of The Blue Lagoon."), Brent Spiner ("Hey guys, you're not allowed to say that on TV."), Mike Judge ("Goodbye."--You'll understand when you see it.) and Eric Idle ("We place the V-chip under the skin of the child's scalp right next to his brain."). Of course Chef pops up, but he doesn't sing! What's that all about?!?! He does, however, introduce Stan to a certain part of the female anatomy. And Winona Ryder ("And now for my new trick.") and the Baldwins ("You know what sucks about being a Baldwin? Nothing!!!!"--all of them voiced by everyone's favorite News guy, Dave Foley) show up, but only in cartoon form. And then there's the songs. Oh the songs. I don't think there was an unfunny line in any of the songs. And there were a lot of them. Just about everyone (except Chef) gets a song. Even Michael McDonald gets one in the end credits. It sounds all sweet and innocent (it's called "Through The Eyes Of A Child" or something like that), but listen to the words. I never thought I would hear him say "Bastards." (I do wonder where they dug him up from. I haven't heard from him since MST3K made fun of him four or five years ago.) The songs run the gamut from Disney-esque (McDonald's song--it sounds like Peabo Bryson should be singing it) to strangely Les Mis-esque (The Mole's song that mixes with everyone else's in a big middle of the movie medley). They even get a little gangsta hip-hop in there with T&P's video version of their song, which can't be repeated on a family oriented site like Geocities...or Yahoo...or whatever they're calling themselves this week. Oh, and Hell! Kenny dies (of course) pretty early on and goes to Hell where we see the best animation ever associated with SP. I was actually kind of scared by their version of the land of lost souls. It was about as frightening as the scenes in What Dreams May Come. Lots of ghosts and fire and black shadows and stuff like that. Pretty amazing for a show that started out with cardboard cut-outs. No budget constraints here. (Seriously, Hell looks awesome...in an anamiation sense, of course.) Even the normal SP animation was improved. I think this is the first cartoon I've ever seen with rack focus. (For those of you who don't know film terms, that's when someone in the background is in focus and the person in the foreground is blury, then they switch back and forth with their lines. Pretty good trick in animation.) Basically Trey and Matt are out to offend everyone. Black people are bound to get offended by "Operation: Human Shield" even though Isaac Hayes wasn't. (It does, after all, backfire when the people in the shield are smarter than the people being shielded.) The Canadians will be offended mainly because this movie will be a bigger hit than Canadian Bacon was. Gay people will be offended because of Big Gay Al's big gay production number. (Although I know a gay guy who thought that BGA was really funny in his episode, so who knows.) Religious people will be severely offended by The Mole's constant references to God. Winona Ryder and Brooke Shields will be offended. But the group that is most offended is the MPAA. They tried so hard to get this movie an NC-17, but Trey, Matt and producer Scott Rudin cut it down and talked to them and finally got an R. In and Entertainment Weekly interview they said that the movie is actually much funnier with the naughty bits cut out. It's a lot more innuendo and raciness. They said that they were going to write a thank you letter to the MPAA for helping to make their movie better. Then, of course, there's all the MPAA jokes in the movie. They get it harder than the bartender in Desperado. This movie is guaranteed to offend everyone without a sense of humor. And, to tell you the truth, that's what Trey and Matt want. If it fails (let's hope not) they might get fired from Paramount and Comedy Central forever. If it succeeds, though, they'll be the best thing that Paramount has ever heard of. They'll probably get a three picture deal (awesome!!!) and a $400 million raise. I'll go see it again if it means that I'm helping them out. The world needs people like Trey and Matt. People who aren't afraid to go the extra mile to make fun of what we're all afraid to make fun of. I'm personally kind of sick of political correctness. Me, George Carlin and Trey and Matt. And, probably, the rest of the world, too. They're just afraid to admit it. After all, remember what the MPAA says, horrific, bloody violence is ok, but naughty words aren't. But what would Brian Boitono do? He would probably laugh his butt off at this movie, just like the rest of us. (Ok, it was a really cheesy way to end a review, but I had to get it in there somewhere.) geovisit();

American Pie/Idle Hands

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Ok, first off, yes I do have a life. Well, sort of. I watch a lot of movies. But I do watch them with friends....most of the time. Well, ok, I watch a lot of them alone, but we won't talk about those. I saw another preview for Dick. That's President Nixon to you, mister! (You wouldn't believe all the titles that get pulled up when you're looking for this one on the IMDb! Samurai Dick? Sounds interesting. Lady Dick? I didn't need to see that. So much for this being a "family" website.) The movie itself looks kind of lame, but I have to see it for three reasons: Kirsten Dunst, Bruce McCulloch and Dave Foley. Two Kids In The Hall! Awesome! It's a virtual reunion! (According to them they never broke up. They're just pursuing other things right now. For five years! They're looking for someone to back another movie, but Brain Candy did so badly that no one will. Will someone please help them!! I need a KITH fix!!!) Anyway, I'll probably see it for them. Could be interesting, though. I hope so. Let's get on with the first movie, shall we? It's getting late. American Pie, in case you've been living in front of a computer screen without internet access (in which case you wouldn't even be reading this...then again, you probably aren't reading it anyway. I think you're just something I ate.) is about four high school guys who vow to have sex before graduation. They have three weeks to meet a girl, break her down and get lucky. Sounds like just another Porky's rip-off, right? Actually, I can't tell you. I have to confess right now that I have not seen Porky's. It's on my list. (Hey. I'm only 23. It can't be too late.) So, before I start comparing this to a movie that I haven't seen (a sin that I'm sure a lot of "real" critics commit) let's start with the real story. Or at least the characters, because the story is pretty much summed up in the one line that I already wrote. Any more would be giving something away. The main character is Jim (Jason Biggs, a newcomer to movies, but he was on As The World Turns for a while), a young man whose father (Eugene Levy in his best role since Waiting For Guffman, but it hasn't been too many years) doesn't quite understand how to deal with what his son is going through. He understands it because he went through it himself, he just doesn't grasp (pun intended) how to talk to his son. Anyway, Jim is kind of a dork, but he's a cool dork. However, if his friends knew what he was doing he wouldn't be so cool anymore. He is, after all, the one with the pie. And the tube sock. He's also the one with the beautiful foreign exchange student taking off her clothes in his bedroom for his computer camera. Who cares if she doesn't know? Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas from A Kid In King Arthur's Court/Aladdin's Palace and Rookie Of The Year--you've come a long way, kid) is dating Vicky (Tara Reid from Urban Legend and The Big Lebowski). They've been dating for a long time and have done everything but the big one. Now she's pushing for those three words that every woman wants to hear and every man is scared of saying. Then, maybe, she'll give it up. Her best friend, Jessica (Natasha Lyonne from Slums Of Beverly Hills), is more experienced in these matters. She says that it doesn't have to be perfect, just do it and get it over with. Kevin and Vicky go through the typical "we're together/we're broken up" phases before the end of the movie. Oz (Chris Klein from Election) is the star of the lacrosse team (this is, after all, an affluent school) and he's very popular. Why, then, can't he get a girl? I don't know. That's not the point. He starts off being a typical jock. Then, after a nearly disastrous fling with a college girl, he decides to play the "sensitive" angle. He joins a choir and meets Heather (Mena Suvari from Slums Of Beverly Hills, Kiss The Girls and Rage: Carrie 2--is it just me, or does she look an awful lot like Heather Graham?). Through her he gains his heart of gold. They also go through the typical "he's a jerk/he's so sweet" phases. Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas from Illtown and Rage: Carrie 2--aren't there a lot of crossovers here?) is the group pris. He doesn't drink coffee. He drinks mocha latte...or something like that. He knows the joys of fine liquor. He doesn't use public restrooms. Anyway, he's pretty much a complete nerd. He has to start rumors about himself to even try to get a date. Soon, every girl in the school is asking his buds if it's true about his, um, parts. The "villains" are Stifler (Seann William Scott) and Sherman (Chris Owen from Major Payne, Angus and Can't Hardly Wait). Stifler is actually one of the guys, but he's gotten lucky. He just keeps almost foiling the plans of the others because he's a stupid jock. Sherman is a total geek who isn't one of the guys. He appears to get lucky at the first party of the movie, therefore motivating the four main characters in their quest. As pointless and sophomoric as all of this sounds, there's actually a lot of heart in this movie. All of the boys learn something about life and love. (Aawwww. Isn't that sweet?) Yes, the movie is primarily sex. Well, ok, it's only about sex. But it's not just one of those movies like Porky's (there it is again) that is just there to show breasts and a bunch of horny guys trying to get some. There's only one scene with any real nudity in it (yes, the foreign exchange student shows 'em) and it's not really exploitive. It's, well, not really tasteful, but as close as it can be without being totally tasteless. The pie and the beer, however, are pretty tasteless. But, you know, even though I've seen the pie thing in the commercials a hundred times, it's still damn funny in the movie. Two words of caution, though: First off, if you're offended by teens having sex (not many people I know are, but I know there are some of you out there not reading my reviews) don't go see this movie. There's a lot of it going on. Personally, I see no problem with that. I happens, people! High school kids have sex! It's a fact. I know all of you parents out there would love it if you're kids had nice, neat little PG-13 lives where no nudity is shown and there's a minimum of swearing. (Violence, however, is ok apparently.) The fact is, there's a LOT of swearing and not a small amount of nudity. Less violence, usually. I know that may come as a shock to a lot of parents, but it's the truth. This movie is fairly close to real life. Although I'm sure that not many people have tried the pastry trick. This movie had to be returned to the MPAA four times before it got its R rating. Yes, it was NC-17 before. They said some pretty stupid things like, "Could he thrust just two times into the pie instead of four?" Uh, what?!?! These are the same people who told Trey Parker and Matt Stone that showing a cartoon character getting his head blown off was ok in their trailer, but showing one farting was not. Something's wrong with our ratings board. I think it's time for an overhaul. And Trey and Matt are the ones to start it. Enough about that...let's move on to the second word of warning: The first twenty minutes of this movie are really, REALLY rough. And I don't mean that it was offensive. I mean that I was starting to think that all the hype was wrong. The editing was bad, the acting was bad, the dialogue wasn't very good and, worst of all, it wasn't funny! Actually, the very first scene was very funny. Then the titles hit. Then it gets really bad. My friend and I were trying really hard to laugh at stuff. Then, suddenly, something miraculous happened: It turned itself around! It instantly became a really good movie! I don't think I have ever seen a movie do that before. I've seen good movie get really bad. I've seen bad movies get a little bit better. I've even seen mediocre movies get really good. But I've never seen a really bad movie get really good. The direction got better. The acting definitely got better. The dialogue got A LOT better. (Except for one scene with Jessica. That was still a little forced.) I don't know what happened. It was pretty amazing. I think the real standout performances here were Chris Klein and Jason Biggs. Chris has only been in one other movie (Election) but he's already perfected his role. He's great at being a dunderheaded nice guy. Jason was hysterical as the dork who tried so hard to be sexy. His stripteases were about as bizarre as anything I've ever seen on screen. Almost as funny as Jamie Lee Curtis's in True Lies. Strangely enough, he reminded me of a friend's brother. Of course, I never saw my friend's brother do a striptease (thank God), but he looked a lot like him. Acted a little like him, too. The girls were all pretty good, too. Tara was great as the long suffering girlfriend. (By the way, I saw her boob-tape in one scene. I guess she doesn't want to be naked under those sheets.) Natasha was awesome as the more experienced pal. Mena was beautiful and was a total sweetheart as the girl who tamed the semi-wild beast. Shannon Elizabeth was great as Nadia, the foreign exchange student. They couldn't have found a better pair, I mean, girl for the part. The standout here had to be Alyson Hannigan from the Buffy TV series. She was hilarious as a band geek who may know a little more about flutes than we really wanted to know. I do have one question for the writers, though. When I was in high school, no one really knew who was a virgin and who wasn't. There were people who I thought for sure had had sex, but they hadn't. How is it that everyone in the school seems to know that these four guys were virgins? It's obvious that their close friends would know, but why should Sherman know? No one was that open about it in high school. And yet, no one seems to know anything about Michelle. She's just out of nowhere with all of her flute stuff. Anyway, great movie. Just watch out for those first few minutes. Now on to the real surprise. When I first started seeing previews for Idle Hands I thought, "Oh God. Why do we have to have Devon Sawa in a cheesy American Werewolf In London rip-off?" I vowed to never spend my money on it. Well, I didn't. I did, however, watch a screener for it. (A pretty good perk from working at a video store.) I have to warn you about one thing about me: I'm pretty much a gore-hound. I love gory movies. Dario Argento is one of my favorite directors and the Evil Dead movie are also particular favorites of mine. That being said, on with the review. Devon Sawa (Casper and Wild America) plays Anton, a lazy stoner who has nothing better to do with his time than hang out with his stoner buddies doing stoner things. He hasn't been to school in six months (probably an exaggeration) and his main concern is where his next score of weed is coming from. His buddies, Mick (Seth Green from Austin Powers and Can't Hardly Wait) and Pnub (Elden Ratliff from The Mighty and She's All That) pretty much do the same things as Anton. They're just a little more sarcastic about it. One day Anton's parents disappear. (Actually, they die, but Anton doesn't know that. We see them die in the first scene, though.) He doesn't really seem to think anything of it until his right hand starts to go wild. He can't control it anymore! What to do? He calls his buddies over and quickly kills them. Mick gets a bottle in his head and Pnub gets his head cut off. He also gets a girlfriend in the process. (Huh?!) Molly (Jessica Alba from Camp Nowhere and Never Been Kissed) is the girl next door that we all wanted next door to us. She's a bassist, writes songs and is actually pretty kinky when her parents aren't home. Not to mention HOT!!! She also tends to answer the door in her underwear. Somewhere along the way we're also introduced to Debi (Vivica A. Fox), a priestess who wants to rid the world of the demon who is possessing Anton's hand. The story sounds pretty lame, and, to tell you the truth, it kind of is. However, the story isn't really the point of this movie. It's the comedy and the gore. Seth Green is, of course, really funny. I don't think I've ever seen him not be funny. Elden is quickly proving himself as an actor. Even though I've never seen any of the Mighty Ducks movies (which he was also a part of) I have seen three of his movies within the last month, all of which he was great in. In fact he was pretty much the best thing in She's All That. (Although Rachel Leigh Cook was really good in it. By the way it wasn't a bad movie, but not a particularly good movie, either. What did the critics see in it?) I guess the real surprise was Devon Sawa. I've always kind of stayed away from this guy. After all, how can we take someone seriously whose first big role was Casper? That's a movie that even its star can't watch. (She also, however, can't watch Now And Then, which I kind of liked. Strangely enough, that also has Devon in a small role. Coincidence?) However, I may have to rethink my opinion. He did a great job with the physical comedy. His hand was supposed to be a totally separate entity and it really looked like it was. He had to do all sorts of back flips and pocket tricks and weird stuff like that and he handled it very well. This kid could be the next John Ritter. (Who I think is a very under-rated physical comedian. Watch those old episodes of Three's Company, or even Noises Off, and you'll see what I mean.) There was a little of the American Werewolf thing going on here. His friends came back to life because "There was this bright light, but it was just too far." They spend the rest of the movie decomposing around Anton's house. Then Anton decides that the only way to kill the evil is to cut it off at it's source. He cuts his hand off. This, of course, makes it a cross between American Werewolf, The Hand, Night Of The Living Dead and Evil Dead II. Who's laughin' now! (Oh yeah, and there's a special bit for real film buffs. There's a shot that's directly out of The Shining. See if you can find it.) Actually, I was. So were my friends. This movie was really funny. There was a lot of gore in it, too. Anton doesn't poison his friends, after all. He gets a little bloody. Then, when they come back to life, they have new problems. How do we get Pnub's head back on? A grill fork will do the trick. Just stick it right in there. How do we stop his burrito from oozing out of his severed neck? Duct tape!! The biggest problems I had with the movie were actually the women. Not that they did a bad job. Jessica did a great job as the punk chick next door. The problem was that her character was weakly written. She started out totally kinky and then turned into an angel. Almost literally. Vivica even seemed to be having fun, but I was getting sick of her. The part was way over the top and really pretty stupid. Then she ends the movie on a weak note. The final showdown just kind of comes and goes. Seth does, however, address that, so I guess it's ok. ("What?! That's it?! No big explosion or anything? That's weak.") Anyway, since it's getting really late now (4am!!! I have to get up at 10!!) I have to wrap this up. The movie was a great surprise. Pretty good special effects and some great comedy, physical and verbal. It's still a bad movie, yeah, but it never tries to be anything more. In fact, it revels in its badness. Kind of like another hand chopping favorite.

Eyes Wide Shut

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Stanley Kubrick's final film is upon us. Finally. And I have finally gotten to see it. Yes, it's taken longer than expected (I had no car for a week and a half!!!), but I finally got there. And I think it was worth the wait. Even with Tom Cruise. Story? Well, it's there somewhere. Tom is Bill Harford, a New York doctor who becomes suddenly jealous when his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman, of course) tells him about a dream fling that she had with a sailor a year before. She didn't actually have the fling, but she said that she would have if they guy had asked. This starts Bill on a weird psycho-sexual Odyssey all around the streets of New York. This, in turn, leads him to a world of hookers, druggies, pimp fathers (not daddies, fathers), and sexual cults. There's not much more that I can say without giving something away that may make some of you (are there enough to say "some"?) mad. The movie is, of course, very interesting. Bill is on his Homeric journey throughout the entire film and, even though he is a participant in the strange goings-on, he is somehow secluded from them, too. He goes to a hooker's apartment and doesn't quite get to do the deed. He goes to get a costume for the mysterious masquarade that his friend, Nick Nightengale (Todd Field from Twister and the new Haunting), accidentally brings him to. At the costume shop he runs into Milich (Rade Serbedzija from The Saint and Polish Wedding) and his daughter (Leelee Sobieski from Deep Impact and A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries. Even though Leelee is running around in her underwear (how young is she?) whispering sweet nothings into Bill's ear, nothing happens to him. He seems to just glide through every incident with some kind of all-powerful, protective shield. Kind of like Odysseus. Maybe it has something to do with that doctor's certificate that he keeps flashing like a badge. (What is he? A doctor p.i.? I need to get me one of those things. It gets him everywhere.) The movie is two and a half hours long, and I think I know why. Every....word....out....of....Nicole's....mouth....has....a............pause...........between....it. I kept waiting for Bill Shatner to appear out of a corner and take over for her. It got kind of annoying in some places, but it worked in other places. At the end, when Victor (Sydney Pollack) is telling Bill what happened, it builds suspense. When Nicole does it at the beginning, though, it only makes her sound high. Which she is in one scene. It did, however, help with the dream-like effect of the movie. I kind of felt like I was asleep for two and a half hours and I just woke up from a really weird sexual dream. Or was it a nightmare? Another thing that bugged me: the MPAA's March of "Decency." There are scenes of orgies in this movie. Everyone knows that. In America, though, most of these scenes are covered by digital people so that we don't accidentally see any naughty bits. They even use the same girl in two different shots! That's the attention to detail that gives Hollywood censors the wonderful name that they have today. And that name is Wally Wick. And then there's Tom. Oh, Tom. Why did you have to profane this film with your presence. I guess I should explain something, here: I can't stand Tom Cruise. I think he is one of the most over-rated "actors" of all time. He's ok, but is he worth his $20 million price tag? Hell, no! He tends to ruin perfectly good movies (see Born On The Fourth Of July with one of the whiniest performances in history) and turns all of his characters into shades of mediocrity. This movie is no exception. In fact, there were times near the beginning that he was so bad that I thought I was going to have to leave. He got better as the movie went on (he lost that goofy grin of his), but then he had to cry. AAAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH!!!!! Don't let this guy emote! And, as talented as I think Nicole can be (see To Die For) she started off pretty bad in this one, too. All of her pregnant pauses, as I said before, made her sound high. She was supposed to be drunk, but come on! Does anyone talk like that when they're drunk? That was probably Kubrick's idea, though, so I can't really blame her for that. One little continuity thing: the girl that Bill helps in Victor's bathroom (how big was that bathroom, anyway? And who has a desk in that close to their toilet?!) is a redhead. The girl at the orgy is a blonde. The girl on the slab is a brunette. All the same girl? Uuuhhh... (A friend thinks that maybe they couldn't get the same girl to play her at the orgy. You know, if Stanley Kubrick asks you to come back, you say "Screw Spielberg. I'm going back to Stanley!" Especially since this is that girl's only film role. It was the same girl, they just colored her hair for each scene. Don't ask why. Only Kubrick knows...and he's not talkin'.) There was, of course, no way that you couldn't tell that this was a Kubrick film. All the way from the semi-grainy film to the use of close-ups, long tracking shots and very long passagways. It's not as sterile as most of his movies (even The Shining was pretty sterile if you think about it), but the mood was definitely there. The sense of forboding. The dark side of human nature. The envelope pushing. Everything was there to make this a classic Kubrick film. What's really interesting about this movie is that, even though it takes place mainly in the streets of New York, the whole thing was filmed in England. Even the outdoor locations. Kubrick reconstructed New York in a studio, even sending a guy to the actual locations in NYC to measure how far from the street a newspaper machine was. Now that's attention to detail! (So what happened with Spartacus?) Harvey Keitel and Jennifer Jason Leigh missed out on a great film. Too bad we couldn't get Tom replaced, then it would have been a perfect movie...well, almost. It took me a while to really get into the movie and the style (as with most of Kubrick's films), but once I got there I was there for good. I even forgot that it was Nicole that was yelling at Tom. (It was hard to forget that it was Tom since he wasn't really into it. He always says that he was, but I couldn't tell.) A great film from one of the greatest directors who ever lived. It's too bad we won't get to see his other project that had been hounding him for years: AI. It sounded very interesting. Something about a child robot who was built to grow and think just like a human child. Gone. Overall, not Kubrick's best, but definitely worthy of his reputation. For more about Kubrick and his films on my page, check out my Stanley Kubrick Tribute Page.

Arlington Road

admin — Tue, 27 Jul 1999 17:00:00 +0000

First off, why the hell are they start movies off with commercials?!?! Don't we get enough of them on TV? Eyes Wide Shut started off with a stupid car commercial. This one started off with two commercials (one about a meteor coming to Earth only to be knocked out of the park by a baseball player--one funny part: a bunch of models, fearing the end of the Earth, rush to a bakery and pig out) and a freakin' PSA! Sure, it's cool to see Howie Long getting a sense of humor about his movie career (not much of one, though...he wasn't very funny), but do we need to see him yuck it up with Terry Bradshaw and a couple of other has-beens about asthma? Previews are fine. In fact I like those. Keep 'em coming! But stop the perversion of our film going experience. STOP THE MADNESS!!!! On a brighter note, I saw a rather interesting preview today. Melanie Griffith, David Morse, Meat Loaf (!) and Lucas Black (the kid from Sling Blade and The X-Files movie) star in Crazy In Alabama. Something about a couple of kids in Alabama that see a sheriff (Loaf, er, Meat, er Mr. Loaf) kill a black kid at a "whites only" swimming pool. (Yes, this takes place in the 60s sometime.) Meanwhile, one of the kid's aunts (Melanie) is in Hollywood trying to make it big. Looks like a pretty good movie, but the surprise came near the end of the preview. This is the directing debut of ANTONIO BANDERAS!!!! Uh, what? When did he decide to start directing? And why hadn't I heard about this? He must have had some help on the trailer from his old pal Robert Rodriguez, because it makes the movie look really good. I guess we'll find out in October. Pretty weird. Now on with our feature presentation. Arlington Road is an suburban thriller with Tim Robbins and Jeff Bridges. Not many people will probably see this because it's not a typical Summer Movie. It actually requires a little thought. Jeff is Michael Faraday, a professor who teaches a course in terrorism at the local university in Washington D.C. His wife was killed in a failed attempt to stop some terrorists who ended up not being terrorists. He is trying to raise his 9 year-old son, Grant (Spencer Treat Clark), and keep his ex-grad student girlfriend, Brooke (the ever-beautiful Hope Davis), from seeming like a replacement. Tim plays Oliver Lang, the perfect neighbor. He and his wife, Cheryl (Joan Cusack), have three kids and seem to be your everyday, typical family. Maybe. The movie starts with Michael almost hitting the Langs' son, Brady (Mason Gamble from Dennis the Menace, Spy Hard and (moving up in the world) Rushmore), in the middle of the street. Brady is bleeding and staggering. Michael takes the kid to the hospital and meets his parents not even knowing that they live right across the street. The tension never lets up after this scene. Jeff takes this family in as friends until he starts to uncover some very unsavory aspects about his new buddy. Oliver's name isn't really Oliver. He was arrested when he was sixteen for taking a pipe bomb to a government building. Was it because his family's farm was taken away from them? Or was there another reason? Jeff starts to scare everyone with his conspiracy theories and his snooping. Could suburbia be infiltrated by a terrorist? Why is Oliver constantly hiding his blueprints for a new mall? And why does the mall look surprisingly like an office building? When I first started seeing previews for this movie I knew that it would be good. The preview was suspenseful and Tim and Jeff are two of the best actors of their generation. The problem was that it seemed to give the whole thing away. They told you exactly who Oliver was. Fortunately there's a lot of tricks up this flick's sleeves. Writer Ehren Kruger (Scream 3) injects a lot of twists, turns and unending suspense. Not to mention a great ending that really sticks with you for a while. I, personally, can't stop thinking about it. It all ties together so well that you can't help but wonder how a guy in his 20s could come up with it. (I'm almost 24 and I know I could never do it.) Director Mark Pellington (Going All The Way) ups the ante with his direction. There's a very slow chase scene that somehow keeps us riveted. There's even a Waka-Jawaka song! (And we MST3K fans know that a chase scene just isn't a chase scene without the Waka-Jawaka. MITCHELL!) This is definitely the best movie that I've seen this summer. (In fact, the only problem I have with it is that the credits sequence is too much like Seven's. Kind of fits, though, considering...well, I don't want to give anything away.) I know that I've been saying that about South Park, but that's in a different class. And then there's George Lucas's little flick. Good, but not up to scratch. Kubrick? Well, that comes close. I think that was mainly good because of it's director. We all knew that we would like that one. The man never made a bad movie. Well, except for Fear and Desire, but that was his first one. We forgive him. He may not forgive some of us for watching the damn thing, but that's ok. We don't all ask forgiveness. The performances were great. This is the kind of movie that I wish Pacino and DeNiro would sign up for. Heat was cool and all, but they were barely together. Arlington Road and The Negotiator have been the best pairing of amazing actors in the past few years. They both get the actors' juices flowing and have them face each other off. They're basically trying to out act each other and we get the rewards. Everyone else does great, too. Joan Cusack isn't known for her menacing qualities. I'm so used to her being in movies like In & Out and Say Anything that it's kind of disturbing to see her as the wife of a possible terrorist. I guess that's the point, though. However, I refuse to say that "her endearing smile has never been so menacing." That may be true, but it's become a cliché. Both reviews that I've read of this movie have that line in it. I, on the other hand, will just reference the line and move on. Hope Davis is also a winner. The only other movie that I've seen her in was The Daytrippers. That was pretty good (another one with a semi-surprise ending) and she was great. I haven't seen Next Stop, Wonderland, but I've heard that it was pretty good, too. I may have to add that to my list of "must-see"s this summer. I never had much of an interest before. She's definitely an indie break-out star of the 90s. I hear that Roger Ebert didn't like this movie. I didn't see his show about this one, so I could have heard wrong. But if I didn't, let me tell you one thing: ROGER EBERT IS A BOOB!! He also thinks that Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is the best of the series. Is this the kind of man you want choosing your movies? I didn't think so. So seek out this movie! I would hate to see it get lost in the shuffle of summer flicks just because its original production company was bought out. (That's why it wasn't released six months ago.) It deserves some recognition before it comes out on video.

Celebrity

admin — Sat, 31 Jul 1999 17:00:00 +0000

(Notice Leo is in the red box. Did they know that he was only in it for ten minutes? But I guess he was in that other movie for three hours. Can Leo bring a new audience to Woody's films? Not really.) Where, oh where, has my little Woody gone. (Uh...ok.) This is Woody's first movie in black and white since Shadows And Fog back in 1992. (Why doesn't that seem like that long ago?) And it's his first with his favorite cinematographer (Igmar Bergman's camera-meister, Sven Nykvist) since 1989's New York Stories and Crimes And Misdemeanors (still his best movie). Anyway, after Deconstructing Harry I was really kind of worried about this one. And, you know what? Those worries were almost founded. This is the story of Lee Simon (Kenneth Branagh doing a GREAT Woody impression), a celebrity reporter who just can't seem to keep his personal life going the right way. (Go figure. I don't think Woody's gotten off of this subject since 1977.) He's trying to divorce his wife (Judy Davis) who seems to be becoming a celebrity with her new boyfriend (Joe Mantegna). They're putting together a Jerry Springer-like show. ( "Let's put the skinheads with the rabbi. That'll be nice." "Did the skinheads already eat all the bagels?") Meanwhile, Lee is finding new women to have almost have sex with (Melanie Griffith, Winona Ryder, Charlize Theron--who, by the way, seems to be looking more and more like Mia Farrow everyday...have you seen previews for Rosemary's, I mean, The Astronaut's Wife?). He's interviewing big stars, but he can't quite seem to get as big as they are with his script about an armored car robbery. Oh yeah, and then there's Leo DiCaprio. He plays a punk star who signs autographs for the cops as they decide to not take him away after getting into a knock-down/drag-out with his girlfriend (Gretchen Mol). It's pretty fun to see him play on his image like this...and to hear him cuss like a freakin' sailor and snorting coke after his "pretty boy" role in Titanic. Looks like Leo's going back to his Basketball Diaries days. Good. (Not that I didn't like Titanic, but I think he's best when he plays extremes.) As you can guess, this is pretty typical of Woody's latest flicks in that everyone in Hollywood is in it. Bebe Neuwirth plays a high-class prostitute (watch out for bananas), Famke Janssen (Lee's ever-suffering short-term girlfriend), Hank Azaria (Winona's date at a party), Donald Trump (well, who else can he play?) and the Buttafuocos. Most of them make little Player-esque cameos. The performances are great. Kenneth and Judy are pretty much perfect as opposite sex Woodys. The pretentious dialogue that Woody writes (let's face it, he's funny but pretentious for some people) slips off their tongues like it was meant to be there. And it's easy to forget that neither of these people are from New York. Not since L.A. Confidential (oh, so long ago) have two Australian or British actors hidden their accents better. Of course, Judy's had a lot of practice with Allen. She's been a stalwart of his stuff since 1990 (Alice, Husbands And Wives and Deconstructing Harry). And I can see Kenneth being in another one. It wouldn't surprise me at all. It's entertaining, too. (Something that Harry barely was.) There are a lot of funny scenes here. The problem is that it doesn't really go anywhere. The movie's theme is spelled out to us ("You can tell a lot about a society by the people it chooses to celebrate."), but it doesn't seem to really come to any conclusions about our society. I'm not used to Woody not having a commentary anymore. Back in the 70s, yes. Sleeper, Play It Again Sam, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex... What did these movies "mean." Well, not much. They were just really funny. He didn't start doing social commentary until Love And Death, and even then nobody knew it. But now he's doing those movies every time. He puts his personal woes into a society that barely works (except for Harry...that was JUST about him). This one seems to be more about screwed up celebrities. I think he's trying to get back to Manhattan and Annie Hall. There's even a scene lifted almost directly out of Annie Hall. Kenneth and Winona have a fight about him finding something else for them to do when she could have a meeting that could further her career. Not much in the annals of Woody, but it's not bad, either. Pretty interesting, anyway. All Woody fans should see it. Everyone else should probably stay away (mainly because it's got to be his longest movie...almost 2 hours). But I guess that's true of all of his movies. And I like the idea of an all black version of Birth Of A Nation.

Superman (1978)

admin — Sun, 01 Aug 1999 17:00:00 +0000

(Take a look at the name of the poster file and see if you think it says what I think it says.) So, I know everybody's seen this one, but I just saw it again at the Paramount here in Austin. Part of their 70mm series. Back in 1938 two teenagers came up with a superhero that would change the face of the world. (Well, the comic book world, anyway.) Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel couldn't know what they had thrown at the world. Action Comics picked the Man Of Steel up, put him in the lead spot of their weekly comic and then gave him his own. Then came the myriad (I'll have to remember to use that word in my eulogy) of other superheroes in his vein: Batman, Captain Marvel, The Green Hornet, The Green Lantern, The Brown Hornet; all of them came from this one little guy who couldn't be killed by human means. He could only be killed by Kryptonite, a meteor from his dead home planet. Of course, his arch nemesis, Lex Luthor, found some and used it every chance he got. Superman had been on the big screen pretty much forever. The 40s had Dave Fleischer's animated series. I've seen one of those and they're pretty good, but there's really no dialogue. It's all about Superman running around saving Lois Lane from herself. You've heard the phrase "Curiosity killed the cat"? Well, it almost killed Lois, too. She would just run to the danger to get a story and The Supster would have to pull her out of it. Then came Kirk Alyn' serials. He hung out there for a couple of series and kept kids on the edge of their seats (and coming back to the theatre) until his successor, George Reeves, took the suit. He took over for one serial and then ran to tv. Television brought Superman in a lot of different guises: cartoon, live-action and, in the 90s, a combo of the two. (Pretty much, anyway.) Lois And Clark was more of a romance: kind of like Beauty And The Beast with a sense of humor. I never bothered watching it, though. In 1978 Richard Donner and couple people at Paramount Studios decided it was time for an update. And it was good. After everybody in Hollywood tried to get the lead role, they went with this little guy that nobody had heard of, Christopher Reeve. Of course, now he's more well-known as "the guy who fell off the horse," but back then he was totally unheard of. He fit the part perfectly, though. He was big (worked out just for the part), had black hair, a square jaw and a spit curl. What more could you want in Superman? (All joking aside, I do wish him well in his endeavor to walk again. I'd love him to make an appearance in the new Superman movie...if it ever gets made.) Lois Lane was played by Margot Kidder, another perfect match. No longer was she just running towards the danger for the story, she was actually pursuing her man! Not exactly the strongest of women's roles in modern film, but it works in this movie for the most part. And Gene Hackman, that grand old man of 70s film. Absolutely perfect as over the top bad guy Lex Luthor. He's equal parts Batman baddy (from the tv show, not the movies) and Bond baddy. He's not in it for the money. He just wants millions of people to die. Is that so wrong. What can you expect from a guy who lives in the sewer. On Lex's side are Otis (Ned Beatty) and Miss Tessmacher (Valerie Perrine from Lenny and Slaughterhouse Five--she was in a Bond movie, too (Diamonds Are Forever), but only as a Vegas showgirl). Otis is a total bumbling fool without a brain cell to his name. He can't even really spell his own name. (Remember Otisville?) Miss Tessmacher is constantly being dressed in sexy lingerie and yelled at by Lex. She really has no purpose in the movie except to look good and be the moral center of Lex Luthor, Inc. The movie starts on the surface of Krypton where Jor-El (Marlon Brando who got $4 million for his 10 minutes) is sending General Zod (Terence Stamp--Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert) and his crew into a mirror. They'll come into play in the second movie. (The two movies were partly shot at the same time and the missles from this one were going to release Zod and Co. Unfortunately, Richard Donner was fired for "creative differences," so Richard Lester had to come to the rescue for the second one.) Jor-El then tells the Krypton Senate that the planet will explode in 30 days. Why do they not realize this? It's only going into another orbit. Uh, I think that would be enough to alarm me. That would play hell with the Earth. Maybe Krypton is made of stronger stuff, though. (Yeah, ice.) Anyway, Jor-El and his wife send their baby, Kal-El, to Earth. Then the planet turns into the sinking scene from Titanic. Young Kal-El makes his journey in an ice star and lands in a wheat field next to a road where a farming couple, Jonathan and Ma Kent, are driving by. (Of course he lands in the country. That's where all UFOs land.) They take the kid in after he lifts their truck and raise him as their own. Of course Clark (their name for him) goes through all of the typical teenage things: first love, bullies, why can't I tell people that I can run faster than a train. (By the way, they should have never shown him running. That looked really, REALLY bad. I think I could do better special effects than that with camera angles. And, is it just me, or does Jeff East look more like a young Ricardo Moltalban than a young Chris Reeve? My suit is made of rich Corinthian Leather.) So Jonathan dies. Clark leaves. He builds a Fortress of Solitude at the North Pole. (He must be stronger than our climate, too. He's wearing a pretty damn flimsy jacket.) He meets his dead father. He moves to Metropolis. Gets a job at the Daily Planet (without a journalism degree...I wonder about the integrity of that paper...and Jackie Cooper is so stereotypical as the chief editor that he has to be a parody. Pretty funny stuff. But what's up with those swinging doors to his office? I don't think any editor would have doors like that). Meets the love of his life, Lois. And the rest is just a quick save of the Earth. For about half an hour there's a montage of him saving people and catching criminals. That's pretty funny. Especially when he saves a kitten that's stuck up a tree. He gives it to the little girl who runs inside telling her mom about the man who "swooped out of the sky." Mom's reply? "Haven't I told you to stop lying?!" Smack!! Whoa! No way would that get by today. (There's a pretty definite run of domestic violence going on in this movie. At one point Miss Tessmacher asks a pretty good question about their Kryptonite plan ("So what?") and precedes it with "I know I'll get a belt in the mouth for this, but..." What the hell were we thinking back in the 70s?) Then the actual plot starts. Sort of. Lex is going to reprogram a couple of nuclear missiles to go towards the San Andreas Fault and Hoboken, NJ (?). He wants to blow the West Coast off the map and sell his useless land in the deserts of California as Lex Luthor Land, or something like that. It takes Superman the last 45 minutes to get through this. Of course, the movie is almost two and a half hours long. That's a lot of exposition, but it's worth it. Otherwise, Marlon wouldn't have been in it. I do have a few questions, but they involve spoilers. In case you've never seen this flick (yeah, right), don't highlight the next bit of text. Otherwise, that's the only way you can read it. Ok, now we've gotten rid of all of the uninitiated. Let's talk about what I really wanted to talk about: THE RULING OF THE WORLD!!!! I figure I'll take over as the Central Ruler and all of you can be my minions. No one else really needs to be around. Oh, wait...wrong website. Oh yeah! The movie! We've already established that Ms. Lane isn't really the strongest character in film history. The problem I have is that, when she's in her car and getting sucked into the ground at the speed of syrup, she's listening to Supertramp! Ok, my actual problem is couldn't she have climbed out before it went vertical? I know I would have left that piecer of a car the second it started going downwards. She, however, stuck with it the whole way! She must have been pretty hard up for a car. (By the way, the Earth must have known where she was. The crack ended just where her car was. Just lucky, I guess.) The second question is, after Lois died, Superman flew around the Earth hundreds of times and turned it the opposite way, therefore turning back time. (He must not know CPR.)Wouldn't that have put the bombs back in the air? Did he only bring it part of the way back, so the initial earthquake already took place, but the aftershocks hadn't? But then they would have happened, anyway. They didn't, though. He apparently stopped everything that happened after the first earthquake. But the gas station still blew up. OUCH!!! I just blew a gasket. The flow of logic has stopped. Ok, all. We're back. No more spoilers. I'll just gripe about the special effects, now. The flying scenes were still pretty good, although Christopher didn't really seem to know what to do with his hands in a few scenes. But, Star Wars had just come out the year before. They pretty much revolutionized the use of miniatures with the Tie Fighters and other stuff. Why did that not apply to this movie? I was pretty scared, though, when the water was coming towards that model train town! After all, I could have spent days building it! I've spent a lot of time criticizing this movie. You might think that I didn't like it. Actually, I really do like it a lot. It's a classic. Great family fun. (Well, except for the kid getting hit.) The only real problem is that it's very dated. That doesn't make it a bad movie, though. The story is still pretty cool. (Written by Godfather author Mario Puzo, nonetheless! Who knew? He wrote the second one, too. After that he quit. That may the downfall of the series.) The acting is great. (Especially Chris and Gene. Gene is so over the top that he almost leaves the top of the screen and Chris is, well...he's Superman. No one else can take his place. And his version of Clark is so dumpy as to be almost charming. And you can tell it's all an act. Check out the look on his face when he catches the bullet when he and Lois are held up.) The action is exciting. The few car chases that there are were building up to Richard Donner's later work in the Lethal Weapon series. Basically, it's a lot of fun. A little slow going at first (Krypton must have been a pretty boring planet. But I sure would like to get one of those glowing suits!), but it picks up well. The script goes from serious to cheesy at just the right times. (They seem to want Lex to be a Bond bad guy. "Everyone has their faults. Mine's in California." Not to mention some of Lois's sexual innuendo: "Do you like pink?") By the way, watch for Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill (the original Superman and Lois) as young Lois's parents. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be them on the train that Clark is outrunning at the beginning or if their scenes were cut and put back in for tv. They're there somewhere, though. Also watch for Larry Hagman as a major transporting the nuclear missles and John Ratzenberger (Cliffie from Cheers) as the guy who pushes the abort button. He shows up in the second one, too. (As well as A Bridge Too Far and The Empire Strikes Back. Not a bad run of flicks for an unknown.) It's a great movie. Especially if you grew up with it. I've seen it quite a few times, but not in a while, so it was a great experience on the big screen. Can't wait to get a DVD player. Then I can wait for it to come out on that format. They desperately need to remaster it, though. Maybe even do a special edition. There's a lot they could add. Apparently tv version add around 50 minutes! Wow! That makes for a long super hero movie. But this copy was pretty washed out. If not a special edition, then definitely a remaster. The sequels, of course, ended up being crap. The second one was almost as good as this one (some say better). Very exciting. Good (for the time) special effects. And everyone was into it! Then something happened. I think it was Richard Pryor. The third one (which I've only seen parts of) was horrible! Something about a bad Superman robot. Everyone was threatening to quit the series after this one, but some of them came back for a fourth! I remember when it came out. Nobody went to see it. They all quit. Now they want to do a new series. Tim Burton and Nic Cage. I don't know about that. Tim did a great job with Batman (and put a new vitality in the genre...although it did spawn Spawn), but could he do Superman? I don't think it needs to be that dark. And Nic Cage? I'm not sure that he could really pull it off. He's a great actor...one of my favorites, actually. But could he be Superman? Doubt it. They have, however, rethought and are trying to come up with someone else to direct and star. That's good.

The Thomas Crown Affair

admin — Wed, 11 Aug 1999 17:00:00 +0000

And we open with some previews. Amazingly, no commercials this time! The new Bond flick: Once again, pretty generic trailer for THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH. Although I did hear some pretty cool news about it. Desmond Llewelyn may be making his last appearance as Q! That's not the cool news because, personally, I'd like to see him in the role forever. I guess everyone gets old, though. The cool news is that John Cleese is going to take his place!!! I can't think of anyone more perfect for the role. I can just imagine him saying, "Grow up, 007." I had also heard at one point that part of the movie was going to be filmed here in Austin, TX because one of the writers was a U.T. grad. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be true. But it'll still be good to see Mr. Brosnan in the role again. And to see some of the old Bond girls popping up everywhere. According to the IMDb there's going to be a lot of them in cameos including Ursula Andress and Honor Blackman, the best of the bunch. THE INSIDER--I love Pacino. I even think that Russell Crowe is pretty cool. And Michael Mann can be a really good director. But, is it just me, or does this story look like it doesn't merit much more than a TV movie of the week? It's about the guy who blew the whistle on the tobacco companies on 60 Minutes a few years back. Apparently, cigarettes are bad for you! It looks like they've put a lot of "excitement" into a pretty boring story. Then again, this could be the next Oscar winner. I doubt it, though. And now, our feature presentation: Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) is a suave finance geek (they never really explain what it is that he does) by day and a suave art thief by...well...day. Everyone knows who he is. Everyone seems to like him. The only person who seems to know that he needs a hobby is his psychiatrist (Faye Dunaway, who played one of the leading roles in the original). His hobby seems to be going to the museum to look at a painting of haystacks. The head porter of the museum knows him by name, but never assumes that he would steal the $100 million Monet right next to the haystack painting. Especially not while four other guys are trying to steal other paintings. When Thomas helps to apprehend one of the guys and then donates one of his own paintings to fill the space in the wall where the Monet was, this quells anyone's suspicions of him. If they had any, that is. Enter Catherine Banning (Rene Russo), super-slueth for the insurance agency that covers the Monet. She starts noticing that something is not quite right about our debonair hero. Yes, he replaced the painting. Yes, he's a great guy that everyone likes. But why is he so worried about this painting? She intends to find out. The problem is that she gets too close. She goes right in for the kill at a party and tells him that she knows he did it. This, of course, doesn't sit too well with Michael McCann (Denis Leary), the detective in charge of the investigation. It ends up not sitting too well with Catherine considering the fact that she's falling in love with Thomas. This movie is based on a 1968 movie with Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen and a whole lot of split-screen images. Since I haven't seen the original (and I call myself a critic--sort of), I won't make any comparisons. All I really know is that Steve was a bank robber in the original and the Pierce isn't quite the tough-guy that Steve always was. The opening robbery scene is awesome. Some of it you can see coming a mile away (a horse shows up at the museum instead of a sarcophagus. Hmmm. I wonder what's going to come out of the horse?), but it still surprises enough to make us think that Thomas must be a genius. The final robbery scene (there's really only two) is even better and more surprising. I won't go into much detail on it (like Entertainment Weekly did--they pretty much gave away the end of the movie! I do agree with them about the music choice for this scene, though. Great song.), but it did have something to do with the Magritte painting with the guy in the bowler hat and the apple over his face. John McTiernan's direction during these scenes is just as good as it was for the two Die Hard movies, Predator, and Hunt For Red October. He keeps it suspenseful and light all at the same time. We never think that Thomas is going to get caught, but we want to see what he'll do next. Not bad for McTiernan's second effort with Pierce. I guess it can't help but be better than Nomads, though. (By the way, how did McTiernan end up with two movies coming out within a couple of months of each other? This and The Thirteenth Warrior are pretty big budget flicks with long production schedules. How'd he do that?) For all of you who expect an action flick like Entrapment, you'll be disappointed. This is pretty much all romance. Not to mention a better movie. Whereas that one stuck the romance between the action (I think it was written in later) and we really didn't see the two of them together (would Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery really hook up like that? I doubt it. Women may still consider Sean sexy, but come on!), this one allows the romance to develop. We actually care about the characters and whether or not they get together. And they're the same age! That's really the amazing thing. The sex scenes are a little weird, though. I read a review of it that said that they were the only truly sexy scenes of the summer. At times, yes. At other times they reminded me of outtakes from the Corey Haim/Nicole Eggart cheese-fest Blown Away. ("We're not done yet!") Rene still looks pretty good, though. A little skinny at times, but that wouldn't stop me. She's still beautiful. Oh, and for you ladies out there (not that any read my site), you get to see quite a bit of Pierce, too. The performances were just as good as the romance. Pierce was his usual slick self. This is the kind of role that he was born for. Well, this and a certain super-spy that we all know and love. Rene used her charm and beauty as an anchor for her hardness. If it hadn't been for those elements, we would have hated her. She was pretty cold for a while. And, of course, Denis Leary is pretty much our last great actor. (That was for you, Mark. He's my audience of one, folks.) Seriously, he was pretty good in this one. He didn't go into his usual shtick and there were only two "You knowwhat"s. And one of them was merited! Unusually restrained performance from Mr. Leary. But what was with his name in the movie? Don't they know that Mike McCann is a guy we made fun of back in high school? (Poor guy. Everyone called him Troll. Even his parent. He'll probably buy and sell me someday.) Two things that bugged me about this movie. At one point near the end, Catherine is running out of the museum and hails a taxi. One stops!! She doesn't have to chase it down. She doesn't have to wait. It's just there when she yells. That never happens! And then, when she's on an airplane, she jumps over the back of her seat and kisses Thomas while sitting in his lap. The stewardess (who looks like she's been on that plane long enough to remember when it was still a prototype) tells her that the Fasten Seat Belts sign is still on, but then she just smiles and LEAVES HER ALONE!!! No stewardess these days would leave you alone. They would have to throw peanuts at you and seem like they're really pissed off that they have to be there. She definitely wouldn't smile! But seriously, folks (I hate that phrase), the movie was kind of slow at times. That didn't make it a bad movie at all, but it just wasn't what I expected. I thought there would be a little more action. I also could never really tell if this was Thomas's first robbery or if he was a career thief. I figure it was his first, but he pulled it off too well for that. I guess that's nitpicking, though. Then there were the product placements. I actually only noticed one, but I heard that there were a lot more. The one I noticed was really REALLY bad. Rene walks into a break room, buys a Pepsi One and downs it in two big gulps. The whole time, of course, holding the can so we can see the "ONE" and looking like a commercial model. And nothing is said the entire time she's doing it. MAD Magazine would be proud. As long as you're not going in expecting Entrapment 2, you should have a pretty good time at this movie. Take someone you love or want to love. (Don't you hate it when critics say stuff like that?) One of the better remakes I've ever seen. I guess it would help if I had seen the original, though. I might have felt differently. As it is, though, I thought it was worth the money to see.

The Sixth Sense

admin — Sat, 21 Aug 1999 17:00:00 +0000

And so I am 24 today. A lot of things happen when you turn 24. No, they don't. You just turn 24. That's all that happens. I just wanted to plug my birthday for a little bit. Part of my selfish self. I did, however, get a DVD player, so that's pretty cool. And I got to see one of the best horror movies to come out of Hollywood in years. I have not yet seen The Blair Witch Project, but general consensus seems to be that that one isn't all it was cracked up to be. In The Sixth Sense, a little boy named Cole (the phenomenal Haley Joel Osment--Forrest, Jr. in that Gump flick) sees dead people. He and his psychologist, Malcolm (Bruce Willis who puts in his best performance since Pulp Fiction), try to figure out why and how to get rid of them. The movie starts out with Malcolm and his wife (Olivia Williams from Rushmore and...well...The Postman, but don't hold that against her--she really is good) celebrating an award from the mayor of Philadelphia. The celebration is cut short when a very strange and skinny man (Donnie Wahlberg who actually makes you forget who he is) breaks into their home and accuses Malcolm of failing him. He's an ex-patient who wasn't cured. He shoots Malcolm and then turns the gun on himself. Fast forward a few months. Malcolm and Cole meet and don't immediately hit it off. Cole is scared of his new doctor, of course. As time goes by, though, he learns to talk to him and things start coming out. The scares in the movie aren't from special effects like a certain remake from this summer, which I still haven't seen, but I hear it isn't all that great. The sets are great, yes. The movie isn't. In The Sixth Sense you get actual scares. There are some jump scares (even someone slowly passing in front of the screen becomes frightening--not to mention a little girl vomiting in the dark) and some creepy scares. ("Come on! I'll show you where my dad keeps his gun.") Not much in the way of special effects, actually. You can't see through anybody. No one flies around a room. There aren't any talking walls. It's just make-up and green slime. But they use it effectively and bring the eerieness into the home...where it belongs. Shall we talk about that kid? Some people have been talking about Oscar. Well, the year's not over, yet, so I don't know. But he was awesome. I haven't seen a kid put in this good of a performance in a long time. He and Bruce played very well off of each other. Not many people have this kind of relationship with their psychologists outside of Matt Damon movies. His relationship with his mom (Toni Collete--Murial's Wedding and Clockwatchers) was pretty impressive, too. I'm thinking maybe Radio Flyer (which this, strangely, almost has a connection to) or The Cure. The director/writer, M. Night Shyamalan, did Wide Awake before this. Now, I heard that that movie sucked. I can't imagine that he progressed this much in just a few short years. (It was released in 98, but shot in 95.) I might have to check it out for myself, though. He does seem to have a knack for working with kids. His hero is Spielberg, after all. And only five years older than me. What's up with all these young 'uns gettin' there before me? Just a few problems, though. Cole's mom notices a light in all of the pictures she has of him. It's just kind of a ghostly light hanging out a few feet away from him. Even in baby pictures. Did she never notice it before? She's had these pictures in her house for years and she just noticed it while she was cleaning house? I doubt that. And where is she when he's hanging out with Malcolm? She just trusts him to be out on a bus without her? She seems like a pretty protective parent otherwise. How did stuff like this slip by her? Would you trust a psychologist to just take your kid anywhere? (This is somewhat explained by that twist ending that everyone talks about--and what a twist!!!--but that just opens up other questions. I won't get into that, though. Wouldn't want to ruin it for anybody.) Hopefully this movie will A) revitalize Bruce's career (he was damn good, too...but what's with all of these movies that he's making with kids?) and B) revitalize the horror genre. We've had a lot of "horror" flicks made lately, but none of them were really creepy. They're just these fun little movies like Scream and I Know What You Breathed Last Week. Good movies and all, but no real lasting impact. (Although Drew's scene in Scream is still pretty harrowing.) Shyamalan has brought us an actual creep inducing film. I may have these images floating in my head tonight when I go to sleep. With this, Blair Witch and Stigmata coming out soon, I really hope that we get a new birth in one of my favorite genres. I'm even thinking about jumping on this one. I've got some ideas. If only I could tie them all together. (Sixth Sense may actually start a new genre... the "Horror Movie With A Heart." As frightening as it was, it was kind of sweet, too. Figure that one out.) If you want to be scared and think, go see this movie. It's a good flick for the kids to see, too. Not the real young ones, but they're at the age that they want to see ghosts and stuff, this one's for them. Not as graphic and disturbing as, oh, say, The Exorcist (although there's a scene that reminded me of that one), but scary nonetheless. Am I repeating myself? The movie's good, okay!!! Go see it with all speed!!!

The Muse

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 1999 17:00:00 +0000

First off, I have to complain one more time. NO MORE COMMERCIALS BEFORE MOVIES!!!!! Who do I have to write to? I come to movies so I don't have to sit through commercials. I'm sick of seeing Nissan and Pepsi celebrated more on the screen than Scorsese and Spielberg. What's up with that? Previews are one thing. Even the little popcorn guy waiting on his Coke-head girlfriend is ok, but stop the commercials. I'll never buy a Nissan or a Pepsi product again. I'm protesting them. Oh, and Old Navy, too. No, not because they're showing themselves before movies, but because they show commercials anywhere. Those have to be the worst and most annoying commercials ever produced. That ad man should be drug out into the street and shot. Anyway, there were some previews here. The Story Of Us--Rob Reiner's new romantic comedy/drama with Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer. I really hope this is good, but it looks like a pretty standard flick about a couple and their life together. It follows them from meeting in college (Bruce shouldn't wear a long wig) to their modern day relationship problems. Looks like it could be pretty fun, though. The Music Of The Heart--The new Meryl Streep flick about a music teacher who makes a difference. This used to be called Fifty Violins. Then I think it was called Mrs. Holland's Opus. Well, maybe not. The thing that really makes this one interesting (besides Gloria Estefan's acting debut--or does her singing career count as that?) is the fact that Wes Craven directed it. Makes me think that maybe Meryl will sprout long finger nails and take Gloria out. That could be kinda cool. Magnolia--Paul Thomas Anderson's new flick that reunites almost all of the cast of Boogie Nights (sorry, no Heather Graham or Marky Mark "That's all you'll ever be" Wahlberg). Unfortunately he adds Tom Cruise into the mix. That's pretty scary. I don't really know what this movie is about. All the preview does is introduce characters. Literally. They just say their names and leave the screen. I hold high hopes for it, though. It is, after all, an Anderson film. And now, our feature presentation: I've been a pretty big Albert Brooks fan for a while. The guy only makes movies about as often as a new president is elected, but they are usually pretty quality material. Oh, he'll show up in other peoples' flicks (Out Of Sight, Broadcast News, Taxi Driver), but since 1979 he's only written/directed seven movies. Where is this guy? This does, however, make me more excited to see new movies coming from him. I appear to be just about the only one, though. The Muse is about a successful screenwriter, Steven Phillips (Brooks), who suddenly can't sell a script. His latest idea actually got him fired. (The final shot to the gut came when his producer, Josh, had just told him that his new script was crap. Lorenzo Lamas walks up and is told that he was brilliant. Youch! Then Jennifer Tilly comes up and says to Brooks, "Isn't Josh a doll?" "Yeah. He's a real doll. A regular Chucky." I love movies with references, don't you?) Fortunately, his best friend, Jack (Jeff Bridges), has a solution. Her name is Sarah (Sharon Stone) and she's a muse. Well, maybe. She seems to be kind of taking advantage of the fact that Hollywood people are so stupid. (Don't let me be like them!) At first Steven's wife, Laura (Andie MacDowell), thinks he's having an affair with this mysterious woman, but when she calls him in the middle of the night for an arrend, she knows that he would never sleep with someone like that. (Ok, it's a little funnier in the movie.) After a while she works, maybe a little too well. He starts to write, but Laura starts to cook. Will she become the new bread winner? Will things break up in the Phillips home? Ok, so they aren't such interesting questions, but the movie's pretty funny. Brooks plays his old character well, of course. He's kind of like Woody Allen (in fact he's sometimes called the West Coast Woody Allen) in that he plays the same neurotic character in every movie. He's not as over the top as Woody, though, so I think he's a little more accessible. People don't usually give him the chance, though. Sharon Stone was actually pretty good, too. She gives a performance that's both ethereal and shysterly at the same time. The whole time we're thinking the same things that the characters are: Is she for real? I guess my main problem was the fact that it kind of petered out towards the end. The first part was so good that it made the disappointment of the second half seem that much worse. It didn't even really get bad, but it just got a little bit...disappointing. The ending, however, was bad. Did Albert start writing sit-coms for a while? Someone expressed concern that maybe Brooks was celebrating the Hollywood celebrity system a little too much by putting too many cameos in the movie. Brooks has always been kind of an outsider when it comes to big Hollywood types. He's in their movies, but he's never really been at home there and movies like Lost In America and Real Life show that he doesn't want to be on their side. This one, I think, shows the same thing. Yes, he plays a screenwriter that we want to win, but everyone around him are complete morons. Even the cameos (including one by a director that Brooks worked with before in one of the greatest movies ever made) show some very big filmmakers being idiots for this woman. And they don't seem to be able to do anything without her. How does that glorify the system? The movie is set up a lot like his latest movies. Some of the scenes seem like they show up just to set up a one-liner, but it works most of the time. ("Daddy, what's a humanigarian?" "Someone who never won the Oscar.") Basically, a pretty funny flick. Not as good as Mother or Lost In America, but it's hard to top those. Still better than Modern Romance, which was pretty good, but I didn't think it was his best work as, apparently, Entertainment Weekly did. They didn't even mention Mother in their review of this one. And definitely watch for those cameos. They come at the best times and are really funny.

The Blair Witch Project

admin — Wed, 15 Sep 1999 17:00:00 +0000

I went to this movie fully prepared to hate it. A friend of mine went while it was still new and told me that it was one of the worst movies he had seen in a long time. He felt like he had been victim to the biggest hoax in film history. Like the filmmakers should have come out afterwards and said, "Now you know the secret: It sucks. Don't tell anybody." Another friend said that she walked out because the camerawork was making her sick. Yet another friend (who has to remain nameless for obvious reasons...not that I tell my friends' names too often--wouldn't want anyone to find out that I don't really have any) got ahold of a bootlegged copy. He and his wife thought it was crap. Then again, they also own a copy of The Cutting Edge. Then I had some friends who loved it. They told me that I needed to see it in a big theatre, even though it seemed like more of a small venue flick to me. So I figured I'd go see it before it came out on video on Oct. 22 (!!!!). I also figured that I wouldn't pay full price for it. I thought, go to a popular theatre for a popular movie around the time that school was getting out. There'll be lots of people there. I figured wrong. I was the only one there until about two minutes into the previews. Then about five other people trickled in. Didn't hurt the movie at all, though. But more on that later. I'd better warn you right now, there may be some small spoilers in this review. I tried to not give out too much info, but it's hard to say what I want to without giving some. I don't tell what happens at the end or anything like that, but be forewarned. In case you've been living under a small pile of rocks, The Blair Witch Project is about three college students who went into the woods outside of Burkittesville, Maryland a few years back to make a documentary about the fabled Blair Witch. They lost their way. Chaos and death ensued. A year later someone found their footage and pieced what happened together. That's what the press release and website and tie-in Sci-Fi Channel documentary said. (Was this a ready-made hit? Can I use some more hyphens?) What actually happened was that a couple of film students came up with an idea, hired some unknown actors, threw them in the woods with cameras and had them ad-lib horror and death while the filmmakers screwed with them. Not as original an idea as we all thought (it was used previously in the infamous Cannibal Holocaust which I have yet to see and another flick mentioned in Entertainment Weekly a few months back. The producers of that film, I think, were thinking about suing), but it still worked. I think the backlash came because people saw it after the truth came out that it was just a movie. (The hype is what really separates it from its predecessors.) It would be much more powerful if you were actually tricked into believing the whole thing. The problem is that, if you know anything about film, you know immediately that it's fake. It's filmed on video and 16mm black and white film. (Because of the video camera, both films are square shaped, so don't look for a widescreen edition of the movie. If they put one out, avoid it. They're screwing with you.) Heather, the "director" of the group, keeps saying stuff like, "Get the DAT! Get it on!" Apparently, though, it was on the whole time, because the sound never sounded different. Do video cameras have as good of sound equipment as a DAT? I doubt it. What makes this work is the acting. (I can't imagine that the acting was all that good in Cannibal Holocaust.) Pretty much all of the actual lines were ad-libbed. The actors only knew the basic storyline. When they start out they look like any three normal students going out for a weekend of fun and filmmaking. They're saying stuff like, "I'm filming a dirty butt" and "I could help you, but I'd rather stand here and record" and marveling over one of the guy's chest hair patterns. This is stuff that you can't write. It just comes up in conversation. That's what made Heather, Josh and Mike so real. After a while, when they finish interviewing people and they actually get to the woods they're still all cool. Until the second night when they start to hear things. That's the filmmakers trying to keep these people on their toes. As time went on the actors actually started to run out of food and weren't getting any sleep because of the torture they were going through during the nights. The really amazing parts of the movie are during the night. The day scenes are pretty good while they're getting lost and blaming everyone else. The night scenes, though, are some of the tensest scenes I've seen in a long time. As the movie goes on there's more and more darkness and they just keep getting more and more frightening finally culminating in a very heartfelt and almost frightening apology and a conclusion that just leaves you walking out of the theatre in a sober silence. And, even though you know you won't actually see the "Witch" (something else that probably disappointed a lot of people, but remember which version of The Haunting was better--I haven't seen the new one yet, that's a link to a very short review of the original), you're still looking in the woods for her. Especially in the bits that are total darkness, of which there are many. I knew all of this stuff before I went in and I still enjoyed it thoroughly. I may actually have to give The Sixth Sense higher marks if only because there wasn't so much hype for that one and it was a little more fully developed. But The Blair Witch Project brings us another intelligent horror film that, hopefully, will bring a new age to horror. I, personally, like the slasher flicks that have been coming out lately, but they're not really scary. They're just kind of like fun death movies. This movie and The Sixth Sense weren't really fun, but they were lasting. I didn't lose sleep over Scream. I may lose an hour or two over this one and I definitely did over The Sixth Sense. (It takes a big man to admit that. And I am that big man. Well, ok, I'm only 5'9", but that doesn't mean anything. Leave me alone!!)

The 13th Warrior/Ravenous

admin — Sun, 19 Sep 1999 17:00:00 +0000

It was cannibal double feature night tonight at Mark's Place! (Well, ok. I didn't watch either of these at my house, but that really doesn't matter here. Nothing makes any sense on my page, anyway.) Since meeting my friend Mark (who is now reading this from Japan--and is probably the only one reading it) I can't pass up a good cannibal flick. Or a bad one, for that matter. Although I still need to find a copy of Cannibal Holocaust. The 13th Warrior is the second John McTiernan movie to come out this summer. (The first one was The Thomas Crown Affair.) Of course, this one was made sometime last year, so it's not really that big a deal that he's put out two big action flicks in one summer. Anyway, I read this book when I was about a junior in high school. I thought it was really good back then. Of course, when you're sixteen a book with lots of blood and gore is always really cool. Basically, it's Beowulf. I guess it's the way it could have really happened, but Michael Crichton did us all a favor by making Beowulf easy to read and disguised it by calling it Eaters Of The Dead. (As Woody Allen says, "Never take a class that requires you to read Beowulf." I can understand why.) That said, and since most people haven't read the original or, probably, the re-write, Antonio Banderas is Ahmahd ibn Fahdalan ibn ibn ibn ibn... He is an Arab who is sent in exile for falling for a the woman of a friend of the King's. He and his interpreter (Omar Sharif--Where's he been lately?) go to the land of the Norsemen. (That's Vikings to you and me, kids.) Soon enough, a young boy comes with news of his village. They seem to be being attacked by a bunch of monsters from the mountains, including a big "glow worm." (Read: dragon!!) Now the spiritual advisor tells them that they need to send thirteen warriors to battle these monsters and save the neighboring village. The thirteenth one has to be an un-Norseman. That would be Antonio. (This is also where the movie starts, with him on a boat during a storm flashing back to the events that sent him to that boat. With lines like, "It was not always like this..." I was expecting him to say, "The name's Ash, and I'm a slave.") This starts the whole adventure off and the movie picks up a bit. We get a lot of gory battle scenes, some pretty good shots of half-eaten corpses and Antonio puking off a bridge. Overall I would say that the movie was ok. One review said that the battle scenes were the best medieval battles since Braveheart (one of my top ten favorite movies of all time--Sorry, Mark). I thought I would really be in for a treat! Then I realized, there ain't been just a whole lot of medieval battle flicks made since Braveheart. These scenes were cool, but they were pretty much all shot in the dark. There could have only been about twenty guys running around flailing their maces around and we wouldn't have known any different. The attention to period was great, but the attention to weather wasn't. At one point the guys build a fire in the rain. Later they say, when it's raining, "at least we won't have to worry about fire." Huh? Then there's the fact that one of the shots during Antonio's big horse riding scene shows rain pouring down on him. In every other shot the sky is perfectly dry. I guess that's how it rains in North Country. Second by second. I guess the main problem was the script. It really spelled stuff out for us. One of the guys I went with said at one point, "Come on! Give us a little more credit!" I agree. There were times that they were still in the dark about stuff that I could see a mile away. Then they proceeded to explain it to us. Then they introduce another spiritual woman somewhere in the middle of the movie after people have died with, "There is a woman who can help." Well, why didn't you say so before? I guess we don't go to this kind of movie for the story and script, though. And it wasn't all bad. There were some funny bits that were actually meant to be funny. Not a bad flick by any means, but not really a good one, either. Worth a matinee price if you're into that sort of thing, which I sometimes am. Clearly, Thomas Crown was his best movie this year. Ravenous, on the other hand, was totally different. I saw this one on video (it's coming out this Tuesday) and I can see why a lot of people didn't like it. In this one, Guy Pearce plays Captain Boyd, a man who has survived the horrors of the Mexican-American War by playing dead and suddenly became a hero. After that, though, he gets sent basically into exile (see a trend for today's movies?) to a remote fort peopled by eight incredibly bored people including Jeffrey Jones (one of my favorite character actors), Jeremy Davies (Saving Private Ryan and Spanking The Monkey) and David Arquette. After a few uneventful days, Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty and Trainspotting) pops up nearly dead. He tells the story of his party being trapped in a cave in the dead of winter. They had to eat all of their oxen and his dog. That only lasted a month, though. (You know, they could have eaten a little less for a while. That would have stretched the food out longer and they wouldn't have had to have become cannibals. What are they, diabetic?) Then they did the deed. They started eating each other starting with the first to die. Then their commander went crazy and started eating everyone. Meanwhile, we find out from the resident Indians that cannibalism makes people grow stronger. They consume the souls and strengths of the people they eat. Unfortunately, they also start to want more and more. Basically, everyone starts dying as they go search for the survivors of the first party. (You should have come to the second party. I didn't get home till three in the morning. I was blind for two days.) I won't tell you why they die, that would ruin the surprise. (There's even a pretty unnecessary "twist" ending that shows just how healing the powers of human flesh are.) This is an intensely sick movie, just like I like 'em. There's nothing really wrong with the movie, it's just a little stupid. There were so many ways for these people to avoid cannibalism. I guess that would have canceled the movie, though. At one point they have Guy fall into a pit with one of his dead captains. He then finds out that he has a compound fracture in his leg. (That's where the bone is sticking out. YOUCH!!!) He somehow gets the bone back in and waits it out! How long did it take to heal up enough to walk on? I don't know. They didn't say. It must have been a little shorter than usual since he was eating the captain, but it still would take months. And if they couldn't last one a bunch of oxen and a dog for more than a month, how did he last on one guy? It's little things like that that bugged me about this flick. Another thing: Was it a comedy? Or was it serious? If it was a drama then they went about it all wrong. If it was a comedy, how could they take something as serious as cannibalism and make a comedy out of it. Ok. All of my friends reading this are thinking, "What? Mark's gone soft?" Yeah, right. I'm the guy who gave Cannibal: The Musical a great review. You know I'm kidding. Cannibalism is one thing that should be made fun of. It's a very strange thing and is very easy to have fun with. Cannibals are fun! Speaking of Cannibal: The Musical, there's a lot of parallels with this one. The guy being accused of cannibalism who may or may not have gone off his nut. The interesting use of music. (This one has a song being played during a supposedly intense chase scene that sounds like it was lifted out of Raising Arizona.) Lots of over the top gore. A jolly time had by all! It also had the feel of a Sam Raimi or Robert Rodriguez flick, either of which probably could have made this into a great movie. Unfortunately it was made by Antonia Bird who was last really heard from with Mad Love. No wonder his other movies haven't been widely released. Even Priest didn't save him. If you're into cannibal flicks, give it a try. It's a lot of fun. No masterpiece (as one of the guys on the IMDb calls it..who are you?!?!), but it's worth a look. All others, beware. It's a bad movie that I probably shouldn't have liked as much as I did.

Outside Providence

admin — Wed, 22 Sep 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Just saw a preview for Drive Me Crazy. I had heard about this movie at work the other day because we have the theme song on our trailers that we're forced to watch every minute of the day. Of course, that theme song is sung by one of the hottest teen queens of the minute: Brittany Spears. As long as you turn the volume down she's great. It's when she's heard that she sucks. Anyway, Drive Me Crazy stars Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina The Teenage Witch--who, by the way, is nearly naked in a new magazine I just saw today--Rowr!) and Adrian Grenier (The Adventures Of Sebastion Cole--check this one out when it comes on video or if it's at a theatre near you--Great flick). It would be cool if this got Adrian into some good roles, but I doubt it. It looks like a cross between Can't Buy Me Love and She's All That, which was just My Fair Lady in high school. Probably not worth anyone's time. The previews for Outside Providence, our main feature tonight, looked great. Another flick from the Farrelly Brothers, the guys who brung us There's Something About Mary, Kingpin and Dumb And Dumber. It concerns a high school kid, his friends, his crippled brother and a three-legged, one-eyed dog. Lots of opportunities for tastelessness. Shawn Hatosy (The Faculty) plays Tim "Dildo" Dunphy. He's an idiot. There's no two ways about it. He's as dumb as the day is long. He and his friends basically just sit around and smoke pot all day. One day, they get busted after hitting a parked police car. His dad (Alec Baldwin) sends him to a prep school ("To prepare you for not getting your neck broke by me.") where he makes more loser friends and gets a girlfriend. She, of course, is one of the most popular girls in the girls' school across the street, or somewhere like that. (And she's played by hottie, Amy Smart, who was unfortunately in Varsity Blues (no, she's not the whipped cream girl) and Strangeland.) That's the mains story. Then there's something about Tim's mom who killed herself. And there's Dad's poker buddies, who include George Wendt (NORM!!). These stories come and go, though, and we never really get into any of them. That's the biggest problem with this movie...and there are a lot of them. The scenes with Alec's poker buddies come at times that don't make any sense. Then we find out that Norm is gay and they throw him out. Next scene, they're all back together laughing about his homosexuality. Did these lower-class numbskulls suddenly become tolerant? I guess they joined PFLAG ("I'm beginning to like the sound of dat.") Then there's a scene where Tim confronts his dad about his dead mother. Every bit of info about the mom is given to us in this scene. Shouldn't we have known something before Tim burst out with it? Shouldn't there be something leading to his outburst? And what's with Alec's martini? I'm surprised this guy even knows what a martini is. And one of Tim's friends dies. No reason. He just dies in a car wreck. No build up. No message. Just a dean coming into the shower with Tim to tell him. (Huh?) All of these plot points tell me that there must be a three hour director's cut out there somewhere. These other story lines just pop up when it's convenient (and stupid) and are never heard from again. Did they accidentally pick this stuff up off the cutting room floor and release it? And, is it just me, or was this almost like an Afterschool Special? Everyone does drugs, but Tim suddenly gets smart when he gives it up for a little while. He becomes Mr. School. Yes, pot takes away some ambition, but it doesn't make a really smart guy that dumb. Tim wouldn't just become smart after a few hours of not smoking. Believe it or not. And the montages! AUCH!!! Can't those be interesting? I've seen some before that actually helped the movie. (Although I did enjoy almost seeing Amy naked in the ocean. But could you really hitchhike to Florida that quickly?) The script was almost as bad, although it did have some really funny parts. When Tim's friend, Drugs, sends him a note at school and the dean reads it to him, I was laughing harder than I had for about an hour. And Alec was really funny. Not bad for his first real comic turn since Beetlejuice. He is a great actor when he wants to be. He just rarely ever wants to be anymore. (Whatever happened to the Alec of Glengarry Glen Ross?) Shawn, however, was totally hit or miss. Occasionally it looked like he was reading cue cards. Then he would come back with either a really funny bit or something that was actually kind of heartwarming. Amy and the rest of his friends were more consistent and should probably go on to other, better things. Somehow I doubt it'll happen off this movie, though. Overall, a total waste of talent and time. I really wanted it to be good. I love the Farrelly Brothers (and Peter wrote the book that I haven't read), but this is way below them. There was some good tastelessness, but not enough. And it's not that that's all I want from a comedy now, but that's what they seemed to be trying for here. It was a comedy that tried too hard to go from tasteless to heart felt in about three seconds. The Brothers Farrelly can usually do that, but only when they're directing apparently. I was actually bored through a lot of it. I thought I had been sitting there for about an hour and a half and it was barely an hour into the movie. If you must see it, wait for video. Maybe it'll play better for under five bucks. By the way, according to the IMDb, the boys are working on a sequel to There's Something About Mary called There's Still Something About Mary. I don't know about that. Can lightning strike twice? Let's hope so.

American Beauty

admin — Sun, 26 Sep 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Finally, Scott Bakula is in a good movie. This movie has had me intrigued since the first preview I saw. What a cast! Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Chris Cooper, Mena Suvari... What more could you want in a cast? The plot doesn't sound like much, but, like the ads say, look closer. Lester Burnham (Spacey) is a self-proclaimed loser. He's unhappy at home and at work (sounds like someone I can relate to). His wife, Carolyn (Bening), is a self-absorbed career woman who really doesn't have time for her family. She's also the martyr of the family. If anything goes wrong she's quick to make everyone feel bad about it and make it seem like they did it just to piss her off. Their daughter, Jane (Birch-Paradise, Now And Then), is a pretty typical teenager. She hates her family and wants to leave as soon as possible. Her best friend, Angela (Suvari-American Pie) is "the most beautiful girl in the school." Unfortunately, she's also an evil seductress who wants everyone to bow down to her. The guys next door to the Burnhams, Jim and Jim (Bakula-Quantum Leap, Lord Of Illusions-and Sam Robards-son of Jason Robards and Lauren Bacall), are gay. This really makes the new neighbor, Colonel Fitts (Cooper-October Sky, Lone Star, a lot of John Sayles other movies), pretty mad since he's a retired Marine colonel who has such a closed mind that different ideas actually run from it. His wife, Barbara (Allison Janney-10 Things I Hate About You, Private Parts, Six Days Seven Nights), is so afraid of him that she stays quiet all the time, never interfering with the fights that her husband and son, Ricky (Wes Bentley-Beloved), have. And they have some big fights. Ricky is the local drug dealer/psycho boy. He video tapes everything because of life's beauty. He intimidates people by starring at them just a little too long. He watches (and tapes) Jane from his window at night. Then he asks her dad, during a party, if he smokes pot. Somehow, he keeps his family in the dark about how he gets the money to buy all of his electronic equipment even though his dad makes him take a pee test every six months. (Now who's the psycho?) One day, though, Lester snaps. He starts doing whatever he feels like whenever he feels like it. Things start to fall apart, but he is finally happy. And there's nothing wrong with that, is there? Any more I tell you about the plot would do you an injustice. You shouldn't go into this movie knowing too much. It won't ruin it (in fact, I already want to see it again), but it will take away some of the surprises. This is the best movie I've seen all year. I know I said that about South Park, but this one is actually Oscar-worthy. (South Park would never win. Too controversial for the modern Academy.) This one shows suburbia at its most realistic. Not the clean perfection of Leave It To Beaver. Not the uber-psycho of Blue Velvet. Not the creepy color of Edward Scissorhands. Although it has all of that, it somehow rises above it to become the best imagining of suburban life I've ever seen. Not that any of those other images are bad. Well, except maybe Leave It To Beaver. Blue Velvet and Edward Scissorhands are great movies, and I know they're not supposed to be realistic. I've lived in suburbia just about all my life and this is what it's like. Little stories that seem big or become big. That's life in all it's glory. The performances in this film were nearly perfect. Spacey was absolutely amazing in his role as the disillusioned suburban father who just can't take it anymore. He's at turns hilarious and tragic. As he becomes more of a winner you really want him to win even though you know what happens from the very beginning. (Spacey wins my vote for "Best Narration From Beyond The Grave Since Sunset Boulevard." One of his first lines in the movie is something like, "In less than a year, I'll be dead." So I'm not giving anything away.) Annette Bening is just as good as his hard-headed wife who won't give an inch. She and Spacey both put in two of their best performances ever. And that's saying quite a bit. I was personally scared of Chris Cooper, and yet I saw something in his eyes that told me what he was really scared of. And there was a strange sweetness in Wes Bentley's eyes even in the beginning when we're supposed to be wondering if he's really the weirdo that he seems to be. Even if he looks a little too much like Joaquin Phoenix. And, of course, Thora and Mena were both beautiful. And, strangely enough, we see more of both of them than I ever thought we would! That was pretty surprising. Nice surprise, though. This was director Sam Mendes's first feature and I can't wait for his second. His experience in the theatre helped this movie immensely. (He has directed the revival of Cabaret and The Blue Room--that one where Nicole Kidman shows her butt.) His use of theatrical lighting brought a fairy tale quality to the proceedings without taking us so far out of the story that we dropped our concern. His music was awesome, too. The score fit the actions perfectly and the music that the characters played fit the mood. From the first dinner scene (they always listen to music during dinner) where they're listening to "Bali Hi" from South Pacific (the theme for the "perfect place" in the musical) to the last dinner scene where we hear "Call Me Irresponsible." And Spacey's classic rock while he's working out brought out the rebellion in him. When he learned about widescreen, he ran with it. Since this isn't a big-budget epic we don't really expect much in the way of scope. I can't imagine this one being paned and scanned on tv, though. There are too many scenes where we need the full emptiness of the frame. It helps to convey the loneliness of the characters. As soon as they shrink it down on the small screen it'll lose all of that. Basically, there's nothing wrong with this film. for its entire two hour time span I never looked at my watch and I kept thinking, "I hope this doesn't end any time soon." That's the real test of a movie. This is another dark comedy without a happy ending that almost makes you feel good. Not because the main character dies, but because he lived. And maybe, through his living, you can think about doing the same. Maybe you can grab life by the cajones and take it on full steam ahead. Maybe you can do something for yourself that makes you raise your fist defiantly into the air and say "I RULE!!!"

Body Shots

admin — Thu, 07 Oct 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Yet another year for the Austin Film Festival, and yet another year for more screw ups in the projection booth. I think I've only been to about five movies at this Festival where nothing went wrong. Anyway, this movie is Roshomon in 20-something club life L.A. Eight people in L.A. are looking for love, sex and drinks one night and they get way more than they bargained for. Sean Patrick Flanery (Young Indiana Jones and Simply Irresistible) is Rick, a young lawyer who is in love with his co-worker, Jane (Amanda Peet from She's The One, One Fine Day and Simply Irresistible). Jane's best friend, Sara (Tara Reid from Urban Legend and American Pie) is a flighty girl who has been seeing Shawn (Brad Rowe from Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss and the new show Wasteland). Unfortunately, Shawn hasn't made a move yet, so Sara starts eyeing Michael (Jerry O'Connell from Scream 2, Joe's Apartment and, of course, Stand By Me) who is a pretty jerky football hero. Along for the ride are Whitney (Emily Procter from Breast Men), a ditzy waitress at the club they all hang out in, Emma (Sybil Temchen from The Passion Of Ayn Rand), a semi-plain young lady who kind of stays in the background, and Trent (Ron Livingston from Swingers and Office Space), a whacked out New Yawker who dresses in golf clothes to go out in. He's the comic relief in a story that goes from pretty damn funny to deathly serious in about five minutes. Confused yet? It's much easier to keep the people straight in the movie than it is in my stupid review. Anyway, these eight people go out one night. Rick brings Mike into the group and no one really seems to like him too much. Throughout the night we get little insights into their characters, sex and love through voice-overs and interviews. Can sex exist without love? That's a given here. Should it exist without love? That's not so black and white. The characters draw some pretty funny conclusions about what the opposite sex wants and what love means to the world. Then (we actually find this out in the first 10 minutes of the movie) Sarah accuses Mike of raping her. This, of course, is where it all gets very serious. We get both sides and it's hard to say who we're supposed to believe. That's part of what makes the movie so good. We can't really root for either one of them because we can see how it could have gone either way or a combination of the two. No easy answers. Director Michael Cristofer (director of Gia, writer of Breaking Up, Mr. Jones and Bonfire Of The Vanities (oops) along with numerous plays) was in attendance along with Ron Livingston and Emily Procter. He had actually interviewed people about love and sex in the 90s before he decided to direct this movie. He got to put some of his interviews into the screenplay, which was written by David McKenna (American History X) and I think the movie is all the better for it. It gives the story some authenticity that makes it all that much more powerful. The direction and editing is pretty cool. Long, sweeping shots, double exposures, disorienting shots. It all comes together to make the movie disturbing and cinematic without being annoying. This was the world premiere of the film, which makes it all the more embarrassing that it started out with a screwed up projection. So much so that the director himself had to go up and tell them and then apologize to the audience. Then, after the film was over, his mic was screwed up. Why is it that we can't get good AV people here? I've never run a film projector, but I could have done a better job. I at least would have been watching the movie to make sure that it was going all right. What a crock. Anyway, enough ranting about the AFF. This was a great movie that New Line is putting out on Oct. 22. Go see it when it comes out. Good movie that actually makes you think. And Ron is really funny.

Princess Mononoke

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:00:00 +0000

The first thing I have to say here is that I'm flying kind of blind on this review. I don't have access to the Internet anymore because U.T. finally caught up with me and canceled my access. This means that I can't go to the IMDb and find out who played what, etc. (Awwwww.) This also means that this review will probably be pretty old by the time I actually get it on the site. Oh well. Life goes on. The third movie I've seen at the Austin Film Festival (the first being Body Shots and the second being The Book That Wrote Itself which didn't really merit a review) probably should have been the best. I've been hearing about this flick for months and finally got a chance to see it. While it was very good it had too many flaws to say that it was really better than Body Shots. Princess Mononoke is the third feature that I've heard of from anime director Hayao Miyazaki. (The first two were My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service--neither of which have I seen, by the way.) I'm not usually into anime, but I thought I would give this one a try because of all I had heard about it. It's the story of a young prince (voice by Billy Crudup) who is infected by the evil that was inside an animal god that attacked his village. If he doesn't get to the middle of the forest and the Forest Spirit quickly he will die a horrible death. Right now it's only in his arm, but it will spread until it takes over his soul. (Sounds a little too much like Idle Hands/Evil Dead, huh?) On his way he runs into a seemingly nice monk (Billy Bob Thornton) and a city populated by ex-prostitutes, their men and their leader (Minnie Driver). Unfortunately for the forest, this village is called Iron City. You see, they are mining iron out of the mountain and, therefore, clearing out the forest. They aren't exactly bad guys, though. The leader is trying to help bring the world into the Iron Age and help a few lepers in the process. Meanwhile, our young prince also meets the title character (Claire Danes). She was raised by the wolves of the forest and has learned to communicate with the gods and animals. She also has this annoying little habit of hating humans. She fights them whenever she gets the chance and is particularly un-fond of the leader of Iron City. She does, however, start to form a bond with the prince. (Why can't a find a wild woman to bond with? Where are you?!?!) The animation was amazing! Of course, most of us have already figured out that the Japanese are masters at animation. If they could only make their people not look like Mexican paintings. Apparently, Miyazaki is one of the best animation directors in the world. If so, I can totally see why. There's not a movement that doesn't ring true and so many beautiful shots that I felt like I was actually there with the characters looking at magical forests. The story (also written by Miyazaki) was great. I've always been inclined to like fantasy films like this, so I was already into it before I got to the theatre. Here's my problem with the film: the English script. I really hope that Mr. Miyazaki didn't come up with lines like, "I didn't know the Forest Spirit made the flowers grow!" and "My ugly, beautiful daughter." What the hell were the American writers thinking? I also had a problem with the ending. It ended on kind of a bittersweet note, which is fine. In fact, that's much more realistic than the happy endings of most American animated fare. The problem I had was with one of the characters. He's been evil and conniving the whole time, but suddenly, at the end, he says, "Ah, to hell with it. I'll be good." Not very realistic at all. Of course, it did have the message that a little head can do everyone good. (Sorry. I couldn't resist. See the movie and you'll know what I mean.) This is, so far, the most popular anime feature in the history of Japan. I guess someone finally beat out Akira. (Was that really that popular over there? Who knows.) I can kind of see why, too. The story is pretty universal, and a popular subject for Japanese animation (man/progress vs. nature). The characters are real and it's definitely very Japanese. I think that, even though it's not as realistic, it gives a better portrait of ancient Japanese culture than, say, Mulan. (Although Mulan was a very good movie I wouldn't show it in a history class.) If you have any interest in Japanese culture or animation in general you should see this flick. As long as you can overlook the bad translation you'll enjoy it. I wouldn't say it's much of a kids' movie, though. I know Totoro and Kiki were both very kiddiefied (Kiki was even distributed by Disney), there's a reason that Disney decided that Miramax should release this one. There's no sex (which seems to almost be a staple of Japanime), but it's pretty violent (an even bigger staple). There's lots of beheadings and be-armings all over the place, quite a bit of it for comic effect. (A group of Samurai sitting on their horses saying that they need to kill the prince when one of their headless cohorts gallops over and falls off of his horse.) It's not as graphic as most anime, but it's enough to keep the kiddies out. This one should be released pretty soon, so go see it if it comes near you. Definitely worth checking out if you're up for a two-hour animated movie.

Muppets From Space

admin — Mon, 25 Oct 1999 17:00:00 +0000

So the Muppets have a new one out, and finally it's written for them instead of being a rewrite of a classic. It's been since 1984's The Muppets Take Manhattan. Not that I didn't like Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island, but I'm just glad that they're doing their own thing again. Mainly because there's no room for the Electric Meyhem in the classics. Not that they found a way to put them in this one. Just one more problem. This time out Kermit and the gang find out that Gonzo is from another planet. (I wonder if Jim Henson had this in mind. Watch the first one and I think he might have. Gonzo constantly wanting to fly. Looking in the night sky and singing "I'm Going To Go Back There Someday."--a song that is strangely not in this flick. You would think...) Of course, Gonzo gets caught up with pseudo-government agencies and keeps trying to find his people. So, that's the story. Pretty simple, really. Just like all of their movies. The problem is that, in bringing them into the 90s, they've taken some of the joy out of the Muppets. Not only did they take out all of the original music (the soundtrack is full of funk hits either taken directly from the original artists or remade by the Muppets), but they've kept the score going pretty much throughout the film. I don't know about you, but I need a little bit of time without music in my movies. It's also a little too frantic for the Muppets. One reviewer on the IMDb said that it was just as laid back as the old days. Er...nope. Those first three movies were perfect examples of laid back family comedies. This one almost feels like Muppets On Speed in comparison. Then there's the fact that everyone's voices are changing. Not only did creator Jim Henson (Kermit, Waldorf, Rowlf, Swedish Chef, Dr. Teeth) die, but so did Richard Hunt (Scooter, Beaker, Janice, Statler, Sweetums). And even John Denver, their favorite guest host is gone. That just kind of puts a whole new spin on the characters. They're the same, but not the same. It's kind of sad to watch the new movies with that in mind. Then there's the cameos. Remember when they were fun in the old movies? Bob Hop popping up with the ice cream cones. Joan Rivers working with Piggy. Now they kind of seem forced. Ray Liotta seems to be having the most fun. Then there's Katie Holmes and Josh Jackson. What the hell are they doing here? That's got to be the most forced of the forced cameos. It is kind of funny that they're playing Joey and Pacey, though. And worst cameo ever goes to Hollywood Hogan. If Katie and Josh were forced, Hollywood was annoying and WAYYYYY over done. The world would have been better off without the coming together of the world of wrestling and the Muppets. Jeffery Tambor, on the other hand, is a pretty good bad guy for the Muppets. Not as good as Charleses Durning or Grodin, but he's not bad. On the good side, there's a great new character introduced. Pepe the King Prawn is awesome! (Well, he's new to me. I never got to watch Muppets Tonight unfortunately.) Who would have thought that the Muppets would have had a character say "I will spank you like a bad, bad donkey!" Speaking of which, there's a lot of adult humor in this one, too. I was kind of surprised considering the fact that the extent of it in Treasure Island was a Star Trek joke and something about Gonzo having starfish in his pants. ("You and your hobbies.") This one has some pretty sexual stuff going on. What exactly is Rizzo doing under the covers with Gonzo? Why is Pepe dancing around in a tutu? As much as I love the Muppets and, actually, liked this movie, I can see where it's the weakest one they've done so far. By the time we get to see Gonzo's people it's just kind of an anti-climax. I liked it better when we didn't really know what Gonzo was. He was kind of like Chewbacca. There was a reason why Lucas didn't show us Chewie's world. If he had we wouldn't have thought of him as being one of a kind. It's still a fun movie, but it's not up to the old days. But, then again, what is? I still love Rizzo, though. (But what's up with that tagline. "Space. It's not as deep as you think." How trite can you get?)

Fight Club

admin — Wed, 03 Nov 1999 18:00:00 +0000

The first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about the end of the movie. The second rule of Fight Club is you think about it for a long time afterwards. Edward Norton plays a poor sap (again) who apparently has no name and a lot of problems in his life. First off, he hates his job. Second, he has no friends. Third, the only way he can get to sleep is if he cries at a group meeting for dying people. (This is where he meets Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), a similar junkie.) And last, but definitely not least, as soon as he gets back home from a business trip, he finds out that his apartment blew up because a freak accident involving his gas stove and his refrigerator. (Don't ask.) This is how he meets Tyler (Brad Pitt). The first time they meet is on the plane home. That night Ed calls Tyler for a place to stay. Then all hell breaks lose. They fight for the first time. This prompts, of course, Fight Club, a club where guys can come to fight it out. No grudges, just good, clean fights. (And the fights are actually anything but clean. These scenes are awesome. Bloodier and more plentiful than Raging Bull. That doesn't make them better or more realistic, but it does make them gut wrenching.) Things go pretty well for a while until Tyler starts to take things too far. He starts sending his "army" on missions to fight total strangers. Then they have to vandalize a large public structure. Then...well, see the movie. I'm not allowed to talk about it. Oh, and then there's the soap. Tyler makes soap for a living. And, in one of the most disgusting scenes since Trey Parker sucked the fat liposuctioned out of Marlon Brando's ass, we find out what it's made out of. Yummy! If there was a way to somehow mix Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Helter Skelter and Bergman's Persona, then David Fincher found it. He's finally gotten his old potential back! Yeah, he started out a little bit disappointingly (is that a word?) with Alien 3, but Se7en was one of the best movies of 1996. The Game wasn't quite as good, but it was still pretty damn thought provoking and interesting. Now, with Fight Club, he comes back as a major director for our time. With huge, Scorsese-esque tracking shots, some that go from inside a man's pores into a wide shot of a room (yes, I know it was done with computers and not an actual camera, but it's still cool) and weird tricks of breaking the fourth wall, he makes a surreal experimental film that we can all enjoy and immerse ourselves in. That's a pretty rare thing. Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter are all amazing in this movie. They all deserve Oscar noms as do the film and director. Edward was so sickeningly sad at the beginning that I almost wanted to hate him, but I still felt myself feeling sorry for him. Brad was so slimy that I wanted to hate him, but still felt myself sucked in by his charisma. Helena was so slutty and dirty that I wanted to hate her, but still felt myself falling for her. And it's amazing how they make-up people could turn all of these attractive people into almost hideous, sub-human forms of life. Even pretty boy Jared Leto looked like he had been hit with a few ugly sticks. Especially after Ed got through with him. And, of course, Meat Loaf was as ugly as always. He put in a surprisingly good performance, too. I guess he's finally figured out that he's a better actor than singer. And I think that Fincher found out that he'll do anything for a role, including add a few pounds of fake breasts to his girth. This was yet another "Best Film Of The Year" films. So far that's American Beauty, Arlington Road, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix, Fight Club and, in a perfect world, South Park should all be nominated for Best Picture. I know many are saying Three Kings, but I haven't seen that one yet. And I know many are saying Eyes Wide Shut, but that's only because it's Kubrick's last movie. And I know still others are saying Dick, but that's because they have very small vocabularies. Definitely, if there were an award given for "Most Interesting Film Style" this one would win it. I haven't seen a big budget, Hollywood movie play with the conventions like this in a long time. Maybe even never. There's fourth wall breaking. There's the film bending to show the sprockets. There's subliminal shots of Brad throughout the first half hour before he's really introduced. There's even an explanation of those little circles, or "cigarette burns" in the upper right hand corner of the film. It's hard to pick out all the conventions that Fincher breaks, but he does it without seeming totally pretentious. Now that's amazing. Now, for all you kiddies out there who are thinking about starting a Fight Club of your own, DON'T DO IT!!! Fighting hurts. It can make you bleed. Bleeding is typically bad. Besides, Brad was pretty much a bad guy in this movie. You wanna be the bad guy? Not that he didn't have his points. Stuff isn't as important as we always make it out to be. You should be happy in your job. (I'm learning that the hard way. Don't ever work in customer service!! Especially not for five years.) But you shouldn't do that by beating your buddy to a bloody pulp. That's just wrong. There are other ways to vent your frustration. You can search all over for happiness, but there's really no need to look any further than your own front door. There are plenty of things you can do right here in your own community. You can visit a dairy, and find out how milk is handled and prepared for delivery. Or plan a series of window displays on home safety. You can start a library. You can discuss with your dentist what you can do to make your teeth more attractive. (And if you know where I got that from, you're good.) So go see the movie, but don't start fighting everybody because of it. I don't think that's the point of the movie. At least, if it was, I must have missed it somewhere among all the other points about life. This is satire on consumerism, following the leader and human feelings, not a promotion of violence. Either way, the phrase "I am Jack's (insert body part/emotion/feeling)" has been permanently embedded in my vocabulary. And watch for a theatre playing one of Brad's movies.

Dogma

admin — Sun, 14 Nov 1999 18:00:00 +0000

First off, I love Kevin Smith. This guy is awesome. He doesn't compromise his dialogue just because of ratings. (Clerks was almost NC-17 just because of the dialogue.) He's true to himself (well, except maybe for Mallrats). And he knows how real people talk. (Except for maybe some of Alyssa's speeches in Chasing Amy.) Cross Mallrats (his worst movie) with Chasing Amy (his best, but not funniest, movie) and maybe Woody Allen's Love And Death and you might get this movie. Bethany (Linda Fiorentino) is a Catholic woman who works at an abortion clinic. How could she be both Pro-Choice and Catholic? Because she's lost her faith. That all changes one night when she meets Metatron (Alan Rickman). He says that he's The Voice Of God and it's hard to not believe him. He puts her on the trail of Loki and Bartleby (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck), a couple of renegade angels who want to walk through the threshold of a church in Jersey. They were cast out of Heaven into Wisconsin for flipping God off and basically being really annoying. Now, because Cardinal Glick (George Carlin in one of the most inspired casting decisions in years) has changed some rules, they can be forgiven just by walking into the church. If they walk out and are killed, though, existence stops. What does that mean? It would be bad. You thought total plutonic reversal was bad? Then there's Azrael (Jason Lee) who wants to help Loki and Bartleby because he was also cast out of Heaven into Hell. He's gotten some of the Mighty Ducks (Yeah, I stole the reference from the movie. Sue me.) to follow him around and kill the people who get in his way. And Rufus, the 13th Apostle (Chris Rock) falls from the sky to help Bethany. We meet Serendipity (Salma Hayek dancing again!!!) in a strip club. (She's the Muse responsible for 19 of the 20 top grossing films of all time.) And, of course, Jay and Silent Bob. It wouldn't be a Kevin Smith flick without these guys. They're a couple of profits who help lead Bethany back to Jersey. They were in Chicago looking for Shermer, Illinois, the fictional town where all of John Hughes' old movies take place. (There's lots of beautiful babes and no dealers!) This is not a blasphemous movie, if you happen to be worried about that. That little rumor was started by a bunch of people who had only heard things from other people who had maybe seen the movie. Actually, Kevin is a pretty devout Catholic and he's just trying to point out some of the good and bad points of the church he grew up in. And so much of it is true that other Catholics are up in arms about it. They can't take the fact that someone has said what they all feel but are too scared to say. Afterall, we all know the Catholic church is perfect. (Of course, I'm not Catholic, so I'm going to Hell.) So, this isn't Kevin's best movie (still Chasing Amy), but it's not his worst, either. As I said, it's a cross between the two. It has lofty ideas and some very serious moments (like Amy), but it's all wrapped in a very comic book type world of religious super heroes and bumbling bad guys (like Mallrats). Just to show how cartoony he can be, Smith throws in an Excrement Demon. (Don't ask. It's best not to.) That's all well and good, but I did have a big problem with it. It was too long! I never thought I would say that about a Kevin Smith movie. I wanted Clerks and Chasing Amy (and even sometimes Mallrats) to go on forever. At a little over two hours, though, this one had a few too many explanation scenes. I know we all needed those scenes because we haven't all read The Bible (at least, I haven't), but I know there had to be a better way to do it than have Jason Lee pontificate for five minutes over why he was thrown out of Heaven and why he doesn't want to exist anymore. I guess it was his first screenplay, though, so I can forgive him. (He wrote this before Clerks, but put it off until he could get good special effects. And what special effects! They're all over the place. Not the best I've ever seen, but definitely interesting. And violent! I never thought Kevin would be this bloody.) Other than that, the writing is pretty good. Although it's hard to believe that people in Heaven cuss this much. The performances make it pretty believable, though. It's interesting to see Matt and Ben playing bad guys. They did a good job of being bad without being unlikeable. Linda had almost seems to have the toughest time with her role, but she finally pulls it off. Everybody else seems to be having a good time with it and playing it to the hilt. Especially Matt, Ben, Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith. These guys probably could have carried the whole movie by themselves. (And they almost did.) So the movie's a little too long, but still definitely worth seeing if your a fan of Kevin, Catholicism or well written cultural references. (Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino (and sometimes Ben Stiller) seem to be the only ones who can do it right.)It's a good time even with its overlong scenes. Just have an open mind about religion and other people's views of it and you'll enjoy it. Watch for Janeane Garofalo as Bethany's co-worker (she's got a great scene with the protesters), Jeff Anderson (Randall from Clerks) as a gun store clerk (no funny lines for him, though), Brian O'Halloran (Dante from Clerks) as a reporter and Bud Cort (Harold from Harold And Maude) as an old man who is attacked they the satanic hockey kids at the beginning. (Has he really gotten that old? I hope that's all makeup because he's only 50 years old.) Then, of course, there's Alanis Morissette as no less than God. If a woman has to play God somehow I knew she would make sure to get the part. (Actually, Emma Thompson was supposed to play God, but she got pregnant. Guess that wouldn't work, huh?)

The Messenger

admin — Tue, 16 Nov 1999 18:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year, one of the networks decided that it would be a good idea to make a movie about the French hero Joan of Arc. They got Leelee Sobieski to play the lead role and Peter O'Toole to play the bishop or priest (or whatever) that was against her. (They also had the misfortune of casting Doogie Howser in the role of the king, but that's a different story.) That movie was a precursor to Luc Besson's new epic. This time, however, Mr. Besson got his former wife, Milla Jovavich, to play the lead, John Malkovich to play the king, Faye Dunaway to play his mother in law and pretty much no one else. I know there are some of us who know nothing about Joan (I was one of them until I saw the tv movie), so I'll recount a little history here. Joan grew up in a small village France and started hearing voices that she thought were God early in life. Then her village was burned (foreshadowing?) and her sister was killed. Her family sent her off to live with her aunt and uncle so they could rebuild the town. Then began a letter writing campaign for her to go see the future king so that she could bring God's message to him. This way he could defeat the British and win France's freedom. As the letters come in people start hearing about her and think that she is the one told about in the prophecies. They hold her up as a hero before she's even given a chance to prove herself. When she finally does get to see the king, he hides among the masses just in case she's an assassin, but she finds him by divine providence. (In this movie she does it in a scene not unlike a scene from the original Star Trek series where three young women are running after the crew saying "I am for you Kirk." Pretty scary.) After this he trusts her with his armies for a while. They win a few battles with her leading the way Braveheart-like (that'll come up later) and then gets accused of heresy soon after King Charles VII is coronated. Is she really hearing God? Or is she just trying to get revenge? Whatever the answer, she's burned at the stake as a heretic. Now, put that into a Luc Besson film. Remember that he was the one who did La Femme Nikita, The Professional and The Fifth Element. Put that weird style into a historical epic without much room for comic relief and you get a fairly weird movie for a French director to make. First the good news: The battle scenes are pretty awesome. These are, in fact, the best medieval battle scenes filmed since Braveheart. The 13th Warrior be damned. There's a really cool bit with a catapult, lots of limbs being hacked off, heads being chopped off and some big balls burying men in the dirt. What more could you ask for? Then there's John Malkovich. He's pretty well cast as a simpleton king who only knows what's best for him after his mother in law tells him. He acts about twenty years younger than he really is and portrays it very well. As does Faye. She's perfect as the conniving mother who wants her "son" to go as far as possible without the hindrance of little girls playing dress up. Oh, sure. She's fine when she's fighting for her son, but as soon as she goes too far, leave her. (Hmm. Sounds like Robert The Bruce's father in Braveheart.) And did I mention that Dustin Hoffman was in it? I know the previews make him look like a big part of the movie, but he doesn't show up until the last half hour of this 2 1/2 hour movie and his part is really weird. He's Joan's conscience! She's supposed to be this pious girl, but her conscience gets the better of her. This is where we start to really doubt her. Maybe she's just a vengeful little wench. Now the bad news: Milla Jovavich is fine as a sci-fi "perfect being" who can't speak English. But keep her away from playing historical figures who were supposed to be prophets from the Heavens. Maybe Luc didn't mean for her to be portrayed that way, but did she have to be so shrill? Did she have to seem like she was coked up? Did she have to look like Leonardo DiCaprio after she cut her hair?!?! I kept expecting her to scream out "Rose! You know I didn't do this!" Then, when her hair starts growing back she looked like Leo had taken over the body of Jennifer Jason Leigh and moved in with Bridget Fonda. I used to think that Milla was pretty hot. Now I just think she looks like a twelve year old boy. Hot factor dropped. Anyway, I thought that Leelee did a much better job. She was at least reserved and a little ethereal. Milla just seemed like a little girl who was barking orders. I couldn't have followed her. I would have been too annoyed. But these guys, even though they were annoyed at first, ended up loving her and wanting to follow her anywhere. Huh? And what was with her head archer dude? He lost his accent quicker than Costner lost his in Robin Hood. Then there's the story: Where is it? I got a lot more out of the tv movie and that didn't really give me much of an idea. This movie, though, left out entire chunks of the story. She's a little girl in one scene. Next scene she's a teenager and she's being talked about by everyone in France. How did that happen? Who knows? I guess Luc thought it wasn't important, so he left it out. Well, I'll tell you what he did. He just left out the body of the letter, that's all. The movie did get better towards the end, but I was still waiting for it to end. I liked the bits with Hoffman. Those were interesting. And it was pretty well directed and shot, as always. I just had problems with the acting and the story, as always. Luc maybe needs to hire other people to write his stories. Yes, Nikita and The Professional were awesome. The Fifth Element, though had it's problems in the story/dialogue department. He came up with it as a teenager and I think it showed. Besson is a great director, he just needs to get great material again. Maybe he needs to stick to organized crime. And where has Jean Reno been in his movies lately? That's the problem!

Sleepy Hollow

admin — Sat, 20 Nov 1999 18:00:00 +0000

So I saw a preview for the new Nickelodeon opus, Snow Day. Let me tell you, Chris Elliott and Chevy Chase have come a long way. And now they're doing this movie. What are they thinking?!?! And that new Tim Allen flick. Not Toy Story 2 (which I've heard was amazing), but Galaxy Quest. What is that, Three Amigos In Space? A bunch of aliens come down to get a sci-fi tv show's cast to beat their oppressors. It also sounds like they're making fun of a certain well respected sci-fi series that we all know and love. In fact, Tim's character even goes by all three names. (True Trekkies know that Kirk did, too. Boy, am I letting MY geek flag fly.) Of course, there's nothing wrong with making fun of Star Trek. I like it and I make fun of it. At least Sigourney Weaver looks good. (For the first time since Ghostbusters as far as I'm concerned.) And how'd they rope Alan Rickman into that makeup? The Talented Mr. Ripley actually looks good, but if Anthony Minghella does the same thing he did with The English Patient, this could be crap. (Of course, I still haven't seen TEP, I'm going on what a lot of people said right after it came out on video. Before that I had heard that it was really good. Maybe it's a big screen thing. Ya think?) And now, our feature presentation. The greatest gothic director of our generation is back. Tim Burton's last movie (Mars Attacks) unfortunately flopped critically and commercially, but that's one in seven, so cut him a little slack. (I actually liked Mars Attacks. What's wrong with me, you might ask? I like cheese and that's all that movie was meant to be. Stop taking things so seriously.) Sleepy Hollow is the story of the Headless Horseman, of course. This time out, though, Ichabod Crane is not a timid schoolteacher. He's Burton's apparent alter-ego, Johnny Depp. Which, of course, makes him a really cool, timid big-city police detective. (I hear he got his inspiration from Angela Lansbury in Death On The Nile. She's not this cool, though.) In other words, don't expect an exact retelling of the original Irving Washington story. This is from the First Knight school of legend retelling. In this case, though, it's not all bad. Ichabod is sent to Sleepy Hollow to figure out who is chopping people's heads off up there. I'm not really sure why he's sent there. The judge who sends him hates him and doesn't believe that things should be solved by looking at clues and using science. I guess he just wants him out of his hair, but why would he send him on a big case like this? So anyway, he goes to Sleepy Hollow and meets Katrina (the lovely and talented Christina Ricci--who's looking more lovely everyday) the daughter of one of the town elders, Baltus Van Tassel (Michael Gambon--The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; Dancing At Lughnasa; Wings Of The Dove). He immediately starts to fall for the young aristocrat. Of course, she has a man of her own, Brom Van Brunt (Casper Van Dien--who is thankfully only in the movie for about a total of 10 minutes--no chance to show that HE CAN'T ACT!!!) In a back room of Van Tassel's house, Ichabod and the elders (including Burton stalwart Jeffrey Jones and the biggest Empirial Complication of the them all, Ian McDiarmid) talk about the murders. "Their heads were not found severed. Their heads were not found at all." Yeah, we've all heard it. And so begins the investigation to find out who's behind the killings and why the Hessian Horseman has come back to life to take the heads of the living. I won't tell you why, but I will tell you that he does have a reason. I'm not sure I like the reason, but I guess it sort of makes sense. The movie is a lot of fun for this kind of movie. If there were ever a director to bring back the glory of the Hammer horror films, it would be Tim Burton. (In fact, Christopher Lee even shows up for a small part.) In fact there's nothing wrong with the style or direction. That's pretty much perfect. I loved the way the movie looked. The woods were spooky. The town was drab. The people were dark. Typical Tim Burton. Beautiful darkness. The acting was great, too. Johnny Depp has yet to put in half a performance. He has all the makings of a young Al Pacino. And, of course, there's Christina. I just can't help but love her. Very talented. Very beautiful. And a great set of...nostrils. (I read somewhere that Christina filmed her first sex scene for this movie. That must be in the director's private cut, because the romance was secondary to the gore--and there is a lot of that. No sex scene here.) The main problem is with the story. It's almost as if the Horseman were going to be in nine sequels with titles like Horsey's Dead and The Horseman Takes Manhattan. There's a story there, but it's not as strong as it really should be. Especially considering Andrew Kevin Walker (Seven and 8MM) wrote it and Tom Stoppard doctored it. And, speaking of script problems, what was that that Ichabod said in court? "The Millennium is upon us"? What? It's 1799. The Millennium is still 200 years away. Did these guys actually make that mistake? Even with these problems I still enjoyed the hell out of the movie. It was funny, creepy and cool. And you haven't lived until you've seen Johnny Depp get splattered with tree blood. Pretty dark, too. If you thought Burton's other movies were dark, this one is three times as dark. No one is spared. Not even newborn babies. Definitely worth the price of admission. And watch for other Burton alums Lisa Marie, Christopher Walken (in a pivotal role) and Martin Landau.

Being John Malkovich

admin — Tue, 23 Nov 1999 18:00:00 +0000

And after a dry spell, Mark's on a role with the movie time. So this is one of those movies where everyone comes out saying something like, "That was the strangest movie I've ever seen. But it rocked!" It's the story of a puppeteer named Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) who can't make any money doing what he loves. (Although he is a brilliant puppeteer. They start off with him doing a show with his own likeness and it's pretty amazing.) His wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz looking like she had been dragged in by three or four cats--but I still want her), decides that it's time for him to get a job so they can support their chimp, dog, birds and other assorted animals. So Craig gets a job on the 7 1/2 floor of a downtown NYC building as a file clerk. His boss, Lester (Orson Bean from Dr. Quinn) is a crazy old man who lusts after his secretary, Florice (Mary Kay Place) who can't seem to understand a word anyone says. (She's a speech therapist, so everyone must have a speech impediment.) He also meets Maxine (Catherine Keener from 8MM, Living In Oblivion, Your Friends And Neighbors and Out Of Sight), his new object of desire. Unfortunately, she has no desire for him. Until, that is, he finds a portal into John Malkovich's mind. Then she finds some monetary desire. Yes, for only $200 you can be inside the mind of one of the greatest actors of our generation! You can experience the mania that is John Malkovich. And that's really all I can tell you about the movie. Anything more would give too much away. I will say, watch for the scenes where John enters his own mind, Lotte an Maxine reach his subconscious and a bunch of cameos of other big name actors. I love that a first time director can get these guys in his movie. So, as I said, this is a very strange movie. I mean, can you imagine what it would be like to enter the mind of John Malkovich? He seems to be a little more normal than we all thought he was, though. The movie does, however, bring up a lot of questions about our own consciousness. What makes us us? Could we find a way to go into other people's minds? What happens to a stick when Craig goes into John's mind? Why do you get dumped out near the New Jersey Turnpike? Can you copyright a mind? And, most importantly, why John Malkovich? Actually, I think I can figure that out. He was Charlie Kaufman's first choice and I'm glad he said yes. Otherwise we could have ended up with Being Lou Diamond Phillips. And that would be bad. The movie is really well written. I can't believe someone actually came up with something like this. What kind of a deranged mind can do this sort of thing? I'm glad they did, though. Spike Jonze (from Three Kings, which I'm still mad that I missed) directs his first feature mainly with a handheld camera. That, of course, makes it even stranger. Mix constant movement with a story about disoriented souls and you get a weirdness that is intensified even beyond the story's capabilities. And he never falls into the trap of a lot of music video directors (he did a lot of Beastie Boys videos, not to mention about 20 others, the only one of which I saw was Weezer's "Buddy Holly") like Michael Bay. No quick cuts of upturned faces and long crane shots of the band, er, actors. It's all very gritty and down to earth, which gives it an edge that most semi-experimental films don't have. The acting is on par with everything else. Cusack is the ultimate loser who is brilliant with puppets, but can't seem to keep people around him. Cameron is a sweet little innocent who gets caught up in a really weird scheme (that, amazingly enough, everyone just goes right along with) that almost destroys her by showing her something that she never knew about herself. Keener works very well as a conniving and manipulative woman who finds her way to something approaching love for someone that she never would have expected. And Orson Bean is, well Orson Bean. He's funny as a sex-starved old man with a secret obsession with a certain actor. And, of course, Malkovich is brilliant as himself. Especially when Craig starts being able to take over his body. I never knew Molkovich was such a good dancer. So what's wrong with the movie? Well, not much actually. It's awesome. There are a few little things like, would Malkovich really be good friends with Charlie Sheen? Doubt it. Other than that it's great. One of the darkest and, of course, strangest movies with the creepiest ending I've seen in a long time. And it keeps the fun going, which is hard to do in flicks like this. How did they do it? The world may never know. We'll just have to wait for the sequel, Being Charlie Kaufman.

Three Kings

admin — Wed, 24 Nov 1999 18:00:00 +0000

And I'm still on a roll. After complaining about not seeing this in my last review, I found out that it was still playing for a couple more days nearby, so I had to check it out. And I'm glad I did. As far as I know, this is the second major Desert Storm movie to come out of Hollywood. The other one was Courage Under Fire, which I thought was quite good. That one brought the emotional horrors of post-war to us. This one goes a little further and brings the horrors of the actual war to us in a way that, while this war wasn't exactly the worst in the way of casualties (we only lost, what, 6 men over there?), it had it's own horrors to deal with. Archie Gates (George Clooney showing that he can really act when he wants to) is an opportunistic soldier who is retiring in three days when he finds out that someone has found a map to some of Saddam Hussein's gold in an Iraqi soldier's, er, very uncomfortable place. (What, like the back of a Volkswagen?) Troy Barlow (Marky Mark Mark Wahlberg showing that he can act even without plastic appendages) is a new family man who just wants to get home to his wife and baby when he finds the map. Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze who seems to be able to act almost as well as he can direct) is a lost little Southern boy who idolizes Troy maybe a little too much. He'll follow him anywhere. Chief Elgin (Ice Cube finally showing that he can act as long as you don't make him work on Fridays) is a spiritual guy who sees that God has put this gold in front of him for a reason. Now, you may wonder why these guys could get away with just running around Iraq and steal gold. Well, it's the end of the way and there's a cease fire going. That's how they're not getting shot. Also, Saddam stole the gold from Kuwait, so they're just stealing it back. If it happens to go missing when the Kuwaitis are looking for it, Saddam must have hidden it really well. And, by the way, he's lying when he says that some American soldiers stole it from him. Somehow it seems like it would work. And I think it would have if they hadn't all grown consciences. That's the heart of the movie. Yeah, these guys are pretty much just greedy bastards at first, but when they start seeing the Iraqi soldiers beating on the citizens, The Dude cannot abide. (Lebowski fans of the world unite!) These poor people are being killed just because they want a fair country to live in. America told them that they would help the rebellion, but they've left. There are no extra men for a pathetic rebellion. What to do? Get as many out as you can. Even if it means putting yourself in the line of danger, losing some of the gold and disobeying the cease fire. So that's the story in a nutshell. (And what a big nut it was.) There's also Nora Dunn as a reporter looking for her big story and Jamie Kennedy (Scream 1 & 2) trying to run her around so that she'll never find Archie and the boys. They're important, but not really until the end. The story's been done before, but what keeps this one afloat (besides the acting) is the heart and the direction. It's all shot almost like a documentary. Very grainy with some scenes so bright you can't see what's behind the people on the screen. (It is the desert after all.) If I didn't know the difference between Clooney and Schwartzkopf I would think that the film crew were actually in the Iraqi desert. David O. Russell (Spanking The Monkey and Flirting With Disaster) makes it seem maybe a little too real. Then, of course, there's some pretty weird violence. (It is a war movie, right?) There are shots of what a bullet really does to the human body as it goes through it. Pretty nasty stuff, but definitely visually interesting. Then there's the fact that there really aren't any bad guys. Yes, the Iraqis are supposed to be the bad guys, but we get their side of it, too. When one of our heroes gets captured and tortured we hear the story of Captain Said (Said Taghmaoui from Hideous Kinky) and his family and how the Americans bombed them into the middle of last century. We start to maybe feel a little for these poor guys. Not really enough to wish that our boys weren't the heroes, but enough to know that it really wasn't our war. We were really only there for the oil. Through it all there's a sense of fun. How is that, you might ask? Come on. It's Clooney. He can't be in a movie without having some fun, right? For the most part, these guys are just kids on a vacation. Yeah, they're at war, but they never really shoot anybody. When Troy actually does at near the beginning, he seems a little sickened by it while everyone else is whooping and hollering. Anyway, they have time for fun because there's not a lot of danger until the middle of the movie. Before that they're throwing Nerf footballs and shooting them like skeet, blowing up cows, having sex with hot female co-anchors...whatever floats their boats. There's really only one thing that I can find wrong with the movie. (This is kind of a spoiler, but not really. We all know it happens, we just don't know who. The movie is called THREE Kings, not Four.) When one of our heroes is shot in the shoulder he dies from his wound pretty quickly. You know, I've seen plenty of people live through a shot like that. It went right above his shoulder blade. They couldn't save him and yet they could save the guy who got shot just below the lung. How does that work? This movie really brought the war film into the 21st Century. With all of the media help and documentary/news story style of shooting, this movie made it real without making it too sentimental. I remember seeing a lot of this war on tv. Especially shots of bombs going into buildings and seeing what kind of damage they did, much like the bullets ripping through the people's stomachs in this movie. That's what made the movie real. And that's what made the war seem not so real.

The Limey

admin — Sat, 27 Nov 1999 18:00:00 +0000

I would love to get into Steven Soderbergh's head. This guy gets a fairly normal story going and then twists it into a strange conglomerate of shifting times and rapid fire editing. Starting with one of the last lines, "Tell me about Jenny!" we get an entire back story on who Jenny (Melissa George looking radiant as always) is and why her father is looking for her without ever really going back in time for much more than a silent flashback with current conversation going over it. These aren't really voice overs, mind you. They're conversations that the characters are having at the time that the main character is thinking about them. Where we really are, of course, is on a plane with said main character. He's going over the events of the past week or so in his head, and that's how we get the information: in a stream of consciousness line of thought...kind of like this review. Except the movie makes more sense. Wilson (Terence Stamp--Superman II, Adventures Of Priscilla Queen Of The Desert and, of course, Episode I) is Jenny's father. He's a British ex-con who found out that his daughter has been killed in a car wreck. He doesn't believe this, so he goes after the man she was staying with, Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda). He's a record producer in L.A. who, of course, has ties to the drug lords in California. Wilson has some people on his side who knew Jenny. Ed (Luis Guzman--Out Of Sight, Boogie Nights, Carlito's Way and, of course, Innocent Blood) and Elaine (Lesley Ann Warren--Clue, Victor/Victoria) were friends who didn't really have the same questions about her death until Wilson came along. As the events unfold we start off a little confused, but, surprisingly (to big-shot Hollywood studios), we can follow the disjointed thoughts of our hero. I love movies like this that prove Hollywood wrong. The story is familiar, though. A man looks for the killer of his daughter. Kind of film-noirish without the woman who causes the downfall of the hero. In fact, the story is so familiar that it causes the movie to move very slowly. That's the only real problem with the film. It's only 90 mins. long, but it seems a little longer. Otherwise, the performances are great and the style is awesome. Terence Stamp is cooler than ever as a Bogart-esque bad good guy who can get beat up and then go right back for more. Peter Fonda is great as a greedy producer who seems to be stuck in the 60s. In fact, we get a scene with him driving his convertible with Steppenwolf playing and telling a story about a motorcycle trip he took way back when. (By the way, there was some great music in this movie. The Hollies' "King In Reverse" (great theme for Mr. Fonda). And any movie that starts with The Who's "The Seeker" is alright by me.) If you want to see where Soderbergh started down this road of non-linear editing, check out Out Of Sight. That was an awesome movie with a much better story than this one. (Although this script was just as good.) It's also one more time that Clooney actually wanted to act. 1999 seems to be full of movies like this. Check out Fight Club, Go, and The Matrix. Ever since Pulp Fiction people can't seem to get enough of the weird time lines that Hollywood never thought we could follow before. Now that they know we can will they start making more movies like that? I think so. Does that mean that non-editors can get jobs now? I bet it does. We'll just be able to throw our films in a Quisenart and put them out like that. But then we might end up with Natural Born Killers. And that just won't be good. By the way, this is my 100th review. (Yeah, the file is review101.html, but one of them never made it to the web. Maybe in the director's cut.) Does this make me a loser? Well, that's debatable. I think it just means that I've had nothing better to do than go spend money at the movies. This is why I don't have many friends.

The World Is Not Enough

admin — Sat, 04 Dec 1999 18:00:00 +0000

So Bond is at it again. In his 19th official adventure (20th if you count the unofficial Never Say Never Again, 21st if you count the weirdo Casino Royale and 22nd if you count the original American teleplay of Casino Royale...whew) This time, though, they don't really seem to know what they want to do with him. Weak story and ok action don't make a great Bond. But Pierce is still great and the rest of the cast does a serviceable job...and there are some surprises. Bond is after Renard (Robert Carlyle), a super-human bad guy who doesn't really seem to use those super-human qualities too much. He was shot in the head by 009 and the bullet didn't come out. It is, however, touching the part of his brain that controls his senses, so he no longer feels anything. This is a constant annoyance to his secret lover. Of course the bullet will eventually kill him as it moves through his brain. (I guess it has a lot of momentum stored up or something.) On the other side we still have M and Q and all the other letters of the alphabet helping Bond out, in addition to a few more heroes. Elektra King (the French beauty Sophie Marceau from Braveheart and...er...Lost & Found, but don't hold that against her) is the daughter of an oil king (get it?) who was going to build an oil line all the way across Asia. Unfortunately, Bond delivered some money to him that killed him in the opening sequence. What we don't know at the time is that King and M were old friends and now things are personal. But is Elektra what she seems to be? Or is she in on the whole plot with Renard? (Confused yet? I was too until I saw the movie. It's really about as simple as any Bond plot. Which is to say, simple to the writers and a little hard to fathom for anyone else.) I will say this: she is a strong woman, which is rare in this series. Not as strong as, say, Michele Yeoh, but strong nonetheless. Along the way, Bond meets his old friend Valentin Zukovsky (British comedian Robbie Coltrane reprising his role from GoldenEye) who, with a little persuasion, helps him find out where Renard is hiding. Here we meet Christmas Jones (the nearly talent-free, but who cares, Denise Richards). And on and on and on. You know, plot isn't what we really care about in these Bond flicks. (But it would help if we could understand the damn thing. This one was totally impenetrable.) It's the action. And the double entendres. And the globe hopping. And the women. And Bond hopping women. And the gadgets. And eventually they throw all of this at us in this one. And that's all that counts. (And how many times can I start a sentence with 'And'?) The opening sequence is pretty good. Not as breathtakingly over the top as GoldenEye, and not as action filled as Tomorrow Never Dies, but not bad all in all. He gets to take a boat out in this one, and damn is it cool. It takes turns like a car, sometimes literally. And, here's one for you, Bond actually gets injured! For the first time that I can remember he carries his injury through the whole movie. He sprains his shoulder and it's actually used as a weak spot for him. Wow. Bond is human. Pierce Brosnan got comfortable with the role in Tomorrow Never Dies and keeps growing through this one. And he keeps making his character just a little bit more vulnerable. (And I don't just mean the shoulder thing.) There's actually a "blink and you'll miss it" reference to his marriage in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. (Yeah. The one with George Lazenby. Well, they got the casting of his wife down right. Who could marry James Bond but Diana Rigg from The Avengers?) It's just a look on his face after Elektra asks him if he's ever lost someone he loved, but it's there. Roger Moore wasn't as convincing when he put flowers on her grave in Octopussy. I don't know what Entertainment Weekly is talking about when they say that Rupert Everett should take over. He's a good actor and all, and I can take him playing a straight role. Hey, if Ellen can do it, why not Rupert? But don't give him THE straight role. I really don't think I could see him as James Bond. Too much baggage coming with him. (He is, however, working on a gay version of Bond. I'm a little frightened, but interested to see if it comes out...so to speak. And I think there might already be a gay guy in the Bond series. That Charles guy who's always hanging out with M seems a little suspect. Not that there's anything wrong with that. (Yeah. It's hackneyed, but I never said I was original.)) The action is, of course, great. Pretty unbelievable, but it wouldn't be Bond without that. Michael Apted, while being kind of a strange choice for a Bond director, handled it very well. Almost as well as Roger Spottiswoode did last time out. A friend of mine said that Apted was a normal choice for a Bond director since he doesn't really seem to have much of a "Director's Vision." That may be, but then again, the man has done some Oscar winning films, unlike his predecessors. What other Bond directors would have also done Gorillas In The Mist, Coal Miner's Daughter and Nell AND been able to do documentaries like Bring On The Night, Incident At Ogala and his 7 Up series? Anyway, he's a very good director who did some great things with this flick. (Although some of the shots of James in front of blue screens looked about as real as Britney Spears' breasts.) Speaking of breasts, who woulda thunk that Denise Richards would ever be cast as a nuclear expert? She comes off just about as well as she does in any movie, as pure eye candy with no other redeemable virtue. But she does look good in tight t-shirts. Especially when she's just swam a couple of feet. The same can't really be said about Judi Dench, who plays M for the third time. Of course, I wouldn't really want to say that about her because she deserves much more respect than that. She's a great actress and actually gets herself into the action this time out. Since she has a personal reason for going after Renard she gets caught up and has to do a little bit of Bond-like thinking. I kind of hope that they keep this trend up. I like seeing M actually do something for a change. And it turns out that she and James aren't really that different after all. She just had a few consequences from her past. (Heh heh heh.) Robert Carlyle is, of course, very good as the super-baddy, Renard. (Too bad he was completely inconsequential as a character. He may has well have not even been there.) He brings a little bit of sympathy to a role that could have been taken way over the top. But that's pretty much what Robert's known for. I was a little surprised to hear that he was going to be in this movie anyway. I would have thought that he'd be too busy with more independent fare. What's he doing in a big budget action flick? Weird. Good, but weird. And this would appear to be Desmond Llewelyn's last trip as Q. The only stalwart from the old days is, unfortunately, finally bowing out. He is, however, leaving an appropriate replacement--John Cleese! He's awesome as R, the new gadget man who seems to almost be a match for James and a little sympathetic towards the man's libido. I think Mr. Cleese will make a great addition to the recurrent cast. With someone like him it's hard to hurt. Can't wait to see him in the next one. Overall, a not a very good addition to a series that seems to be consistently churning out the hits lately. That's a good thing, because I've always loved the Bond movies. But it's also a bad thing because, apparently, they've gotten lazy. It had it's good points (most of them attached to the front of Denise), but all in all a weak entry into a great series.

Deep Blue Sea

admin — Sat, 04 Dec 1999 18:00:00 +0000

Also known as Jaws 5-We're Smarter Than You. I watched about half of this movie the other night while our carpets were being cleaned at work. (In case you're a new reader--yeah, right--I work at Blockbuster. I'm not proud, but I can't deny the dirty truth.) I had to shut it off because they finished and, well, I wanted to go home. I knew I had to see the rest of it, though, just to see how bad it could really get. Remember when Renny Harlin came of age? First he does an installment of the Nightmare On Elm Street series. Then he does a the weakest installment of the Die Hard series. Then he makes a mistake by taking on Andrew "Dice" Clay's dream project, The Adventures Of Ford Fairlane. Oops. Then Cliffhanger, a Stallone flick where only the first 15 minutes and John Lithgow's performance are worth anything. And even that first action scene was centered around something breaking that should never have broken. Unless, of course, Stallone's girlfriend weighed about 4,000 lbs. Then we get to Cutthroat Island. No need to go on about that one. And then, suddenly, he did something right. The Long Kiss Goodnight was actually a fun action movie. Samuel L. Jackson and Geena Davis made a great buddy pair. Not to mention Geena looked good as a badass. Don't think about it too much and you'll just be carried along by the action. Then, after that glimmer of hope, Mr. Harlin has wallowed in crap again. This time he's decided to make a movie about smart sharks that terrorize an underwater research facility. Dr. Susan McAlestar (Saffron Burrows from Hotel De Love, The Matchmaker, and Wing Commander) is trying like hell to get her Alzheimer's research finished. She's been working with sharks in order to get a certain enzyme to make the brain snap back into place. I'm not really sure why sharks, but that seems to be the animal of choice. I, personally, would've chosen something a little more benign like, say, pigs. Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson), is sent along to find out what's going on and if the research should go on. (This is about where it started to sound a lot more like another Spielberg movie that Sam was also in, Jurassic Park.) On his way in he starts to meet all of the principle players of the research unit. Carter (Thomas Jane from Face/Off, The Velocity Of Gary and The Thin Red Line) is the resident shark expert, pretty much taking the place of Robert Shaw. Janice Higgins and Jim Whitlock (Jacqueline McKenzie from Angel Baby and Stellan Skarsgard from Good Will Hunting and Insomnia) are a couple of scientists who are just kind of along for the ride. Tom Scoggins (Michael Rapaport) is the resident tech-nerd. He runs everything from the computers. And, finally, there's Preacher (LL Cool J--Yes, he's still alive), the religious cook. At first all is well. Of course. Then things start to go really well. The experiment works on one of the sharks. Then, just as suddenly, we find out what Stellan's character is really for besides answering lines like "Well I'll be damned." with lines like "No. At 6.5650 seconds, you just saw what it's like NOT to be damned." Huh? He's actually here to be the world's biggest minnow. His arm gets bitten off first. Then he gets dipped in the water from a helicopter where he's grabbed by a shark and pulled underneath the heavy metal floor where the helicopter finally dies. What a way to catch a fish. Then, to add insult to injury, he's thrust into the window of the observation deck where everyone stares at him while the glass cracks around him and thousands of tons of water threaten to pour in on top of them. "Hmm. What should we do now?" Maybe RUN!!! Morons. This is where we learn that Dr. McAlestar, in order to save people from her father's fate, enlarged the brains of the sharks in order to test the new drug. Unfortunately it made them a lot smarter than anyone in this movie. (Of course, I think they were smarter before, but that's a different story.) Then there's LL. He's off in a different movie. In fact, he's in Kubrick's version of Titanic, walking down long corridors with lots of doors with water spraying out of them. I kept expecting him to start hearing the other people's thoughts, no matter where he was, and come a-runnin'. I guess he was too preoccupied with his bird who had the good foresight to get away from the sharks that were quickly infesting the research station. And besides the stupidity of the human characters, the special effects weren't even that good. You could always tell the animatronic sharks from the digital sharks. Some of the death scenes looked like something I've seen on my computer. That's pretty bad. They could make dinosaurs that look real six years ago, but now they can't make real looking sharks? That's weird. And the bodies just looked awful. They looked like rejects from Tomb Raider. What's up with that? There were a few good action scenes of course. And it's always nice to see Michael Rapaport get ripped up by a shark. But, overall, this was the kind of tripe that Hollywood loves to put out. No thought at all. Just big action that really doesn't make much sense. It all could have been avoided very easily. Instead we get The Poseidon Adventure with sharks instead of Shelly Winters. Samuel L. Jackson was the only real buoy of taste and he leaves the scene too quickly (and surprisingly). If you want to laugh and make fun of something, rent this one. If you're looking for action with plot, go rent Ronin. Or even The Long Kiss Goodnight, which looks like The Killer in comparison.

American Movie

admin — Sun, 05 Dec 1999 18:00:00 +0000

Ok, so I actually paid $7 (WHAT? SEVEN DOLLARS?!?! AT THE DOBIE?!?!) to see a documentary. Pretty outrageous, huh? At least it was a good one. This little flick is about Mark Borchardt, a Wisconsin filmmaker who will stop at nothing to get his film made. His dedication is pretty amazing. His friends and family help him out, but most of them don't seem too hyped on his chances. His Uncle Bill gave him $3,000 to help him make his short, Coven. But he started it three years ago. His friend Mike has been helping him all along, but Mike's about as smart as a bag of clay because of all of the drugs he did in the past. He's just about finished with Coven, but that's not his dream. His dream is a feature called Northwestern. While all of his previous shorts have been weirdo horror flicks, Northwestern is a personal odyssey about him and his friends. This movie is really funny in the way that Ed Wood was really funny. We're watching a guy who thinks he has every bit of talent of every director in Hollywood. He doesn't really, but the will is there. He really wants to (no, he needs to) make this movie. He needs to sell 3,000 copies of Coven so that he can make his dream project. If that fails then he fails. But he's also got plenty of problems at home. That's what makes the movie as sad as it is funny. First off, he's white trash. Poor as dirt. Not very educated. Can't seem to stop drinking. Second, he's got three kids by a woman he doesn't really love. They never got married and she wants the kids all to herself even though she's in the same situation he is. (They both have semi-live-in significant others.) The only difference is that he takes his kids to see movies like Apocalypse Now. What's wrong with that? Kids need the classics. I felt a real sympathy for Mark even though he wasn't really the greatest guy in the world. In fact, at times he's kind of a jerk. But I saw a lot of myself in him. (Except, of course, I'm much better looking.--And, hopefully, a lot smarter. He's got a good name, though.) I would love to do what Mark did. I just don't have the guts. Maybe some day. If you've seen Hands On A Hardbody (and most people at least here in Austin have since it's been running at the Dobie for about a year and made over half of it's money there) then you've seen the kinds of people that populate American Movie. Upper-lower class with a dream. That dream may not make a lot of sense to a lot of people, but it connects with some of us. And we can see the desperation that Mark goes through. I hope his movie makes it. It'll give me a lot of hope for my dreams. I know I'll be at the Dobie when Coven plays in a week or two.

Flawless

admin — Tue, 07 Dec 1999 18:00:00 +0000

Robert De Niro is finally getting back into his old self...sort of. Walt (Bobby himself) has been a hero cop for 14 years. Back in 1988 (Can the writers do math?) he saved a couple of security guards and some hostages from a couple of guys with guns and now he's just trying to make a living as a cop. Everyone on his street loves him. The only problem is that he's pretty intolerant of any other lifestyle. There's a drag queen named Rusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman on his way to becoming a real star) who lives on the other side of the building. They have no end of fun yelling at each other because of Walt's fear and hatred Rusty's choices. Not to mention the obnoxious singing he always hears from Rusty's apartment when his cross-dressing friends are over. Then tragedy strikes. When the notorious drug dealer, Mr. Z, notices that some money is missing, he sends his minions off to get it back. They kill a neighbor friend of Rusty's and her boyfriend who took the money. Walt tries desperately to help, but he has a stroke on the way up the stairs. It leaves his slightly paralyzed on his right side. After a few weeks of self-pity, Walt takes the advice of one of his therapists and tries to start taking singing lessons. When he tries to go to a professional things get tangled up and he just can't bring himself to do it. Then he gets some real courage. He goes to the one person he hates most of all and asks Rusty for the lessons. This, of course, is the main driving force of the movie: the relationship between Rusty's cross-dresser and Walt's intolerant cop. The two actors keep their forced friendship from being too sappy and they don't get too close too fast. All through the movie you're not really sure if they really like each other or if they just need each other. But you do know that they realize just how similar they really are. Both of them are at odds with "normal" society and have to deal with the shame that others think they should feel for how they are. Philip is pretty amazing in a challenging role. Without going way overboard, he's just flamboyant enough to be camp, but not unreal enough to be fake. De Niro, almost up to his former glory, must have spent a lot of time with stroke victims to get the part right. And he does it beautifully. We feel sorry for him on so many levels. There's sadness in this Archie Bunker character (especially when he realizes that his object of affection isn't as classy as she appears to be), but not so much that he gets weepy every five minutes. Thank God. This is Joel Schumacher's first time to write and direct a feature since his Breakfast Club for the mid-20s, St. Elmo's Fire. He does a better job this time out (although I really did like St. Elmo), but there's still a slight problem. While the relationship bits are great, I have a real problem with movies like this bringing a drug sub-plot into things just to give it a high stress ending. This one worked a little better than most, but it still had a little bit of a Three Men And A Baby feel to it. Is this the only way we can get these two characters to really find out that they're friends? Isn't there some way besides shooting people? He does keep the mood light, though. Especially with scenes like Walt and Rusty signing "The Name Game" around the piano (stay for the credits. That's one of the best parts) and the confrontation between the drag queens and the Gay Republicans. (Do those exist?) Even when the tone is serious they manage to keep some humor in it. That's what keeps the movie real. It's a very good movie even with the semi-weak ending. If only for the performances of De Niro and Hoffman (speaking of which, when will Robert do a movie with Dustin?) this movie should be up for some awards this year. And, by the way, the phrase "Banana Republican" is stuck in my brain now.

Run Lola Run

admin — Thu, 16 Dec 1999 18:00:00 +0000

Why were humans put here on Earth? Where are we going? What are we doing? Pretty lofty questions for an 81 minute movie about a girl trying to save her boyfriend's life. Lola (Franka Potente--who also wrote the theme song) is a bottled red-head who gets a call from her boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu). He's just lost some money that belongs to some big gangster dude because Lola wasn't there to pick him up. Now it's up to her to figure out how to get 100,000 Marks, get to Manni and keep him from being killed in the next twenty minutes. That's the story. That's it. What makes this little German flick awesome is how it's played out. First off, there's a pretty much non-stop techno-beat soundtrack that pumps up the tension. Then there's the near-revolutionary catch that I kind of wish that I hadn't known about before I saw the movie. All I can say is that Lola's life is a video game. (Do you realize how difficult it is to review a movie that you can't say anything about? Now I know how the original critics of Psycho felt like.) The director, Tom Tykwer, knows how to keep tension to a maximum. Along with the music we get continuous quick shots of her running all over the streets of Berlin, occasional animated sequences of her running down stairs, and, of course, lots of Hitchcock-like action sequences with twisting and running cameras. (And, in fact, there's a homage to Vertigo in the casino scene near the end.) The only real problem with the movie is when it slows down. There are a few scenes where Lola's dad is talking to his mistress and the movie comes to nearly a dead halt. It's kind of a relief, but after a couple of minutes I want to get back to Lola and Manni. Then there's the intermission bits. (I can't think of anything else to call them without giving something away.) Lola thinks back to when she and Manni are in bed together talking. Her sequence is one of those bits that only seems to happen in movies where the woman asks something like, "How do you know you love me?" Maybe I just haven't been in enough relationships, but that question has never come up. To me there's no real answer to that question. If you're really in love you don't really know why, it just is. As Mount Everest is and Albert Cogan isn't. (I'm sure someone will correct me on that quote. At least I hope someone will. I've always wondered what the name actually was.) Manni's question is a little more realistic. "What would you do if I died?" I can think of someone asking that and, in fact, have heard someone ask it. It's a hard one to answer, but at least there is one. "Oh, honey. You know I could never go on without you. I would just hole up in my room and never come out again. My life would end with yours." That's the only answer that ever makes anyone happy. And remember, sometimes the most frightening answer to a question is "I don't know." This is one of the revolutionary movies of 1999. One of the movies that makes us look at the way we watch movies and think, "Why have we been watching them the same way all these years?" While it's not the best movie of the year, it's one of the most interesting and maybe the best foreign film of the year. (Of course, I haven't seen many of them from this year, so I could be wrong.) By the way, this movie comes out on video 12/21. The problem with seeing it on video is the use of split-screen. Since they didn't letterbox it there are times that you only see half of Lola's face. I HATE PAN & SCAN!!! And also, Blockbuster is run by a bunch of blithering idiots. According to the box this German film is "In French with English subtitles." Now, I only know a little German (and he's sitting right over there), but I could even tell what language it was in. Morons. I also know enough German to know that Lola Rennt doesn't mean Run Lola Run. It means Lola Runs. Oh well. American can't be perfect.

The Cider House Rules

admin — Tue, 28 Dec 1999 18:00:00 +0000

No, this movie is not saying that the cider house is really cool. Believe me, I wouldn't want to live there. It's just a shack where the migrant workers stay at the orchards. What it is saying, though, is that sometimes you have to break some rules in order to do what's right. In fact, it says it so often that I started to think about speeding all the way home and using it as my excuse. Of course, this makes it sound like I didn't like the movie. On the contrary, if you can get past the fact that they overuse the significance of the rules of the cider house, this is one of the best movies I've seen this season. Lasse Hallstrom goes back to his (sort of) roots of coming of age stories that he started with My Life As A Dog and continued with What's Eating Gilbert Grape. This guy really knows how to show the tumult in a young man's life when he figures out what's wrong with that life. That constant look of, "Oh, Life, there must be something more." The near futile attempt of breaking out when all of the odds seem to be against you. And, especially, the joy of finally getting out and finding yourself. This time out, Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire, fast becoming an indie king, or at least prince) is the young man in question. He's an orphan, born and raised, living in the early 40s. He was sent with two families who just didn't seem to work well with him. (One complained that he didn't make any noise and the other made him make too much noise.) So he just stayed on with Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine, who is making a major comeback lately) and became his "son." As the years went on Homer also became, in addition to a big help around the orphanage, quite a good doctor under the tutelage of Dr. Larch. (Every time I heard his name I kept looking for a tree. Funny, that.) One service that Dr. Larch handles, besides placing kids in the care of hopefully loving parent, is illegal abortions. This brings up some of the more forced discussions in the script because Dr. Larch is definitely pro-choice and Homer seems to be leaning towards pro-life. While this was a bit over done throughout the film, it does (of course) come into play at the end and brings about the conclusion. More on that later. One day, when Homer is of that age where he's thinking about leaving the nest, a young couple come for on of Dr. Larch's underground operations. Wally Worthington (Paul Rudd from Clueless and The Object Of My Affection--is it just me or is he looking more and more like Ben Affleck every day?) and Candy Kendall (the uber-beautiful Charlize Theron from Devil's Advocate, Mighty Joe Young and The Astronaut's Wife) show up two months pregnant. Wally is on leave from the Air Force and Candy can't handle being a mother. Wally's mom and Candy's dad probably couldn't handle it, either. Anyway, Homer sees this as his way out. He becomes friends with the two young lovers and hops a ride to their home town where he becomes an apple picker in the Worthington orchard. There he meets the migrant workers (headed up by the under appreciated Delroy Lindo) and, after Wally is shipped out again, starts a secret love affair, probably his first. While all of this is going on, Dr. Larch, who is basically a good man with a few fatal flaws, is trying to get Homer back. He's dismayed by the fact that the boy left in the first place, and even more angry that he doesn't write often enough. And, now that he's about to be replaced, he wants his son to follow in his footsteps. These worries send his ether addiction into outer space. And, on top of all of that, things aren't right for the kids, either. No one is as happy without Homer. Tobey Maguire, while not reaching the heights of his former co-star, Leonardo DiCaprio (This Boy's Life), is becoming quite a good actor. (Maybe a role in a Hallstrom film will cure his near obscureness. After all, look what happened after Leo was in Gilbert Grape.) Yes, he kind of plays the same shy innocent in all of his films, but he's become so good at that character that I'm starting to worry that he's really that way in real life. Here he's a young man who wants so badly to leave his old life behind, but there's so much calling him back that he almost can't bear to be away from it. He wants to stay at his new home, but there's too much pushing him away even when he's happy. He's getting this huge slice of life in a relatively short amount of time. (He sees the ocean, a lobster and a movie besides King Kong for the first time.) It's all coming so fast, but he doesn't want it to slow down. I saw a little of myself in this character, which may be why I liked the movie so much. His need for escape. His love of films. (The look in his eye when he's watching Wuthering Heights is the look I get when I'm sucked into a movie. I'm sure I got it through out this one.) His shyness. His near inability to express himself. (The scene where he confronts Delroy Lindo about a secret that he has is a classic bit of acting. Kind of a "Should I be doing this? Wait. I have to do this." kind of thing.) So am I revealing too much of myself here? Oh well. No one reads these reviews anyway. I might as well use it as a diary. Michael Caine is threatening to become an actor again. After leaving behind all hope back in the early 80s, he's finally decided that the world needs his art again. (Fortunately, I think his head has gone back to its original size, too.) After this and Little Voice I wouldn't be surprised if he started to get the parts that he really deserves again. Yeah, he had his moments with stuff like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Without A Clue, Muppet Christmas Carol and Hannah And Her Sisters, but what's up with Jaws: The Revenge, Mr. Destiny and On Deadly Ground? Yech! Maybe it was his turn in Michael Caine: On Acting In Film, Arts And Entertainment. Now he's realized that he can act again. And it's an amazing turn of events. He brings such a quiet grace to his role as the hopeless Dr. Larch that we can't help but feel sorry for him. Yes, he was trying to keep Homer at home where he thought he belonged. Yes, he was constantly sniffing ether. Yes, he was forging documents in order to get Homer back. But he did it all because he loved his kids. He wanted someone to take over for him who he knew would carry on his traditions of good care and a loving touch. Who else would put the kids to sleep with a story every night (even if that story had lines like, "His head hit the rock and he spilled his brains on the ground.") Who else would make them feel like the princes and kings that they are. And, not least importantly, who else would provide a needed, if illegal, service for mothers of unwanted children. If they didn't do it someone else would and it may kill the poor girls. Charlize Theron. What can you say about Charlize Theron. She's a much better actress than most people give her credit for. She has a certain magnetic quality that shows the joy of a character without completely hiding the internal strife. (Did that actually mean anything?) When Homer says to her "I've seen all kinds of women. I've seen it all. But when I look at you, it hurts." (or something like that. It didn't sound that trite when he said it) you can totally see why his breath was taken away. And then when she walks into the cider house to see Homer and smiles (and I hate this phrase as much as Roger Ebert does, but it's the only one that fits) she literally lights up the screen. Who knew that a girl from South Africa could become an All-American bombshell in such a short amount of time. (Charlize, if you're reading this, I live in Austin, TX and I'm your age. I'm here for you!) And then there's the cinematography, which is almost a character in itself. Oliver Stapleton obviously loves to look at the New England countryside because we see a lot of it and it's beautiful. It brings to mind another Tobey Maguire flick that was the recipient of my first review, The Ice Storm. Both of these movies made me want to visit there as soon as possible just to experience winter in New England. (Of course without all the drama.) The only real problem I had with the movie (besides the constant reference to the "rules" and the overly obvious abortion angle was the ending. I think it was a personal problem, though. It worked for the movie and was the way it had to end, but because of my identification with Homer I wanted it to end differently. By the way, watch for hip hopper Heavy D as Peaches, Kieran Culkin as Buster the brooding young orphan and Erykah Badu in the pivotal role of Rose Rose (Delroy's daughter). The credits say that they are "Introducing Erykah Badu." We Blues Brothers fans, though, know differently. So she was actually allowed to act in this one (and she can act quite well, too...I was impressed), but she was there for the Blues first. I just recently read the book. Of course, it's even better than the movie, but completely different. It takes place over Homer's entire life and gives a lot of back story for Dr. Larch. Very good. Check it out at Amazon.com

The Green Mile

admin — Wed, 29 Dec 1999 18:00:00 +0000

And that pretty much sums up the sentiment of this movie. Of course, the movie was better then the trailers gave it credit for, but it was still pretty sappy. First and foremost, I must say this: No matter what horrible things you hear behind this door, no matter how loud I scream, I did like this movie. I thought it was a very good movie. It just had some very fatal problems. Screenwriter/director Frank Darabont takes us back to Stephen King's Prisonworld, which he had already taken us to in The Shawshank Redemption, definitely one of the greatest prison films of all time. Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) is the head warden on death row at a Louisiana prison back in the 20s. He's seen them come and go, but never quite like the one he's about to see. Enter John Coffey (Michael Duncan from Armageddon), the biggest, blackest man on the face of the earth. He looks like he would be trouble. But when he asks for a light to be left on at night because he "gets scared sometimes in the dark," some questions come up. Could a man who is this meek have raped and killed two little girls? Then there's the other guards on the Mile. Brutus "Brutal" Howell (David Morse from Contact, The Crossing Guard and 12 Monkeys) is the Tom Sizemore character here. He's pretty much second in command and is always ready to back up whatever Paul says. He's also pretty handy with a billy club. Dean Stanton (Barry Pepper from Saving Private Ryan) is the young-un of the crew. He's ready to help out, but he's still learning the ropes. Harry Terwilleger (Jeffery DeMunn from The X Files movie, (shudder) Rocket Man and a small part in Shawshank) is the old man of the group. He's been around, but he hasn't quite gotten to the ranks of Paul. And, just to bring a real villain into the story, there's Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchison from Batman & Robin...poor guy). He's a prissy little busy-body who "knows people." And that's the only reason he has his job. All he really does is make life a hell for the guys on death row. The prisoners are, for the most part, not bad guys. There's Arlen Bitterbuck (Graham Greene who has been in every movie that called for a Native American, most notably Dances With Wolves and Maverick), but he doesn't really say much. He's just kind of there. The main side prisoner is Eduard Delacroix (Michael Jeter from "Evening Shade" and The Fisher King). He's a simple minded little Cajun who only seems to want friends. He finds one in Mr. Jingles, a mouse who finds his way onto the Mile. This, of course, is no end of annoyance to Percy. And so the story goes until a) we find out about Coffey's special powers and b) William "Wild Bill" Wharton (Sam Rockwell from Safe Men and Lawn Dogs) shows up. Wild Bill brings a bit of evil to the Mile. While all of the rest of the prisoners are completely serene when Percy's not around, Wild Bill is Hell on Earth. He spits at Paul. He pees on Harry. There's just nothing he won't do. As for John's powers, he's a healer. He takes the ailments of people onto himself and then coughs them up in a cloud of flies. Where did that come from? Well, this is, after all, a Stephen King story. You had to expect a weird twist. In fact, that's what gives the story its inspiration. That's what brings the over-sentimentality to the film. Would such a person be put on Earth just to be killed like this? Would someone with the power to heal be able also to kill? Paul doesn't think so. While Shawshank was sentimental and thought provoking and inspiring and all that stuff, this movie goes well beyond the call of duty in the first and last of those traits. There are so many scenes that end in an inspirational thought that I thought I was watching the Lifetime Network. While we're on the problems, I'll just list a few. First off there's the Saving Private Ryan framing story. This time it's a little more needed, but it's just too long. The film is three hours long and could have been cut by about 15 minutes just by editing some of the old Paul out. Especially at the end. There's a scene where the movie should have ended, but it kept going for another few minutes. This is what we call "padding," folks. It's what directors do in order to make their movie no longer a short. Well, you know, this movie was never in danger of that, so cut it. Then there's Paul's ailment. He has a urinary tract infection. While this works well in the book (one of King's best lately), it doesn't translate well to screen. I'm sure they could have come up with something that wouldn't involve Tom Hanks holding his crotch all the time. It kind of turned comical after a while. And the flying sparks. There were so many light bulbs breaking in this movie that I thought I was watching the director's cut of the finale of The Natural. Lots of shots of Tom with sparks behind him. Come on. But, as I said before, I did like the movie a lot. There were some good points. The acting was great. Michael Jeter was a standout, but everyone was perfect. Tom, as always, put in a great "everyman" performance. He was the leader, but he led them as one of them, not as a commander. (And I'm talking about character and acting.) Michael Duncan was pretty amazing, too, as the beleaguered Coffey. Pretty inspiring performance of a tortured man with a great gift. And it's always good to see Tom and Gary Sinise together again. (How many movies have they made together? Are they about to become Bob Hope and Bing Crosby? Or Janeane Garofalo and Ben Stiller?) And, as always, James Cromwell put in a great supporting performance. It's always good to see him as long as he's not acting with a talking pig. (Although, the way Tom's going, he just about was.) Harry Dean Stanton still has it, too. He's got the crazy freako character down to a science. He plays a trustee named Toot-Toot who helps the guards rehearse the executions. Doug Hutchison reminds me a lot of Peter MacNicol from Ghostbusters II and "Alley McBeal" ("Why am I drippings vith goo?")) He's just so sleazy! And I was finally impressed by Sam Rockwell. He totally annoyed me in Safe Men (which, by the way, was not very funny at all), but he kind of scared me in this one. He was equally gross and evil. Perfect combo for this character. The story was great, too. As I said, it's based on one of Stephen King's best recent books. I think writing in serial form helped him get back to the old days. Nothing wrong with the direction, either. Maybe a few too many sweeping entrances and a pretty obvious Psycho-like shot at a mental institution, but that can be forgiven. I was thoroughly involved the whole way. I just wish it hadn't been so damn long! Overall, a very good movie. Not a great one, though. That's unfortunate because I think Mr. Darabont could be the best adapter of Stephen King novels ever. With the possible exception of Rob Reiner. King said that The Green Mile was the best adaptation. Maybe the most faithful, but not the best. Nothing compares to Stand By Me.

Any Given Sunday

admin — Tue, 04 Jan 2000 18:00:00 +0000

And I'm sure Mr. Stone will be proudest of when his critics can site this as his Worst Movie Since Natural Born Killers. (I guess that doesn't really take in much. He's only made three since that one. Nixon, which was very good, and U-Turn, which I liked, but it seemed more in David Lynch territory. And then, this near travesty.) Let's see. Where should we start? I guess I should explain that I'm not a football fan at all. I wanted to see this movie because of Oliver Stone (who can occasionally make a great film), Al Pacino (who seems to be putting in less and less great performances) and Cameron Diaz (who can do no wrong). This movie starts off with a pretty good football scene. I have to admit that even I was kind of into those scenes. That's a good thing since they take up just about an hour and 45 minutes of the three hour movie. In fact, the first scene was so long that I was starting to think that there was no story, just football scene after football scene. So, this is the story of Tony D'Amato (Pacino), the head coach of the Miami Sharks. (Yeah, I get it. Some of the other teams are called the Americans, the Rhinos and the Knights. I guess they couldn't use the real names, so they just forged their way in.) He's getting up there in years and some of the higher ups think it's time for him to quit. His star quarterback, Jack "Cap" Rooney (Dennis Quaid--is he really football player material?) is also getting up there and is starting to kind of fall apart. In fact, he's taken out in the first game with a really bad back injury and isn't able to play again until the playoffs. When his second string QB is taken out in the next play he is forced to send in third stringer Willie Beaman (Jamie Foxx). After Beaman pukes on the turf he starts to bring the team to a victory only to be thwarted by his own insolence. (You see, he calls different plays than the coach does. Bad boy.) Meanwhile, in another movie, Christina Pagniacci (the lovely Ms. Diaz), is trying to own her team a little more than it should be owned. She's almost coaching from the box. Her father owned the Sharks for a long time and now, since he's dead, she's taken over with an iron thumb. Tony hates her. Cap's not too fond of her. Neither is her mother (Ann-Margaret looking so much older than she did even five years ago in the Grumpy Old Men movies). In fact, she inspires the best line of the whole movie from Charleton Heston, "I seriously believe that woman would eat her young." That's the whole story. Beaman becomes the star QB (of course). He leaves his girlfriend (of course). He makes commercials (of course). Tony tries to put Cap back in. He finds out that his team doctor (James Woods) has been faking test results in order to keep older players in. There's a younger doctor (Matthew Modine) who wants James stopped. Cap has an evil wife (Lauren Holly) who wants him in that game no matter what. There's even an over the top sports newsman (John C. McGinley from Office Space and a lot of other Stone films--and doesn't he look a lot like a young Dabney Coleman?) who makes Willie out to be the biggest story of the year. Of course, of course, of course, of course. There are absolutely no surprises in this movie at all. I guess that's the biggest surprise. Oliver Stone has made the most predictable movie of his career. At least U-Turn was so weird that you didn't know what direction it would go next. And there's not a lot for any of these actors to do. The only fleshed out characters are Tony and Willie, and even those are pretty cardboard. The rest of the parts could have been played by any unknown actor out of the L.A. restaurant scene. What was Matthew Modine doing here? A favor for Stone? I know what James Woods was doing. He's always around Stone's work, so I guess he's got an excuse. Everyone did a great job, though. Especially Mr. Pacino, who puts in one of his most understated performances in about 10 years. The yelling is actually called for this time and he never once does it over the corpse of a five year old boy. (Such a bad scene from City Hall.) Now, back to those football scenes. The only problem I had with them was the fact that there was always music playing. Very few times was there only the sounds of the players, which I think makes a better scene. I would much rather hear the cracking of the helmets and the grunting of the players than the synchronized beat of the metal or rap that the music supervisor thought would heighten the experience. It kind of made the otherwise great scenes into Michael Bay music videos. (Which, by the way, it looked like he was helping old Ollie out with some of the direction. What's up with all the close-ups and moving cameras? I thought I was watching Armageddon again.) And then there's the fact that a lot of the time it looks like the actors couldn't be bothered to be in the same room together. A lot of Cameron's scenes looked like they had to be filmed during off days of the Being John Malkovich shoot. Very few times is she ever in the same room with Pacino. Or anyone else for that matter, except for Ann-Margaret and Charelton Heston, who weren't doing anything else, so they could be all over the place at any given time. And speaking of Mr. Gun Happy, there's a scene between Tony and Willie at Tony's house that pretty much sums up the whole movie. When Willie comes over for dinner, Tony is watching Ben Hur. (Get it?) It's right at the chariot race scene. Lots of guys giving their lives for their sport. Then, for some reason, later in the dinner it goes back to when Ben Hur is on the slave ship. Huh? Did they forget what order the tapes went in? But that's not important right now. What is important is what I think this movie is actually about. It's not about football at all. It's actually about filmmaking. You see, Oliver Stone is now one of the older statesmen of film. He's mad that he missed out on being part of the "Film School Generation" that Scorsese and Spielberg were a part of, so he's going to take his punches at old Hollywood, too. He does this by showing us Ben Hur and having Mr. Heston gallivanting around his new film. But, he doesn't want his generation, which is now the older generation, to be forgotten. We must learn from the old to get the new. He sees filmmakers like Darren Aronofsky (Pi), Alexander Payne (Election), Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and David O. Russell (Three Kings) horning in on his territory. He wants them to know that he can still make a hip movie. So he puts all of this weird stuff into his movie, lots of cutting, lots of loud music, lots of grainy shots. And he brings Old Hollywood into it, too. In this movie the new only prevail with the recognition and help of the old. (It's a long shot, but I bet it was on Ollie's mind.) Unfortunately, Oliver didn't really make a hip movie. He made a "hip" movie. There's a big difference. And, besides that, he has a lot to learn about football. The teams seem to magically get seven points for their touchdowns. The extra point is mentioned once or twice, but the point is already on the score board. And he's got a lot to learn about television. A commercial would never have the line "I keep all the women creamin'" in it. Not a very good movie. But Mr. Stone may have a bright future at MTV.

Bicentennial Man

admin — Wed, 05 Jan 2000 18:00:00 +0000

So you thought that the previews for this movie made it look like a really bad kids' movie about a robot who wanted to be human? Kind of like Disney 2000? Well, actually (and I just found this out today) it's based on an Isaac Asimov short story/novel about a robot who, in the attempt to become human, learns that immortality and non-feeling may not be so great after all. Andrew (Robin Williams) is delivered to the Martins' house one day in 2005. He's a typical android in every way except one. He is creative. When he drops a glass horse that belongs to the youngest daughter who he calls Little Miss (Pepsi girl Hallie Eisenberg), he carves her a new one out of wood without the help of a design. He just makes up a design that would be pleasing to her "love of tiny mammals." After this, Mr. Martin (Sam Neill) takes Andrew to the company that built him and talks to the president, Dennis Mansky (Stephen Root from Office Space and "News Radio"), about the phenomenon. It turns out that Andrew's personality is an anomaly that they would be more than happy to study and then replace Andrew. Sam will have none of that and makes sure that they can't touch his new friend. So time goes on and people get old and die, but Andrew stays the same. For a while, anyway. He gets a new face that will allow him to show more emotion when Little Miss (now played by the lovely and mostly-talented Embeth Davidtz from Schindler's List and Army Of Darkness) gets married. Even later, while looking for more of his kind, he finds Rupert Burns (Oliver Platt), an ousted scientist who is experimenting with flesh androids. Strangely enough, no one will fund him. Too close to home. (I actually think it was the fact that, while he's molding Andrew's face, he makes Robin look like he did in Popeye. That would scare me off, too.) But Andrew, who has been making money off of his sculptures and clocks, will. And thus begins the part of the movie where Robin actually looks like Robin. And he starts to really turn human. At a little over two hours this movie drags occasionally, but, given the previews, I was pleasantly surprised. Not as good as it could have been, but still not as bad as it looked. First off, Robin doesn't go over the top like he has been lately. I really liked Good Will Hunting and What Dreams May Come, but he seems to be playing the emotion chip a little much lately. Hence, Jakob, The Liar. (I haven't seen it, but I haven't met anyone who really liked it. One guy actually said that it was the first Holocaust movie that didn't make him feel sorry for the Jews. The characters, that is. Not the race.) Since he couldn't cry, he wasn't allowed to emote like he usually does. The supporting cast is good. Sam and Oliver are always great to watch. Even in their old makeup. (I always knew Oliver Platt would make a great Orson Welles.) Embeth Davidtz, playing both Little Miss and her grand-daughter, was very good in two sort of one note roles. The whole point of the story, of course, is to call to mind a few questions on what exactly life is. With all of the artificial intelligence that we are trying to design now, will we eventually create a new life? And will the new life be able to deal with its own immortality? Is that immortality a problem that the new life will want to solve? And, in the end, what is life? Although I wonder how bad it would be sometimes to not feel anything. There are certain feelings I would like to never feel again. You know, pain, heartbreak, the feeling of that metal hook that the dentist uses, the feeling of a (What's it called?) ball-peen hammer being hit against your head. Stuff like that. I guess the real problem with the film besides its length was the fact that Chris Columbus directed it. Nothing against the guy, but he shouldn't be doing moral sci-fi. The movie was so schmaltzy that I felt like I was being controlled more than Andrew was. I'm sure Asimov didn't put this much sap in his pages. The music was always telling me when I should be crying and when I should be laughing. I'm sure I laughed at the wrong times every once in a while. And I never cried. No. Really, I didn't! I never cry at movies! Shut up!!! And then there's the fact that none of the old makeup was really convincing. Every once in a while there was a shot that looked good, but you could tell that Oliver had been caked with stuff. And not everyone goes grey at the same age. Come on. But, the movie wasn't bad. Not great. Not even particularly good, but not really bad. And any movie that includes the old joke "A Buddhist walks up to a hot dog vendor and says, 'Make me One with everything.'" is ok with me.

Man On The Moon

admin — Tue, 11 Jan 2000 18:00:00 +0000

Ok, so I was wrong. Jim Carrey was perfect for bringing Andy Kaufman to life. Milos Forman actually couldn't decide whether to use Jim or Ed Norton (the first one I heard about for the role). He let the studio decide and they went with, of course, Jim. After all, Jim's never had a flop. Forman brings us the short life of Andy Kaufman, unfortunately best known as Latka on Taxi. I say unfortunately not because he was bad in the role. He was hilarious, but he hated doing it. That was a character he created for his act and ABC turned it into a schtick. The film starts off just as Andy would have wanted it to start off: with a piece of performance art that will get rid of all of the people who don't understand him. As it was, I think there were really only two or three of us in the theater who knew what we were getting into. The rest were kind of nervous at this point. Throughout his life Andy (along with his partner in crime, Bob Zmuda played by Paul Giamatti from Private Parts) came up with avant garde comedy bits that either made you laugh or made you want to walk out. Either way he was happy. His first really successful act came after a club owner told him that "Show business is just that. 'Show' and 'business.' Without business, there's no show." He immediately created Foreign Man and started doing imitations. Not good ones, of course. They consisted of Foreign Man saying, "Hi. My name is Jimmy Carter, the President of the United States." Then came Elvis. Suddenly this little guy with a weird accent burst into a real impression and blew everyone away. In the audience that night, talent manager George Shapiro (Danny DeVito) saw something big. He approached Andy after the show and, after finding out that the guy was really American, signed him up. Things look up for Andy after that. He gets to the top of the game by being signed up for Taxi. He's not happy about it, but he's on it. He did, however, get some demands met for his appearances. First, he wants an hour and a half of meditation time before each taping. (Andy was heavily into Transcendental Meditation.) Second, he had to get a tv special all his own. Third, and most confusingly, he wants four appearances on the show for Tony Clifton. "Who the hell is Tony Clifton?" He's a character that Andy and Bob came up with. Basically a rough sounding Vegas lounge singer with no talent and horrible people skills. He yells at the audience. He throws water at them. He sings like Fran Drescher with a cold. Needless to say, his demands are met and he gets the gig. And he gets the special. And he reads all of The Great Gatsby on stage to a college audience. And he gets into wrestling and makes a shambles of it. And he gets a girl named Lynne (Courtney Love again showing that she can act better than she can sing). And he gets cancer. In case you didn't know, yes, Andy Kaufman is dead. To most people this is no surprise, so I'm not giving anything away. It's like telling you that the Titanic sank or the Apollo 13 made it back ok. Don't worry about it. Movie not ruined. He does, however, turn his misfortune into a positive. In order to get positive energy flowing into himself he wants to put on a show where everyone turns into kids right before his eyes. He brings out a childhood memory (a woman who danced in a kids' movie from 1931). He brings out Santa Claus. He takes everyone out for milk and cookies. It's one of the best things to ever happen at Carnegie Hall. This is a great feel good movie. I'm not sure that it really should have been, but that's what it turned into. Not really a bad thing, but there it is. You feel good that Andy finally got to do what he always wanted to do by the end. He does die, but there haven't been many scenes this season as moving or strangely happy as his funeral. An image of Andy singing a happy song and urging everyone in the church to sing along. What could have turned into a tasteless Farrelly Brothers' joke turns into a perfect ending for the movie. (Of course there's one more tag that's pretty cool, too. Is Andy actually dead or did he fake it?) All of the performances are great. Especially, of course, Mr. Carrey in the performance of his career. I thought he was great in The Truman Show, but this blows that one away. He is Andy Kaufman. I'm glad he got the part, although I'm sure Edward Norton would have been great, too. Has he ever not been great? The only thing I really had a problem with is a scene that's in the trailer and I had hoped that it would be different in the movie. Unfortunately it's not. It's the one where Shapiro is talking to Andy at dinner and he says, laughing, "You're insane." Then he sobers up and says, "But you might also be a genius." That was just a little much. I guess there always has to be a moment like that in any movie like this. Other than that, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood, The People Vs. Larry Flynt and Problem Child 1 & 2---oops) have written a pretty amazing script to bring Mr. Kaufman to life. They don't really shed a whole lot of new light on the man himself, although they do show the sadness that never really seemed to show through his act. But it does make for a great movie that is worthy of the Milos Forman canon of eccentric and controversial geniuses, which so far includes Kaufman, Larry Flynt and Mozart. Great piece of filmmaking from all involved. And, somehow, they managed to get almost all of the original members of Taxi to play themselves, except for Danny DeVito for obvious reasons and Tony Danza, who never really liked Andy. It's kind of funny seeing all of these people playing themselves 20 years ago. Except for Christopher Lloyd, they didn't even try to make them look the way they did back then. When Andy and Jerry Lawler go on David Letterman, Paul Shaffer didn't bother to grow his hair back. When Shapiro talks to Saturday Night Live producer Dr. Evil...I mean Lorne Michaels (who actually says, "Rrriiiight" at some point), he still has his grey hair that has just appeared within the last ten years. A couple of watch-fors here: The real George Shapiro plays the club owner at the beginning of the film. Vincent Schiavelli (from countless other Forman films and he played the priest that married (and divorced) Latka and Simka) plays ABC exec Maynard Smith. The real Bob Zmuda plays Jack Burns, producer of "Fridays", an SNL clone from 1980. And Norm McDonald plays Michael Richards back in his "Fridays" days.

Boys Don't Cry

admin — Sat, 22 Jan 2000 18:00:00 +0000

You know, I keep forgetting who Hilary Swank is. I guess that's a good thing for her career. Imagine going from The Next Karate Kid to Beverly Hills 90210 and expecting a real acting career. Well, let me tell you something: She's got one coming to her. Boys Don't Cry is a true story about a girl who posed as a guy back in the early 90s (how weird does that sound? I remember when it still was "the early 90s"). She made friends in a small town (first mistake), got a girlfriend (second mistake) and then was raped and killed by her friends. I'm not sure how much of the movie was based on the reality of the case, but in this version Teena Brandon (Swank) becomes Brandon Teena. (That's a rather convenient name for a cross dresser, don't you think?) She goes to a small Nebraska town, meets Candace (Alicia Goranson--Becky from Rosanne), gets in a fight over her honor and escapes with Candace and John (Peter Sarsgaard from Another Day In Paradise and Dead Man Walking). After waking up in Candace's house, Teena finds out that Candace has a kid and John has a prison record. He and his bunk buddy, Tom (Brendan Sexton III from Desert Blue, Welcome To The Dollhouse and Pecker) have been hanging out with Teena's new crew since they got out of the joint. After a couple of nights of hanging out with them and staying at Candace's place, Teena meets Lana (Chloe Sevigny from Kids and The Last Days Of Disco), a girl who wrote John all the time while he was in prison. She says that she did it because she was young (13) and stupid. He says she did it because she loved him. Her mom (Jeanette Arnette from Head Of The Class), who I think John has something with, too, is a drunk who lets everyone call her "Mom" and is just like one of the kids. Kate (Alison Folland from To Die For) is just another hanger on who doesn't get in the way much. John starts to show his mean streak when his daughter pees on his lap and he lashes out at her. Then, when the group gets pulled over for speeding, he throws them all out of Candace's car and makes them walk home. (That was a weird scene, anyway. They were speeding to catch up with a car full of three girls who had made fun of them. What were they going to do to them? Beat them up? They didn't really seem to want to do that. Oh well.) Teena, of course, starts to fall for Lana from day one. Even though she won't admit her homosexuality, she knows what she likes, and Lana is the perfect embodiment of it. She finds a new reason to stay when Lana returns her affection. Unfortunately, Teena has some warrants out for her arrest. And so begins the downfall of Brandon Teena. The movie itself is very good. A little fractured, though. At first I couldn't really figure out where in the story we were. It seemed to be going back and forth, but it all became clear by the end. Along with the really cool Koyaanisquatsi style stop motion photography shots, this made the story seem even more whacked out than it already was. And what an interesting story. I can't think of anything more confounding than a girl pretending to be a guy and actually getting away with it for, I guess, a couple of months. Even going so far as to have sex with her girlfriend and not giving it away. (I still don't exactly know how she did that. I guess it would be easier than a guy disguising himself and getting away with it, although that's happened, too. Those guys had to be REALLY stupid. "What's this, honey?" "Oh, don't pay any attention to that." Huh!?!?) Of course the movie is totally disturbing. These guys are so intolerant that they actually rape and kill a girl who tricked them for a little while. But it wasn't even because she tricked them. It was partly jealousy (John, in some twisted way, seemed to love Lana), but mainly just not being able to live with the fact that Teena was gay. So much so that they decide to teach her a lesson in hetero-sex. Of course, it's the wrong lesson and results in one of the most brutal rape scenes I've ever seen. And then there's Hilary Swank's performance as Brandon/Teena. We never really see her play Teena, so I don't know if she can act like a girl, but she's got the guy down perfectly. The only thing that almost would have betrayed her was her voice, but, since she was supposed to be fairly young and pretty small, it might not have been so noticeable. Just another guy with a high voice. In fact, she did such a good job that the girl I saw the movie with had to ask me if it was really a girl playing the part. (We saw later in the movie that she was, indeed, quite female.) Brandon had to be a tough role since she's not only trans-gendered, but she's completely confused about her sexuality. She swears to her cousin at the beginning that she's not a lesbian, but she can't be turned on by guys. Then, when Lana arrives, things just go so far that she loses any questions she ever had. An amazing performance that hopefully gets some recognition. It'll be hard with a movie like this, though. It's not only about an unpopular subject, but it was almost rated NC-17 before it was cut down. Actually, the only real problem I had with the movie is that they chose to name it after a song by quite possibly the whiniest band ever, The Cure. (And how much hate mail will I get for that one? Probably none since my audience of one knows I don't like The Cure.) Other than that, not a perfect movie, but very good. Definitely not for everyone, though.

Girl, Interrupted

admin — Fri, 11 Feb 2000 18:00:00 +0000

Ok, so that's the only quote I could think of. I saw this movie much earlier today, so bear with me. Back in 1968 Susanna Kaysen spent 18 months in a mental institution. It wasn't totally her choice, but she checked herself in. Her parents had more to say about it than she did. It was mainly because she was depressed and said that she wanted to write. She became a writer, though. She wrote about her experiences in the institution. And now, Hollywood has made a movie out of her pain. I'm not cynical at all, am I? Susanna (Winona Ryder) is a frail young woman who seems to think that she jumps around in time and that her bones can disappear. Ok, maybe she's a little crazy, but no more than most kids back then. Inside the asylum she meets some real crazies. Georgina (Clea DuVall from The Faculty and The Astronaut's Wife--don't bother with that one) is a pathological liar. Daisy (Brittany Murphy from Clueless and Drop Dead Gorgeous) is obsessed with chicken and laxatives. Polly (Elizabeth Moss from The West Wing, Anywhere But Here and Mumford) burned her face in order to hide the rash that was making her get rid of her dog. But the craziest of all is Lisa (Angelina Jolie). She's pretty psychotic. Everyone likes her mainly because she's their leader. She can be very caring when she wants to be, but she can also be very frightening. Along the way Susanna also finds out the inner workings of the institution. They seem to not really know what they're doing, but then she decides that they really want to help. Especially the seemingly indifferent head nurse, Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg). And the people on the outside like her boyfriend Tobey (Jared Leto), don't seem to really care about anyone but themselves. So what's the movie trying to say? I don't really know. It's not an expose of a corrupt institute. So that's one difference from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. (It's about the only one, though.) It's not really saying that these places are for everyone, even though it worked for one sane person. It just puts the facts out there, lets Whoopi play her normal, supportive mother-like role, and tells its story. That's fine, but it seems to really want to do something else. It wants us to identify with Lisa and Susanna at different times even though, by the end, we're made to kind of hate Lisa. Then it turns her back around. So, is she a bad girl? Or is she just misunderstood? Who knows? I guess we have to read to book. The acting is what carries this movie. Winona and Angelina especially. They both do pretty amazing jobs in their roles. And Vanessa Redgrave and Jeffery Tambor bring some quiet dignity to roles that change in midstream. Their changes actually make sense, though. It's not really a bad movie, but it's not really good, either. I almost think that it would have been better if it had kept up with its initial style. When Susanna thought that she was unstuck in time we got some rather disjointed scenes that played out kind of like the scenes in The Limey. One scene playing right into another one with overlapping lines and Susanna looking behind a door just to see a room in a completely different place and time. That was pretty cool. Then that stopped and the movie became a very typical Dead Poet's Society flick. Better than some, but still nowhere near the original. Worth seeing, though, if you're a fan of either of the leads, as I am. My one complaint for them...gain some freakin' weight! I'm starting to be able to see bone on these poor girls. Especially Little Noni, whose clothes seemed to barely want to stay on her. (By the way, this is the closest I've ever seen to her showing more skin than is publicly acceptable. We get a back view with a little side view. Ok. I'll stop being a sexist misogynist dinosaur, but it's in all guys' natures. At least I'm not into rails.)

The Beach

admin — Fri, 11 Feb 2000 18:00:00 +0000

For about a month now I've been hearing how totally mediocre this film is. That really disappointed me. I think Danny Boyle is awesome. At the time they came out, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting were two of the coolest and strangest films I had seen in a long, long time. A Life Less Ordinary? Well, not as good, but still pretty damn cool. How can you argue with Delroy Lindo and Holly Hunter as two sadistic angels trying to get two people together at any cost? Apparently you don't. When I heard that he was making a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio my warning bells went off. That's not a jab at Leo really. I think he's a very good actor. The problem was the fact that this was another movie that sounded like a disaster movie with Leo. Shouldn't he get away from that genre? Is he trying to become an action hero? Will Danny turn him into his new Ewen McGregor? Then all the flack started coming. It seemed that my fears were confirmed. Well, let's start at the beginning. Leo plays Richard, an American kid traveling Thailand. Through an opening monologue that sounds spookily like the one from Trainspotting, we find out that he's kind of disillusioned with the whole tourist experience. He wants something different. Not necessarily dangerous, but definitely different. When a guy challenges him to drink a shot of snake blood, he takes the challenge after some chiding because he doesn't want to be the "typical American tourist looking for all the comforts of home." So he checks into his hotel, a bug ridden hellhole with crazy people in every room. On one side he's got a beautiful French girl and her boyfriend. On the other side he has Daffy Duck (Trainspotting vet Robert Carlyle), a completely insane dude with a secret. He tells Richard of an island way off the coast where there lies a paradise community. Nothing to do but live life to its fullest. No rules but to have fun and survive. The next day Richard finds a map stuck to his door and a dead Daffy in the next room. The stress of knowing about this place was too much for this disturbed mind, so he killed himself. So Richard takes the map to the girl next door, FranÃ§oise (French beauty Virginie Ledoyen from A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries). You see, he's fallen in deep smit with. Unfortunately her boyfriend, Ãtienne (Guillaume Canet from a bunch of French films that I've never heard of) has to come along. So they go and find the biggest crop of weed that you've ever seen. Unfortunately they also find some Thai's with the biggest guns you've ever seen. After they get away from them they finally find Paradise. It's run by a woman named Sal (Tilda Swinton from Orlando and Female Perversions) who keeps the rules strictly followed. No one leaves the island unless they are with her and they are only getting supplies. No one comes on the island except people who live there. (They have a deal with the farmers. We don't bother them and they don't bother us.) The problem is that Leo has already broken one of those rules: he's given a map to two stoner dudes that he met back in Thailand. And he lied about it thinking that they would never make it. Well, you can tell what happens. The other problem is that he and FranÃ§oise start a little relationship. After this, a shark attack and a run in with the farmers things start to fall apart. Now, the previews really mis-marketed this movie. It really looked like a big action flick with lots of death and running. There were seven deaths and a little running, but not enough to call it an action movie. It's a drama with a little action. Pure and simple. The movie isn't about the death of the people. It's about the death of paradise. It's about the corruption of pureness. These three kids come to this island where people have lived for nearly six years in peace and shake things up by bringing lies and deceit to it. (Ok, only Leo does that, but that's beside the point.) The biggest problem with the movie is that the characters are kind of weak. The acting is very good, but they don't have a lot to work with. Everyone is pretty much a stereotype. Not really in a bad way, though. There's no one acting "typical" of their race/nationality (except maybe the stupid American), but they are just kind of cookie cutter people. That bothered me through the first 3/4 of the movie. Then, all of a sudden, I got lost in the world and, especially, the point of the movie. I started to like the movie a lot. It started to remind me of another little movie shot in that area, Apocalypse Now. (It's actually kind of a forced connection. Richard watches it early on.) Richard has to watch out for the kids he gave the map to. He starts to go crazy with his responsibility, even forgetting about the woman he loves. He gets so caught up in his "power" to run through the forest that he starts to see it as a game. (There's even a scene of him running through virtual woods looking like a video game. Pretty funny stuff.) He goes so far as to sneak into the farmers' camp while they're sleeping. I also started to identify with pretty much everyone. The guy who wanted to get the hell out of there before the fit hit the shan. The guy who couldn't leave because of his dying buddy. The woman who wanted it all to work at all costs. The ending worked perfectly. Totally bitter sweet. And all of those reports that Leo wasn't happy with the fact that the original script didn't have a sex scene in it? Well, I'm sure it did because there's suddenly two in here and one is a major plot point. The other one (with his French object of desire) isn't as important, but it's not totally exploitive, either. I've heard that Richard never has sex with FranÃ§oise in the book. Unfortunately I haven't read the book (I never seem to do my homework for these reviews, huh?), but it's now on my list. Richard is also supposed to be a nicotine addicted, pop culture junkie who loves video games. Only two of these are even hinted at in the movie. I don't think I ever saw him with a nicotine cigarette. Lot's of pot, but no cigarette. Then there's the report that it's racist. I didn't see that at all. I read a review on the IMDb that stated that no Thai would allow these "hippies" to stay on the island for as long as they did and the farmers certainly wouldn't start shooting them. Erm. I know that pot farmers are very protective of their crops. If there's even a chance that you might tell the authorities then you're better off dead to them. This person also said that he was mad (and so were other Thai's) that they showed this paradise there because there are no "restricted" areas that would qualify as paradise outside of military bases. So, how is that any better than what the movie showed? If anything the movie would help tourism. That's pretty good for any country, I thought. So, not a perfect movie, but, for some reason, I really liked it. I think it's because I'm a transplanted child of the 60s. I may have been born five years after they were over, but I can identify with their ideals, and that's what the movie was really about. A bunch of people finding their idea of a perfect life. They're at one with nature. They're living away from society. Is there a way to really find a place like that? I don't know. It would be nice, but it may not be any place tangible. It may not be a place like the perfect beach in this movie. It may actually be home or the perfect job. It may even be on the Internet. (Let's hope it's someplace a little more real than that.) Just something that we can all be completely happy with. And I hope that we can all find it. But, and this is the big question of the movie, what do we do when it all comes crashing down? Especially if we cause the breakdown? I can't really recommend the movie, though, unless you're able to overcome weaknesses in character and plot and just go with the cinematography (which, by the way, is beautiful...it made me want to look for an island like that) and what the story is trying to say. Then it might just get your blood pumping. It might even make you look for your own little piece of paradise. Even if it's only in your mind.

SXSW 00--Don't Look Back (1967)/Hamlet

admin — Sat, 11 Mar 2000 18:00:00 +0000

It's that time of year again. Time for all the film people in the world to invade our little mountain burg and clog up Mr. Hankey's environment again. Yes, it's South By South West time again. That means that I'm going to be seeing more movies than I even knew existed within the next week. What's wrong with that, you may ask? Well, absolutely nothing...as long as we're not watching movies with Gen-X stars playing Shakespearean tragedies, but we'll get to that in a bit. First I'll start with a short review of D.A. Pennybaker's classic documentary (or, as he puts it, home movie) of Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of England. I first saw this movie on A&E about ten or fifteen years ago. I didn't really know what to think about it then. I just knew that it was a good movie about an artist that I admired. Now some time has passed and I've grown to think of Dylan as one of the ten or so Gods of Rock. I've also learned a thing or two about film. This movie still packs a punch that most non-Errol Morris documentaries can only aspire to. Pennybaker was one of the fore-fathers (or mothers) of cinema-verite. That, of course, is reality filmmaking. The viewer is put into the action so much that we feel as if we really are a part of it. In fact, the fact that there's a camera in everyone's faces isn't mentioned even once. He also started the use of a separated sound a video system. The camera and microphone were never attached by any wires, so the mic could be clear across the room from the camera. This helped to keep the people at ease because they didn't always have a camera a foot from their noses. It also didn't hurt that his sound woman was extremely sly with the mic. Then, of course, there's Dylan. The man was, at the time, going through a bit of an identity crisis. He was just starting to wonder if he should go electric. (Less than a year later he did.) He didn't believe in anything. (At least that's what he said.) And he tended to piss off people that he actually liked. There were times that you really didn't want to like the guy. He had a way of going from normal, everyday jokester to a mean bastard in an instant. But then he would sing, and it's hard to not like him when he brings one of his songs to life. There's a really interesting bit with Donovan in it. Through the whole movie there are references to Dylan and Donovan having some sort of feud going on. Not a personal one, but a professional one. Were they going to top each other? Is that even a question that needs to be asked? When Donovan is finally brought to the Man to jam with him, he seems both in awe and jealous of his talent. Donovan does one of his songs (one I didn't recognize) and everyone seems happy with it. Then Dylan bursts into "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and, of course, blows Donovan and everyone else away. Poor little Donovan is just left shaking his head in the dust. This movie is a must for any Dylan, documentary or just general film fan. It's still amazing. And now for the event of the last three hours. Hamlet 2000. I had such high hoped for this version. Mainly because of the cast. I should have actually been warned off by the cast. Not that there's a single person in the cast that I don't like. No. In fact I love all of them. But they're not Shakespearean actors by any means. This wouldn't be a problem if they had just brought the story into present-day New York and changed the dialogue. But NNNNNNOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! They had to keep the dialogue the same ala Romeo + Juliet. (Did I just use the word "ala"? What was I thinking?) At least that one had some lead actors who could handle the dialogue. (Whatever you may say about Leo, he is a good actor when he wants to be. And Claire is great anyway.) Let's see. Who all was a Not Ready For Shakespeare Actor? Ethan Hawke (Hamlet), Kyle MacLachlan (Claudius), Bill Murray (Polonius), Liev Schreiber (Laertes), Julia Stiles (Ophelia) and Steve Zahn (Rosencrantz). The only two with any Shakes-type talent were Sam Shepard (Hamlet's ghostly dad) and Diane Verona (Gertrude). And Sam wasn't given many lines! (By the way, I just realized that he would make an absolutely AMAZING Sam Spade. Or Philip Marlowe. Either one.) Since there wasn't really too much good about this movie, I'll just go through the whole thing and make a list of what was really wrong with it. 1) The cast, but we've already discussed that. 2) Julia Stiles, while a good actress who has already been in a semi-Shakes movie (10 Things I Hate About You), isn't so good when she doesn't speak. I know Ophelia had more lines than this. 3) Ophelia's dark room has a window. 4) Don't make a serious ghost disappear into a Pepsi machine. 5) Don't allow Blockbuster (which I worked my last day for yesterday!!!!) finance your movie. There were shots of Ethan walking through the action aisle (which included movies like Doctor Zhivago and The Third Man...which are in the CLASSICS SECTION!!!). He then passes a section of the New Release wall where all of the cover boxes have been removed to show off the BBV logo on the tapes. That can't be right! 6) BBV would never be showing The Crow: City Of Angels (an R-rated movie) on the in-store monitors. 7) After Showgirls Kyle MacLachlan should never be allowed near a pool again. 8) A bullet through the eye would probably not allow someone to open a closet door and take a few steps out of it. 9) The end of Hamlet does not work with guns. 10) The line is not "Horatio, I am dead." It's "Horatio, I am killed." 11) Don't allow Ethan Hawke to do the "To be or not to be" speech in the aisles of a Blockbuster. 12) Do not allow Hamlet to be a filmmaker instead of a playwright. 13) When editing, make sure that the person is in the same position from one shot to the next unless it's a style that you're going to use throughout. 14) Don't allow Bill Murray to use words like "wherefore" unless he's joking. 15) Ophelia is wired with a tape recorder for her betrayal of Hamlet. They use a recorder so big that it pokes out of the bottom of her shirt that doesn't cover her stomach. Not to mention the fact that they used the kind of clip on mic that is used on news shows. 16) Stop ending Shakespeare flicks with news reports! 17) Don't allow Casey Affleck to take over a major corporation. So that's the list of things that were totally wrong with this movie. What was right with it? Well, there were about 30 minutes where everyone clicked. About an hour into the movie, the audience and the actors seemed to actually be into it. It started to be a drama again. I almost cared if Hamlet got what he wanted. Then, about 10 minutes from the end, it all went to hell again and got really, really stupid. I felt bad for the director (Michael Almereyda--Nadja, Another Girl Another Planet, The Eternal) who was in attendance. People were laughing at things that I don't think were really supposed to be that funny. I tried really hard not to, but it was pretty difficult. But the movie hurt so bad that I almost didn't have to laugh.

SXSW 00--The Operator

admin — Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:00:00 +0000

Four days into SXSW and this is only my third movie. I'm getting right on fixing that ratio. Not a bad little thriller/comedy. It's done by an Austin director and filmed in Dallas, so it's a local story. That's always nice. Gary Wheelan (Michael Laurence from a few things I've never heard of and small parts in Airplane and Kentucky Fried Movie!!!) is a successful lawyer in Dallas who doesn't always play for the right side. His current cases include a guy who is trying to get his mother declared mentally incompetent and a guy (Brion James in his last role) who has been scamming old people out of lots of money with real estate fraud. Gary also has a problem keeping his pants on around beautiful women, an activity that his wife (Christa Miller, Kate from The Drew Carey Show) doesn't really know...at first. He also has a bit of a gambling problem. He owes money to his bookie, Doc (Stephen Tobolowsky, the "My...voice...is...my...passport?" guy from Sneakers), who knows he's good for it until... One day the pressures of finding a phone number get to be too much for Gary. He goes off on a poor operator who doesn't take too kindly to his threats. She begins a long and involved (and rather ingenious) plot to ruin him. Or at least teach him a lesson in kindness. He knows her only as Sheba. We never really get a good look at her. Only glimpses. We only know that she is a rather attractive Asian woman. She brings in a lot of Eastern philosophy (something that director John Dichter has chosen for himself) for the lessons she feels that Gary must learn. Of course it helps that she gets into his bank account and takes his money, listens to his phone calls, cancels his credit cards and buys things for his girlfriends. Expensive things. And, the kicker, she tells his wife that he slept with her. Well, that's how the cookie gets thrown on the floor and stomped on 'til it dies. The movie was pretty much just a way to say how it's bad to think that stuff should rule our lives. Yes, it's a personal philosophy. Yes, every once in a while it gets a little too much air time. But, and most importantly, yes, it's entertaining as hell. The first half of the movie kind of reminded me of The Player. A successful man is stalked and harassed by a mysterious psycho. Only this time it's phone calls instead of postcards and it's a lawyer instead of a producer. Not a bad way to change the idea, though. Then it gets into a different territory. More like Liar, Liar. I don't mean that it turns into slapstick (although it maintains it's humor throughout the movie), but Gary starts to turn around. Good job from first time director Dichter. He also did the casting and chose a great cast to bring his characters to life. The only weak link was Christa. She's not a bad actress, and I love her to death, but she couldn't quite get the accent down. It's tough if you're not used to it, so I can understand. So be nice to your local operator and go see this flick when it comes out. Not a life changer, but it's a cool flick.

SXSW 00--Loving Jezebel/Wonderwall (1968)

admin — Tue, 14 Mar 2000 18:00:00 +0000

Finally creeping up on the ratio here. Five movies in five days. Don't worry. More tomorrow. Loving Jezebel was a romantic comedy about a guy just trying to find his own love in the world. Unfortunately he finds everyone else's instead. Theodurus (Hill Harper from The Nephew, Beloved and The Skulls) starts his story off with him being shot at by a jealous husband. After the rather hackneyed line of "I guess you're wondering how I got here" he gets to the real story. He goes through every girl he ever loved and how all of them had boyfriends. And most of those boyfriends threaten to kill poor Theodurus. And all of the girls are beautiful, which is a little unrealistic, but who cares? It's just a movie. Our hero starts off as some kind of weird cross between Woody Allen and Urkel. I wanted to knock his head off within about five seconds. Luckily, as he grows up he gets to be a little more stable and actually becomes very likable. So much so, in fact, that he makes the movie extremely entertaining and fun. As he goes through all of his women he learns something new with each one. He comes a little closer to finding "the one." And we're a little more glad to know him as time goes on. It's a very fun movie with lots of great performances, including Phylicia Rashad as his over protective/bearing mother. Even though this movie is very Woody Allen-ish, if you don't like Woody you'll still like this flick. My friend that I saw it with didn't see the Woody Allen connection until I mentioned it, but he still loved it even though he hates the Woodman. Wonderwall was a very strange movie. Released in 1968, it's soundtrack provided the world with the first official Beatle solo album. And George Harrison's soundtrack isn't too bad. Very 60s pop with a strong Eastern influence. But that's to be expected. It is, after all, 60s era George Harrison. The movie is a British psychedelic trip about a brilliant, Einstein-ish scientist (Jack MacGowran from The Fearless Vampire Killers, How I Won The War and The Exorcist). He can't seem to remember to take his socks off before he soaks his feet. He barely remembers to turn the lights off at work before he leaves. Basically, he's an addlebrained old man who also happens to be very intelligent. One day he gets mad because his neighbors are playing their music too loud. He throws a clock, knocks his butterfly collection off the wall, and discovers a hole in his wall that gives him a small entrance into his neighbors' apartment. He soon becomes obsessed with watching his neighbors as they are living their daily lives: taking pictures, having sex, throwing parties (which leads to the saddest scene in the whole movie: the old man dressed in his mothballed tux with party decorations while he's watching the kids have fun next door), all the normal things that mods seemed to do in late 60s London. Along with that he falls in love with the young lady in the apartment, Penny Lane (does this help to say that the director, Joe Massot (The Song Remains The Same), is a Beatles' freak?). And remember, this is a comedy! It actually is pretty funny. It, of course, has a lot of the trappings of the typical 60s counterculture movie. Lots of psychedelic shots of swirls. Lots of bright colors. Shots that could be cut two minutes before they are. Strange sequences with drugged out animation. And, of course, a little nudity and drug use. Oh well. Certainly not a bad movie. Not a particularly good movie, but also not bad. It's entertaining in a strange sort of way if you're into the time frame. It's not for everyone, though. I actually don't know of many people who would have the patience for it because of the general strangeness of it. And I'm not really sure what, if anything, the director was trying to say with the movie. Maybe that, even though the hippies/mods seemed to be happy, they were still just kids with the same problems that everyone else had? Or that the older generation could be useful even to the younger "independent" generation? (Speaking of which, I've always wondered what the oldsters in this kind of counterculture flick were thinking while they were making them. Were they in tune with it?) Or maybe he was just trying to make a fun little flick. Check it out if you're into this sort of thing, which I obviously am. It's just been remastered and re-released, so it should look pretty good now. I don't know if it's only in theatres for a while or if it's coming to video. Keep an eye out for it either way.

SXSW 00--The Independant/The Exorcist (The Version You've Never Seen)

admin — Wed, 15 Mar 2000 18:00:00 +0000

(Imagine this in the thick New Yawk accent of non-actor Ryan Phillipe circa 54.) Did you ever hear of Morty Fineman? He had it all for a while. He made movies that no one else in their right mind would have ever made. Movies like I See London, I See France or Ms. Kevorkian or World War III II. His movies were exploitation without actually being exploitation. Even though all of the women had huge breasts and wore very little clothing (if any at all), they were empowered women. And they carried guns. Like Roger Corman and especially Russ Meyer before him, he brought his female characters into the world by putting them straight into the action. No down time at all. Sometimes they were bad, sometimes they were good, but they were always powerful. And all of his 427 movies (in only 30 years!) always had something important to say. His great lost opus The Simplex Complex showed soldiers the dangers of VD. The Whole Story Of America showed us that America wasn't won by showing the Indians a good time. And, of course, the haunting Brothers Divided showed us that, not only are there things worth dying for, but family (especially a Siamese twin brother) is the most important of those things. Even if that brother happens to be dead. Of course all of this is total BS. There's no such person as Morty Fineman. He's played to perfection by Jerry Stiller in this hilarious mockumentary about an independent exploitation director who has managed to keep his art going even though he has almost no talent and not a cent to his name. He lost all of his money making The Whole Story Of America back in 1992. Of course, with titles like The Man With Two Things, Christ For The Defense and LSD Day you can't imagine that he had too much money to begin with. Somehow, though, he managed to get a Rolls-Royce so that his now ex-wife could live in it. His daughter, Paloma (the always radiant Janeane Garofalo...even if she doesn't think she is) has a good head on her shoulders and tries very hard to help her father, but she knows that he's doomed to fail every time. Throughout the movie we get snippets of other filmmakers talking about how Mr. Fineman has influenced their art. People from Corman himself (who was the inspiration for the film, even though Fineman is more like Russ Meyer) to Corman alumni, Ron Howard. Their insights are really funny. Especially Peter Bogdonovich and Ron talking about their love (or hatred) of Bald Justice. Guess who loved it. Plenty of small parts for buddies of Jerry, Janeane and director Stephen Kessler (Vegas Vacation (oops) and all those old Snapple commercials with the lady behind the counter). People like Andy Dick, Jonathan Katz, Julie Strain, John Lydon (er...Johnny Rotton), Bob Odenkirk, Laura Kightlinger, Ethan Embry, Ben Stiller and even Amy Stiller pop up in the most unlikely of places. Especially watch for the scene with the kid who Kessler told us had to "look for his sad spot" when he cried. Now that's scary. The only real problem I found in the movie is the fact that Ms. Garofalo is a bit too radiant. In fact, she was using tanning lotion for most of the film. It's part of the character, so that's ok, but I heard that she got hooked on it for a while. Then someone told her that she looked like a tiny orange, so she quit. Thank God for honesty. She looks much better without the George Hamilton look. This movie doesn't have a distributor yet, but they've already gotten lots of calls, so it should be opening within the next few months. Go see it when it does. It's really, really funny. Star Wars misquotes and all. And now for the big world premiere of SXSW. The Exorcist (The Version You've Never Seen). This is still the scariest freakin' movie I've ever seen. It's amazing that, even though I've watched a lot of horror movies (it's one of my favorite genres), this one is the one that gets under my skin and pushes the fright right out through my pores. It almost hurts to watch it because of the shear intensity. Now there's 11 more minutes to scare us. Ok, only about one of those minutes is actually new horror footage, but the other ten do help the movie along. It's not like they just stuck a Jabba scene in there and called it cinema. No, they put in a new scene with doctors so that we actually know what kind of pills Regan is being force fed. (It's ridilin. That gave us a little comic relief.) There's also a few more subliminal shots that even William Peter Blatty hadn't noticed before. (The author was with us watching this version for the first time since 1973.) 26 years ago, Blatty had watched this version in an editing room with director William Friedkin. For some reason or another, Friedkin decided to cut 11 minutes out for running time. (I had heard that the spider walk scene--which is put back in in a shorter version than is on the video special edition's documentary--was cut because it was too much for the audience. Our audience applauded that scene.) Blatty always wondered about this and finally, about 10 years ago, started hounding Friedkin about it. About a year ago, Billy relented and put it all back in, took a couple of confusing shots out (one of a smiling Regan just before she comes downstairs to tell the astronaut that he's "going to die up there.") and added some subliminal shots. One thing that this movie really makes me wonder is what the hell happened to Billy Friedkin? He was obviously at one time an amazing director. Between this and The French Connection, he put out two of the most exciting movies ever put to film. Then he started his downfall with Sorcerer. It wasn't a bad movie actually. It just had the unfortunate luck of being released at the same time as Star Wars. That and it wasn't up to the quality of his first two successes. Then he seemed to have accidentally directed Al Pacino in Cruising, one of the worst movies ever made with big name actors. Now he's doing things like Jade and Blue Chips. Poor guy. Maybe Rules Of Engagement will be better. It certainly looks like it will be. Another thing that this screening (and a panel with Robert Rodriguez and John Carpenter) made me notice is that the film stock that we see now is not nearly as cool as the old film stock. One of the main characteristics of 70s films is that almost grainy yet clear look of their film stock. Look at a movie like The Godfather, or either of Friedkin's good ones or Mean Streets and you'll see it. Today's film stock is way too clear. It looks like a tv show. Robert said at the panel that he was flipping through channels one day and couldn't tell the difference in movies and tv shows until he stumbled upon The Godfather. Anyway, this is an amazing film. (In fact, the only problem with the new version is that they seem to have turned the tagline into the title.) It's not "I'm going to make you jump" scary. (Although it does that a couple of times.) It's more of the "I'm going to crawl under your skin, disturb the hell out of you and make you look over your shoulder in the dark for the rest of your life" scary. And that's much worse. It lasts longer. This is the kind of movie that I want to make. One that will make people call me a bastard in the street because they couldn't sleep for weeks after seeing it. Then I'll know that I've succeeded. To tell you the truth, I don't think this movie would be made today. We've really gotten away from this kind of horror film. We've started to almost get back to it with The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense, although that one is less horror and more suspense. Now they would have to soften it somehow. The entire exorcism scene is done without a not of music. That makes it all the creepier. Now they would oversaturate it with a John Williams score instead of letting the action itself scare us. They would also probably be too scared of what the church would think. (Actually, most of the responses that Blatty heard were positive. He's heard that people high up in the Catholic Church not only enjoyed his book, but made it required reading for their people. The few who did revile it didn't understand that it's coming from someone who's faith is deep and it's a very spiritual story. Damien Karras, although starting out with questionable faith, ends up believing stronger than anyone else in the movie. And Chris, Regan's mother, also learns faith through the experience.) I'm surprised that a movie like South Park was made without a giant ripple in the Church Effect. Personally, I say screw 'em if they can't take a joke. None of these people are saying that the church is bad. Even Kevin Smith didn't do that with Dogma. It's really too bad that studios are so scared of things like this that they probably wouldn't allow a movie like The Exorcist to exist in today's world. Maybe I can change that. (Heh heh heh.) This version should be out in theatres on Friday the 17th. Go see it if you dare. I'm pretty sure that I won't be there. I don't know that I could take it again. In the words of Blatty himself after he asked how many of us had never seen it on the big screen (which was most of us), "Good luck."

SXSW 00--Shafted!/The Original Diner Guys/Searching For Jimi Hendrix

admin — Thu, 16 Mar 2000 18:00:00 +0000

Shafted had one of the best ideas of the whole South By Southwest Film Festival. A weenie little white guy has delusions of being a 70's black super detective named John Shat. He's up against gangs of Steve Martin impersonators, fat Asian gangsters and a flamboyantly gay club owner with lots of gay minions, three zombies and Gary Coleman. What could be wrong with that? Sounds like one of the funniest movies ever. Well, execution is one thing. Interspersed with a few really clever jokes (the Steve Martin thing being one of the strangest) are a bunch of really lame jokes that came very close to making me laugh, but not nearly close enough to recommend the movie. The writer was obviously a big movie buff. Besides the above Star Wars reference, there was a line from Taxi Driver ("Thank Mohammed for the rain. It washes all of the trash off of the streets."), a perfect parody of the scene in Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen loses it in the barracks and an entire scene that was scored with the climax music from Once Upon A Time In The West. That's really enough for me to like most movies, but this one didn't really get my interest the way it should get the interest of an avid blaxploitation fan. Not to mention that the gay jokes started wearing a little thin by the middle of the movie. (John is constantly getting turned on by male dancers and his cohort who is a small Asian man trying to kill his opponent. What John doesn't know is that this man is actually the guy's sister dressing up to fool the gangster dude.) It's really too bad that the movie wasn't better than it was. Part of it may have had something to do with the home movie look of the whole thing. Then again, that may have been done to make it look like Dolemite and all those other really cheap blaxploitation flicks of the 70s. This one's almost worth the time to see it just because of the idea. But, unless you're into that sort of thing, don't bother. The Original Diner Guys is a documentary by Barry Levinson about his friends that he used to hang out with back in the 50s at a local Diner. Yes, these are the guys that he based the characters in Diner on. I loved Diner. It's been a while since I've seen it, but who couldn't love that movie? Yeah, it's just a bunch of guys sitting around a table talking about their lives and problems, but they're a lot more interesting than any of my problems. And yet, they're universal problems. And, for you girls out there, this movie explains why guys want to hang out with guys so much. This is why you should never say, "Why can't I hang out with you and your friends?" It's because you don't want to hang out with us. You don't want to know what really goes on in our minds when we're together. This new documentary follows these guys through their 50s. From 1990 to 1997. Some of them are lawyers. Some are doctors. Some are family men. Some have managed to remain single. And one is a director/writer. But he's hardly in it. The new movie pretty much follows the same formula as the original. The guys (there were actually about 25-30 of them) sit around at camps, weddings, wakes, etc. talking about life. They reminisce in the best scenes and they talk about what's going on around them in some of the more mundane scenes. The movie starts off really slow. They have their first reunion at a summer camp where they play sports and just hang out. This is just them getting reacquainted since some of them haven't seen each other for 30 years or more. then they move on to a birthday party. This meeting is much more fun and, in fact, each meeting gets to be more and more fun because you actually have time to get to know the guys. It's not as good as Diner (as far as I know, the best of Levinson's Baltimore movies--I haven't seen his latest one, though), but what could be? This is a good way to get to know the story behind the story. Searching For Jimi Hendrix is another D.A. Pennebaker (he did the classic 1967 Dylan documentary Don't Look Back) documentary about musicians covering Hendrix songs for a tribute album. It's only an hour long and shot on video, so I think it was probably done for cable. Almost all of the artists, from Los Lobos to Roseanne Cash to blues singer Charlie Musslewhite to gospel group The Blind Boys Of Alabama seem to have a pretty good handle on the impact of Jimi. They want to do him justice, but all of them know that they really can't. He was one of a kind and there's no way anyone can repeat what he did. Even when he covered a song he made it his. (Dylan still doesn't think of All Along The Watchtower as anything but a Hendrix song.) Only three of the artists come out seeming like blithering idiots when it comes to Jimi's music. Laurie Anderson just doesn't seem to get it. She admits that she wasn't really a fan until the project came up, but she still doesn't seem to understand it. She gets the music, but the lyrics completely elude her. Chuck D doesn't seem like an idiot because of what he says, only how he says it. He gets the music, but he doesn't know how to talk about it at all. He seems to just want to string together cuss words. His cover is definitely the worst. It took me a few minutes to figure out that it was supposed to be Purple Haze...I think. It was just bits of music strung together on a computer in random order with him rapping over them. Dreck. And then there's Taylor Dayne. What she was doing on here, I don't know. She liked Hendrix, but she's, well, Taylor Dayne. She seemed more impressed by his bronzed penis (huh?!?!) than anything else. Not as "fly on the wall"-ish as Don't Look Back by any means. This one is more talking heads than anything else. We do get to see them all in the recording studios, but the important thing is them talking about their hero and the effect that his music had on their young lives. Pretty good making-of documentary from Mr. Pennebaker. Not up to par with his earlier masterwork, but definitely very interesting.

SXSW 00--Around The Fire/Silver And Gold/High Fidelity/Rated X: A Journey Through Porn

admin — Fri, 17 Mar 2000 18:00:00 +0000

This was the day of my mini-butt-numb-athon. (Apologies to Harry Knowles for stealing his phrase.) Four movies in one day. A personal record. And people wonder why I love Austin. The day started off around five (I'm a late riser) with Around The Fire. In this one, Simon (Devon Sawa from Casper and Idle Hands) is a young man with a problem. He's being literally thrown into rehab right at the beginning. He meets up with Kate, a (of course) sensitive counselor who uses tough love to get through to her "kids." Throughout his time in rehab, Simon flashes back to all of the good times he had while growing up. His mother died when he was very young. (Ok, so that's not really a good time, but bear with me here.) So he pretty much grew up with his father and step-mother raising him. Then, when he went away to boarding school, he met his new best friends: Jennifer (the ultra-beautiful Tara Reid from American Pie and Body Shots), Andrew (Eric Mabius from Welcome To The Dollhouse and Splendor), Trace (Colman Domingo from the Clint Eastwood debacle True Crime) and Kevin (Henri Lubatti from Felicity). They introduce him to a Grateful Dead type tour and, of course, drugs. I got the feeling that he had never seen a bong before these guys came along. Things degenerate, but Simon has a lot of fun. He starts a relationship with Jennifer (who wouldn't?) and starts noticing that his friends deal as well as do. Meanwhile, the home life isn't getting any better. He resents his step-mom for taking his real mom's place. He resents his dad because he married her. He keeps remembering walking towards a door with sex sounds coming out of it back when he was about three. Then there's the fact that his parents just don't trust him. After he got a week suspension from school for doing a bong hit the trust thing is just gone. Then they met his new friends at his graduation. They were hippies! God forbid! So they must be on drugs. And when he gets a package at home one day, WOW! They try to force him to open it in front of them because it must be drugs. After a while even his friends start to worry about him. He starts dealing and ignoring Jennifer (MORON!!!!!) and they both have an explosive dinner with his parents. (And I'm talking Rebel Without A Cause explosive, not Blazing Saddles explosive.) What else do you expect from this family? This movie doesn't really offer anything new to the world. (Except for maybe the fact that hippies still exist in the original form at Grateful Dead concerts. Funny, I thought they had all learned from the mistakes of the past. And who still says, "I'm just gonna hang out over here and be mellow"?!?!) It's not a bad little movie, but it's predictable and not amazingly creative. But it's full of good performances (including a really cool appearance by Stephen Tobolowsky) and might deserve a look on video. It's opening in a week here in Austin and we're supposed to go out and tell ten friends about it. Well, here's my word: See it, but wait for video. It's not worth $7. Silver And Gold is a concert video of one of the few 60s icons whose new albums still matter. (And Bob Dylan is a maybe on that list of two. When was the last time even the guys from Oasis said that Paul McCartney's new album influenced them?) Ol' Neil just keeps on truckin' and puts out a great album every once in a while that even Pearl Jam can jam to. This was the world premiere of this hour long film and Mr. Young was in attendance. I didn't see him, but he was there according to the director. It's nothing more than a straight concert video shot right here in Austin at the Bass Concert Hall. I'm not sure if it was shot for video or VH1 or what, but it exists and we're probably better off for it. Neil is still in great form even if I didn't recognize most of the songs. (There were really only three that I knew and I think only one from the old days. Sorry, no Heart Of Gold...he hates that song. He got quite a few requests for it shouted out by some morons in the audience. That is, until another audience member told him to shut up. Even Neil laughed at that one.) He just goes through the songs and only talks to the audience a couple of times: once to complain about the traffic (that got a big laugh from both live and filmed audience) and once to say what a great crowd they were. Otherwise it was just a one man show with him just blazing through a few acoustic versions of some great songs. This was the first digital projection at the Paramount and it looked ok. Kind of like a really big screen tv. The sound, though, was amazing, mainly thanks to the sound system that Ron Howard and Matthew McConaughey helped put in for the EdTV premiere last year. It's really hard to critique these kinds of shows because all that really counts is the music. And with Neil Young, how can you go wrong? I guess some of us Southern men need him around, anyhow. High Fidelity is the new Stephen Frears (director of The Grifters and Dangerous Liasons) and John Cusack movie. In this one, Cusack is Rob Gordon, and ex-DJ who now owns a record store that doesn't get a whole lot of business. He and his co-workers, Dick (Todd Luiso from The Rock and Jerry Maguire) and Barry (Jack Black from The Cable Guy and The Jackal), know everything there is to know about music and most other pop culture. They spend their days making Top 5 lists of just about anything they can think of. The movie starts with Rob's girlfriend, Laura (Iben Hjejle) walking out on him. We're not sure why until much later. But that's not important right now. What is important is Rob telling us about his Top 5 Breakups. (He talks to the camera through the whole movie like some kind of nervous breakdown version of Ferris Beuller--not that that's a bad thing.) In a style not unlike Loving Jezebel, he goes through each one and we get flash backs of what was so right and so wrong about each one. Then, for the rest of the movie Rob tries to figure out where (if anywhere) he went wrong with those relationships and get Laura back. Did he just lose the love of his life? Were those other women really as perfect as they seemed to be at the time? Those questions will be answered next time on The Dork Is Right! This movie is hilarious. I laughed from beginning to end without hardly any interruption. It may not be a great film or anything, but it's so cool and so funny that that doesn't matter. It entertained me (and the rest of the audience) for nearly two hours. That's all that counts. And it had both John and Joan Cusack in it. That's always a plus. And there's small appearances from Lili Taylor, Catherine Zeta-Jones-erm-Douglas, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Sara Gilbert, Lisa Bonet and a great, but strange, part for Tim Robbins. Funniest thing I've seen him do since The Spy Who Shagged Me. Of course it's the ONLY thing I've seen him do since then. Still very, very funny, though. One thing that I loved about the movie is that these guys are me and my friends. We may not make Top 5 lists all the time, but we talk just like these guys. Everything is drenched in references and saying how stupid everyone else is for not liking what we like or liking things like Michael Bolton or saying that people who like Life Stinks are missing the point that at one time Mel Brooks was a genius, so his recent sins are that much worse. These guys are music elitists and, sorry, but so am I and so are my friends. We try not to, but we look down on people with bad taste. And so do you, you hypocrite. The quote at the beginning of my review is the story of my life. It's my adage. We also deal with heartbreak or tragedy with our pop culture. We watch movies. We listen to music. We make tapes of music that will remind us of how we felt at the time so we can prolong that feeling. Why? Because we're creatures of habit. In essence: we're stupid. Then there's the way he obsesses over women. He thinks about it and thinks about it until it finally takes over everything that he does. That's all me, too. Maybe I should keep that to myself, though. Forget I said anything. In case you hadn't figured it out, I loved this movie. There's really nothing wrong with it, but I can see that it's not for everyone; although, it seemed to be for everyone in this audience. Everyone had a great time. But I was disconcerted by one thing: why is it that, as John gets older, he looks more and more like Alan Rickman. And why is he wearing eyeliner? Ponder that as you're watching the movie. And you will watch the movie. Because I told you to. Rated X: A Journey Through Porn is, well, just that. One man's journey through making a documentary about the porn industry. It's part of the prerequisite porn trilogy that apparently all festivals have. And I thought it was just SXSW. Dag Yngvesson picked up a porn movie when he was 13 and it started a love (lust?) affair with the genre ever since. Now that he's grown up he's decided to get a closer look at the industry that he found out was right in his backyard in San Fernando. With camera in hand he went to talk to the star of his first porn film, William Margold. William no longer acts in the films, but he is a producer. He, like Boogie Nights' Jack Horner, tries to make the atmosphere more pleasant and familial for his crew. They really are one big happy family. Bill even has a bunch of teddy bears around his office to make people a little more comfortable. He also was one of the big factors in getting the Meese Commission out of the porn industry's hair back in the late 80s. Kind of a porn Frank Zappa. Dag gets most of his information from Bill, but he knows that he has to dig a little deeper and maybe even see the sleazier side of things (if that's possible). He goes to Regan Senar (not sure if that's right, but I have nothing to go on but my sketchy memory) and finds out that this guy has tapes of all of his starlets having sex with him as part of their interview process. He also finds a director who is using porn as a stepping stone to legitimate film, a 19 year old girl whose family seems to be ok with her getting into porn films and a porn queen who happens to be happily married and have a young son. Of course she also has an ex-boyfriend who, during the course of filming, gets out of prison and an old drug habit that keeps threatening to come back. And there's always the threat of "the AIDS" as the people in the film like to call it. What can be done? No one wants to use condoms in these movies, so there's not much that can or will be done. Near the end of the film, Dag is asked by the director on the rise if he would be the camera man on a shoot. Dag is, of course, nervous about it, but agrees. He sees how it could be addicting. Lots of money. Always a job to be had. Pretty easy work. What could be wrong with that? Dag made a very good movie that partially exposes the porn industry for what it is (a sleaze market that also happens to be one of the biggest money makers in the world) and partially tells us how the films are made (we find out what happens when a girl has her period and we are prompted to ask the musical question, "Got milk?"). He shows a little bit of himself (no, not that little bit) and shows how he could be one of them if only he had the nerve. By doing that he shows us that we could even be seduced by it. Hey. Lots of sex and money! Sounds good to me. Ok. I couldn't do it, either, but there are a lot of people who could and do. Should we look down on them for it? Probably not. It is, after all, a job that keeps them off the streets...for the most part. And, besides, pretty much everyone uses their product. How many of you have never seen a porn film? Yeah. That's what I thought. By the way, if you're wondering what the hell the German says on the High Fidelity poster, it basically says, "For 30 years I've been hearing people sing about broken hearts. And has it helped? Like shit it has."

SXSW 00--The Big Kahuna/Grass/Kitchen Privileges

admin — Sat, 18 Mar 2000 18:00:00 +0000

And so begins the final day of SXSW. Actually, I guess it's at the end of the day, but who's counting? There's something about the sound that a cigarette makes. You know, that really light crackle of the embers burning as the smoker sucks in on the filter. Now, I don't smoke. In fact, I think it's a filthy, disgusting habit. But there's something about that sound that modern filmmakers have found. It's a very pleasant and almost soothing sound. That sound abounds in The Big Kahuna, the new flick with Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito, together again after the amazing L.A. Confidential. This time they're a couple of veteran marketing men trying to sell their industrial lubricants to the biggest potential client yet. Helping them is Peter Facinelli from Dancer, TX, Pop. 81 and Can't Hardly Wait. Bob (Facinelli) is a young and inexperienced research man for his company. He's only at this conference as a figure head. As Larry (Spacey) says, it doesn't matter if he doesn't know anything. It only matters what he represents. He's also very religious and a newlywed. Phil (DeVito) is a man who's near the end of his rope with his business and personal life. He's about to be divorced and has been battling a bout with alcoholism. (They never actually say this in the script, but it's kind of hinted at.) He sees Bob as a young kid on his way up. Larry is Phil's best friend and partner in the company. He's brash and overly honest about how he feels about everyone and everything. He doesn't really believe in religion unless he's praying for business success. When Larry enters the room he immediately starts picking it apart. Then he meets Bob. Then he picks him apart. He's too young. He's too stupid. "But I like you, so you'll do." That sort of thing. Larry and Phil have a very deep friendship that transcends their business partner status. These two men love each other as much as any two heterosexual men can. They know that the other is there for them no matter what. Bob sees this, but can't believe that someone like Phil could be friends with someone like Larry. (Sounds like my best friend.) When it turns out that Phil just doesn't care about his job anymore Larry knows something is deeply wrong with his friend. Bob, on the other hand, cares about his job, but he can't seem to have a conversation without steering it towards God. That's a big no no in business-land. Rule #1: Don't talk about religion. Rule #2: If you have to talk about it, don't contradict your potential client. This movie is like a cross between Glengarry Glen Ross and Hurlyburly, both very good movies. (And, strangely, they are both based on plays and star Kevin Spacey. Go figure.) Lots of people with problems trying to sell something. It has a great script and great actors. It didn't seem to be for everyone, though. I thought it was great, but I heard a lot of people complaining about how it didn't get good until the very end. Funny how everyone was laughing at the funny parts at the beginning. The only fault I thought people would see in it is the fact that they used Baz Luhrmann's sunscreen song. I, personally, think the song is kind of cool, but most people got annoyed with it really quickly. The movie has a way of being spiritual without being preachy, which is very good. It doesn't condemn either man for their religious beliefs. It kind of told us that we should all just live our own lives no matter what other peoples' beliefs are. That message alone should get it some recognition. Yeah, it's been done before, but it's still a message that we need occasionally. Not bad for first time director John Swanbeck. And speaking of substances that I don't really condone the use of, Grass is a documentary about the history of the use of marijuana in America. Naturally, it's narrated by Woody Harrelson. Who else? Being that this is Austin, this was a pretty popular screening. You could tell exactly why everyone was there. There were a few of us who just wanted a good laugh (I had heard that it was very funny), some who had a purpose for being there (they were the ones with hemp shirts, hemp bags, hemp pants and hemp hair weaves) and some who just wanted a contact high from all the weed on the screen (the ones giggling in the front and back rows). Now, since I don't use marijuana, I didn't get all of the references or jokes, but I think I've been around the stuff enough to understand most of it. But that wasn't the main point of the movie. That would be the fact that this stuff isn't the dangerous "Devil Weed" that everyone has been brought up to believe that it is. Since the early 1900s, the government has been trying to say how it turns people into murderers and sex criminals. You know, most of the people I know who have done it can't even get themselves off the couch when they're high, much less have the motivation to pick up a knife and kill someone. And does it really lead to the harder stuff? Well, no. There aren't many potheads who suddenly decide that heroin looks pretty good. As Denis Leary says, "It doesn't lead to heroin, it leads to carpentry." A very good documentary that shows us exactly what the government has done to cover up the fact that pot isn't really as evil as we always (never really) thought. And all of it is shown with clips from movies, news footage and some great graphics. (My favorites were the Yellow Submarine homage and the governments official problem with pot from the 70s: "If you smoke it bad things will happen to you. We just don't know what.") So what's wrong with people indulging in a habit that people like Cab Calloway, Gene Kupra and Robert Mitchum were into? Not much, really. It's not really addictive. It doesn't make you insane. It doesn't lead to harder drugs. It doesn't make you want to kill. (Thank you Reefer Madness--a movie I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't seen yet.) All it does is kill a few brain cells. It probably isn't even as dangerous as alcohol, but that's perfectly legal. Leave it to the American government to get it wrong. Now, I'm not saying that I'm going to go out and start smoking pot. I just see no problem with other people doing it as long as they do it responsibly. If we can trust people with something like alcohol I think we can trust them with something that's at least natural. And we go from that rather peaceful flick to one of pent up fear. Kitchen Privileges concerns a young woman, Marie (Katharina Wressnig) who was raped a year ago. Now she's become an agoraphobic and her boyfriend doesn't quite understand. She takes in a boarder named Tom (Peter Sarsgaard from Freak City and Boys Don't Cry) who has a habit of locking the kitchen door (er, how many kitchens have locks on their doors...or doors for that matter?) when he's making up some new recipes. As Marie starts to trust Tom more she also starts to come out of her shell. Then her jealous sister comes back into her life for a little bit. Things take a turn for the worse when Marie learns of a freeway serial killer and her sister disappears after being led away by Tom. Is he the killer? How does he know so much about her rape? Why is he so interested in it? And what's behind his locked bedroom door? Equal parts Single White Female, Pacific Heights, Suspicion, Repulsion and In A Lonely Place (whew!), this is a very competent psychological thriller. I was surprised by it considering the fact that it's a competition film without distribution. It held its sense of dread right up until the end. And then it threw some ringers in there with a few really weird images (how many dead chickens can you fit into one refrigerator?) and really makes you wonder if they're real or if Marie is imagining the whole thing. And then there's that "leave it all up to you" ending. I think Hitchcock would be proud of this one by the co-writer of Zandalee and The Last Ride, Mari Kornhauser. I hope it does well. Now, the festival is over, but it's time for a Private Service Announcement that is probably all for naught, but I want to do it anyway. This has been the loneliest SXSW I've ever experienced. Not because no one was there. There was no shortage of people. And I've got some friends there that I only see once a year. No, this year was lonely because a couple of friends of mine can't get over some things that they said to each other a year ago. My best friend had been working SXSW for a few years when he said some things to a certain staff member that I know he's regretting now. And she said some things to him that I know she probably regrets. I know they would never admit to the regret because they're too damn hard headed about everything. I can hear it when they talk to me about it, though. And now that certain staffer seems to be shunning me because she saw me hanging out with my buddy. And I have a feeling that I'm going to be forced to choose between him and SXSW. As much as I love volunteering for this, guess who will win. Now, my friend kind of banned himself from working SXSW ever again and the staffer is going along with it, so he's stuck where he is. I'm trying not to get caught in the middle of it, but I've kind of been forced to because they're both friends and it's getting ridiculous. GET OVER IT!!!! It's been a year. I know that there's a part of both of you that wants the whole thing over with. I know you want each others' friendship. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!?!? It's been a freakin' year. I wish you two would just talk your way through it without getting into a shouting match. I want my movie buddy back for SXSW. Of course, I want a lot. I also want a girl out there to realize that I'm interested in her, but I bet I won't even get that. Ok. Enough preaching to people who will probably never read my reviews. Too bad. I probably sound like a whiny little kid who's trying to get his parents back together, but that's ok. They sound like whiny little kids, too. It all comes out in the end.

The Ninth Gate

admin — Mon, 20 Mar 2000 18:00:00 +0000

There's another line that pretty much sums up Johnny Depp's character in Roman Polanski's new horror (?) film. A woman, who has been kicking butt and taking names, says, "And what will you do if we see them?" And he says, "Probably hide behind you." I'm not saying that he's a coward. He's no Ichabod Crane, but he couldn't fight to save his life. Johnny plays Dean Corso, a rather quiet and unscrupulous book collector/seller/buyer from New York. He shows what depths he will go to get the rare volumes by lying to a couple who's father collected about $500,000 worth of books. He sees a four volume set of Don Quixote and tells them that they aren't particularly valuable, only interesting. He pays them $4,500 for them, takes them to his partner and we learn that they are nearly priceless. Pretty nice guy, huh? One day he gets a call from Boris Balkan (Frank Langella). He has an extremely rare book called The Nine Gates which is proclaimed to only have three copies in existence. And two of those are supposedly fakes. Balkan wants Corso to chase after not only the original owner of his volume, but the owners of the other two in order to find out which one is real. The book, of course, is supposed to help bring about the opening of The Ninth Gate and a meeting with Mr. Satan himself. What they don't know is that Saddam Huessain already has a rather intimate audience with him. Along the way Corso meets up with Liana Telfer (Lena Olin), the wife of the man who sold Balkan his copy and promptly killed himself. She appears to want the book back pretty badly. Badly enough, anyway, to have sex with Corso and then go ballistic. (She's a little over the top and ridiculous with these scenes.) He also meets a mysterious French girl (Emmanuelle Seigner from Frantic and Bitter Moon--she also happens to be the current Mrs. Polanski--Go Roman! This gives me hope that maybe when I'm over 70, rich and too paranoid to come back to America I can get a beautiful young French girl to marry me, too.) who keeps appearing everywhere he wants to be like some kind of ghostly Visa card. We never really find out what her role in the whole thing is, just that she seems to be there to protect Corso. Basically, he's sent on a chase around the world for something that people are willing to kill for. And he even finds out that he won't do anything for money. This is not a horror movie. It's not even particularly creepy. I know it's been sold that way, but there's really not a scary scene in the whole thing. There are scenes that are a little disturbing, but not enough to really comment on them. It's actually just a semi-supernatural detective story. Even the supernatural doesn't really enter into it except with Ms. Seinger's character. (She appears to float a couple of times, which made the audience laugh. I'm not sure if it was supposed to or not.) Now, I may have sounded like I didn't like the movie. I actually really did like it. I just wanted to warn people who were going into it with the idea that they were going to be scared out of their minds. This is less Rosemary's Baby and more Frantic. It's just one guy's search for something that he realizes is going to be a doorway to evil, but he wants the money and he's afraid for his life if he doesn't do it. There's really nothing wrong with the movie. It's not Polanski's best movie by any means, but it still has that distinctive P-Man feel to it. Kind of a European David Lynch feel. Lots of interesting characters (especially a couple of book collector brothers who are total opposites but they finish each other's sentences, and an old woman in a wheelchair with a rather frightening looking secretary), and a dark sense of humor that keeps the whole thing from collapsing under its own pretensions. It is, after all, an art film. Good performances all around except for the occasional outburst from Ms. Olin. She just doesn't seem to work when she has her claws extended. Frank Langella is very good as business-like devil worshiper who has no conscience at all. And, of course, Johnny was great as the flawed "hero" of the story. I think, as long as the material is halfway decent, he's incapable of putting in a bad performance. (We'll just leave The Astronaut's Wife out of this.) So, if you're a Polanski fan you should definitely see this flick. If not, then you might want to avoid it. If you're new to his stuff, check out Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion, The Tenant or Chinatown instead. He's a little past his prime, but he remains very interesting.

Final Destination

admin — Tue, 21 Mar 2000 18:00:00 +0000

Let me just say that Me, Myself And Irene looks hilarious. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a big Jim Carrey fan. I'm saying that because I'm a big Farrelly Bros. fan. And a big Jim Carrey Fan. Anyway, if the movie is half as funny as the trailer, it's going to be pretty damn good. And now, our feature presentation: Final Destination is that little horror/suspense/teen flick that no one really seems to know about. It might be best that way, but I kind of liked it. It's a fun film, if not a particularly good film. Alex Browning (Devon Sawa from Idle Hands and Around The Fire--I have to admit that I'm a fan of his now after Idle Hands. He's got a lot of potential as a physical comedian.) is on his way to a fun filled flight to France with his French class. Unfortunately for him he starts to get a weird feeling in his gut, mainly because his dad says things like, "Live it up while you can." and his mom tears a flight tag off of his dad's luggage that he's using. Alex thought it was good luck. The weirdness doesn't end there. First off, they're taking off from JFK Airport. Now, the filmmakers may not have thought of this since the movie was set in a suburb of NYC, but JFK, Jr. died in a plane crash. Then Alex hears Rocky Mountain High on the airport sound system. John Denver died in a plane wreck. (They did say something about that one.) Then he gets on the airplane and starts seeing rust and old parts on the plane. That, of course, makes him wonder. Then he falls asleep just before the plane takes off and sees it going down in a ball of fire. (That scene was pretty damn cool. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be in an actual plane crash, see this movie.) When he wakes up he runs screaming to the front of the plane, gets in a fight with one of the other students who had it in for him anyway, and they all get ejected from the plane. Then, just as they're trying to figure out what they're going to do, the plane explodes in a fiery death ball. So Alex saved six people's lives because he was paranoid. Now the FBI is wondering how he knew, but that's not what's important. After a few days go by his little group (most of whom are paranoid of him) start to die off one by one. First is his best friend, Tod (Chad Donella from Disturbing Behavior and a recent episode of The X-Files), slips on some supernatural water and hangs himself in his bathroom. Of course there's a love interest in Clear Rivers (pronounced Claire, but isn't that weird? She's played by the beautiful Ali Larter from Varsity Blues, Drive Me Crazy and The House On Haunted Hill). She even doesn't believe Alex at first. There's also a dork who wants to be cool (Sean William Scott from American Pie and the upcoming Road Trip--Devon is slowly making his way around all of the stars of American Pie, I think), a teacher (Kristen Cloke from Chris Carter's other series, Millennium), a leather clad bastard (Kerr Smith from Dawson's Creek) and his rather submissive girlfriend (Amanda Detmer from Drop Dead Gorgeous--and she pretty much is). Pretty stereotypical characters for a teen movie like this. And, just to add to the stereotype, Tony Todd shows up for one scene (even though he's featured predominantly in the preview) as a creepy mortician who talks in circles and basically just scares Alex and Clear. Fits him. He's pretty much the creepiest man alive. So these people all start to die in some of the most Rube Goldbergian ways. Some of them are pretty clever. Some make you say, "What the hell just happened?!?" But, the point is, Alex sees who it's going to be and what's going to cause it before it happens. So he figures out Death's system. As I said, this isn't a very good movie, but it's a lot of fun. Director James Wong (producer of The X-Files, The Others and other tv hits) knows how to keep the suspense going and how to shock the hell out of you. If only the movie hadn't been so predictable. There was a way to make this movie a lot better. Actually, two ways, but they're mutually exclusive. First, we could have done without the supernatural baloney. If a toilet springs a leak, that's one thing. But the water should not a) follow the future victim or b) suck back up into the toilet. There's just no reason for that. It makes the movie seem like a bunch of mumbo jumbo. The second way was to just forget the whole thriller thing. Make it into something like Fearless, a very good movie about the aftermath of a plane crash. Don't make people die under mysterious circumstances. Just show how they all dealt with the fact that they (or their friend) saw it happen before it happened. That would have made a very interesting personal drama. But that's not what these guys wanted. They made a shocker that wasn't really too shocking. Just a lot of fun to watch. Which, I guess, is all we can really ask for in this genre. Not really worth the $7 I paid for it, but a matinee or a rental would probably be worth it. It did make me drive very carefully on the way home, though. Maybe it was worth it after all. I guess we'll never know.

Fantasia 2000

admin — Thu, 23 Mar 2000 18:00:00 +0000

I'm actually writing this on April 3rd, so it's been a while since I've seen the movie. I was in Dallas for a week and a half and couldn't get to a computer to write a review, so you'll have to forgive the rustiness. Not that you'll notice a difference. I think that most of us (us, of course, being me and my audience of one who saw this movie with me) have seen the original Fantasia. It's a pretty amazing blend of classical music and animation that was a dream project of Walt Disney's from the get go of his fledgling studio that somehow still manages to get by to this day. At the time the movie was a total flop. It was Disney's third animated feature and, some people thought it would be his last. But he soldiered on with Dumbo and Bambi and recovered from his momentary lapse. Fortunately the movie has soldiered on, too. It's become a classic and is now considered one of Disney's best and definitely most ambitious projects. And who can hear Night On Bald Mountain without thinking of that evil looking devil coming out of a mountain. Or The Sorcerer's Apprentice without seeing Mickey Mouse and his dancing brooms. It's become ingrained in our brains as an equal to the music itself. For many of us it's the only way we would have ever been introduced to the music. Disney saw his little experiment as an ongoing process. The same movie would never be released twice. Every few years it would get an updating and revamping. But, since it flopped, why bother? Well, his dream has finally come true. For the most part, anyway. The only bit that was left in was The Sorcerer's Apprentice. No more Bald Mountain. No more dancing hippos. No more floating mushrooms (which may have been one reason for its resurgence back in the 60s--who knew that Disney was that in tune with the drug culture?). So, new music and new sequences. That's not always a bad thing, but they don't quite add up to as much as the original did. Whereas that one was a classic, this one is kind of a mild diversion. The main cool thing about it is that it's only being shown on IMAX screens, so it's really, really big and you can get caught up in even the stuff that's just fluff. The first new sequence is set to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Much like the way the original started off (with the line showing what sound looks like), it's an abstract bit of animation involving triangles set up like butterflies trying to get away from the "dark force" of, well, I'm not really sure what it was. Just a big dark mass. Interesting stuff, but not much more than an experiment. Then it goes into the story of a family of whales set to The Pines Of Rome. Lots of computer animation and a touching story of how the baby gets separated from his parents and is finally set free. My friend called this the "If Whales Could Fly" sequence. They do a lot of flying. Didn't really understand that, but I guess when we're not looking... I like this one a lot, but my movie buddy wasn't too impressed. I thought the animation was very interesting and I was actually kind of touched by the story. He thought it was typical and nothing special. Oh well. He also thinks Natural Born Killers was a cinematic masterpiece. Go figure. (Just kidding, bud. I shouldn't make you mad. I hate to lose my only reader.) Then we go to New York City, circa 1930 and a world peopled by Al Hirschfeld characitures. Now, I have a great respect for Mr. Hirschfeld, whose drawings can be seen in every magazine from TV Guide to The New Yorker, but this was a little bit, erm, stupid. He's credited as the artistic consultant on this segment set to Rhapsody In Blue, but I don't know how much he really had to do with it. It was a little stereotypical (the black guy can't wait to get to his jazz club, the family can't make time for their little daughter, the bum will take any job) and not as funny as it was obviously supposed to be. It was interesting to see old Al's drawings come to life, and it's always good to hear a little Gershwin, and the little girl was kind of funny, but not a very good bit overall. Next up is the story of The Steadfast Tin Soldier set to Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2. This one was very good. The animation was alternately cute and frightening. (Well, as frightening as an evil Jack In The Box can be.) The story, of course, was great. This was the first to really catch everyone's attention, I think. I only vaguely know the story of the little one legged soldier (is it just me or does that sound rather phallic? Oh, Mark. How could you bring that up during a Disney movie?), so I'm not sure how close it is, but who cares? With a segment this good it's best to just get lost in it. Apparently they had been looking for just the right music for this bit for a long time, and I think they found it. Perfect blend here. Then there's the (thankfully) very short piece for Carnival Of The Animals. Something about a group of flamingos and their crazy friend who gets ahold of a yo-yo. It's kind of cute and a little funny and, most of all, very, very short. This is more like an old Disney short that just kind of comes, makes you giggle a little and then goes out of the mind forever. It's fun while it lasts, but not enough to recommend to all of your friends. We move from there to the classic bit with Mickey and the Sorcerer, Yen Sid (spell it backwards and you'll see who it really is). This part has always been great. No need to go into it. Suffice it to say, watch how you cheat your job. It could come back and flood you out. And to add to the classic Disney character fun, we now have a segment with Donald Duck! He and Daisy are trying to help Noah out with his Arc and, much like Mickey and Yen Sid, they have a love-hate relationship. Noah loves to make Donald work and Donald hates to work. But he doesn't have much choice. It's raining pretty hard. There are a lot of really funny parts of this (watch for the dragon and the unicorn) and it turns into a pretty sweet little story of Donald and Daisy's love for each other. Or maybe they just want to make sure that their species goes on. Who knows? Very cute. Very funny. One of the better segments. The best, however, is yet to come. Much like the Night On Bald Mountain sequence of yore, this one ends with a bang. The Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky tells us the story of a wood sprite who is brought out of the lake in order to bring Spring to the forest. Just as she finishes, a volcano explodes and takes out the entire forest and even threatens to take her and her sturdy buck friend with it. This is the best of the set and could even be seen with the original film without being totally out of place. The wood sprite is one of their most beautiful creations and we are genuinely touched when she gets her hope back after the destruction of her home. Amazing animation filmmaking from what can still be at times the best animation factory in Hollywood. But Dreamworks (The Prince Of Egypt) and Warner Bros. (The Iron Giant) are catching up. Watch out Disney. You've got a lot to make up for. (Did anyone bother to see Pocahontas?) I think my main problem with this was the host segments. Steve Martin, who is one of my all-time favorite comics, was the first host. He obviously didn't have anything to do with the writing of his bit. His main joke was the line I started this off with. Although he does come back after the end credits and asks for a ride. That's kind of funny. Then we've got Bette Midler, Penn and Teller (an inspired choice to introduce The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but, again, not as funny as they could have been), Itzhak Perlman, Angela Lansbury, Quincy Jones and James Earl Jones (who has the funniest line in the whole movie...and it's not even that great). Overall, not bad. Not the classic that the original was, but worth seeing on the big, big, big, big screen of the IMAX. The good bits make up for the other rather mediocre bits.

Romeo Must Die

admin — Sun, 02 Apr 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Jet Li rocks! That's my one line review of this movie. He was just about the only good thing about Lethal Weapon 4. He made Black Mask worth watching. Fist Of Legend is one of the better kung fu flicks I've seen without Jackie Chan. Much more brutal than Mr. Chan, he puts forth a fierceness not really seen since Bruce Lee. (By me anyway.) I almost expected him to lick his blood and scream. This, his first American starring role, is all about two warring families in New York. One, The Sing Family is the most powerful Chinese mob on the docks. The other, The O'Day Family, is the most powerful black family. They're both trying to gain control of the entire shoreline and have been at war for the past couple of years. When Po Sing (Jon Kit Lee from The Corrupter) is killed the murder is, of course, blamed on the O'Days. It also brings his brother, Han (Li) over from Hong Kong. He breaks out of prison in one of the best fight scenes I've seen in quite a while. (And you never thought that a guy could fight while hanging by his foot.) So Han makes his way over, confronts his father, Ch'u Sing (Henry O from Red Corner and Brokedown Palace...can this guy get away from Asian prison movies?) and we find out just where they stand. You see, Han was in prison for something that his father and other brother, Kai (Russell Wong from the Vanishing Son series) did. Now Kai is Ch'u's right hand man and is in line to run things. Han still loves his brothers, but he's never wanted anything to do with the family business. On the other side of things, Isaak O'Day (Delroy Lindo) is leading his family into a legit business. He just wants to make enough money so that he never has to steal, lie or kill again. His right hand man, Mac (Isaiah Washington from Love Jones, and Out Of Sight) may have different ideas, though. He wants to take over the business. The only other thing standing in his way is Isaak's not so bright son, Colin (D.B. Woodside from the TV series The Temptations and Murder One). He's wants so badly to take over, but he's just not really smart enough. His sister Trish (acting debut for singer Aaliyah), on the other hand, is smart enough to want to stay away from the whole thing. She owns a little store that seems to sell everything that kids want. I couldn't really figure that out. Anyway, Trish and Han meet, sparks, bullets and kicks fly. Especially when the NFL gets involved. (Huh?) This weasely little guy named Roth (Edoardo Ballerini from The Last Days Of Disco) seems to want to become an owner of a team that doesn't exist yet. He's found the perfect spot for a dome just off the shore of the docks. Unfortunately he needs some deeds before he can build. That, of course, is where the two families come in. Yes, the story is convoluted as hell. Why do these guys want to help this little weasel? Especially Ch'u who doesn't seem to want to give up the life. How does a girl who is younger than me fall for a guy in his late 30s? These are questions that we all ask ourselves once in a while. But none of that is important. What's important are the fight scenes. And those make up for any weak story development. There's the fight in the prison, there's the fight with the Chinese girl where he uses Trish to fight her (you see, he can't his a girl) and there's the football fight and...well...a few others. All of them include lots of butt kicking on the part of Mr. Li. And this, of course, is a very good thing. Although, strangely enough, he never kills anyone until the very end. What's up with that? But he breaks lots of bones, as the x-ray cam shows. (That's a really cool little innovation that mixes Total Recall with Three Kings. But we kung-fu die-hards know that it was first (I think) used in The Story Of Riki-O, one of the most brutal and grotesque kung-fu films ever made. Very funny, too. Check it out.) The only complaint I heard (and I didn't really notice it) about the fight scenes was the fact that they seemed to be fudging Russell Wong's punches. He was almost always shot from the back so you couldn't tell where he was going for. He obviously wasn't nearly as good as Jet. But who is? I kind of wonder if even Jackie could kick his butt. (We love you Jackie!) This was cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak's directorial debut. (He worked on Q&A, Species, The Devil's Advocate, Dante's Peak, U.S. Marshals, Lethal Weapon 4 and many others.) His earlier work with Jet Li paid off here. He ably handles the action sequences without muddling them up, which is a big problem with some movies like this. So this one won't make any new fans of the martial arts film, but it will make the current fans happy. No great shakes as far as story (they didn't have me fooled for a second as far as who was involved in the deaths of the two sons), but the action is great and worth every penny of my matinee ticket price. Two things of note, though. First off, interesting homage to Isaac Hayes in Delroy Lindo's character. I guess every bald black man with a goatee has the right to have a name that rhymes with the legendary ladies' man. And, second, why is it that all kung fu movies made or re-released in America have rap and r&b soundtracks? This one worked because it kind of fit with the story, but I personally think that techno and club music fits better. Instead of trying to get the latest Tupac single in there (this guy works dead more than he ever did alive), try finding some music that actually fits the action. Just a thought. I could be wrong. I've been known to be wrong at least once.

Wonder Boys

admin — Tue, 04 Apr 2000 17:00:00 +0000

I've wanted to see this movie ever since hearing the first strains of that song on the trailer. There's just something about "Watching The Wheels" by John Lennon that puts me in a great mood to just hang out and not think about anything. Just live life and see what happens. It's one of the best songs of his career and, unfortunately, one of the most under-appreciated. But, that may be good. That way it means a little more to the few of us who have latched onto it. But that's not exactly what this movie is about. Some have called it a coming of age story. It's not. It's a coming of senses story. It centers around Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas), a college English prof who is going through somewhat of a mid-life crisis. Just a partial list of his problems: a) He's diddling his bosses wife (Frances McDormand), b) he's in deep smit with one of his students (Katie Holmes) who happens to be renting a room from him, c) he's trying to keep his editor (Robert Downey, Jr.) at bay since his 250-300 page new book has gone over by about 2,000 pages, and d) his wife just left him this morning because he wasn't there for her. On top of all that, he now has to babysit James Leer (Tobey Maguire), a death obsessed student from one of his writing classes. This kid knows every Hollywood suicide there is and is enamored by the fact that he's fallen in with Dr. Tripp's crowd. Of course this was a total accident (we think). James just happened to be at the same party as Grady one night. Then they had a little adventure with a jacket belonging to Marilyn Monroe, a dog, Grady's girlfriend's bedroom and a gun. Oops. Throughout the film everyone gets tangled in Grady's messes while he's just trying to make his wife feel better about leaving him and tell his pregnant girlfriend that he loves her. James is just trying to be with his hero while never revealing too much of himself. Or maybe he's just trying to get his book published. I, personally, think it's the former, though. He's genuinely touched by Grady's concern for him and Grady seems to have some kind of connection with this weird introvert. He also accidentally corrupts him with all sorts of new habits (drinking, smoking pot, homosexual editors...the usual). This is a hard movie to sum up in case you haven't noticed. It was also apparently pretty hard to adapt to a screenplay. I liked the movie a lot, but it wasn't as affecting as it probably could have been. In a way that's good, though. At least it didn't go overboard sappy like some of these kinds of movies do. Chalk up one more winner for director Curtis Hanson. Sure, it's not L.A. Confidential (his first film), but what is? The performances are pretty damn good. Douglas has finally hit a role that fits his age. He's been so caught up with the fact that he's got a young woman with him in real life that he can't seem to see that he shouldn't have them in his movie life. A Perfect Murder? What the hell was that? Just another hackneyed job at a Hitchcock classic. Crap. He's made the occasional good move (The American President, The Game), but even those can't make up for things like Disclosure. He does a fine job as a man who can't seem to make choices for himself. He just lets life go by while he keeps working on the same book for years that goes in so many different directions that even he doesn't know what it's about anymore. Just like his life. Tobey Maguire was, of course, great as the young man who has all sorts of issues that he can't admit to. He needs someone in his life, he just doesn't really know who. It's certainly not his parents who he alternately accuses of being incestuous and locking him up in the cellar. Tobey is one of those few young actors who have the "quiet intensity" thing down. Sure he seems to play the same roles over and over, but he's so good at those roles that I can't wait to see him in the next one. Tobey's Ice Storm co-star is pretty good as an average college chick who seems to be hot for teacher. (I hate using a Van Halen song in my reviews, but it fits so well.) She may not be the best actress in the world, but she's certainly not bad. And, I'm sorry to all of my female friends who seem to think that she's ugly, but she's beautiful. Maybe that's why she gets cast so often, but there is some talent behind the pretty face. We just need to find it. Maybe in her next role where she gets to stretch and become a cheating fiancee' in The Gift. Frances McDormand was maybe a little underused in her role, but she was damn good in it. The one I'm worried about is Robert Downey, Jr. This guy's a great actor, but he can play roles like this in his sleep. He's just the crazy gay editor who wants to get both Grady's book and James. ("I can see myself inside him." Uh. Yeah. Thanks, Rob.) Hopefully he gets to stretch a little more in Black And White. It'd be nice to see him in a role with some meat. One of the best things about the rest of the movie was the music. Like L.A. Confidential, the music was very important to the story. From the John Lennon song to Bob Dylan's heartbreakingly realistic paean to mid-life "Not Dark Yet" to Neil Young's nearly haunting "Old Man." Yeah, that's a choice that seems obvious. "Old man, look at my life. I'm a lot like you were." I guess they couldn't help but put it in. The only bad thing about the music is the fact that sometimes the songs end very abruptly. It almost sounds as if they forgot to overdub them onto certain parts of scenes. Surprisingly amateurish for this movie. Very good film, if not a great one. Definitely worth the time and money to go see it, and it may even make you think about some of the choices that you've made in your life. Maybe even make you start making some choices. A few more movies like this and I may make some for myself.

Wonder Boys [2]

admin — Fri, 07 Apr 2000 17:00:00 +0000

We all need to make a pact to go see Samuel L. Jackson in the new Shaft remake. I just saw the preview and it looks better than Mission: Improbable 2. Well, close anyway. And who better to play the black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks than Mr. Jackson? So did you know that there are now two William Friedkin films in the theatre now? Wow. That hasn't happened since...well...this summer when The Thomas Crown Affair and The 13th Warrior (both directed by John McTiernan) were accidentally overlapped. (I say "accidentally" because The 13th Warrior was supposed to come out about six or eight months earlier than it did. By the way, is McTiernan going to redo all of Norman Jewison's films? His next project is a remake of Rollerball. Will he be doing Fiddler On The Roof next?) Well, as much as I liked Billy's new film, The Exorcist has no competition. Rules Of Engagement asks us what would happen if a career colonel was held responsible for the innocents that he killed. Col. Terry Childers (Samuel L. Jackson) was sent over to Yemen in order to get the American Ambassador (Ben Kingsley) and his family out of danger. There are hundreds of protesters outside waiting for him to show his face so they can yell at him, I guess, is what we're supposed to believe at first. As soon as Childers and his men show up the crowd starts throwing rocks and snipers start shooting from the tops of buildings. The ambassador gets out with Childers' personal help, saying "I'll never forget this." Then all hell breaks lose. Marines start to die and Childers orders his men to fire on the crowd. 83 innocent men, women and children died that day and 100 more were wounded. Did they have weapons? Were they the immediate threat? We don't know. Enter Col. Hayes Hodges (Tommy Lee Jones). He is two weeks away from retirement and he's been behind a desk for the last 30 years being a mediocre marine lawyer. He was wounded in Vietnam where Childers saved his life. (This is shown in the first scene which is a not too badly done battle sequence.) Now he's being called upon to save his friend from a murder conviction. Unfortunately, the U.S. has a better lawyer in Major Mark Biggs (Guy Pearce sporting a strange New Yawk accent). He's not a bad guy, he's just doing what he's told. Basically we need a scapegoat for what happened or else we'll have to take our ambassadors out of all of the Middle Eastern countries because of what Childers did. Throughout this we see some conflict in Hodges' mind over whether or not his friend was malicious and if he should be on the case at all. For the first half of this movie I really wanted Childers to burn. I don't care what they said about his character, he ordered his men to shoot into a crowd that, as far as I knew, didn't have any weapons. Yes, they were throwing rocks and molotov cocktails, but most of them were just going right back onto their own people. The real threat was the group of snipers. Shoot those guys and you've got your safety. The people disperse because we're firing back and all is right in the world. Was this the intention of the filmmakers? To make us hate the guy we're supposed to be rooting for? Sometimes that works. In film noir it worked. In this kind of thing it really doesn't. But I was willing to let that go. It was actually a very good movie. Not the most original, mind you. It was no Exorcist or French Connection. But it's Friedkin's best movie since 1977's Sorcerer. (What was he thinking with Jade? And Cruising?!?!) The courtroom scenes are very good. I was actually enthralled to see people talking about the fate of one man, although I saw a lot of Jackson's character from A Time To Kill coming out in this character. ("Yes they deserved to die and I hope they burn in HELL! And they did have guns, dammit!") The main cool thing about this was the "massacre" scene itself. It was done in a documentary style that reminded me of Saving Private Ryan. No body parts being blown off, but it was very realistic. I'm hoping that this means that Friedkin is back in form. Of course the acting was great. Do I really need to say that, though? Jackson and Jones are great actors. No doubt about it. Jones didn't overplay his drinking problem. Jackson didn't overdo is anger at being on trial for something that he thought he was right in doing. They gave a great sense of two friends in a harsh situation, too. From those opening scenes in Vietnam, I believed these guys' friendship. And that's what this whold movie hinges on. And Guy Pearce wasn't bad as the northern boy who had never seen combat, but was going to pass judgment on someone who did what had to be done. And then there's Ben Kingsley who can be a very good actor when he wants to be. Here he was a weak willed little pushover who would say anything just so he could stay out of trouble...even if it meant perjuring himself. And, to top it all off, there's a small part for Captain Dale Dye (Platoon, Always, Saving Private Ryan). Who could ask for more? Maybe someone older than Philip Baker Hall to play Tommy Lee Jones' dad. Or some better makeup on Tommy when he's supposed to be young in Vietnam. But that's nitpicking. A few more problems? Well, yeah. Plot holes abound. Are we supposed to believe that the Secretary of Defense (Conrad Bachmann (Foxy Brown, Outbreak, Tremors), who burned a tape that would keep Childers out of jail, would actually let the jury make up their own minds? That he wouldn't get to the judge? He got to the ambassador, what's a little more? That's the main problem that I had with the whole thing. And what about bullet holes in the embassy itself? Wouldn't those have clued some people in? Oh well. I didn't write it, so I can't change it. Not a bad flick from Mr. Friedkin. Worth the time and money to go see, but don't expect a masterpiece. More than I expected, but not as much as I had hoped for.

Keeping The Faith

admin — Sat, 22 Apr 2000 17:00:00 +0000

So a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar. Wait. It's just a priest. And he's pining over a picture of three kids. They're the kids that his ex-wife (before he was a priest) took from him. No, wait! They're him and his two best friends since childhood. This is how Edward Norton's directorial debut starts. He's the priest, Brian. He and Jake, the rabbi (Ben Stiller), have been best friends since 8th grade. That's also when Anna (Jenna Elfman) came into their lives. (Of course, none of these guys played themselves in 8th grade. That would just be silly. Actually, the kid playing Brian looks a little like Haley Joel Osment, who looks like a very young Edward Norton. Good choice.) Anna was the fun loving tomboy who all the guys were after, but she was loyal to her two boys. No one could come between them...except her dad. He got a job on California and she had to leave at the end of the year. Skip ahead 15-20 years. Anna's back in NYC and looks up her old buds. They've gone the route of God and, through their stand-up sermons, they've been able to bring hundreds of people to the church/synagogue every time they speak. A self proclaimed "God Squad" bringing religion into the 21st Century. As the three friends hang out together they all start to fall for each other in different ways. Ok, not all of them. This is only PG-13, after all. Anna and Jake fall into a best friends with benefits relationship while Brian just falls for Anna. Who wouldn't? Jenna Elfman is not quite as perfect as Charlize Theron, but she's pretty damn close. The thing is, Anna just doesn't have time for a real relationship and Jake has to pretend to like every woman who his congregation throw at him. He has some horrendous dates ("Does pecan pie have nuts in it?"), but he keeps coming back to Anna and their secret lust. Of course it turns into more than they ever expected and they have to keep it hidden from the other rabbis and their families (the "Kosher Nostra") and Brian. All the time Brian is seeing signs that she might love him even though he took his vow and "doesn't miss it." Uh-huh. Lots of very funny scenes as Brian is explaining the whole situation to the bartender at the beginning (Brian George--the Soup Nazi) through a series of flashbacks. The narration, thankfully, stops after a while. In fact, the movie starts off so funny with so much slapstick that I was kind of disappointed when it slowed down to get us involved in the story. I almost think it could have done that without slowing down as much as it did. It could have been like classic Woody Allen if it had kept its momentum the whole way through. (That description really fits with all of the beautiful shots of Manhattan throughout the whole film. Ed, at one point, says, "A true New Yorker thinks that people living in another city are kidding themselves." I guess he learned a little from Woody when he did Everyone Says I Love You.) Writer Stuart Blumberg is obviously Jewish. And I knew it before I knew his name. Even though Mr. Norton is the moral center of the film, the religious aspects really stick to the Jewish side. Blumberg knows something about Catholicism, but he puts an awful lot of details about the Jewish faith. He seems to want both faiths to finally come together and agree to disagree. Not only are the two main characters best friends, but they are trying to form a center where people from both churches can party on weekends. Kind of a religion mating ritual. Of course, this is made ironic because the main person Jake and Anna are hiding their relationship from (and the reason that he doesn't want to get serious with her) is his mother (Anne Bancroft). Her other son married a non-Jewish girl and she pretty much disowned him. And would he get thrown out of a job? The big question of the film is what's the difference between faith and spirituality? Of course there is. Peter Gabrial puts out very spiritual music, but it's not religious by any means. You can have faith in another person, which Jake has a problem with. And if Jake really wants to bring Judaism into the 21st Century, wouldn't he be able to tell everyone that he's in love with a Catholic girl? And wouldn't he be able to tell his best friend that he loves their other best friend? Which brings us to another (and more important to non-religious people like myself) question: Can friends stay friends after something like this happens? It's hard, but they can. Unfortunately, one has to back down. This has happened to me so many times it's hard to count them all. Of course, I'm usually in Brian's position. I have another friend who reminds me of Jake, but so far we haven't been after the same girl. Different tastes really help our friendship. And what about the guy who tells his best female friend that he loves her? What happens to this poor sap? His fate is left up to the woman. The whole thing boils down to Jake saying, "I can't tell them because I don't think they'd be able to take it." Too bad if they can't take it. It is the way it is and you can't do anything about it. Anna says it herself: If you have faith in them, they will let you lead them/be with them. It doesn't matter what you tell them as long as you tell them the truth. Too bad we can't all take our own advice. Ok, that's enough of the spiritual side of the flick. It's actually really funny, too. As I said it starts off with some great sight gags and slapstick. After a while it does slow down, but it keeps us with the story until the end. And, if you're a movie buff, you might even catch some in-jokes that Ed stuck in there. Not only was the writer an actor in Fight Club, but Milos Forman (director of The People Vs. Larry Flynt and Man On The Moon) shows up as Brian's mentor. This is a joke in itself since I'm sure the Catholic church had something to say about Larry Flynt. And Ed gets a jab at him at one point when he does his Andy Kaufman impression on Anna's answering machine. (Norton was the original choice for the role in Man On The Moon until Jim Carrey showed interest.) He did a pretty damn good job of it, too. We all know that Ben and Jenna can handle comedy, but not many people know that Ed can pull it off, too. He was very funny in this one. Definitely held his own with the two comic vets. Some of us knew just because we know he's a great freakin' actor and can pull of just about anything. He's also one of my favorite actors, so I had to see if he could direct. He's not exactly the most stylish director, but he's not bad. And, as I said before, he must love NYC. Not the greatest movie ever made, but it's certainly worth the money to see. Very funny and a little thought provoking at the same time. And it's always good to see Eli Wallach in a good role...even if he has gotten so very OLD!!! He looks much older than his old buddy Clint.

U-571

admin — Sun, 23 Apr 2000 17:00:00 +0000

First, can I just say that Jackie Chan needs to stay away from buddy pics. The only buddies he's really good with are Michele Yeoh and Sammo Hung. Rush Hour wasn't bad, but Chris Tucker just gets on my nerves in general. Jackie's latest American flick, Shanghai Noon, looks alright, but come on! Owen Wilson? Owen's much cooler than Chris, so maybe he can get away with some of the "fish out of water" jokes. I hope so. It looks kind of funny, though. I'll see it just to see Jackie kick a guy's butt with his hair. Anyway, on with the submarine flick. Since Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, I think we can expect a resurgence in WWII dramas popping up everywhere. And I guess it was only a matter of time before we got another U-Boat flick. This one starts off with Lt. Andrew Tyler (Matthew McConaughey--is his character's name nearly Andy Taylor on purpose?) on a 48 hour leave with his crew. He's been informed that he didn't get a command of his own because Captain Dahlgren (Bill Paxton) didn't think that he was ready for it. He doesn't have time to steam, though, because their leave is cut short. They've been called on an all-important mission to find a disabled U-Boat, kill it's crew, and find the Enigma. The Enigma is a typewriter that will decode all of Germany's U-Boat communications, thus turning the war in our favor. Basically it's a McGuffin. We don't really care if they get the damn thing or not, just so it gives us some action. And it sure seems important to them. So they go forth and kill. Then, while some of the crew are on the U-571, the fit hits the shan and the American ship is blown out of the water. (So Paxton gets to be in another movie about a little ship wreck.) Now Tyler and his suddenly smaller crew has to sink the other German ship and try like hell to make it to friendly lines before all of their power runs out. The ship had already been hit a lot when the Germans were in control of it, now it's getting hit worse. Then there's a fight amongst the men, a German prisoner who causes all sorts of trouble ("I am U-571. Destroy me.") and a pretty dramatic fight with a German Destroyer. Not a lot of surprises in the flick. In fact, I haven't seen Das Boot (for shame!!!), but I feel like I have now. (By the way, for all of you non-German speakers out there, it's pronounced more like boat than boot. Don't let me hear you mispronounce it!!) From previews that I've seen from Wolfgang Petersen's film, this new film has a lot of the same shots. I guess that's not really a bad thing. There are, after all, very few shots that you can get in a submarine. But Hunt For Red October managed a few more. All of the Germans looked like the guys from Das Boot, too. Coincidence? Well, maybe. There was a lot of cheese in the movie, too. The whole first scene with Tyler and his crew was a little cliched. "We're on leave." "Not any more. You're shipping out." Dum-dum-dum! And what was up with Harvey Keitel's line: "We've got a one-way ticket to topside." As I've said before, there comes a time in every actor's life where he just has to say "NO!!" And I can understand why a character named Wentz wouldn't want his shipmates to know that he was half German, but wouldn't they know? Are they idiots? People can tell that I'm part German just from my last name and Wentz is more German than my name is. This isn't to say that I didn't like the movie. Au contrar. (I don't speak French, if you couldn't tell.) The action scenes more than make up for any cheesiness in the script. Director/writer Jonathan Mostow (Breakdown) knows how to hold our attention. And those depth charge scenes are pretty nerve-wracking. The sound system in the theatre I was in wasn't quite good enough to make me look around when they were exploding all over the place, but I still felt like I was trapped in the little sardine can with them. Extremely suspenseful when it wants to be. And the cast was great: David Keith (playing the stereotypical black chef--and his name is Coonan. Ouch!), Jon Bon Jovi (who is a much better actor than he ever was a singer--of course this is coming from the only person who lived through the 80s without buying Slippery When Wet), Tom Guidry (the kid from Lassie and The Sandlot), and Jack Noseworthy (Idle Hands, Breakdown). They really gave you the idea that they were all just kids stuck in a tough situation that could get them killed. And Keitel rounded them out nicely as the old man of the crew who will always be #2 by choice. And the music was great, if a bit overbearing at times. Very reminiscent of an old war movie. So, not a bad movie. Just a few too many clichés to be called a great movie. It's worth it if you're into war movies or if you're up for seeing Matthew in a leader type role. Otherwise, rent Das Boot or Run Silent, Run Deep instead.

Erin Brockovich

admin — Mon, 24 Apr 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Coming soon to a theatre as far away from you as possible: DINOSAUR--I know I'm supposed to hate Disney and all. They are a huge corporate monster with no real feelings for the world around them except for the dollars they spend on their merchandise. But I can't help but like some of the movies. That's why I have a DVD of The Fox And The Hound on order. Dinosaur is a new feature coming out of their computer animation department that cost them $26 gazillion just to plan out. Four years later they've finally finished what they were doing. Yes, it looks like a reptile version of Tarzan (a baby dino is brought up by monkeys (?!?!) and now they all have to survive the meteor shower and a mean dino), but I'm so there. I was a huge dinosaur fan back in the day and I still am to an extent. Jurassic Park gets me every time I see it. Even The Lost World got me for a little while. Until the end, that is. This just looks like a cool little movie. And Disney is going back into PG territory! Not since The Black Cauldron have they done something so dark that the MPAA thought it should be kept away from the really little kiddies. This is cool! As Don Bluth found out, it's hard to make a dino movie without making it at least PG. At least one that's respected by someone over the age of 4. Does anyone remember We're Back? Didn't think so. Would anyone have remembered The Land Before Time had it not been for the 46 sequels? Not a chance. SMALL TIME CROOKS--And the Woodman gets back to slapstick. Woody Allen has been making these self-important movies (Deconstructing Harry, Celebrity) for far too long now. I heard that Sweet And Lowdown was pretty good, but this one looks like it's bringing him back to the old days. He and his crew (Jon Lovitz, Michael Rapaport, Tracey Ullman and a few others) try to open up a bakery just to get to the bank next door. And Hugh Grant finally shows up in a Woody Allen flick. It's about damn time. That guy's more Woody than Woody is now. It looks very funny, but Woody looks so old! Yes, he's been old for a while, but he really looks bad in this one. Still can't wait to see it, though. I still have never seen one of his on the big screen. I'll have to change that for this one. (I know. You've heard it before.) And now, our feature pres-en-ta-shoun: Steven Soderbergh has yet to disappoint me. This one is a little more conventional than his last one (The Limey), but it still shows that he's in top form at telling a story in a way that we don't forget. Julia Roberts nearly loses herself in the role of Erin Brockovich, a young mother of three who can't keep a job or a man. When she's in a car wreck and sues the doctor who hit her she's brought into the life of Ed Masry (the original Tom Jones himself, Albert Finney), a lawyer who just wants to keep his small-time firm running above water. She forces him to give her a job and slowly finds out that there's a case right under their noses. A small town near where they live is being contaminated by a large electricity corporation. Bad water is being seeped into their system and causing them to contract cancer and all sorts of other horrible ailments. Erin is able to talk to the people because she's one of them. She isn't a lawyer (in fact she hates them), she dresses in the latest white-trash chic, she talks like a sailor (never thought I'd hear Julia cuss so much) and, most importantly of all, she's sympathetic to their problems. She's so integral to the case that, when Ed tries to get some help in the form of a big corporate lawyer (The Voice Of Oscar, Peter Coyote), the case starts to fall apart. No one trusts the new guy and his assistant. Meanwhile, Erin's new boyfriend, George (Aaron Eckhart from In The Company Of Men and Your Friends And Neighbors) is getting sick of being put off all the time. He feels like he's just a nanny. Why can't she just quit and get a new job? This movie seems like it would be just like A Civil Action, the water battle film with John Travolta from two years ago. You know, small law firm goes up against a big corporation to get some money for the people that are being hurt and put their homes up for third and fourth mortgages in the process. And they're both based on true stories (in fact, watch for the real Erin as a waitress in this one). It is like it and it isn't. While A Civil Action was a very good film, it seemed to concentrate more on the actual justice system. This one focused more on one person and the repercussions of her actions. Why is it that a young woman who knows nothing about the law can come in and make a difference in the lives of these sick people? What happens to her life when she spends all of her time at work and nearly ignores her family, even if it is for a good cause? How does she communicate so well with these people? And this is where we get to what is usually a problem: Julia Roberts. I'm not much of a fan. (Couldn't tell, could ya?) She does do the occasional good movie (this one, Notting Hill, Flatliners), but for every one of those there's two or three Runaway Brides and Pretty Women. Or times when she tries to stretch too much (Micheal Collins, Mary Reilly--What was she thinking?!?!). She proves occasionally that she can act when she feels like it, but she just chooses not to for some reason. Yes, it was a little hard to forget that she was Julia Roberts in this movie, but I think she was a good choice for the role. Who else could pull off those slutty clothes and still make them look natural? There was one problem, though. She had a zit or something on her left inner breast that just annoyed the hell out of me throughout the whole movie. Couldn't they have done something about that? Kind of distracting. Other than that she did a great job in a difficult role. I was pleasantly surprised. (Don't get much of those in my reviews. What a terrible phrase.) Even though the movie is over two hours long, I really didn't feel like I was in the theatre for more than an hour and a half. I was constantly entertained and glad to be there. It helped that Erin was a very interesting and well written character. How often do you hear someone tell a couple of big wig lawyers about all of the sexual favors that they gave out in order to get papers signed? Very good movie from Mr. Soderbergh and Ms. Roberts. And Julia will probably get another Oscar nom out of it. We'll have to wait and see if she deserves it more than anyone else. But anyone who tells you that they don't want to see it because it's got her in it, just knock 'em in the gut and drag them in. It's worth it.

Bringing Out The Dead

admin — Tue, 02 May 2000 17:00:00 +0000

I'm pretty angry with myself for not seeing this one in the theatres. Unfortunately, Martin Scorsese doesn't stay there too long. I was waiting to see it with a friend of mine. By the time I found out that he had seen it without me (bastard) it was already gone. Oh well. That's what video and DVD are for. This is the fourth time that Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader have worked together and it won't be their last. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Last Temptation Of Christ and, next year, a biopic of Dean Martin called Dino. Go figure. Marty's been working on that one for a long, long time. It's also the first time that Marty and Nicolas Cage have worked together. I hope it won't be their last because Nic is pretty much the perfect Scorsese actor. He's intense, downbeat and bloody amazing. Kind of like another actor who works with the director quite a bit. Bringing Out The Dead is the story ambulance driver Frank Pierce (Cage) who is trying really hard to not go crazy in New York City's late nights. He can't sleep, always wants a drink and sometimes can't eat. But he also can't quit. He's got to make up for the one who got away: Rose. She haunts him more and more often lately asking him why he killed her. His partners don't help. Larry (John Goodman) is so deadpan and by the book that he can't see that his buddy is falling apart. Marcus (Ving Rhames) just wants to score with Love, the female dispatcher (Queen Latifah--listen for Scoresese himself as the male dispatcher) and make a show out of saving people. And Major Tom (Tom Sizemore) is completely insane. He seems to want to beat all of his patients up. On the first night of the movie (it takes place over three nights in Frank's life) Larry and Frank pick up an old man who had a heart attack. His family is all around him, but they weren't able to do anything. Frank meets and instantly fall for Mary (Patricia Arquette), the old man's daughter who hadn't seen him in years. The rest of the movie just takes Frank from place to scuzzy place around NYC at night. There's no real story to it. He gets more and more insomnia riddled and goes more and more crazy. He's on a losing streak with the patients and doesn't want it to go any longer. His boss won't fire him, so he has to find another way out. He tries drink, food, cigarettes, but tension will not ease. (How's that for a sly reference? Any Peter Gabriel fans out there?) People come and go from his life, but Mary, her father and Noel (singing "sensation" Marc Anthony, who has more acting talent than singing talent) are constants. Noel is a young man who isn't allowed to drink water because his kidneys have gone out. He's hallucinating and breaking things. Generally causing a disturbance where ever he goes. Meanwhile, there's a killer drug running around called Red Death. And everyone seems to be carrying it around. The New York of this film (which takes place in the early 90s) is the New York we've come to expect from Scorsese: dirty, grimy, full of crime and violence, but somehow shown in a light that let's us know that he loves the city. The hospitals are full of gunshot victims and don't have time for heart attack victims. They push people out the door who have drug related problems because they'll just be back the next night. Out on the streets Frank finds apartment buildings with crud on the walls, no lights and a couple who claim to be virgins, but the girl is pregnant. Sometimes Frank is seen as a savior type. When he's walking into the dark houses his white shirt blindingly white like he's coming from the Heavens. He saves the babies from the "miracle birth." He brings a heroin addict "back from the dead" while Marcus holds a spiritual with the guy's friends. This kind of religious imagery pops up everywhere and is not too surprising. After all, these guys are bringing people back from the dead. And who was supposedly the last person to really do that? He's also right there with the sufferers. He says that he feels like a "grief mop." Just there to clean up and support the people who are losing someone. Even if he can't save them, at least he was there. But he still feels like he's playing God. Like Jim said in Empire Of The Sun, "I can bring everyone back. Everyone." And he believed it for a while. Frank knows he has to save someone soon or he'll go insane. But who? Mary's father? Probably not. The man seems to want to die. Noel? No, he wants to die, too. Too many hallucinations of deserts. Mary? That's a possibility. She was a junkie up until a few months ago. Maybe she needs some saving. Or maybe it's just himself. Yeah. That must be it. Isn't that what all movie "heroes" are trying to do? Schrader has covered this territory before, but I love what he does with it. I guess this is the latest of his New York Trilogy (we'll have to come up with a new name for it now). Once every few years he goes back to his old stomping grounds and writes up a dark story about the underworld of NYC. First there was Taxi Driver, which this one reminded me a lot of. I kept expecting Nic to say something about how the rain washed the scum off the streets, but he seemed to want to help them instead of just get rid of them. He was repulsed, but drawn to them all at the same time. Taxi Driver was about the violence trapped in the city. Then there was American Gigolo about the hustling scene. Ok, so he screwed up. But everyone's allowed at least one failure. Next was Light Sleeper about the drug world. That one was pretty good, but no one saw it. Seek it out. It's worth it. The only thing that keeps Bringing Out The Dead from continuing the trend is that it was based on a book. The others were all from Paul's head. Pretty scary, huh? Personally, I expected a little more from a teaming like this. Not to say that it was a bad movie. No, it was actually quite good. But it's not what it could have been. I wasn't really involved with the characters hardly at all. The acting was great (especially Nic and Ving) and the story was interesting, but something was keeping me at a distance from them. I'm not even really sure what it was. It was very, very well shot, too. But that's to be expected. It's Scorsese. He doesn't get slouches behind the camera. And there were some amazing moving crane shots that I'm pretty in awe of. I heard that they were done on buses going about 60 mph. I'd hate to be the camera guy on that little trip. Not Marty's best movie by a long shot. Not his worst, but not his best.

Gladiator

admin — Sat, 06 May 2000 17:00:00 +0000

"Do you like gladiator movies?" And, with that, Ridley Scott comes back! Gladiator is the story of, well, a gladiator (Russell Crowe). His name used to be Maximus and he was the general of Marcus Aurelius's (Richard Harris) army and his trusted confidant. After the defeat of the Germanian army the old Caesar tells Maximus that he will be the new Caesar instead of his own son, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). When Commodus is told of this he promptly kills his father and has Maximus taken to the woods to be executed. Fortunately Maximus is too strong for that and is able to kill all of his captors, but not before he is told that his wife and son have already been killed. Our hero is captured again after falling unconscious in his burned home town and is sold to Proximo (Oliver Reed in his last role--some shots had to have his face superimposed over another man's body Brandon Lee style) who trains his slaves to be gladiators. Maximus sees his chance for revenge. He also sees a way to bring Rome back to its former glory. Meanwhile, Commodus is turning Rome on its ear. Aurelius wanted Rome to go back to the people, but his son has other plans. He will be their god. The Senate will be crushed. Rome will be his. His sister, Lucilla (Connie Nelson), will bear his child. His nephew, Lucius (Spencer Treat Clark, Grant from Arlington Road), will NOT be the next Caesar. And, basically, everything will go to hell. Everyone else, of course, doesn't want this to happen. Maximus soon becomes the height of Roman entertainment as he kills off all of the people pitted against him. He and his team (including Djimon Hounsou from Amistad) band together, which is something unheard of for the slaves to do. There are many other characters who have rather interesting names. There's Juba, Hounsou's character who becomes Maximus's trusted friend; Quintus (Tomas Arana) who directs a play called Reserviorus Dogus; Falco (David Schofield) who sings about Der Kommisarus; Noximus (John Williamson) who clears up the ducts of Rome; and Hagen (Ralph Moeller) who serves as the Consiggliare of the Corleoneus Family. (One of these guys I'm kidding about. It's up to you to figure out who.) This is the moment we've all been waiting for. The new version of what is basically the Spartacus/Ben-Hur story told with a 20th/21st Century sensibility. It's full of violence, kinetic camerawork and, erm, interesting relationships. I love all of those old epic films. There's something very cool about a three or four hour movie about a guy who rises from the dregs of his society to become the leader of the revolt. But, as much as I admire the films, they are getting a little old fashioned. It took about 30 years for Hollywood to figure out that we were all mature enough to be able to take the snails and oysters conversation in Spartacus. There is violence in those films, but it's not very realistic. We're not willing to believe in virgin heroes who seem to hack off arms with no blood. They also tended to bring a lot of Bible stories into play. Now, I like The Ten Commandments, too, but I can see where a movie like that wouldn't work too well today. Unfortunately, the films don't really translate too well for the current audience. Then along came Braveheart. It was one of the most realistic and gritty freedom fighter films ever made about someone who fought before, say, 1860. It's also one of my all-time favorite films, so lay off. Then, a few years later, they throw out The 13th Warrior. "The best medieval battle scenes since Braveheart." Now, think of some other medieval battle films made between those two and you'll figure out why the scenes didn't have to be too good to be the best since Braveheart. Gladiator, on the other hand, has some great action scenes. One big Braveheart style battle scene and a bunch of gladiator fight scenes that just blow you away. Sometimes the camera seems to be a little too close for clarity, but for some reason it works. You may not always be able to tell what's going on, but you always know. There's a very fine line between great and The 13th Warrior. The story is great, too. Let's not think that it's just a violent movie with no story. Au contrare. It's the story of the two men who were as close as brothers who must butt heads to make their empire what they think it should be. It's also the story of two men who love the same woman. Maximus and Lucilla were lovers in the past and, now that he is back in Rome as a gladiator, she is trying to keep him safe and still make him see that he can make a difference. And, of course, Commodus is just sick and wants his own sister. How very Scarface of him. Then there's the underlying theme of the sickness of society. Rome has a great Coliseum built just for watching slaves die horrible deaths. It's like Faces Of Death, Biblical Style. Everyone in the city ran to the Coliseum to see Christians eaten by lions and slaves hacked up by big guys with masks. And then they vote on the fate of the winner. In a way, we haven't changed much. We're not content with the fake blood in movies like this. We want the real thing. We run towards the tv when COPS comes on. We watch shows like Jerry Springer just to see who will win the fight. As long as they're less fortunate than us we'll watch their demise. You know, all those people getting dragged away have lives. They're real people. As soon as we start realizing that maybe we can get that crap off the air. But I don't think it's going to happen any time soon because I even find myself being stuck on those channels. I'm embarrassed by that (as it should be), but it happens occasionally. And while I'm ranting, there were a few parts of the movie that people laughed at that really weren't funny. There were a couple of scenes that hinted at the homosexual activity that was, at that time, perfectly normal to the Romans. Of course, everyone in this day and age finds that kind of stuff extremely funny. At this point it's cool to be gay, but only if you're funny. Now, I'm not gay, so it didn't offend me. I just thought it was interesting that we're supposed to be in a more enlightened time as far as these things are concerned, but we aren't even as far ahead as the Romans were. Go figure. In other news, the acting was excellent in the film. If this doesn't make Russell Crowe the star he deserves to be I don't know what he has to do. I guess be in a flick with Tom Cruise. (Blech!) He's really a great actor who can even bring standard fare like Mystery, Alaska up a notch or two. Joaquin was very good as a man who saw Rome as his new toy. We can almost see where he's coming from, but he's evil all the same. That's the way to make a villain believable. Make us identify with him. It's so much more frightening that way. Ridley Scott is a great director. Yeah, he's gone a little astray lately (GI Jane), but he hasn't missteped too many times. Think back to Blade Runner. Or Thelma And Louise. Or even White Squall. He's awesome. And he's back in form with this one. He puts his stamp on everything from fight scenes to dream sequences. (What's his deal with white horses?) I love the scenes of Maximus laying on the ground and then seeming to fly over it in a Koyannisqatsi type film. Perfect way to bring a dreamlike quality to the screen. Very good film from Mr. Scott. It ain't no Braveheart, but it'll take quite a bit to dislodge that one from my memory. This one comes pretty close, though. I would suggest seeing it on the biggest screen you can. And, while I have your attention, I have one more rant: TURN YOUR DAMN PHONES OFF WHEN YOU'RE IN A THEATRE!!!!! And, if you have it turned off but still know it's ringing, DON'T ANSWER IT!!!! It's a freakin' movie. This lady sitting next to me had two conversations with her son about whether or not he should go out that night. Not to mention all of the "Awwwww! You shouldn't do that!"s. I felt like grabbing her phone, putting it on vibrate, shoving it down her throat and calling her every five seconds for the next three hours. Now, I talk during movies. Yes, I'm guilty as hell. But, first off, what I say is really funny. Second I say it quietly enough to where only my friend can hear me. Unless, of course, it's a really bad movie and everyone knows it. Then I'll just shout it. Or maybe not. Next time someone does this kind of stuff I'm throwing whatever it is they're talking to (phone or friend) through the screen and then sending them after it.

The Virgin Suicides

admin — Mon, 08 May 2000 17:00:00 +0000

No, I did not go to this movie because I'm a dirty, horny old man. Well, maybe a little bit (I'm not old, anyway), but I really did want to see if Sofia Coppola could direct better than she can act. Believe me, she can. This is the story of five teenage sisters in 1975. Celicia (Hanna R. Hall--little Jenny from Forrest Gump) is the youngest. At the beginning of the movie she tries to kill herself, but she's found just in time to save her life. Her parents (James Woods and Kathleen Turner) can't quite figure out why. But the psychiatrist (Danny DeVito in a very short role) who talks with Celicia knows that she doesn't have enough contact with boys her own age. So the Lisbons have a party with boys and everything. Unfortunately, the kids don't really hit it off, so Celicia quietly goes upstairs and throws herself out the window. This time she succeeds. (She apparently hit a gate with spikes on it, but she looked like she was floating. I didn't get the gate part until they were pulling the thing out of the ground.) The rest of the movie goes through how her older sisters get through their parents' (especially Mom's) overbearing rules. Lux (Kirsten Dunst) is the only one we really get to know. She is a little hornball. They have a couple of guys over for dinner and she plays footsie with them. She turns the guys at school on (go figure). She gets the No Dating rule broken. That's when things get really bad. Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett from The Faculty) falls for Lux mainly because she doesn't show any interest in him. (He's the stud of the school.) Trip talks to Dad, who is also the high school math teacher, and gets him to talk Mrs. Witch into letting him and some of the guys take the girls to the Homecoming Dance. Dad's one of the chaperones, so nothing can happen, right? Well, Lux stays out all night with her new friend and gets all of the girls stuck in the house for the rest of their lives. No more school. No more boys. No more rock and roll. No more life. Things go downhill for all of them after that and it builds to a final act of rebellion that no one in the town will ever forget. Meanwhile there's a group of guys who live really close to the girls are falling in love with them, but they know that they'll never really get to know them because of their parents. Basically it's a really dark coming of age movie. It's narrated by one of the guys (Jonathan Tucker from Mr. Music and Sleepers, Anthony DeSimone from Sofia's first short Lick The Star, and a few other kids that I don't know) across the street many years later (Giovanni Ribisi). Occasionally we see Trip as a grown up, but we really don't know what happened to any of the kids. We just know that they all grow up in ways that kids never should in the year that the movie covers. I've read a lot about this movie telling us exactly what it's like to be a teenage girl. Now, like the doctor at the beginning of the film, I've never been a teenage girl, but I'm not really sure that I learned anything about them from the movie. Maybe if they had read more of Celicia's diary... But the movie is from the boy's point of view. We see some of the girls' daily lives and it does feel like it was directed by someone who knew what they were talking about, but there really wasn't much to the girls as characters. They were basically objects of affection for the school. Strangely, tough, this worked. The point wasn't to tell us how it feels to be a young girl, it was to tell us how it feels to be a young person. It showed us how kids deal with death. Yes, they are saddened by it, but they can't really show it. And if they choose to kill themselves, you're not always going to see signs in their eyes. Sometimes it will come at a time when it seems like they are setting themselves free from whatever it is that would cause them to take their own lives. And those kids that you barely know? They have a huge impact on your life. Only one person committed suicide while I was in high school and I didn't really know him. He was just another guy in one of my classes. But I'll remember him forever because he didn't seem like the type of guy who was so upset with life that he would deprive himself of it. I don't know why he did it. I guess no one really does. In this case, though, we know why the suicide happens. Kathleen Turner is the most overbearing, egotistical mother in recent film memory. And you thought your parents were overprotective. As time goes on you learn to hate her more than her kids probably ever could. James Woods, on the other hand, is just weak. He can't stand up to his wife. He's a milquetoast in the worst sense of the word. He's just as much to blame as Mom is, but it's harder to hate him because, dammit, he tries. These two actors, of course, tower over their younger co-stars, but the rest do very well, too. Kirsten Dunst is perfect as the lusty little girl who everyone wants, but no one wants to defile. But did we expect her to be anything but perfect? She's a very good actress. And not too bad to look at, either. Josh Hartnett, who keeps threatening to become a real actor, does very well as the young man who is so confused by his feelings for Luz that he thinks that he might be wrong about them. Only when he grows up does he realize that he may have really loved her...or does he? Maybe he's just rationalizing what he did. My only problem with him is the fact that, with the long hair of the 70s, he looks a little too much like his Faculty co-star, Clea DuVall. Not as cute, though. Sofia's direction alternates between dead serious (the scenes with the girls stuck in their house) to near parody of the times (Trip strutting the halls to the strains of Heart's "Magic Man"). It all works very well. Even when Luz's eyes literally twinkle we feel like that's what they would do if we were really looking at her. I say we let Ms. Coppola keep directing only if she promises to never act again. Kudos on the music choice, too. From ELO's "Strange Magic" to 10cc's "I'm Not In Love" every song seemed to fit the scene that it was scoring. And Air did a great job on keeping the actual score in the period. So Sofia Coppola puts a great directorial debut out. Not perfect. Maybe a little too distant, but very good nonetheless. Go see it, but don't expect easy answers. Or a happy movie. Watch for Scott Glenn in a small role,too.

Road Trip

admin — Sun, 21 May 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Back when Tom Green started his show (actually a few months later) I saw the last minute or so of an episode. All he was doing was riding around on a tricycle and babbling. He just wasn't funny at all. Yes, my opinion was formed in less than a minute, but it was an opinion that I was willing to stand by. Ok, it's a bit closed minded...but I'm also big enough to admit when I'm wrong. I'm not saying he's one of the funniest guys in the world or anything, but he's pretty damn funny when he wants to be. Kind of like a 90's/00's version of Andy Kaufman, only he actually wants to be a comedian. He does things just for the pure spectacle of it even going so far as to exploit his sickness. (That's something that I must admit helped his cause in my eyes.) The biggest difference between Tom Green and Andy Kaufman is that Tom has actually made a good movie. (Ok, he's been in two. Look for Clutch for a cameo. I don't know if it's available anywhere, though.) This time around Tom plays Barry, a student/tour guide at The University Of Ithaca (of course, most of us call it Cornell) in NY. He also happens to be the worst tour guide in the history of tour guides. He doesn't know anything about the college he's been at for eight years and he's not exactly the brightest peanut in the...yeah. Well, he makes up for it by being a good story teller. He busts out the story of his group of friends and their title activity. Josh Porter (Breckin Meyer from Can't Hardly Wait, Dancer TX, Clueless and Go) has a problem. He and his girlfriend of his entire school career, Tiffany (Rachel Blanchard from The Rage: Carrie 2 and the tv version of Clueless), are stuck living about 1500 miles apart. He's in Ithaca and she's right here in my lovely little hometown of Austin, TX at The University Of, uh, Austin. Just so you know, there's no such college. They've remained faithful even though they haven't seen each other in months. Josh, however, has a not so secret admirer. Beth (Amy Smart from Varsity Blues and Outside Providence--luckily she's finally in a good movie) is a popular girl in Ithaca who is just looking for a nice guy. But she's got a kinky side that she shows Josh when she seduces him on camera. Things get a little confused when Barry accidentally mails the tape to Tiffany. Now it's time for a little trip. Josh and his friends take off in one of their cars. Actually, it's Kyle's dad's car. Kyle (DJ Qualls) is the weakest willed of the weak willed. He lets his family control his life and freely admits that he's never had sex...with a human. I don't want to know. E.L. (Seann William Scott playing pretty much the same role he played in American Pie) is exactly the opposite. He'll do anything that's fun and gets mad at Josh for putting off Beth's advances. Rubin (John Stewart look alike Paulo Costanzo) is the resident genius who can apparently teach anyone anything in 48 hours. He's also a major pothead. Oh well. Basically, everything that can go wrong on the trip does. They lose their car, they run out of money, they meet up with disgusting waiter, they butt heads with an inattentive motel attendant (Andy Dick in a very funny and actually understated guest appearance), walk into a frat where they just don't belong and many more things that are just too strange to mention. Meanwhile, Barry's back in Ithaca reveling in the fact that he gets to feed a mouse to Rubin's snake. ("Someone's going to die tonight. Give in to the black abyss of death.") Of course this brings up the now classic mouse eating scene. You know, I really think that this is a high point in cinematic history. Seeing a man stick a live mouse in his mouth is really something special! So this movie is much funnier than it ever should have been. It looks like just a really stupid version of Animal House or something of that nature. Maybe an offshoot of American Pie. But it goes beyond that and almost (but not quite) becomes one with those movies. It's not a classic by any means, but it could become a cult thing in a second. It shows a rather skewed version of reality, so don't expect something quite as revelatory as the big Pie. But it calls attention to the fact that it's unrealistic: Barry gets called on a scene involving coeds walking around the bathroom topless. It's funny how that makes it all ok. Yeah, parts of it are cliched. As soon as Kyle's dad (Fred Ward) gets on the trail of the boys you know what's going to go down between him and his son. We pretty much know exactly what's going to happen with the love triangle when we find out that Beth is actually a nice girl and not just trying to get some. No great shakes in the plot, but who cares? This is some funny stuff. Who wouldn't laugh at a guy sticking French toast down his pants? As long as I'm not the one eating it, it's fun. There's nothing wrong with a little dirty toast. And it's not just Tom who puts in a good performance. Breckin, who's always been cool in my book, does a great job as the straight man to his wacked out friends. Seann has been playing this role to perfection for a while, so of course he was good. DJ was a little annoying, but that's the character, so he did good, too. And, by the way, director/writer Todd Phillips seems to be on a role with his college flicks. His first big one was Frat House, which I was, I guess, lucky enough to see at South By South West a couple of years ago. It was very good, but really disturbing in its brutal honesty about hazing in New Jersey fraternities. Not too surprising, though. (You can tell that I don't have a very high opinion of frat boys. After all, they steal all the women from little guys like me and generally bring the IQ of any college down. And, yes, I realize that I just alienated some of my friends. They're used to it, though. It's the price you pay for being in a frat.) No matter if the movie was staged or not (and there are some who think it was) it was very good and worth catching if you can. I saw it on tv not too long ago, but I can't remember who was playing it. Todd's other two movies are more rock oriented documentaries. Hated is about G.G. Allin and the Murder Junkies and Bittersweet Motel is about Phish. I haven't seen those, but they seem to be pretty good according to the IMDb. Road Trip is his first fiction film but you wouldn't know it from the way he handles the story. I guess he'll be one of the few (like Michael Apted) who can alternate between the two film forms. Good for him. So check it out. And, as an added bonus, the lovely and talented Ms. Smart shows a little more than she has before. And, if that doesn't grab you, so does Tom. And, of course, the last part of it takes place in Austin. If you're from here (which, I know that my Audience Of One used to live here) only about 20 seconds of the movie was actually filmed here. And, funny thing, the exit from I-35 onto MLK still says "University Of Texas." I guess this town is big enough for two big colleges. (And, yes, everyone in the theatre cheered when Austin showed up on the screen. Such pride we have.)

Mission: Impossible 2

admin — Fri, 26 May 2000 17:00:00 +0000

I love John Woo. There's just no getting around that fact. He could put out a film of Chow Yun Fat reading stereo instructions and, somehow, it would be exciting. Tom Cruise is the most over-rated actor in the world. There's just no getting around that fact. He could be in a movie by the best director in the world and somehow bring it down a few notches. Oh wait! He has!! Watch Eyes Wide Shut. Or The Color Of Money. Or Born On The Fourth Of July. Or the first Mission: Impossible. Or...or this movie. So let's go over a little of the plot, shall we? Ethan Hunt (Mr. Cruise) is at it again. This time, though he's trying to keep another rogue agent, Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott--the prince from Ever After), from spreading a virus that will kill its victims if they don't get the antidote within 20 hours. He's trying to give it to people so that he can sell the antidote and make billions and billions of dollars. But first he has to get past the guy who had the idea originally (Brendan Gleeson--Hamish from Braveheart). He also has to keep the virus safe from people like Ethan and his new girlfriend, Nayah (the impossibly beautiful Thandie Newton from Beloved). Nayah used to be Sean's girl, but she left him in order to go on with her life of crime. But Ethan picks her up, at the insistence of his boss, Swanbeck (Anthony Hopkins in a short little nothing role), to get close to Sean in ways that he doesn't even want to dream about. However, within two minutes of meeting her, Ethan falls in love with her. I think it had something to do with the fact that she could drive a car as well as he could. (That's the first exciting scene...and the last for about an hour and a half.) So now both Ethan and Nayah are torn between whether or not she should be doing this. Of course she does it and all goes to plan. Sort of. This movie was so mediocre. The biggest problems with this movie lie in the script which, surprisingly, was written by Robert Towne, legendary writer of Chinatown, Personal Best, The Last Detail, and Shampoo. I guess he's gone a little downhill lately. He also wrote the first M:I flick, Days Of Thunder, The Firm and Love Affair. What's his deal with Tommy? Maybe he should get together with Rosie O'Donnell. By the way, what happened in Towne's personal life lately? He seems to really have it in for women. Not only is there the line from the beginning of this review, but there's Sir Anthony's line from the trailers, "To go to bed with a man and lie to him? She's a woman. What more training does she need?" Ouch! (Although, I have to admit that I loved the lines. Heh heh heh.) And he screwed up one of Hopkins' lines. The leader of the IMF wouldn't say "It's Mission: Impossible, not Mission: Difficult." He would say, "You're on the Impossible Mission Force, not the Difficult Mission Force." That just makes more sense and it's just as funny. Which is to say, not very. For an action movie there's precious little time for action. As one of the guys walking out of the theatre said, "That was a really good little romance." There was so much going on between Ethan and Nayah that they kind of forgot that there was a pressing dilemma on their hands. The action scenes go a little like this: There was the car scene between Ethan and Nayah, a break-in scene where Ethan once again dangles from a rope only a few feet from the floor (can we get a new set piece for these movies?), and then the last half hour with it's motorcycle chase, fight scene and gunplay. Now there was nothing wrong with those scenes, but where's the real action? Why do we need all of this stuff going on between the two lovers that we never really care about? And why is John Woo directing a romance? His last movie, Face/Off, had about five minutes of "romance" in it and that was a big Hollywood blockbuster. They're supposed to have bad love stories in them. Look at Armageddon! He's not a romance director. He shouldn't have even been involved in well over half of this movie! But, once again, Mr. Cruise has taken a very stylish director and taken nearly all of his style out of him. The last one, granted, was directed by a man who has only made one really good movie since 1987's The Untouchables (and that would be Carlito's Way from 1993), but De Palma is still a very stylish director. There were two scenes where he was allowed to make a real contribution to M:I. This time Woo got to make a few more, but Greg Araki (the worst living filmmaker) could have made this movie and the only difference would be the lack of slo-mo. Ok, maybe it wouldn't have been as interesting and Ethan Hunt would have been gay, but that's beside the point. Then there's the little plot holes. Remember in the first one when Ethan takes off his Ross Perot mask and we're all surprised that it's really him? Well, since our special effect technology has gotten better since 1996 they decide to beat that one into the ground. Now, instead of having Tom wear makeup, we have Tom playing Dougray playing Tom. Then they just stick a blue mask on Dougray's face and digitally stick Tom's face on it so he can take the mask off. It looks pretty cool, but do we need it four times? Not at all. Especially when it's not a surprise in any of those times after the first one. And the last time Ethan apparently puts one on him and his enemy in the middle of a fight. How did he know that that's who he was going to have a chance to mask? Did he have masks of ever single one of Sean's men? That makes for a pretty damn big bag of tricks. But I guess that's nitpicking. And there's no way you can skydive out of a commercial jet. Yes, they put those parachutes in them, but they don't expect you to use them. You're way too high and going way too fast. Yeah, the bad guy was flying it, but it didn't look like he was dropping altitude until right before they jumped. Also, could Ethan have really bungeed from a helicoptor through a slit that's only about three feet wide without harming his pretty little face? Not a chance in hell. Even three feet away that would have been hard, but he was about 30 feet away. But these are action cliches that we have to deal with I guess. Would James Bond have been able to jump off a cliff, catch an airplane and fly it down to saftey? Nope. But it's Bond, so we accept it. I didn't think Mission: Impossible was supposed to be like that, though. I really do think that at some point the M:I flicks and the James Bond flicks are going to cross and we'll get Ethan Hunt working totally alone and James working with a team. What happened to the Impossible Mission Force? I know they were all killed in the first five minutes of the first one, but shouldn't he have a real team this time around. Sure he got to pick a couple of people (Ving Rhames returning in his role from the first movie and William R. Mapother in a role that REALLY doesn't matter. But nepotism runs deep in the Heartland. He's Cruise's cousin. And that's Tom's real last name.), but did he really need them? Apparently he's a one man IMF. And that's just so not true to the original TV show. (I won't even mention the fact that they made the leader of the original IMF, Jim Phelps, the bad guy in the first movie. Isn't that kind of like finding out that Captain Kirk was a Klingon all along?) And they need to stop trying to pain Tom into a role that's not him. I don't care what anyone says, he's really not that charming. That freakin' Arnold on Green Acres was more charming than he is. He tries in this one (strange since he never really did in the first one--maybe he didn't have time since that one actually had some action), but he kind of comes across a little slimy. Perhaps since he kept the hair he thought he was still in Magnolia. But, with all of its predictability and stupid romance, the end kicked some major butt. I couldn't help but get a little excited when they were riding those motorcycles around in slow motion and kicking the crap out of each other in pure John Woo style. (He even threw some doves in there for us.) But, is it just me, or did Tom look a little like Kevin Smith regular Jason Mewes? And Dougray, in long shots, looked way too much like Tom to tell the difference. But in close-ups he looked like Antonio Bandares. Poor guy. Doesn't even have an identity of his own. At least he's not Tom Cruise. So I guess the movie isn't a total loss. But I didn't even think it was as good as the first one. But if you go don't think you're going to a John Woo film. (And please don't pay full price!) It's just another Tom Cruise vehicle. File it next to The Firm...with guns. And a little style.

Battlefied Earth, or How John Travolta Learned How To Stop Thinking And Worship Ed Wood

admin — Wed, 31 May 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Before you think I'm completely insane, just know that I had a free pass for Regal Cinemas and I felt a sense of duty as an amateur critic to warn people (my audience of one, anyway) away from it. And that, dear reader, is the only reason I went to see what seems to be the most reviled film in history. That and I needed a good laugh. And laugh I did. First, a little back story that you all probably know anyway. A couple of decades ago there was once a little known sci-fi writer named L. Ron Hubbard. He wrote the kind of stuff that used to get made into movies back in the 50s. You know, alien parables about races taking over races and humans coming from the bottom to survive. Sometimes they had some grand message about the way the universe was going, sometimes they didn't. Who cares? Well, he decided to write a book called Dianetics back in 1950. It was basically an outline of his "new way." If people would only follow him he could show them how to cure all ailments without the use of modern science. But Dianetics is a science according to Hubbard. The funny thing is that he cures himself of ever being sued by saying that The Church Of Scientology doesn't treat anyone, they send them to practicing specialists. Yeah. That's what I thought. So the new "church" wallowed for a while and he kept churning out sci-fi books. Then, suddenly, everything exploded and Sir Hubbard became a multi-million copy selling author/guru. We all remember those lame commercials back in the 80s trying to sell his newly found book usually to late night audiences. There are buildings all over the country touting his "religion." (Even, sorry to say, one right off of the U.T. campus here in Austin. A friend of a friend walked in there and was told that he was going to kill himself because he was sssssoooooo depressed. But they could help! Funny. He felt perfectly happy.) Well, even after this explosion of psuedo-crap L. Ron (can I call you L?) kept writing. In 1982 he published Battlefield Earth. Sometime after that a whole bunch of celebrities jumped on the band wagon. Tom and Nicole, John and Kelly, apparently Isaac Hayes. (NNNNNOOOOOO!!!!!! I thought you were smarter than that Isaac!) Then, just as suddenly as he appeared, LL Cool Ron died leaving an entire nation in...well...the same state it was before he died. Only with one less person. But I guess the important one here is John Travolta. He was so impressed with Hubbard's pulp sci-fi (which no one else is really very impressed with) that he decided a long time ago that Battlefield Earth would make a great movie. Kind of a Star Wars for the spiritually lost set. So sometime after he got famous again (I'm assuming...who would have given him this much money right after Look Who's Talking?) he hit the road and tried to sell his new idea. Now, some years later, Warner Bros. and Morgan Creek Productions have picked it up. This is one of the first times that I've ever felt sorry for a production company. Unfortunately for Morgan Creek, it's very hard to do good sci-fi. But the good part of it is that there are two ways to do it. Good sci-fi has to either be smart (2001: A Space Odyssey) or exciting (Jurassic Park). Occasionally it's both (Dark City), but that's not very likely. Of course there's a whole slew of flicks on the other side of "good sci-fi." The "so bad it's good" side (Plan 9 From Outer Space, Species, Mutant Women From The Third Planet From Betelgeuse). In the middle you have the mediocre sci-fi (The Postman, Waterworld). These are the worst sci-fi movies of all time. They're not even fun to make fun of. This one teeters just on the edge of being mediocre and so bad it's good. Plenty to make fun of, but why bother? It makes fun of itself. What's the story? It seems that sometime before the year 3000 the Cyclos have taken over Earth. Now, in 3000, the humans have gone through a devolution that would make Mark Mothersbaugh proud. (Strange how the buildings and cars only look maybe a couple hundred years old. I didn't think we built things to last that long anymore.) These people barely even know what death is, so when the Cyclos capture them they don't know how to use any weapons to defend themselves. This makes the horrible Cyclos think that "human animals" are stupid and shouldn't be trusted with anything but feeble slave labor. The head of the Earth Cyclos, Terl (Mr. Travolta), is particularly unfond of Earthlings. He's been trying to get out of his "temporary" assignment as the Chief Of Security on Earth for quite a while. Unfortunately he did something naughty with the leader's daughter, so now he has to stay. He now has to try to stay on the good side of his on-planet boss who looks a lot like Dan Aykroyd in Nothing But Trouble. Terl's second in command, Ker (Forest Whitaker) has been training to take his place, but now it looks like the smarter half is just going to have to wait until his superior dies to advance in the company. Meanwhile, slave human Johnnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) is being taught by Terl (via a machine using special effects straight out of Ghostbusters 2) because he thinks that humans can help him steal some gold from one of the mines. So basically he's teaching someone who he sees as inferior to use all of his equipment and expects him not to use it against him. The rest of the plot is just Johnnie and Terl seeing who can out-stupid each other. And they both do a damn good job of it. (Can you tell why there haven't been any movies from L. Ron since 1941?) First off, Terl seems to think that humans, if let free, will automatically go to their favorite food when they get hungry. Somehow it doesn't surprise him when our "favorite food" is raw rat. Then, when Johnnie is caught again, he gets a chance to be really free and take Terl with him in order to get some of the all too precious leverage, but instead he gives Terl back his gun and becomes a prisoner again! What if you never get another chance?!?! Then, instead of killing that stupid bastard, Terl just throws him in with the rest of the humans and lets him talk about his revolution. Then Johnnie, instead of mining, gets his followers to fly to Fort Knox to get the gold out of there, not thinking that it might raise some eyebrows that it's in bars. (And not realizing that it's very heavy. But seeing as how they push huge carts of the bars around quite easily, these guys must be a lot stronger than we are now.) When Terl does notice the bars he fully believes that they smelted all of the raw ore into bars! And, near the end during a hand to claw fight, Johnnie puts a ring around Terl's arm that will explode with just enough force to blow his arm off. Somehow Terl doesn't notice this big bulky thing hanging out on his arm that wasn't there before. (I guess I just gave something away, but does it really matter?) The worst thing about it is that they leave it open for a sequel! This, supposedly, is only half of the book. Now we have to find out what happens to Johnnie and his friends as they fight off more Cyclos from other planets! I'll be looking for that flick next year on Cinemax. Hopefully starring Miles (and Miles) O'Keefe and Harry Hamlin in the lead roles. Now, imagine every sci-fi movie you've ever seen. Turn them bad and smash them all together. Now you have some inkling of how bad this movie is. Just in the first 15 minutes I noticed that they used the wipes from Star Wars, the hair/makeup/wardrobe from Waterworld and The Postman and there was even a scene where Johnnie gets shot and runs through about fifteen plate glass windows. Yes, even Blade Runner can be perverted. And the ten foot tall Cyclos are so stupid looking that we can't help but laugh at them. At first they're almost evil looking, but they're only shown in shadows and at weird angles that make them seem like some kind of Twilight Zone hell-creature. Then when they're finally shown in all their, erm, "glory" they look like Klingons in Elton John's Pinball Wizard boots. They tried to explain their walking trouble by saying that the gravity was different. But why were they having problems walking on their own home planet? (Which looked a little like the Borg planet.) And of course the direction was nearly inept. Roger Christian, whose biggest credit before this was Masterminds with Patrick Stewart, was probably the only one Travolta could get to direct this slop. But he gets so close during fight scenes that I never knew what was going on. At one point I couldn't even figure out who got shot! Mr. Pulp Fiction seemed to be in "I'm Evil" mode. I've never heard so much maniacal laughing in my entire life. And only a quarter of it was coming from me. The rest was from the man himself after saying such lines as, "A human getting leverage on a Cyclo? That'll be the day." Maybe he's seen The Searchers too many times. I used to think Travolta was a bad actor. Then he started to surprise me with Primary Colors and A Civil Action. Now I feel like I'm watching him in Perfect again. And what the hell is Barry "I need a new agent" Pepper doing in this? Did he decide to follow Saving Private Ryan and The Green Mile with this? Or was he just following one of his favorite actors to the egotistical actor's graveyard? I hope he doesn't get dragged down with Johnny Boy. And the script. It sounds like it was written by a little kid who knows that his parents don't want him cussing too much. Oh sure, he can get away with a "crap" here and there. In fact, screenwriters Corey Mandell and J.D. Shapiro got away with quite a few "craps." Just about every other line had one in it. How could Forest Whitaker (who I would think would be too busy directing Sandra Bullock to do something this bad) have not felt stupid saying lines like "What kind of crap-lousy thing is this?" Did Da L Ron Ron actually write phrases like that? Or were these creations of these two guys? If they made it up they should be promptly flayed with a fish scaler. This could be enough to kill the careers of everyone involved. Hopefully Hollywood and the viewing public in general can see it in their hearts to give them all another chance. Travolta has a few more flicks lined up if they haven't dropped him out already. I could care less if Roger Christian and the writers go anywhere else, but lets give John, Forest and Barry a chance elsewhere. John was blinded by his leader and the rest just followed. Forgive them. They know not what they do. But lets make fun of them while they try to win our favor again. It's really too bad that MST3K went off the air. This is craptastic.

American Psycho

admin — Tue, 06 Jun 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Isn't it amazing how many movies have come out lately about how immaterial materialism is? First there was American Beauty which told us that, no matter how expensive the couch is, it should be ok to have sex on it. Then there was Fight Club. It told us that the things we own might end up owning us and that we are not beautiful and unique snowflakes. These, of course, were two of the best movies of 1999, a year full of great and innovative movies. Now comes American Psycho. Yes, on the surface it's an exploitive romp inside the mind of a serial killing yuppie in 1988. But if you probe not too far under that surface story you'll find out what it's really about. The surface story is of Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), a young man who is so intent on fitting in and looking good that he doesn't even notice that he looks just like everybody else. He listens to music that he might not even like just because it's "cool." He won't go anyplace where he doesn't need a reservation. He even watches himself while he's having sex with two women. This is about as low as you can get on the ego food chain. He has become the kind of plastic robot that we all learned to hate back in the late 80s. That's not even the real problem with Pat. He seems to be perfect: perfect fiancee (Reese Witherspoon), perfect secretary who also happens to be in love with him (Chloe Sevigny from Kids and Boys Don't Cry), perfect body, perfect friends. But there's a great big, awful, nasty problem: He really enjoys killing people. He starts (as far as we know) with a bum who doesn't seem to understand the concept of "get a job." Then he moves on to his "friend" Paul Allen (Jared Leto from Girl, Interrupted, Fight Club and Prefontaine) who happens to have better business cards than he does and always confuses him with someone else. This is the murder we've all heard about where he pontificates about the importance of Sports in the career of Huey Lewis And The News. (Although he doesn't seem to know quite enough about them. He says that Sports came out in 1983...it actually came out in 84. Am I letting my geek flag fly too high? Who cares. I like Huey. There. I've said it.) His happy dance around his posh upscale apartment just before he drives an ax into Paul's face is hilarious. Things go downhill for Pat after this. A nosy cop (Willem Defoe) keeps questioning him about the "disappearance" of Paul. (But someone said that they saw him in London two days after his murder. Hmmm. Just another case of mistaken identity?) His girlfriend is getting more and more needy. His stuff is constantly under scrutiny by his friends. Paul has a better apartment than he does and everyone has better cards. What's a poor yuppie to do? Kill more people, of course! The movie pretty much goes on like this for a while until a finale that leaves you with more questions than answers: Did he actually kill Paul or someone else? Was he confused with someone else? Did he kill anyone at all? But it lets you know that you're not getting out easy. The whole ending is summed up in one shot of Pat in front of a door with a "This is not an exit" sign on it. Along those lines, throughout the movie I was asking myself one question: Why does Pat kill? Does he do it because he really likes it? Or does he actually use it as a outlet to be different from everyone else? He's spent his entire adult life trying to be just like everyone else, but does he really want to be different? Does he want to leave behind a legacy that's new and exciting in a twisted way as opposed to leaving behind just a bunch of paperwork and a cool car? We don't get the answer, but that's what makes this movie the movie the The Minus Man really, really wanted to be. Christian Bale put in a performance of a lifetime here. This guy has grown from extremely gifted child actor (Henry V, Empire Of The Sun--one of my all-time favorite flicks) to one of the best unsung actors of his generation. I'm thinking he's not going to be unsung anymore. He put so much glee into the murder scenes that he almost makes you happy he did it. He was funny and disturbing all at the same time. Then, after playing Pat as a plastic anti-hero, he turns him around near the end. He goes to almost human when he starts to think that he may not have gotten away with it. Then, when the answer is obvious (to him, anyway) he goes back to the robot we all knew and loved. Amazing job that I hope gets some recognition. And for all of you out there who think that this is just another gore fest, it's not. There's not really that much violence shown on screen. It all takes place off camera with only the aftermath sometimes shown. And, yeah, that can be pretty bad, but we never see the ax fall on Paul. We only hear the sweet strains of "Hip To Be Square." (A perfect song for Mr. Bateman.) And what's wrong with that? I kept thinking what a great double feature this would make with Wall Street. Both are about 80s greed culture and how evil it can really be. Both feature monsters of a sort. And both were made by very talented directors. (In fact, Oliver Stone was up to direct this one. Whew!) Mary Harron brought an edge to the material that I don't think Stone could these days. He just doesn't seem to be up to it anymore. (Did you see Any Given Sunday? Yech!) And she made what could have been just another serial killer flick with a "message" up a notch to being a great film about greed and materialism that happens to have a few murders in it. It's no Psycho, but it's at least a step above the entire slasher flick genre. (But get Pat's last name. Homage?)

Gone In 60 Seconds

admin — Sun, 11 Jun 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Ok, I have to go back to my habit of talking about trailers real quick. I think I may have said something about this one before, but it warrants another go. COYOTE UGLY--What the hell is Bruckheimer thinking? Oh. Wait. I forgot who I was talking about. Of course he's not thinking. He's just stroking his, er, ego. Basically he's taking one of his old movies (Flashdance) and a movie that may as well have been his (Cocktail) and turning them into something even worse than they were (if that's possible): a ripoff of two very bad movies. This one does, however, have the asset of a) not having Tom Cruise and b) having a lot of really hot women acting the way we want them to...like us. Come on, Jerry. I know you've got a couple more good flicks in you. Just stop repeating yourself! REMEMBER THE TITANS--You know, I'm not much of a football fan, but I am a Denzel Washington fan. I could watch him in almost anything. (Although I'm still avoiding Virtuosity--even though it has Russell Crow in it, too.) This one looks pretty good, though. It's a true story about a football couch in Alabama who was told that if he lost one game he would be fired. As long as it's better than the last two football flicks I've seen from Hollywood (Varsity Boobs and Any Stupid Sunday) it should be ok. Not something I'm really looking forward to, though. And now for the reason you all came here. How is it that the aforementioned Mr. Bruckheimer came to remake a B-movie from 1974 that no one really cared about in the first place? The main attractions of the original were 93 cars being crashed within 97 minutes and a 40 minute car chase. And since that was already done what are you going to do? Put Nic Cage and Angelina Jolie in it, of course. In this new version Nic plays Memphis Raines, an ex-car thief extraordinairre. He's moved on to a gas station/kiddie race track, but his brother, Kip (Giovanni Ribisi from Saving Private Ryan and The Mod Squad), hasn't. He's formed his own crew that has decided to work for a British gang leader (Christopher Eccleston from Shallow Grave, Jude and eXistenZ). The only problem is that Kip is a moron and likes to race people in his stolen cars, so he accidentally leads the cops right to their hideout. That doesn't make their boss happy, so he sticks Kip in a car crusher and politely asks Memphis to go back in business and steal 50 cars in three days or he'll squash the kid like the brainless grape that he is. This, of course, sets Memphis on a Blues Brothers-like quest to get the band, er, gang back together. He gets Otto (Robert Duvall), the Silent Bob-like Sphinx (Vinnie Jones from Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels) and Donny (Chi McBride from The Frighteners) pretty easily, but Sway (Angelina looking great in dreds) is a different story. She's gone straight just like all the rest, but she doesn't want to let go of that life. She ends up doing it for Kip and for the movie. The job isn't made any easier by the fact that the cops are hot on their trails. Det. Castlebeck (Delroy Lindo from The Cider House Rules and A Life Less Ordinary) has been after Memphis for years, but has always been one step behind. (Of course this time he's only about 50 steps behind, but I guess he's getting old or something.) And his partner, Det. Drycoff (Timothy Olyphant from Go and Scream 2), can't seem to make up his mind whether he wants to be smart or stupid. And then there's Kip's team. They don't help, either. There's Tumbler (Scott Caan from Varsity Blues), Freb (the 100% talent free James Duval from Go and lots of flicks by the equally talentless Greg Araki--thank God he's not related to Robert), Tobey (William Lee Scott from The Opposite Of Sex and October Sky) and one other punk whose name eludes both me and the IMDb. These guys all have their specialties (Freb's--yes, that's spelled right--is ordering pizzas. And I totally believe that that's all James is good for), but they're about as dumb as the day is long. I wouldn't trust these guys with a sponge. What's wrong with this movie? Well it's just so damn dumb! This is what gives Hollywood action movies a bad name. The cops are so dumb that they couldn't think their way out of Denise Richards' bra. Castlebeck finds the remains of a black light on the floor of the first warehouse and wonders what it is. He has to send it to a lab to figure something out that I could have told him without having seen the first part of the flick. And then it takes the lab two days! Drycoff can't form a sentence one minute and then comes up with some brilliant piece of information the next. Can we have some consistency from these characters? Please?!?! The rest of the characters aren't a whole lot better, but at least you can sympathize with them...sort of. Personally I would have let Kip fend for himself. This was the first time that Giovanni has really annoyed me other than that travesty of a tv show turned movie The Mod Squad. (What were they thinking making that one R-rated? Didn't that kind of alienate their core audience?) He and his friends should have been left to die horrible deaths in the car crushers. It did have a few saving graces, though. First off, I still like the Bruckheimer look. You know, that quick cutting action sequence, the shot of the hero from way above coming down to a close up of his face, that reddish hue of the films. No matter who directs his flicks (this one is Dominic Sena who also did Kalifornia, a much better Natural Born Killers) they all look exactly the same. The only one of his usual canon of directors who can put any of his own personality into his films is Tony Scott. And it's taken him years to do it. Take a look at Top Gun and Days Of Blunder. They look just like this one. Then there's the cast. Nic, Robert, Delroy and Angelina are just cool, even if they have awful lines to deliver. But Robert's looking so much older than he did in either The Apostle or Deep Impact. What's happened to him in the last year? There's a really cool scene where the old crew is meditating to Low Rider and the new crew is just looking confused. Pretty much the best non-action scene in the whole movie. (If you don't count the semi-sex scene. But I guess that's sort of an action scene.) But the main attraction is, of course, the car chases. The last 20 minutes of this flick is taken up by a pretty amazing car chase between Nic in a beautiful 1967 Mustang GT (codenamed Eleanor for the radios) and every cop in L.A. This is nearly as good as anything in The French Connection, Bullitt or Ronin. And it almost made me glad that I spent the $5 for a matinee ticket. The only problem I had was that there were two chase scenes in the sequence. Taken separately they're awesome. Taken together they start to look a little bit alike. There are so many parts where a bigger vehicle is coming out of an alley very slowly and nearly blocking the way for Nic that I started to wonder if there was a slow moving vehicle factory nearby. But that didn't stop the chases from being exciting. I would almost buy it just for that alone. But then they had to ruin it by tagging on a contrived "feel good" ending that made me feel anything but good. Something about how "A brother's love is a brother's love." Nice sentiment, but I doubt that it would come from the person it came from. It's Blue Streak all over again. (Yeah. That was a bad movie, too.) So, if you're into car chases go see it during cheap time. Otherwise don't waste your time. It's fun, but not enough to really recommend.

Will the real history teacher please stand up?

admin — Wed, 14 Jun 2000 17:00:00 +0000

About 15 years ago America started something that some of us have really been trying to kill ever since. It's called political correctness. And while it's pretty much been obliterated by the likes of Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Eminem and Kevin Smith, it still threatens to rear it's ugly little head every once in a while. What's happened this time? you may ask. Well, my great state of Texas seems to be part of the problem. A few days ago Gov. George Bush (who, by the way, is thinking that he will actually get elected president--just in case you didn't know) decided to go in in the middle of the night and take down a couple of plaques from the Texas Supreme Court building. These plaques were apparently offensive to some people because they featured Confederate flags and were written in Civil War language...which, of course, means that it didn't say anything about race or creed. Knowing that these were written during the Civil War didn't enter into these peoples' heads. The fact that the building was built with Confederate money didn't enter into these peoples' heads. All they saw was something that offended them so it must be destroyed. Now, this is where things get sticky. First off, the Civil War was not fought over slavery. I know that's the initial thought, but it wasn't. It was fought over money and states' rights. Yes, slavery entered into those two things, but it wasn't the main agenda. In fact, I believe that slavery was on its way out anyway. (Not sure on that fact, but it seems like I heard it somewhere.) Second, these things were written during a time when tensions were high and race meant something very different from what it means today. Yes, it was an intentional omission, but it was way back when. Things have obviously changed. Taking these plaques down (a part of our history) is like taking Buckwheat out of the Little Rascals shorts or taking the "All God's Chillun" segment out of A Day At The Races or taking the little black centaurs out of Fantasia...oh. Wait. They did that, didn't they? Yes, it's a regretful thing, but it happened. And in order to remember that it was bad we can't ignore it. If we do we end up like all of those Germans who deny the fact that the Holocaust ever happened. And then we could be doomed to repeat history. (Oops. Can't use that word, but more on that later.) And that doesn't even begin to cover the fact that Gov. Bush (that still gives me a shudder) did this without a vote and said that his covert operation was in order to keep the noise from disturbing the work going on in the building. How stupid do you think we are, Georgey? Can a couple of plaques really make that much noise? I hope you lose a lot of votes over this, you moron. The second thing that some people here in Texas have decided also involves the Civil War. At Texas A&M (the college that can't decide whether or not they want to keep burning their students) there was once a portrait of one of their presidents that happened to also feature a portrait of General Robert E. Lee. The president is long dead and the painting has been up forever. But now someone has deemed it offensive because a general of the Confederacy is in it. So what? Yeah, the guy fought for the wrong side, but this is a piece of art commemorating a university president, not a general who was doing a duty that he thought was right. We have pictures of every governor in our capitol. Should we take down all of the ones who ever uttered a dirty word or did something stupid in office? It would be a very lonely hallway if we did. But this isn't the biggest offense of the last week. No, not by a long shot. Some college back east (and I'm sorry that I don't know which one so that I could rail on them personally) has decided that the word 'history' is offensive. Yes, it's a sexist word! I guess Saturday Night Live was once again one step ahead of the world when they did a skit called Great Moments In Herstory back in the 70s. I'm sure that the people who spoke Latin had sex in mind when they came up with the word 'history.' I would know who they were, but I'm not allowed to study history! (I really wish that I could claim that one as my own, but it was a co-worker's joke. Sorry to disappoint you. Thanx Dan.) So we can't teach history anymore. What do we teach? The 'All That Stuff That Happened Years Ago' class? The 'Past' class? The 'Class Formerly Known As History And Is Now Known As Prince'? Why the hell are we so messed up over who we offend with meaningless little words? 'History' is not a bad word. It's not sexist in any way shape or form. If we kill of history then actors can't go into histrionics. We can't take histamines. (But I bet we could take antihistamines.) And women couldn't get hysterectomies. This is the exact reason that we have the South Parks and the Slim Shadys. As a matter of fact, if there had been no PC movement in the early 90s there would have been no reason for Matt and Trey to rail at the world and make us see how stupid we really look when we try to please everyone all the time. I have a sister who has William's Syndrome. I don't want people calling her 'handy-capable'. She's disabled. She knows it. I know it. Her mom's a little reluctant to say it, but that's the way it is. We deal with it. People have to learn to deal with the crap that life gives them. And if Christina Aguilera can't have a sense of humor when it comes to how slutty she looks maybe she shouldn't dress like a tramp in heat and stand on the cover of Rolling Stone with her tongue hanging out and her panties showing. (Not that I'm complaining, but she is.) Just laugh it off and let it go. That's the only way you can get through things like this. It's not a big deal. No one believes that you gave Carson Daly, Fred Durst and Eminem sexual pleasures that only your dentist knows about, it's a freakin' joke. You happened to make a comment about him on MTV and your name fit in the slot better than Britteny's. This country just needs to take Don Henley's advice: "Get over it." (How's that for eclectic taste? From Eminem to Don Henley.) And if you have an opinion write it down. Post it somewhere. Don't sue over it. Don't make someone else take theirs down. That's what the American Way is all about. And, in fact, that's what the internet is all about. That is, until the government finds out about it. And that brings up a whole other subject that I might get to later. But Napster's got time. And, for the first time ever...on my website...a comment from my all-important, all-singing, all-dancing Audience Of One. Unedited (except one reference to a review he wrote to me) and uncensored. He's got a lot good points (and is about fifty times smarter and more well-informed than I am), but stay tuned for my rebuttal. Now here's the main purpose of this message, my response to your most recent rant. First of all, keep in mind that you're a friend and I'll always respect you and your opinions. You know that, but I thought I'd remind you nonetheless. I believe that for the most part I agree with you, but there are some important areas where our opinions head off down different roads. Variety is the spice of life, different strokes for different volken and all of that happy spam, you know it and I know it, we can agree to disagree, blah, blah, blah. As you know, I lean so far to the left politically that its a wonder I can walk straight. There are exceptions. I'm pro-death penalty, for instance, and I'm not entirely against gun ownership, though I wonder what the Hestons and Major Dads of the world have against gun registration. I'm generally for a strong defense, though I want to de-nuclearize the world. And capitalism for the most part has been good to me, though socialized medicine should be given a chance. But mostly I'm your basic pro-choice, give-peace-a-chance kind of dude. So that's where Mark I is coming from and here's what he has to say. I am not a fan of political correctness and I generally dislike those who advocate it. I don't like it when people try to alter the language, the academic atmosphere and the law to fit their specific political agenda, which centers on two things: the guilt of the oppressors and the innocence of the oppressed. Any group of people who have been given a raw deal in life are branded innocent and can do no wrong. All things concerning them must in some way help point out their prior oppression and to boost their self-esteem. The reverse is true of those labeled oppressors, which seems to include me for some reason (though the only thing I feel a need to "oppress" are my pants). They can do no right and are always to be considered the enemy. This kind of whining philosophy has created such idiocies as "date rape." Rape is rape, kids. There is no in-between and no need for further categorization. And the "history" thing is just plain hilarious. There are more absurdities, though. I heard that one university had a class called, "white male authors," throwing Hemingway, Poe, Hardy and Faulkner together merely on the basis of their status as members of the oppressor class. Oh, yes-and there's a feminist organization on one ivy-league campus who refer to themselves as, "gyno-americans." Two things come to mind here. One is that PC is not necessarily a COMPLETELY bad thing. Why? Because the reality is that most of American life is not ruled by no-fun feminist, minority and leftist academics, lawyers and politicians. Its run by corporations and their political lackeys. I know this sounds like more paranoid gibberish and maybe it is, but paranoids aren't always wrong. Look up the facts. And the corporations obviously want a conservative America. They generally get what they want, too, since they're running the show. And their impact, even on the supposedly pinko college campuses, is vast. How many corporations sponsor scholarships? Plenty of them. they also build buildings and fund research done on our campuses. They practically run business departments. The truth is you're lucky if you can take a shit in America without the permission of a bunch of dorks in suits. Also, despite what the right likes to claim (and keeps shouting about through their mouthpiece, AKA the news media), the government and the court system is not a bastion of oversensitivity. Its run by Republicans and a lot of aging judges, many appointed during the Reagan years, who want to execute everything in an afro and let monopolies run free with our money. For these reasons, a little overboard leftist vitriol is a bad thing but not the worst of things. Its stupid and annoying and if left unchecked (no chance of that happening) it could be dangerous in the long run. But its body count is one hell of a lot smaller than Union Carbide's. Naturally PC has affected the news media, but oddly enough, its mostly the kind of news media that have the greatest impact on you and I-the entertainment press. Its there (though it doesn't go unchallenged), but is mostly absent from the front page, except when pointing out what someone said or didn't say can sell newspapers. Most of the hard "news" that's affected by PC are the stories ABOUT political correctness. And that's the other thing that comes to mind. It seems to me that the reaction AGAINST PC is a helluva lot more important than PC itself. It comes from every direction-the entertainment and artistic community, the business world, the political right (there really is no political left in the USA), the news media and from conservative academics. I never even knew there was such a thing as political correctness until the media told me that it was poisoning my society. The anti-PC forces are often even more insane than the weirdos they claim to be opposing. These days, any kind of "sensitivity" is greeted with cries of, "PC!PC!PC!" and is felt to be the ideal subject for humiliation. Both actual political correctness and the reaction against it are symptoms of a larger problem in America. I suggest two books on the subject. One is "Culture of Complaint" by Robert Houghs. Houghs is the arts editor for TIME magazine and an outspoken cultural critic. The other is, "The Sibling Society" by Robert Bly. I haven't read the latter yet, but I've read "Iron John" by the same author and it changed my whole way of thinking about life. Both books center around a big problem America has today, which is that everyone has become a crying child trying to get the attentions of its parent-but no one wants to be the parent. No one wants to take responsibility and be the "establishment." Everyone wants to be loved and protected, never to have to take responsibility for their society or even themselves. Right and left, black, white and everything else, artists and accountants, teachers and students, EVERYONE is running up to a non-existent mom or dad and saying, "I'm hurt and he did it!" Part of life is taking blows, and its NEVER going to be fair. Someone always is going to hit harder than the other person. Now. That said I have a few specific gripes about your rant. First, I don't agree that Eminem, Trey & Matt (no one ever says, "Matt & Trey") and Kevin Smith are "heroes" in any way against America's obsessive oversensitivity. They just know what's cool and/or funny and they use it. I seriously doubt that they are under a great deal of pressure from the left to tone down their material. Some, yes, but it isn't nearly as big a threat to any of them as the right is, what with the boycotts of Christian coalition types. Yes, the PC opposition to all of them gets a lot of ink (naturally) but it was the Catholic church that Miramax was concerned about offending when they scratched their heads over what to do with DOGMA. I will give the SOUTH PARKateers credit for one thing. They have no sacred cows whatsoever. They used to, of course, but the aliens abducted them. They have proved that more than ever with that episode where Stan's uncle and his pal were in Vietnam riding Ferris wheels and eating cotton candy. Using words like, "bitch" and "asshole" is one thing, poking fun at the sufferings of Vietnam Vets, well, THAT is ballsy. And I like what they do with chef, too. And I like the underwear gnomes, too, but I'm beginning to digress. Regarding the civil war-sorry, bubba, but slavery WAS the central factor in the war. Almost every white southerner (including yours truly) is taught as a child that the civil war wasn't about slavery. But its bullshit. You are correct that it was about "money and states rights." It was about the money that slave-owners' plantations made and the rights of states to maintain their slave-centered economies. And make no mistake about it, slavery was the epicenter of the southern economy and slave owners were more than willing to take up arms to fight any threat to it. True, it was, "on the way out." Only three countries of any size had slavery in the mid-1800s; The USA, Russia and Brazil. All were economically underdeveloped countries at the time. The medieval southern plantation economy was holding America back, not just morally but economically. But history doesn't just "happen," people have to make it happen. In America, unfortunately, it took a war. Also, Robert E. Lee is historically misunderstood. He was against secession to begin with, and against slavery, for that matter. True, his family owned slaves, but after the death of his father he freed all of the family's slaves. He was a very intelligent man and why he chose to fight for the south is unknown to me. But he was a brilliant soldier who became a noted educator after the war and its unfortunate that his name is used by brain-dead racists, opportunistic politicians as well as minority activists to achieve their goals. Regarding the specific cases you mentioned in Texas, I agree with you on both issues. Total wuss move on the part of George dubya (he of the bantamweight brain and the heavyweight ego) and those particle-physicists running Texas A & M that have famously kept that fine university a bastion of wisdom, enlightenment and chicken-fried steak technology. These weren't so much examples of political correctness as they were political cowardice. When Zell Miller, then the governor of Georgia, fought (successfully) to take the stars and bars off of the Georgia state flag he argued passionately for it in public. He had good reasons for changing the flag and he told the people why. That would be pretty courageous anywhere in the south, but in peach tree state it took a big cast-iron set of doo-dads that probably clinked loudly when he walked. But George Jr. is such a pussy that he has to run off and steal away the plaques at night. Somebody slap that little preppy prick and send him back home to mom. Barb's probably got bigger nuts than her son. I have equal disdain for Disney's removal of the black centaurs from FANTASIA and for the peckerheads who butchered A DAY AT THE RACES and other such stuff. I have no use for people with no courage to face the past. Things were what they were and are what they are. For these same reasons we're not likely to see another big-screen re-release of SONG OF THE SOUTH any time soon, which is too bad. It made the mistakes of its time period, but it was and is still a great work of art. To think that the next generation of kids won't be singing "Zipidee doo dah, zipadee ay" is a tragedy, and I'm not even kidding. When talking about the whole confederate flag issue, though, I generally agree with Bill Maher's statement, "you lost the war, take your loser flag down." Not because its offensive to some (Pauley Shore offends the holy ratshit out of me but I'm not going to argue that he should be banned from public facilities-In fact, he should be locked up in one), but rather because it implies that there is legitimacy to the confederacy today. There isn't. We're part of America and that's that. I've always been and always will be a southerner, but my sense of identity has nothing whatsoever to do with any war fought 135-some-odd years ago, and for those for whom that's true, I say get the fuck over it. While I hate having to deal with America's dixiphobia (I invented that term-always give me credit when using it), southern xenophobia is quite a real phenomenon and a constant source of annoyance for a somewhat educated southerner like myself. Georgia was right to remove the stars and bars from its state flag, and Mississippi and Alabama should follow suit. Why? Because both states, like Georgia, added the confederate symbol in the 1950's as a symbol of segregationalist arrogance. It was never intended to honor anyone's ancestors who'd fought in the war. It was a way of flipping off the forces of reason and civilization who were trying to change things for the better in America. If these states want to prove that they're not still mired in the past, taking the Lynyrd Skynyrd album covers off of their state symbols would be a damn good start. Only South Carolina has a legitimate claim to keep it on their flag. They added it to the flag in the 1890's as a tribute to confederate veterans, thousands of whom were living at the time. If they want to keep it on, fine. As for the rest of you slope-browed, knuckle-dragging, wife-beating, mouth-breathing, no-neck-having unclefucking peckerwoods, wake the hell up, take a bath and join the real world! One final jab. The "stars and bars" isn't really the flag of the confederacy. It was one of many different confederate battleflags. What's now considered the flag of the confederacy is a mistake. Go figure. Oh, and when it comes to sacred cows, let me slay one right now. I'm not breaking any big state secrets by pointing out that African-Americans have suffered more than any other group of people in this country, and that racism is still very real all over these United States. But it amazes me how white guilt over these facts has had such a vast affect. Let me be frank (you can be Barbara, if you want). African-Americans can be the whiniest shits in the country. There is a school of thought (legitimized by many brainless academics) that says that once you have achieved "oppressed" status, nothing you do is wrong. It all can be blamed on the "oppressors." Total horseshit, of course. In the end, everyone is responsible for their own actions. But a great deal of white America is reluctant to call black America to task for their occasional absurdities. This is only on the surface, of course. But the surface is important. Rarely will you see afrocentricism criticized by anyone except a handful of people like Robert Houghs and the occasional Black conservative (both of them). There is no objective legitimacy to the claim that the ancient Egyptians were black, for instance. But no one challenges it publicly. This inability in white people to treat blacks on the same level that they treat whites is patronizing and ultimately racist, IMHO. As I said before, my buddy makes a lot of good points. But here's what I think: First off, I talked to a friend of mine who just went through a history class at U.T. Yes, it's a southern college, but it's also an Austin college. Austin probably has more Democratic Northerners than it does Republican Southerners. We're a pretty big hippy town and the college tends to show it. Anyway, since I'm a little lacking in my Civil War history I had to go to another source. My friend told me that the Civil War was not about slavery until Abraham Lincoln made it that way. The French were about to side with the South because they believed in the states' rights to make their own laws and were called in. When Lincoln (who didn't really care about the slaves one way or another) heard about this he decided to make the South much worse than they really were. He was out only to preserve the Union. (Notice: I'm not saying that the South were the good guys here. I'm sure that a lot of Southerners were only fighting for their slaves. After all, where was most of their money coming from?) So Lincoln started playing up the slavery aspect of the fight. Before that it wasn't really the biggest deal of the War. I'm sure it had a lot to do with starting it, but it wasn't the only reason the South was fighting. At the time I doubt that the North and South were called Free States and Slave States. Slavery was still in the North, just not as rampant. Why do you think so many runaway slaves were returned to the South? The North didn't care. And, no, Lincoln did not free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was merely a symbol. It freed the slaves in states that were still rebelling at the time of the writing. The war was over by then and the South was in a shambles. No more rebelling states, no more free slaves. And the government didn't really mean to enforce it. Slavery ended pretty much on its own. [Check out Civnet's pages on the Proclamation.] The flag is a symbol of history. That's the way I see it. I don't choose to fly it. I know people who were into it, not because they were racist, but because it was a pretty cool looking flag. And it really is. Now, the people who fly it because they're card carrying members of the Kchicken Kfried Klan choose to turn it into the symbol of evil that it could be. Maybe it should be returned to it's home in the museum and retired otherwise, but I don't really think so. All of the high schools that chose it as a symbol of their school (of which there are two here in Austin) chose it not because they're racist institutions, but because it's a part of our heritage. I'm fairly certain that our inner city high schools, Anderson and Travis, aren't evil empires of the Reagan, er, racist administration. I agree that it should be used with discretion. Maybe those state that have it on their flag for strange reasons should take it off. Maybe we shouldn't have trucks driving around with little flags on their license plates. Of course, I believe that those same trucks shouldn't have shotguns hanging in the back window. That scares me more than any flag ever could. So, if you're out there reading this and you have a Confederate Flag up and you really do think that the South could come back and win the war, get over it. Just stop. It's over. I agree that these guys should "take down their loser flag." But there are those of us who don't think of it as a symbol of lynchings past and just see it as part of our history. Or herstory. Or that stuff that used to happen. And, even though I'm a white, straight male, I have never oppressed anyone. (Well, maybe some of my old video customers, but that's because they wanted to rent The Doom Generation.) As some comedian once said (I heard this from a friend, so I don't know the guy's name), "I don't wake up until 11. How can I oppress anyone?" And yet I still feel guilty after seeing a Spike Lee joint. Why is that? Because there are some people who think that the white world is the bad world. Well, I'll tell you this: We're no better than you are. We're no worse, either. If everyone is created equal, then everything is equal. Equal intelligence, equal strength, equal opportunity, equal blame. Don't blame me when Johnny Redneck knocks over a liquor store that happens to have a black manager and I won't blame you when Gary Gangsta knocks over a convenience store that happens to have a white clerk. I know it's a small percentage of black people who use guns to get there way. Probably the same percentage of white people who do it. Let the people who do it take the blame for their own actions. I know Mark I covered this in his comments, but I totally agree with him, so I figured I would put my own slant on it. As far as the PC "heroes" goes, I don't really believe that Matt and Trey and all those guys are the killers of political correctness. They weren't the first (I think Lenny Bruce and George Carlin are closer to that end of the spectrum) and they won't be the last. What they are is a direct result of political correctness. If we hadn't been so careful not to step on anyone's big feet back in the early 90s (or early 50s for that matter) we wouldn't need people like these guys to show us where we went wrong. Yes, maybe they're just following a trend, but they're at the top of that trend now and they're the ones that will influence the next generation of crucified artists. What they have done, as so many have done before them, is raise the bar. We are no longer offended by the same things that we were offended by even five years ago. And I think that's a good thing. The sooner that we can talk about these things without running off in a huff, the sooner that we become that tolerant nation that we have always claimed to be. "Give us you sick, your poor, your hungry...just make sure that they don't cuss or have spew in their hair." Twenty years ago you could barely say "cancer" on tv without some station manager jumping on you saying that it was insensitive. Now Tom Green can show you his cancerous testicle on MTV and no one really thinks too much about it. As gross as it is, this is a good thing. Over in Germany I saw a commercial for shampoo that had a naked woman running around in the water. Over here, that same woman has a bathing suit on. I guarantee you that more American teenagers are drawn to the tv when that girl in a bathing suit is on than there are German teenagers who rush to the tv every time they here water against nipple. It's because we, as a country, have been conditioned to think of sex as a dirty thing. Nudity is bad. I was taught it. You were taught it. They teach it in schools. What they don't say is that the human body is a beautiful thing and totally natural. No, in America it's taboo. And that's why there are so many teenagers itching to have so much sex. (Well, that and their raging hormones, but they're not allowed to talk about that, either.) It's something to piss their parents off with. Something to get away with. Little Johnny American says, "Hey, man. I've got a Playboy!" Little Gunter German says, "So? My dad shares his with me. I see more on tv. It's no big deal." This is why our country is in trouble. (That and the Bushes threatening to get back into office. The W stands for "Daddy, what do I do now?!?!") As for violence, I see worse things on network news than I do in most Italian horror films. At least it's cannibal pygmies doing it over there. Here it's our local chapter of "Guns For Kids." But I would still rather my future kids see two people making love than two people killing each other. (Thank you George Carlin.) When I worked at Big No Choice Video I used to get so mad at parents who asked if there was sex in an R-rated movie. "No, but it's pretty violent." "Oh, well that's ok. I just don't want him seeing any naughty bits." Morons. I've digressed from out original subject, but it all does tie in together under that big umbrella of PC. You may have to run around a bit to keep it all dry, but it won't run away from you. (Uh, I think that made sense.) I think I'll stop rambling now. I'm starting to hear a yawn and at least one cricket. Yes, the chair in my auditorium is now empty. I'll get off my soapbox and move on to lighter subjects. SAVE THE SALAMANDER!!!! And, just to continue the tradition, here’s a bit from my buddy in Japan again: Finally got the new stuff up on your "rants" section, I see. I found your rebuttal quite interesting-which doesn't mean that I'm gay, mind you. As you probably would suspect, I have a few comments about your comments. Feel free to put this on your website if you so desire, though obviously this can't go on forever. Also, we're drifting a bit from the subject. Initially we were talking about PC, but our primary points of argument are about history. On the former we appear to mostly agree, on the latter, well....The ideology you are expressing is similar to that of the classic confederate apologists, who (ironically, for you) are not too dissimilar to the afrocentric and feminist warriors of political correctness. All seek to purge their group from blame on every issue at any time in history, and are willing to warp facts in order to do so. I'm not saying you are one of these people. I'm just saying you are sharing a few too many of their beliefs for my comfort. Again, its not THAT big of a deal, but I do feel a need to point out a fact or two. Regarding some of the specific contentions: "The civil war was not about slavery until Abraham Lincoln made it that way." "(Lincoln) didn't really care much about the slaves one way or the other." These are both not only untrue but quite obviously untrue if you do even a little research into the history of America at the time. The secession began after Lincoln's election and was specifically because he was against slavery. Remember the Lincoln/Douglas debates? Lincoln's argument was, "a house divided cannot stand." This meant that America as a country cannot survive with slavery in some states but not others. Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated the issue of slavery all over America well before Lincoln became a candidate in the 1860 presidential election. He probably wouldn't have been a candidate if the issue of slavery hadn't been such a hot button at the time, because those debates were what really what made him famous in America. His only political experience before then was four terms in the Illinois state legislature and one measly term in the house of representatives (he was defeated for re-election). He was unknown outside of Illinois before his debates with Stephen Douglas. But his opposition to slavery was life-long. His abolitionist parents moved the family from Kentucky to Indiana because Indiana was a free state. He was probably the most famous anti-slavery activist in America, and that's why he was elected President. That's also why the slave states seceded. They saw that Mr. "Slavery sucks" was going to be in charge, so they opted to go their own, foolish way. "The French were about to side with the south." France was never particularly interested in fighting for the south, but they did help finance the Confederacy. I'm not sure if it was the French government itself that helped out or if they just allowed or encouraged businessmen to do so, but either way French money was involved. They didn't care one whit about states' rights. They just hoped to prevent the USA from encroaching on their remaining colonies in the western hemisphere, and they wanted to piss off their colonial rivals the Brits, who were staunchly anti-slavery and generally supportive of the union. "slavery was still in the north, just not as rampant." No. The country was divided between those states whose laws forbade the practice of slavery by law and those which did not. All of the states which allowed slavery were involved in the secession. All the states which did not sided with the union. Yes, many runaway slaves were returned to the south, largely because there was usually a reward involved. Plus, right or wrong, the slaves were violating the law where they had come from. Much like the civil rights movement a century later, it took a little stoking to get good people to wake up and heed the call to action. "It(the Emancipation Proclamation) was just a symbol. It freed the slaves in the states which were still rebelling at the time of the writing." Of course it freed the slaves in the states which were rebelling at the time. THAT'S WHERE THE SLAVES WERE! Where the heck were they supposed to free the slaves if not in the slave states? That it could not be enforced until these states were reclaimed was irrelevant. The law was the law, and that made all past state laws allowing slavery moot-the slaves were now free men. And, since there was already a federal law against importing new slaves into America, there was no possibility of slavery being allowed. "The government didn't really mean to enforce it. Slavery pretty much ended on its own." As I mentioned before, things don't happen "on their own." People have to go out and make it happen. There's no history (or herstory, or the-stuff-that-happened-before-the-Fat-Boys-broke-up) fairy that waves his/her magic wand and makes life sweeter for all mankind. Real human beings have to go out and do it to it. In this case the wherewithal was provided by the United States Army, which stationed troops in the south for a number of years following the war. Only in Texas did slavery "slowly" die out, because its a damn bloody big place and it was hard to get a battalion out to every little hamlet of the friendship state. But those holdout slaveowners in Texas knew that what they were doing was illegal. They just didn't tell the slaves and kept a low profile. That's the reason for the Juneteenth celebration, which you should be familiar with. Less specifically, if slavery was not the central issue of the war, what on earth were the other reasons? We've already covered the slave economy and "states'rights", which was a euphemistic phrase for slavery just as a hundred years later it became a euphemistic phrase for segregation. Rarely do confederate apologists come up with any issues other than those for the war. Regarding the confederate flag, you mentioned that you thought it was a "symbol of our heritage." That is correct. Let me tell you something that is going on here in Japan. Conservative politicians here are espousing the use of an old Japanese flag as a sort of semi-official flag of state. Its the flag you've seen in countless WWII movies, the sun with rays coming out of it. It was the flag of the old wartime and pre-war military fascist government, the government which bombed Pearl harbor and invaded all of Asia, slaying countless people in their quest for power. These politicians are also arguing that this flag is a "symbol of their heritage." They are encountering quite a lot of opposition to the idea of re-instating it, much of it from ethnic Chinese and Koreans in Japan, as well as the governments of neighboring countries. This flag is often used by the Japanese far right (i.e., the fascists) as a symbol of their movement. The far right isn't popular here, but it is vocal-they like to drive around cities in vans playing the old (wartime and pre-war) national anthem at top volume, usually with that flag waving from the top of the van. This flag is truly a symbol of Japan's heritage. But were I Japanese, it would not be a heritage I would be terribly proud of. In the same light, I'm not especially fond of the fact that people in my native region once fought a war to maintain slavery. In fact, I believe some of my family fought in that war for the south. I'm not hanging my head in shame every day over this fact, that would be stupid. Its not a mark of personal dishonor. But on the other hand, its not really something to be proud of, either. I don't want the stars and bars to be banned from all public places for all time, that's nuts. But when it is used as a symbol of our heritage, I want everyone to recognize just what kind of heritage it is that the flag represents. Pretty it ain't. I have little to complain about regarding the rest of your rebuttal, I'm pretty much in agreement with it (except that I despise salamanders). I would, in fact, like to see a comic book or even a film version of the wild tales of Johnny Redneck and Garry Gangsta'. Maybe something like JOHNNY REDNECK AND GARY GANGSTA' IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL or JOHNNY REDNECK AND GARY GANGSTA' GO TO MONTE CARLO or JOHNNY REDNECK AND GARY GANGSTA' AND ROBIN. And maybe a kids-oriented comic about little Johnny American and little Gunter German. They show boobs on TV in Japan sometimes, too (come on over!). Anyway, gotta go. I hope you enjoyed my unmitigated trashing of your opinions, and by extension your character. Just trying to help. Enjoy, Mark Well, I have one more thing to say. (You knew I would. I just can’t keep my mouth shut.) History is not always written by the winners. In fact, a lot of the time it’s written by some poor schlep who’s been cooped up in his office way too long. And that poor schlep is biased. There’s no way around that. Whether he be biased for the good guys or the bad guys, that’s who is going to come out the best. We may have a lot of history books about the Civil War, but how do we know which is right? Are any of them right? They’re all written on the basis of someone’s idea of what happened. Sometimes they’re written on the basis of a lot of someones’ ideas. My point is that everyone knows the story of the War Between The States, but everyone also knows it in a different version. There’s no one around anymore who were alive at the time, so we don’t know exactly how things went down. Either the North had absolutely no slaves or they had just as many as the South and they were just guilty about it. Either Lincoln was an opportunistic politician or he really was the slave-freeing saint that we were all brought up believing he was. Personally, I believe that somewhere in the middle lies the truth. As far as the comment that I made about the Emancipation Proclamation only freeing slaves in the states that rebelled, that was under the assumption that there were still slaves in the North (which I have always heard, even when we were being taught that Lincoln freed the slaves back in grade school, that there were) and that they were still slaves after the War. The armies of the North had already freed the slaves in the South. This is how I was taught that the E.P. didn’t free a single slave. (E.P. of course standing for extended play record.) And, if I remember right, it was a black teacher who told us that. (Of course, she was also an English teacher, so…) Of course all of this sounds like I’m trying to be a politician myself. Maybe I am sitting on the fence about this, but I kind of came to the realization that most likely both of us are right about the whole history thing. Does anyone really know what happened 150 years ago? Well, ok, we know what happened, but not exactly how it happened. There’s always something that we’re not completely sure about or that is often reported in different ways. It is absolutely impossible to get a totally unbiased view on any historical event. As far as the Big War goes, you’re either a Southern sympathizer, a Southern apologist or a Northern absolutionist. (Is that right? Whatever. You know what I mean. Someone who thinks that the North was absolutely devoid of any evils no matter what.) So, Mark, I think we are both right and we are both wrong. We can do all the research we want, but we will probably find evidence on both sides. Which is totally right? Neither. Now I feel like Jerry Springer doing his “Final Thought.” I think I’ll shut up and never bring this up again. At least not until Mr. Dubya does something else stupid. So I should be back here sometime in the next five minutes or so.

Shaft

admin — Sat, 17 Jun 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Now many of you will remember the 1971 original. Very good film. Slow by today's standards, yes, but still fun enough to be pretty damn cool. It's started a almost look a little cheesy in this day and age, what with all of the 70s stereotypes (the gay bartender, the insatiable lust of a private dick, the constant bickering between the NYPD and said private dick, the rather backwards racism of said NYPD), but it's just a little hard to see the impact that this movie had on 1970s black culture. First off, it started a whole new genre of film: blaxpoitation. Without this people like Richard Roundtree, Isaac Hayes, Pam Grier and Dan 'The Dragon' Wilson never would have had any kind of careers. And that would have been a crime. Second, John Shaft was pretty much the first black hero to hit the screen. This, of course, took the community by storm and started every young black man wearing leather trench coats and trying to be bad muthas. And it was the first film to ever show a white woman joining a black man in the shower! Not bad for one little low budget feature by a failing major studio (MGM). And now, nearly 30 years, two sequels and a tv series later, that same studio is at it again. Of course there's no way that this version could have near the impact of the first one, but they chose just the right actor for it. And they kept it from being a needless remake and made it more of a passing of the torch. This time John Shaft (Samuel L. Jackson) is an NYPD cop who happens upon a race crime and is able to solve it with the help of the one witness, Diane (Toni Collette from The Sixth Sense), but isn't able to keep the suspect, Walter Williams (Christian Bale from Empire Of The Sun and American Psycho), in jail since he broke the bastard's nose. After bail is set Walter skips out on it and isn't heard from again for two years. Neither is Diane She's too scared to testify because this guy's dad is a heavy hitter in town. At the two year point Walter comes back, Shaft catches him and he gets away with a one million dollar bail to the chagrin of both Shaft and a woman who I can only guess is the victim's mother. (They never actually say.) This, of course, is where Shaft loses faith in the system and quits by throwing his badge at the judge. But before bail is set he has to spend some time in jail where he meets Peoples Hernandez (Jeffrey Wright from Basquiat), a local Puerto Rican drug pusher and they form a sort of edgy bond. After the bail is paid Walter hires Peoples to kill Diane because he knows Shaft will be after her, and that's where the story really starts. All this and Richard Roundtree reprising his original role as the new Shaft's uncle. How awesome is that? After all the trouble I heard about the production I'm glad that the end product was as good as it was. Director John Singleton (Boyz N The Hood) and Sam had one idea for the film and producer Scott Rudin and writer Richard Price (Clockers and Sea Of Love) had another. There were scenes that Mr. Jackson wasn't too happy about because they played the race card a little too much, not to mention the fact that "the black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks" doesn't get any! Oh, there's a sex scene kind of blurily played out during the opening credits, but it looks closer to a James Bond intro segment than a real sex scene. Richard, however, does go home with two beautiful young women, so that kind of makes up for it. And Sam said that the first order of business for any sequels will be to bring back the sex. But in the more or less PC 90s it's hard to have a hero who has sex with more than one woman in each movie unless he's Bond. That's too bad. And Richard and Christian weren't too happy that some of their scenes were cut after Jeffrey took over his role so well. There was originally a scene with Walter and Shaft in a fist fight, but that's gone. Maybe on the DVD. But the movie is worthy of the name in both content and acting. The story is right along with the whole race relations aspect of the original. There's plenty of one liners to keep the racists among the New Yorkers at bay. One thing that was a little disturbing was Shaft's first captain. He seems to really not like John, but it's more of a "your crazy antics" type thing than anything else. He's happy to throw him out of the precinct when he breaks Walter's nose. Two years later he meets up with John again and says something along the lines of "One thing I love about my retirement community. It's, oh, how shall I put this...restricted." That's a rather racist comment from a guy who didn't seem to care about race before. And why did Carmen (Vanessa Williams playing Shaft's Hispanic partner!) say "Step off, Peoples!" Didn't we stop saying that about 10 years ago? Two more real quick bugs: Shaft finds Diane very quickly. Everyone has been looking for her for two years, but he finds her within a couple of days. Huh?!?! And that last car chase sequence proves that Singleton isn't a car director. Lots of blurry shots of cars outside of other cars. I didn't always know what was going on. And there was a shot cut from the first chase scene between Shaft and Diane where the car is about to hit Shaft. There's a shot in the preview that shows it from above, but it's not in the movie, so you almost have to guess the danger that he's really in. All of this is kind of nit-picky, though. The movie is really awesome. Lots of action, cool dialogue and Samuel L. Jackson in a role that he was born to play. Not to mention Busta Rhymes in a role he was born to play: the wisecracking pimp daddy. And Christian seems to be really good at these kinds of psycho roles. He'd better get some good guy roles soon or else everyone's going to think he's actually a first-class bastard. I can't wait for Shaft In Jamaica (which is Jackson's preferred location for the next one). We can only hope that this one does well enough, but I don't think we'll have a problem with that. After all, we can't turn our back on our brother man, can we? By the way, Isaac's new version of his biggest hit is just a good as his original. Not very different, just a little longer and still amazing. Gotta love Ike, man. And watch for Gordon Parks (director of the original) in the bar.

Scary Movie/Me, Myself And Irene

admin — Sun, 09 Jul 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Ok, I have to start this review off with a review of another movie. Back in 1989 there was another flick called Scary Movie. It was made out in Driftwood, TX by a bunch of guys from right here in Austin. Basically it's a fairly funny study of paranoia on Halloween night. This dorky little guy gets stuck in a cheesy house of horrors. There also happens to be a serial killer on the loose. Now, I saw this movie back in high school just a year or so after it's initial release. It was a pretty big deal because there weren't just a whole lot of movies being made by Austinites back then. (Remember, this was before Linklater and Rodriguez had made their cheapies.) My friend and I settled in to watch it. I liked it. He didn't. He thought it was stupid and boring whereas I thought it was pretty funny and the pace was pretty much just right for the kind of suspense it was trying to build. Not a perfect movie by any means, but definitely worth a look--if you can find it. It's even hard to find here in Austin. It's released through Generic Films and has a cover that looks like you would think something would look like from that company. Black and white with a big barcode on it and Scary Movie printed in bold black letters. I mainly put this in here because a) someone I know actually thought that the new movie was that one (I was very surprised that they had heard of it--his friend had a copy in his car!) and b) I actually met one of the guys who worked on the movie about five years ago. It was either the director (Daniel Erickson--he hasn't done a damn thing since then) or a friend of his. Just wanted to plug it real quick. So call your local video store! Start a campaign! Get the original!! And now back to our regular broadcasting. The new Scary Movie is a Wayans Brothers spoof of all of those teen horror flicks that seem to have actually died out. (Although I saw a trailer for a new Urban Legend flick. You know what? The first one sucked pretty hard. Why bring it back? Oh yeah. It made money.) And it starts out with Drew Becker (Carmen Electra looking too old to be a high school kid, but who cares? She gets down to her underwear!) being slaughtered in her house in a fairly funny scene. Especially when the killer (in a Scream mask, of course) stabs her in the breast and pulls out her implant. Carmen is about to get the Jenny McCarthy award for having a sense of humor about her image. Plus she's just more attractive even if she did marry an alien. The plot follows Scream exactly with a few nods to I Know What You Did Last Summer. Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris from the horrible Lover's Lane and Eden) is the Neve character. Get it? Her boyfriend is trying desperately to get in her panties. She and her friends (one of whom is Shannon Elizabeth from American Pie and another one is Shawn Wayans playing a latently homosexual football player--go figure. Is it just me or is football one of the most homo-erotic games in the world? TOUCHDOWN!!!!!) start getting notes from someone who knows that they killed a guy last Halloween. But it can't be the Gorton's Fisherman, right? He's dead! Along the way we meet Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri, one of the most annoying SNL alums in recent memory), an overzealous reporter who will resort to anything to get a comment ("Cindy! Your ass is huge!"), Doofy the retarded deputy and Shannon's brother and Randy (Marlon Wayans) a stoner who sees dead people when he's high. And I think you probably know the plot. Guy runs around in a mask with long sharp objects and kills teenagers. Now here's the problem with this movie. Back when they did I'm Gonna Get You Sucka! the blaxploitation field had been pretty much dried up. There weren't any being made, but for some reason their spoof worked. The genre itself, while pretty much gone, was ripe for the spoofing. When they did Don't Be A Menace the urban drama was definitely well past ripe. Now it would seem that these horror flicks were a little past ready. But, you see, Scream was basically a spoof of horror movies. And all of the ones after that have followed it's lead. How do you spoof a spoof? Well, in the Wayans Brothers' case you retell the story, have the killer be the straight man to a bunch of absolute morons and throw in a lot of really gross humor. That part of the movie worked really well. I don't think I've seen a sex scene this funny since the one in Brandon Lee's Rapid Fire. Or maybe Casper Van Dien's in On The Border. Or any of them in Showgirls. The problem was when they actually tried to spoof the horror flicks. Some spoofs worked really well. The Matrix and The Usual Suspects got great treatment. And, actually, Scream 2 got a good bashing with a scene in a theatre where one of Cindy's friends is killed by the entire audience Julius Caesar style because she was overly obnoxious. I know we've all felt like doing that at least fifty times in our lives. And then they would have a great joke that they would run into the ground because they thought that the audience wouldn't get it. Casting David L. Lander in the role of the principal was nearly genius. (He was the wanna be Fonzi, Squiggy in Laverne And Shirley. Remember Henry Winkler in Scream?) I recognized his voice over the p.a. system. They probably shouldn't have even showed him. Who wouldn't recognize that voice?! But they have to spell it out to us and show us a nameplate on his desk that says Principal Squiggy. Shame on them for ruining a great joke. Also keep an eye on little Anna Faris. She's one of those rare actresses who really doesn't have much shame. Not many actresses would allow a director to have mounds of hair coming out of her panties or blast her with...erm...well see for yourself. She also kind of looks like a cross between Winona Ryder and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Kinda cute in a weird sort of way. On thing I noticed about this movie. You can really tell that it was made by black filmmakers. Lots of jabs at white America. When the killer is in Cindy's house and she calls 911 on her computer she types in "White woman in trouble!" and the cops are there before he can even back out of her room. And BET is at the school when Gail is doing her first report. They say something like, "White kids are being killed and we're gettting the hell outta here!" Not many white guys would even think to do jokes like that. And Spike Lee would probably scream about it. Overall it wasn't bad. See it for matinee price or wait for video, though. Definitely not worth full price. So almost immediately after seeing this one a friend called me to meet him for Me, Myself And Irene. How could I pass up a new Farrelly Brothers' movie? Now, if only the Coens and the Wachowskis had new ones out I could have seen all of the great brother teams in Hollywood today. (Sorry, haven't seen any Hughes Brothers flicks.) This time the Farrellys are back with their first muse, Jim Carrey. He plays Charlie Bailygates, a small town Rhode Island cop whose job and kids are everything to him. Unfortunately his kids are the product of an affair that his wife had with a black midget who happened to be a member of Mensa. So he's got three genius black sons that he just can't bear to think of as not his natural sons. So he doesn't. He turns into a wussy little guy who everyone can and does take advantage of. One day the pressure gets to be too much for him and he splits. Literally. He becomes Hank, an overly confrontational id monster. Enter Irene P. Waters (Renee Zellweger--and I doubt that the name is coincidental). She's a girl who is just trying to get out of New York when she's brought into the police station because the New York EPA is looking for her. Her ex-boyfriend was into some illegal dealings. We never really know what, but it doesn't matter to the story, so we don't really care. Basically, Charlie, Hank and Irene end up going on a road trip to upstate NY to meet some EPA guys who are promptly killed by her ex. She runs to Charlie, they run together and chaos ensues when he forgets his pills that keep Hank at bay. (Do they have those?) Meanwhile his sons are trying to help the cops find their dad until they find out that most of them (headed up by Chris Cooper (October Sky, American Beauty) in another jerk role) are trying to kill him. Oh, and Irene starts to fall for Charlie and hate Hank. But you knew that already. Now, I'm not going to lie to you. This is no There's Something About Mary or Kingpin. Probably a little better than Dumb And Dumber, but it loses some steam towards the end. But up until that point it's great. I'm really glad Jim decided to do another stupid comedy like this. He's got the best single person fight scene since Fight Club. And he didn't have to have computers help him out. One thing that was a little strange: I've never heard Jim cuss this much! He said some pretty damn gross things, including a name for a noise that women make that they would rather we didn't notice. And all in a Dirty Harry impression! Not bad for a guy who can't seem to get noticed by the Academy. And Renee was great, too. She's a great straight woman to Jim's over the top freak boy. And she looked pretty good even though she was supposed to be wearing the same clothes for days on end. There's a lot of shock in it, but there's something else that only the Farrellys seem to be able to bring us in these kinds of movies. There's characters that we can care about. Think back to Airplane. One of the funniest movies of all time. But did we really care if Stryker and Elaine got together? They could have gone down in a ball of fire as long as it was funny. But we really want Charlie to come to terms with Hank and get Irene. Just like we really wanted Ted and Mary to end up together. And if they hadn't we would have been pretty pissed off. This is one of those flicks that you just forget about plot and go with the characters and their comedy. I guarantee that you'll enjoy it if you do that. Especially the montage when Charlie first turns into Hank. One of the best montages ever. And one of the best transition cuts ever. Check it out for yourself. But if you do, answer me this question: How did he find the, ahem, marital aid at the podunk little country store? The only real disappointment for me (besides the fact that the end started to peter out) was the lack of Lin Shae! They had to cut her scene out! Shame. I always look forward to seeing her in their flicks. It's too bad that the Brothers couldn't get the cast they wanted for their next one, Stuck On You. For the Siamese twin brothers they wanted Jim Carrey and Woody Allen. How cool would that have been? But, alas, Woody's schedule didn't work out. (That's what I heard last, anyway.) Oh well. I guess we'll have to wait to see how Jim would work with Woody.

The Untouchables (1987)

admin — Thu, 13 Jul 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Remember when Kevin Costner could do no wrong? Think back. Think wwwwwaaaaayyyyyy back. I, amazingly enough, can remember that time. It was a time called the late 80s and early 90s. A short time in the grand scheme of things, but a lifetime for such limited talents as Costner. Appropriately, a movie called The Untouchables started this short trend. (And, even though he's made good movies since, it ended in 1992 when he put out a little piece of tripe that inexplicably became a huge hit called The Bodyguard.) And now you'll have to think even further back. Back to a time when Brian DePalma was actually a viable force in Hollywood. Back when he was one of the leaders of the 70s American cinema starting with flicks like Sisters and Obsession and ending with Blow Out and Scarface in the early 80s. Now, some of us film geeks know DePalma for what he really is, the heir apparent to Hitchcock. Most of his movies from the 70s are homages to one of Hitch's more famous masterpieces. You know, Obsession = Vertigo, Dressed To Kill = Psycho, Body Double = Rear Window. With that last one he started to falter. Then in 1987 with one last gasp of brilliance he helmed a movie inspired by a tv show of all things. (And he would have one more pretty damn good flick in Carlito's Way a few years later, but it wouldn't touch this one.) This is what he's going to be remembered for. (That and giving a struggling method actor named Robert DeNiro his start in Greetings, The Wedding Party and Hi Mom!) John Q Public has already forgotten all of those 70s flicks (except Carrie for some reason--never was real impressed with that one. Movie or book). And hopefully they'll forget about such travesties as Snake Eyes (which, to be fair, had one really good scene--but after the first few minutes it's pretty worthless) and Mission To Mars. But they will always remember Costner as Eliot Ness and DeNiro as Al Capone. In case you've never seen it, which I know you have, The Untouchables is based on real people. Maybe not the true story of the people, but they did really exist. (No matter what the disclaimer at the end of the movie says.) Eliot Ness is the Treasury Dept. officer who is after Prohibition era gangster Capone. He puts together his group of crime fighters after meeting up with Jim Malone (Sean Connery in his only Oscar winning performance--although he's done better), a Scottish Chicago beat cop who happens upon Eliot in a rather depressed mood. Jim teaches him a thing or two about being a real cop by basically shocking him with his tough guy ways. Next to be drafted is George Stone (Andy Garcia). He's an Italian rookie who changed his name so he wouldn't be discriminated against. He also happens to be a perfect marksman. Then, on their first raid, they grab Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith from American Graffiti and Starman) out of the office, hand him a gun and throw him into the middle of the action. And so The Untouchables were born. Now, I don't know how true all of this is, but it makes for a great movie. And DePalma knew exactly what to do with it. He added some Hitchcockian shots (especially the last shot of the baseball scene), an actor with all the charisma of David Schwimmer (Costner--but somehow it worked this time), an actor who would steal the show (Connery) and a final showdown shot as a homage to a silent classic (Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin). Another thing that DePalma did that no one else seems to have the guts to do anymore is that he made a movie based on a tv show that is rated R! Not only are his characters allowed to cuss, but they're allowed to be very violent, as they should be. This was, after all, the days of the ruthless gangsters. So the cops had to be just as ruthless. Now you would get some watered down version of the gangsters. People who wouldn't be allowed to kill the good guys. At least if they did it would be off screen and we wouldn't see one of them hanging from a hook in an elevator. I loved The Fugitive, but was it really that realistic? Wouldn't the reality of it been a little messier than the Harrison Ford flick made it seem? Maybe we'll have to wait for F-Troop: The Movie until we get another realistic look at the world of the tv show. I'm not really sure how this movie helped Costner get his career into high gear. He was good in the role, but that was because the role wasn't very challenging. Ness is actually a pretty stale character on his own. Very reserved. Not much emotion. What emotion he does show is very subdued and easy. I guess DePalma just found this guy who was good at nothing and then ol' Kev found a way to exploit that talent. Connery, on the other hand, was great in his role. Not his best role by any means, but it was apparently enough to win him an Oscar. It was probably given to him more as an acknowledgment for past roles than for this one, kind of like Pacino's for Scent Of A Woman or Elizabeth Taylor's for Butterfield 8. Here's what I want to know about George and Oscar: Did DePalma mean for them to have some kind of homo-erotic thing going on between them? When George gets shot in the Canadian raid Oscar just goes ballistic over it. He finds out that George is ok and then starts out on a rampage just killing everyone he sees. Then, when Oscar is killed, it's George who takes it the hardest. What was going on with them? And then there's DeNiro. Oh, DeNiro. Here again, not his best role, but it's one that stays in the memory. I can't think of another actor who could pull of Al Capone. Can you imagine that Bob Hoskins was almost tagged for the role? DeNiro was always the first choice, but DePalma didn't know that he would be available. Bob would have been interesting, but DeNiro was perfect. Which brings us to B-movie actor Billy Drago (Pale Rider and Banzai Runner--I have no idea what that one is, but it brings to mind some interesting images) as Ness's real arch-nemesis, Frank Nitti, Capone's weasely little errand boy who ends up waiting in the car. He's pretty much perfect in this role because he looks like a weasel. Not to mention the fact that he's very good at the taunt. ("Your friend died like a pig!") This movie was pretty much an instant classic. In fact, the only thing I can find wrong with it is the end of the courtroom scene. When they're hauling Capone off and Ness pushes his way through the crowd and says, "Never stop fighting 'til the fight is done!" It's just kind of a hackneyed bit that almost doesn't fit with the rest of the movie. Other than that it's a perfect movie to add to the DePalma and DeNiro resumes. Now, if only we could get both of them to do it again.

X-Men

admin — Fri, 14 Jul 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Let me just preface this review with a real quick statement that may explain where I'm coming from. Even though I'm a big Kevin Smith fan I don't know from comic books. I don't think I've ever read one from cover to cover. I can't even really get into the cartoons. But I love comic book movies. Superman, Batman, Dick Tracy...hell, I even thought that The Shadow was pretty interesting. Now that you know that you probably won't have any respect for my review. But I don't really care, so here goes. The X-Men are a group of mutants in the near future who have discovered that they have special powers. But I'm sure you all knew that. Who wouldn't after all the hype that this movie has gotten? On the good side we've got Dr. Xavier (Patrick Stewart). He's their leader and can not only read peoples' minds, but can make them do whatever he wants them to. Cyclops (James Marsden from Disturbing Behavior) is, according to a friend who watches the show, is supposed to be the leader when they're "out in the field" and has "all the power of the sun behind his eyes." Actually he just shoots lasers out of them. His girlfriend, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen from GoldenEye and The Faculty), is the doctor of the group, can move objects with her mind and is slightly clairvoyant. She also doesn't have a cool nickname. Storm (Halle Berry from her mugshots) can summon the powers of the weather. On the dark side of the X is Magneto (Sir Ian McKellen from Gods And Monsters and Apt Pupil), the leader who can create magnetic forces out of, well, thin air. In the beginning he's wearing a hat and trenchcoat that makes him look just like The Smoking Man from The X-Files. Then he puts on the Magneto helmet. They changed the rest of the costumes, why did they keep that the same? That looked really stupid on Sir Ian. Sabertooth (pro-wrestler Tyler Mane) is his main henchman who seems to just be a lion. He's really strong, too. Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-(shudder)Stamos from my dreams) is blue and hot. She's a shape shifter which, I think is the coolest super power. Toad (Ray Park--Darth Maul from Phantom Menace) is just what his name says. He uses his tongue to get wrap around things and pull them or himself closer, spits green stuff and jumps with amazing strength. The first one we meet is actually Magneto as a kid in a concentration camp in WWII Poland. His parents are dragged away and he almost breaks the gates after they close. Flash forward a few dozen years and enter Rogue (Anna Paquin looking better and better every year--I was really scared for her for a while there). She accidentally puts her first boyfriend in a coma because she takes the life force out of anyone she touches. She runs away from home and runs right into Wolverine (Hugh Jackman from not much else) who has metal bones, great strength, long retractable metal claws and an amazing ability to heal. That's pretty much the plot. You've got Wolverine trying to not fit in with the rest of the X-Men, Magneto trying to end "normal" man's reign and the X-Men trying to stop him. Oh, and Rogue keeps trying to fit in. That's also the problem with the movie. The plot is pretty stupid and the characters are just cardboard cutouts of what could have been great people. The only ones who really have any kind of real character are the two leaders, Wolverine and Rogue. And even they aren't that well developed. They try to get a love triangle thing going with Wolverine, Jean Grey and Cyclops, but it just doesn't work. They bring it up, ignore it and then bring it up again at the very end. Was that actually a subplot or did they just accidentally write it in? I hear that there were about 45 minutes cut out. That could explain some of it. I'm not sure if I could have taken any more of Sabertooth or Toad, though. They were pretty annoying. And what happened to Senator Robert Jefferson Kelly (Bruce Davison from Apt Pupil and Spies Like Us). He was barely even in the movie. After the rather brilliant ad campaign that made some of the commercials look like ads for the anti-mutant senator I thought that he would be a major part of the plot. That would have made a pretty interesting subplot: corrupt politico becomes puppet for evil mutants! Sure would have made for some fancy viewin'. But no. He was in the movie for a collective 10 or 15 minutes. Was he cut, too? On an acting note, Mr. Jackman and Miss Paquin seemed to be having problems with their accents. Hugh is Australian and you could kind of tell every once in a while. It reminded me of Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You. Not quite as bad as Costner in Robin Hood, though. Anna had a harder time with hers. Rogue is supposed to be a young southern belle type girl. And she starts out that way, but she kind of loses the accent somewhere along the way. Then it comes back for a bit. Then it goes away. She's a really good actress, but maybe she should leave the accents to Meryl Streep. Other than that I really didn't have a problem with the performances. Patrick and Ian were great as always. Hugh was pretty damn good as Wolverine. Davison was appropriately slimy (in more ways than one) for his diminutive role. The rest didn't have to do much, so I'm not really sure how they did. It had it's good points, of course. It is, after all, a Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil) film. It has some pretty good humor in it, usually from Wolverine. He's everyone's favorite, so they pretty much made him the leader and gave him all the good lines. He even cusses, which is new for a comic book movie of this type. (Spawn doesn't really count. It's a more adult comic book.) There's a reference to the costumes from the books and even a great reference to Star Wars from Ray Park. And speaking of Ray, was he really the right person to play Toad? All this guy does is jump around and throw his tongue at people. I've heard that they changed him a little so that Ray could use his martial arts, but they didn't change him enough. When I see someone like Ray Park I want him to play a Jet Li type character. You wouldn't have Jet Li playing Dr. Xavier, would you? Then there was Mystique. Wow! All Rebecca had to wear was blue spray paint and a couple of patches. Too bad about those patches, though. She was looking good even if she was a little scary. But, hey. Scaly chicks need lovin' too. There were some really good action sequences, too. Especially the final battle on the Statue Of Liberty. Ray finally got to use some martial arts and we got to see some great butt-kicking. Now here's the real question: was this comic supposed to show through super heroes the alienation of teenagers? Or was it supposed to be like a new Holocaust? It could really be both. The mutants never quite fit in with the "normals" so they're always discriminated against. In fact, the Senator and his cronies want them to start identifying themselves with some kind of distinguishing mark. (Sound familiar?) Then Dr. Xavier (who was perfectly cast, by the way) has his "School For The Gifted" where he teaches teen mutants how to control their powers and helps them to fit in with the rest of the world and themselves. (Some of the scenes in the school look like propoganda ads for it. That's pretty funny.) I read somewhere that this is why the comics have been so popular with teenagers. They can relate to the mutants' struggle to be a little more normal, whatever that is. I can see that, but this Holocaust thing puts an interesting spin on things, even if it's kind of beat into us every once in a while. Overall, not really a bad movie, but hard to recommend. I really expected more from Mr. Singer. If you just want a couple of cool action scenes and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos in blue paint, then go for it. But pay matinee prices. Not freakin' $8 like I did. Where am I? New York City?!?! This is Austin for God's sake!

Loser

admin — Sat, 22 Jul 2000 17:00:00 +0000

What an aptly titled movie. If you're wondering why there's no quote for this one, it's because there really weren't any memorable lines in the whole movie. This is Amy Heckerling's (Fast Times At Ridgemont High and Clueless) vision of college life. Paul (American Pie's Jason Biggs) is a dorky guy from Backwards, U.S.A. Somewhere that they wear Kyle Broflovski style hats. He becomes the only person in his family to make it into college. N.Y.U. to be exact. This is where the "fish out of water" story starts. Paul meets his roommates, Chris, Noah and Adam. They're supposedly stylish, but they just come off as really annoying and stupid. One of them wears leather pants all the time and they all wear weird colored sunglasses. They also have a habit of spiking girls' drinks so that they'll consent to have sex with them. That's the only way these guys will ever get any. One more reason for rufies to be illegal. So Paul is being tormented by his roommates who just want to party. They tell him exactly how big of a loser he is because he studies and that he should drink more. In the only class that Paul seems to have he enters the room by tripping down the stairs and falling into the chair right next to Dora (Mena Suvari from Americans Pie and Beauty--she has another one coming out called American Virgin. I'm surprised they didn't rename this one American Loser just to keep the trend going). She's the only person who seems to show any respect to the poor guy who just doesn't know how to be part of the "in crowd." Unfortunately she's also the professor's (Greg Kinnear) girlfriend. Prof. Alcott happens to be a real jerk and takes his rather unlawful girlfriend for granted. She's too good for him. Go figure. So Paul gets kicked out of his dorm by his wonderful buddies, moves into an animal clinic (!) and gets to know Dora a little better because one of his roommates gives her drugs that nearly kill her. So Paul finds her, takes care of her and falls in love with her. But she's too much in love with Talk Soup Boy to know that what she's got right in front of her is perfect for her. Paul's just her buddy, right? Paul realizes that the guy's a jerk, but he buys flowers and says that they're from Alcott just to keep Dora from being upset. What a nice guy, right? Actually, he's just plain dumb. I've almost been there before and it just makes the other guy look way too good. Face it, bud. You may be keeping her out of the doldrums, but you're really just hurting her in the long run. The problems with this movie abound. First off, it's supposed to be a comedy, but it's not very funny. ODs are rarely funny. Affairs with your profs can be funny, but not this one. Fish out of water comedies can be trite, but very funny. They didn't take this one anywhere. Even cameos by comedians (Steven Wright, Dan Aykroyd and Andy Dick among them) didn't help. The only one who seemed to be allowed to be funny was David Spade...and that was no fault of the writing. It was his delivery of the lines that was funny, not the lines themselves. And there was way too much of the side characters. The roommates, as I said, were totally annoying and they were all through the damn movie! I was sick of them within about three seconds of meeting them and they had to show up all the time. There were totally non-sequitur scenes with them planning their party. Did we care? Not at all. Dr. Alcott was pretty stupid, too. Are people really that self absorbed and evil? Well, I guess they are, but do we need to see them in movies like this? And do they need to be played by Greg Kinnear who has always seemed like a much nicer guy? And do they have to be having sex with girls like Mena Suvari?!?! The only good characters were Paul and Dora. I guess it's good when the two leads are interesting and you care if they get together, but could we have a few more people that we want to live through the movie? I think there were scenes cut out, too, that would have helped the story make more sense. There's a scene where two of the roommates catch up to Dora and start talking to her as if they knew her pretty well. They had only met her when she was sick from the drugs that they gave her. Would they have even recognized her? And where's the scene where they're looking for her for days on the streets of New York? They never would have just run into her like that. Then there's the missed opportunities. As I said before, they don't use the fish out of water thing to it's full potential. And there's a point where Paul's roommates (who, by the way, are completely interchangeable and may as well be nameless) find out about Alcott's indiscretions. They blackmail him and then Paul comes in to talk to him. He thinks that Paul is in on it and tells Dora later. This is where Dora should start thinking that Paul is a jerk who is just using her to get a good grade out of Alcott. Nothing is done about this. It's barely even mentioned! She finds out the truth and thinks nothing more of it. In fact, Alcott tells her the truth! Don't you think a guy this stuck on himself would try to put any other potential suitor of his girlfriend down as much as possible? And the ending. Wow. What an anti-climax. We all know how it ends, but it just ends! Nothing else. Just their first kiss and fade to black. No, "how's their relationship" type stuff. It could have gone on for a while longer. I'm glad it didn't, but it could have. It did, however, have Ms. Heckerling's old Fast Times trick of telling us how the characters are doing now with a few lines about each person. Only one of them is worth it, though. The rest are basically just, "This guy's in jail." "This guy's a drooling idiot." Blah, blah, blah. Nothing funny at all. I was really wanting to like this movie. It was going to be kind of about me. Yes, I was always one of those guys who never quite fit in, strange as it may seem. After all, I'm a God Of In now. But back in the day I was a dork. (This is self deprecating, by the way. I'm still a dork. I've got a website, don't I?) And I always had really good female friends who never thought of me as any more than friends. Even when their boyfriends were jerks. So I just had to take it. I guess I'll have to write that movie. (It's copyrighted. Don't steal it!) I'm not really sure why we're always so happy about Amy Heckerling doing a new movie. How many good movies has she really done? Fast Times was a nearly perfect vision of high school in a fairly good part of California in the 80s written by Cameron Crowe. Then Clueless came along in the 90s and almost did it again, just a little less realistically. Other than that none of her movies have really been that great. After all, who started the Look Who's Talking flicks? And who single-handedly nearly ruined the Vacation series with European Vacation? And, well, I liked Johnny Dangerously, but no one else did. It was a bad movie, too. Maybe she just need to stick to high school and stop trying to branch out or grow up. She certainly can't keep up with the times. This movie is supposed to take place in 2000, but people are still doing the L on the forehead thing and listening to music that came out before 1997. But it did have a pretty good soundtrack. It's always good to hear fellow Austinites Fastball in a movie. And then to hear classic Elvis Costello right next to them. (I've always thought that the lead singer of Fastball sounded a little like Elvis, so that was interesting.) So there were about two funny lines in the whole movie and I can't remember them at all. Not worth my time or my $8. Five years and a nice contract and this is all Amy can come up with for us. Damn shame. Let's hope that Amy, Jason, Mena and Greg can get better flicks next time. They're all talented they just need the right material. (But Jason's not doing so well. I hear that Boys And Girls was crap, too. Oops.)

The Perfect Storm

admin — Sun, 23 Jul 2000 17:00:00 +0000

You always have to be wary of any movie with the word 'perfect' in the title. Especially after that Jamie Leigh Curtis flick. You know that they're never going to be what they say. This one is no different, but (and this is a humongous but) it's about as close as Wolfgang Petersen is probably going to make here in America. This is the true story of Billy Tyne (George Clooney), the captain of the Andrea Gail, a sword fish boat off the coast of Gloucester, Maine. He's hit a slump and he and his crew can't make ends meet. The night that they come back from one run he tells them that they have to make another one a couple of days later. Bobby Shatford (Mark Wahlberg) is a young rookie who has only made a few runs. He and his girlfriend, Christina (Diane Lane from The Outsiders, Jack and Lonesome Dove), are just starting out their lives together. She's got kids from another marriage that she's trying to get back and he's not making enough from the paltry fish runs to support even the two of them. Murph (John C. Reilly from Hard Eight, Boogie Nights and Never Been Kissed) has an ex-wife and a young son to help support. His son loves him and can't stand to see him go away every few weeks. The fact that he only got to see him for a day this time didn't help matters any. Sully (William Fitchner from Go and Drowning Mona (oops)) is Murph's arch rival. He's the guy who broke up the marriage. So they're always at odds with each other from the beginning. Bugsy (John Hawkes from Rush Hour, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and he was the doomed clerk at the beginning of From Dusk Till Dawn) is a lonely old salt who finally finds someone to love him just before he ships off. Even if he can never remember her name (Irene played by Rusty Schwimmer from Twister, EdTV and Amistad--no relation to David) and she's not that attractive he falls for her. Alfred Pierre (Allen Payne from Jason's Lyric) is, well, we don't get to know him. At all. He's just some Cajun romeo who pops up every once in a while to show us that there are black guys on these boats. So Billy and his ragtag crew take off one more time despite Christina's protests. While they're out catching very few fish the local weatherman (Christopher McDonald from Happy Gilmore, The Skulls and The Iron Giant) finds out that there are three weather systems about to collide and cause the "perfect storm." It's got something to do with these storms feeding off of each other's energies and not dying down the way they're supposed to. And the Andrea Gail is sailing right into it. Another captain who is falling for Billy, Linda (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), tries to warn him, but his radio gets knocked out. Of course. I have to admit that, even though the characters were a little weak and cliched, I was totally caught up in the story. I couldn't help but think about the real guys who do this kind of stuff everyday just to bring us the fish that we eat. My friend who I saw it with has first hand experience with what the folks on shore were going through. His dad was a shrimp man. He told me that they got all of the emotions right on that end. From Bobby and Christina sitting in the car together until the last minute to everyone waving goodbye until they couldn't see the boat anymore. He said that he and his mom used to drive to another point where they could wave at them a little bit longer. They just couldn't let go. This is the kind of thing that got to me. The characters didn't bother me that much because of the situation that they were in. The only one that really bothered me was Alfred Pierre since he wasn't developed at all. Even the story of the rescue crew got to me. There's another small sailboat caught in the storm and the Coast Guard is called out to find them and the Andrea Gail. Then, of course, the rescuers have to be rescued. I was pulling for everybody! Clooney and Wahlberg seemed to actually care about their performances again. That's what matters most for these guys. Some people can put in great performances without even thinking about it (Sir Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster...you know the ones), but these guys really have to care. Don't get them involved in movies like The Peacemaker or The Big Hit because you'll end up with phoned in performances. The rest of the cast was equally good. William Fitchner is turning into one of my favorite unsung heroes in the film industry these days. He's just so unique looking and good that it's hard to deny his presence in any movie. It's hard to believe that he got his start on Grace Under Fire. Ol' Wolfgang is a great action director. Always has been. Now, I still haven't seen Das Boot (I know, I know), but it's supposed to be the best submarine movie ever made, so he knows how to work on water. And he knows how to tug at the heartstrings (The Never Ending Story). This time around he shows that he can do both at the same time. That's something even Costner couldn't do. (Of course, that's not the only thing he can't do.) The action sequences are great. Lots of suspense flying around with the water. It's a little hard at times to figure out who's doing what, but that's more because of the fact that they're being dowsed in water than any fault of Mr. Petersen. This actually made me look forward to his next flick. And yes, that last wave is amazing. We'll be seeing this come back around for Oscar time. Just the special effects, though, I think. The movie was good, but it wasn't that good. The only thing that bugged me (besides Alfred, but I beat that point to death) was the speech that Bobby had for his lover out on the water. He does this "Leia. Hear me." speech in the middle of the storm and they show Christina floating above him. I really could have done without that. Just way too cheesy for a movie that was doing so well with keeping from the stupid sentiments. I was constantly reminded of Billy Joel's Storm Front album (which I'm listening to as I write this review) throughout the entire movie. In fact, when I first saw the preview I thought it was probably inspired by his "Downeaster 'Alexa.'" But it has a life all its own. It's a great movie with a lot of emotion that some critics can't seem to figure out. Look beyond the characters and into the story. Think about the real people who are out there doing this and you'll like the movie as much as I did.

1900 (1973)

admin — Mon, 24 Jul 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Let's go back to a time when movies were still being made by pioneering directors. Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Bogdonavich. A time when Bernardo Bertolucci was still a viable source of important and at least semi-entertaining films like The Conformist and Last Tango In Paris. A time when Robert DeNiro was putting in amazing performance after amazing performance. A time when Gerard Depardieu wasn't a fat cartoon character. And a time when Donald Sutherland could still act. (Did anyone see Shadow Conspiracy? "Your thafty ith my conthern, thir.") The year was 1976 and all of these factors were well in place. That was the year of this humongous epic. 1900 is the story of two Italian men from birth to age 44. Both were born on the day that composer Verdi died in 1901. It was also a year of great upheaval in the Italian government. The Fascists and the Communists were constantly fighting to gain control of the country and the people were divided. Alfredo Berlinghieri (DeNiro) was born to a rich landowner and Olmo Dalco (Depardieu) was the bastard son of one of the women who worked the farm. The boys' grandfathers (Burt Lancaster and Sterling Hayden (General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove) respectively) were old friends but have had a rift between their friendship ever since one became rich and the other poor. Alfredo and Olmo, although they are completely different, become very close friends. At a very young age they find out that their families have different political views. The Berlinghieris, since they are rich, seem to want the Fascists out of power, but they don't want to rock the boat in order to stop them. The Dalcos are more rebellious. They'll strike, fight or die for their cause. The boys are no different from their families. After Olmo comes back from the war, things have changed even more. Atilla (Donald Sutherland) has taken over as foreman of the farm and is pretty much Alfredo's father's hand man. He's cruel, ruthless and pretty much pure evil. Everyone sees it, but no one has the guts to say anything about it but Olmo and he is kept quiet by everyone else. The father really isn't much better. He has no compassion for his workers and forces them to rebel. Olmo and Alfredo go to the city, meet women, fall in love and continue to see the differences in themselves. Olmo becomes more interested in socialist/communistic causes and Alfredo becomes more and more tyrannical and weak. He doesn't like what Fascist Atilla is doing to his people and claims to be a Socialist, but he doesn't think that he can do anything. He drives his wife, Ada (Dominique Sanda) to drinking, but she was annoying before that. Even his loving uncle has left him behind. The story reminded me of a cross between the Godfather Trilogy, Casino and Raging Bull. A young man becomes his father, which is exactly what he didn't want to do. His wife hates what he's become and is driven to alcoholism. The young man accuses his best friend of having an affair with his wife. (DeNiro doesn't have the famous line in this one, though. Woulda been funnier if he had, though.) Bertolucci is amazing as always at capturing time and place with his camera. It's a beautiful film even if the scenery is very dirty. He's also a master at catching the feelings of his characters. We felt the pain of every one of them. One thing that surprised me was the fact that he was able to keep a good pace throughout this five hour eleven minute magnum opus. (Yes, I sat through a five hour movie--with intermission. I am a loser.) Most of Bertolucci's films are long, ponderous and don't make a whole lot of sense. This one and The Last Emperor are different, though. They don't drag at all and the stories are amazingly interesting. 1900 went on at a great clip until about the last 20 or 30 minutes. That was when the five hour time frame felt like 1900 in real time. (The film wraps around on itself starting and ending with DeNiro looking a bit like You Bet Your Life-era Groucho and Donald getting pitchforks in all extremities.) Bertolucci seemed to want to show everything at the end so that we knew exactly what happened to each character no matter how minor. There's even an anti-Schindler's List part to the proceedings. This is when things get really self-indulgent. It's almost as if he couldn't decide on one ending, so he put all of them on. And then there's a bit with Olmo and Alfredo as old men fighting. It's laughable until the very last image. Like almost all Bertolucci films this one is very sexually explicit. This version (the 1991 restored director's cut) has all of the naughty bits added back in and I think they go even further than Last Tango even dreamed of. As the guy who introduced the film says, we got to know DeNiro like only his ex-wives and doctors know him. Definitely some images I never thought I would see, like DeNiro and Depardieu being masturbated at the same time by a prostitute and two young boys checking out their penises. (Looks like Olmo shrank as he got older. Hmm.) That's something I probably could have done without, but it made sense in the story, so I guess it wasn't totally exploitive. Funny what they can get away with in Italy. It's a lot more violent than most of Bernardo's films. I can't remember any violence (unless it's sexual violence in Last Tango) in any of the ones I've seen. This one, however, has some of the most disturbing violence ever put on film, most of it from Sutherland's character. Between killing a little boy (the one scene that makes this movie deserve its NC-17 re-rating) and head-butting a cat he runs the gamut of despicable acts. He's one of the screen's most evil men since Henry Fonda's character in Once Upon A Time In The West (which Mr. Bertolucci did some camera work on). The performances from everyone else are pretty amazing, too. Gerard has finally shown me that, at least at one time, he could act. What happened? Why do movies like My Father The Hero and Green Card when you could still be doing good movies. And what was up with his guest shot in Kenneth Brannagh's otherwise brilliant version of Hamlet? I couldn't understand a word he said. This shows why he's one of the most important actors to come out of France. Through most of the movie he seemed to be fighting alone for his cause and you could see the pain and anger even when he was happy. Always a brooding bit of hatred underneath. And DeNiro shows us what he used to be able to do. Now that he's acting with cartoons it's hard to imagine that this guy was once considered one of the greatest actors alive. He and Brando had the market cornered on crazy anti-heroes. Here, though he's playing the polar opposite: a weak man who believes one thing in his heart, but doesn't think he's allowed to act it out. Then he ends up nearly believing what he never wanted to. A very layered job from a national treasure that has kind of forgotten what he's supposed to be doing. (Really. Think of one truly great performance he's put in since Goodfellas. Flawless is about the only one I can think of that comes anywhere near what he could do.) Unfortunately this is kind of a lost DeNiro movie much like Once Upon A Time In America, another epic that needs to have a big re-release. The supporting cast is equally good even if it's a little hard to see Burt Lancaster, one of the most American actors ever in my opinion, as an Italian pervert. (Nice enough guy, but in the end he's basically a perv.) The only problem I had with the cast was Dominique Sanda as Alfredo's wife Ada. She was beautiful at first, but then she spoke. She has a voice slightly more manly than mine...and it's not sexy on her. Kathleen Turner can get away with it, but she can't. Then she started acting like a complete idiot. (Just one more comparison to Casino. I hated Sharon Stone's character in that movie.) There's a scene where they all go to a party thrown by Olmo's people. She starts to act like she's blind and runs into people screaming about how blind she is. Then, when the jig is up, she runs around apologizing to everyone, running into them again. Even when they're all running towards a fire trying to put it out she still can't stand to not be the center of attention. "Why are you going?! I was only joking! I am not blind! Come back!" I wanted DeNiro to bring out Joe Pesci and whack her right in front of everyone. This is, unfortunately, a movie that has gone unnoticed for a long time. Not a lot of people have heard of it and those who have don't want to sit through the whole thing. (Even the "short" version is four hours long.) It's worth it, though. Everyone is in their peak form and, except for the very end, it's totally engaging and goes by faster than most three hour epics made these days. If you can, find the director's cut. I've never seen the original American release, but I hear that it doesn't make very much sense because of all of the cuts. As long as you can stomach some of the more shocking scenes this is a great movie. It's a story that doesn't get a lot of recognition, too. Not in film, anyway. It's worth the five hours just for that.

What Lies Beneath

admin — Fri, 28 Jul 2000 17:00:00 +0000

First, some previews. (Yeah, I haven't done this in a while, but future movies merit previews again.) SPACE COWBOYS--Ok, I like everybody in this movie: Clint Eastwood, James Garner, Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones. And I love movies about the space program. So I will see this movie and I will probably like it. BUT, the plot seems a little weak. Four retired astronauts who never made it to space are called upon to do something or another with a Russian space satellite because they're the only ones old enough to remember it. Uh, couldn't they get some manuals? We're supposedly friends with the Russians now. Couldn't they just fax them to us? It wasn't sent up 2000 years ago. It was more like 30. But the guys who play Clint and Tommy as young men look a lot like them, don't they? THE CREW--See above about the actors: Burt Reynolds (yeah, I like him now), Dan Hedeya (who has to be the youngest here), Richard Dreyfuss and Seymour Cassel. This one I'll see at some point, but I don't have very high hopes for it. It could surprise me and be really good (like Analyze This did) or it could depress me and just show how old these guys really are (like True Crime did for Clint). Looks fairly funny, though. AUTUMN IN NEW YORK--What is Winona Ryder doing in a movie with Richard Gere? And, more importantly, why is she having sex with him in a movie?!?! That's so gross! And, besides, she's supposed to be with me!! Basically just another weeper that will probably make some pretty serious bank, but won't really be worth the film it's thrown on. Didn't we see this movie with Marisa Tomei and Christian Slater? Yeah, I didn't think anyone saw it. BOUNCE--This is a movie about a fabric softener. Well, close. It's about two professionals (Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck) who don't think they have time for love. Then they fall in love. Whatever. We've seen it before. Next movie. (It is a little weird to hear "Academy Award Winner Ben Affleck," though.) BLESS THE CHILD (or, The Seventh Sense)--But the weirdest thing of all is to hear "Academy Award Winner Kim Basinger"! What a crock. This is another movie that could either be good or really bad. I like the cast (especially Christina Ricci), but the plot about a little girl who is going to "lead us to God" and the semi-religious sect who wants her seems to have been done a few times in one way or another. I'll probably see it, but no expectations. And now, the real deal: Ok, first off, did anyone else see Random Farts, er, Hearts? Good. Don't. That was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Not only was it boring, but it was stupid. And Harrison Ford looked like he was walking in a daze. And, sorry Harry, but you look ridiculous with that earring. I haven't seen Force 10 From Navarone or Hanover Street, but I can't imagine that they were any worse than this. That said, Mr. Ford has taken his earring out...and it shows. (Actually, quite literally. I could see the hole.) This is the story of the Spencers, Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Norman (Ford). Claire was in an accident a year ago and no one will let her forget it. Now the Spencers' daughter has gone off to college and they're all alone in their pretty much secluded Vermont house on a lake. They're all alone, but Claire thinks that they're not. She's started to see and hear ghosts. Is it their next door neighbor? The couple next door have been acting awfully suspicious. Why was the wife crying in the back yard a couple of days ago? And what was that bundle that the husband was taking out to his car late last night? That's all I can really tell you about the plot without giving too much away, although the trailers have done a really good job of that already. Like Snake Eyes, they pretty much give away every twist and turn. So, if you can help it, don't see any trailers before seeing the movie. (Note to trailer cutters: don't put anything from the second half of the movie in the trailer!!) I will tell you this, film school has nearly ruined movies like this for me. I couldn't watch it without seeing a bunch of other movies in it (more on that later). I also knew exactly when the big scares would be. Anytime the audience jumped I had already figured out when I should jump. That's not the fault of director Robert Zemeckis. That's more the fault of many years of filmmakers using the same tricks, and the fact that there are really only so many ways that you can make an audience jump. So I can't fault him for it. I still love the moment when your jump becomes a self-deprecating laugh. It's just a great moment in any movie, and this movie had a lot of those moments. This is actually the kind of movie that Brian DePalma was famous for years ago. It seems to be a homage (I hope) to Hitchcock. It takes bits from Rear Window, Rebecca, Suspicion and Psycho (check out the music at the end). Even a little bit of Gaslight shows up. (And yes, I know that's not a Hitchcock film. But it may as well be.) It was actually a pretty good suspense film even if you know the original source material and the ending. The only problem I had with it was that it seemed to have too many endings. And they were all a little weak. It's one of those, we want you to believe this, but it's really this, and here it is again...and again...and again. Now let us drag it out a little longer. Not to mention the fact that some of it was pretty far fetched, but it's a movie, so I was able to kind of suspend my disbelief. And there was one rather insulting part. Claire is looking someone up on the internet. When she finds her in the student directory (Norman is a scientist at the university, which comes into play at the end), she has to read her name to us and make sure that we know the connection. "Frank. Madison Elizabeth Frank. M...E...F" I don't know about the rest of the audience, but I can read, so I got it right off. The performances were pretty good. Of course I love Michelle and Harrison. I think Michelle is one of those few actresses who gets better with age. Yeah, she was beautiful back in the day, but she's gotten radiant in the last few years. And Harry's still got it, he just needs to learn how to use it again...and stay away from movies like Random Hearts. He's kind of the Henry Fonda of the modern age. Except I think he treats his kids better. And Zemeckis is just as good as always. I'm sure there were hidden special effects in this one just like in Forrest Gump and Contact (which I thought was very good--no matter what you say). He's kind of taken off on a new career lately. Remember when he only did big comedies like Back To The Future and Roger Rabbit? Now he's only doing big dramas. I can't wait for his next one, Castaway with Tom Hanks (who, of course, is the Jimmy Stewart of the modern age. But who's John Wayne?) So, not a bad movie at all. Pretty suspenseful, just kind of a weak ending. Maybe if Bob had chosen just one ending it would have been better. Check out a matinee. It's worth seeing on the big screen.

The Patriot

admin — Tue, 01 Aug 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich (the Little Spielberg from Sindelfingen--self proclaimed probably) are very talented filmmakers. Especially when it comes to action sequences and tugging at the heart strings. I just wish that they would have an original thought occasionally. Universal Soldier was the closest they came to an idea that came from themselves...and we saw where that went. Three sequels and Burt Reynolds later it's still going, but no one cares. They seem to be in the business of thinly veiled remakes. Stargate was some weird conglomerate of Close Encounters and The Ten Commandments with a little bit Lawrence Of Arabia thrown in for good measure. It had some brains to it, though. Independence Day was War Of The Worlds for the cyber-set. Dumb, but it was very entertaining. Godzilla was more Jurassic Park and The Lost World than Toho Studios. And it was just dumb. This time out they've decided to remake Braveheart and set it during the American Revolutionary War. Luckily they decided to do a good job of it. I really would have come down hard on them if they had screwed it up. Braveheart is one of my all-time favorite movies. I know my Audience Of One disagrees with its merits, but I don't care. So, nyah! Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) is a simple farmer with seven children (not too much of a stretch for Mr. Gibson--I think he's actually up to 15) and a dead wife. He also happens to be a hero to every man who knows him. He was one of the victors at Fort Wilderness, a battle that helped to end a war with France and get the Cherokees to end their treaty with the overseas enemy. He also did some things that he's not proud of during that battle. Now his oldest son, Gabriel (Heath Ledger from 10 Things I Hate About You) wants to help the cause of the Revolutionaries. Ben sees the side of the Americans, but he doesn't want to get involved because of the horrors that he saw at Wilderness. He also doesn't want his son to be any part of it. But, of course, his son joins up and is caught by the English army and is set to be hanged as a spy. On his way out of Ben's house, Thomas (Gregory Smith from Kripindorf's Tribe and Small Soldiers--he looks a bit like a really young Mike Myers), Ben's next oldest boy, is shot by Colonel Tavington (Jason Isaacs from Armageddon and The End Of The Affair--even looks a little like Ralph Feinnes). Now revenge must be gotten. Tavington is quite evil, too. Even his superior, General Cornwallis (Tom Wilkinson from Rush Hour and Shakespeare In Love), thinks he's out of line in his brutality. There was one scene where I wanted to jump into the screen and kill him. I almost yelled out at the character who was trying to kill him exactly how to do it. I don't think the rest of the audience would have liked that, though. But I bet they were thinking it. This is one of those rare movies that will get your adrenaline going and actually make you wonder what you would do in the heroes place. Would you be able to give your young sons guns and have them kill soldiers? Would you be able to lead a band of farmers to victory against a huge army of people who are dying to kill you? Would you be able to look a man in the eye and kill him? The answer to all of these questions for Ben is, of course, yes. He becomes a malitia leader and sends his family off with his dead wife's sister (Joely Richardson from 101 Dalmations and Return To Me). His old friend Colonel Harry Burwell (Chris Cooper from American Beauty and a lot of John Sayles movies--finally not playing a jerk) allows him to keep Gabriel close enough to protect him. A lot of people have commented on how violent the film is. Well, you know what? That's how it was. Not many people said too much negative about how violent Saving Private Ryan was. Or even Braveheart. We all just took it that that's how those wars were fought and that the filmmakers were going for pure realism. But I think the thing that people were really offended by in this one was the fact that, in order to save Gabriel, Ben gave his two sons (both around 10 or 12) guns and told them "Aim small, miss small." (I'm not a gun owner, so I don't really know what that means. I guess if you aim for a finger, you'll miss by a finger?) Now, I'm no advocate for guns at all (in fact, I think the less there are, the better), but this action was totally representative of what was going on at the time. This was why "the right to bear arms" was in the Constitution. Today we don't have this danger (believe it or not), so of course little kids shouldn't have guns. But at the time it was necessary sometimes. And the boys had exactly the right reaction to their killing. The oldest one seemed a little disturbed by it, but he was glad that he did it. (And that was a little disturbing, too.) The younger one was angry at his father for making him do it. And his father's act of sheer violence on one of the soldiers scared the bejesus out of him, as it should have. And speaking of the action, WOW! The battle scenes were played out so well that I almost forgot that I was watching a Hollywood movie. It's no Private Ryan, but it was at least, well, Braveheart. And, unlike some scenes like this (13th Warrior), you could always tell what was going on. At no time was I thinking, "Who just did that? Who's knife is that sticking out of that back? Should I be glad that that guy's head got blown off?" And the decapitation by cannonball scene was something else. I haven't seen a blow to the head like that since, well I'd have to go back to Braveheart. Or maybe Deadly Friend. It's funny how the most unpretentiously patriotic film to come out of Hollywood in years was made by a German. Maybe it's not so strange since we naturalized Americans tend to take it for granted. But when we do come up with something to celebrate this great land of ours, we slather it on so thick that even Patrick Henry would ask for death. I mean, come on. The Postman? Armageddon? I'm as much of an American as the next guy, but I cringed during a few scenes in those movies. The Patriot, on the other hand, didn't have as many obligatory flag waving scenes. Yes, there was a flag and, yes, it was waved, but not in a way that made Mel's troops want to kill him. The problem scene came with Gabriel in a church trying to recruit troops. He's not strong enough to get people rallying behind him, so the girl he loves (Lisa Brenner from MTV's train wreck of a soap Undressed) has to. When she stands up to yell at all of the men of her town about their cowardice I had nearly retched. Mel's comic relief recruiting scene in a seedy bar gave me more tears in my eyes. Actually, that's not true. I had tears in my eyes during the church scene. Tears of laughter. (But it's always good to see Robert Altman/"Benson"/"Deep Space Nine" alum Rene Auberjonois. And he's back in Father Mulcahy mode!) The final battle was a great example of how to build tension and rally the audience at the same time while still keeping an air of dignity for the participants. Even though Mel uses the same trick he did in that Scottish Revolution flick he did a few years back (the spike in a horse--but this time it reminded me more of The Simpsons episode that he was in) it didn't seem totally derivative. And Mel's final fight scene with the evil Col. Tavington was one of the high points of the film. As it should be. One more problem, though. What happened to Cornwallis's dogs? Ben and his gang captured a couch that contained two of the General's dogs. After they make an appearance with Ben in Cornwallis's office and are more loyal to Ben than their former owner (of course) they just kind of disappear. That's too bad. I would have liked to see them maul their less popular owner. I know, it's not historically correct, but it would have been funny. More parallels to Courageous Ticker? Well, besides the fact that they're both about people trying to win their independence from England, there's a semi-secret wedding. (I half expected to see Tavington try to claim his right of prima nocta.) The lead character is reluctant to go to war even for freedom. There are family members killed as a turning point for the lead character. Ben's army almost disbands when they find out that "the English are too many" and he has to give a speech to get them back. Well, ok, he waves a flag, but it's the same thing. They're waiting for a foreign army to come to help them out. (And there's a sort of eccentric character who promises that they'll come played by Tcheky Karyo from GoldenEye and Bad Boys looking a little like Gerard Depardieu.) Ben changes the way the army fights because he's apparently a military genius. (Although I don't think that a guy named Ben Martin was the one who suggested that the American army hide behind bushes.) There's even an insider who betrays the militia (Adam Baldwin), but he's not as close to Ben as Robert The Bruce was to William Wallace. He did, however, feel remorse when Tavington went too far in his warfare tactics. At least Mel didn't scream out "FFFRRREEEDOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!!!" I'm very surprised that he didn't, though. Even when Devlin and Emmerich are good they're not very original. But Mel can always be counted on to bring the level of anything up a notch. He makes what could have been just another pre-1900s war flick up to the level of The Last Of The Mohicans, which this also has a lot in common with. More in look than plot, but it's been a while since I've seen that one. Mel does a great job with his talking and walking and moving about and being an actor in general. Seriously, he's great as always and everyone else is on his level. And Heath even seems to have overcome his accent problem! I almost forgot that he's an Australian. (Funny how the lead actors in a movie about the American Revolution are Australian. But we've covered that one already. And Mel's only an adopted Australian, so he may not count.) And we were allowed to get to know the supporting characters enough to care when they died. That's something that a lot of these kinds of movies can't seem to do anymore. Just check out any of Emmerich's or Jerry Bruckheimer's films. But with these performances and the writing it's easy. Not surprising, either, since Robert Rodat, writer of Private Ryan, wrote this one. So check this one out. Devlin and Emmerich have finally put out a movie worthy of its box office. And they did it without too many epic shots of pompuer. I don't know how historically accurate it is (I'm a film geek, not a history geek), but it's good enough for me. It tweren't no Braveheart, but it's a damn fine piece of filmmaking. Not too deep, but entertaining as hell and worth my money to see and, eventually, buy. And a quick note to Spike Lee (as if he'll ever read my petty little review). He was apparently ticked off and hated the movie because there were no slaves in this movie. First off, there was a slave, but he was fighting in the malitia for a year so that he could get his freedom. That was a law. The black people who were on Ben's farm, but they weren't really slaves. They were basically indentured servants. But slavery was an issue. They talked about the fact that the black man in their crew was a slave and how things were going to be different after the war, but they all knew that things weren't going to be THAT different. (It was a little forced, but I think I heard at one point that that law did actually go into effect.) Here's the deal with Ben's lack of "real" slaves. A mainstream American audience can forgive a man for killing another man. They can even forgive him for giving his kids guns and telling them to kill if the motivation is right. But, they won't forgive him for owning slaves. Even if he's Mel Gibson. He'll just be a charming slave owner. He's got to do some serious soul searching for that to work in this day and age. And even then we'll think twice before letting him move in next door. Spike should be glad that we won't stand for that kind of hero. It may not be realistic (Ben probably would have owned a lot of slaves considering the size of his farm), but it's more palatable. And that's the way things are Spike. You wouldn't have even liked Ben if he had actually owned his servants. There's plenty of other things for you to be pissed off about. Don't take it out on a popcorn movie. Sometimes I really do think that you wish you lived back in those days so you could start a revolution. You can be a great filmmaker, but stop thinking that the whole world is against you because Mel Gibson can't own slaves. We just don't want him to.

Hollow Man

admin — Fri, 04 Aug 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Going into a Paul Verhoeven movie you know exactly what you're going to get. Lots of violence, lots of action, lots of special effects, at least a little sex and lots of pretty bad lines. Some of his movies deviate a little bit (Robocop didn't have any sex, Showgirls didn't have any violence...but I wish it had), but that's the basic formula. Hollow Man is his latest opus of magnum dumbness. But are his movies really dumb? Well, yeah, but they're entertaining as hell (except for Showgirls...but I wish it had been). He's the master of big, dumb sci-fi action flicks. Much better than Jerry Bruckheimer and not as pretentious. this time out Kevin Bacon plays Sebastian Caine, the genius behind the government's experiments with invisibility. He does some amazing things. He's overbearing. He's meglomaniacal. He's a bastard. Yes, Kevin is playing James Cameron. Elisabeth Shue is his trusty assistant/ex-girlfriend, Linda Foster, who loves to hate him. She's also in a secret relationship with Matt Kensington (Josh Brolin), the third in the triumvirate of scientists on the project. After Sebastian finally comes up with the final solution to bringing the invisible thing back (they've already made an ape and a dog disappear) they find out that the invisibility formula is making the animals very irritable. But they finally bring the ape back and she becomes as taciturn as she once was. After going to the Pentagon and not telling them that he had finished the project Sebastian decided to become the first human to get gone. In a blaze of some fairly amazing special effects, Kevin Bacon is never seen again. When they find out that they can't bring him back so easily Sebastian does what any red-blooded, heterosexual male would do if he were suddenly invisible: he spys on chicks. When they're sleeping. And showering. And peeing. (There's pretty good scene with some invisible fingers groping one of his assistant's breasts. And, by the way, they're real.) Of course, he also gets a little ornery. He starts raping, killing and maiming just like we always like to see in one of Paul's flicks. And, yes, there's plenty of violence and lots of really cool special effects. Amazingly, though, there aren't that many bad lines! Only a couple and they weren't bad enough to remember. Then the end turns into a pretty interesting haunted house type movie. Everybody dies. We all go home. The end. Not a bad flick at all, but not Mr. Verhoeven's best. (That's still Robocop.) The character's a little plastic and not very well dimensioned, but what do you expect? Starship Troopers didn't have a Charles Foster Kane in it, but it was still pretty damn cool in its cheesiness and actually all the better for the bad characters. And speaking of bad acting, I know Elisabeth Shue is talented. I saw Leaving Las Vegas and the second two Back To The Future flicks. What the hell happened to her in this movie?! She had a weird smile on her face through the whole movie as if she knew that the camera was on her and couldn't believe it. This is how I act, Elisabeth. But she looked good in her disappearing bra. (Bad continuity throughout. Where did Sebastian get those infra-red glasses in the monkey chase scene?) The special effects were great. You thought Who Framed Roger Rabbit? looked good? Anytime no one was throwing something or someone around I was thoroughly amazed! Of course, when Sebastian or the ape were disappearing or reappearing, yes, it looked a little like a computer rendering of The Amazing Visible Ape/Man, but it looked really cool. And, of course, Verhoeven made sure to show Kevin's invisible bacon as much as possible. Never in the flesh (fine with me), but I saw it as muscle and displacing water quite a few more times than I really needed to. I think all bad guys should be invisible. Things are so much more suspenseful that way. And you really don't have to work at it. Just have a rat run into a cage and some invisible teeth bite into it. You never see it coming. And it's one thing to have a mouth hide what's really going on, but it's something wholly other to see what really happens in an ape's mouth as it squishes down on the furry flesh of a nice, succulent rodent. Pretty disturbing. There was an interesting flaw in the logic, though. At one point when they are trying to bring Sebastian back, he falls off of the table. The assistants pick him up and act as if they are actually touching his muscles and blood vessels. There's even a sound effect! Isn't his skin just invisible? It's still there, right? Uh-huh. In this modern age they could have taken this old idea to some new levels. And they start to. We almost see what sex would be like with an invisible person. (Intriguing, right?) But it ends just before it begins! And, no, I'm not just saying that this would have been interesting because I'm a pervert (although...). It really is an interesting concept for a movie. There are, of course, other things that could have been explored. Sebastian is in a pretty powerful position. Instead, Verhoeven just goes for the action. That's really the only thing wrong with this movie. It's kinda trite. Not much exploration into the whole invisibility thing at all. I do wonder, however, if they paid Kevin as much for this as for his other roles.

Reindeer Games

admin — Sun, 06 Aug 2000 17:00:00 +0000

John Frankenheimer is one of those classic directors who you just don't want to see go in the toilet. After great films like The Manchurian Candidate and Birdman Of Alcatraz you expect great things from him. Then he disappeared into obscurity with flicks like 99 And 44/100% Dead (great title, though), 52 Pick-Up and Tales From The Crypt. He recently did The Island Of Dr. Moreau. What was he thinking? But there was a shaft of light. And it was Ronin. And it was good. Amazing chase sequences, great action and an interesting and intelligent plot. Not to mention great performances from Robert DeNiro and Jean Reno. (Natascha McElhone is a different story, though. And what about that scene where they point out the fact that it's an international team?) Nearly a great film. That's why I had so many high hopes for Reindeer Games. Another action film from an intelligent director who knows how to make a suspenseful scene. And it's got Ben Affleck (not the best actor, but I think he's pretty cool--sorry Mr. Mark), Gary Sinise (great actor who can't seem to get a break lately) and, the main draw for me, Charlize Theron (she's mine. Mine! ALL MINE!!!! Ok, maybe she's too perfect for me. Or maybe I just need to get to Hollywood fast.) Ben is Rudy Duncan, a car thief who's two days away from getting out of prison. His cellmate and best friend is Nick (James Frain from Elizabeth and Where The Heart Is), a guy who killed a man for messing with his girl. It was basically self defense, but he's stuck in prison for it. He's also two days from release, but he's got more hope. He's been writing to Ashley Mercer (Charlize) for six months. She's a beautiful (duh!) young girl who started writing him through a magazine and has now fallen for him. Lucky for her he's fallen for her, too. In fact, since he's been reading the letters to Rudy, Rudy's fallen for her, too. On the boys' last day in the joint a riot breaks out in the cafeteria. (I can't imagine that they call it that in prison. Is it a mess hall?) Nick gets shived and dies in Rudy's arms. So, after much deliberation, Rudy decides to take Nick's place and get a little action from the girl of his dreams. And get some action he does. In one of the best sex scenes of Charlize's career. I love her. But I guess I'm not the only one. The next day the two of them run into Gabriel (Sinise), Ashley's truck driving thug of a brother. He wants Nick to help them rob an Indian casino that Nick used to work in. Unfortunately, no matter how many times Rudy tries to tell him, he won't believe that Rudy isn't Nick. Even Ashley won't believe him. So Rudy finally decides to go along with it...Santa suits and all. Not a bad premise, really. No problems with the story. It was all in the script. The first 30-45 minutes are just fine. It's just a bunch of stupid people trying to get a semi-smart guy to help them with their first job. (Yes, it's their first job. And they want to hit a casino. Idiots.) Now, great movies can be made with stupid characters. Blood Simple is an amazing film. Not a smart person in sight. But this movie isn't that smart. Oh, there's some smart lines--some of them even funny. But by the end it all falls apart into a Scooby-Doo mystery. Who is really the mastermind behind the whole thing? Who's playing who? And why does the guy with the gun always have to talk so damn much? The most disappointing thing about this movie is that it was written by Ehren Kruger. His first script (Arlington Road) was so smart that it almost hurt. The paranoia dripped from the screen and the viewer was so involved in the story that they almost ripped the arms off of the theatre chairs. (Well, I was, anyway.) It was an amazing screenplay from someone who had great things ahead of him. Then came the Scream 3 gig. It's the only Scream movie that I didn't see in the theatres and I'm kind of glad that I didn't. It wasn't bad, but the characters started turning into the cliches that they once parodied. And now this. Was Ehren a one trick pony? Will he and Paul Simon team up soon on a duet of "Slip Slidin' Away"? (There's a joke there. It's not funny, but it's there. You just have to dig. And it's not disrespectful to Mr. Simon.) The performances were pretty much just run of the mill. No one really seemed to care about what was really going on. At least I hope they didn't. Gary almost looked like he believed some of his lines, but I think that's just because he's the best actor of the bunch. (Although Isaac Hayes is still in the running. He's in the short riot scene at the beginning.) Clarence Williams III (Life and The General's Daughter), Danny Trejo (From Dusk Till Dawn and any other movie that needs a Mexican thug) and Donal Logue (The Patriot and Blade) round out Gabriel's gang and put in...well...performances. Dennis Farina is wasted as the manager of the casino. Sad. Frankenheimer is still a good director. Great, in fact. The movie was visually pretty damn good. Lots of cool angles and stuff that added to the suspense of the story. But the writing was so weak that it undermined anything that he was trying to do. It's a shame when a once great man is thwarted by a man who was great once. Unless you're a fan of any of the people in this movie you should probably avoid it. I actually enjoyed it a little bit because of its sheer cheesiness, but it was bad. Even with Charlize.

Nurse Betty

admin — Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Here's the problem with moving. I am just now, on October 9, reviewing a movie that I saw nearly a month ago. And this review (and others written before it of movies that I saw after it-figure that one out) probably won't be on my website for another few weeks. So this is all old news, but I'll put it up anyway. When I can. Whenever the hell that may be. Now, on with the review...if I can still remember the movie at all. Where does reality end and fiction begin? Are we the characters that we play on TV? Does the line blur when the mind blurs? These are all questions that Betty Sizemore (Renee Zellweger) deals with when she sees her husband (Aaron Eckhart from In The Company Of Men, Your Friends And Neighbors and Erin Brockovich) brutally murdered by a couple of hitmen, Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and Wesley (Chris Rock), who are straight out of a Tarantino flick. They even have a scene in a diner where they are eating pork and discussing Charlie's final job. Go figure. Since she was watching her favorite soap opera when it happened (something she was obsessed with) she projects herself into the story in order to overcome the trauma of seeing her husband scalped in one of the most violent scenes in any comedy I think I've ever seen. She goes so far as to seek out the star of the soap opera, George McCord (Greg Kinnear). But she's really looking for Dr. David Ravell, McCord's character on the show, because he and her new character used to be engaged. All of her real life she wanted to be a nurse, so, in her new life, she is a nurse. Just to get to Dr. Ravell, though. She finds her way into Rosa's (Tia Texada who looks like a really sexy, Latino version of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) home by saving her brother (at a hospital, no less-somehow she manages to get a job there, too!) and figures out how to get to meet the esteemed doctor at a party. Things just get more complicated from there. The performances are what make this movie. Renee is awesome as an unstable victim of a defense mechanism. She's crazy, but we know why and we feel for her without getting sappy all over her. Somehow Renee is able to do this kind of sick comedy without being sick along with it. She may get blood spurted all over her, but she retains her dignity and goes on about her business without letting it get to her. I'm glad she's finally getting good roles again. Now, if we could just keep her from those bad romantic comedies like The Bachelor. Morgan Freeman, who I haven't seen do comedy since his Easy Reader days (unless Bonfire Of The Vanities counts, but I doubt that it does), did an amazing job as a hitman obsessed with his last job. He's at the same time quiet and demanding to his partner. Then, when he lets his rage show, you pay attention because you never really know where this guy could go. He seems like a normal, sweet natured hitman (huh?), but you just know that there's a cold-blooded heart of a killer beating in that chest. And finally Chris Rock gets a good role. He's not much of an actor usually, but this time out he's actually pretty damn good. You can tell that Wesley would follow Charlie into the Gates Of Hell, but there's always a note of rebellion even when he's not showing it outwardly. And, while Greg's character is a little schizophrenic, he does his typical Greg Kinnear job on it. He is a good actor (as evidenced in As Good As It Gets), but he tends to put a lot of his own sarcastic personality into every role he plays. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just an observation. And the constant flip-flop of this character from nice-guy to total asshole is probably (I hope) intentional. We never really know who he is, but, then again, he plays an actor. And do we really know who any actor is? His character kind of skewers actors in general. Totally charmed by Betty and her persistence one minute (He, and everyone else involved in the show, thinks that she's really trying to get a part on the show-are Hollywood types really that dumb?), and then yelling at her for making him into a fool the next minute. Oh, and Crispin Glover is in it! Where the hell has he been for the last four years? His last role was in The People Vs. Larry Flynt back in 1996. But now he's back as a deputy from Betty's hometown who is looking for her. I've always liked the guy even though he's totally insane. Maybe because he's totally insane. He does a pretty good job as a small-town guy who knows exactly what's going on even though the sheriff won't do a damn thing about it. He's got his own ideas, and they're right, dammit! Even though this movie is more violent than any comedy I think I've ever seen, it has more heart than most of them, too. As I said before, we actually care about the characters. Charlie and Wesley, even though they're hit men and, by nature, evil, are totally sympathetic characters. We don't want them to succeed in their mission (killing Betty), but we want them to find her and fall for her just as we have. And Betty, of course, is nearly a perfect character for this kind of movie: blissfully oblivious to what's going on around her. And we're really scared for her when she first meets George. What if he doesn't like her? What if he realizes that she's sick? Oh, I hope he likes her! And speaking of weird relationships in this movie, there are two of note here. First off, Charlie and Betty seem to be connected in some strange way. Both of them are obsessed with someone who could never live up to their ideals. Charlie sees Betty as his last great job. She's sneaky and knows exactly what she's doing. It will take a lot of smarts to find this slippery character. And, in a way, he loves her. She is, after all, his last job, so I think he wants to make it last as long as possible. Betty, on the other hand, is after Dr. Ravell. She's totally in love with this guy who she thinks she was engaged to years ago, but the real person can't be the medical genius who is so romantic on the show. And then there's the relationship between Charlie and Wesley. They seem to be friends only because of the job, but there's something more there that we can see throughout the whole film. The problem is that they don't tell us about it until the very end. They really could have told us at the beginning and there would have been no surprise lost. I figured it out early on, so it wasn't much of a surprise. It almost seems like Neil LaBute, whose other two films (In The Company Of Men and Your Friends And Neighbors) were dark, sadistic satires about sexual politics in the 90s, has softened up a bit. It's not nearly as twisted and biting as the others. But, keep in mind that he didn't write the script. This is his hack job for now. But it seems to be a loving hack job, so I don't berate him for it. Good job on something that could have been a total throwaway flick. So this is a fun, cute and violent comedy about building confidence in a girl whose life has not been very good to her. Go see it if it hasn't already left the theatres by the time I get this on my website. And, if it has, rent it. No Oscar winner, I don't think, but it's really much better than it seems like it would be. Keep your eye out for continuity errors. My friend that I saw it with said that there were quite a few, but I only noticed one. Early on, Betty gets her picture taken with a cardboard cutout of George. Charlie and Wesley get ahold of it and find out that it was just a cutout, but, later, when they find the cutout, Charlie says, "What the hell is that?" Shouldn't he know what it is? Oh well, even the best movies have little things like that. It's just people not paying attention to detail or something was cut out or added after the thing was written and shot. I guess that's the way it goes in Big Hollywood.

Almost Famous

admin — Wed, 04 Oct 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Have you ever listened to a song or an album that changed your life in some way or another? One that took you to another place and made you feel like you could conquer the world or tell someone how you really feel about them? For my generation it tends to be albums like Nirvana's Nevermind, Pearl Jam's Ten, Radiohead's OK Computer. Whatever. For me, personally, it tends to be pre-1990. Peter Gabriel's Security, U2's Joshua Tree, The Beatles' Rubber Soul, The Rolling Stone's Let It Bleed, Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks. In fact, this movie takes place during my favorite period of music. Pretty much anything released between 1965 and 1975 is pure gold to me. This is when artists were just starting to really experiment (The Beach Boys, Yes, The Moody Blues) or get introspective (Simon And Garfunkel, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell) or, if we were lucky, both (The Beatles, The Who, Bob Dylan). And it was a time when metal was what it was supposed to be, a mix of hard rock and blues and psychedelia. Led Zeppelin knew what they were doing when they started the whole metal movement. Then, somewhere along the way, it got out of hand and became the music of long haired violence mongers. Now it's totally devolved into alterna-crap like Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails. But I digress. As you can tell, I have heard albums that have changed my life. Quite a few times. Maybe even more than is natural. (In fact I used to get made fun of because I paid a little too much attention to music-especially to music that came out before I was born. I was uncool.) But I'm sure you've heard an album like that at one time or another. And it seems as if Cameron Crowe has had it happen to him even more than I have. That's probably why he became a freelance Rolling Stone journalist at 15. And that's also probably why he chooses perfect music for all of his movies. (Can you hear "Secret Garden" by Bruce Springsteen without seeing Tom Cruise and Renee Zellwegger or "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel without seeing John Cusack and Ione Skye?) Almost Famous is the story of William Miller's (Patrick Fugit, whose biggest roles before this were a tv horror movie called Legion Of Fire: Killer Ants! and a small role on Touched By An Angel-GACK!) life on the road with a band in 1973. This is a time that Mr. Crowe knows inside and out not only because he lived in them, but because he lived them. This is also Crowe's life story. The movie starts off, though, in 1969 where William finds out that he's really 11 (and not 13 like he thought because his mom put him in school early) and his sister, Anita (Zooey Deschanel), runs off because mom, Elaine (Frances McDormand), is too strict with them: no rock music, no fast food, no anything fun. She goes so far as to say that Simon And Garfunkel's Bookends album is about drugs and promiscuous sex. (Anyone who has heard the album knows that it's about stages of life, but that's not important right now.) So, in one of the more poignant scenes in the movie, sis plays "America" (S&G's best semi-unknown song) for her to explain why she has to leave. This is where young William's life is changed forever. It's his first rock song. And what a way to start off. His sister also leaves him all of her albums. Somehow she managed to only pick up classics (The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, The Who's Tommy, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper, Joni Mitchell's Blue-which actually didn't come out for two more years) it would have been nice to see a couple of more obscure trash albums. Maybe she could have been really into The 13th Floor Elevators or The Archies. (Just a note: The Elevators are actually really cool, just not well known and I don't know that they put out any classic albums. They are, however, from Austin, which makes them cooler than cool.) Four years later, William runs into legendary rock critic Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who immediately takes a liking to the 15-year-old music lover. He gives him his first assignment at Creem and sends him to a Sabbath concert to interview the opening band, Stillwater. Somehow his mom lets him go. I guess she's softened up a lot since she lost her first born. This is where William meets Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), a groupie, er, Band Aid, who tries to get him backstage, but ends up in his heart instead. Unfortunately for William, the lead guitarist of Stillwater, Russell (Billy Crudup) is already in hers. Then, by some fluke of fate, not only does William get backstage, but he gets a job on the road with the band to write about them for Rolling Stone. SCORE!!! Along the way he becomes friends with the boys, loses his virginity (even though he doesn't look old enough to know what to do with a girl) and becomes the "adult" of the group. And that's the irony of the flick. It is laid on pretty thick, but Cameron tends to rise above it. The script is so well written and the roles are so well acted that you tend to forget that you're watching a big Hollywood movie and start to think that you're actually watching your friends on a long trip. Even scenes that seem like they wouldn't work (and, in fact, they shouldn't work) work like a charm. (I really hate that cliché.) The one that everyone talks about (and I'm going to do it, too) is the scene on the bus where everyone bursts into Elton John's "Tiny Dancer." Crowe puts a "singing in a car" scene in every movie (can't remember one in Singles-any help?) and they all work pretty well even if they're really short. This one, however, works better than anything he's ever done before. Because Russell is the only member in focus on the new T-shirt, Jeff (Jason Lee in one of his best performances), the lead singer, and Russell get in a huge fight and nearly break up the band in one of the best "disintegration of a band" scenes ever. Then, after everyone is back on the bus, they're still pissed. But something amazing happens. "Tiny Dancer" comes on the radio and the drummer starts to drum the beat on the back seat. Then the bassist starts singing. After a while the whole bus is singing along and they're all friends again. This sounds like a totally hackneyed scene, but it works so well because of the choice of song and the genuine acting. Just think if Crowe had chosen a song about friendship or a group of people coming together. Maybe The Beatles' "All Together Now." Pretty stupid, huh. Instead, he chose a song that does have a little to do with a band (the song is about Elton's lyricist Bernie Taupin's wife, who is the "seamstress for the band"), but it's just a nice love song for the most part. And it has a perfect build up from soft piano ballad to a slightly harder piano rock song. It allows all of the riders to join in as it builds. And it just sets the mood of the times without being totally nostalgic. It's the perfect choice of sing along song that doesn't seem perfect until you actually hear it in the scene. From then on William is dragged from one city to another to write a story on the band for Rolling Stone. Four weeks turns into months. A few cities turn into the whole tour. His infatuation with Penny turns to love and his admiration of Russell turns to jealousy and, in a way, pity. This is the best movie that Cameron Crowe has ever done. The movie that he was born to do. He's great at the romantic comedy (Say Anything is the best high school romance ever and Jerry Maguire and Singles are pretty damn good, too-of course Fast Times At Ridgemont High (which he only wrote) is a classic-but not very romantic), but this is his life and his first love. The movie portrays a time when Elton John and Rod Stewart were still cool. A time when groupies could actually have sex with their favorite bands without worrying about where they were the night before. (Although I'm not so sure that that was a good thing.) A time when a 15 year old could actually be taken at least sort of seriously as a writer. And it portrays it so well that we can forget about any other movie that takes place in the early 70s and just watch this one anytime we want to relive that period. The attention to detail (except for the whole Blue thing) is amazing. Did you ever see Somewhere In Time with Christopher Reeve? He has traveled back in time in his mind in order to meet a woman that he fell in love with through her picture. But he suddenly sees a penny from 1980 and gets sucked back into present time. There's no penny in this movie. Nothing to distract you from the times. You can tell that Cameron holds the early 70s in high regard, but he doesn't want us to get the idea that it was all fun and games. After all, there were dangerous drugs, hard life on the road and weird things going on with sex that, although they aren't really touched on in the movie, they are hinted at in the very end. There were hearts broken, families torn apart, distrust and political upheavals. But they're the times that shaped him, so he sees them in a light that I may not. The performances are all uniformly amazing. The three main characters are portrayed more believably than anyone in Cameron's last flick. (It's just hard for me to see Tom Cruise as a nice guy.) Kate, the very embodiment of a Tiny Dancer is great as the woman child who wants so much to be grown up, but deep down she's just a little girl who has lost that all-important childhood because of her use of sex as a power trip. Her innocence is gone, but she still plays it up enough to know that, somewhere it still lingers. She loves someone that she knows she can't have, but she'll keep trying anyway. (There's a great scene where it all comes to her and she's smiling and crying at the same time. Beautifully acted and shot like one of those old 70s photography commercials. Just made you want to wipe her tears away and take her back to her castle.) Billy, as the hard-working, soon to be rock star, is given a role that may just make him a star. He's an egotistical user who doesn't realize that he's hurting a girl that he doesn't really love, but he's still vulnerable and totally a nice guy. Everyone loves him and he always has time for his fans. He may not always have time for William who desperately wants an interview with him, but he's gotten too close to the kid. He's afraid that he may say something that he and the band don't want printed. And Patrick was surprisingly good as the boy who becomes a man on a trip full of grown up children. He goes from a sheltered little boy to a world-weary young man in the course of the two hour movie. He kind of reminds me of Tobey Maguire's Homer Wells from The Cider House Rules. He starts off totally passive and just takes in everything that he's given but ends up a changed man who won't be walked on anymore. And yet he retains his innocence throughout. (One great scene where it all falls on him at once is where he tries, one more time, to get that interview, but Russell yells at him to leave and he hears Penny in there with him. He gets pissed off, flips off the door (making sure no one sees him do it), goes across the hall, sits down hard and quietly cries as he hears the two of them giggling behind the closed door. It was painful to watch, but more true than anyone is willing to admit.) The rest of the performances are equally impressive. Jason Lee is great as the over the top, jealous lead singer with his heart buried somewhere under a thin shield. Frances McDormand has finally found a role that suits her again as the well meaning, but over-protective mother. She takes a role that we would typically hate (think Carrie's mom) and turns it into a totally loving mother who just has a lot of idiosyncrasies. She's not the kind of mom that we would want, but she does love her kids and would do anything for them. She just wants to keep them safe…and off drugs. And, of course, Hoffman is great as the legendary, bombastic critic who reaches out his hand to a kid with a dream. He's uncool in a cool way. And he knows that he's uncool, but he's so ok with it that he plays it up. According to him, critics were meant to be uncool. I can see that. Complex characters for a movie that's much more complex than you would ever think. And then there's the music. Cameron has always had a way with music, but I think he's surpassed even himself this time. From the first strains of Rod Stewart's "Every Picture Tells A Story" when Penny is dragging William to Stillwater's hotel to Elton John's unjustly overlooked "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" being played while William is running towards Penny's hotel room looking for her, there's not a false note (is that a pun? No, I would never do that) in the whole film. Even the score fits with the times. But I guess that goes to figure. Cameron's wife, Nancy Wilson, wrote it. And she should know a little something about the 70s since her band, Heart, were million sellers back then. So this is my long-winded way of saying GO SEE THIS MOVIE. It's the best movie I've seen all year with some of the best music ever written and the best script since last year's American Beauty. And after you see Almost Famous go rent High Fidelity, a movie that would make a great companion piece to this one. They're both about people who make music one of the biggest parts of their lives. And, of course, I love both movies. Then again, I guess I can identify with the main characters in both. As a side note, what the hell happened to Rolling Stone? This movie really made me realize how far downhill that magazine has gone. Back in 1967, when it was first published, it helped to usher in the era of rock criticism. It was right on the edge with stories about politics, music and culture. William may have been called "The Enemy" by Stillwater back then because he wrote for RS, but now he would be called "The Sellout." Jeff once says something about how they don't just give anybody the cover to some band with the week's hit. If that that were true today. Now we've got Titney Spears and N'Stync on every issue. And the best writers are their political writers. Only PJ O'Rourke seems to remember what Rolling Stone (and rock and roll for that matter) is all about.

Psycho Beach Party

admin — Sat, 07 Oct 2000 17:00:00 +0000

What would happen if you took those really bad, cheesy beach movies of the 60s, turned them on their ear with a 21st Century sensibility and introduced a psycho killer and a girl with split personalities who may just be one and the same? Well, you may just get this fun little mess of a movie. Florence Forrest (Lauren Ambrose from Can't Hardly Wait) is your everyday, typical 16-year-old girl who wants hormones, but just hasn't quite gotten them yet. She also has a separate personality named Ann Bowden who is S&M sex kitten extraordinaire. She and her loser friend, Berdine (Danni Wheeler), want to be cool, but they just aren't allowed to be. They're the only ones at the drive in who aren't in lip locks with boys. They're actually paying attention to the movie. Man, they must be losers. Soon, though, Florence and Berdine are introduced to The Big Kanaka (Thomas Gibson-Greg from Dharma And Greg) and his gang. They're the best surfers around and now Florence wants to learn how to surf. Eventually she talks Kanaka into teaching her, but only after she becomes Ann and turns him on by promising to tie him up and do weird, unnatural things to him. His crew is a little weirder, though. There's Starcat (Nicholas Brendon-Zander from Buffy The Vampire Slayer) who has had three semesters of psych classes and thinks he's Freud. T.J. (Nathan Bexton from Go) is your typical teenage boy who's turned on by just about anything and is always referring to his, erm, tool. Junior (Buddy Quaid-not related that I know of) is a surfer who can't take his shirt off because of the heartbreak of siroccos. And Yo Yo (Nick Cornish) and Provoloney (Andrew Levitas) are not so ambiguously gay, even going so far as to have oil poured on them as they wrestle. Not that the rest of the town is much more normal. There's the weirder than weird police inspector, Captain Monica Stark (Charles Busch who also wrote this piece of trash filmdom-and, yes, he plays a woman). Florence's mom (Beth Broderick from Sabrina The Teenage Witch) is a little bit too obsessed with her daughter's sexuality and everyone else's horniness. Marvel Ann (Amy Adams from Drop Dead Gorgeous) is a sexpot who just wants…well what do you think she wants? Something about beef. Lars (Matt Keesler from Splendor) is the too perfect foreign exchange student from Sweden who stays with the Forrests. And Rhonda (Kathleen Robertson from 90210 and Splendor) is the caustic wheelchair bound girl. It was an interesting twist (although not very original) to make the handicapped girl the bitch. Oh, and there's a few gory killings going on, too. Who did it? Well, of course everyone is a suspect and the least suspected person is the obvious choice. Some of the killings are pretty imaginative, but we never really see any of them happen, so the gore is kept to a minimum. What is abundant, though, is the over the top sexual innuendo. That was pretty funny, if not too surprising or shocking. But I'm a sucker for a good innuendo. And you know what they say about suckers, don't you? They go out the door as soon as a surprise comes innuendo. Ok, that was really bad. I'll never try to be the Marx Brothers again. (And you know that promise will be broken.) Performances were overall pretty typical. Nothing too special except for Lauren Ambrose who had no less than three different personalities to play. And even a scene where she went through about five in order to get to the right one. She was pretty damn good in a role that could easily have been so cheesed up that it would have been over the top. But she was able to keep it grounded among the craziness going on around her, but still cheesy enough to fit right in with the proceedings. Now, you may wonder, why haven't I mentioned the fact that they are parodying the old beach movies? Well, I've never actually seen any of those, so I'm probably not very well qualified to say whether or not they did a good job. Just from clips that I've seen of those moldy old schlock-fests they seem to have done a pretty good job. It was complete with bad backdrops behind the surfers and a go-go dancer shakin' her thang during the credits. So this wasn't a bad movie. It didn't live up to everything that it could have been, though. Maybe it didn't quite show us the joy of cheese that the old flicks had, but it was pretty funny. It may have been better if it had been made just like those old flicks and been really PG rated. Then they could have been a little more subversive with their barbs. But it was R rated, so they spelled it all out, had the kids cussing, a little gore and a little nudity. Not totally necessary and maybe a little distracting, but it made for a few good jokes and some interesting scenes where the normally innocent little Florence belted out a string of curses. But, like most of the movie, while it was funny it wasn't very original.

Meet The Parents

admin — Sun, 15 Oct 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Have you ever had one of those days where everything just goes from bad to worse to apocalyptically horrendous? Well, Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) is having one of those weeks. He showed up at the school his girlfriend, Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo from The Arrival), works at to propose to her. In the process he found out that her sister's boyfriend asked for her father's permission before he did anything. Now he has to. Problem is her father is Jack Byrnes (Robert DeNiro). So he has to impress an ex-CIA agent who has the means at his fingertips to find out anything about Greg's life or even ruin it forever. How do you stand that much pressure? Well, you give Pam's sister a black eye, lose a cat and accidentally insult everything that Mr. Byrnes holds dear. Oh, and you threaten to change his daughter's last name to Focker. It's really bad when they realize what that means when combined with her middle name. (Greg's name brings no end of fun. It may seem like a cheap joke, but for some reason I never got tired of it. And neither did the audience I saw it with.) And the whole thing starts with Greg losing his luggage. Damn those airport people. With just that little bit of a premise this movie keeps the laughs coming for it's full 107 minutes. Jay Roach (Austin Powers 1&2 and Mystery, Alaska) has finally made a great movie outside of the Austin Powers franchise. (Mystery wasn't bad, but it was a clichéd story that really couldn't go anywhere.) The only disconcerting thing about it is the fact that Emo Phillips is one of the associate producers. What the hell is that all about? I guess he was in and produced the original (yes, this is a remake), so he can have something to do with this one. But it shouldn't be good with his name on it. Ben Stiller is so good at this kind of character that I don't think he even needs to think about it anymore. You know, the Every Guy that everything goes wrong with. He's kind of a dork, but somehow remains cool. Then, by the end he explodes all over someone. (This time it's an obnoxious flight attendant.) He's got to be one of the funniest people in the movie business today. He doesn't even have to do anything but look at the camera in his self-conscious, "Why is this happening to me?" way and you laugh automatically. But the real star of this movie is DeNiro. For someone who's not known for comedy he sure has been doing a lot of them lately. And he's done a hell of a job in them, too. But he did start out in comedy. Check out a couple of nearly unknown Brian DePalma flicks, Hi Mom and Greetings. I've only seen Hi, Mom and it was cool, but very weird. DeNiro, of course, was great. I hear Greetings is pretty good, too. (There's one more shot in 1963 called The Wedding Party-also a DePalma flick-but that one is supposed to suck on ice.) But he didn't stop there. Midnight Run is a great movie. As is King Of Comedy, but no one wants to give that one a chance. And, of course, Brazil is a classic. But since 1996's Marvin's Room (not a comedy, but his role is comedic) he's been doing mainly comedy. Wag The Dog, Jackie Brown (again, not strictly comedy, but he's funny in it), Analyze This and…well…Rocky And Bullwinkle. And three out of four of them are great and I hear that he was the best part of R&B. But I digress…all the time. Basically, DeNiro steals the movie from the real comedian. He's amazing as always as the overbearing dad who just wants the best for his daughters. It may not be the same performances that Bobby used to put in, but this one was worth seeing him once again parody himself. He makes us alternately hate and love the character. Anyone else probably would have just made him into an evil father in law or given him no edge at all. Luckily DeNiro knows when to show his heart and when to show his teeth. This was a great movie. It's a lot of fun and worth the full price of admission just to see Robert DeNiro put Ben Stiller through the ringer. And, for God's sake, keep an eye on those Fockers! By the way, there will be a sequel. Jay Roach is already working on it. This time Mr. Byrnes goes to meet Greg's family. Of course it's called Meet The Fockers. Imagine a bunch of kids telling their parents that they want to see that one. Soap sales go through the roof.

The Contender, or Mrs. Smith Goes To Washington

admin — Sun, 22 Oct 2000 17:00:00 +0000

It's so unfortunate that my quote is true. But more on that later. First a preview. FINDING FORRESTER-The new film by Gus Van Sant starring Sean Connery looks like it should be called Good Will Forrester. It's about a black, inner city kid who is only known as a basketball player in his local college. Suddenly he finds this Forrester guy (Sean) who wrote "the great American novel" of the 20th century and then disappeared. Forrester helps him become a better writer and no one can believe it. I'll see it because I like Van Sant (even after Psycho Redux) and I love Connery, but I can't help thinking that Gus is looking for another Ben and Matt. This new script is by Mike Rich who won the Nicholl Fellowship from the AMPAS and then sold his first script. It will probably be very good, but it's a rehash. Maybe Sean will get an Oscar nod for it. Wouldn't surprise me. Robin Williams got one for the same role. And now, the real movie: Laine Hanson (Joan Allen) is in the running for replacing the vice president. Pres. Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges) believes that she is the right person for the job. Unfortunately for both of them, Shelly Runyon (Gary Oldman) doesn't. He is able to dig up some sexual discrepancies from her past, put them on the internet and crush her dreams of becoming the first female VP. And somehow no political activism gets in the way of this plot. There's almost no mention of what's going on in the world. Occasionally they bring up abortion or separation of church and state, but those are mere sidelines to the important issue at hand. Will a Republican asshole congressman allow a woman to become VP? With the help of Reginald Webster (Christian Slater in his first real role since 1998's Very Bad Things), the youngest man (I think) to be on the committee to confirm the VP, Runyon finds ways to get America to constantly sway their vote of confidence. Is she a slut? Is she a baby killer? Will she drop and give the President a hummer while he's on the phone with the heads of state? Now, we Southparkateers know that there's a time and place for everything, and it's called college. Who cares if this lady had one drunken orgy when she was 19? I'm sure she's matured quite a bit since then. But Mr. Runyon, of course, doesn't feel that way. This is one of those movies that, as soon as you see the preview, you know it's going to be a big Oscar flick. It's a controversial issue, but not so controversial that the Academy is scared of it. It also allows for lots of great performances from some very good actors. Not to mention that fact that it's the closest to classic Hollywood that I've seen in quite a while, although The Green Mile came close, too. Even with some of the harsh talk about sex it was very close to something that would have been released about 40 years ago with Jimmy Stewart in drag, complete with big music swells during Hanson's and Evans' grandstanding scenes (a bit much, I think) and "The End" written at the end (kind of cool to see every once in a while). But I don't hold that against it because it's very well written and acted. Jeff Bridges big Oscar speech almost made me want to run out and run for office. But then I figured that there's not enough controversy in my life. This is Rod Lurie's second feature, but it's the first that anyone has ever heard of. (His first was a film called Deterrence with Kevin Pollack as the President. That just can't be right.) He handles it with dignity and a lot of handheld shots. I felt like I was watching a very good episode of NYPD Blue. Jeff Bridges' President is a bit of an enigma. He starts off as kind of a bubba type dude. As Film Threat says, he's kind of like his character, The Dude, from The Big Lebowski. Now, this isn't a bad thing. What it does is humanize a President. He's so enamored of the fact that he can get anything anytime from the White House kitchen that he will call them up and order the oddest things. (This becomes a pretty funny running gag that breaks up some of the more dramatic scenes.) But at some point in the film we realize that his seeming rubeness is just a faÃ§ade to get people to think that he's not all there when actually he's just taking everything in and is ready to use it against his enemies. He's really very intelligent, but it's to his advantage that only certain people to know it. His scene with Slater when he tries to figure out exactly why this kid is trying to destroy his potential running mate is a great example of Bridges at his Peter Falkiest. Sam Elliott is great as The Dude's sidekick, Kermit Newman. He's at turns brash, to the point and caring. He may think that Evans' decision to have a female VP is only a cause for the President to fight for, but dammit, he'll stand by that decision and try to make Senator Hanson into the best damn VP we've ever had. And he won't let her be brought down by a simpering little weasel like Runyon. The only problems I have with him are his name and his lack of a mustache. I was happy every time someone called him K because there's no way I'm taking someone named Kermit seriously. And Sam needs his mustache. Without it there are certain smiles that he gives that make him look rather unfortunately like a Kermit. And it's never good to look like a frog. And speaking of Oldman, he's uniformly amazing as this simpering little weasel. He's ultra-conservative, not very smart, but still too smart for his own good. His personal life is in a shambles, but he doesn't know it because he's too busy trying to destroy a life. I'm really glad that Oldman has found a new kind of bad guy to play. Ever since The Professional he's been this over the top, nearly drug induced terrorist type dude without a sympathetic bone in his body. He's great at that character, but it's good to see him somewhere else. He's still a bad guy, but he thinks that what he's doing is right for the country. It's not just his insecurities at work; it's his idea of what America should be. And while that's not exactly a good idea, it is a lot of people's idea. Christian Slater is, well…he's Christian Slater. Not much else can be said about him at this point. At least he's not Jack Nicholson Lite anymore. He's really not a bad actor and I do consider myself a fan, but I've seen him play the same role so many times that I've kind of lost faith in the former ol' JD. Here he's given a little more to work with to show what range he has. He's passable, but not great. Joan Allen, on the other hand, is amazing. She handles what could have been a total grandstanding role into a major achievement for this kind of role. She can't let it be known whether or not it's her in the pictures with a big, well…we'll leave that to the imagination. Her silence is an admission to some people, but it's really an invalidation of the question. What business is it of theirs whether she did it or not? So watch for Joan next year in March and probably the movie, too. I don't know that it's going to be one of the five best pictures of the year, but I'm sure the Academy will think so. It just reminded me too much of The Insider to not be their kind of movie. Very good film, though, and an important one for everyone to see. I have to admit that I fall prey to the stud/slut double standard at times, but I don't like the fact that it's there. And that's what this whole movie is about. If Senator Hanson were a man what would Runyon and his cronies be saying about him? Would they see him as a promiscuous, dangerous man for public office or would they just think that he was an experimental college student who was getting his rocks off while he still could? It's a question for the ages that can't be answered in two hours, but it can be addressed very well.

The Legend Of Drunken Master (Drunken Master II, 1994)/Shanghai Noon

admin — Tue, 24 Oct 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Once again Hollywood is trying to make a buck off of Jackie Chan-mania. For the most part, though, that's not a bad thing. I'm glad that American audiences are finally getting to see some of his Hong Kong movies, but they tend to find the driest, least interesting ones. Mr. Nice Guy? Operation Condor? Well, now they've finally decided to bring us one that's worthy of the Chan legacy. The Legend Of Drunken Master (aka Drunken Master II) is the best Jackie movie I've ever seen. It's his sequel/homage to the film that started it all back in 1979, Drunken Master, a great film on its own. I've seen DMII before (and even own a copy of the Chinese release), but seeing it on the big screen was a film geek's religious experience. The story follows the typical "new Jackie" plot (it was made in 1994 after he had already set that plot in stone): Jackie wins a couple of fights, something is lost that Jackie has to save, Jackie gets his ass kicked, Jackie learns something new, wins the final fight and saves the day. Nothing new there. What is new is the level of comedy and action. After the exposition (which takes up about the first half hour) there is pretty much no end to the action. Brief story outline: Jackie is Chinese hero Wong Fei-hong. He's already learned the art of Drunken Boxing, but he has to learn to control it and his drinking. His father (Lung Ti from Better Tomorrow I and II-and he's about the same age as Jackie) is a stern man who runs a martial arts school that is running into a few hard times. Not so much as to need money (although every action of Jackie's makes it seem that way), but enough to be in a little bit of trouble. His step mother (Anita Mui from Rumble In The Bronx and The Heroic Trio) is a wise-cracking woman who tries to keep Fei-hong out of trouble, but it's hard since he seems to be in nothing but trouble. At some point in the film Jackie has to defend his mother, gets really drunk and fights off three gangsters who think that he has a jade stamp from ancient China. (Getting drunk is a part of Drunken Boxing. It loosens the limbs and lowers the threshold of pain.) His father throws him out of the house and Jackie gets his ass kicked. Now it's up to him to save his father's school and return China's heritage to its museums. But none of that is really important unless you want a history lesson. What is really important are the fight scenes, and these are amazing! The final scene in the sweatshop is a real stand out, but so is the one in the restaurant with hundreds of guys coming at Fei-hong and his mentor. The only problem that I see with this film is that Anita Mui's character gets a little annoying at times. She does some shtick and then runs it into the ground, but she has great timing and she can kick ass right along with Jackie. So run out right now and make this movie a hit! It deserves it more than any of the movies that have been released over here so far, including the American ones. Speaking of which, I finally saw Shanghai Noon. And, as I said, Drunken Master II is better than any of the stuff he's made over here. This time out Jackie is Chon Wang (and that's the main joke in the movie), an Imperial Guard who is in Old West America searching for Princess Pei Pei (Lucy Liu from Alley McBeal). Along for the ride is Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson from Bottle Rocket and Meet The Parents), a totally inept outlaw who thinks he's God's gift to guns. This pretty much follows the same formula as Rush Hour, but without all the laughs and good action. This time out Owen gets all the laughs, but they're only mild chuckles and few and far between. And most of them are either about his stupidity or Jackie's nationality. Lots of stereotypes at work here. Early on Chon hangs out with some Indians and ends up with a wife (played by newcomer Brandon Merrill-yes, that's a woman and she's not bad to look at). Her character seems to have been cut out of the version I saw. She shows up when it's convenient to get the boys out of trouble. (She's a perfect shot and seems to know everything about fighting.) Where is she when they're actually moving around? There are many shots of Chon and Roy on their horses, but she is nowhere to be seen. Is she following close behind like a good little Indian girl? (Yet another stereotype) Or is she just staying behind because she may get killed if she stays right with them? Or did the screenwriter and editor just forget about her? That's more likely. Jackie gets a couple of good fight scenes (one between him and a couple of Indians is particularly good for this movie), but not enough to sustain 110 minutes. And what's with the main bad guy? Roger Yuan has been in some martial arts flicks (mostly American) like Showdown In Little Tokyo, American Streetfighter and Vanishing Son, but does he have any skills? If the only movie you've seen with him in it is this one (and it's the only one I've seen), the answer would appear to be no. All he does is put his foot on Jackie's chest and throw things at him. It always helps if it looks as if Jackie is in some danger when he's fighting. In this case it looks as if he's letting the guy kick his butt. And speaking of that last scene, when Marshall Van Cleef appears (Xander Berkeley from Apollo 13 and Amistad-and, yes that name is a direct reference to legendary Western bad guy Lee Van Cleef-clever, huh?), he turns it into a John Woo movie complete with Mexican standoff (and a joke about it) and church. Leave it to John. He's the only one who can get away with it. Occasionally Tarantino can. I will give this movie one thing (besides the chicks): they found a perfect song for a bar brawl (and that scene's not too bad). As the fight starts, the rockin' part of ZZTop's "La Grange" starts up. What a great choice! If you've never seen a Jackie Chan flick this one may not seem that bad, but it's not a good place to start. Go see Drunken Master instead.

Black And White

admin — Tue, 24 Oct 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Black And White is the story of a group of white kids in New York who are part of the hip-hop crowd. They come from "good families," go to good schools and hang out with people from Harlem. And Sam Donager (Brooke Shields looking rather interesting in her dreadlocks) is trying to capture it all on video for her documentary examining the minds of these kids. From the opening scene of two white girls and a black guy going at it in the park you never really know what's going to happen next. We go from a hip-hop group trying to get studio time from Arnie Tishman (writer/director James Toback) to Charlie (Bijou Phillips) lying to her parents about where she's been. (She was one of the girls in the park.) Then we see Sam and her gay husband Terry (Robert Downey, Jr.) start filming at Charlie's school. Wren (Elijah Wood), Charlie's clueless boyfriend, helps the filmmakers gain access to all sorts of places that they would otherwise never have been allowed into. Then Dean (basketball player Allan Houston) has a moral dilemma over whether or not to take a bribe from Mark (Ben Stiller) to throw a game, and his girlfriend, Greta (Claudia Schiffer), is no help at all. To go into all of the other stories would be pointless. There's too much going on in this movie to tell you in this review. Basically it's a movie about identity, redemption and retaliation. The white kids are totally accepted by the black people because they seem to understand and be interested in their culture. The kids know it's a fad that they're going through and that it won't last long, but they're enjoying it while they can. None of these kids have good relationships with their parents because the parents can't seem to understand what's going on in their kids' lives. They only see the guns and music. What they don't see is the camaraderie and the fact that these kids are able to cross the race boundaries without stereotyping their friends. By the end of the movie at least one parent has come to a conclusion with a harsh price. The performances were all pretty good considering the fact that they were all improvised. I was especially impressed with the kids. I can't imagine that they were well versed in the art of improv before this, but they handled it very well. The only weak link was Allan Houston, but he's a basketball player and it's his first movie, so I guess I can cut him some slack. But even Mike Tyson (who played himself and got to slap Robert Downey, Jr.) did a pretty good job. Surprising indeed! This was a very good movie that should be seen by anyone who is in the hip-hop culture or who doesn't understand it. Its documentary look makes it all the more realistic. Maybe it could help us all come a little bit closer together without beating us over the head with its message of tolerance.

Bedazzled

admin — Tue, 24 Oct 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Elliot Richards (Brendan Fraser) is a loser. No two ways about it. He's the kind of guy that his co-workers warn each other of the presence of when he's in the snack room. The kind of guy that women look at and quickly look away. The kind of guy who says things like "she's had tee many martoonis." But he's also the kind of guy who falls for someone hard. In Elliot's case it's Allison (Frances O'Connor from Love And Other Catastrophes and the upcoming Spielberg flick, A.I.). She's beautiful (kind of like a young Shirley MacLaine) and she seems to be very nice. Unfortunately Elliot doesn't have the guts to talk to her. When he finally does she walks away before he thinks the conversation is over. Enter The Devil (Elizabeth Hurley)-and, in this case, I think we'd all like to. She's hotter than you could ever know and is looking for a new soul to take over. She gives Elliot seven wishes (because it sounds good) and proceeds to make his life a living hell. Luckily the previews don't show more than the first wish, so I won't give away any details about any of them. That's part of the fun of the movie. Harold Ramis (Egon from Ghostbusters and director of Groundhog Day and Caddyshack) directed this remake of the 1967 cult classic starring Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. I, shamefully, have never seen the original, so I'm watching this with the eye of an amateur. And, from what I hear, that may be for the best. I actually really liked this remake. Fraser made a great loser in the beginning and learned a bit each time his wishes fizzled. He played basically seven different characters that all had this same little loser dude running through all of them. Not bad for Encino Man, huh? And Elizabeth Hurley. Oh, Elizabeth. She is the devil incarnate. Her outfits get sexier and sexier (Catholic schoolgirl…that's all I'm saying) as she comes back into Brendan's life after each wish. And the writers have given her things to do that are not always totally evil, but they're bad in a funny way. She gives the role a playful menace that's not always pure evil, but always fun. Ramis, as always, brings his comic touch to the proceedings. He knows how to catch the comedy in strange, supernatural things and this time out is no different. Then again, I've liked everything he's done. Even Multiplicity. The only problem I have with this version is the ending. It seems very trite and way too convenient. Although it wasn't really predictable. I'll give it that. I thought I had the last wish pegged. But it was kind of like the end of The Bone Collector, but not nearly that bad. (If you haven't seen that one, don't. If you have, I'm dreadfully sorry.) So this flick is a lot of fun. Not perfect by any means, but it's a good date movie with some great performances. If only it had had a little more bite to it and a better ending.

Charlie's Angels

admin — Mon, 06 Nov 2000 18:00:00 +0000

But before we get to the actual ass kicking, let's take in a couple of previews. THE SIXTH DAY--This is the new flick from Der Ahnold. Something about a clone of him running around and taking over his life. I like Arnie and I want him to make another good movie. But this ain't it. VERTICAL LIMIT--Chris O'Donnell climbs K-2 to save his stupid sister from an avalanche. Pretty damn good cast for this Cliffhanger type flick. Scott Glenn, Bill Paxton, Robin Tunney...and, well, Chris. But I may be able to forgive it that. What I can't forgive it for is Chris's hair. Does this take place in the 80s? As long as director Martin Campbell (GoldenEye and Mask Of Zorro) keeps up his good work with action, this could be good. Let's keep our fingers crossed. And now, the main attraction: Once upon a time there were three little girls who worked for an elusive millionaire at his private investigation agency. This time out, instead of Farrah, Kate or Cheryl, we get Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz. But this is not a bad thing at all. They've been hired by a scientist name Knox (Sam Rockwell from Safe Men, The Green Mile and Galaxy Quest) to find out who's after his secrets. His assistant, Vivian (Kelly Lynch from Drugstore Cowboy and a bunch of stupid movies since then), seems to be smarter than him. They believe that Roger Corwin (the always maniacal Tim Curry) is out to get them for the money that he could make off of Knox's ideas. So the Angels and Charlie's assistant, Bosley (Bill Murray in a role way too small for him), are off. They try desperately to figure out what the hell is going on. Unfortunately there's a tall, thin, silent man (played by Crispin Glover of Back To The Future fame) stalking them and trying to thwart their every move. Kick ass Kung Fu ensues. With Crispin in tow! When I first saw the trailers for this I knew that I had to see it because I love all three of the girls and Bill's pretty damn cool in supporting roles like this. I didn't have very high hopes, though. Especially after I heard that Drew didn't want the Angels to carry guns. What would they do for the silhouette?! Now I'm glad they didn't use guns. After months of training these girls (and Crispin!!!!) pulled off some Wire Fu that I haven't seen this side of The Matrix. The fight scenes were amazing for actors who didn't know Iron Monkey from Drunken Master. The only one who looked comfortable with the moves in the first trailers was Lucy because she actually knows some Kung Fu. She's no Michele Yeoh, but who is? Cameron looked positively goofy flipping her arms around like she was waving them in front of a tv screen trying to make them look rubber. But these chicks did a great job. Of course, the wires didn't hurt too much, either. Neither did all of the slo-mo. And Drew went so far as to name some of her moves as she did them! (Although what she did at the end wasn't exactly the Moon Walk. But that's nit picking.) The filmmakers seemed to know exactly the right tone to take, too. It wasn't serious at all, but it wasn't too funny. It was pretty much a perfect blend of homage and parody, as a movie based on a tv show should be. I think these girls really liked the original show and wanted to carry on in that tradition. I know that McG watched all of the episodes before he went into the director's chair. Now that's dedication! I couldn't have done that. Yes, there were some really cheesy parts of it. (The girls run down a flight of stairs while undressing and are suddenly in leather that they couldn't have hidden under their clothes, Bosley gets a ball and glove in a prison cell, a montage of the girls as teenagers in the beginning), but it's all there on purpose. It's supposed to be cheesy. The show was cheesy and so were the 70s. They used bad transitions between scenes like fire effects, they had a lot of "laser" type effects--and it all worked! It was a great meshing of a 70s feel with Matrix like special effects. Drew was great as the unofficial leader and bad girl, as was Lucy as the more dignified of the trio. But the real standout was Cameron as the goofy, not quite all there member. She just went all out with her pratfalls and then pulled it together enough to do some ass kicking that looked as realistic as any of it in this movie. Not to mention the fact that she did things for Underoos that I never thought could be done for them. WOW! And then there's Crispin. Who the hell gave this guy his bad ass card?! How did he go from nervous breakdown poster child to a menacing, mysterious bad guy? He was awesome as the Thin Man. I was actually scared of him for the first time ever. In real life he's certifiable, but in this movie he was evil. Bill and Tim didn't get nearly enough screen time. Bill did a lot with what he had and was very funny, but I would have liked to have seen him try to do some of the Kung Fu and fail at it. Or maybe secretly be a master at it. That would have been kind of cool. But, alas, it was not to be. He drifted in and out of scenes doing some pretty funny pratfalls and comic relief in a movie that already had plenty. I'm glad he was in it, though. Tim was just kind of there, as were Tom Green, Matt LeBlanc and Luke Wilson. They were Drew's, Lucy's and Cameron's love interests, respectively. Tom had a few good scenes pretty much playing himself and Matt was ok as an actor who didn't know what Lucy did for a living and Luke was alright as a guy who "speaks Natalie." He was just as naive as Cameron, but not as funny. They were romantic sidebars. Not much else. But they didn't distract, so they were allowed to be in there. The only really bad thing about it was a semi-sappy ending. One of the Angels has a near encounter with Charlie and we're supposed to get all teary eyed about it. I didn't. It was a minor flaw in an otherwise fun movie. And, no, we don't see Charlie. But he's still played by John Forsythe and still uses the same conference phone. That was a nice touch. Supposedly the office looked pretty much the same, too, but I didn't watch the show enough in reruns to notice that. I'm sure I'll get a chance now. Although I don't know that I'll take that chance. Not many 70s tv shows impress me much. Some of the popular ones (The Mod Squad) were just terrible and their movies were worse. It's good to see one actually getting a good screen treatment. Don't go into this movie expecting a great film. Just go expecting a cool movie that's a lot of fun. This is the movie that Spiceworld should have been and we were all glad it wasn't. It's got some of the best action I've seen all year and it doesn't take itself too seriously. That's the real pleasure in it. Well, that and the girls in skimpy clothes. Nothing wrong with that.

The Fascists are coming! The Fascists are coming!

admin — Thu, 09 Nov 2000 18:00:00 +0000

Yes, this is exactly how I feel about the fact that George W. Bush may be our next president. But I have a slightly inside view of the man. He has been my governor for the last six years. And, while the governor of Texas is pretty much just a figurehead (one more reason to think that the man has no experience), he has managed to ruin parts of our state that many didn't even know existed. I look out over my hometown (Austin) and see a city that was once a bustling center for art and industry. Both sides could live together in virtual harmony. Now it looks as if the industry is taking over. Yes, we've gotten our movie studio out at the old airport and the film community is still strong, but someone has allowed the taxes to get so high that people don't want to come here to film unless they have Sandra Bullock's backing. And the pollution! Austin may still be one of the cleanest cities to live in, but it's catching up. Town Lake isn't safe to swim or fish in. I can see it from where I work and it is alternately bright green and crappy brown. There are days that it looks as if I could walk across it. There are other days that Barton Springs, one of Austin's favorite watering holes, has to be closed because of the pollution. Then I look at Houston where Mr. Bush has had his greatest influence. He has allowed industries to dump their waste into Clear Lake. It's not so clear anymore. The city itself has beat LA on smog days within the last year, the first time any city has beat that cesspool in fifty years. Trees are being cleared. Forests destroyed. And all of that land has a great big W stamped on it. What will he do with an entire country to play in? Well, we know that he's against women's rights. The people that he has put in charge here in Texas have been very vocal about how they feel about women.

"We have to have men who are responsible for their women...letting women have contraception gives them too much power." --Dr. William Archer III, Bush's appointee as Commissioner Texas Dept. of Health
"God does not forbid women to be leaders in society, generally speaking, but when that occurs it's usually because of the abdication of men...I would vote for a woman for the presidency, in some situations, but again, there's a certain shame attached. God's Word says very plainly that an elder is to be a man."

And what about abortion, Dubya? Well, he declared January 1998 as a month of prayer to end abortion. He has decided that Roe Vs. Wade was a crock and that he will overturn in. That, of course, means that we will lose more of our young girls to back street abortionists who don't know what the hell they're doing. He will take the choice out of women's rights. His military standpoint isn't much better. He wants to go ahead with something that we had pretty much forgotten about: Reagan's Star Wars plan. He wants to be ready when those bombs come flying towards us. The problem is that there are no bombs flying towards us. All of the European nations (our allies) warned us against sending the damn thing up. But Bush knows that we are the greatest military power in the world and, dammit, he wants to show it. We will be in war before the end of his term. And I think we all know how he stands on education. He says he got one, but I'm not too sure. Here's a rather long list of some of the things that he's said lately:

"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it." --Reuters, May 5, 2000
"I think we agree, the past is over." --On his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000
"Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometime until we get an objective analysis." --Meet the Press, April 15, 2000
"I was raised in the West. The west of Texas. It's pretty close to California. In more ways than Washington, D.C., is close to California." --Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2000
"The fact that he relies on facts -- says things that are not factual -- are going to undermine his campaign." --New York Times, March 4, 2000
"I understand small business growth. I was one." --New York Daily News, Feb. 19, 2000
"If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign." --Hilton Head, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000
"We ought to make the pie higher." --South Carolina Republican Debate, Feb. 15, 2000
"I've changed my style somewhat, as you know. I'm less, I pontificate less, although it may be hard to tell it from this show. And I'm more interacting with people." --Meet The Press, Feb. 13, 2000
"I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth." --Nashua, N.H., as quoted by Gail Collins, New York Times, Feb. 1, 2000
"The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case." --Pella, Iowa, as quoted in the San Antonio Express News, Jan. 30, 2000
"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" --Concord, N.H., Jan. 29, 2000
"This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve." --Speaking during Perseverance Month at Fairgrounds Elementary School in Nashua, N.H.
"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." --Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000
"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" --Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000
"The important question is, how many hands have I shaked?" --Answering a question about why he hasn't spent more time in New Hampshire; quoted in the New York Times, Oct. 23, 1999
"I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating." --U.S. News & World Report, April 3, 2000
"I sure am glad I had my bacon for breakfast. " ---When a man from PETA shouted desperately: "MEAT IS MURDER! PORK IS DEATH! " to protest Bush's promoting for cruel meat industry on February 11, 2000 , reported by Associated Press.

That's a lot of times for Bush to show how stupid he really is-and that's just a small portion of the Bushisms. And yet he bought his degree from Yale! Why is it that a guy who supposedly graduated from college can't speak? Or read? His favorite book as a "child" wasn't published until after he left college. He has people read policies to him. He says that he's reading books now, but he can't remember what they're about. I know at least one person who decided to go for Gore because of education. Take that, Dubya. (Of course, it may have just been because she HAS an education.) What was it he said about Social Security? "My opponent thinks that Social Security is some kind of government program!" Um. What is it, Dubya? A bunch of old people sitting around saving money? No, the government runs it and helps people out with it. That's what it's there for. Along with a bunch of other programs that help people get on their feet or go to college or find work. Within the next four years (or less) we can look forward to unemployment going up and all kinds of government help programs being quashed. The next four years are going to be a regression into the government that we were sick of during the 80s, back when Reagan put us into a recession worse than the Depression of the 20s. In fact, I tend to think that we're going to go back into the 50s. A time when women had to run for the kitchen every time their man came home. A time when homosexuals had to run for cover. A time when we just built and built and didn't care about the future of the country. A time when we were scared for our lives because of the impending dread of World War III. And speaking of guns, this is the guy who allowed us, as Texans, to carry our guns around without anyone knowing about it. Yes, we are one of the few states in the nation now with legally concealed handguns. Why is this? Who knows? I would rather not constantly wonder if the guy in the car next to me has a gun that he can shoot my finger off with. Mr. Dubya is one of those redneck dudes who has a gun rack in his truck. Is that really useful if you're just driving around Austin? Most people know my views on the NRA and the like. They're an ok group of people as long as they're not anywhere near me or my family. They need to shut up about how it's unfair that they have to wait to get their guns or that they can't hide them. And do they really need assault rifles? Is Chuck Heston on a rampage against apes? Guns maybe shouldn't be illegal, but they need to be controlled so that stupid people can't get ahold of them. And Bush and the NRA aren't helping that cause at all. The best thing for Dubya to do is, within a month of taking office, run back to daddy with his tail between his legs saying, "I can't take it anymore! I can't run a country any better than I could half way run a state! Give me a drink!!!" (Yet another thing he can't admit to. He is an alcoholic. I have no problem with that personally because he's recovering (something alcoholics never stop doing), but he will never use the word. That's what I have a problem with.) When that day comes I will be dancing about in the streets saying exactly what just over half of the country actually believes. Which brings me to another point: the Electoral College. What the hell is wrong with this system? A bunch of people count the votes. It comes up to Gore winning. But Bush takes the office. Why? Because the politicians think that the people are wrong. That is why Bush is winning. Not because the people want him there (although it is a very, VERY close call), but because a bunch of Republicans think that a sniveling daddy's boy is the best thing for this country. It's time for the Electoral College to die. (Not the people in it, mind you, just the idea of it.) Gore won. The People voted him in office by about 200,000 votes. The idiots in the College voted Bush in by one state. Nice going. Thank you for ruining our country. And thanks to Nader for taking away votes that belonged to Gore. He didn't accomplish anything (not even his meager 5%) but take everything that he and Gore believe in and flush it down the toilet by making sure that Bush won. But, if you're pissed off at Nader, don't graffiti his headquarters or his supporters houses. That's just stupid. Write a freakin' letter. Send a chain e-mail. Build a website. Do something constructive. Don't destroy someone's property. That just shows stupidity and a lack of creativity. Well, I guess we'll all just have to wait until we see what happens with Florida. As of this writing Gore has added about 1,400 and Bush added about 200. (I'd like to know where those votes are coming from, but that's a different story.) That puts Gore down about 900 votes. And there's an area of Palm Beach where people think that their Gore votes went to Buchanan. (Scary thought.) Now Gore's campaign head is taking it to court and people are protesting the polls. As it should be. And to all of you people out there who think Gore is being a sore loser...what happens if he actually won? Then something is wrong with the system. He, himself, has not made a statement yet, so we don't know how he's actually taking it. If this were happening to Bush I'm sure he would be much more vocal and be denouncing the whole Gore campaign. Now, some of you may be thinking, "Mark. You're a movie guy. How could you be for Gore? He's out to ruin the industry." And to that I say, I know where my priorities are. I would rather have a little trouble in Hollywood that we can get over (yes we can) than a lot of trouble with people living on the streets and dying in back of buildings. And, to some extent, I agree with Lieberman and his cronies. I just think they're going about it all wrong. They seem to want to stop the making of the violent movies. I say just rate them differently. But Jack Valenti is against that because he may be put out of a job. And Bush will affect Hollywood because film is a mirror for society. We will still have the violence, just not as much sex, because that won't be allowed in society. It's not really that I'm pro-Gore. He's not the best man out there for the job, just the best one in the running. It's just that I am totally anti-George "Dubya is for Women" Bush. (That's a laugh. Wait until he screws you.) I don't want him to fail as president; I just don't want him in the White House. As soon as he moves in I want him to have to move out. I want him to realize that he can't handle it before he even tries. But that's hoping for too much. A dark time is coming to America and it's in the shape of a Bush. Hide all of the Presidential cucumbers. My roommate sent this e-mail to her friends and family just after she heard that black news. She says the same thing I do, just more succinctly and probably better: Everyone, I would like to declare Wednesday, November 8th, 2000, a day of mourning for our beloved country. Today, the country put its neck in a noose by electing not only a Republican president, but a Republican house and senate. There is NOTHING to stop the Republicans' plans to strangle our country with its moral superiority. I fully believe in any one of you that I have sent this to, to disagree with me wholeheartedly, but I also believe in my right to express my horror at what has happened tonight. When I heard the results of Florida, I honestly wished I could remove myself from this country. The thought of what Bush wants to accomplish as President threatens all the things I hold dear, beginning with my rights to be the person I want to be, to be free of danger from others with itchy trigger fingers, my rights as a woman, and my religious freedom. I feel that tonight's election has placed in office a man who will try to take away my individuality in his quest to create a WASP society. Thank you for your time in reading this little announcement. My prayers go out to our country. Melanie R. Williams Let's hope that, in a few weeks, we find out what the people already know: Gore is the winner and he will help keep our country going in the right direction. I truly believe that the only reason anyone thinks that the Clinton/Gore administration was bad is because Mr. Bill was getting blown in the Oval Office. Well, dammit, if a guy has his finger on the trigger, he had better be getting blown. I think that was the problem with the Reagan/Bush admin. And any problems you have with my opinion can be directed at that brick wall over there.

Sweet And Lowdown

admin — Fri, 24 Nov 2000 18:00:00 +0000

So Woody Allen has put out his annual movie. Ok, so this is the one from last year and I'm just now seeing it through the glories of home rental. This one is a kind-of documentary about the second greatest jazz guitarest in the world, Emmet Ray (Sean Penn). He is second only to the great (and real) Django Reinhart and is a legend in his own mind. Yes, Emmet Ray is one giant ego. If it weren't for the fact that Django sent him either in a dead faint or a flood of tears he would be the self-proclaimed greatest guitar player in the world. Along with his ego problems come relationship problems. He meets women and doesn't want to get caught up with them. Until he meets Hattie (Samantha Morton from Jesus' Son), a mute girl who, at first, seems perfect for him. She can't stop him from talking about himself! Then he starts to fall in love and things go to hell from there. Not a bad portrait of a major league asshole who thinks the world of himself and only sees the world as a stage for his gift. Unfortunately it's a Woody Allen movie, and I've come to expect a lot more from Woody. This should have been a great mockumentary at least as good as Zelig. (It's actually done in the same way: lots of interviews with "experts" including Woody.) What really saves this one are the performances. Sean Penn is awesome (as always) as the man who can only stand to be with himself. He's in the role that's usually a Woody impression, but he doesn't do it. He comes across as his own character, closer to Woody in Deconstructing Harry without all of the Woody mannerisms. (And it's still much better than that one.) Kind of a Woody Allen for people who don't like Woody Allen. Samantha Morton, who hasn't been in any American flicks until now, is equally good as the mute girl with the proverbial heart of gold. She's able to hold her own and actually come out on top of a man who is in the business of holding people down. Add to them a good supporting cast like Uma Thurman, Anthony LaPaglia and John Waters (!) and you've got the usual first rate cast of modern day Woody. (John Waters in a Woody Allen movie? Yes, the King Of Bad Taste in a movie by someone who prides himself on his taste. Weird, huh?) There are some genuinely funny moments (like the moon scene which got too much exposure in the previews--classic Woody comedy right there), but it gets bogged down in Emmet's jerk-ness. There were times where I couldn't believe that anyone could be that much of an ass and it just wasn't funny anymore. But the music was great, the performances were great and the attention to detail was great. (At least it seemed like it was. I wasn't around in the 30s, so I don't know.) All in all, not a bad movie, just not as good as it should have been and just a bit on the slow side. Unless you're a Woody completist (like yours truly), go find Zelig instead. Much more interesting.

Unbreakable

admin — Sat, 25 Nov 2000 18:00:00 +0000

A few previews of note this week: PEARL HARBOR--This looks like it could be an absolutely amazing movie. But Michael Bay directed and Jerry Bruckheimer produced. What does that mean? Lots of special effects and no substance. Shame, cause this could have been the end all be all of movies about the start of WWII. Then again, they could surprise me, actually show some restraint and not turn this into Pearlgeddon. But damn does Ben Affleck look like he belongs in those times. PROOF OF LIFE--The movie that ended a relationship. Meg Ryan's husband is kidnapped and Russell Crow is sent to find him by David Caruso (first warning sign). They may or may not fall in love. (Meg and Russell, not Russell and David.) So, what's the movie about? This actually looks pretty damn good. Should be a cool action thriller in the vain of 3 Days Of The Condor. And now the real movie: It's hard to review of movie like this without having some spoilers, so if you don't want to know anything about the plot of this movie DON'T READ ANY REVIEWS OF IT!!! Including this one. I'll try not to give anything away, but I can't promise anything. Comic books are a big deal. I know it. You know it. Anyone who has ever been around or been a 12 year old boy knows it. They're a form of escape that people who feel outcast can turn to. This is why they are a favorite pastime of teenagers and, well, geeks. There's just not a nice word for it. The characters in them are, at their core, geeks and outcasts. They are weird in some way, be it mutated, bitten by a radioactive spider, from another planet or just carrying a lot of emotional baggage about the death of their parents. But they do something with their geekdom. They fight crime or cause crime. Either way, they overcome. Personally, even though I was a total outcast as a teenager and am still a geek, I never really got into them. But I love the movies about them. I can get caught up in the world faster than just about anybody who picks up a comic book on a regular basis. What the hell does this have to do with the new movie from M. Night Shyamalan and Bruce Wills? Everything, true believers. Everything. In 1961 a boy is born with a rare disease that allows his bones to be broken very easily. Due to that traumatic ailment he can't lead a normal life, is constantly called Mr. Glass by the kids in his Philadelphia neighborhood and has a rather unnatural obsession with the color purple. He also has a lot of time to read lots and lots of comics. This boy grows up to be Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), owner of a comic book art gallery and searcher of certain kinds of people. Elsewhere in Philly, David Dunne (Bruce Willis) is surviving a horrible train wreck. It's so horrible, in fact, that he is the only survivor. The strange thing about him is the fact that he doesn't have a scratch on him. And Elijah thinks he knows why. The two men contact each other and start an uneasy (at first) friendship. Is Elijah just an intelligently rambling idiot? Has his disease gone to his head? Or is he on to something when he says that David is unable to be harmed? David's son, Jeremy (Spencer Treat Clark from Arlington Road and Gladiator) thinks he is, but that could just be wishful thinking of a young boy. Of course, things at home aren't helping matters for David. His wife (Robin Wright Penn) and he sleep in separate rooms trying to share their son without really sharing their lives. And David's distance has only gotten wider since the crash. He's living in a daze that is almost exactly the opposite of Jeff Bridges' daze in Fearless. Jeff's was a life-affirming, out-going daze. David's is an introverted, "Why me?" type daze. Every scene of the movie is a piece of a beautiful puzzle that you're never quite sure of until the very end. Some of us who pick up on imagery and symbolism (I say "us" as if I do it all the time--I do it about one out of 100 times) may put it together a little faster than others. But even we second guess ourselves and the ending still surprises. One hint: watch for bright colors. They tend to indicate an important development. Everything is pretty drab in the movie, so they're not hard to spot. Shyamalan has a style that makes it seem as if you are a participant in the goings on. There are entire scenes that are shot from behind train seats or in a reflection of a TV. Not a single shot is what you would call normal. There is always something about it that's a little off-kilter. And that works so well in this film that you almost forget about it after a while. It's shot like the comic books that Elijah is so reverent of. And the attention to detail is amazing, from the shots of Elijah's glass cane breaking to the shots of David's security poncho flowing in the rainy wind. Some of the shots are reminiscent of Hitchcock, too, such as one of Elijah falling down some stairs as he is trying to ask someone about a gun that they may be carrying. We don't so much see him fall as we follow him as he falls. The whole scene, in fact, seems as if it were taken directly out of one of Hitch's flicks. He keeps his pace very slowly, but that just builds the tension. Some people said that The Sixth Sense was ass-wrenchingly slow, but it wouldn't have worked as well if it had moved any faster. The story needed to build up to the revelations at the end. So does this one. There are no easy routes and we have to take them as they come. These two films may be slow, but the rewards far outweigh the time spent in the theatre. The actors are at the top of their form, too. Bruce, yes, seems a little catatonic, if not comatose. But how would you be if you had just survived a train wreck like this and were slowly finding out just how indestructible you are? No matter what you say, I doubt that you would be jumping up and down for joy. Jackson, on the other hand, gives a fairly amazing performance as the obsessed comic book lover and all around weirdo looking for a cause. He is at turns trustworthy and freaky, sometimes at the same time. He is obviously extremely intelligent, but there's something boyish and almost naive about his love of the books that got him through a rough life. It's as if all of life's problems can and have been solved through these books. And he even gets to pay tribute to the role that made him famous with the scene quoted at the beginning of this review. I expected him to say, "Does Superman look like a bitch?" And his hair puts in a great performance as well. Robin and Spencer do a nearly equally good job as David's long suffering wife and son. Robin really wants their marriage to work, but she's starting to wonder if it ever will. And Spencer wants so badly for his dad to be a super hero. So much so that he takes some pretty drastic measures to try to prove it in one of the most intense scenes in the whole film. I expect quite a bit more from this little guy. I guess the true test of a film's greatness is whether or not you want to see it again. I can tell you that, as soon as the lights came up, I was ready to see this one again to pick out more hints that I may have missed along the way. Just like The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects, the ending had me both reveling and scratching my head. Not a perfect film, but one of the best of the year. Can't way for Shyamalan's next one.

Requiem For A Dream

admin — Sun, 26 Nov 2000 18:00:00 +0000

After seeing this movie I seriously felt like nipping out and shooting myself. Yes, the new film from Darren Aronofsky (Pi) is that forceful. It's the story of four drug users and their downfall into despair. Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto from Fight Club and Prefontaine) is a young man in New York City who would seem to have his whole life ahead of him. Unfortunately, he has a huge heroin habit that only gets worse as he tries to make more money by selling. His girlfriend, Marion (the extremely lovely Jennifer Connelly from "The Street" and Labyrinth) is no help since she seems to be into the stuff even more than he is. And his best friend, Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) is the one who came up with the idea of selling, so no help there, either. Sara (Ellen Burstyn), Harry's mother, is a TV junkie who finds out that she may be a contestant on a TV show soon. Maybe even her favorite program, hosted by Tappy Tibbons (Christopher McDonald from Happy Gilmore and The Perfect Storm). Unfortunately for her, her son comes in every once in a while to pawn her TV for drugs. She knows why he's doing it, but doesn't see any way to stop him. In trying to lose enough weight to get into her old red dress she goes to a sketchy doctor who prescribed uppers and downers. Soon enough she gets pulled into the circle of despair caused by drugs. As the drugs get heavier and the times get worse the two worlds of the friends and the mother get more and more alike. Soon they're nearly indistinguishable. If you saw Pi, then you know that it was much more successful than it ever had any reason to be. And I mean that in a good way. It should have been a mess of random shots that didn't make any sense to anyone without a map. But Aronofsky is a master at putting a huge number of shots together to make a coherent story. It was one of the groundbreakers for art films in 1998 that started a small but powerful revolution in film that is hopefully still going today. Requiem For A Dream is no different. But this time it's even more accessible and, therefore, a better film. It tells the story of these four people in a way that makes you care about them even though they are some of the biggest drug users since Trainspotting. They're basically good people (Harry loves his mother and girlfriend and Sara just wants a chance to be on TV to tell the world about her son and his successes) they just can't stay away from the drugs that are carrying them down to the dregs. And each of them end up having to do something that they would not have done if it hadn't been for the constant need for their drug of choice. No one comes out unscathed. There are no happy endings in this kind of world. Every performance was ensconced in desperation and every one was amazing. Ellen puts in her best performance in years. (In fact, she started to look a little possessed towards the end.) So Aronofsky has done it again. He's taken a story (this time one that's been told before) and turned it on its ear with his freak-out Cuisenart editing style and made it into one of the bet movies of the year. Can't wait to see his Batman: Year One. But his style isn't necessarily the truly amazing thing about the film. It's the handling of the subject. Since the characters are totally likable and you feel for them he brings the horrors of drug abuse home. And then he pounds it and shows that everyone can be a victim by throwing Sara into the mix. Her story starts off funny (she lives alone in a building full of other old ladies and her dieting at first is full of images of sandwiches floating across the ceiling), but it soon diffuses into a horror of psychologically damaging proportions. This is what makes this a film that had to be made and should be seen by anyone who even thinks about picking up a needle or a rolled up dollar bill. I defy anyone to come out thinking, "I want to try that!" And, on a lighter note, can you imagine if Jennifer and Jared were actually a couple and had babies? They would probably be the most beautiful kids in the world, but the eyebrows! They would get there five minutes before the kids.

Is there no Justice?

admin — Sun, 10 Dec 2000 18:00:00 +0000

You know, there's a very easy solution to this whole election mess. RECOUNT THE DAMN VOTES!!!! All of them! I don't care how long it takes, just recount all of the votes in the U.S. and make sure that no one from the Republican or Democratic camp are hovering over the poor people trying to count. Democracy takes time and effort, something that George Dubya doesn't know anything about. We almost had the thing licked, too. The Florida Supreme Court had decided that the votes in their state would be recounted by hand. Finally someone showed a little thought! Then the damn U.S. Supreme Court had to pop into the equation. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that the recounts should stop until they've heard every last piece of "evidence" that these guys had. Why couldn't the counters go on counting? Who the hell knows? It would save a lot of time if they did decided in favor of Democracy, but I guess we've got time. This whole election thing is pissing me off, though. If we had just counted the votes right to begin with the whole thing could have been avoided. Count the votes and keep Jeb Bush out of the room while they're being counted. And find all of those votes for Gore that Jeb's hiding in his basement. And it surprises me how many Democrats are turning over to the Bush side. Why is that? Do they not know that he couldn't even run a state? This is the same man who, just a few months ago, said that he wasn't ready for the job of President. (This is a paraphrase, but it's close enough.) "But if I get elected, well that's just the way it's gonna be." !!!! It's the same guy who once sent a bunch of pork ribs to a party held by a local Jewish group. Needless to say, all of the ribs were thrown away. No, I have no respect for the man and I don't think he'll make a good President in the slightest. And the billboard over on Congress here in Austin congratulating him is a bit premature and angers me no end. It's sponsored by the Reagans and if Ronnie did it I can totally understand. But, as far as I know, Nancy still has all of her faculties running, so how could she make that mistake? Has she not been watching the news? HE'S NOT PRESIDENT!!! Hopefully the only why he gets into the White House is with his daddy on a tour. And why is it that he doesn't want to talk to Gore? Wouldn't that make him a little more compassionate in the eyes of his voters? To me, not talking to him makes him look like the asshole that we Texans who are suffering because of him all know that he really is. (We're 49th or 50th in everything except education. Ironic, isn't it? Our children is learning even if our governor didn't.) I truly believe that he bought a lot of his votes. I know his brother did some shady deals down in Florida. There's just too much going on down there. Ballots being found in cars. Republican groups pushing people around to stop them from recounting. White supremacists who support Bush. (He doesn't mind, by the way.) Maybe he used all of that money that he made off of the deals he made with companies down in Houston. (He allowed them to dump stuff in Clearlake for a small fee. "Just make the check out to 'Dubya.'") I know he didn't use the money that he helped Texas lose in law suits. (A company was already set up to check emissions from cars and he and his buddies squashed it about a week before they were going to start. So they sued Texas for $45 million. Thanks, bud. That could have been used to, well, educate our kids.) I don't even think that Gore is the greatest guy in the universe. He's had a few shady deals in the past and he's shunned Clinton during his campaign. That's a pretty big asshole move. And a big reason for him doing all of the recounts is just so he can get into the Oval Office. But at least he's intelligent. And who cares what his intentions are, he's also upholding justice...and I think he sees that as his main goal. Millions of peoples' votes weren't counted. And here's the really bad thing for Bush: if he "wins" because of the Supreme Court's ruling, no state government will recognize his Presidency. He will have won more by default than by actual count. And he went over the state's heads in a matter that should never have gone to the Supreme Court. This means that they will actually resent his being in office. Nothing will get done. Dubya will just have a job for 4 years. No more than the janitor who cleans Bill's toilets right now. If, however, the people actually do rule and Al gets in then things will go on. The states will recognize him and they won't feel invalidated by his presence. The only way for us to know who really won and get on with our lives is to recount the damn votes. Otherwise we could be in for four years of nothing. You know what frightens me even more than these two guys, though? Strom Thurman. He is third in line for the Presidency if we can't choose a President when the time comes. Yes, the oldest man to ever hold a chair in the Senate (and that's about all he can do anymore) could be the leader of the free world. A guy who can't even remember how old he is. Speaking of which, why the hell is this guy still on the Supreme Court? He's 900 years old! I'm not saying that I think he should die or anything...I'm glad when anyone can live as long as he has. But I'm beginning to be a little upset about Noah's decision to put him on the Ark. ("Noah, dear. I can't find another Strom." "That's ok, honey. I have a feeling that this little guy will be around for a long, long, LONG time.") And he's getting a little addled. Yesterday he asked why everyone was so concerned about the vote of a character from Good Times. He says that he wants to stay on the Court until 2002 when he'll be 100. Strom! That was 800 years ago! Give up your seat. Give it to someone younger...like God. If Bush (and the Supreme Court) don't understand the concept of "every vote counts" then the American Way has died. Maybe I won't move out of the country (bye Alec), but I will have lost a lot of respect for and faith in the upholders of our laws. If they decide to not recount at least Florida, then I will never trust another court to uphold what I've always thought of as Justice. Tomorrow Justice could cease to be blind. It will just be another tool in a partisan world. It will be something for a different administration to strive for.

Vertical Limit

admin — Sun, 17 Dec 2000 18:00:00 +0000

At the outset of this movie the first thing I thought of was Cliffhanger, that really stupid mountain climbing flick with Sylvester Stallone a few years back. That one's plot pretty much relied on things breaking that would never actually break in real life. In the very beginning, when his girlfriend's clip breaks (sorry all you mountaineers out there, my knowledge of this stuff can be summed up in one Monty Python sketch) some of us understand that she would have had to weigh about 3,000 pounds to actually break the damn thing. But it still gave us the best scene in the whole movie. Besides maybe the scene where Sly impaled a guy on a stalactite... mite...whatever. And any scene with Lithgow. Maybe if I saw that movie again today I would actually like it better, because I actually kind of liked this one. Oh, it still had the usual stuff breaking (a couple of climbing ropes break under the weight of one person dangling from them), but it was actually a pretty fun movie and the action scenes were pretty damn good. It all starts when the Garrets, a family who climbs together, but apparently doesn't stay together, are out rock climbing. When they get fallen on by a couple of idiot novices Peter (Chris O'Donnell) has to listen to his dad's advice and cuts the rope allowing dear ol' dad to fall to his death and the two kids to survive. (Note to filmmakers everywhere: when a body falls that far, it bounces. It may not be as dramatic is a single thud, but it's more accurate and a bit more gruesome. Dad must have been made out of lead.) Annie (Robin Tunney from The Craft and End Of Days...although I'm sure she'd rather forget about that one) never really forgives Peter for what she thinks was a stupid decision. There's just no way to know that all three of them couldn't have survived. The writers do one thing that only I would think is cool with the family here. They show how close they are (although they never mention a mother, not even later) by having them sing songs to each other and the others try to guess whether or not it's a song and then they have to tell the artist and the year. This is the sort of dorky thing that I wish some of my friends would do with me just for the heck of it. Yes, I'm a total geek. The only really unforgivable cheesy moment is when Annie sings "Take It To The Limit" by The Eagles. And, of course, Peter is taking a picture of an eagle. Three years later Annie has made a name for herself in the mountain climbing world (fastest woman climber) and Peter has stopped climbing altogether. He's become a photographer for National Geographic. But now Annie has a new challenge. She's climbing K-2, the world's second largest peak and subject of too many movies in the last ten years, with Texas millionaire Elliot Vaughn (Bill Paxton). Peter shows up, has a few awkward moments with Annie, and the adventure begins even though mountaineer extraordinairre, Montgomery Wick (Scott Glenn) warns them that the weather is about to change for the absolutely horrible. But, being that this is headed up by a millionaire, they go on up anyway. And, of course, of the five climbers three survive the avalanche: Vaughn, Annie and Tom McLaren (Nicholas Lea-- Krycek from The X-Files). They're trapped in a cave under tons (which later look more like pounds) of snow and Tom is very badly injured. So Peter grabs up his team. It includes Wick, Monique (Izabella Scorupco from GoldenEye) and a bunch of other people who aren't that important, including Alexander Saddig--Dr. Bashir from Deep Space Nine. Skip Taylor (Robert Taylor--one of the agents from The Matrix and a shoe in for the part of Jay's Australian friend in a live-action version of The Critic), who helped Peter try to stop the climb in the first place, is stuck back at the base camp. Besides the danger of really bad weather and avalanches, in a plot twist taken straight out of Wages Of Fear (or, for those of us more in tune with 70s cinema, Sorcerer) every member of the rescue team have about a gallon of nitro strapped to their backs. Fortunately it's easily frozen, but we get an obligatory scene showing the power of the nitro when Skip gets some on his shoe and they throw it out into the snow. Big boom. But you know, none of that is really important. (Yeah. That's why you spent so much time on in, Mark.) What's really important is the action. And Martin Campbell (GoldenEye, Mask Of Zorro) knows his way around an actions scene. It doesn't matter that Chris O'Donnell can't really act (ok, he sort of can). It doesn't matter that every bit of the plot is totally unbelievable (and, believe me, it is). It doesn't even matter that there no sex scene with Robin. (Ok, maybe that one matters a little bit. At least Supernova had that, but that's a different story.) I think what I like about Campbell so much is the fact that he tries not to use too many digital effects. All of the avalanches in this movie were actually created on the mountain that they filmed it on. (They used Mt. Cook in New Zealand. If they had used K-2 we would have heard about all sorts of people dying on the set.) So, don't worry about acting (although everyone does as good a job as possible in a movie like this) or plot so much. Just sit back and laugh about stupidity and get carried away by the mountain falling on a bunch of idiots. If you gave Cliffhanger a chance you could definitely let this one slide through your brain. Of course it's been a long time since I've seen Cliffhanger.

An open letter to "President-elect" Bush

admin — Mon, 18 Dec 2000 18:00:00 +0000

Democracy. "I spoke the word as if a wedding vow."--a slight paraphrase of Bob Dylan--but I'm sure he would agree. When I heard that Gore had conceded and we were going to have another Bush as "President," I decided to be Michael Moore for a while. As soon as I get the Shrub's e-mail address this is going to him. I'll let you, loyal Readers, know if I get a reply. Dear Mr. Bush, I know you won't read this, but please at least have someone read it to you. It's one American's thought and concerns on what he believes in. Something you should learn a little about. In a few short weeks you will take over the Government of the United States Of America. That's quite a step for a man who couldn't keep a baseball team afloat all by himself! And just think, a few months ago you admitted to not being ready for the job. But, you said that if the American people were going to vote you in, well, then that's just the way it's going to be. How nice for us. Funny thing, the American people DIDN'T vote you in. I know it. You know it. Most rational people know it (including a lot of Republicans). The electors voted you in. And even they wouldn't have if you had allowed every vote to be counted in Florida. By going over the Florida Supreme Court you undermined their authority and invalidated your own "Presidency" in their eyes. Not too long ago you said that, if you won the popular vote and Gore won the electoral you would fight it. You said, "Trust the People!" Did things change? Did you not trust the People when they said, "President Gore"? Did you not trust their vote? Or did you just not trust that it would go your way? This is what Democracy is all about: allowing the Peoples' voices to be heard. When you went to the Supreme Court and got them to stop the recount, you, in effect, stopped Democracy. Doesn't that word have any meaning to you? By the way, why did the Supreme Court change their minds and hear your case? Didn't they once say that they couldn't get involved? I know you're no stranger to taking graft, so why be above giving it? Why, just a few years ago your campaign took money from Alcoa in Rockdale and allowed them to keep dumping millions of pounds of sulfur dioxide into the air instead of actually making them clean up. They only agreed to reduce the nitrogen oxide emissions by a third, but it would have been easy for them to cut back much more. Your CARE program and appointees to the TNRCC have allowed older companies to be grandfathered so that they won't have to cut back at all. All of these companies make enough money to change their technology, but they give enough to you so that they don't have to. So more kids grow up with dirty lungs and cancer. We could always go back to when you and Houston Senator John Whitmire cost Texas $140 million by quashing an idea to lower car emissions. Tejas Testing already had check stations in place in high risk areas like Dallas when you pulled the plug. They sued. They won. Thank you for that. And thank you for taking $130 million out of our environmental funds to cover the suit. Your "takings" bill back in 1995 didn't help matters at all. Land owners can now sue over government actions that reduce their property's value. This means that if an animal that lives there goes on the endangered species list the taxpayers have to pay them. But you're taking care of that when you shoot endangered birds, right? You've also given Texas the worst record in the U.S. under the Clean Water Act. What few readings we have show that 30% of our streams and lakes don't meet standards. And that doesn't count all of the little ones that your guys don't think matter. You and your buddies have made Texas number one in health risks from six major air pollutants, total emissions of toxic chemicals, release of toxic chemicals into the air, underground injection of toxic chemicals and cancer hazard from manufacturing facilities. We are number three in the release of toxic chemicals into the water. Now that's something to be proud of. And I'm not the only one concerned. Remember when Mothers For Clean Air sent you that calendar that showed pollution around Houston schools? They didn't want commendation for a job well done on the calendar. They wanted action taken to have safe surroundings for their kids. You and the TNRCC have pretty much stopped that from happening. But I guess I shouldn't have expected you to listen to a group of women. Your views and your friends' views on women have been shown again and again. Dr. William Archer, your appointee as Commissioner of the Department Of Health, once said, "We have to have men who are responsible for their women...letting women have contraception gives them too much power." Is it? I thought that we had gotten out of the 50s. And Marvin Olasky, one of your policy advisers, said, "God does not forbid women to be leaders in society, generally speaking, but when that occurs it's usually because of the abdication of men...I would vote for a woman for the presidency, in some situations, but again, there's a certain shame attached. God's Word says very plainly that an elder is to be a man." He's a modern man, isn't he? Remember when you declared January 1999 as a "Month Of Prayer To End Abortion"? Did you know that you can't do that? First of all, because of Rowe vs. Wade you can't "end abortion." (But you want to overturn that, don't you? More on that later.) And second, because of a little thing called Separation Of Church And State. You can't declare a prayer for anything. Now, I'm not a praying man, and I'm also not pro-abortion. I do, however, believe that, ultimately, it is the woman's body and her choice. I also know that abortions are legal because of the health risk of the alternative that some girls would take. Young girls would go to backstreet doctors and have the operation. If you succeed in reversing RvW (which you probably won't) you will also succeed in making barren or worse, killing, hundreds or thousands of innocent young women who didn't believe that they could take care of a child. I know that no one who gets pregnant thinks that they could take care of a child. It's something that is learned as time goes on. But it is a choice that they have to make. These girls may have that child's life on their conscience, but you will have all of those girls' lives on yours if you overturn RvW. And I'm certain that, if one of your daughters got pregnant, that she would be ferreted away to the best doctor in the country before anyone even knew. And PLEASE have someone else talk to foreign leaders. You have proven time and time again that you fumbled your way through English classes (among others--how did you graduate?) and that you don't exactly know your way around an important discussion. I would hate to be forced into a "skirmish" because you angered a powerful leader who thought that you were weak enough to beat. And your idea of putting the missile defense system in the air won't help matters at all. We have always been in a delicate relationship with countries like the former Soviet Union. This step, whether the system works or not (and most think that it doesn't) will put us back into the state we were in during the Cold War: scared and frustrated. Foreign leaders begged Clinton not to put it up and he didn't. There was a very good reason for that. Just as I am not a praying man, I am also not a gun owner. I believe that guns should be left to law enforcement agencies, but I know that we cannot take guns out of peoples' hands. That would go against the Constitution. You know, that piece of paper that says that we should count every vote? But we don't have to actually put them into the hands of people who shouldn't have them. If you don't believe that we do this, then why is it that one quarter of all of the guns used in violent crimes in the country come from four states--Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and, oh here we are, Texas! Just so you know, that's less than a quarter of the states in the U.S. If only there had been background checks at gun shows, something that you once said you were in favor of, those kids in Columbine would probably still be alive today. Now, I'm not blaming you for Columbine. That was in Colorado, after all. But you could have helped to stop things like that happening here by signing a bill requiring the checks. Too bad you didn't. Could it have something to do with your ties to the NRA? Are you afraid to cross them? Guess what? They are a very small portion of this country (as are so-called Pro-Lifers). Most of us support gun control. And, if you're so big on gun control, as you have often said that you are, why are we allowed to carry concealed handguns? And why are we now allowed to carry them into churches, hospitals and amusement parks? These are three places that I have never felt a need to carry a gun. You have banned cities from suing gun manufacturers for damage done using their product (something that the cigarette companies wish you had done for them) and allowed bills requiring trigger locks to pass into obscurity. Kayne Robinson, first vp of the NRA said that they will be able to "work out of your office." Is that true? I'm beginning to think that maybe it is. You at least will allow them to walk all over you. So, on January 20th I will be worried. I worry for the natural wonders that will die because of your actions or inactions. I worry for the children who will suffer because of your policies on welfare. I worry for people on Social Security since you don't understand that it IS a government program. I worry for women who will no longer have a choice about their own bodies and actions. But I do have a challenge for you: PROVE ME WRONG!! Please. I do not want this country to fail because its leader wanted a new toy. I want us to remain as strong, if not stronger, than we have been for the last eight years. (And, believe it or not, it has been very strong. Look at the economy and unemployment rate everywhere but Texas.) Call people smarter than you when you need help. Realize that being President is not necessarily a one man job. (But you plan on delegating all of your tasks don't you? That's good. That means that you won't have to do anything.) See what this country can achieve and reach for it. Don't drop to an idea just because you don't understand it or because some big organization wants you to back it. Realize that your actions today DO IN FACT make a difference later on, if not in your life time, then in your daughters' lifetimes. Strive for a better country for them and their kids, and all of our kids. This country can remain great. But it's all up to you and your buddies. Do something for all of us, not just for yourself. --Me Austin, TX

Dracula 2000

admin — Thu, 28 Dec 2000 18:00:00 +0000

And, yes, that references exactly what you think it does. That's just how obvious this movie is. But let's start at the beginning. Note that I did not feed Wes Craven's ego by putting his name in the title as he so helpfully did. I bet he'll be glad for people to forget that he had anything to do with it after it bombs at the box office. Oh! You want a story? Well, there's very little here, but I'll get started. Van Helsing (Christopher Plummer) is still alive in the year 2000. (Something to do with leeches sucking the blood of Drucula--who he has locked in his cellar--and being injected into Van Helsing's blood. Yeah.) His personal assistant, Simon (Jonny Lee Miller with his English accent actually intact), doesn't want to believe his boss when Drac (Gerard Butler) escapes. One of the employees (Jennifer Esposito) got greedy and hired a few guys (including Omar Epps, Danny Masterson from That 70s Show and Sean Patrick Thomas from Cruel Intentions) to break into the secret vault and break out the Undead Dude. Of course they all get turned into vampires due to their total stupidity and just plain non observation. Meanwhile, in New Orleans (natch), Mary (Justine Waddell from Mansfield Park) has crazy sex dreams about Dracula. Funny thing about her...she's a virgin. We know this not because they actually come right out and say it. Not because her name is Mary and there are a lot of biblical implications in this movie. No. It's because she works at the Virgin Megastore. And wears night shirts from her job. And has matchbooks from the store on her night stand. It either means that she's a virgin or Virgin Records put a LOT of money into this flick. Or maybe she's just really into her job. Mary's roommate, Lucy (get it?--she's played by Colleen Fitzpatrick, otherwise known as Vitamin C), thinks that the dreams will stop as soon as she gets a man in her bed. But, instead of a peak into Mary's sex life we get Vitamin C being the first "teen singer" to show her breasts in a major motion picture. Britney could learn a lesson here. (Heh heh heh.) The reason for Drac's obsession with finding Mary is one of the "Big Mysteries" of the movie. It's actually fairly obvious if you've ever seen Blade, but I won't ruin it for you here. The other Big One is Who is this Drac person, anyway? Why is he so pissed off at Jesus? What's wrong with crosses and silver? And how the hell can we kill him? It's actually an interesting theory, but there are, of course, holes in it. (Why isn't he afraid of rope? Why didn't Van Helsing figure it out? He's much smarter than Mary and Simon. And why did Mary have to basically be told? Didn't the filmmakers make it obvious enough?) But my biggest problem is that they felt the need to explain some of his fears (crosses, Jesus, silver), but completely ignored other idiosyncrasies (mirrors, daylight). And that ending was WAY too easy. It can't be that easy to kill the first vampire. And then, of course, there's the totally out of the blue vampirization of Jeri Ryan's character. She's just some newscaster who knows that people only tune in to see her breasts. (It was a little bit funny to hear her talk about them and refer to herself as a "big tv star.") But she really had nothing to do with the rest of the plot. There's 15 minutes cut out of the over two hour running time right there. But my problems started way earlier than that. Why is it that every modern vampire film has to take place in New Orleans, New York or out in some deserted town? Why not, say, Dracula Does Dallas? Or Van Helsing's Houston? Or Vampires in Puxatony? Ever since the late 70s and Anne Rice the vampire has been synonymous with New Orleans, especially. Let's move on, shall we? And if I have to hear the line, "Don't fuck with a [fill in the blank]" one more time I'm going to picket the Writer's Guild. The performances were alright, but I really have to wonder why some of these people took the roles. I guess it's a fun thing to do a vampire flick. I would probably do it, but then again I'm kind of a freak. But Christopher Plummer? I guess he was looking to go back to his days of horror movies like The Sound Of Music. Not to mention the fact that he seems to have gone to the Chuck Heston School For Overactors. And Omar Epps had a good career going as did Justine Waddell. I can only hope that they either did it for the fun of getting all bloody or they fired their agents. I guess the biggest problem with the cast was the title character himself. Ol' Gerard was pretty unthreatening in the role of the greatest vampire who ever didn't live. He's all brood and no nuance. I think David Boreanaz would have been a better choice and all he can really do is brood. (I'll get killed for that one. I know it. Time to kind of make up for it.) At least he can be more charming. (Did that do it?) Director Patrick Lussier seems to almost know his way around a horror flick. Too bad he wasn't allowed to edit this one. His work on the Scream films and that last Halloween flick was pretty damn good. He knew how to keep the suspense going even when the material didn't quite hold up. This time, though, the film seemed not so much edited as cut together from a broken copy of the movie. There were action scenes that would cut from a shot of Mary jumping to, in mid jump, a close-up of her face. Very jarring and disorienting. And this isn't the kind of movie that benefits from that kind of edit. It just came of as totally unprofessional. This is the kind of movie that you rent on a Friday night when you and your friends feel like tearing into a movie. Don't bother seeing it in the theatre, though. They tend to frown upon throwing things at the screen. One more thing: I have made a decision on this. No more movies with the year of release in the title unless they're Godzilla. It's never a good sign.

The Way Of The Gun

admin — Fri, 29 Dec 2000 18:00:00 +0000

There once was a movie called The Usual Suspects. It was written with such flair and intelligence that it got more buzz in 1995 than just about any other movie and built its audience pretty much only by word of mouth. (I barely remember seeing any trailers for it.) The director (Bryan Singer, of course) deservedly got a lot of praise and went on to bigger, but not necessarily better, projects. Funny thing happened, though. The writer (Christopher McQuarrie who also worked with Singer on his first feature, Public Access) got squat. Yes, he got the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, but did it get him any more jobs? Well, it's been five years since we last heard from him. Luckily, though, he's come out of obscurity with this little bending of a couple of genres. In The Way Of The Gun, two criminals, Parker (Ryan "Marble Mouth" Phillippe) and Longbaugh (Benicio Del Toro), overhear a guy at a sperm bank talking about how a woman was hired by a couple of millionaires to carry a baby for them. Their twisted little brains start turning when they hear the name of the doctor who takes care of her and soon they are on their way to kidnap her. Of course, before they get Robin (Juliette Lewis), they have to get through Jeffers and Obecks (Taye Diggs and Nicky Katt) who think that they are bodyguards supreme. Unfortunately for Robin and her owners, they aren't. And unfortunately for Parker and Longbaugh they don't know who's paying Robin for her body. Mr. Chidduck (Scott Wilson from Dead Man Walking and the upcoming Pearl Harbor) is a guy who big time drug lords and gangsters come to to take care of their enemies. His cleaner, Joe Sarno (James Caan) is kind of an elder statesman of the profession who realizes that the new boys don't know a damn thing about what they're doing, so he goes out to do it himself. Of course, he has his own personal reasons, too. This is McQuarrie's directorial debut and, to tell you the truth, I was really worried about it. Remember the last time a writer of one of my favorite movies directed his first feature? It was a little thing called The Man In The Iron Mask. Keep Randall Wallace (Braveheart) from directing until he takes a few lessons. McQuarrie, though, learned from a master. (Not that Mel isn't good, but Singer is pretty amazing when he's on (Usual Suspects, X-Men). When he's off (Apt Pupil) he's still pretty damn good.) And the pedigree shows in this film. It's not flashy or anything, but he keeps the pace going (although it may be a little slow for some tastes) and the actions scenes are expertly done. It's a very dark film, too. But he knows how to keep a sense of humor around things even if his characters don't. (I think I counted three smiles in the whole movie. What a happy bunch.) (Pay no attention to the trailers. This is not an action/comedy! They really pushed it that way and I bet a lot of people were disappointed. It's amazing what trailer editing can do. They did a horrible job on these.) And the boy hasn't lost his touch as a writer, either. This story has just as many twists and turns as his last one. It may not have the big surprise ending, but the relationships and loyalties between the characters are revealed and even change throughout the film. This is what really drives the plot. We don't know too much about these people, but, as their relationships come out, we find out what's beneath the surface. People we think are just cold, hard men end up being caring human beings. The only problem I had with the writing at all was one scene where the two bodyguards had to figure out for us something that was obvious to me almost from the beginning. It almost reminded me of the "Finkel and Einhorn" scene from Ace Ventura. Pretty needless. I think the best thing about the film is that there are no real good guys. At first it would seem like Chidduck and his family are the good guys, but he does evil things for a living. The kidnappers are just in it for the money, but they're loyal to each other and they do seem to care about Robin and her baby even if they don't know how the hell to take care of a pregnant woman. (And she's VERY pregnant.) They're kind of like a modern day Butch and Sundance. In fact, the names that Phillippe's character gives them at the beginning are the actual names of Butch and Sundance and they have a speech near the end that is very reminiscent of Butch's final speech. Basically this movie is a Western. As McQuarrie puts it, "It's a Western where the cell phones don't work." It's about two guys who are apparently looking for trouble (shown in the first scene which had more profanity in it than most entire movies these days) and get caught up in a plot that takes them through the desert. They're lone desperadoes that we kind of care about. McQuarrie didn't want it to be compared to The Wild Bunch, but the end is a little bit like that. No slo-mo or ballet deaths. Just two "bad guys" with really big guns duking it out with some guys who aren't really good guys. He also threw a Fistful Of Dollars reference in there with the town that the final scene plays out in. It looks just like the one where Clint hid out in the fountain. And the Eastwood connection gets a bigger boost from the casting of Geoffrey Lewis (Juliette's dad) in a small, but pivotal, role. The cast did a great job for the most part. Benicio was, as always, nearly perfect as the more menacing of the two kidnappers. Taye Diggs was very good as the no nonsense bodyguard. Even Juliette Lewis did alright as the ultra-scared pregnant woman. (She's actually starting to look like a woman now. Still not in the slightest bit attractive, though.) Phillippe is, of course, the weak link here. This guy just needs to give up until The Keanu Reeves Story comes out. Thankfully he doesn't have too many on camera lines. That way he can just stand around and still get girls to rent the video. He is, however, supposed to be the main character...at least, he's the narrator. He doesn't have a lot of screen time, though, so I don't know. The best job, though, goes to the veteran. James Caan put in his best performance since Misery...maybe even The Godfather. It was good to see Sonny Corleone all growds up. This is the kind of role that an aging mob actor dreams of. Too bad De Niro can't get these kinds of roles. And why is that? Check this one out when it comes out on video/DVD next week. (Even though I don't work at BigChoice Video anymore, I still have my connections...heh heh heh.) It'll make you remember what a great writer Mr. McQuarrie is. And pay close attention to the radio when Parker and Longbaugh are in the car with Robin. One of the stations they go through has a news report about a director named Singer who was caught molesting some teenagers. Of course, Bryan was accused of this on the set of Apt Pupil. Is Chris really that pissed off at the guy? I want to know the story behind that one.

All The Pretty Horses/Return To Me

admin — Sat, 30 Dec 2000 18:00:00 +0000

Now, I never read the book that All The Pretty Horses was based on, but I hear that it's much better than the movie in so many different ways. But more on that later. This flick is about John Grady Cole (Matt Damon), a teenager (?!) who travels to Mexico with his best friend Lacey Rawlins (Henry Thomas) because his grandfather's ranch is about to be sold by his mother. Along the way they meet up with Jimmy Blevins (Lucas Black from Sling Blade, The X-Files movie and Crazy In Alabama), a kid who has someone after him, but it's not because he stole his horse. (Mmm-hmm.) The three form a friendship of convenience (which becomes a bit more) and then get separated because Jimmy has to steal his horse back from a Mexican rancher. John and Lacey end up at another rancher who takes them in and learns to trust these two American boys who came out of nowhere. John really gets a break because he knows a lot about horses and helps the rancher choose mares for his stallion. Then John meets Alejandra (Penelope Cruz), the rancher's daughter. That's when all hell breaks loose. I love Westerns. All kinds of Westerns. Mainly the ones about a lone desperado (or two) who does something to change the tides of time (True Grit, Lonesome Dove, just about any Clint Eastwood Western) or the coming of age type Western (Red River, True Grit, Dead Man's Walk). Or even a small group of people obsessively after one goal (The Wild Bunch, The Searchers). Never been one for the cavalry Western, though. So this movie seems like it would be right up my alley, right? It's a coming of age Western about two boys (sort of) who don't really want trouble, but it comes riding up to them with either a stolen horse or breasts. The problem is that I never really care about any of the danger that they're in. All three of the guys do a great job, so it's not their fault. But something seems to have been lost in the script. I can't believe that Ted Tally (Silence Of The Lambs) wrote something like this. Then I look at some of his other stuff. The emotionally detached Before And After. The ludicrous The Juror. (Ok. You caught me. I haven't seen that one, but have you ever run into anyone who liked it?) Maybe he would lose something in translating a book to the screen. Maybe Silence was a fluke. And, as good as the cast was, I didn't see much chemistry with Matt and Penelope. Their forbidden love affair just didn't "heat up the screen" like it probably should have. She's beautiful (although, in this one she kept reminding me of Courtney Cox-Arquette) and I was glad to see her in a big "prestige picture" like this, but she didn't really have much to do. She just kind of drifted in and out of scenes, had sex with Cole and then left just as quickly. Not a very big part of the story at all. And, in fact, of all of the warnings that Cole gets to stay away from her, not one comes from her father. Apparently he's too much of a pussy to actually talk to the kid himself. He has his sister do all of the talking. Huh? I never got the impression that the guy trusted Cole with any more than his horses. A man in his position would definitely come at this kid with both arms swinging. Especially an old style Mexican man in his position. Billy Bob Thornton directed a near masterpiece with his last movie, Sling Blade. It was an awesome slice of life from the poorer side of the Deep South. And art film without being an Art Film. This time out, however, he tries for a little more. He keeps the Art reigns in for the most part, but when he does stretch out too much he goes way out into annoying territory. Cole at one point has a dream where he asks a dead character what it's like to be dead. Fine. Good. I like that. But only show it once. And don't cut to a shot of a bunch of prisoners singing "Red River Valley" in Spanish. Pointless. And don't EVER have a bit player show the emotions of a main character as stupidly as Billy Bob does here. He has an old man who is just standing there watching Cole as he calls Alejandra. Suddenly the old man starts clapping and dancing. Cut to a shot of John's face. Cut back to the old man standing completely still with the sound of him dancing still going. Freakin' annoying. Pretentious. Not to mention totally stupid. As much as I'm putting this movie down, it wasn't a totally bad movie. I just expected so much more...and it's more fun to point out its shortcomings. But the acting was great and the cinematography by Barry Markowitz (Sling Blade and The Apostle) was very good. He knows exactly how to make Mexico look like the most beautiful place on Earth. (Of course it helped that he was using New Mexico and San Antonio instead.) I guess I was looking for a movie to bring the Western back. And, even though this takes place a while after the Cowboy era was really over (I'm putting in about the 30s), I was really hoping that this would be that movie. It's not going to be. Maybe Billy Bob's 240 minute cut would actually make us care for some of these people a little bit more. Keep your eyes open for extremely small roles by Robert Patrick, Sam Shepherd and Bruce Dern. Now, if you want chemistry, check out Return To Me. (Of course, I made a C in chemistry, so I could be totally wrong here. Maybe that's why I'm single.) It's a very cliched and stereotypical romantic comedy with a near-tragic twist, but it's fun in its own manipulative way. Bob Rueland (David Duchovny) is a devoted husband who would do anything for his wife (Joely Richardson) including build a new shelter for the apes that she works with at the zoo with his own money. (Apparently he's a multi-millionaire architect. The man spends money like he pulls it out of the toilet everyday...erm. Don't ask.) Meanwhile, on the other side of town (I guess) Grace Briggs (Minnie Driver) has a deadly heart condition. If she doesn't get a transplant soon she'll die. Enter fate. (Read: the writers.) Bob's wife dies in a horrible car accident that is (thankfully) not shown and Grace gets her heart. A year later Bob has turned into a total asshole and his best friend, Charlie (David Alan Grier), is just trying to get him hooked up. He takes him out on a double date with a woman who isn't in the slightest bit attractive or charming (except for her breasts). They go to O'Reilly's Italian Restaurant (this, of course, is a the root of quite a few gags with dishes like ravioli with a side of cabbage) where Grace works for her grandfather, Marty (Carroll O'Connor), as a waitress. There are instant sparks. Basically it's one big "What if..." statement. Something that would never really happen except in cheesy romantic comedies. (The most depressing bit of cheesiness in this one is how Bob gets to go back to the restaurant. He accidentally leaves his cell phone. Fine. Sounds plausible. But he leaves it at the bar three feet from where he's getting his coat. He had the phone in his pocket when he was at the table. So we're to believe that, instead of putting it back in his pocket where he usually keeps it, he put it on the bar while he got his coat? No.) The problem with this movie is that director/writer Bonnie Hunt, who is great with the kind of role that she wrote for herself, knew that her two romantic lead characters weren't the strongest part of the movie. Instead of rewriting them to be stronger, she threw lots of scenes with the other, better, characters in there. First off there's the old men. Carroll O'Connor and Robert Loggia head up a cast of four best friends who bicker over who the best dead singers are and who the would be on a baseball dream team. Most of the arguments center around whether Ireland or Italy are better sources for these kinds of people. There's some funny stuff floating around here. But I would have to disagree with their conclusion that Dean Martin is the greatest dead male singer. He was great, but that's a bit like saying that Mark Magwire is the best baseball player who ever lived. One word for these guys: Frank. I rest my case. The other really cool characters are Grace's best friend and her husband (Bonnie Hunt and James Belushi). These two act like a real married couple. Maybe he's a bit harsh with the kids sometimes (and they have a LOT of kids), but I never thought that he was TOO harsh. It seemed to be more like exasperated fun than anything else. And who better to play a "best friend couple" than Bonnie and James, two people who have made their careers on playing the smartass best friend types. And we finally see that, yes, James is John's brother. He does a back flip from a laying down position that rivaled anything that his brother ever did. Maybe not as funny, but still pretty amazing that a guy that big could do something like that. So, no, this wasn't a great movie (very manipulative and a little derivative), but it was better than expected. Especially the supporting characters. And check this little bit of useless trivia. Duchovny, who the Marx Brothers Mailing List has often thought would make a good Zeppo, plays Bob Rueland. Zeppo play Bob Rolland in Duck Soup. Coincidence? I wonder.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

admin — Sat, 13 Jan 2001 18:00:00 +0000

Every country has it's genre that sums up the culture that the people live in. We have the Western with heroes both real (Wyatt Earp, Butch and Sundance), imagined (The Man With No Name--ok, they're Italian movies, but Clint is pure America) and semi-imagined (Roy Rogers, John Wayne). Japan has it's Samurai films with their film heroes (Lone Wolf, Toshiro Mifune). (Considering the similarities between the Western and the Samurai films it's no wonder that so many Samurai films have become Westerns.) And, of course, China has it's Kung Fu films with real life legends (Chen Zhen, Wong Fei-hung) and screen legends (Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Michele Yeoh). Of course we're here today to discuss the third type of film: the Kung Fu film. Now first, let's think back to previous Kung Fu films. You have the typical ones like The Five Deadly Venoms and The Five Fingers Of Death. Then you have the out and out brutal ones like Enter The Dragon, Fist Of Legend and The Story Of Rikki Oh (which is actually in a category all its own). And there's the comedy/Kung Fu like Drunken Master II (and even I), Project A, and New Legend Of Shaolin. But buried somewhere among the subgenres is the one that very few people really know very much about: the chop soky film. The best example of this is The Bride With White Hair, an amazing fantasy film by Ronny Yu, who has unfortunately gone on to do such American films as Warriors Of Virtue and Bride Of Chucky (a fun film in itself, but it may as well have not been directed by him). In the chop soky subgenre we're treated to visions of Kung Fu fighters flying from tree to tree as they try to catch their foes with their ever powerful swords that can usually cut through rock, metal, what have you. The film makers use a technique called Wire Fu. It's exactly what it sounds like. The actors are attached to wires as they dance around the sets. Then, in post-production, the wires are digitally cut out. Chop sokys are the main users of this technique, but it's used quite a bit in other flicks, too. Jet Li uses it probably more than anyone else and now movies like The Matrix and Charlie's Angels are using it. So what, you may rightfully ask, is the point of all of this? Well, I'm just trying to tell people that this style of film has been around for a long, long time and that Crouching Tiger is not the first film to use it. It is, however, one of the best films to use it. Ang Lee (director of The Ice Storm and Sense And Sensibility) grew up reading wuxia novels in Taiwan. They are basically Chinese Kung Fu fantasy. Lots of swords, romance and ass kicking. A while back he decided to make one into a movie. Problem was he had never made an action film before. All of his films deal with dramatic family problems with an edge of humor. (At least the two that I've seen did.) How was a novice action director supposed to make a film that was based around action? Well, first make it with actors who have never done Kung Fu before. Then film it in a language that most of them don't speak. And make it more about the drama than the action. Make sure that the story comes first. Then, to tie it all together, hire the greatest martial arts choreographer who has ever lived, Woo-ping Yuen. The film is about two sword fighters, Yu Shu Lien (Michele Yeoh) and Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat), who have been tied to each other by fate for many years. They love each other but are bound by honor not to do anything about their love. Li Mu Bai is trying to get out of the life. He is giving up his sword to an old friend whom Yu Shu Lien is going to see. Just after she gets there, though, the sword is stolen by a mysterious young thief who is being trained by Jade Fox(Pei-pei Cheng who was a big Kung Fu star in the 60s), the woman who killed Li Mu Bai's master. Meanwhile, the governor's daughter, Jen Yu (Ziyi Zhang), wants to become a sword fighter. She talks to Yu Shu Lien who tries to talk her out of it. It's been a long, lonely life. Soon another story of unrequited love comes out in the form of Jen and a young thief named Lo (Chen Chang from Happy Together). Unfortunately Jen is betrothed to the son of a rich family nearby. The circles of love and revenge meet and clash as the story gets wound up into a fate that cannot be stopped. My God. That sounded like a really bad tagline. I need to stop that. The story is great, which is kind of unusual for these kinds of films. But I guess what we all came here for is the action. Did it add up? Oh hell yeah. There are really only a few action scenes, but the ones that are there are freakin' amazing. With only a little training Chow and Ziyi look as if they've become masters. Having only been in one movie before, Ziyi is the real standout here. She puts in a performance that rivals her more experienced partners. Chow, as a martial arts novice, does a great job throwing the swords and punches. His fights with Pei-pei are a lot of fun to watch. And, of course, Michele is amazing. I don't think she could be anything else. What's more mind boggling than the novice action actors is the fact that hardly any of the cast (or the director, for that matter, I believe) spoke Mandarin before this. Michele and Chow both speak Cantonese. (Yes, there's a difference. It may not sound like it to our ears, but there's a big difference.) How were they able to put their emotions into something that they barely understood? I know a little German (he's right over there), but I could never act in it. Not even with someone guiding me the whole way. Lots of respect for what they did here. Ang Lee, while not using a new technique as some think he did, did do some new things with the camera. There were a lot of really cool near POV shots that move right along with the characters as they bounce from building to building. I haven't seen that before, but I haven't seen a lot of movies like this. The only problem I had with the direction of the action sequences was the fact that we were sometimes too close to the action. I almost couldn't tell whose feet were whose. But it wasn't enough to take away from the shear majesty of the scene. Absolutely amazing. Near the end there's a scene with Li Mu Bai and Jen leaping from tree to tree. And I'm not just talking about the trunks here. They're jumping onto the tree tops, which squirrels would be hard pressed not to break. A lot of people laughed at this and the scenes of them flying across the buildings. That just means that I was seeing this with the wrong crowd. In these kinds of legends, the Kung Fu masters are able to use their balance and control it so well that they seem to be able to defy gravity. That is how they seem to fly when they jump and are able to stay atop these humongously tall trees. I guess to the uninformed eye this could be pretty funny, but it was magical to me. I never thought that I would see Mickey Mouse fly through the trees. But here is where another problem arose. It may have just been my screening, but the tree scene seemed to be just a little bit too bright or out of focus. It almost looked like a 3D movie if you aren't wearing the glasses. Just a little bit distracting. But, as I said, it may have just been my screening. Probably was. Despite those two very small problems this was an absolutely brilliant movie. Best Kung Fu film ever? Maybe. It may move a little bit too slowly for your everyday movie going audience (and it's subtitled, so that's another handicap for most people who can't read), but it's amazing and deserves any accolades that it gets.

State And Main

admin — Sun, 14 Jan 2001 18:00:00 +0000

"Would you like to hear about a preview?" asked Father Time. "Oh, yes, Father," said Little Jimmy. TOWN AND COUNTRY--You just have to love Warren Beatty. He pretty much single-handedly changed the course of film history back in 1967 when he got Bonnie And Clyde made. Then he won a bunch of accolades for Shampoo in 1975. And somehow he has managed to make two of his dream projects (Reds and Bulworth) into realities that actually work very well, a feat that no other director seems to be able to do. Now he only does a movie very occasionally, but he only does the ones that he either really cares about (Bugsy, Bulworth) or that he thinks would be fun (Love Affair). Not always good choices (I hear Love Affair wasn't all that good), but I love to see him in action. This movie looks like something that he would have avoided, though. It's the story of two long-time couple (Beatty/Diane Keaton and Garry Shandling/Goldie Hawn) who talk about (and sometimes do something about) infidelity. And it's kind of a slapstick comedy. Not too much going on in the story department. Doesn't look like it would be too spectacular. Why would Warren do it? The same reason that I think it may actually be good: it was written by Buck Henry, the genius behind The Graduate and To Die For. Here's hoping that ol' Buck still has some life left in his pen and is able to turn a run of the mill movie about old relationships into something more. But now let's talk some old business. State And Main is the new film from play/screenwriter David Mamet. The story's not much, really. A film crew comes into a small town in Vermont and wreaks havoc on the locals. It's been done a thousand times, so now it's all down to execution and character. This time out the characters are great. The director, Walt Price (William H. Macy) is a self-serving bastard with a razor sharp tongue, but he knows when to turn on the charm in order to keep his cast and crew on the job. He'll go from insulting the costume designer ("Did you show Claire these drawings?" "Yes." "Did she puke?") to treating the writer like a son ("Let me tell you about my first shoot.") The writer, Joseph Turner White (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a meek man who only wants his vision on film. He doesn't really know anything about the film industry since he's been writing plays up until now. And now he has to figure out how to do a movie called The Old Mill without an Old Mill. He finds help in the form of the local drama coach/librarian, Ann Black (Rebecca Pigeon). She's been engaged to Doug (Clark Gregg from The Adventures Of Sebastian Cole), a Senate hopeful, for years, but now she may just be falling for a writer who can barely speak for himself. The leading man, Bob Barrenger (Alec Baldwin) is having a problem keeping his hands off of young...very young...girls. And one in town (Julia Stiles) is trying desperately to tempt him. The leading lady, Claire Wellesley (Sarah Jessica Parker), suddenly has a change of heart about showing her breasts even though she's been doing it for years. (The American public can trace them from memory.) The mayor (Charles Durning) is a weak little man who can't say "Boo!" to his wife (Pattie LuPone from the old show "Life Goes On"). They're having some of the more powerful crew members/stars to their house for dinner and she takes over the entire process, including completely remodeling the house. And Marty Rossen (David Paymer from Payback), the producer, is in the fight of his life just to keep the budget on track and the star off of the local girls. He goes for the jugular like a gangster at a stool pigeon. I'm not sure if Hoffman's character is based on Mamet back when he first started writing films, but Mamet certainly knows what he's talking about. These people, while charicatures, may as well be real. Even only working on a few student shorts I know these kinds of people exist. And, of course, Dave's dialogue is great. I don't think I've ever known one of his scripts to be badly written. Even The Edge had moments of pure brilliance. The thing that gets me about all of Mamet's directorial work (although I've only seen two of his films) is that he tends to direct his actors as if they're on the stage. Especially his regulars (in this one they are Macy, Pigeon (Mamet's wife) and Ricky Jay who plays Julia's dad). In this one Macy gets out of the trap and Jay isn't in it enough to really fall into it too much...but he still does. Rebecca, on the other hand, seems to only act on stage. A little stiff and almost emotionless. It tends to work in Mamet's films, but it can be off-putting to the uninitiated. I've never seen her outside of his films, so I don't know if she can act any other way. But even Steve Martin was sucked in in The Spanish Prisoner, so maybe it's just Mamet. I still love you, though, Dave! Some real stand out performances come through this time out despite Mamet's usual traps. First off is Macy. He's awesome as the acid tongued director who just wants to get his movie made no matter what. He breathes life into what could have just been a cardboard cutout of a character. Hoffman is pretty amazing as the quiet little mouse of a writer. So desperate for attention, but so unwilling to really do anything to get it until he finally figures out what needs to be done with his art and his life. Paymer comes into the film like a hurricane. He hears that his film is in danger of going over budget or not being made at all and just starts kicking ass and taking names. I've never seen him as funny or as tough as he is here. And last, but never least, is Alec Baldwin. He's been on a bit of a down trend lately with his dramas (Heaven's Prisoners? Mercury Rising? Anybody? Anybody?), but he's been great as a comedic force. He was just about the only good thing about Outside Providence ("It ain't over 'til you both get your cookies"). And now he's done it again. It's a smaller role, but he does everything he can with it and turns it into one of the funniest characters in the whole movie. The guy is a slave to his libido and it's a slave to the little girls. And he's so stupid that he can't really see that it's totally wrong. My friend and I may have been the only ones who really liked this movie (a couple of guys came out saying that it wasn't very smart and they didn't seem to like it at all), but we both thought that it was approaching brilliant. Maybe not as good as Bowfinger, but it would make a great double feature with it. Check it out.

Cecil B. Demented

admin — Sun, 14 Jan 2001 18:00:00 +0000

Too bad John Waters can't take his own advice. Oh, sure, this one's twisted, but it's totally confused, too. But I get ahead of myself. Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorff from Backbeat (awesome movie) and Blade) is the leader of a terrorist film crew that includes lead actress Cherish who used to do porn (Alicia Witt from Citizen Ruth and Urban Legend...but don't blame her for that one), leading man Lyle who is addicted to every drug under the sun (Adrian Grenier from The Adventures Of Sebastian Cole and Drive Me Crazy...but don't blame him for that one), Raven who worships Satan but is really a sweet girl (Maggie Gyllenhaal from Homegrown and Waterland) and a whole host of other freaks. Each of them have tattoos of their favorite renegade filmmaker's names somewhere on their body from Sam Peckinpah to Kenneth Anger to Spike Lee. Meanwhile, in a ritzy hotel, Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith) is bitching out her personal assistant (Ricki Lake in her fourth role for Waters). Honey is what we in Film School Land like to call a Total Bitch. She's pretty much pure evil. Kind of how we all wish that Julia Roberts was. (Why does she have to be so nice? It makes it so hard to hate her.) Luckily her new film is premiering in Baltimore (only because it's Waters' hometown--no films besides his actually premiere there). That gives Cecil and his crew a chance to teach her a lesson. The Sprocket Holes take over the Senator Theatre, start shooting and take Honey hostage in the name of Sinema. Soon thereafter they force her to be in her movie. Then, befitting any movie with Patty Hearst in a bit part, she starts to get involved with her captors and takes up their cause. Now she's wanted by more than just her adoring fans. This is actually a pretty funny movie. Lots of in-jokes for us movie buffs. The idea wasn't bad, either. Real independents beat up and maim filmmakers/goers because they make expensive, bad movies. The problems start when you really think about it. First off, this is a John Waters film. Now, if John had made this movie back in his Divine days it would have been totally appropriate. Now, though, he's been making mainstream studio movies since Hairspray back in 1988. (Some would even go back to Polyester, but any film shot in Oderama can't be too mainstream.) Granted, his movies certainly aren't "the norm," but he's financed by the same big studios that he's defacing here. Typically I would think that this was totally cool and subversive. Just look at my review of South Park. Great movie and completely subversive in its attack of the studio system and the MPAA. The problem here is that we don't really know who the good guys are. Are we supposed to root for the guys who are killing people because they watch bad movies? Sure, I'd love to kill some of these guys who MAKE the bad movies, Michael Bay and Renny Harlin being first on my list. (Greg Araki would be first, but he doesn't spend any money on his and he's the kind of asshole that Cecil would love.) But can we really blame the public who has been brainwashed into spending $7.50 to spend an evening with Keanu Reeves? And are we supposed to empathize with these guys? I really didn't like any of them except Raven and she was a Satanist. (Of course, then there was Cherish, but only because Alicia Witt is hot.) The rest of them were just angry young idiots who were brainwashed by Cecil...and he's one of the biggest assholes to make a presence in recent film. I even started to find new reasons to hate Honey. And then there were long stretches of the film that only seemed to be there in order to show how much John knows about film. Cecil will start to name drop Preminger or Fassbinder and then we can just stop listening. Basically this film is all bite, but no real brains. Remember, John, we have to care about somebody. Even in Pink Flamingos we wanted Divine and her family to win the "Filthiest Family Alive" title. Here I was just wanting Raven to cap Cecil. All in all, it's worth a look if you're a Waters fan. It's not that it's a bad movie, it just doesn't live up to the potential of what Waters could have done with this story. And I could be totally off base here. My roommate thought it was great. I just thought it was another example of Waters' fall from grace. I liked his last two films better.

A Bushy World

admin — Sat, 20 Jan 2001 18:00:00 +0000

For the last few days a dirty rain has been falling on Austin, TX. Dirtier than I've seen it in a long time. The line of rain running down my windshield wiper (on my freshly cleaned car, by the way...dammit) is light brown. I firmly believe that Mother Nature is crying because of what is happening today. She knows that something horrible is going to happen to Her domain because of a small little man who doesn't feel that She is important. That is why my website has gone black. From now until the day that George Bush either wises up or leaves office this website will be black. (Ok, not all of the pages that were up before I started this. I'm too lazy for that.) It's a small protest, but it's a protest none the less. A few weeks back I sent my letter to Bush to a few local and national newspapers. Of course most of the e-mail addresses were wrong, so that didn't help. And I don't think anyone decided to publish such a long pontification except for my friends at The Paralegalator. (Thanx, guys.) But one response that I got disturbed me. I don't know who it was from because the e-mail list that I had didn't have the names of all of the publications, just the addresses. The e-mail address was newsroom@yankton.net and the response was one line: "It's over, get over it." That one line tells me worlds about this guy. Mainly one of three things. He's got to be

a Republican, or
a Democrat that just doesn't care anymore, or
a person who never cared.

This attitude is dangerous. Especially if this guy is one of the second two. (Believe it or not I don't hate all Republicans. Only the really stupid ones who tend to make it into powerful offices.) Now I'm not saying that we should all riot at the White House for the next four years. That would just be way too expensive. No, all I'm saying is get your voice heard. The "election" may be over, but our opinions are not. The majority of the People did not vote for this fool who is taking over our country and there are constructive and peaceful ways to let the higher ups know this. And this is my way. My website is going black. I will wear black on days that I think Mr. Bush did something really stupid. (I may need a whole new wardrobe.) I will post things on my site to point out why these things were stupid. I will mourn when our country starts heading for what could be a national disaster such as a breach of Justice (as I've been doing for the last couple of months). I will write my Senators, Congressmen, what have you. Who knows? Maybe I'll even get my ass out of this chair and join in a couple of protests in the outside world. These may seem rather small and insignificant, but if enough people do it it becomes like the Alice's Restaurant Massacre. If three people do it it becomes an organization. But if 50 people do it then it becomes a movement. And that can be the greatest and most powerful thing in the world. (Are my 60s roots showing yet? Funny what listening to a bunch of hippy music can do to you, huh?) I do believe that deep down George W. Bush is a good man. He's just had everything go his way his whole life, so now he thinks that he deserves what he's gotten and he won't see that some people don't choose to be in their positions. That is the main problem with him. He also surrounds himself with people who feed his ego and his wallet. They are the truly bad people. They are the ones who want to scar the Earth and keep the poor poor. George is just too stupid to realize what he's really doing. He doesn't see the real world implications of his actions or inactions. When Bill Clinton said, "I feel your pain", we believed him. I still believe him. I don't believe Bush when he says anything along those same lines. I do, however, believe him when he says, "Is our children learning?" He is our President and we should support him. But if he makes mistakes (which we all know he will--even a lot of Republicans are scared) we should let him know that we think they are mistakes. And let no amount a spin make it seem as if paving a National Park is a good thing. Now is the time for the People to speak. That time has been going for the past couple of months and it will not end until we are heard. It's not over. And remember, Dubya. This is what you get when you make me political. I never really cared before you happened.

Dr. T And The Women

admin — Mon, 22 Jan 2001 18:00:00 +0000

Back in high school which of us guys didn't think that being a gynecologist would be the coolest job in the world? Come on! You got to see women in ways that only their, well, gynecologists get to see them. Now I don't think it would be such a great job. More because of David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers than this movie, though. That and the old adage that all gynos hate women. And imagine the sex life! He spends all day looking at women from the inside out. Then he goes home and his wife/girlfriend wants him to look at one more. Her sex life would probably be more rewarding, but it would end up feeling like work for the good doctor. That being said I do not envy Richard Gere's character in this movie. Dr. Sully Travis seems to be the only gyno in Dallas. Every rich woman in the metropolitan area comes to his office and basically makes his life a living hell. They clog up his waiting room, scream at his receptionists and then insist on unscheduled appointments. (By the way, how many hypochondriacs actually go to their gynos first? Don't these people have general doctors?) Not only is Dr. T. having problems at work, but his home life is getting more fouled up every day. His wife (Farrah Fawcett still looking pretty damn good sans clothes) is literally going crazy. Apparently Sully is too good to her and it's making her revert back to childhood. (Don't ask.) His sister-in-law (Laura Dern) and her three little girls have moved in with them. The problem with Laura is that she seems to be insane, too. Or just drunk. Or on coke. I couldn't really tell. Then there's his daughters. Dee Dee (Kate Hudson) is supposed to get married soon. But when her maid of honor, Marilyn (Liv Tyler) comes in town we find out a little secret about her. (I'll just say this: WOW!!) His other daughter, Connie (Tara Reid) knows the secret and constantly says things like, "Don't you worry about me. Every thing's fine with me." Huh? Should we be worried? Another person we should probably be worried about is Bree (Helen Hunt), the new golf pro at the country club that Dr. T. spends his off-time at. (He seems to spend an awful lot of time there for being as busy as he is.) She's a free spirit who won't let anything tie her down. But all bets are off when she and the up until now faithful Sully start an affair. After a tornado that looked like it was created in Gere's backyard (but was powerful enough to make it all the way to a place with very poor Mexicans living in a desert...there's no real desert near Dallas. This place looked more like the end of Evil Dead II than any place near Big D) and a surprisingly graphic (but not realistic at all) birthing scene...nothing is really resolved at all. What's wrong with this movie? Well, let's start with the fact that it's a Robert Altman movie. This automatically sets it on another tier of quality. I'm not really sure why since his failures seem to out number his successes. Maybe it's because his successes are so freakin' good that we can totally forget about most of his failures. And let's also look at the fact that the 90s were a great upswing for Mr. Altman. With Short Cuts, Vincent And Theo, The Player and Cookie's Fortune it looked like we could expect a great number of great films out of him. Then again, lately we've also had Ready To Wear, The Gingerbread Man and Kansas City--most interesting (except for Ready To Wear), but all generally failures. Are we ready for another decade like the 80s for The Amazing Mr. A? This movie is just kind of a mess. None of the characters are very well drawn except for Gere's. (Surprising since writer Anne Rapp's last movie, Cookie's Fortune, was a great vehicle for Altman.) And with a cast this big that's a major drawback. And for a movie written by a woman it's pretty insulting to women. The only smart woman is Bree. Everyone else is either insane or just plain dumb. (To be fair, the only three other men (including Robert Hays and Andy Richter) are pretty dumb, too.) Then again, maybe Anne's saying that only modern women are really intelligent...but that doesn't really seem to be the message here. In fact I don't really know what the message is, but I know it's got one. Altman, who is usually amazing with ensemble films like this, just kind of goes through the motions here. The most we get is a great party scene where we get a little bit of info on each character...like all big scenes like this in Altman's films. No real dialogue, just a lot of chatter and character business. He's still got his touch with that. What he doesn't have his touch with is endings. This one nearly ends with a wedding that reminded me of the ending of Ready To Wear. And that's not a good thing. At all. Remember all of those really bad comedies from the 60s? The ones with the big, chaotic endings where everyone's running around not really knowing what the hell they're doing? (Much like What's New, Pussycat? and The Party with Peter Sellers--an otherwise great movie.) Back when they actually thought that fast = funny? Well, Mr. Altman sometimes thinks that way with his comedies. I love you to death, Bob, but what's up with this? Amazingly, though, Richard Gere keeps his accent fairly consistent throughout the movie. Unfortunately, so does everyone else. Pretty insulting to Texans, too. Two bright points, one subtle, one would have been better if it had been subtle. First, the store names in the mall at the beginning. Someone asks, "Where's Mom?" when they're looking for Mrs. T. Pan up to the sign above Guess. A few minutes later, when she's dancing naked in the fountain we pan up to see a sign that says Godiva Chocolates. Kind of funny, but it should have been a little less pronounced. We're smart enough to see the signs without the big pan up. Second, the group wanting to name a freeway after Jayne Mansfield. Now that's some funny stuff. Other than that it's really not worth seeing, which is sad for an Altman film. Unless, of course, you're either a completist (like me) or a fan of seeing Helen Hunt's breasts (long shots, but still not bad).

Sugar & Spice

admin — Tue, 23 Jan 2001 18:00:00 +0000

This is a little ditty 'bout Jack and Diane. Two American kids...who get married in high school and don't do the best they can. Diane (Marley Shelton from Nixon and Never Been Kissed) is the head cheerleader at Lincoln High (whose mascot is the Fighting Lincoln). Her boyfriend Jack (James Marsden from X-Men), who she met by kicking him in the face, is the star football player. Of course, when they meet sparks fly. Apparently so does the semen because she gets pregnant soon before prom. They get kicked out of their respective houses and have to make it alone. Jack gets a job at the local video store because the geeky guys who work there want to hang out with him after school. Diane gets a job at the bank branch at the grocery store...which gives her the greatest idea that any cheerleader has had since the invention of the mini-skirt. The problem is that she and all of her friends are dumber than bricks. Even Lucy "The Genius" Whitman(Sara Marsh) who is trying to get into Harvard and has a good chance is pretty damn stupid. The rest of her crew are Kansas "The Rebel" Hill (Mena Suvari), Hannah "The Virgin" Wold (Rachel Blanchard from Road Trip and The Rage: Carrie 2), and Cleo "The Stalker" Miller (from The Limey and Dark City). Along the way they add Fern "The Terminator" Rogers (Alexandra Holden from Drop Dead Gorgeous and Dancer, TX). That pretty much sums up their characters. To help you tell them apart I'll tell you a little bit about them. Kansas is the one with the mom in prison for killing her father a few seconds after she was born. He was in the next room with a nurse. Hannah is the one with a strong Christian back ground who can't watch anything but G-rated movies. She likes horses. She REALLY likes horses. Cleo is the one who is obsessively in love with (get this) Conan O'Brien. She fantasizes about Conan's head on Keanu Reeves' body. Lucy is the obsessive compulsive...but it only shows up when it's convenient. Fern is a white trash girl with the local arms dealer for a dad. He's rather unfunny. Oh, back to the Idea. Diane thinks it would be a great idea to rob her bank. They know that they can do it because they can rent a bunch of bank robber movies and learn from their mistakes. (None of which, by the way, made any appearance during the robbery proper.) Besides their utter stupidity (the only person dumber than they are is Jack), they have another turn of bad luck. Lisa (Marla Sokoloff from Whatever It Takes and Dude, Where's My Car?) is there...and she's out to get Diane for stealing the position of head cheerleader from her. I am so ashamed of myself for actually kind of liking this movie. I'm sure it will be totally bashed by the critics. Really, it's almost as stupid as its main characters. But there are little flashes of near brilliance that make up for the fact that one of the first places that Jack tries to get a job at is a fast food joint called Lucky Pluckers. (This may have been funnier if there weren't a place here in Austin called Pluckers. They use a lot of the same jokes. Somehow it's kind of funny there.) It's a satire on the cheerleader stereotype and (including the prerequisite gay mascot dude), I guess, the bank robber movie. In that capacity it almost works. Sort of. Maybe if only the cheerleaders had been stupid. But even Lisa was a complete moron. This should have been called Reservoir Dumbasses. (There's a pretty funny parody of that movie in here, too...of course. You haven't lived until you've seen five Betty dolls and Richard Nixon walk up to a grocery store in slo-mo.) So, if you can turn your brain totally off you'll probably enjoy this flick. It's better than Jawbreaker (by miles) but not nearly as good as Heathers. Kind of along the lines of Drop Dead Gorgeous. Not too much of a waste of money for a slow Friday night. Go with a bunch of friends so that you can laugh at the girls you went to high school with. Although I seriously didn't know anyone this braindead. But it's pretty funny anyway. And, besides, all of these girls are sexy as hell. I especially liked Cleo (with the Jennifer Connally eyebrows), Hannah (who, appropriately enough, looks like she could be related to Alicia Silverstone--she did play Cher in the Clueless tv show, after all) and Lucy (who, for some reason, reminded me of Patty Duke). And what the hell is up with all of the cheerleader flicks these days? There's But I'm A Cheerleader (really bad) and Bring It On (didn't bother even though Kirsten Dunst is in it). And wasn't there another one? Don't you think America should be over its cheerleader fetish. What am I talking about? I'm out of college and I still have a cheerleader fetish. Um. Nevermind.

Snatch

admin — Wed, 07 Feb 2001 18:00:00 +0000

How's about a coupla previews? THE MEXICAN--You know, I can't help but want to see this movie even though the though of Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, two of the most sickeningly beautiful people in the world, together is a bit creepy. But it looks like they're playing up their white trash heritage, so maybe they won't be so perfect. Looks funny in a weird sort of way. Probably won't be any good, but it'll be fun. And with Brad in tow it'll at least have some good acting. 3000 MILES TO GRACELAND--Great cast of Elvises (Elvisi? Elvi?) in this one: Kurt Russell (who played Elvis in John Carpenter's TV movie based on the man's life called, appropriately enough, Elvis), Christian Slater (who was an Elvis maniac in True Romance...even had the man come to him in the form of Val Kilmer) and Kevin Costner (who, granted, doesn't have any real Elvis connection, but he's in a renaissance lately, like Elvis in the late 60s). And it's got a plot lifted almost directly from Ocean's 11. A group of guys decide to rob Vegas during an Elvis Convention. Like The Mexican, it'll be big, dumb fun, but it'll probably suck overall. I'm there. SAVING SILVERMAN--Are there no movies coming out in the next couple of months that are going to be genuinely good? This one I have to see because of Steve Zahn and Jack Black. I also like Jason Biggs (isn't he a little young to have grown up with the other two guys) and Amanda Peet is HOT! This one will be so bad, but I'll see it and probably love it. GO JACK AND STEVE!! By the way, you can totally tell that Steve's underwear are digitally put on him in the scene where he's doing yoga or something. (Yes, I read it in Entertainment Weekly, so I was looking for it...but it's pretty obvious.) THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS--And finally we get to one that I just don't care about at all. This one looks like one big bowl of suck. The only slightly interesting things about it are Vin Diesel (I just can't not like the guy after Iron Giant) and Jordana Brewster (the little hottie from The Faculty). Other than that it looks like a cross between Le Mans, Rebel Without A Clue, and Gone In 60 Seconds...and I mean the re-make, not the original. Bad, bad, bad. Now. What about dat movin' picture? After seeing Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels I knew that I had to pay attention to Guy Ritchie. Now, two years later, he's finally come up with something besides a relationship with Madonna. And it doesn't look like the ol' girl has slowed this guy down one bit. This time out Guy tells us the story of a bunch of inept British crooks and gangsters who are after a very large diamond. Turkish (Jason Statham from Lock Stock) and Tommy (Stephen Graham) are two lackeys who are trying to be up and comers. Unfortunately they keep turning on some bad luck. They get involved with Brick Top (Alan Ford), a gangster who feeds his enemies to his pigs. This guy runs an illegal boxing match every week and wants Turkish and Tommy to take care of his contender who is supposed to drop in the 4th round. Unfortunately, they lose him. But they have a great prospect in Mickey (Brad Pitt). He's a one punch hitter from a band of gypsies from outside of London. Will he throw a fight, though? And will anyone be able to understand him? Somewhere along the way we also meet Franky Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro) who is in charge of the diamond. His boss, Doug The Head (Mike Reid) is a local jeweler/gangster. His cousin, Avi (Dennis Farina, great as always), comes to London from New York to get his stupid cousin out of trouble. Meanwhile, Vinny (Robbie Gee), Sol (Lennie James) and Tyrone (Ade...no, just Ade) try to get the diamond for Boris The Bullet-Dodger (Rade Serbedzija from Mission: Impossible II, Stigmata and Eyes Wide Shut), the local Russian arms dealer. And somewhere in this mix comes Bullet Tooth Tony (the real discovery from Lock Stock, Vinnie Jones), a kind of cleaner for local gangsters. That's an awful lot of characters to take care of...and somehow Guy does it. He introduces us to each of them, gets us to care about them as it were, and then pulls the rug out from under us when he kills them off one by one. What can I say? It's a gift that few have. This guy's style is amazing. It's almost comic book style, but there's a little more to it. Imagine a cross between Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, even more so than From Dusk Til Dawn. It's fast, cartoony (in this one he even introduces each character with a comic book picture) and violent and yet keeps its sense of humor throughout. The movie was hilarious. The performances were great, with Farina and Pitt being standouts. Farina was the epitome of the crazed American gangster who just didn't quite seem to have a handle on the situation or his temper...but he always thought that he did. And Brad was great as the nearly incoherent Piker who could knock a guy out in one punch. This guy was almost as much of a bad ass as Tyler Durden. The only real problem that I had with it was the intrusion of Madonna. No, she doesn't appear in the film, but her song, "Lucky Star" does...twice...within about five minutes. It would have been kind of funny (but not really) if it had only shown up once. But by the second time I was already tired of it. Some have said that this isn't nearly as good as Lock Stock. I'm not really sure. I need to watch that one again before I can say. Personally, I love 'em both. Great flicks that probably need to be watched more than once to really get everything out of them. And, yes, the kid behind the ticket window snickered when my friend and I said we wanted tickets to Snatch. Don't we all, guys? Don't we all? Personally, I think the uproar about the name was all for nothing, though. Who cares? I'm glad they didn't change the name just to appease some asshole who thought it was offensive. That's just because he had a dirty mind. Everyone knows what the title of the film is really referring to, so it really doesn't make a difference. Watch for a cameo by Spud (Ewen Bremner) from Trainspotting. I think I'll name my first film Pussy and make it about a cat. The next one will be about the trials and tribulations of a family that's moving. It will be called Box. After that, I think I'll make one called Vagina. It'll be about a kid from Virginia who can't spell.

Hannibal

admin — Sat, 10 Feb 2001 18:00:00 +0000

One of the most frightening things in the world has to be finding out that someone you trust is a hideously evil serial killer. Only slightly more frightening than that is figuring out that he knows that you know. And, of course, this is a normal, everyday occurrence, so we all know exactly how it feels. Right? Hannibal takes place ten years after the events of Silence Of The Lambs. Of course Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter, M.D. (Anthony Hopkins, of course) is still on the loose. He's just been in retirement for a while. But now he sees an opportunity to start things up again. Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore), on the other hand, isn't having the time of her life. Her superiors seem to hate her, especially Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta). He sees her as a nuisance who didn't want to play ball with him years ago. And, by ball I mean she didn't want to have sex with him while he and his wife were still together. Now she's in the middle of a crisis because she chose to shoot a drug dealer who was carrying her baby in a pack in front of her and a machine gun in her hand. This all came to be because of a stupid D.C. cop who wanted glory instead of safety in inaction. So Clarice is struggling to keep her job when Hannibal resurfaces by way of one of his old victims, Mason Verger (an uncredited and unrecognizable...um...well, figure it out or look it up yourself...you won't figure it out. Way too much scar tissue make-up). He knows that Lecter actually seems to care about Clarice, so Verger uses her to lure his nemesis out so that he can make him suffer as Hannibal made him suffer. (This is the second movie that I've seen in a row where one of the characters likes to feed people to pigs. I didn't think it was that common.) After that it's basically a pretty intelligent game of cat and mouse and dog. Of course we're always wondering who the cat, mouse and dog are. How does it compare with the Oscar winning part of the story? I don't even know if I want to try. I enjoyed this one quite a bit, but it's nowhere near as intense or disturbing. Just more graphic and disgusting. A little more Hollywood than NYT best seller, but I hear it's a lot better than the book, which got pretty terrible reviews. Hopkins was, of course, amazing. He's not as creepy here, though. He's more of a cartoon character, which isn't what we want from Dr. Lecter. We want to be frightened of him because of how suave he is, not how he eats brains. But that's more a function of the writing than Hopkins. He does the best he can with what he's given. Julianne Moore was great as always. Almost to the point where I didn't even miss Jodie Foster. Almost. I did always wonder what Jodie could have done with the role, but that's just because I love her so much. Julianne played her even harder than Jodie did, which is reasonable since she's had a lot more harsh experiences in the last ten years. I wonder what Gillian Anderson would have done with it. The end was a little more over the top than we probably needed, but it was fun in a gross and disgusting way. In fact, the whole movie seemed like it was made more for fun than the first one was. I don't think that I could ever say that I had fun watching Silence Of The Lambs. This time, though, I actually laughed quite a bit. Ridley Scott, as always, knows his way around a thriller. He's been doing it so long he could probably do it in his sleep and still put out a pretty decent flick, which I think is what he may have done with this one. As I said, it's a good movie...certainly worth seeing for the continuing adventures of Hannibal. Just not a great film like Silence is. There's the typical Scott style going all through this one. Lots of interesting expressionistic shadows and angles, good suspense, all that jazz. I just don't know that he really put his heart into it as he did with Alien, Blade Runner and even Gladiator. But he's a great director and it shows through as always. If Scott were to direct a comic book flick (and it seems like I've heard that he's thinking about one) I think it would look like this. I think that's the main problem I had with Scott's vision of the story. He's turned Dr. Lecter into a comic book villain. The end, especially, is full of the imagery you would find in a particularly graphic comic. That's not a very good way to look at one of the greatest villains to grace the screen in the 90s. And look at Verger. Or, on second thought, try not to. He's basically a man with no face. Now that's a comic book villain if ever I saw one. I would have liked it if they had gotten Ted Tally to do the screenplay again this time, but they found someone instead who still has a good career: David Mamet. His script is actually not as tight as Tally's, but it meets the standards of the rest of the film, so I'll go with it. Maybe we needed another villain who endangered someone besides Lecter. Silence was a great story because we had the true evil helping to capture a lesser evil, but that lesser evil seemed to be the main part of the story. It was totally original! This time it's just Hannibal who is on the lose and a bunch of people looking for him for different reasons. Actually I really did like the movie. As I said it was a lot of fun. I just wasn't expecting it to be fun, I was expecting to be disturbed and challenged. Instead I was amused and entertained. Watch for Frankie Faison as Barney, an orderly from Silence. He's the only actor (that I know of) to actually be in all three Hannibal movies. He played a different character in Manhunter, though. (Still haven't seen that one. For shame.) And also Spike Jonze shows up somewhere in it. I didn't see him, but he's on the IMDb, so it must be true, right?

Traffic

admin — Thu, 15 Feb 2001 18:00:00 +0000

That line come out of the mouth of a 16 year old girl and it has to be the scariest and truest movie line of the last ten years. Steven Soderbergh has once again brought us to a world seemingly so far removed from our worlds and yet so close to them just the same. He's shown us that we should be afraid of what's going on under our noses because it affects each of us in different ways. Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) is about to become the head of the DEA. He's a politician from Ohio who feels that drugs are the ultimate evil and that the people who use/sell them are minions of the devil. What he doesn't know, of course, is that his 16 year old daughter, Caroline (Erika Christensen who looks a little like Julia Stiles) is a part time drug user. You name it, she's done it. She also happens to be third in her class at the local private school that Bob sends her to. Javier Rodriguez Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) is a cop in Mexico who just runs with the system. When he and his partner, Manolo (Jacob Vargas) are taken in by the local general who says that he's working to crush one of the drug cartels, he sees a way to do some good. But then he starts to realize that things aren't always as they seem. Helena Ayala (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is a rich suburban house wife in San Diego who finds out that her husband, Carlos (Steven Bauer) is a drug trafficker. When he gets arrested she goes for help from their attorney, Arnie Metzger (Dennis Quaid), but he doesn't seem too able to help. Can she keep her son and unborn child from being killed by other drug pushers without getting into the life herself? Ray and Montel (Luis Guzman and Don Cheadle) are a couple of cops who bust Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer), a co-worker of Carlos'. He's fingered to help them get his boss. Meanwhile Ray and Montel have to do surveillance of Helena to see if she was in on her husband's shady deals. I don't think anyone puts in a bad performance here, but the real standout is, of course, Benicio. Javier is a broken man who can't decide what the right move is. Should he tell the so-called good guys what's going on or should he keep to himself and help out his own leaders? He deserves every accolade that is thrust upon him for this performance. As for the Best Picture nomination, I have one word: YES!!! This is one of the best movies of 2000 and should be nominated. I'm at a loss as to whether or not I think this or Crouching Tiger should win, but I'm glad that they're both nominated. And Soderbergh did an amazing job of bringing this to the screen. Every story has a different look to it. Mexico is yellow and drips with sweat. Ohio is blue and looks like the back bone of America. California is bright and looks like, well, California. Sunny, hot and beautiful. And the film itself is grainy so that everything achieves a realism that helps the subject of the film come alive. Steven Soderbergh is a God Of Film. That's all there is to it. Can't wait for his version of Ocean's 11. After three serious flicks in a row it's time to lighten up a bit. Not that there's no humor in this one. The dialogue between Ray and Montel is great. These guys have a great relationship that's a strong friendship without getting gushy. I'm glad that they didn't show them trying to take bullets for each other. That always bugs me. Yes, they're friends. We can get that through dialogue. Don't show them crying over each other. These guys are much more realistic. The whole point of this movie is to show us exactly what our government is doing in its "War On Drugs." The answer? Not a whole hell of a lot. But, the thing is, they're doing just about all they can do. The drug lords of the world will always be one step ahead because they know exactly what's going on. They know how to keep demand high while keeping supply always running. The government is also trying to make us see the users as the enemy. That's wrong. That makes the enemy our friends and family. Those are the people who need our help, not our war. The enemy is the pushers and the leaders of these cartels. Yes, if you get rid of the leaders it helps a little bit. But someone else always takes over...and sometimes it's the person that you least suspect. It's funny that the kids in this movie make more sense than almost any of the adults. Caroline's boyfriend, Seth (Topher Grace from That 70s Show), tells Robert the truth about supply and demand. White people go to the projects asking every black person they see where they can score some drugs, but it goes the other way, too. Black people will go to suburbs asking white people the same question. Soon everybody is asking everybody else and certain people realize that selling will be big money. You can make upwards of 50 thousand a week. "Do you think anybody goes to law school anymore?" So how do we stop all of this? Well, I don't know. And neither do the writers of this movie. We all just know that our present plan is not working. And our "President" Bush just helped the drug czars out by allowing Mexican trucks to come over our borders without stopping to put their cargo on American trucks. Maybe we still have to check the trucks, but it always helps when you actually have to take everything out. One way to change things would be to legalize it. Now, I know that's not exactly the best idea. In fact it's probably a pretty damn stupid idea. But, think of it this way, a lot of crime started when Prohibition started. When it was over, so was a lot of the crime. As they say in this movie, when things are going well no one gets killed. As soon as something happens, that's when they start killing each other. And it's not always the drug people who are getting killed. So we legalize it. Then the government can control exactly how much comes into the country and they can control who gets it. (Not completely by any means, but a lot more effectively than they are now.) They can even tax the hell out of it if they want to...and I'm sure they would. More power to them. But, as I said, that's not the best idea. The only drug that should be legalized, in my opinion, is maybe pot. And I'm not even sure about that. It's the only drug that doesn't really have any effects any worse than other legal drugs like nicotine and alcohol. And it actually has other uses. But, as it has almost the same effects as alcohol and I'm not the biggest fan of that, I'm not too sure about it. I think probably the best thing that we can do to keep kids off of drugs and make demand go down is one of the hardest things in the world for some parents to do: listen. Just sit down and talk to your kids. If they decide to try something out and you find out don't go ballistic on them. Talk to them about why they did it and how you can help them realize that they don't need it to have a good time. Help them not feel like they have to rebel against you. That's really the only way to fight these people, take their demand away. They will always out gun and out number our guys. The War On Drugs is pretty much a bust and only creates more victims. And Traffic shows us who those victims are...and it's not who you want to be the victims.

Thirteen Days

admin — Thu, 15 Feb 2001 18:00:00 +0000

First, some previews: LORD OF THE RINGS--You know, I'm looking forward to this series almost as much as I was the new Star Wars movies in '99. And now this preview just shows me that my waiting can't be in vain! This looks so freakin' awesome!! The last shot with all of the characters coming over a ridge with the titles and release dates is shiver enducing. I...can't...wait. CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN--The last we heard from John Madden (the director, not the football yeller) he was winning an (undeserved?) Oscar for Shakespeare In Love. I liked that movie. Now he's got Penelope Cruz (love her) and Nic Cage (love him) in a romance about a man who meets his true love while in Italy (I think) during WWII. And it looks like utter crap. Very much like another crap filled movie, A Walk In The Clouds. If he can't find something better to follow up SIL, then screw him. Penelope I can forgive because she's just feeling out her American audience. Nic I can forgive because he's a great actor and has been in enough great movies to allow for a drop off in quality for a while...although that drop off has been going for quite a while now. And now, for what you've all been waiting breathlessly for: We will never know what it feels like to not know. Imagine that someone is watching you and you don't know it. You never give it a thought until you finally know that there's someone standing right behind you with a knife. Or, in the case of Americans in October of 1962, a few nuclear bombs right in our backyard. The Cuban Missile Crisis is probably the closest that we have ever gotten to an actual nuclear war and no one really knew it. Yes, they knew that we were close, but not exactly how close. For thirteen days America was in real danger of ending the world with the help of the Soviet Union. And it was up to President John Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood), Attorney General Robert Kennedy (Steven Culp) and their political advisor, Kenneth O'Donnell (Kevin Costner) to keep that from happening despite all those who seemed to want it to happen. With the help of Robert McNamara (Dylan Baker from Happiness) and quite a few others they did just that. (I think we all know how the movie ends, so I don't think I'm ruining it for anyone by saying that we didn't go to WWIII.) It's an amazing story that I didn't know nearly enough about. Now, through the miracle of movie magic, I know quite a bit more about it and am more grateful than ever that Kennedy lived as long as he did. Costner, who also produced, did a passable job as the Kennedy's old friend. The weak point was, as always, his accent. He starts off absolutely horrible, sounding a bit like Floyd the Barber, then gets better with only flashes of bad throughout the rest of the movie. Slightly better than Robin Hood, but more glaringly obvious when he got it wrong. But in respect to the rest of his performance he was better than usual. I was actually pretty convinced for the first time in years. Bruce Greenwood didn't quite have the accent down, either, but he was less obvious about it. His accent just kind of drifted in and out. And his voice was all wrong for JFK. Way too deep. But other than that his performance was great! We got a real sense of the pain that he was always in with his back problems and the agony that he went through trying to figure out what the hell to do with those crazy Russians. And then there's Steven Culp, who also played Bobby Kennedy in the little seen Norma Jean & Marilyn a few years back. Apparently practice paid off because he was awesome. The real standout of the entire cast. If this is the way the real Bobby acted then I can totally see why he was supposed to be the second President Kennedy. He was strong, level headed and always in control of the situation. Hell, I would have voted for him. And his Bahston accent was nearly perfect. Where's his Oscar nom? Dylan Baker, who I always love seeing, was great as Bobby McNamara. It's too bad that Dylan is so little known, but I guess someone has to be a character actor these days. And speaking of character actors, there was a bevy of them in this one. Bill Smitrovic, Ed Lauter, Michael Fairman...the list goes on and on. You may not recognize their names, but you know their faces and they blend into the parts perfectly. Director Roger Donaldson does a great job of keeping the tension going for the movie's entire two and a half hours. Especially the last twenty minutes or so when they're trying to figure the last move in the most dangerous chess game ever played. I don't think I've been that tense since I saw Arlington Road. It's funny that it took an Australian director who has only done one other good movie (No Way Out, although I hear The Bounty was alright) to make a film about something that happened in America. But I guess it did affect the whole world. This is a very good film about an intense part of our history. It really made me wonder what John and Bobby could have done if they had lived to fulfill their potential. But, if the conspiracies are to be believed, that never would have happened. As one of the generals said, "Those goddamn Kennedys are going to destroy this country if we don't do something about it." Maybe they did do something about it.

Quills

admin — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 18:00:00 +0000

Every so often there comes a person who tries to change our ideas of Free Speech and what it means to pornography. Back in the late 80s it was Robert Maplethorpe. In the 70s it was Larry Flynt. Hell, even in the 30s there was Henry Miller. But one of the first and still most controversial had to be the Marquis de Sade. His mixture of pleasure and pain along with his erotic prose caused a furor in late 18th Century France. So much so that he was thrown in an asylum for the remainder of his years after publishing a couple of books. Now, before we get into the review proper I have to tell you: this film is a work of fiction. Yes, most of the characters did, in fact, exist in real life, but they did not interact (or look) the way they did in the film. There was no altercation a year before de Sade's death and he actually died peacefully. That said, lets go into what the movie says: The Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush) is already locked up in an asylum where Madeleine (Kate Winslet) is secretly getting his manuscripts to a publisher. Now, the Marquis and Madeleine have an interesting relationship. They respect each other and even seem to love each other (although de Sade would never admit to it), but she will not consummate the attraction. She is in love with some one else. When Napoleon finds out he sends Dr. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine), a renowned "doctor" who thinks that he can cure deviants by bleeding them and trying to drown them, to remedy the situation. He meets with Abbe Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix) and finds his policy of respect and normalcy for the inmates distasteful at best, dangerous at worst. The Abbe is, of course, shocked and surprised that de Sade is able to get his manuscripts out of the asylum. He was only allowed to write because the Abbe felt that it would help him "purge his demons." Dr. Royer-Collard allows the Abbe to continue his treatments as long as the Marquis is watched more carefully and no manuscripts are allows to get out. Meanwhile, the good doctor goes to pick up his betrothed, a beautiful girl no more than 16 YEARS OLD!!!! Yes, the hypocrisy starts to rear its ugly head. So things only escalate from here. The Marquis, who is in charge of the asylum theatre (which is very popular with the townies), writes a play that ridicules the Doctor and his child bride. The causes all quills to be taken away from the "madman." But, you see, without his quills, the Marquis can't write. And this is what truly drives him crazy. The thoughts that he has scream to be let out until he can come up with ways to write them down anyway. The Doctor and his new wife aren't happy, either. He keeps her locked up in her room with very little time outside of it. She was raised in a convent and was shielded from the perversities of the outside world, "and I will not allow her to be defiled now." I think we all know where this is leading. So this movie is not really about the Marquise de Sade, not in a historical way, anyway. It's really about censorship. What this man wrote back in the late 1700's is pretty hardcore even by today's standards, but he was handing it out to people who would have probably broken the dick off of the statue of David. But these same people had their own idiosyncrasies, like marrying children and expecting them to perform their "wifely duties." They also had no qualms about making money off of something that they think is dirty. In fact, they will sell it under the pretense of using the money for good causes. Imagine a church selling Marilyn Manson cds and saying that it was ok because they're using the money to build a new wing for worship. There's a bit of confusion, though. Throughout the whole film we know that the Doctor is the bad guy and that we're supposed to be on the side of the Marquis and Madeleine. (The Abbe is stuck somewhere in the middle. He's a good man, but he also thwarts de Sade's publication because he thinks the stories are dirty.) But when someone dies at the hands of someone who heard de Sade's work, we're left to wonder whether it was his fault or not. In fact, he even seems to blame himself for it. I, personally, believe that it's not his fault. The killer was unbalanced in the first place and would have eventually been set off, and was in fact set off earlier in the film. He was just stopped before he was allowed to finish the deed. I believe in putting blame where it belongs: on the person himself and the people who were supposed to be watching him. But the filmmakers seem to think that it was de Sade's fault. But that doesn't make a lot of sense. First off, it undermines the message of the rest of the film. Second, director Philip Kaufman was almost a victim of censorship himself. When he made Henry & June he caused the NC-17 rating to be created. Before that he would have had to have cut the film to get a legitimate rating. So why would he make a film that shows why censorship is sometimes a good idea? No idea. Other than that Kaufman has turned in a great film based on his favorite idea: an idealistic outsider who comes in a causes a controversy. He's done this many times in films like Henry & June, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Rising Sun, even to some extent in The Right Stuff, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and his screenplay for The Outlaw Josey Wales. He's also apparently able to make a film of a play without making it look stagy, something that even David Mamet sometimes has a problem with. Ah, Kate Winslet. I've loved Kate ever since I saw her in Sense & Sensibility. And she's as good in this as ever as the young girl who is torn between her hidden love of a man and her love of erotic literature. Joaquin is great as the tortured Abbe who genuinely likes de Sade and considers him a friend, but feels that he's done something wrong by allowing him to write for so long. But I think he should probably keep his shirt on from now on. He's got some problem with his back that makes his shoulder look totally out of joint. Kinda gross, actually. Poor guy. He not only has to work his way out of a dead brother's shadow (which he's pretty much done), but he has to put up with a hair lip and a fudged up back. Very good actor, though. Gotta love the guy. Caine is very good, as almost always, as the evil and perverse Doctor. He can run off at the mouth about how horrid de Sade is for writing about sex in such straight forward ways, and then turn right around and get his jollies off of a 16 year old. (Although, I will have to admit a certain dirty pleasure at seeing her come out from under a desk with a look of utter satisfaction on her face. Heh heh heh.) But, of course, the real performance here is by Geoffrey Rush as the Marquis de Sade. Yes, Mel Gibson's old roomie put in an absolutely amazing, if a bit hammy, performance as one of the most controversial figures in history. He's over the top. He's dirty. He's perverse. He's funny as hell. And, most of all, he's extremely charming. How else could you explain lines like, "You've already stolen my heart, as well as another more prominent organs south of the Equator." and "Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated." coming off as something more than just lewd. They sound as if they were actually spoken by an intelligent man whose intent is more than just to shock. He wants to bring these kinds of thing out into the open. Why should we hide sexuality behind a veil of filth? Why not talk about it like it's something that we all do. "We eat. We shit. We fuck. We die." I can see why he's up for on Oscar for this one. The script helps him out a lot, though. It has its moments of triteness, but overall it's very witty and serves its subject well. Great movie that deserves more of an audience. It brings up some important questions about censorship throughout the ages. But, in all of its seriousness, it doesn't forget its sense of humor. It's actually a very funny movie at times. Certainly worth a look or two.

SXSW 01--The Journeyman/Atomic Ed And The Black Hole/No Early Birds

admin — Sun, 11 Mar 2001 18:00:00 +0000

It's that time of year again. Time for a bunch of us film geeks and music morons to run around at break dick speed trying to see as many movies and bands as possible before the whole thing ends and our badges turn back into what they are: useless pieces of paper wrapped in hard plastic. On a string. Yes, it's time again for South By South West. Now, some of us are smart enough (dumb enough?) to realize that you don't have to buy the damn things. Yes, we are the few, the not so proud...the idiotic. The Volunteers. But, you what? Screw that. I always have fun with it. It's a nice change from real work and, while I still have to work with pretentious assholes at times, these people can actually help me with my career if I kiss their asses with just enough tongue. So let's start with the festivities! When I heard that there was a new spaghetti Western shot by a local dude playing the festival, I got so excited that I nearly broke my neck trying to tell everyone about it. And that was before I saw it. That's how much love those flicks. THE JOURNEYMAN When I heard that it had Willie Nelson and Barry Corbin (Northern Exposure and WarGames...oh, and a little thing called Lonesome Dove) in it I was doubly excited. This local kid actually got a living legend and another really cool actor to be in his first feature! How cool is that? Add to that that he also got a great character actor John Beasley (The Apostle, Crazy In Alabama) and you should have a recipe for something that could bring back the Western as we know it. When I heard that it was shot on digital video I started to get worried. How's that going to look? Everybody knows that even digital doesn't look nearly as good as film when it's projected onto a movie screen (or any screen for that matter). But I understand. It's a hell of a lot cheaper. Hell, that's what I'm going to shoot on if I can ever get the damn camera. But a Western has to be beautiful. It has to have expansive landscape shots, epic sweeps...you know, the works. Well, it looks like my internal warnings were warranted. What director John Crowley got was a movie that would have looked great if it were on film. There were lots of sweeping shots, but they were all marred by the fact that when you move a shot on video the whole thing blurs. And it's just not as clean as film. The colors were a little wacked up. Storywise it was alright. Two brothers see their father (played by a WWWAAAAYYYYY under-used Willie....and let's not make any jokes about that last line. This is Willie NELSON we're talking about. Show some damn respect.) get brutally murdered by a group of gun men led by Barry Corbin. He didn't do that actual shooting (and, in fact, was pretty pissed that it happened), but he didn't do much to reprimand the guy who did it. Soon after it happened the two kids ran to the outhouse and hid until the older one (who was always pretty cruel to his little brother until this day) made his little bro get in the hole and he ran out to distract the killers. They drag him off (literally) and a preacher eventually finds the other kid in the outhouse. Thirteen years later we see a robbery go horribly wrong. Pretty much everyone gets killed except for the supposed leader of the crew (Dash Mihok from The Thin Red Line), who is badly injured, and one especially crazy young man who looks a bit like death warmed over. (Mostly because of an intense morphine habit.) He starts the killing spree and the local law (led by Barry Corbin who has apparently turned over a new leaf) finishes the job. The film then turns into a kind of cross between The Searchers and one of Clint's Westerns. The psycho's brother shows up in the town soon after the bloodbath chasing after him. He ends up on the hunt with Barry and his boys (which includes Willie's killer), but soon goes off on his own. Dash also gets into the action because he realizes that a)what he's been doing is wrong and b) what this psycho is doing is wrong. He's out to kill the son of a bitch who double crossed him...but no more lawlessness. So the story is almost spaghetti, but stylistically it's very conventional. A real spaghetti Western would have weird angles, extreme close-ups, Mexican stand-offs...none of which did this movie have. No feeling of Clint at all. In fact, not much feeling at all really. The story was interesting, but it didn't seem that Crowley really knew how to get the emotion of it onto film...or video. Only occasionally did that come out. And most of his actors didn't help. Yes, Barry was great. Yes, Dash was pretty cool in another crazy, comical role. Beasley was good in a very strange role. (Was he supposed to be part Mexican? Is that why he kept speaking Spanish? Funny that he's a black man.) Willie was alright as the dad, but we didn't really get a chance to know him since he got blown away within the first ten minutes. And the guy who played the evil brother wasn't bad. (He did pretty well with those overly surreal drug scenes, which actually seemed to work.) But everyone else was just kind of there. The guy who killed Willie was by turns comically stupid and supposedly menacing. I was never menaced and I didn't laugh too much at his antics. I just kind of wished that he would go away. (Granted, that's as much a problem with writing as with acting, so we can blame Crowley and the actor for that.) Nothing much in the way of actors here. I guess that's what you get when you get gay porn actors to be in your movie. (Don't ask. It's on the IMDb. Funny what you find there.) So not too great of a start for the festival or the director. It certainly wasn't a bad movie (and the morphine addiction was an interesting twist...you don't get much of that in Westerns), but not a very good one, either. Kinda boring at times. The best scenes were the ones with Barry yelling at his crew because every one of them was dumber than the next. ATOMIC ED AND THE BLACK HOLE How do you live with the fact that you helped build something that killed millions of people within seconds and thousands (millions?) more over the next fifty years? That's the rather lofty question that this little documentary short tries to answer by documenting the life of Ed, an old man in Los Alamos, NM who used to work at the nuclear plant during WWII. Now he collects bits and pieces from the plant (only the non-radioactive ones, of course) and keeps them in his shop (The Black Hole) to remind him and the world of something that should never happen again. Some of the things, though, he won't sell because he plans on opening a museum to cut through all of the Big Science ("with a capital B and a capital S" as one of the people at the actual Los Alamos museum says) behind what happened back in the 40s when those bombs were dropped. But remember, this is a comedy! Yes, even with that question, this is very funny. This guy and his friends are a little crazy, and they seem to know it. That's what makes this totally celebratory instead of it poking fun at the guy. The filmmakers agree with the old man, but they still want to have fun, much like the guys who made Hands On A Hardbody and American Movie. This is a great short that, unfortunately, will never be seen by a general audience. Hopefully someone like IFC or Sundance Channel picks it up and shows it on a rotation for a while. NO EARLY BIRDS Along those same lines is this little documentary about Garage Sale Culture. We follow two garage sale hunters, Roxanne and Dale, on their treks through the streets of Austin, TX as they search for the perfect piece of junk that will be their treasure. These people get on the road before sunrise (in scenes that are almost unwatchable because their just too damn dark!) and start the search in order to be the first to get to the garbage. Roxanne has good reason to do this, if a bit of a greedy reason. She collects the stuff for her store, Curiosa?, which I pass by all the time on 5th Street. I was always a little curious (ha ha ha) about it. Now I know it's just a junk shop. I wonder how many customers Roxanne loses because of this flick. Dale just does it because he wants to replace stuff that he's sold because he "got broke." Along the way we also meet a guy whose parents died, the rather condescending estate sale coordinator that he hired, the parents' next door neighbor and an old man who is just about the worst packrat I've ever seen. The path through his house is so thin that the filmmakers almost couldn't get the camera through. The walls are cluttered with stuff that's hanging from lines. He had to dig to get the phone. It literally looked like a junk yard. I couldn't even tell that it was a house. This one is a little more sarcastic and less forgiving than Atomic Ed, but it's no less funny. This could very well be the next Hands On A Hardbody. And, like its predecessor, it shows a side of America that we don't really know about. Something that we don't really pay much attention to. Something that's out there. Really out there. One note: most Austinites are not like the people in this movie. In fact, there are quite a few of us sophisticates out here. You know, the kind of people who will wait until they are alone to pick their noses.

SXSW 01--The Journey/The Trouble With Lou/Climax/Pornstar: The Legend Of Ron Jeremy

admin — Tue, 13 Mar 2001 18:00:00 +0000

THE JOURNEY Occasionally there comes a film that connects with its audience so well that it finds a way to transcend its subject and touch everyone in spite of how trite it seems like it would be. Rarely does one of those films come to a festival. And even more rarely does it ever come from a first time filmmaker. The Journey is a documentary about a guy and his two friends who set out from Atlanta in a 1971 VW Mini-Bus trying to bridge the generation gap. The want to interview people from the older generation for advice to our generation. What can we do to make our lives fuller? How can we make the world a better place in our own way? Which way do we turn for inspiration and guidance? I'll tell you the answer that every one of them gave: inside yourself. Do what you love. Follow your dreams. That's the only way to be truly happy. Their first stop was right here in Austin to talk to then Governor Ann Richards (who was in the audience at its world premiere when I saw it). She got them in touch with Henry Winkler. He got them in touch with bunches of people at Disney and the ICM talent agency...and Billy Crystal. Along the way they pick up an MTV director of photography who gives up her chance to work in Europe to help them complete their mission. That's when The Journey turns into a voyage of self-discover. Now, usually I hate to use phrases like that. They're trite. They're over-used. They're stupid. But that really sums up this movie. The four bus riders end up learning about themselves and the two generations. And through it all the audience is right there with them. This movie hit me pretty hard. As trite and cliched as the whole thing seems it is done so well that you forget that you've seen it a million times. But this time it's real. These folks really were laughing together and crying together. They really cared about what they were doing above all else. They knew that it was an important mission. And the people that they interviewed knew it, too. Even George Lucas gave his seal of approval. They sent it to him to get permission to use a clip from The Empire Strikes Back and, in an unprecedented turn of events, he watched it himself and gave them the rights to do it. He also told them how amazing he thought what they were doing was. I can't say enough about this movie, so I think I'll stop here. Eric Saperston and his crew already have distribution, so we can only hope that this movie gets a wide release. It's not only a great movie, but it's an important one. One of those rare documentaries that you could watch over and over anytime you feel depressed about your life. It'll pick you up and put you on the right track. THE TROUBLE WITH LOU This movie will also make you rise to the occasion. It's about Lou, a young man in the late 50s who has a problem. He's spending too much time alone with exotic hand creams. Even when he gets a girlfriend he feels the need to pleasure himself anytime he sees girls in bathing suits. The urge is so strong that he drives all the way home to yank it and then forgets to pick the poor girl up. And, to make it a little more interesting, it's all done in the style of one of those old 50's hygeine films. The real problem here is that it's pretty much a one joke story, and it holds that joke pretty well...for about half an hour. Then it starts getting a little tiresome. Oh, there are still some funny lines (one that comes to mind is, "The pilot told them that the weather was perfect for masturbating."), but overall the pace just clinches up. The filmmakers were there and they said that they still had some tightening to do in the 2nd and 3rd acts. They were showing us their rough Avid cut. Well, I hope they cut A LOT out. Make it a short. In fact, at one point they show a picture of Paul Ruebens in his Pee-Wee days. Yes, that was kind of funny, but all it really did was remind me of a short that HE did back in the 80s that was pretty much the same thing...and much funnier. I don't know how you can get ahold of it, but it's hysterical. It comes complete with a dancing, singing animated penis. (Not the realistic one that's making its way across the internet right now. This is actually a cartoon.) If you can find this one, watch it instead of The Trouble With Lou. You'll get all of the same jokes in less time. CLIMAX And how else to follow a flick about masturbation than with a movie called Climax. Well, it could have been a good movie called Climax. This is about a group of friends at a party who haven't seen each other since high school graduation two years ago. Now, of course, they've all kind of grown up...but not really. I'm sure that if you were one of the fiends all of this would have been hilarious. But, being an outsider (and seeing as how a lot of the dialogue was incomprehensible), this was crap. It had about three spots where the dialogue was good, but the rest of its 90 minute length was pretty ass wrenching. Imagine watching a bunch of obnoxious people that you don't know at a party. Now imagine trying to have a good time there. It won't work. Not that the acting helped at all. Most of the actors were so bad that I think even Keanu could have taught them a thing or two. For a movie called Climax, there certainly was a shortage of them here. You know it's a bad sign when a member of the audience tells the filmmaker, "It was good. Lots of characters." Yeah, that's about the only good thing I could say about it, too. PORNSTAR: THE LEGEND OF RON JEREMY I went into this not knowing a damn thing about Ron except that he's short, fat and hairy. I didn't even know that he has an enormous schwanschtucker. Now I feel like I kind of know the guy and a little bit about why he's so popular. About 25 years ago a young man named Ron Hyatt got his picture put in Playgirl magazine. From that a long and illustrious career in porn started. Now, at that time he was skinny and fairly good looking. Now, though, why is it that this little guy can still get the babes and a lot of the porn starlets are dying to do scenes with him? Why do guys go crazy when they meet him? Well, think of it this way: he's a regular guy just like us. He's no longer good looking. He's certainly no male model. He's just a guy. And any one of us feel like we could be just like him. Except for the monster, of course. And another thing that I never knew, he and AL LEWIS ARE GOOD FRIENDS!!! How the hell did that happen? Overall, this is a really fun documentary about an American legend, but it's not as illuminating as it could have been. It seems like there could have been more said. But, these guys have gotten to be pretty good friends with The Hedgehog, so we wouldn't get any of the dirt on him. Apparently, though, there is no dirt. He's a really nice guy who everybody likes. He was at the screening and seemed totally approachable. He even fielded a question about one of the biggest mistakes he ever made: sucking his own dick. "All right. Congratulations. You got a laugh." So, if you want to know the man behind the dick, this flick should be out fairly soon. It may be edited a bit (there's a little bit of nudity in it...go figure), but they've got plenty of footage to go in its place. Check it out if you're up for this sort of thing.

SXSW 01--Passing Stones/Cornman

admin — Wed, 14 Mar 2001 18:00:00 +0000

PASSING STONES There's a lot of crap at film festivals. Usually you only see a couple of really good ones and a whole bunch of movies where a bunch of guys just wanted an excuse to use guns or see boobs. This one, while having a fairly ordinary premise (a bunch of people looking for money) and some questionable acting, was done in such an original way that it's easy to over look the weak points. Leon (writer/producer/editor/director Roger Majkowski) is a 30 year old paper boy. His younger brother, Tony (Roger's real-life brother, Thomas) is a drug addict who can't seem to really think for himself. And his mother is a controlling bitch who no one really likes. At all. Not even a little bit. When one of the old men on his route gives Leon a note and then kills himself, he has to find his older brother, Gary (Tom Ellis) to translate it since it's in Polish, a language that Gary just happens to speak fluently. (Um. Yeah.) This isn't easy for Leon because he's pretty much disowned his older brother because the guy is a complete loser. When he loses his temper people tend to get their fingers chopped off...or worse. And then there's the little thing with Gary's wife...he's a cross dresser. So the three brothers find out that the old man buried some money somewhere and that there's a wife and two girls left behind. Now to find them. This is where things get really complicated and dark. You see, the girls hate their father and thought that he had died in prison. Their mother is dying of Alzheimer's and can't even remember who they are. And the younger girl has Tourrette's and frequently barks at their new guests. And remember, this is a comedy. It's actually very funny, twisted stuff. Definitely not for everyone. I heard that people walked out of the first screening in disgust. I knew that I had to see this one. The script is pretty damn awesome. Almost every line is funny at least in a mild smile way. And not only that, but the guys are witty enough to be fun, but stupid enough to be real. For the most part, these guys are morons. They just happen to be driven towards a goal that they can achieve, so it's not too much of a stretch that they get as far as they do. And then there's all of the religious overtones. Leon believes very deeply in God, but he doesn't know that He's still there for him. "God doesn't listen to adults." And the note was supposedly written because God told the old man to write it. What does this mean to the characters? It's different for each one, so don't ask. The characters are great, too. Even the two with horrible diseases are written in a way that they don't make fun of the diseases. We laugh at them, but not maliciously. And as shaky as some of the performances were, the chemistry was great. The brothers acted so much like real brothers that I was surprised that all three of them weren't really related. (They even kind of all look alike...of course the two Majkowskis look like Downes Syndrome kids, the youngest looking like Adam Sandler...weird.) The only real problem I had was the fact that, occasionally, it seemed like Majkowski was vying for John Waters' spot as The Gross-Out King. Gary finds out that people will do anything for money, so he comes up with some sick things for them. He makes a hooker pee in front of some business dude on the street...you know, things like that. In a direct rip-off/homage to Waters he gets a guy to follow a guy and his dog, hold his hand under the dog's ass and eat its shit. They don't actually show it as Waters did, so it doesn't do exactly what it could have, but it was still pretty bad. But we Pink Flamingos lovers didn't even bat an eye. This was a great first feature. Certainly not for everyone, but if you're up for a sicko, twisted flick with a cool story check it out. I'm sure it will at least go to video. CORNMAN What the hell made me watch this? Maybe it was the fact that it's about a vegetable hero. Or maybe because it's a homage to the Troma tradition. Maybe I just really like corn. This is the story of Cornman, a guy who accidentally dumped nuclear waste on himself while walking through a field of corn (what he was doing with nuclear waste I don't know) and found himself able to hear and understand corn. His side kick is a short, Mexican guy named Butter Boy. I'm not really sure what his power is, but he wears a popcorn tub on his head and loves anything with the word butter in it. His interchangeable girlfriends are all named Sheila and are numbered beyond that. Dr. Hoe, Cornman's arch-rival, is and evil man with a hoe for a hand. His minion, Starch, is a moronic farmer kid who keeps losing his fingers because he makes Dr. Hoe angry. The obligatory bad girl (whose name I can't remember), squeezes her victims heads off with her legs. Much more impressive than Xenia Onnatop. For some reason Dr. Hoe wants to take over the world's corn. I'm not sure what he hopes to achieve by doing this, but, hey. Whatever floats your nuggets. This movie is full of Troma clichés that are supposed to be spoofs, I think. But as I said about Scary Movie, it's very hard to spoof a spoof. Director, Barak Epstein tries very hard (almost too hard), but he fails pretty miserably. There are a few exceptions that only prove the rule. He knows how to make fun of female exploitation. In one scene Cornman is about to start having sex with an ear of corn. Suddenly we're treated to a random shot of two girls in bikinis kissing each other. I have no idea why, but I wasn't complaining. Luckily, the characters weren't supposed to know why, either. It was just there to mess with us. Then, in the "climactic" fight scene, Sheila #3 and the bad girl are fighting. They make their way into a tub and suddenly they are wearing bikinis. Then Butter Boy runs over, stops them, turns on the water and lets them go at it again. There was also a pretty well done fight scene (well done in the sense that it was really bad on purpose) complete with horrendous dubbing. I guess what really killed this one was the performances. They were uniformly bad. I've seen better performances at a flea circus. Maybe if the actors' timing had been a little better...nah. It still would have sucked all of the hair off of Robin Williams' ass. Surprisingly, Lloyd Kaufman (Mr. Troma himself) shows up in a cameo. I guess Epstein kept his connections from when he worked on Toxic Avenger IV. (You can tell they guy's a fan, too. Toxie shows up in a scene or two as does Sgt. Kabuki Man.) This movie was bad, bad, bad. The filmmakers were in the audience (which was rather small) and were supposed to do a Q&A, but there weren't enough people at the end to warrant us staying any longer than we had to. In a way I felt sorry for the guys, but hell. They put us through 70 minutes of hell, so screw 'em.

SXSW 01--Memento/Godass/Los Trabajadores (The Workers)

admin — Thu, 15 Mar 2001 18:00:00 +0000

MEMENTO How would it feel if everyday you woke up and couldn't remember what happened the night before? (I know, some of us have that feeling every morning anyway...but those people have problems of their own.) Or if you start a conversation and then can't remember who or what you've been talking about for the past five minutes? Or maybe you looked into the face of some one that ten minutes ago you were falling in love with and suddenly you don't even know that you had ever met them before? That is the tragedy that is Leonard Shelby's (Guy Pearce) life. No, he's not an old man with Alzheimer's. He's a young man who has no short term memory. Basically, his RAM's all screwed up. And now he's looking for the guy who raped and killed his wife. (Now we know that this isn't Clean Slate.) He's got a couple of people helping him, but can he trust them? Hell, he can't even trust the guy at the front desk of the motel he's staying at. That guy has rented him two different rooms because he knows that he won't remember which one he was in or even if he was staying there. One of his friends is Teddy (Joe Pantoliano from The Matrix). He's kind of a slimy looking guy, but he seems to really like Leonard. But is he really the one who committed the deed? Then there's Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss, also from The Matrix). She's a beautiful waitress who has a problem of her own. She's willing to help Leonard if he helps her with her abusive boyfriend. But is she playing him for her own sinister purposes? The real help to Leonard are his pictures and notes. Ever since "the incident" he's had his own portable memory. He takes pictures of everyone he meets and every important place he goes and writes a little note on it so that he remember who the hell they are. The really important stuff he gets tattooed on himself. But even these methods are necessarily trustworthy. So basically this is a film noir in reverse. Literally. We start with the final scene and from then on it's totally non-linear, much like The Limey. And then it ends with more questions than it began with. And, like The Usual Suspects, it works extremely well! This was a great movie with more than just a cool gimmick. The script is very tight with no glaring holes in it that sometimes pop up in movies like this. (I'd have to watch it again to know for sure.) And Guy Pearce was awesome. His character seems to have come to terms with his condition, but he's also extremely pissed off by it. He can laugh at it, but there's a hint of hatred for it in his jokes. (Go figure. But the jokes actually make this a very funny film as well as suspenseful and intriguing.) And his single-mindedness for getting his wife's killer shows through all of it. That's all he lives for. It's part of his being. Everyone else is also very good. But then Joe is always good and Carrie is turning out to be a pretty good actress who can do more than just shoot people and look cool in black leather. I guess the most interesting thing about this flick is the fact that it teaches us not to trust our own memories. After seeing it my viewing buddy and I both felt like we were afflicted with the same condition that Leonard was. Why do we rely so much on our memories? When the police get testimonies from people they will often get three or four different stories, sometimes from the same people. So, are our brains really that reliable? Well, no. But they're all we really have. We can't go around taking pictures of everything we see. (Although certain grandmothers give it a good try.) So we try to remember everything that we can. And after seeing Memento you won't take it for granted. GODASS Before you start to think that this is some perverted movie about blasphemous pornographers I'll tell you this: the title really has nothing at all to do with the film except for the fact that it becomes the name of the lead character's magazine. Teri (Nika Feldman) is a young woman (we never really know how old she is) somewhere south of New York. She runs a little punk 'zine in 1988 and interviews all sorts of "celebrities" for it. Her life revolves around the 'zine so much that she sometimes forgets that she has a real life. When one of her friends tries to kiss her (and she seems to want him to), she stops him because she can't be bothered with that right now. In fact, early on she figures out that she is probably a no-sexual--someone who will never have sex--because she had to watch one of her celebs suck his own dick. (For those keeping score, that's two movies that I've seen during SXSW where a guy sucks his own dick, the other being Pornstar. Is this a new trend in movies? Let's hope not.) She and her two best friends, Kevin (Arik Roper) and Skank (Preston Miller), go with her to NYC to spread the 'zine around. While there they get their car stolen and end up staying with Teri's biological father (George Crowley) and his boyfriend (Fred Schneider--yes, the same one who sang about a love shack about 10 years ago). Teri's not too happy about this because, of course, she's a rebel and she hates her family. Although she desperately wanted her step-dad's love, a man whose final thought about her was that he wanted her out of "that damn leather jacket." The story was interesting enough. Too bad the script and the acting SUCKED!!!! There really wasn't a single redeeming performance in the entire film. Even Fred couldn't play a gay guy in front of a camera. If I were to say something nice about this film I guess it would be the attention to detail. Now, I didn't live the punk life in the late 80s. (I was too busy trying to not be the quiet, fat kid in the back of the class. Let me tell ya, growing your hair out doesn't do it.) But a few people who did live it said that it was exactly like this. Lots of parties, puking and rebellion. (That's another trend this year. Lots and lots of puke on the screen. At least there were no gay cowboys eating pudding.) I really wanted to like this flick because I liked the director, Esther Bell. (Do people still name their daughters Esther? I thought that went out with Ethel.) I didn't actually meet her, but during her intro she just seemed like a rather insecure punk-ish chick who happened to be pretty cute. Extremely natural, too. She didn't really seem to like being on stage, but she was happy enough to be there. That's cool. Unpolished, a little uncomfortable, but still able to plug a casting call for her next movie. Unfortunately I just couldn't bring myself to like it. I guess it was directed well enough, but it just looked really bad. It reminded me of Whatever and Girl, both movies about punk girls in the rock scene and both very disappointing. This wasn't even as good as those. In fact, those were Citizen Kane compared to this one. They at least made a little bit of sense. Godass won the Festival Choice Award at the New York Underground Film Festival. Those people must have remembered what it was like to be a punk kid in the late 80s, because there's no way that this movie would win any awards here. We take quality over subject matter. LOS TRABAJADORES/THE WORKERS I have to preface this with the reason for my watching this documentary. There is no way that I would have been interested, but it was directed by one of my old TAs from U.T. So, maybe it's a bit of a conflict of interest that I write a review of it, but I guarantee that if I had thought that it sucked I still would have reviewed it honestly. I just wouldn't have told her that I reviewed it. As it is I'll probably e-mail her and let her know that she got a good review. The Workers is a very short documentary about day laborers here in Austin. A while back the city decided to move their headquarters from 5th Street to somewhere off of 51st Street. Of course this pissed a bunch of people in the neighborhood nearby off. What they didn't realize is that these guys aren't out for their daughters or anything like that. These guys are just working stiffs like you and me. In fact, they probably work harder because they have more at stake. They're working for their families back home. A lot of them send almost all of their money back to Mexico. So why are they here, you may ask? And I may answer, Because their government is full of a bunch of corrupt assholes who don't care about their workers or their families. (Hey guys, we're starting to know the feeling.) These guys may be illegals, but would you work in your own country if you were only paid $2/hour? Hell, no! You would probably run to Canada. They're very proud of their homeland (one guy even makes his food the color of the Mexican flag), but they can't work there. Pretty sad state of affairs. Through Heather Courtney's documentary we get to know some of these guys and their families. She took a trip to Mexico to interview one guy's family after he went back for a visit. It's a very emotional experience to hear how the family feels about him having to be away from them for so long and then how great it feels to have him back even for the short periods of time that he can come back. The only real criticism that I have for it is that there were a couple of awkward editing choices. At one point she went to an establishing shot, cut to another closer shot and then went back to the same establishing shot. That could be chalked up to a cinematic typo, though. Other than that, Heather has made a film that will make me think twice as I drive by the building where these guys hang out to get their daily jobs. They're some of the hardest workers around and most of them are nicer than the people who were complaining about them coming to their neighborhood. (Most of those people have changed their tunes, by the way. They've met the guys and found out that they're just normal folks like the rest of us.) Hopefully someone like Sundance or IFC picks this up. People need to see films like this (especially in Texas and some of the other Southwestern states) in order to understand the culture that they're living in.

SXSW 01--Never Again/How's Your News?/Blow

admin — Fri, 16 Mar 2001 18:00:00 +0000

NEVER AGAIN Ever since seeing My Life's In Turnaround I have liked Eric Schaeffer. Now, I know that that's laughable to a lot of my "film friends," but I don't care. Apparently he's a vanity project making idiot with no creativity at all. But I think that the guy's got some funny ideas floating around his head. This new one is probably his best yet. (Although I still haven't seen If Lucy Fell or Wirey Spindell.) It's the story of Christopher (Jeffrey Tambor) and Grace (Jill Clayburgh), two 54 year olds who decide that they will never again fall in love. In fact, Christopher thinks that he may be gay because he couldn't get it up during his last encounter with a random 25 year old. So Christopher is hanging out in a gay bar when he runs into Grace who is still reeling from being shot down by a midget. (Don't ask.) As soon as they meet their "never again" goal goes out the window. They find out that there is life left in the old loins after all and that love will come...eventually. The most interesting thing about this movie is the fact that these are two older people who see each other as sexual beings. Usually, if you're over 45 that's it. No more sex in movies...unless, of course, you're Sean Connery or Harrison Ford. Then you've always got the 25 year olds. But this one actually gets pretty sexually explicit with the older crowd. First off (and, yes, this is a bit cliched by now, but it's still funny), Christopher's mother cusses like a sailor. She keeps telling her exterminator son to "Squash the cocksuckers." "Mmm. They're cockroaches, mom. Cocksuckers are a completely different thing." Second, they actually show Christopher and Grace having sex. (No, there's no nudity. Don't worry.) And they get pretty hard and heavy. Grace even tries on a strap on in one of the movies funniest scenes. And these people, once they start to really fall for each other, start acting like kids. It really shows us that, underneath it all, we're all the same when we fall in love. We will still be asking our best friends, "Does this shirt look alright with these pants?" We'll still be afraid of commitment. We'll still jump to conclusions when there's no evidence to show for it. We'll still be total freakin' morons. The audience I saw this with loved it. It was pretty consistently funny and still had a serious message, which strangely enough is a Bond movie title: Never Say Never Again. No matter how old you get, there's always a chance to find love. Check this one out. And watch for Michael McKean in a hilarious cameo. And Bill Duke and Sandy Duncan are both great as Christopher and Grace's best friends, respectively. (Grace had two more friends, but I don't know who they were.) HOW'S YOUR NEWS? Every once in a while Trey Parker and Matt Stone do something to redeem themselves in the eyes of those who think that South Park is just a bunch of dick and fart jokes. (Personally, I love it. But you probably know that.) This time they gave money to Arthur Bradford so that he could take a group of mentally disabled adults across the country in an RV. His mission was to make a series based on their interviews with "normal" people in the streets. Well, the series fell through, but now he's made a feature length documentary about the trip. And it looks like it was a fun trip. Arthur took five of his video class students from Camp Jabberwocky, some more disabled than others. There Susan, a woman who only seems to be mildly retarded; Robert, a man who can't really talk; Sean, a shy young man with Downes Syndrome; Larry, a man with what appears to be MS; and Ronnie, a man who is obsessed with meeting famous people...especially Chad Everett. These people come together to form a news team that is beyond comprehension. They go out in the streets and interview people about whatever happens to come to mind. Sometimes it's the weather, sometimes it's life, sometimes it's just whether or not they know any famous people. This is a very funny and sweet documentary. I know it has to be hard to edit something like this without making it seem as if you're making fun of the people, but Bradford managed it. He almost makes it seem as if the fully functional people are the butts of the jokes. Yes, we laugh at the reporters, but not in a way that makes us feel guilty for it. We're laughing at their innocence. They are in this world to have fun, and that's just what they do here. But still, some of the funniest stuff here is the reaction that the reporters get. Some people just don't know how to take them. Are they for real? Should we treat them as normal people? This is a great documentary that I'm glad to say will be showing on HBO and Cinemax soon. Check it out when it makes it there. BLOW This is it, folks. This is our big premiere this year. And I'm not really sure if it's a world premiere or what's going on with it. I'm fairly certain that it's already premiered somewhere because no one from the film was there. As Harry Knowles said in his intro, all of the cast and crew were stuck in an international press junket that they couldn't get out of to be here tonight. Oh well. We did alright without them. Blow is the story of George Jung (Johnny Depp), the first American to bring Colombian cocaine into the country. Thanks, man. That's just what we needed. Turns out that he was just doing it to keep his family happy! Yes, George was a family man. But his wife, Mirtha (Penelope Cruz) made it very difficult, seeing as how she is a total bitch who just wants money. But George only has eyes for his daughter. She was the only thing he could see when he was making all of the money. She was his life. His partners don't really help out too much, either. Derek (Paul Ruebens) is a flamboyantly gay hairdresser who may or may not be double-crossing George. And his other partner, Pablo Escobar (Cliff Curtis who looks like a cross between Andy Garcia and the bad guy from Desperado), doesn't seem like the kind of guy who can be trusted at all. Imagine if Scarface had had some remorse for what he was doing and was less showy about it. And that he was a white guy married to a Latino girl instead of the other way around. I don't know how much of this is true, but it makes for a damn good movie. Ted Demme (The Ref, Beautiful Girls, Life) has made a movie that will finally probably get him those good reviews that I know he's always wanted. (Although I thought The Ref was a GREAT movie.) His direction is pretty good (but the editing was probably better), but he's no Scorsese, which is who he's trying to emulate here. The movie's structure is VERY Goodfellas-esque. (And Ray Liotta is even in it...as George's dad! Funny since Ray's only 8 years older than Johnny. Lots of "old" make-up.) The script and the performances are what really makes this movie stand out. As much as we hate to, we really do like this guy. After all, he's totally charming and he loves his family. But he still brought a gigantic monkey into America for our backs. Why do we want him to win? It's gotta be Johnny. He's one of those actors who, even though he's a very well-known star, he melts into roles so much that we can pretty much forget that we're not watching the actual guy. And, once again, Johnny's amazing in this role. And ol' Pee-Wee does a pretty damn good job in a role that I've never seen him in. He's a slimy little bastard, but likable at the same time. How is that possible? I don't know. I just know that I now believe that Paul Ruebens is not just cool, he's a good actor, too. And here's the real surprise: Bobcat Goldthwait is in this flick! So that's two, count 'em, TWO character comedians who don't play thier characters! (Bobcat actually comes very close to slipping just after he snorts some especially good coke. "I can't feel my face!") The only real problem I had with it (and I would have to watch it again to make sure) is that I don't think the timeline is quite right. It seems like they have characters aging too quickly and other characters who never seem to age at all. Ol' Ted should have been able to do a better job on that. Blow will be opening wide on April 6th. Go see it. It would make a pretty good double feature with Traffic. They both kind of show how stupid our current ways of getting drugs off the streets are pretty useless. After all, we got this guy off the streets, right? (We know this at the beginning. No spoilers here.) Look where it got us.

Oscar Predictions 2001

admin — Sat, 17 Mar 2001 18:00:00 +0000

Do award shows really mean anything? No. Does the fact that I open this with just about the same line every year mean anything? No. Let's move on. The movie biz was in slo-mo this year. There were a few really cool movies, a few good movies, and even a few great ones. But no life changers. None that really caught everybody. Oh, there were some that touched some of us in ways that we liked, but none of those really made the bucks that it apparently takes to get a nomination. No, this year we get a lot of mixed up noms from movies that no one saw and most critics even didn't care about. Why is that? Did Hollywood blow their wad in 2000 and now they're dry? Were they running out of things to do because of the impending strikes? Who knows. All I know is that my favorite flicks didn't get noms and I'm pretty pissed off about that. But what are you gonna do? This isn't a democracy. Let's get to woik. BEST PICTURE:

What? Mark has actually seen four out of five of the Best Picture noms? Wow! That hasn't happened since, well...last year. But it doesn't happen often. Believe me. And, you know what? I loved all four of the films that I saw. I don't know that they were all Oscar worthy, though. Gladiator, while a very visceral experience and a great film, is probably only here because the Academy loves nostalgia. Why else would Kim Basinger win for looking like Veronica Lake? These old farts thought that Ben Hur was great (actually, it was amazing) and they want to relive that experience. It will probably win for this rather stupid reason. Erin Brokovich is a very conventional film from an unconventional director. It was a cause movie. A very good one, no doubt, but one just the same. That's why it's here. That and Julia finally showed us that she actually can act. Traffic is an amazing film about the problems with the War On Drugs. It's a controversial cause movie. It should probably win and is, in fact, my vote for Best Picture. But it probably won't win because a)it IS controversial and b)Steven Soderbergh has two films in the category. This means that he should cancel himself out. Why? Who knows? But it was also supposed to happen with the Grammys. (Paul Simon and Steely Dan, both classic rock artists, were supposed to be canceled out giving it to Eminem despite the outcry. The Dan won in the most anti-climactic ending to any awards show I've ever seen. But it's a great album, so who cares? As good as Em? Probably not. The Grammy people were scared. That's all there is to it.) Crouching Tiger is another amazing flick that is one of the most successful foreign language films of all time. It's my other choice for Best Picture, but it will probably take Best Foreign Film, just like Life Is Beautiful did back in 99. It deserves it just as much, too. Chocolat is the anomaly here. It was the big surprise. No one who has seen it had very glowing reviews of it. In fact, I only know one person who's seen it and he said that it was a very good flick (best review I've heard, usually they're very lukewarm), but it wasn't as good as other films this year. Not a chance. Now, instead of Gladiator and Chocolat, why not Almost Famous and Unbreakable? Especially Almost Famous. If Jerry Maguire was nominated (a weaker movie by the same director) why not this one? It's the best film he's ever made. It just makes sense. Old bastards apparently hate good music. BEST DIRECTOR:

STEVEN SODERBERGH--TRAFFIC
STEVEN SODERBERGH--ERIN BROCKOVICH
ANG LEE--CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON
STEPHEN DALDRY--BILLY ELLIOT
RIDLEY SCOTT--GLADIATOR

And, of course there's one guy who won't win just because his film isn't up. Now, I haven't seen Billy Elliot, but I can't imagine that Daldry did a better job that Soderbergh, Lee, Scott or...um...Soderbergh. Now, this is the first time that this has ever happened. One director not only nominated for directing two films, but also having both of those films up for Best Picture. Will he cancel himself out here? Usually, as we all know, the director of the Best Picture winner will win here, but that's not always so. Spielberg won when Shakespeare In Love stole BP. (Still bitter? You bet.) Ang Lee did a great job on his first action film, but will the Academy forge giving one to Ridley after all these years of being a great hack for them? (I'm beginning to use that word the same way a friend of mine does. It's not a bad thing to be a hack. It just means that you don't write your own stuff. You're a director for hire. I love Rid.) I'm thinking that Mr. Soderbergh will actually take it for Traffic whether the film wins or not. His directing on that one is absolutely amazing. Much better than what he did with Erin. BEST ACTOR

JAVIER BARDEM--BEFORE NIGHT FALLS
RUSSELL CROWE--GLADIATOR
TOM HANKS--CAST AWAY
ED HARRIS--POLLOCK
GEOFFREY RUSH--QUILLS

This is where I start having problems guessing because I've only seen two of the performances here. Geoffrey Rush was awesome in Quills, but he's always great and everyone knows it. He won for Shine a few years back and I don't think he'll get it again for this one. As good as Russell was I don't think he'll get it, either. It wasn't too different from other roles that he's played (except for all of the swordplay and stuff) and he still hasn't proven himself to the Academy. I'm even going to have to go against Tom The Great here. He's already won twice and been nominated five times. I don't think he'll get it for a movie that I hear is very mediocre even if it is another meeting of the Gump team. I know nothing about Before Night Falls except that Javier's performance is supposedly amazing for someone who basically amounts to a newcomer. And there's the reason that he won't win. Too new. I'll have to go with Ed here. He's been putting in great performances for years and no one seems to know it except for us film geeks. And I hear that he's even better than usual in a movie that probably isn't up to scratch. But if Jessica Lange can win for Blue Sky, why can't Ed Harris win for Pollock. I think his flick got better reviews no matter how lukewarm they were. BEST ACTRESS

JOAN ALLEN--THE CONTENDER
JULIETTE BINOCHE--CHOCOLAT
ELLEN BURSTYN--REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
LAURA LINNEY--YOU CAN COUNT ON ME
JULIA ROBERTS--ERIN BROCKOVICH

Do I even need to go through this category? I think we all know who will win her first statue here. Julia has been nominated twice before for lesser roles and the Academy loves her probably more than the rest of the world does. Now she's finally put in a really good performance and they can't ignore her. But there's always a chance that someone like Laura Linney could come out of nowhere from a movie that no one saw but got great reviews all the same. Or maybe Ellen will finally get one for her amazing performance as the speed freak mom. I'm still thinking Julia, though. Maybe she shouldn't win, but she will. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

JEFF BRIDGES--THE CONTENDER
WILLEM DAFOE--SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE
BENICIO DEL TORO--TRAFFIC
ALBERT FINNEY--ERIN BROCKOVICH
JOAQUIN PHOENIX--GLADIATOR

Just to keep with the Soderbergh tradition here, I'm going to have to say Benicio. He was awesome in Traffic. The other three performances that I saw (still haven't seen Shadow) were great, but Benicio blew them away. By the way, why is he considered a supporting actor? He was pretty much the main character of them film. I think he, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones had pretty much an equal amount of screen time. Oh well. No one ever said that the Academy was logical. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

JUDI DENCH--CHOCOLAT
MARCIA GAY HARDEN--POLLOCK
KATE HUDSON--ALMOST FAMOUS
FRANCES MCDORMAND--ALMOST FAMOUS
JULIE WALTERS--BILLY ELLIOT

This is pretty sad, but I've only seen one of these movies. But that encompasses two noms, so I figure that evens it out. Judi or Marcia will probably win this one because I heard that Marcia was just about as good as Ed in Pollock and Judi is an Academy favorite. Personally, though, I'm pulling for Kate or Frances if only to bring that movie some damn recognition. Plus they were both great! Kate should become a star from this movie. Unfortunately no one saw it. Maybe on video. BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

PETER PAU--CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON
JOHN MATHIESON--GLADIATOR
LAJOS KOLTAI--MALENA
ROGER KEAKINS--O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?
CALEB DESCHANEL--THE PATRIOT

And here we start with the technical stuff that it's hard for us civilians to gauge. Here I'll have to go with Crouching Tiger. That movie was so visually amazing that I can't see how they could give it to anyone else. Yes, Gladiator looked great, too, but CT,HD was more innovative and interesting. The Patriot also looked really good, but could we really inflate Roland Emmerich's head with an Oscar for something besides special effects? No. Let's not do that. VISUAL EFFECTS

Um. Yeah. All three had some pretty amazing effects. That final wave was pretty awesome in The Perfect Storm. Gladiator went back and forth between amazing and alright. Hollow Man is probably the one that should get it even if the movie itself wasn't that great. It had a lot of the same stuff that Who Framed Roger Rabbit? had back in 1988, but it was even better. Yeah. I'll allow it. It doesn't matter how bad the movie is, if the effects were amazing it should get it. Look at ID4. Ok movie, but it won this category and we accepted it. EDITING

ALMOST FAMOUS
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON
GLADIATOR
TRAFFIC
WONDER BOYS

And this is where they inexplicably finally give Wonder Boys a nod. It was a great movie that should have already had a nom somewhere, but it gets one for editing. I don't remember anything special about the editing, so I'm going to say no to this one. I would have to go for Traffic or CT,HD. Both were just amazing films that had editing to fit them. DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

INTO THE ARMS OF STRANGERS: STORIES OF THE KINDERTRANSPORT
LEGACY
LONG NIGHT'S JOURNEY INTO DAY
SCOTTSBORO: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY
SOUND AND FURY

I really don't know why I bother with this category. I've never seen any of these and I don't really remember hearing about any of them. I'm going to say Arms Of Strangers because of the subject. Oscar loves the Holocaust. And who doesn't? DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT

BIG MAMA
CURTAIN CALL
DOLPHINS
THE MAN ON LINCOLN'S NOSE
ON TIPTOE: GENTLE STEPS TO FREEDOM

Now here I've actually seen one...and that's amazing. The Man On Lincoln's Nose is about Robert Boyle, the production designer behind North By Northwest, the original Thomas Crown Affair, In Cold Blood and countless other classic films, including lots of Hitchcock movies. He's a brilliant man with immense talent and this film is great. It won't surprise me if it wins since Oscar is nostalgic. LIVE-ACTION SHORT FILM

BY COURIER
ONE DAY CROSSING
QUIERO SER (I WANT TO BE...)
SERAGLIO
A SOCCER STORY (UNA HISTORIA DE FUTEBOL)

I have no idea what any of these are, but the Soccer thing will probably get it. Just a gut feeling. ANIMATED SHORT FILM

FATHER AND DAUGHTER
THE PERIWIG-MAKER
REJECTED

Here again, I've actually seen one of these! Rejected played at Spike And Mike's Sick And Twisted Film Festival and SXSW. It's an amazing, laugh out loud funny short by Don Hertzfeldt whose other films are almost as funny. I'll be pushing for this one. FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

AMORES PERROS--MEXICO
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON--TAIWAN
DIVIDED WE FALL--CZECH REPUBLIC
EVERYBODY FAMOUS!--BELGIUM
THE TASTE OF OTHERS--FRANCE

I've only seen CT,HD, but Amores Perros played SXSW and I hear it's very good. CT has it, though. It won't win Best Picture, but it'll win this one. Awesome. Interesting title on the French one, though. SOUND EDITING

SPACE COWBOYS
U-571

Only two this year? I'll go for U-571. I never saw the other one, but anything with a submarine will probably win this category. And the sound was incredible. But that's really something for the next category: SOUND

CAST AWAY
GLADIATOR
THE PATRIOT
THE PERFECT STORM
U-571

Here again, U-571 all the way. Those sub movies will do it every time. ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

ALMOST FAMOUS--CAMERON CROWE
BILLY ELLIOT--LEE HALL
ERIN BROCKOVICH--SUSANNAH GRANT
GLADIATOR--DAVID FRANZONI, JOHN LOGAN AND WILLIAM NICHOLSON
YOU CAN COUNT ON ME--KENNETH LONERGAN

Uh-oh. I'm going to be pushing for Almost Famous all the way here, but Erin will probably take it. That sucks because AF had a GREAT script and deserves the Citizen Kane/Pulp Fiction award. ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

CHOCOLAT--ROBERT NELSON JACOBS
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON--WANG HUI LING, JAMES SCHAMUS AND TSAI KUO JUNG
O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?--JOEL AND ETHAN COEN
TRAFFIC--STEPHEN GAGHAN
WONDER BOYS--STEVE KLOVES

I'm going to have to go with Wonder Boys on this one for the same reason as Almost Famous on the last one. The movie needs the recognition. But Traffic will probably take it and I'm ok with that, too. Great script on both flicks. ORIGINAL SCORE

CHOCOLAT--RACHEL PORTMAN
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON--TAN DUN
GLADIATOR--HANS ZIMMER
ENNIO MORRICONE--MALENA
THE PATRIOT--JOHN WILLIAMS

I'm always up for an Ennio score, but I'll have to go with CT,HD again here. Great music for a great film. (Can you tell I'm getting sick of this? The predictions are getting shorter and shorter.) COSTUME DESIGN

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON--TIM YIP
DR. SUESS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS--RITA RYACK
GLADIATOR--JANTY YATES
102 DALMATIONS--ANTHONY POWELL
QUILLS--JACQUELINE WEST

I'm going with either Quills or CT,HD. Oscar loves a period film and both of those had great costumes. Quills will probably take it. ART DIRECTION

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON--TIM YIP
DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS--MICHAEL CORENBLITH AND MEREDITH BOSWELL
GLADIATOR--ARTHUR MAX AND CRISPIAN SALLIS
QUILLS--MARTIN CHILDS AND JILL QUERTIER
VATEL--JEAN RABASSE AND FRANÃOISE BENOIT-FRESCO

Once again, probably CT,HD or Quills. Gladiator will probably take it, but the other two should win. MAKEUP

THE CELL
DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS
SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE

Now, why is it that they don't list the makeup designer here? I'll go with Shadow here even though I've never seen it. Although The Cell had some pretty amazing makeup, too. Who knows. Maybe The Grinch will get one here. It shouldn't, though. ORIGINAL SONG

A FOOL IN LOVE--MEET THE PARENTS--RANDY NEWMAN
I'VE SEEN IT ALL--DANCER IN THE DARK--BJÃRK, LARS VON TRIER AND SJÃN SIGURDSSON
A LOVE BEFORE TIME--CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON--JORGE CALANDRELLI, TAN DUN AND JAMES SCHAMUS
MY FUNNY FRIEND AND ME--THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE--STING AND DAVID HARTLEY
THINGS HAVE CHANGED--WONDER BOYS--BOB DYLAN

Three classic rockers, one alt-rocker and one, um, something else. I'm going to have to go with Bob on this one. His song is awesome. I don't remember Randy's even though I've probably heard it at least three or four times. Sting's song is only in here because it was in a Disney flick...a very unsuccessful one at that. The other two I just didn't really care about. (Yes, there was something that I didn't care too much about in CT,HD. I'm sure it's a good song, though.) Yep, Bobby all the way.

SXSW 01--Ginger Snaps/Lontano In Fondo Agli Occhi (Pictures Deep In One's Eyes)/Mutant Aliens/Ladyporn

admin — Sat, 17 Mar 2001 18:00:00 +0000

In one day I saw the goriest, the most pretentious, the strangest and the sexiest movies I've ever seen at SXSW. I guess it was a good way to end the festival. Let me tell you about 'em. GINGER SNAPS Let's start with the gory one. This is the story of two teenage girls, Bridgett and Ginger (Emily Perkins from It and Katherine Isabelle from Snow Day), who also happen to be the biggest rejects in the whole school. Goth girls all the way. They hate everyone else and everyone else hates them. Meanwhile, a mysterious monster is running around the suburban neighborhood killing off all of the dogs in horrible, nasty ways. When the girls decide to make it look like their chief rival's (Danielle Hampton) dog was killed they get attacked. Luckily the monster is killed. Unluckily Ginger gets bitten. At about the same time she finally gets her period. Her mother (Mimi Rogers) has been so worried about the girls because they're 15 and 16 and they haven't "become women" yet. (Mimi is probably the creepiest part of the whole movie. She bakes a cake with dripping strawberry icing when Ginger finally flows. [shudder]) Ginger, on the other hand, thinks that all of the weird stuff that's happening (the unwanted hair, the strange draw towards violent sex, the tail) are all part of growing up. This movie totally should have been the sequel to And American Werewolf In London. Call it An American Werewolf In Suburbia. It had that same kind of sick sense of humor that Landis's classic had. (For the vampire version check out Innocent Blood. Great mostly unknown horror/comedy flick.) And it's got to be twice as gory. Not only are the attacks blood soaked, but in an homage to Harold And Maude, the girls take pictures of themselves faking their own deaths. Their parents must have been giving them plenty of money for their hobby, because these were some elaborate deaths. The whole outcast thing may be a cliché now, but what isn't is the idea of a female werewolf. I can't think of another flick with a woman turning into a werewolf. And the minstrel cycle thing just adds a whole new dimension to the monthly full moon fever. Does that make this a feminist horror film? Well, yeah, sort of. The guys in it only help out the girls. Bridgett is the real hero here. Sam (Kris Lemche from eXistenZ and the tv version of Joan Of Arc), the local drug dealer, helps her quite a bit, but she's the Ripley. In fact, she never really even wants his help. He just kind of thrusts it on her, until things get really out of hand, that is. Then she needs everyone's help. Even her mother's. The girls are great in what could be their break-out roles. They are the epitome of the old "Their Own Best Friend" Syndrome. They would do anything for each other...including kill. Sometimes. And it doesn't hurt that Katherine is HOT!!! And she hides it pretty well early on. Ginger Snaps should be coming out pretty soon. Check it out if you're into funny horror flicks. It's got to be one of the best. LONTANO IN FONDO AGLI OCCHI (PICTURES DEEP IN ONE'S EYES) Two words: "Um, what?" This may end up being one of the most highly acclaimed foreign films in history, but as far as I'm concerned it sucked. The story (what little there was) had something to do with a little Italian boy who occasionally (and inexplicably) sees things like eels coming out of people's mouths. This only happens two or three times throughout the entire movie, but they happen the be the most interesting occurrences in its hour and a half running time. Supposedly this is about the little boy's growing into adolescence in 1954 Naples. I guess the main problem here is that the little boy is too young to be even a beginner adolescent. He's probably about 7 or 8. And some of his adventures are just creepy. There's a servant girl who is having an affair with some random dude who hardly shows up except to screw her. At one point she appears to sexually molest the little boy. I'm not sure if she did or not, but she was certainly rubbing his, erm, "ant" as she called it. I think that counts. Either way she went too far. And she's supposed to be the hero of the movie! At least, the kid seemed to like her a lot after he got over the initial shock of the whole scene. Sorry, but I pretty much hated her after that. Basically, if you crossed Igmar Bergman and Fredrico Fellini I think you would get this film. But you would have to take all sense out of them first. And when you don't even make as much sense as those guys you've got a real problem. MUTANT ALIENS Speaking of no sense, but in a good way, this is the new animated feature from Bill Plympton, he of some of the best MTV commercials ever. This time out we're learning about an astronaut who was stuck in space for twenty years. When he comes back his mutant alien friends, his daughter and her boyfriend have to help him get revenge on the guy who dumped his fuel and blamed it on his daughter. But the story never really matters in his films. What matters is what the story is used to show...the freak of nature jokes that this guy comes up with. Things like a sucking off a rocket or putting people on a platform that lowers them so that he is above them. These are the kinds of things that Plympfans love. Who cares about the story? Now, those of us who know Plymptoons we know that this will not be a straight forward cartoon. No, it will be plenty weird with lots of sex and violence to offend everyone except the most accepting of us. And boy did this one have plenty of both. With giant noses going to war with giant eyeballs and fingers and men having sex with animals and a boyfriend who thinks that his girlfriend is always going down on everyone she comes near, this is among the strangest animated features you're likely to see. But here's the problem: as with all Plymptoons, this one goes on a little too long. It probably would have worked better as a short than an 83 minute feature. This one, however, had its funny parts spread out a little more. In I Married A Strange Person it seemed like Bill had put all of his jokes into the first 20-30 minutes. This time he's learned to space them out. But that may be a downfall because we get a little tired of waiting for the next laugh. Don't get me wrong, though. I love Bill Plympton and I really liked this movie. I just think he needs to learn how to edit down his ideas. Or at least come up with more jokes to fit into a feature. LADYPORN How many of you ladies out there (and I know that there are at least one or two...well...nevermind) have ever thought, "Wow. There are just no porn movies out there for me! All these guys ever show is weird angles and money shots." Well, ladies, your wait is over. Sort of. Maggie Carey and Elena Carr got sick of it, too, so they went out and interviewed a bunch of women to find out what they would want in a porn flick. Turns out that they want romance. They want foreplay. They want more than three minutes of heavy breathing and then the girl getting squirted in the face. (One girl even said that she gets off on men having sex. Um, I've never heard that before. Most women are as turned off by that as we hetero guys are. Well, whatever floats your man in the boat.) Then Maggie and Elena made their own porn. Before you guys get too excited, it's not a lesbian porn. They auditioned people (some of which auditioned even though they didn't want to do nude scenes!) and then filmed a real live porn. All under the confines of the University Of Texas!! (As a disclaimer here, the ladies weren't allowed to say where they filmed it except that U.T. allowed it. But if you spent a year in the exact same studio in the Communications Building as they did, you can tell where they filmed it. Now that's a weird feeling. I don't think my prof would have let us do that. They were, however, very proud of the fact that they got an A on their project.) The first part of the film is the documentary that they made about the making of the short porn. These two girls went through quite a bit to make this thing. Their casting calls went pretty well until the female cast member decided that she couldn't have sex with the guy because she had started dating his roommate! Luckily they found an actual married couple who were willing to do it for them AND they found a way to keep the other couple in the film. Pretty ingenious stuff. And, of course, to keep the doc exciting for the female porn fiends out there, all of the male crew members took their shirts off for the set up. There are plenty of shots of them moving heavy objects for no reason. I guess it's time for the men to be exploited, huh? One thing that they thought that they would get in trouble for is the fact that their DP was a guy. They said that he was very professional and realized that he worked for them, although they did get quite a few shots of the girl that they hadn't originally planed on. The porn itself was pretty damn good. It was short, but it had a story that wasn't totally intrusive. Women are more interested in character development, so we actually get to know some of the characters before they just start going at it. Two big problems, though. First off, one of the complaints of regular porn was the music. (One girl called it disgusting.) Well, their music wasn't a whole lot better. In fact, it was way too loud and really, really bad. And then there was the end. The original couple shows up again. The girl jumps on top of the guy, looks into the camera and says, "Ladyporn" in a semi-seductive voice. That, I'm sorry to say, is pure cheese. If they ever make another one (and they are thinking about it) I suggest highly that they DON'T do this. I guess it was supposed to be a jab at the cheesiness of those soft-core Skinemax type flicks, but that's not what this was supposed to be, so it just undermines the whole thing in less than one second. Other than that it was very interesting to kind of see the porn industry from the other side. Women certainly have a softer idea of sex than men do, and it's not a bad vision. (Although I personally could have done with less shots of random guys in gold bikini briefs, but since this is for women...whatever.) It's also good to know that women aren't just interested in looks. Of course we learned that when we saw Pornstar, right? Why else would Ron Jeremy be so popular? The guys in this are, for the most part, just regular guys. The guy in the gold underwear was a muscle head, but other than him the guys were very normal looking. It just goes to show, it's not what you've got, it's how you use it. In a male dominated world it's good that women can get their say every once in a while. There are some female porn directors who have actually made a name for themselves (I can't remember who they said last night, but there were at least two), but it's always been the men who got rich and famous. Unless, of course, you're an actor. The women are paid SO MUCH more than the guys. Even Ron isn't rich after 25 years of being the most popular in the business. Funny how that works. That is why Maggie and Elena don't believe that porn is exploiting the women. They're getting paid VERY well for their jobs. And, as they found out, it's much harder to find women who are willing to have sex on film than it is to find guys. Unfortunately Maggie and Elena have decided that this is not their calling. They may make one or two more just for the fun of it, but they won't throw their real film careers on the back burner just to make porn. Although they did say that they now have something to fall back on. I don't know how you'll ever have a chance to see this flick, but if it ends up on IFC or Sundance (which I doubt since there is actually hardness and penetration) check it out. Sometimes it's a good idea to see what women actually want in their sex life. It could give us that slight edge that we need. (Heh heh heh.) Plus it's a pretty interesting movie about sexual ideas in the 21st century. So that's it for SXSW this year. And what a way to top it off. Lets hope that next year they get The State Theatre back and get rid of The Bad Dog. That's got to be the most uncomfortable place to see a movie. I'm sure it's great as a comedy theatre, though. The shows aren't as long and your ass doesn't get as abused. (Although I hear that it went bankrupt two or three weeks ago. Too bad. It is a pretty cool place.) Let's also hope that they get some better and more interesting flicks next year. Yeah, there were some great ones this year, but there were a lot more good ones in years past and more that were instantly appealing.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

admin — Sat, 24 Mar 2001 18:00:00 +0000

And this would be the Coen's movie about Pomade. Or maybe it's their movie about Roots Music. But more on that later. Sometime in the middle of the Depression, Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) has escaped from prison along with Pete (John Turturro in his fourth Coen film) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson, director of the fabled O starring Julia Stiles, which has yet to see the light of day). Now, Everett, as everyone calls him, is the smartest of the crew. And he's about as dumb as the day is long. For one thing he's obsessed with his hair. He can't use anything but Dapper Dan Pomade (the second time this gross kind of hair product has shown up in a Coen Brothers flick) and has to sleep in a hairnet every night. He's also made his two anklet mates obsessed with a bunch of loot that he stole from an armored truck before he was incarcerated in Mississippi's greatest rehabilitator. Along the boys' quest they meet up with an interesting assortment of characters. There's Tommy (bluesman Chris Thomas King), a blues guitar player who sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads; George "Babyface" Nelson (Michael Badalucco who seems to be making a habit of playing real-life killers--his last role was David Berkowitz in Summer Of Sam), a gangster who hates his nickname; Pappy O'Daniel (Charles Durning), the incumbent governor who can't seem to get the votes he needs; a blind DJ (Stephen Root in his first, but hopefully not last, Coen film) who make the convicts and their guitar playing buddy, dubbed The Soggy Bottom Boys (no, George and the boys don't really sing), a hit without them even realizing it; and, of course, Big Dan Teague (John Goodman also in his fourth Coen flick), a one-eyed Bible salesman who, like most Bible salesman, has a hidden side to him. If you haven't heard by now, this is the Coen's twisted take on Homer's Odyssey. From what I've read they didn't set out to write an adaptation. After they wrote a bit on it they realized that that's the way it was going...so they just played on it. Complete with Zeus (Durning's character) and Neptune (the mysterious Daniel von Bargen playing pretty much the same character he plays in Malcolm In The Middle) I'm not too sure about that, though. It follows the story very, VERY closely. But that's cool. It's kind of a running inside joke for all of us who remember having to read it in high school. (I actually had to read it twice. My fault for picking the wrong damn classes in college.) As always, the Coens do an amazing job of bringing a different time and place to the screen. They are masters of creating new worlds that seem realistic in their own cartoony way. Even their weaker films have characters who are so true to their world that you truly believe that they exist there. That's why they have already gone down as some of America's best auteurs. Check out all of the references (some rather cleverly hidden) to the Coens' earlier films. (Things like a guy grabbing John Goodman by the neck and being swung around and Badalucco playing a bank robber.) And the performances are excellent, too. But of course! Clooney is awesome as a nearly childlike man who will go to any length to get back to his wife (Holly Hunter in a role very reminiscent of Ed McDonnough from Raising Arizona--"You got back there and you get me that ring!"--just more fertile than the Tennessee Valley) and family. For the first time in his life Clooney is playing a guy who is cool because of his very uncoolness. When he spits out lines like, "I'm a Dapper Dan Man!!" he does it without his trademark smirk. He's actually charming without being charming. This very well could be the best performance in George's career! Turturro and Nelson are also very good as his even dumber partners in crime. They are stupid, but they're not annoying in their stupidity, which is a fine line that's crossed way too many times. And then there's Tommy. His character is really a stroke of genius. The boys mix ancient myth with modern (sort of) legend. Tommy is based on blues legend Robert Johnson who once said that he sold his soul to the devil while waiting at the crossroads. If you've ever heard Cream's version of Crossroads you've heard Johnson's story. And Clapton is still covering the guy's songs. Unplugged had both Walking Blues and Malted Milk on it. If you really want to hear where modern blues guitar came from, check out some of Johnson's recording. Made in the mid-30s by a man who didn't make it past 27 years old (he was poisoned by the jealous husband of one of the many women that he hit on), they are some of the most harrowing and heart-felt recordings ever made. Which, of course, brings us to the music. That's where the real heart of this movie comes in. There are only two original recordings on the soundtrack, but the rest may as well be original. Each track evokes the period and most were written at the time when this music was hitting the airwaves with full force. We get a look at the blues, country, honky-tonk, spiritual...pretty much every genre that went into making rock and roll what it is today. I love this album and I'm not a big fan of country or gospel. (In fact, I pretty much HATE country. But this is before people like Randy Travis and Garth Brooks screwed it all up for everybody.) This is where you go to really get a handle on how today's music got its start. Definitely check out the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. (I especially like the Siren song, "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby" by Emmylou Harris, Alison Kraus and Gillian Welch. Of course the three sirens being very sexy didn't hurt the memory of the song.) (And yes, by the way, that was another shameless link to Amazon.com. This is not the Coen's funniest film (I don't think it's supposed to be), but it is one of the warmest they've ever made. It's a very good film that seems to have gotten a short shrift from some critics while others apparently thought that it was the best movie of the year. I'll still have to go with Traffic on that, but this one was great. It had to be as good as any Preston Sturges comedy, which is where the Coens got their inspiration--and their title. Watch out for cows! (And no matter what the Humane Society thought, they weren't real.)

Oscar Winners 2001

admin — Wed, 28 Mar 2001 18:00:00 +0000

(For my earlier predictions go here.) So Hollywood is finished masturbating itself, and in a giant orgasm of self-congratulation they have chosen the "best" of 2000. It wasn't quite as good of a year as 1999, but there were a few good ones...some better than the ones they had to choose from (Almost Famous). First, the ceremony itself. Steve Martin was a GREAT host. Much better than Billy Crystal was last year. (No jokes that went on too long like Billy's bit about losing Isaac Hayes in the fog. "How do you lose Isaac Hayes?! He's a 7 foot, 250 pound black man!...Where is he?...I don't understand it!...How do you..." Shut up!!!!) But it seems that Mr. Martin couldn't leave Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts alone. And Russell didn't seem too happy about that. I guess the joke about hitting on Ellen Burstyn went too far...and it was only the beginning of the night. Get over it, Russ, you self-important prick! Love ya, man, but go out and buy a sense of humor. Unless, of course, he was only pretending to be pissed. Then it was really funny. But the best part of the entire night had to be the look on Tom Hanks' (aka, Mr. Easy Pants--because he took the shortcut to fame by only making hits) face when Steve told the world that he was the ringleader behind the plot to kidnap Mr. Crowe. If they gave Oscars for best performance on Oscar night, this would have been it. Perfect foil for Steverino. For Most Embarrassed Performance I would have to go with Anthony Hopkins' face when Irving G. Thalberg Award winner Dino De Laurentiis called him DON!! It looked like Tony was thinking, "Yes. We're old friends. I think I'll have him for dinner sometime." But the rest of Dino's speech was short, to the point and very good. As were all of the speeches this year. Except for one, but we'll get to that later...Julia. First, a word from our sponsor: Why did ABC feel the need to remake South Pathetic? Was this really necessary? The play was bad enough as was the original movie. But maybe I just feel that way because I had to hear "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair" fifty times a night back in high school when the choir did it and I was working backstage. But I'm not bitter. And then there was Britney. Oh, Britney. You're so untalented, but I love to watch you try to dance. And, of course, the best part of the whole commercial barring little Miss Spears' ass was Bob Dole! "Easy, boy." For a Republican he sure does have a GREAT sense of humor. But he was even holding his pen in the commercial where it seemed completely out of place. I guess it's a trademark now. And speaking of Britney, what was up with all of the young hotties in the audience this year? I've never seen so many Britney and Christina types running around the Oscars as I did this year. Who the hell were they?!?! I want to know. I need to know! Ok, enough commercial stuff. The damn Pepsi commercial is the only one of note, really. This ain't the Super Bowl. And now, I guess it's time for the winners. Let's start with the most important. BEST PICTURE--GLADIATOR Hmmm. What the fuck were the Academy thinking here? Maybe in their infinite senility, "Oooh! Chuck Heston is back!" I loved Gladiator, but Traffic was obviously the best film of the year. I think it was probably too controversial for the old farts in the Academy, though. Too bad. They could have chosen a movie that actually meant something. But I guess it wasn't about the Holocaust. BEST DIRECTOR--STEVEN SODERBERGH, TRAFFIC Now this one I'll agree with. And what a strange occurrence for the Best Picture and Best Director to be two separate movies. But I'll take it. Steve was amazing as always and he deserved it for this movie. Erin was great, but not as great as Traffic. And thank you, Stephen, for thanking all of us creators out here! That was the best speech of the night! (I say this as if I've created anything besides a lot of confusion in the last three years.) One gripe, though: Why was Tom Cruise up here for this one? He was just about the blandest presenter I've ever seen. Get him off the stage! BEST ACTOR--RUSSELL CROWE, GLADIATOR Huh?! Ok, the guy was great, but I figured that Mr. Harris would have won. You know how those Academy members love the Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect. And, besides, was Russ really better than all of those other guys? I've only seen one of the other movies, but I can't imagine that he was better. BEST ACTRESS--JULIA ROBERTS, ERIN BROCKOVICH Again, what the fuck?!?! Did they see Requiem? Ellen Burstyn was perfect. Julia was better than usual, but not Oscar-worthy. She did, however, gain some points for her speech. As I've said before, this is what awards' shows are about: excitement. When Steely Dan won the Grammy for Two Against Nature (a great album, but not the best album of the year...it seems to be catching) they were so unsurprised that I almost thought that they knew. It was the most anti-climactic awards' show in history. Julia, however, calling Bill Conti "Stick Man" was just a giggling mass of excitement. It almost made me really like her. Really, really like her! Almost. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR--BENICIO DEL TORO, TRAFFIC Now this I'm happy about. Benicio deserves it if only for making Excess Baggage watchable a few years back. But now he's actually in a movie that also deserves the accolades. (He's been a little dry in the good movie department since The Usual Suspects...although I still love Fear And Loathing.) Good for him. And may there be a plethora of great performances from this guy. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS--MARCIA GAY HARDEN, POLLOCK How could they give an award to such a xenophobic film?! Well, I haven't seen the movie, but I hear that both leads were great even if the movie itself wasn't all that amazing. Good for her. But I still would have liked it if one of my Almost Famous girls had gotten the little gold man. BEST FOREIGN FILM--CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON Did any of us have any doubts about this one? Great movie. Deserved it. Let's move on. BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY--STEPHEN GAGHAN, TRAFFIC Another one that deserved it, although I would have also loved it if The Wonder Boys had gotten something. Or even O Brother, Where Art Thou. But that one deserved the Cinematography more--which it didn't win. Can't win 'em all. Or any, for that matter. (Speaking of which, where's High Fidelity in all of this? That was an awesome movie.) And having Arthur C. Clarke present the award from Sri Lanka had to be a stroke of genius, although, up until about six months ago I thought he was dead. It's amazing what goes through your mind when you think that you're reading an interview with a dead guy. But I was glad to hear that he had NOT passed on and was still living the high life on the beach in a huge house in retired bliss. I'm glad he got to see 2001. Too bad we don't have a passenger ship to the moon for him yet. BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY--CAMERON CROWE, ALMOST FAMOUS Perfect! This is the award that this movie deserved in the year of Traffic. And the moment when the two Crowes met was priceless. Let's get this guy more Oscars. ART DIRECTION--CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON I can see that. But after seeing the clips from Vatel I can see where that one would have won. I looked a lot like Titus...which was an amazing film that I didn't get a chance to review. Rent it now. NOW, I SAID!!! CINEMATOGRAPHY--CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON As much as I would have loved for the Coens to get an award here I can see where this one would have won. It was amazing, after all, what with the midgets and brooms and all... Wait. Wrong movie. What with the swords and trees and all. That's better. Still glad that The Patriot didn't win. We don't need prestige pictures from Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. SOUND--GLADIATOR Big surprise here. Although I am a little shocked that the sub movie didn't get it. But wait... SOUND EDITING--U-571 There it is! I knew it would come through for me. ORIGINAL SCORE--TAN DUN, CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON Any doubts here? I didn't think so. Not only did it have Yo Yo Ma behind it, but it was a mixture of Eastern and Western styles. Academy love dat. One guy I know was disappointed that Gladiator didn't win here. "A score like Gladiator's only comes around once in a while." I don't know much about it (Hell, I still think John Williams is pretty cool), but I know what I like. And I thought both of them were good. But one going to Ennio would have been cool. ORIGINAL SONG--BOB DYLAN, THINGS HAVE CHANGED, THE WONDER BOYS Awesome!!! This is a great song (no matter what the DJs here in Austin say) that SHOULD have beat Randy Newman...although I still love Randy. Even if he has gone a little soft in his old age. (But not too soft. Have you heard his latest non-soundtrack album? Great. Maybe it's just his film music.) And Bob's performance and speech were great, too. Much better than the Golden Globes where he sounded totally incoherent. But Bob, what's up with the pencil thin mustache? You look like Lester the Molester. Shave, dude. And another thing about another performer that night. BJORK!!! What are you doing to us?!?! What was up with the swan?! She looked like Sean Young trying out for Swan Lake! And is it just me or are the same people who love Bjork the people who would put a bullet in Yoko Ono's brain? Come on, people. They're the same woman! Yoko puts on her young Icelander suit (or swan suit, in this night's case) and sings her old songs and people love her. I see no difference in their music. COSTUME DESIGN--GLADIATOR At least The Grinch and 102 Dalmatians didn't win. I can see where this one got it. Quills was great in this aspect, but it's been done a lot in the last, um, 50 years. And Crouching Tiger has been done to death, too. Gladiator, however, isn't done well very often. And, as I've said, the Academy is VERY nostalgic. MAKEUP--DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS And who didn't see this one coming? They could have at least given it to a movie that was a little bit good. Oh well. It's not how good the movie is, it's how good the makeup is...and Ron's movie had some great makeup. FILM EDITING--TRAFFIC The only other one here that actually may have deserved it was Gladiator, but I'm glad Traffic got it. Great job by Stephen Mirrione, who is also cutting Soderbergh's Ocean's 11 and has cut both of Doug Liman's films, Swingers and Go. Keep an eye on this guy. VISUAL EFFECTS--GLADIATOR Here again, any doubts? Hollow Man probably should have gotten it, but the Gladiator guys did create the Roman Coliseum and Oliver Reed out of thin air. And there's something to be said for that. DOCUMENTARY FEATURE--INTO THE ARMS OF STRANGERS: STORIES OF THE KINDERTRANSPORT Always bet on the Holocaust. Even if the movie sucks ass it will probably win if it's about the Holocaust. Although I hear that this one is very good, but not the best of the year. Of course that's coming from one source because no one sees the Documentaries. Let's move on. DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT--BIG MAMA A short about a guy who was raised by his grandmother. I think it probably won because Big Mama passed away before the a while back. I would have bet on The Man On Lincoln's Nose just because it was about one of the Academy's own. Just goes to show ya that even know-it-alls don't know it all. LIVE ACTION SHORT SUBJECT--QUIERO SER (I WANT TO BE...) I know nothing about this except that apparently it's in Spanish. Good for them. Let's move on. ANIMATED SHORT--FATHER AND DAUGHTER Don Hertzfeldt was robbed! Actually I've never seen any of the other shorts here, so I can't say that Rejected was the best, but I loved it. Maybe if it hadn't had the "I'm bleeding from my anus!" part it would have won. You have to see it to understand. I don't think I've laughed so hard at Spike And Mike's Sick And Twisted Animated Film Festival. But I'm sure that Father And Daughter was a very sweet little short that deserves the award. But now I'm bleeding from MY anus, so I must be going. YAY!!!!

Small Time Crooks

admin — Tue, 10 Apr 2001 17:00:00 +0000

When this movie came out everyone was excited because it sounded like Woody Allen was returning to the old days of his funny movies. I was especially excited because I thought that Jon Lovitz and Hugh Grant would be perfect in a Woody flick. Then the reviews came in. Pretty bad. Oh well. Looks like we'll have to just watch Manhattan Murder Mystery again to get the funny stuff. Well, the critics were right...sort of. This time out Woody plays Ray Winkler, a burnt out crook who has gotten out of the life (and prison), but itches to get back in. The problem is that he's not very smart. He thinks he's a genius because they used to call him The Brain when he was in prison. Unfortunately he didn't realize that it was ironic. And his crew is no smarter. In fact, they're even dumber than he is. Denny (Michael Rapaport), Benny (Jon Lovitz who is wasted here) and Tommy (Tony Darrow who, since playing Sonny Bunz in Goodfellas has spent his time playing in gangster and Woody Allen movies) are dumber than the day is long. We can only hope that Ray IS the brains of the operation. Ray's wife, Frenchy (Tracy Ullman was was awesome in Woody's Bullets Over Broadway), is an ex-topless dancer who just wants a good life, no matter their station in it. She wants Ray away from all of his felon friends. Unfortunately he has a plan. You see, there's this bank with a vacant pizza parlor down the street from it. If they could just tunnel underneath all of the stores in between they could have the spoils of the bank. But, of course, that proves to be more difficult than it would seem...and it seems pretty damn hard. Meanwhile, Frenchy is fronting the place with a cookie store and, of course, the cookies are selling like hot cakes. So they have to hire help in the form of May (Elaine May, co-writer and ex-stand up partner of director Mike Nichols), Frenchy's amazingly out there sister in law. Cut to about a year later. The cookie business has become an over night sensation and made everyone into instant millionaires. The robbery, of course, has been forgotten. But now Frenchy wants to become part of the power elite and Ray is happy being the schlemiel that he's always been. Enter David (Hugh Grant). He is hired by Frenchy to teach them how to be poised and knowledgeable about art and the more "high-class" parts of being rich. And there's till about an hour left of the movie. Overall, not a bad movie. Not Woody's best, but I still like it better than Deconstructing Harry or Sweet And Lowdown. (Maybe I need to see DH again. Everyone seems to love that one now.) The performances are all very good as is expected from a Woody movie, especially the four main characters (Ray, Frenchy, David and May). Having never really seen Elaine May in anything (or any of her old classic stand-up routines) I can see what the fuss was about. She's great as the scatterbrained, Gracie Allen type. Hugh is a little less at home as the scheming David, but he does pretty well in a role that he usually doesn't play. Woody and Tracy are, of course, great as the always bickering, yet loving couple who just want a piece of the cookie. (Heh heh heh.) They have a lot of great lines the show us exactly what kind of relationship they have and they work very well together. And for the first time in a long time Woody isn't playing the mid to upper-class know-it-all. He's a lower-class moron and he's great at it! And through his character you can tell what the real Woody thinks of certain types of "art" in NYC. (Avant garde "theatre" is apparently crap.) I guess the real problem I had with this was the messiness of the script. There are characters who seem like they would end up being pretty important (like the cop who catches the boys while they're digging their tunnel), but then they just totally disappear. Or little details that don't ring true like the fact that a realtor would NEVER tell some random guy who rented out a space. Not without a little grease, anyway. So Woody almost returned to form here, but he still has a ways to go. He still knows how to entertain (and this movie is entertaining) even if his scripts aren't as tight anymore. Some say he's a victim of over-exposure and puts out too many movies. I say he just needs to work a little harder. He's lost the glory of the old days of Sleeper and Take The Money And Run, but he's trying and I commend him for it. Let's hope his next one is another step up.

Tomcats

admin — Tue, 17 Apr 2001 17:00:00 +0000

In the single most prophetic line this Spring, Jerry O'Connell sums up this entire movie. But first, a preview: THE ANIMAL--What is it with SNL people? Do they really think that this shit is funny? This time out it's Rob Schneider as a guy who has been saved after a horrible car wreck. The problem is that he's been saved using parts of different animals. Now, at the most inopportune times (because that's when it's funniest), he shows the traits of those animals. Despite the fact that this is an idea that not even Jim Carrey would be able to save, let alone say yes to, Rob Schneider is just not funny. Occasionally he had a good moment on SNL, and he was pretty funny in Big Daddy, but he has yet to prove himself in anything else. Did anyone see Deuce Bigelow? Yeah. I didn't think so. (Don't bother. It sucks the hole out of a donut.) The preview makes this movie look like it could rival Tomcats as the worst movie of the year. (Oops! Did I give away the end of my review? Sorry.) This is a must avoid...unless of course someone else rents it and you're up for a really bad movie. Then proceed with caution. And now the real reason we're here. Michael (Jerry O'Connell) is a Tomcat. These guys have been friends since...well, they never say, but for a long time. When one of them gets married in the first segment the boys decide that they don't want to get married. So, of course, there's a bet. The last one gets the results of a mutual fund that's guaranteed to grow. Seven years later the pot's up to nearly half a million and it's down to two guys, Michael and Kyle (Jake Busey), and it's their duty to do every girl in the world. Enter Vegas and suddenly Michael is in the hole $51, 000 and has one month to pay Carlos (the totally miscast Bill Maher). Carlos, who seems to wear too much base for his makeup, will take something from Michael everyday until he pays him. (Huh? Is that how Vegas works?) BUT, Michael finds a way to get the money! He finds out that at the wedding at the beginning of the movie his buddy Kyle could have fallen in love with a girl named Natalie (the ever-lovely Shannon Elizabeth). FIND HER NOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!! But, of course, things aren't that easy because a)Kyle's a complete dick and b)Natalie and Michael fall in love. What else? Then there's the fact that his accomplice is a total dumbass. Steve (Horatio Sanz, the completely unfunny John Belushi/Chris Farley replacement on SNL these days) is a little preoccupied with catching his wife (Jaime Pressly, the hot little number from Ringmaster and, of course, Poison Ivy: The New Seduction) with another woman...or other women. Something I would LOVE to catch Jaime with. But Horatio's brand of physical humor is so fucking obvious, stupid and forced that I felt John and Chris's ghosts strangling their Heavenly agents for taking them before they could show these snot-nosed kids how it's done. How many times has this sort of thing been done before? You don't even want to know. How many times has it been done better than this? You still don't want to know. This was a terrible movie. My brain hurt after seeing it it was so bad. Now, I think we all know that I'm not a PC guy and I love gross out and sexual humor (and a combo of the two is even better), but please be smart with it. Trey Parker and Matt Stone probably could have come up with a GREAT way to make this funny. The Farrelly Brothers definitely could have done it. Director/writer Gregory Poirier (writer of See Spot Run and Gossip, not to mention a couple of porn flicks. Great resume. But he did write Rosewood. Just the exception the proves the rule.) doesn't know how the hell to do this stuff. He puts a scene in here about Kyle getting testicular cancer, probably only because it's cool right now and it brings to mind someone else who could do this better. It could have been funny if it hadn't been so fucking predictable. (Although is was rather interesting in a really sick way to see David Ogden Stiers chomp down on a testicle.) The best scene in the whole movie was actually a parody. Kyle and Natalie (who is trying to make Michael jealous so he'll actually pull his dick out of his ass and make a move) are walking on the beach. Michael is watching them hanging off a cliff by his fingernails. He takes one hand off of the rock, blows on his fingers and then moves on. Then, of course, he loses his grip, falls about thirty feet and ends up hanging by one hand. Breathing heavily, he throws the other hand up on the cliff so that he's facing the camera. Camera holds on him forever. Then, just as Natalie and Kyle look over their shoulder at all of the noise he's making, he falls behind some rocks. Fifty doves fly out from behind them. Maybe Poirier has a career with the ZAZ team. Then again he lets what could have been a pretty good American Beauty parody nearly went by unnoticed. It turns out to be the big "sensitive love scene." Of course it's made "funny" by the fact that Michael is only dreaming of it while jerking off at a sperm bank. Why is he there? Because his buddy Kyle is making a deposit in case his pipes don't work after his operation. Why is Michael there again? And the performances don't really help too much. They don't hurt, but they don't help. I guess they do all that they can with this godawful material. But Jerry, who I like by default of being in the greatest movie ever made (even if he was the weak link), is really just plain dumb in this one. I don't know how he got laid so much. He's not smooth. He's not cool. He's not even charming. He's a complete dumbass. Basically this movie is saying that women are dumber than he and Kyle are and that they only care about looks. (Although that doesn't explain Kyle's record. Jake Busey is one ugly bastard.) I guess we smart dorky looking guys are screwed, huh? So, like Deuce Bigelow and The Animal, only see this one if someone else is dumb enough to pay for it. (I bet I'll get an e-mail about that. Heh heh heh.) And be warned, for a movie about sex, there is NO nudity in it (except for Jerry's ass) until the outtakes (which are a little bit funny). And then it's only brief as a girl gets out from under Jerry. There are a lot of hot, scantily clad women...many in thongs. And that is never a bad thing. But you do get an awful lot of looks at Jake's thonged ass. I'm planning on nightmares tonight.

Josie And The Pussycats

admin — Sat, 21 Apr 2001 17:00:00 +0000

What do you think of previews? Well, I think there are too many on video, but here's what I think about specific ones. CATS AND DOGS--What are these people thinking? This is a movie about how dogs and cats are trying to take over the world, but they're too busy fighting with each other to actually get it done. Here's the catch, though: it's all done with live action animals that are computer animated to look like they're talking. And it actually looks better than Babe. But didn't they see Baby Geniuses? This movie's going to such Oprah's ass, but I kind of want to see it if only because I'm a masochistic movie goer. THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS--You know, I once said that this movie looked like one of the worst movies of the year. Now that we know that Joe Dirt, Tomcats, Driven, The Animal and Cats And Dogs are coming (or have come) out, we know that they can't ALL be the worst movies of the year. No, this is actually looking a little better now that they've put out a full length trailer. It almost looks like it could be a brain turner offer. (Um, hey. I never said I was an English major.) I may check it out for matinee prices. THE MUMMY RETURNS--Ok, let's just start this off with this: I HATED THE FIRST ONE!!! It wasn't even fun. It was putrid. In fact, it was beyond putrid...it was the action version of The Doom Generation. Remember the Allan Quartermain movies? (Don't worry, neither does anyone else.) This was WORSE! Bad one-liners. Boring action. Even more boring bad guys, which is a mortal sin in this genre. And the special effects weren't even that good! In a movie based around SFX, they were really mediocre. Never, ever switch between guys in suits and computer generated mummies. Bad idea. This one looks like more of the same with better SFX...but, then again, the FX looked good in the trailers for the first one. So this is more of the same. Avoid. And I did even see a movie tonight! So, like, Josie (Rachael Leigh Cook) and her friends, Valerie (Rosario Dawson from Kids, Light It Up and Down To You) and Melody (Tara Reid) have this little band, mkay? And, like, they really kick ass, but nobody really cares too much about them. It's, like, so sad. Luckily, you know, like, this guy, Wyatt Frame (Alan Cumming from Plunkett & Macleane, Romy And Michele and GoldenEye), came along and wisked them away to New York to make them big stars at his humongazoid label, MegaRecords. EXCITEMENT!!! Ok, I'm going to stop with the val speak. It's getting really annoying to think (and type) like that. Basically, the girls get made into big stars. But Wyatt and his boss, Fiona (Parker Posey) are using them (among other bands) to sell stuff. They're putting subliminable (that HAS to be how you say it) messages into the music that says things like, "Pink is the new red!" and "Josie and the Pussycats are the greatest band ever!" all to the voice of Mr. MovieFone. Of course the girls go through all sorts of hardships on their way to figuring all of this out. Josie has trials and tribulations like being brainwashed and missing a gig of her would-be boyfriend, Alan M. (Gabriel Mann from Outside Providence and American Virgin). And this is cute and all, but it doesn't really seem to be what matters. Oh, they give us the occasional commentary on modern teen life, like product placements EVERYWHERE. (I've never seen so many product placements. I know they were trying to make a statement, but how many of these companies actually paid a WHOLE LOT of money to weasel their way in here? Most of them, I would think.) The best of these parodies comes in the form of DuJour, MegaRecords' last big hit. They rose to fame with the help of their hit single Backdoor Lover. As played by Seth Green, Breckin Meyer, Alexander Martin (he's the Ethan Hawke wanna-be) and Donald Faison (all from Can't Hardly Wait, which is an underrated movie--watch this one very carefully to figure out why I say that) they are latently gay and overly aggressive...and dumber than the crud on my shoes. But they're also VERY funny. But what really seems to matter is the music. And, surprisingly, it's really good! Whoever is playing and writing for these girls is pretty damn good at making music that's not totally cloying and stupid. And it actually rocks! It's not just dumb, lowest common denominator pop from the dregs of the teeny bopper market. It's closer to 80s power pop, but it really works in the modern world. Think Bananarama with balls. Or maybe The Go-Go's with neo-punk edge...but not too much. And the comedy's there, too. There are lots of good lines ("Does anyone have change for a tampon?") and some great cameos (Carson Daly trying to kill Melody was pretty good...it's good to see him be the dick that I know he is). The girls did a great job as the wide-eyed innocents in a strange, new world. Rosario was good as the no-nonsense thinker of the group, although it was a little disconcerting that she was the one being left out of everything. I couldn't tell if they were doing it because she was black and they were trying to make a statement or if it was just random and it worked best with her character. Tara was quite good as the total doof of the band. She was dumber than a brick, but all the more charming for it. (Although I hear she's about as dumb as her character. Makes sense. Look at her taste in men.) But the star to come out of this movie should be Josie herself. Rachael was great as the charismatic but unofficial leader of the group. (They were originally just The Pussycats until Fiona and Wyatt decided that Josie should have her name in lights.) She's all thoughtful innocence and love for everyone unless they go after her friends. Then she's the worst enemy you could ever have. Not to mention the fact that she was at her cutest here. And she's always been VERY cute. It had to be the hair. And the fact that she was always wearing very tight shirts and dresses. No, it was more than just that. I dare you to take your eyes off of her. The supporting cast was equally good. Alan Cumming was good as always as the foppish English slimeball that he plays so well. I wonder if he can do anything else? Parker was actually annoying as the evil queen of MegaRecords. But she must have been very good at it because I hated her ass. I almost wish that they had just left it at Alan. What didn't work? Well, there were characters that probably should have been edited out. Alan M. was a little annoying and dumb. The girls' manager, Alexander Cabot (Paulo Costanzo from Road Trip), and his sister, Alexandra (Missi Pyle who was much cuter in Galaxy Quest as the alien girl) were kind of stupid. But all of these characters had their moments when a great line would come from them. And, like I said, the plot is kind of secondary. A little hackneyed, in fact. But it was a lot of fun and I'm not really sure why it's not doing as well at the box office as it should be. I saw it on a Saturday night in a nearly empty theatre. What's up with that? This is probably how comic book movies should be made: over the top and lots of fun...with a lot of self-referential jokes in them. Directors/writers Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont (who also did, surprise, surprise, Can't Hardly Wait) have done another comic book movie, though. And it sucked from what I hear. It was a little loser called The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas. They, however, did not direct it, so maybe they can't be blamed for it. Josie is a much better movie and seems to have struck just the right chord for this genre. Lots of fun without losing too much thought.

Freddy Got Fingered

admin — Wed, 25 Apr 2001 17:00:00 +0000

When Anthony Michael Hall gets the most appropriate line in a movie, you know something's wrong. But you know? I think I'll start with some previews. EVOLUTION--Finally. A real trailer for this stupid movie. I hear that David Duchovney really wanted to work with Ivan Reitman, and that's why he's in this. But he would have rather it not be about aliens. Well, as spotty as Ivan's track record has been lately, I'm kind of excited. As I think we all know, Ghostbusters is in my top 3 favorite movies of all time, so I like Reitman. This doesn't look nearly as good as GB, but Dave has great comic timing and the rest of the cast is pretty good. The SFX look none too shabby, either. And Dan Aykroyd even gets a shot in it! Hopefully it's funnier than it looks right now. (But the scene with all of the guys singing in the jeep is kinda amusing.) WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?--If that's not a title asking for a bad review, I don't know what is. I love this cast: Martin Lawrence, Danny DeVito, John Leguizamo, Glenne Headley...how can this go wrong? Well, it doesn't look too good. Kinda stupid, actually. But I'll see it because I think that all of these guys need a hit. And it looks kind of funny in a really stupid way. And now, the movie that we've all been dying to stick our thumb up the ass of. Dear Tom Green, I'm almost a fan of yours. Yes, at first I thought that your hijinks were really stupid and that you were retarded. But then I realized that you were the Andy Kaufman of our generation, if only Andy had been into milking cows with his teeth. And I thought that your work is Road Trip was great! That is why I really wanted to see your movie. And then I started to hear that it was really over-the-top gross and maybe went too far. That's what REALLY made me want to see your movie. The problem started when I read reviews of it. All were negative, some were down-right disconcerting. Not because of the grossness of what happened in your movie, but because it just wasn't funny. No, you seemed to be sacrificing fun for gross. But I still wanted to give you a chance. Maybe I would find something in it that all of those guys didn't. After all, I even liked Dirty Work! Well, let me put it as delicately as possible. This was quite possibly the worst movie I have seen in the past 5 years. I would call it the Battlefield Earth of comedy, but that would be an insult to Travolta's trashterpiece. At least that was fun to laugh at. There are ways to make your movie better, though. Maybe for the director's cut: 1) Cut out all scenes in which the little kid gets bloody. It's not too funny to see a kid plant his face into the side of your car when he starts crying and has a mouth full of blood. And we really didn't need to see teeth falling out of his mouth. That was just mean and evil. Now, there are ways to show accident prone kids who are funny. Hell, the Farrely brothers showed in Dumb And Dumber that even BLIND kids can be funny. How can it be done? DON'T SHOW BLOOD!!!! Have it be all in fun! And certainly don't have him get chopped up by a fucking propeller! 2) Have a reason for your grossness. You almost approached a reason for wearing the gutted deer when Anthony Michael Hall told you to "get inside the animals." That was almost funny. It, however, was not funny when you jacked off the horse. Or when you jacked off the elephant. In the words of one of your own characters, it was just "fucking stupid." Now, you may say that "it's anarchic! It's comedy without a reason!" No, Tom, the Marx brothers were anarchic comedy without a reason. This was just fucking stupid. It was you trying to find a way to insert a scene with you drinking milk directly from a cow's udder and lick a compound fracture. 3) If you want to make your bad guy sympathetic, don't make him such an irredeemable prick. Your dad in the movie (Rip Torn) was the biggest asshole father to hit the movie theatres since Robert DeNiro in This Boy's Life. There was nothing likable about him even after you had your heart to heart with him covered in elephant spoo. I never once believed that he wanted you to succeed. Here's a tip: don't ever write a father whose only real joy in life is beating his kids down, no matter how obnoxiously stupid his kids are. 4) Don't have Shaq act like you. I never, ever, EVER again want to see him thrust while saying, "Can you do it this way? Or this way? Or that way?" Having him in bed with your mom (Julie Hagerty) was pretty funny, though. 5) No one in the movie OR animation biz would write out a check for a million dollars and give it to some schmoe off the street just because he made him laugh. Not even someone like Anthony Michael Hall. 6) Don't cast Harlan Williams unless your name ends in Farrely. So what did you do right? Well, not much really, but there were some funny scenes. A) When you were skating through the mall knocking people over...that was almost funny, but it had been done a million times. What was REALLY funny was you slamming into the door because you tried to go through the wrong one. B) The scene where you're trying to impress your date (Marisa Coughlan from Gossip and Super Troopers) by playing a tape of a ringing phone and answer a huge cordless phone saying that it's a cell phone. Even the screaming of "$40 million fucking Deutsch marks!!!" was really funny. But then your dad screws it by existing. C) The "Daddy would you like some sausage" scene, but only in the trailers. It's not so surreal in the movie and, therefore, not as funny. D) One line: "Even if you were the poorest man on Earth I would still want to suck you cock." I really do think that you're funny, Tom. But I think you need to be reigned in. And giving you a movie deal where you get to write, direct and star in your own movie is NOT reigning you in. I hope they never do it again. At least not until you study There's Something About Mary and Road Trip and figure out what they do right and what you did wrong. Your sometimes fan, profwagstaff

The First 100 Days Of The Rest Of Our Puny Existences

admin — Sat, 05 May 2001 17:00:00 +0000

So a few days ago "President" George W. Bush hit his first 100 days. This, for some reason, is the arbitrary day where we all look back on his achievements and assess what he will do for the next three and a half years. Much was made at one point just after his inauguration of his choice of music at the party. He used Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed And Delivered." I doubt that Stevie was real happy about that since he showed up at Gore's party, but the Austin Chronicle had an interesting take on this. They said that, by the end of the four years we may be singing another Stevie Wonder song from the same album called "Heaven Help Us All." I'll bring up another one that was originally written about Nixon: "You Haven't Done Nothin'". And let me tell you it looks like a whole lot of nuthin'. Between retracting statements that were apparently made by junior officers in haste (usually the Prez himself) and taking back things that other presidents have done, he's on his way to not doing anything for a really long time. As The Daily Show says (and I'm paraphrasing because I didn't see the show it was on) he's making past presidents do less in their 1st 100 days than they had previously not done before. (Damn, I wish I had seen that one.) Let's go over some of the non-achievements of this latest "administration."

Bush bans federal money for international family planning groups that support abortion. Now, how many of these groups actually "support" abortion? They present it as an option, not an answer. And cutting all funding to these groups will do SO much more harm than good. It will cause the people who go to them to not get the help they need. Sure, they can go to some superstitious group that doesn't give abortion as an option, but those groups tend to not help nearly as much because they're too caught up in their religions to really help anyone. They preach the word of God, but they don't realize that words don't do the trick. It's support that really gets these couples on the right track. Not "God will show you the way." Guess what, folks, we have to find our own way. A lot of things have been said in the name of God that have cause wars, murder and pestilence. No, religion is not all bad...it can be a great support for people who need it, and in theory it's a great idea. But for some it's just not enough.

John Ashcroft chosen as attorney general. A man who has spoken at racist universities and proclaimed racist publications as some of the best journalism in America. Um. That ain't right. In fact, that's a hate crime against all Americans...but we'll get to that later.

Bush meets with Mexican President Vicente Fox. For the first time Mexico has elected a president who wants to change things and take Mexico into the future. So we send him a "president" who wants to stop progress and take us back to the past. Well, at least we'll meet Mexico somewhere in the middle. One of the first things that Mr. Shrub did was to allow Mexican trucks into America. Before they had to offload all of their cargo and put it onto American trucks. Now they can just go through customs with little or no checking. Hmm. Can you say "drug trafficking"? I knew you could! No wonder Georgie wants this one passed. Lots more coke!! And also the trucks aren't up to code! They're unsafe, but they're allowed to be driving right along side our cars. And the drivers aren't properly trained. "Can you see?" "Si." "Ok, here's you license." I'm all for relations with Mexico being the best they can be, but until all of their trucks and drivers are up to snuff I don't particularly want them tooling along next to me on the freeway. And I'm right where they all will be.

Bush pushes his $1.6 trillion tax cut to Congress. His budget includes cutting funding to environmental groups...of course. And still a little over 99% of the bottom 60% of Americans get less than $1600 in tax cuts. Who gets the most? The top 10%. Only 43% of them get less than $1600. And those are all of Georgie's drinkin' buddies. (I've read a report by Edwin A. Locke that said that the plan's detractors want redistribution of wealth by raising the rich folks' ("the most productive members of society") taxes so that they handle the brunt of the cost...thus being "servants to the poor," which he calls, "those who have not earned it." First off, I beg to differ with that description. Some of the poorest people I know are also some of the hardest working ones. And I doubt that anyone would call Dubya one of "the most productive members of society." Second, this sounds an awful lot like the "trickle down theory" that Reagan pushed back in the 80s. Something like what Bush, Jr. is pushing these days. Is that really what Locke is saying? That the trickle down won't work and is a bad thing? But Reagan said it...and he's all Republicans' hero!) The only good that comes out of all of this is the end of the marriage penalty. But what we rational people want to know is where is all of this money coming from? Our surplus isn't $1.6 trillion. It's actually quite a bit less than this. And people say that Democrats want to spend all of the surplus. With Bush's tax cut in effect we should be broke within a few years.

Bush decides NOT to regulate the emissions of CO2 from large factories, thus making a campaign pledge null and void. And it won't be the last time. Why, you may ask? They gave him money for his campaign. And that's what can happen with this "presidency." It can be bought.

Ariel Sharon, the new leader of Israel, is told by the Shrub that we won't try to renew Israeli-Palestinian talks until they stop the violence. Um, it hasn't stopped for the past 4,000 years...do you really think that a whining Bush can make it stop? Thanks for playing.

John McCain, Bush's rival, gets his campaign finance laws passed by the Senate. Bush never says whether he likes it or not. And the world wonders why for approximately .001 seconds. Could it be because all of the Shrub's campaign money was made in ways that McCain is trying to stop? Naaaah.

Bush's tax plan is passed, but now it's down to $1.2 trillion. Not much of a change but it'll help to keep America afloat a little bit longer until we get a real president.

Gale Norton is named Secretary of the Interior. She promptly tries to get us to allow big, smelly drills into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska to pull up a little bit of oil. That oil will keep our cars spewing CO2 emissions for about six months. The drilling will drive off wildlife and destroy the refuge forever. Someone once told me that the drilling could actually HELP the caribou up there. Um. What? We humans are a little more resilient than just about any animal and I don't think a single one of us would want to live next to an oil drill. I have never EVER heard that drilling for oil helps ANY animal. I think even earthworms are opposed to it. Hell, a roach or two has complained directly to me about it. They're noisy, they stink and they're not too good on the breathing environment...or the ground...or the water. And the caribou are going to be helped by this? Yeah, I saw all of the DuPont commercials back in the 80s. "Do people care this much? People do." Fuck them. They're just as bad as Exxon spilling crap all over the Alaskan shoreline. Sorry, don't buy it. Never will. And Kay Bailey Hutchison, my state's "representative," sends me letters saying why Gale Norton is a good choice and how we can make this Alaska thing work to the environment's best interest. Apparently she chooses not to represent me.

Bush gets China to release a crew of a spy plane that may or may not have hit a Chinese plane during a picture run. First off, why are we taking pictures of our allies ("Everybody on the Great Wall Of China wave!")? Second, he got them back by doing something he said that he wouldn't do: he apologized. Profusely. He nearly groveled. Remember that scene in Superman II where Robert Vaughn bowed down to Terence Stamp? That's what this was like. But, as soon as the letter was sent, read and the troops were back home, Bush said, "Ah, we didn't mean it!" Well, kudos for getting the boys back home, but you can't save face now. You're a weak-dicked little schlemp. And then he didn't even greet the poor guys when they got back. Did he care at all? Doubt it. Just like he didn't care about the people in the Valley here in Texas who are living in shantytowns...people who just about every governor in Texas history has visited and tried to help. He just don't give a fuck.

Bush says that he will sign a global treaty that bans or restricts the dirty dozen chemicals. Good...but will he actually do it or will he dick around until it's too late? I know where my money's going.

Bush dissolves an office in the White House that helps environmental causes, originally set up by President Clinton. Of course. We all know how he feels about the environment.

Bush dissolves another office set up by Bill, this one to help with racial issues. And speaking of which, does Mr. Bush believe in hate crimes? No. He feels that it's just as bad to shoot a man for his wallet as it is to drag a little girl behind a car just because she's black. Sorry, but hate crimes exist. Not only do they exist, but they are crimes against the American Way Of Life. They are crimes against humanity. Hate crime offenders should be treated as serial killers because they will do it again and they will feel no remorse for it. They feel that they are killing animals and don't understand why they are being punished. They are assholes who can't differentiate between a human and a bug. Fuck 'em. And someone once told me that there are more hate crimes committed against white people than there are against other races. I'm not too sure about that (in fact I think it's dead wrong), but call it what it is. The hate crime laws should be color blind.

Bush dissolves yet another office, this one to help with women's iss...wait. No! He didn't. The aide who said that was wrong. The office stays. Now, was the aide ill-informed or did he just leak something to see what the public reaction would be and be the fall guy when they threw up the shit storm? You be the judge.

Shrub cuts funding for finding alternative fuels. Hmm. The guy made his fortune in the oil industry (even though his well was dry...just like his brain). I can't imagine why he wouldn't want us to find another way to power our cars. Other countries are cleaning up by finding cleaner burning cars and fuels. Over here we're still driving around suburbans that spew so much filth into the air that you can't stand 50 feet behind them. We're burning more oil by the day. Why? Because the oil companies are too fucking powerful. They've got our "president" in their back pocket. This new IT thing is a great start, but it will be crushed by Big Oil. And that sucks because it could be the ticket out of non-breathable air. (By the way, as gas prices have been going up at astronomical rates, the oil companies have been saying "We're just passing our costs on to you. Don't blame us!" And yet they're having the highest profits in years. How do you account for that? Could it be price gouging that is condoned by our own "president"?)

Bush allows mining companies who give him lots of money to dump more arsenic in our water. They use it to help them mine and it gets washed into our rivers and streams. It's very small doses, but who the fuck cares! It's arsenic! In our water! The lifeblood of our ability to survive on this dying planet! Did something happen to make arsenic not poisonous anymore? Hell, even Carey Grant's old aunts knew that it could kill people in small doses. Does Goergie Poergie not know that? And he wants us to smile as we drink it down. As Jim Jones once said, "Come to me, my babies!"

George no longer wants meat in school lunches to be checked quite as thoroughly. Hey, kids are strong! They can handle a little mad cow disease and food poisoning. Public uproar is, well, uproarious. He comes out and says, "Eep! Never mind. That was just a test. We'll keep checking it." As Bob Dylan once wanted to say in "Blowin' In The Wind", "How many times can one president take back what he said before we realize that he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing?"

Bush wants to set up an Office of Faith in the White House. I'm not exactly sure if he was ever allowed to do this, but I hope he wasn't. As I said before I'm not against religion, I just don't practice it much. BUT there is a thing called Separation Of Church And State, and if Shrub doesn't know that he needs to read the Constitution again. Then again, he never reads what's handed to him, so I bet he'll never get to it.

He's pushing forth with his missile defense system harder than ever now. This is something that other countries begged Clinton not to do and even our own military would be weary of...if they thought that it would work. A guy I know who worked very closely with this particular idea up in Washington said that there is almost no way that it will actually work. So basically we're going to be spending millions of tax dollars on something that has no chance of actually defending us from any missiles should they come our way, which is highly unlikely unless we build it. Then all of those little countries with The Bomb will think, "Oh, let's test it out. They seem to want us to!" And people say that Democrats like to spend tax dollars foolishly. Someone set us up the bomb indeed.

Yes folks. This has been our president. Somethin' isn't he? He's been so busy trying to get his precious tax plan passed that he's kind of forgotten about nearly everything else except for trying to hurt the thing he hates the most...the environment. Oh, and he's not doing much for the American People, either. And just think if Cheney has yet another heart attack. We may actually have to deal with Bush as president! Now that's a scary thought. And people wonder why his handlers tried to keep this 100 days thing from being a big deal. To bring us back full circle here's another quote from the Boingo of Oingo...same song. "Let's talk of family values while we sit and watch the slaughter Hypothetical abortions on imaginary daughters The white folks think they're at the top, ask any proud white male. A million years of evolution, we get Danny Quayle." I think that pretty much sums up George Dubya Bush, too.

A Knight's Tale

admin — Sat, 12 May 2001 17:00:00 +0000

And I expected the guy to go into Monty Python's Parrot Sketch. But first he showed us some previews. FINAL FANTASY--This movie holds the future of computer animation in it's realistic little hands...and it looks AWESOME!!!!! Even if little girls next to me gave it a thumbs down. They're at the wrong age anyway. Unfortunately, they're at almost exactly the age that they're selling it to. But I'm going to be there and so are some friend of mine who are really into this sort of thing. And so should you be, too. Or something. AMERICAN PIE II--Yes, the kids are back, and they want more sex!! Funny how that works. Looks pretty funny, but I have one question: How did Jim's parents and his girlfriend's parents all end up in the same room while the two of them were in bed together? Unless Jim and the girl are roommates, which is highly unlikely in a non-Threesome environment, the two sets of parents would never have met like that. But maybe it's explained in the movie. It makes for a pretty funny scene, though. And one of the best lines from either movie, "I believe we met your daughter. I didn't catch her name, but hopefully my son did." Um, like, that's all the previews I can remember for now, so here's the main event. And when I say main event I mean MAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIN EEEEEEVEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, if jousting had been wrestling (which it may have been the wrestling of it's day...only more real) it would have looked something like this movie. But I get ahead of myself. William Tatcher (Heath Ledger, today's it golden boy) is a poor peasant kid who really wants to "change his stars" and become a knight. Unfortunately, that's very difficult in medieval England. Fortunately, Will's employer, a jousting knight, as just died after losing his last match. But no one knows except for the servants, so Will goes in his place. Now, this is where things get really dangerous. You see, peasants aren't allowed to joust. Only real knights are allowed to be killed in nasty ways in this event. His buddies, Roland (Mark Addy from The Full Monty and The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas) and Wat (Alan Tudyk from Wonder Boys and 28 Days...sporting a horrendous Scouse accent) are not too happy about Will's decision to become Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein, descendant of many, many knights. Of course the blurtings of buddy Geoffrey Chaucer (Paul Bettany from Bent and Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang)) don't hurt his popularity at all. His introductions at matches are more Hulk Hogan than King Arthur. (He even calls Will "The Rock" a couple of times. Sad.) And his armor, made by the blacksmith they picked up along the way (Laura Fraser from Virtual Sexuality (not as dirty as it sounds) and Titus (also not as dirty as it sounds...but close)), is lighter and stronger than anyone else's. Convenient, that. Enter Jocelyn (beautiful newcomer Shannyn Sossamon). She is a princess who begins to fall for the little knight who could. But she's not impressed by his winnings. In fact, when he doesn't promise to win the tournament for her it catches her interest. It's his persistence that pays off in that department. But all cannot be well for Good Sir Knight. No, there has to be a bad guy. This is where Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell from Dark City and Dangerous Beauty) comes in. He falls for Jocelyn, too, but in a much less romantic way. He just wants a woman for his mantel. And he'll do anything to get her. The story is pretty pedestrian. Boy has big dreams. Boy starts his work on the dreams. Boy meets girl. Boy meets arch nemesis. Girl tells boy to lose if he loves her. It happens everyday. Well, to me, anyway. What makes this movie different is its gimmick. And what a gimmick! Imagine anything anachronistic for this time. Now stick it in the movie and make it work. From the first beats of Queen's "We Will Rock You" to the Pretty Woman style dress and hat that Jocelyn wears to the first strains of Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back In Town" all the way to the guys singing words to the tune of "Stars And Stripes Forever" everything actually works to the movie's advantage. Check out the amazing melding of David Bowie's "Golden Years" with a more traditional medieval piece of music. Well, almost everything. There is a joke with the Nike swooshes that's a little hard to take, but product placements must be made somewhere, I guess. It did, however, have a few too many parallels to a little movie set in medieval times starring Heath's Patriot co-star. There's the woman of high persuasion falling for the rogue. She's supposed to marry someone else who actually has her persuasion. Now, you may say that these are just coincidental plot points that ALL movies have. But I give you more examples that are a little harder to write off. Jocelyn's maid had the same accent as Princess Isabelle's maid. AND she started to fall for the fat friend of the hero. There was also a cry in the final jousting scene that was WAY too reminiscent of William Wallace's (another parallel...their names) cry of "FREEEEEDDOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!" at the end of the better movie. And just to show that this movie is an equal opportunity rip-off artist, there's a scene in a jail that is way too much like the jail scene near the end of Gladiator and a Deus ex Machina that apes the one in Robin Hood-Prince Of Thieves. But the cast doesn't disappoint. Heath is a pretty good actor for a pretty boy. He did, however, seem to have learned a lot from his older Aussie co-star from that last flick. He had a few Gibson-esque mannerisms in this one that I never saw before. At one point I actually expected Will to say, "Aye. Fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live. At least a while." And the Chaucer character was great! Bettany did a great job as a man whose only joy in life was to be the center of attention and explore human nature in his writings...which we never actually see him write. I don't know enough about Chaucer's work to know if there were very many in-jokes about it, but I imagine that there probably were. And wasn't it appropriate that he looked quite a bit like Sting? (Only we real Sting-freaks will catch that one. Although hasn't he lost some of his talent lately? Oh well. One can't write good songs forever, I guess.) The sidekicks were funny (if Wat was a bit too much like a cross between John Stewart and Michael Rapaport) and Jocelyn was beautiful and almost ethereal. Pretty good embodiment of an independent princess. But I guess Rufus Sewell was the real standout, as always. He's a great actor who doesn't always get great roles. This one was pretty good, though. He was evil, yet almost charming in his own weird way. But he was almost too evil. And then he didn't even really get his comeuppance. He never actually gets shown for the truly evil man that he really is. We know it (and the little girls next to me screeched when they saw what he had in store for Will...HE CAN'T HURT HEATH!!!!! He's all chocolatey with a hard caramel center!!) and Will and his buddies know it, but the jousting audience never really finds out. Shame. I would have liked to have seen him in the stocks. At least they didn't commit the Twister sin and kill him. That was just dumb. So Brian Helgeland (co-writer of L.A. Confidential, Conspiracy Theory, and The Postman (whoops) and writer/director of Payback--I wonder how Heath got this role) has brought us a stylized version of the medieval times. No, it's not very realistic, but we couldn't sell tickets if Heath had shit all over him and his teeth were falling out. Well, maybe we could, but to the wrong kind of people. It's nothing if not entertaining. Lots of action, comedy and romance. It's only real crime is that it's just silly. And I don't use that word often. In fact I hate that word, but it's the only way to describe the movie. Silly. But in a good way. I can think of worse ways to spend two hours. And it's got a great soundtrack, too.

Douglas Adams. March 11, 1952-May 11, 2001

admin — Thu, 17 May 2001 17:00:00 +0000

On Friday May 11, 2001 we lost the greatest sci-fi comedy writer to ever come out of Cambridge, England. Yes, Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker Trilogy, has gone to find the real meaning of life. And that is generally considered to be a big mistake. After being born, Douglas grew up...and that took quite a while. At least 18-49 years, in fact. He traveled a bit, and ended up going on a hitchhiking trip in 1971 with only his borrowed copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide To Europe to his name. Sort of. It was "borrowed" from a book store. Somewhere in Innsbruck he went flat on his back in a field, looked up into the stars and, in a drunken and poor stupor, thought, "Wouldn't it be great if someone wrote a Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy?" By the end of the decade he would pay the bookstore back by selling more copies of his own book than the publisher's of the original ever dreamed possible. This is the period of his life when he worked with Graham Chapman of Monty Python, John Lloyd of "Black Adder" and "Spitting Image," and the rather imaginatively named Adams-Smith-Adams. But none of that really panned out. Not a sausage. Only one of the Adams-Chapman shows ever saw the light of day...but it was more of the dead of night because that's when BBC decided to play it. It looked as if the 24 year old Douglas Adams was going to be obscure for the rest of his life. Simon Brett would change all of that. In 1976 Simon was the producer of "The Burkiss Way," a popular Radio 4 comedy. He met Douglas through John and decided that he wanted to do a sci-fi comedy radio program. So that's when Douglas went back to his old idea of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Originally, though, it was going to be called The Ends Of The Earth and was going to be about the earth being destroyed for different reasons in every one of the six episodes. There was also a character whose house was being destroyed for the same reason. But Doug went back to the Hitchhiker's Guide idea. He wrote the pilot, recorded it and waited for the time and permission to make more. And he waited. And he waited some more. And, just to be different, he waited some more. Finally, in August of 1977 word was handed down, the show was a go. The pilot was finally made and was a big hit. It stretched the boundaries of comic radio of the time. Doug ended up working on "Dr. Who" as a script editor (not knowing that that position apparently had to come up with every story on the show) and also worked on the "Radio 4 Christmas Pantomime," "Black Cinderella II Goes East" (it went nowhere), wrote the book version of his Hitchhiker's Guide, a theatrical version of the story and the second radio series. Then he quit "Dr. Who." Who wouldn't? Even with quitting his formal job, the first book was late...as was pretty much everything else. He once said, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by." Yep. Pretty much sums it up. But the book was written and was finally published in October of 1979, the same day that the album came out. Hipgnosis, creators of album covers by Pink Floyd, Genesis and pretty much any 70s rock icons you can think of, created the cover. Sales went through the roof. So that's how the whole thing started. There were more radio series, more books, a video game or two and an internet venture. It's his books that I know best. In 1980 he released The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, sometimes considered the best of the Trilogy. Then, in 1982 there was Life, The Universe And Everything, which was not quite as good as the first two, but still pretty damn good. After that he surprised everyone by writing a fourth book for the Trilogy. So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish came in 1984 and is my personal least favorite. Still not bad, though. He put the Trilogy down for a while and, in 1987 went on to a sci-fi murder mystery with a difference, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The next year he wrote the sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul. It had everything: time travel, murder, baggage claim. Then, eight years after the last Hitchhiker's book, for variety, he wrote another one, this time giving up on the long titles that people hated to say, he gave us Mostly Harmless. (This is when I actually got to meet him! It was an extremely short visit that consisted of three words: "Hi," another "Hi" and "Thanks" as he signed my copy of the book and motioned for the next person in line. Starstruck teenagers don't say much.) That same year Doug took up a cause. He visited the rain forest and realized how damaged it really was. In response he wrote, with Mark Carwardine, Last Chance To See, a humorist's look at the destruction of animal and plant life. Douglas took a genre of sci-fi and bent it to his own needs. In doing so he found a way to make it entertaining in a way that no one else ever has. His absurdist storylines make absolutely no sense, and yet they make all the sense in the world. His cast of characters are among the most widely recognized in the sci-fi world: Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trillian, Marvin the Paranoid Android, Slartibartfast, the Triple-Breasted Whore. In 1997 he worked with his friend Terry Jones of Monty Python to create a new world, the world of the Starship Titanic. The computer game was the first of it's kind, one where you could talk to different characters and get a different answer out of them every time. Almost like artificial intelligence. It responded to pop culture cues among other things. The book, which was only an introduction to the game, was very funny in a way that only a collaboration between Adams and a member of Python could be. Before Douglas died he was working on the script of the Hitchhiker's Guide movie (he's the only one I would trust with it) and a real-world internet version of the Guide. (Check it out at www.h2g2.com.) He was very excited by the prospects of everyone in the world being able to contribute to the biggest encyclopedia in the known universe. And, with handheld wireless technology, his dream from 1971 has now come true. We can hold all of the knowledge in the world in the palms of our hands. Douglas Adams was a creative genius who had only begun to show us where his mind could go. Now he has been taken from us, but his work will make us laugh and think hopefully for the rest of this measly planet's lifetime. I may seem to be making light of things in this tribute, but it's only because I think that that's the way he would want it. The news of his death shocked and saddened me more than any entertainment news since Phil Hartman died. It damn near ruined my day. He is one of my favorite authors of all time and it's hard to believe that there will never be another book. Not that he was a very fast writer, but it was always nice to have the possibility. So long, Douglas, and thanks for all the laughs. If you don't have his books, BUY THEM NOW!!! The Hitchhiker's Trilogy: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide--The best way to get all five books and a short story. Everything you ever wanted to know about the greatest misnamed trilogy ever. Dirk Gently: Misc. stuff:

Bridget Jones's Diary

admin — Fri, 18 May 2001 17:00:00 +0000

Yeah, we'll get to the incredibly loud "FFFFFUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK!!!!!!" But first, some previews. SERENDIPITY--This is the new romantic comedy (I guess) with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. It looks like it was inspired by the song "Someday We'll Know" by The New Radicals. A couple meet, are perfect for each other and she lets it all go because she believes in fate...and fate made her number fly out of his hand. So she writes her name and number in a book and tells him to look for it at a used book store. If he finds it, it's meant to be. Pretty damn stupid on her part. He's got a better career than she does. I'll see it at least on video because John's cool as hell and Kate is beautiful and talented. CAPTAIN CORELELELELELEL'S MANDOLIN--This time I got to see a longer preview of this one and...it still annoys me. This time, though, I think it'll get nominated for Best Picture or some such bullshit. Nic Cage, at least, is trying for the Oscar. He's sporting a thick Italian accent. This will suck more than anything has ever sucked before. Except Freddy Got Fingered. And now for the previously mentioned flick. Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger) is a 32 year old British woman who just wants to find the right guy and get her life in order. So, to help her with her task, she starts a diary. Unfortunately her mom gets in on the action and keeps trying to hook her up with different men from around their neighborhood. The latest is the reindeer sweater wearing Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). Too bad about that sweater because she almost fell for him. Until she met him and found out that he was a total asshole and had no charisma whatsoever. Just a boring guy all around. When she started to fall for him it gave me all kinds of hope. Pretty soon, though, she starts sleeping with her boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), who is everything she does NOT want in a man. He's crass, overly charming, a womanizer...you know. All of those things that girls go for. But most of all he's actually fun. They go for boat rides and he stands up and falls in the water trying to board her boat. And apparently he's amazing in bed. You know. All of those things that girls go for. But soon enough things get complicated. Mark keeps entering her life and Daniel isn't all he's cracked up to be, but neither of these guys will leave her alone. Who does she really love? Who will she end up with? Why is a girl from Texas playing a British heroine? Well, it turns out that she's brilliant in the role. She gained 25 pounds to play the role of an every woman and still remains cute. AND she nailed the accent. Colin and Hugh are where the problem is. And it's not really a problem, it's more of a comfort zone. It's very strange to see Hugh Grant play a cad. He's supposed to be the not-so-charming charming guy. Colin, on the other hand, looks like he could be a total womanizer. It's almost as if during rehearsals they got ahold of each other's scripts and just went with it. It worked, though. And the two of them fight well together. (This movie has to include one of the funniest fight scenes in the last 10 years.) And the movie is VERY well written. If this is how the news articles were I can see how Bridget became a hero to thousands of British women. She's strong, smart, funny and independent, but she has all of the same insecurities that all women have. She also can't talk when it really counts, just like all of us. Now, I'm no woman, but I have it on good authority that this is the way women think. They are very insecure about everything about them. Even things that they have no right to be uptight about. This is why skinny women think that they need to lose weight or women with great breasts think that they need bigger ones. Yes, it's partly the media, but it's mostly their own built in insecurities. Now, before you ladies out there start screaming for my head, guess what? We guys have them, too. I'm a fairly normal-weighted guy, but I'm extremely insecure about my weight. There are a lot of things about myself that I'm really not happy about. We all have them. That's why Bridget shouldn't just be a woman's hero. She's not just "every woman," she's "everybody." I could empathize with her just as much as any woman could. I think we've all been through these kinds of emotions and fallacies. So guys, don't think that is one of those movies that you'll hate your girlfriends for making you watch. It's actually a good movie for all of us. I mean, I knew that I would like it, but I didn't think I would like it as much as I did. Of course, it helps that it was recommended to me by someone I trust with movies. She liked it so much that she saw it again with me within about a week of seeing it the first time. Forget What Women Want. This movie gets into their heads even more than Mel could get into their pants. Plus, somehow it's always good to hear the word "fuck" in a British accent. Dunno how that works. By the way, if you're wondering about the German poster, "Schokolade zum Fruhstuck" means "Chocolate for breakfast." I have no clue where they came up with that one. I think they got a Japanese guy on it.

Shrek

admin — Sat, 19 May 2001 17:00:00 +0000

Hey, he's talking about the donkey over there! What? So I'm sure all of you have been reading or hearing about how Shrek is the best movie ever and it will win the first award in the category that the Oscars should have started years ago, Best Animated Feature. (VERY excited about that!) Well, that all remains to be seen, but it is, along with Bridget Jones's Diary, one of the best movies I've seen this year. Short (hopefully) synopsis: Shrek (Mike Myers) is a lonely Ogre. Oh, he wouldn't let on that he's lonely, but deep down, under all of those layers that he's so proud of (Ogres are like onions, after all) he's very lonely. He's spent his entire life being feared because of how ugly he is, so he's built a wall around himself to keep people out. Enter Donkey (Eddie Murphy). He's running from the city of Duloc because Prince Farquaad has outlawed all fairy tale characters and, being a talking donkey, he counts. So he runs into Shrek's swamp, hides behind the big green guy and gets saved. Now they're friends for life...at least that's what Donkey thinks. Shrek thinks that Donkey is annoying as hell because he won't SHUT UP!!!! That night Shrek finds out just how desperate things are. All of the fairy tale characters crowd into his swamp making the guy who thinks that he likes to be alone be surrounded by people. He goes to talk to Farquaad who sends him off to save Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz). By marrying a princess, you see, the Prince can become king. (What feudal system they're living in I don't know.) When Shrek and Donkey find Fiona they get a little more than they bargained for. She's beautiful, but she also has her own ideas about who her hero should be...and he certainly isn't an Ogre. But what is it about her and the night? This is a sweet little story about the beauty on the inside of all of us. Both Fiona and Shrek find something to love about each other under the rough exteriors. (And, even though Fiona is beautiful, she is rough.) It's also the most anti-Disny movie ever made. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who produced this little marvel of a movie, is an ex-employee of Disney. He didn't part on such good terms. That's why Farquaad's castle looks a lot like Michael Eisner's building, the castle that Fiona is trapped in looks a lot like a ruined version of the Cinderella castle in Disney World and the entrance to Duloc is guarded by a rope maze and a guy in a big Farquaad head. There are a lot of other digs, but I'll let you find them for yourselves. And then there's all of the fairy tale references. The scene with Gepetto turning Pinocchio in to the guards for money, the Mama Bear throw rug, the French (and possibly gay) Robin Hood. Once again, there are many more, but if I told you it would ruin half the fun. Watch for a great Charlie's Angels gag, too. The animation is even more amazing than the story. With every animated feature that Disney (especially with Pixar) and Dreamworks do the animation just gets better and better. This time out it's so good that you can actually see pores and stubble. I didn't notice in the movie, but in a shot in Entertainment Weekly, Shrek actually has fingerprints! It's still not as realistic as the previews to Final Fantasy have been (which, by the way, that movie is going to be the most well-animated movie EVER), but it still rocks my ass. The characterizations are pretty amazing, too. All four of the principles seem to have learned the first rule of animated film voicing: breath life into the characters! The characters are only as real as their voices allow them to be. Pixar does a GREAT job of finding actors who do this, but Dreamworks has had a bit of a problem with it. Prince Of Egypt was not too good in this respect, and Road To El Dorado did a little better. This time, though, Cameron and the boys know exactly what they're doing. The only problem with the movie was the reliance on fart jokes. The introduction of Shrek has at least two or three of them. (Did we really need to know that Shrek's farts kill fish in his swamp? I don't think so.) That would have been more than enough, but there are lots of references to butts and butt functions throughout. We could have done without them and then maybe they could have added back in some of those other fairy tale parodies. Other than that it's a great movie for kids and us kids who just refuse to grow up. Check it out.

Pearl Harbor

admin — Fri, 25 May 2001 17:00:00 +0000

Before the infamy, let's get some previews under our belts. (Don't touch me there!) TOMB RAIDER--I loves me some Angelina! And dear ol' dad's in it, too. The game is great. But, will the movie be the new millennium's version of Indiana Jones? Or will it just be The Mummy? I really hope it's good and I'll be in line to see it. I see it more as a comic book movie than a video game movie. Don't ask me why, but that's just the way it is. Maybe it's because Lara Croft is more like a comic book hero than a video game pixel. I dunno. AMERICA'S SWEETHEART--What do you get when you take Hollywood's most conventional leading lady (Julia Roberts) and pair her with its least conventional leading man (John Cusack) in a story more conventional than a group of Star Trek geeks? A movie that looks like it could be total crap if it weren't for the fact that John was in it. It's about a Hollywood couple (Cusack and Catherine Zeta-Jones-Douglas) who break up on and off screen causing people to avoid their movies. Enter new girl Julia who John falls for (of course). Re-enter old girl who makes life a living hell. It's The Philadelphia Story in Hollywood! Whatever. THE PRINCESS DIARIES--Julie Andrews: Good. Anne Hathaway: Who? Rehash of My Fair Lady/Pygmalion: Bad. Garry Marshall: Bad. Very bad. Must avoid. ATLANTIS--I know that Disney is an evil empire and I'm supposed to hate them to be cool, but I'm also supposed to think that Steven Spielberg is an over-payed, over-hyped hack, so fuck that. I love Disney's animated flicks. If they're in good form, they're amazing (Pinocchio, Aladdin, Jungle Book, Mulan). When they're bad they're still pretty entertaining...or at least interesting (Black Cauldron, Aristocats, Great Mouse Detective). This, being a PG-rated animated Disney flick, looks like it could be a great big flop for the Mouse House. After all, the last time they tried that was The Black Cauldron. And their last flick, The Emperor's New Groove, didn't do so well. However, the animation looks awesome and the story looks better the BC. I'll be there. But I'll buy a kid's ticket so I don't give them too much money. A.I.--The more trailers I see for this movie the more excited a get. Yes, it's Spielberg doing Pinocchio, but it's also Spielberg doing Kubrick doing Pinocchio. I'm all for it. And it looks like Steve's actually trying to do a Stan impression. And we all know that Haley Joel Osment can play a robot because he IS a robot. It'll be interesting to see how it comes out. I can't wait. And now, for a film that will live... Nevermind. I already made that joke. But it would have been great. Let me start with a word about Jerry Bruckheimer. The line that I quoted at the beginning of this page pretty much sums up his whole career. Mr. Bruckheimer has been making shit for the past twenty years, but it's usually very beautiful shit. It's shit that I would be proud to hang on my wall. It's also very exciting shit. Exciting enough to blast you off of the toilet. I'm going to stop with that right now. On the IMDb there's a biography of His Speediness. In case you don't want to go there to read it, I'll sum it up for you. It's a long diatribe about how Jer transports his audience to another world using beautiful images and extremely well-drawn characters who are propelled into very well written and exciting stories. He's the most successful and critically acclaimed producer in the recent history of film. The author of this bio was trying to get a job. What really sums up Bruck's career are the trademarks that are listed on the same page. Those I'll quote for you: "Jerry Bruckheimer likes to make movies where things blow up and guns are fired several times." "Bruckheimer likes scenes with Money (sic) flying though the air. " So he likes to blow shit up and throw money around. Yep. That's our Jer. That being said, imagine, if you will, if Jerry decided to make an epic about one of the most significant events in our nation's history. Are you scared? Well, he didn't screw it up too badly, but he also didn't win any converts I'm willing to bet. The real story of this movie centers around three people: Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck), Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett) and Evelyn Johnson (the always beautiful Kate Beckinsale). Rafe and Danny have been best friends since they were kids. This we know because of a horrendous introductory scene with the two of them as kids and William Fitchner as Danny's abusive WWI vet father. This is one of those scenes that has to be seen to be believed. There's so much emoting going on that you would think that you were on the set of a Tennessee Williams play. VERY bad. Zip ahead about 15 years. Rafe is a hotshot pilot who can't get over the fact that he's the best pilot America has to offer. Danny is a shy pilot who can't get over the fact that he's almost as good as Rafe. Evelyn is a nurse who can't get over the fact that she fell in love with Rafe within about two hours of meeting him. Of course we get no time at all to figure out how they fell in love because we're only shown a scene with the two of them meeting and then a scene two weeks later when he tells her that he's shipping out and wants her to wait for him. But, dammit, they're in love. And, since he's shipping out, we all know what happens. No, they don't have sex. He gets shot down. Three months later she and Danny fall in love. Rafe comes back. Complications ensue. Besides making Danny totally evil in most guy's eyes (I don't care what you have to do, you never, EVER take your best friend's girl...even if he's dead), this also makes for a pretty stupid love story. We've got two best friends after the same girl, both trying to figure out what happened. Rafe hates Danny. Danny still loves Rafe. Evelyn loves Rafe, but Evelyn REALLY loves Danny. Then the bombs start to actually fall. This is where the movie turns into an amazing account of the destruction of a Naval base and the lives that destruction ruins. Then, after all of that is over and America has started to put the pieces back together, we start another movie. This one is about the retaliation. Now we're left to wonder which of our two heroes will die. (We all know that they can't BOTH live. There's only one girl.) The cast does a pretty passable job. They're all solid actors, even the leads. (No matter what a certain friend of mine living in The Land Of The Rising Sun says about Ben, he's not all that bad. And he probably does better here than he usually does.) Kate, who is always good, is maybe a little less good, but still worthy of a nod. She did, after all, keep her accent at bay. Quite well, I might add. But she does look a little too much like Liv Tyler here. I kept expecting Ben to break out the animal crackers. Thank you, Ben, for not doing that. The supporting cast was kind of hit or miss, though. Jon Voight was great as FDR, even if his part was a little over-written. Alec Baldwin was quite good as a rather typical colonel who takes the boys under his wing while being tough on them. He should have used his gruff voice, though. Sometimes he sounded a little too pansy to be a real colonel. Cuba Gooding, Jr. was, well, post-Oscar Cuba. He always seems to be playing it up to get another one. But he's not in the flick nearly as much as they make it seem in the trailer. He's basically a cook who gets to use a big gun. Good for him. Dan Aykroyd is very good as Captain Thurman, a character who represents all of the men who were trying to crack the Japanese codes. He knew what was going on, but he couldn't make anyone believe. Mako was also very good as the admiral of the Japanese Air Force, a man who did not want to do what he had to do. He was a peaceful man stuck in a violent world. And last, but certainly not least, Ewen Bremner was good as the stuttering flyboy of the bunch. He was in love with Betty (James King) and, well, he stuttered when he was nervous. That was his whole character, but Ewen played it for all it was worth. And it took me almost the entire movie to realize that he was Spud from Trainspotting! Michael Bay is almost trying to turn into a filmmaker under Jerry's nose. The filmmaker he's trying to be, however, is Spielberg. Tom Sizemore is nearly wasted in a small role as a rough mechanic at Pearl Harbor, but we had to get someone from Saving Private Ryan, right? And the scene where the boys crash and have to start shooting Japanese soldiers looks exactly like the battle scenes in SPR, except not as good or violent. And, if you believe the IMDb, the whole movie was shot using 3-strip Technicolor, which was used back in the 30s and 40s. This gave the film the look of an old classic. Delusions of grandeur. But all Bruckheimer flicks look the same from Flashdance to Gone In 60 Seconds, so that's really the last mention of Bay that we need. And Bruck throws out all the stops in this one. Big, sweeping shots of kids in fields. Crane shots swooping from the ground at Ben's feet to the air above him. Underwater shots of guys being shot (just like a previously mentioned better WWII flick). Shots that follow bombs into their targets. Big shots that looked like Scarlett looking over the battle grounds outside of Tara. (There were a few too many of those shots for my taste.) And, of course, some great dogfights. But what's a little disturbing is the fact that this is almost nothing more but a more expensive version of Top Gun. You had two flyboys who did things like buzzing towers and barrel rolling when they shouldn't. You had a father figure who took them under his wing (even if Alec wasn't in the movie as long as Tom Skerrit was in TG). You had a character nearly die because his canopy wouldn't open. And you had a character named Goose! You're a sick man, Jer. And how were the Japanese depicted? Quite well, actually. They were never blood thirsty assholes just trying to kill those stupid Americans. They were people just like our guys who were doing a job that they thought was right. If they were shown as the bad guys...guess what? They were the bad guys! Get over it. It would be a little weird if we, as Americans, couldn't decide who to be for because the Japanese were so charming. Randall Wallace, who wrote one of my favorite movies, Braveheart, also wrote this one. He seems to have lost his touch a bit. There are parts that are WAY over written and the first half hour to hour is absolutely ordinary. So predictable and conventional and old-fashioned as to be nearly boring and almost a little painful. This kind of old-fashioned writing worked for me in Titanic (to an extent), but it really didn't work at all here. But what really mattered here was not the love story (which is what's being used to sell it overseas). It's the battle scene. And that is absolutely amazing. As disgusted as I was with some of the love stuff, the actual attack on Pearl Harbor made the whole three hours worth it. The special effects were even better than those in Titanic, which looked amazing at the time. The pain and violence of the attack came through the screen. But I find it hard to believe that only two guys got their planes off the ground and they just happened to be best friends. Then, after this amazing sequence, the movie goes on for another hour. Luckily we get some great dogfight scenes, but we also get an unsatisfying ending. Well, that may not be the best word for it, but I didn't agree with it. And speaking of not agreeing, for being a movie whose main hero was a Democratic president, this sure was a Republican movie. Lots of talk about God. (I got a little sick of hearing last rites being read.) Lots of "Hooray for the military" bits. So, all in all, was this a bad movie? No. It was actually pretty entertaining and that attack sequence was, as I have said many times, amazing. I did enjoy it a lot at times. (And there was lot of shit blowing up!) But the movie as a whole was disappointing in some ways. Was it worth the money? Yes, but I didn't pay full price. Go see it, but don't expect a brilliant piece of filmmaking. And, for God's sake, walk out before the end credits song starts up! That was excruciating!!

Spores: The Movie

admin — Sun, 27 May 2001 17:00:00 +0000

Now, this is where your humble web page builder and amateur film critic plays with the notion of conflict of interest. This is a movie that you will probably never see if you are outside of the filmmaker's immediate grasp. (Unless, of course, his copies of it actually get out and about like the first episode of South Park.) Yes, they're talking to some people about distribution, but even if it gets out there it will be EXTREMELY hard to find. Most likely. But who the fuck cares, right? This movie was made for the pure joy of making a movie. And that's all that counts. And I totally envy the guys who made it. This is what I wish I had the guts to do. (Except for the butt shots. Nobody wants to see that from me. And why did you have to linger so long on it?!) But the real reason I'm reviewing it is because of my Jebadiah Leland tendencies. The filmmaker is a local boy and good friend of mine and I think he has a future in the business. And I'm looking for someone to ride the coattails of. Now, the film starts off with a disclaimer: "This is a bad movie. But it was made to be a bad movie." Yes, my buddy is a little insecure. But, really, he doesn't need to be. He describes the movie as "It's as if someone gave Kevin Smith $700 and told him to re-make Invasion Of The Body Snatchers with Corey Haim and Corey Feldman." And that's almost exactly what it is. It's a foul-mouthed b-movie with bad special effects and lots of one-liners. But in this case, that's not a bad thing. In fact, it's a very good thing. The writer/director, Jonathan London, is a self-proclaimed geek for bad action movies and cheesy special effects. His favorite movies are, quite obviously, Army Of Darkness and just about anything with Jean-Claude Van Damme. (In fact, I think he's got the whole collection. But don't hold that against him.) The plot follows Jon and his best friend, Kevin McCaffrey, as they battle their ex-school friends who are now pod people invaded by invisible alien spores. But that's only secondary to the homages, rip-offs and one-liners running throughout the movie's 75 minute running time. Jon's fandom has paid off. Yeah, there are a few too many pop culture references that border on Greg Araki territory, but for the most part they work. (Especially the test to make sure that Jon is a real person: name all of The Fantastic 4. Real names!) And, no matter how much Jon loves the bad action flicks that he worships, he knows how ridiculous they really are. Jon and Kev are your typical buddies in a buddy flick like this, but they go a little beyond. Haven't you ever wondered just how close some of those "buddies" really are? Why is it that these guys never seem to be able to keep girlfriends? But they always have each other, right? Well, let me put this nicely. Jon and Kev were really close friends, but you always got the feeling that, somewhere deep down inside, they wanted to be even closer. But Jon was too busy pining over the girlfriend that he just lost to notice it. (And remember, Jon. I don't really think you're gay. I know you did this on purpose to bring out the true nature of these kinds of stock characters. Right? Right?!) And then of course there's the scene with Jon's brother, Paul, dancing around in his underwear with shaving cream. But we won't even get into that. That boy has even less shame than his older brother. (What the hell was that, Jon?!?!) Jon and Kev are amateur actors at best, but after a while you forget that these guys aren't DeNiro and Pacino (hell, they aren't even Damon and Affleck) and just get caught up in their personalities. And it didn't hurt that they got better as the movie went on. As a director you can always tell where Jon is coming from. He's watched a lot of Sam Raimi movies (two scenes seem to be taken directly out of Evil Dead II and Army Of Darkness) and even more Hong Kong Kung-Fu flicks. His fight scenes are pretty well choreographed for a no-budget, Super 8 first film. (Actually, his first film was a documentary about his brothers, but I don't know what happened to that. The last I heard about it he was editing it.) In fact, the one between the the martial arts Spore and Kevin was pretty exciting. Funny, too. Equal parts Matrix and Story Of Riki-Oh (which he includes a clip from---YES!!!) But Jon's fight scene wasn't gross like the ones in Riki-Oh were. Somehow raw hamburger meat can't compare to intestines wrapped around guy's throats.) And who else would have thought of setting a fight scene with yourself to The Carpenters' "Top Of The World"? You have to see it to believe it. (And that one had one of the funniest conclusions I've seen in a long, long time.) Hopefully this movie gets some kind of distribution so that someone, somewhere can see it. It was definitely a first movie and very rough, but there were enough flashes of brilliance to show that there's something more underneath and, with a little time and effort, it can show through. I wish Mr. London a long and illustrious career in the movie biz. And a nice career for whoever did that opening computer animation sequence, too. That was pretty amazing for a movie like this. By the way, if Harry Knowles knew about this screening (and even had it on his site from what Jon says...but I couldn't find it) why the fuck wasn't he there? Did I scoop him? Or did Jon already send him a copy and he didn't feel the need to come? Either way, fuck 'im. I was there. Loved the movie, Jonny Boy...and I want a copy!! But next time make it down here instead of in Philly so I can help you with it. I would have loved to have been there.

Pay It Forward

admin — Sat, 02 Jun 2001 17:00:00 +0000

The quote to the side is pretty much the moral of this movie it seems. No matter how much good you do, bad shit can still happen to you for no apparent reason. I guess I should preface this review with this: I am making an exception to my rule of no spoilers. That's because the worst atrocity of this movie is it's "twist" ending. If you don't want to know the ending I will tell you a capsule review right now. Stop watching right after the news interview. That's where director Mimi Leder should have ended it. This movie has a great and moving message, but it's completely destroyed by the last 15 minutes. For the rest of you, this is a warning away from the movie with the worst ending in the history of movies. I pretty much undermines the rest of this "feel-good" movie. Here's the story in a nutshell. Trevor (Haley Joel Osment) is a young boy who thinks that the whole world is against him. And it really seems to be. He lives in Las Vegas with his absent, drunk mother, Arlene (Helen Hunt), who does all she can to provide for him, including working two jobs (one at a sleazy near-strip club and one at a casino), but she doesn't really seem to know that he's really there. His school is armed. He doesn't have any real friends. His father (Jon Bon Jovi) is gone, hopefully to never come back (but of course he does at the most inopportune time). Enter Mr. Eugene Simonet (Kevin Spacey), a social studies teacher who was the victim of some pretty horrific burns and now is seen as sort of a freak around the school. The thing is that he's a really good teacher and he eventually earns the respect of his students. He also gets them to think and challenges them to change the world. He assigns them an extra credit project in which they must find a way to change the world in their own way. Of course all of the kids come up with their own lame ways. (One kid says that he'll e-mail all of the kids in China and have them jump up at the same time trying to knock the world off of its axis.) But Trevor plays his trump card. He says that he will help three people in big ways that they can't do for themselves. Then, instead of those people paying him back, they have to pay it forward (I got pretty sick of hearing that phrase by the end of the movie) to three other people, thereby causing a chain of do-gooders. Pretty damn good idea, if a bit Utopian. So Trevor helps out a bum (James Caviezel) by giving him a meal and letting him sleep in their garage one night and shower in the morning. This, of course, freaks mom out and she tells James to leave. He tries to pay it forward by fixing her truck. Trevor then tries to get his mom and his favorite teacher hooked up. (In one of the movie's more affecting scenes a very nervous Mr. Simonet tries to ask Arlene out on a real date. Pretty nerve-wracking stuff.) His third and last good deed is trying to help out a friend who is being beat up by the school bullies. Unfortunately he freezes and just stands and watches while the kid is thrown into a dumpster. All of these misadventures are interrupted occasionally by the road trip of reporter Chris Chandler (Jay Mohr) who is trying to figure out who started the pay it forward movement. When he finally does find out who it was he interviews Trevor who thinks that his good deeds failed, but his mom carried it on because she helped out her mother. There are some meaningful looks between Arlene and Eugene who have been through some tough times lately. And that's where this movie should have ended. At an hour and 45 minutes it's still a respectable length. But they had to make it a little over two hours and ruin any good feelings I had toward the whole Pay It Forward movement. They had to kill of Trevor. Yes, boys and girls, they had Trevor try to save his buddy again (all while Arlene and Eugene are making up...against the lockers of the school) and he gets stabbed in the process. Not only does he get stabbed, but it's a minor stab wound in the side. Somehow though, his mother and Eugene are told at the hospital (by a very unsympathetic doctor from the looks of it) that they couldn't save him. (They must be in the medical dark ages in Vegas if they couldn't save him from the pinprick that he got from the other kid.) Then, as if it's supposed to make us feel better, we get to see everyone who was touched by Trevor's idea. And it's a line of cars with candle holding occupants that stretches all along he desert highways of Vegas. It, however, didn't make me feel good. It made me sick. The writers of this film decided that we couldn't get the point of a life touching other lives unless that life was taken. Instead of having a child who grew up to become a leader of some sort we have a martyr. They used the DEATH OF A CHILD to pull tears out of a bunch of poor saps who this sort of thing works on. I don't know if it worked better in the book, but it certainly served only to piss me off in the movie. (And not many movies piss me off.) It negated anything that the filmmakers were trying to do. Mimi Leder should be ashamed of herself for this one. All because of a 15 minute epilogue that shouldn't have been. The movie was moving, affecting and even kind of funny up until that point. And to think that I liked Deep Impact. Other than that the acting was great. Spacey and Hunt were great as always and Haley showed that he was no one trick pony. But if you insist on seeing this movie (and I do suggest that you watch most of it) stop it right after the interview. Watch further and you'll be as pissed off as I was. I guarantee it.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

admin — Fri, 15 Jun 2001 17:00:00 +0000

Yeah. The quote could have come from me this time. But first, some previews: But, oh! Let me bitch about a problem that is STILL plaguing our local theatres that I've been bitching about for the past year. COMMERCIALS!!!! I swear to God that there were more commercials this time than previews. One for the Will Rogers Foundation, one for Mountain Dew, one for a Jeep, one for Fandango.com and one for some other useless piece of shit. How many previews? I believe five. (Ok, so it's just as many.) Two of which (The Fast And The Furious and Final Fantasy) I've seen multiple times. No more selling stuff to movie goers. If you're going to sell something put it in the movie where it belongs! (And more on that problem later.) And now back to the previews already in progress: ...worse than fetid dingo's kidneys. SUMMER CATCH--Why is Freddie Prinze, Jr. still allowed to "act"? And why is he allowed to act with hot women? (In this case, Jessica Biel.) And what the hell are Fred Ward and Brian Dennehey doing here? This time out he's a baseball player (apparently one who matches his acting) who is trying to win the heart of Jessica who seems to strip any chance she gets. (But this is a PG-13 flick, dammit.) And to make matters worse Matthew Lillard is in it. What's this, three movies now with both of them? And then there's the Scooby-Doo movie that they're going to stink up. His day has passed, and it didn't go quickly enough. (Although it was pretty quick, wasn't it?) RAT RACE--An update of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad (ad naseum) World. Did the world need one? Probably not. Will I see it? Probably. It's Jerry Zucker, first off, and he hasn't made too many bad comedies. (Not a word about his tepid dramas.) Plus the cast seems game: Breckin Myer, Amy Smart, Whoopi Goldberg, Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese, Seth Green, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Jon Lovitz, Dean Cain, Kathy Bates, Dave Thomas, Wayne Knight, and probably many others who I know, but I don't know. All of them after a butt load of money. And all of them crazier than that last. It'll probably suck, but the last version was Oscar nominated, so this one could...well, suck. I'll see it, though. JIMMY NEUTRON: BOY GENIUS--Another attempt by Nickelodeon trying to horn in on Disney's territory. This one looks really awful, though. I think I was mildly amused once in the whole trailer. The rest of the time I was thoroughly annoyed. Something about a kid who is a genius (go figure) who isn't popular at school (again, go figure) until he starts trying to save everyone's parents from the evil aliens. How they got Martin Short, I know. They paid him. How they got Patrick Stewart, on the other hand... Oh, and one more thing. DAMN them for taking all of the R-rated trailers out of PG-13 movies! And now, the main attraction: As we all know, Tomb Raider is a video game about the adventures of Lara Croft, archeologist extraordinairre. Not only is she intelligent, but she's beautiful and she can kick a lotta ass. And she wears lots of tight clothes and short shorts. This, of course, is what keeps her teenage fans coming back. (Especially now that there are patches you can get to make her nude for her entire adventure.) I have to admit that I think the games are awesome. (And, no, I don't have those patches.) I have the first three and have actually only been able to get through the first quarter of the first one. If I had gotten them before I got out of my teens I would have beat them in a day. When they decided to make a movie out of Lara, I knew that it would go one of two ways: suck or fun. I was truly hoping for fun. After all, what is Lara but a digitized, female version of Indiana Jones and James Bond all rolled into one? Then they chose Angelina Jolie to play her. Who better? She's perfect for the role. Ok, so she's not British, but she's a good actress and she can convey intelligence. (Whether or not she actually HAS intelligence is still up in the air. Look at her taste in men.) Not to mention the fact that she looks AMAZING in tight shirts and short shorts with guns strapped to her thighs. (That Lara has to be a faster draw than John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and The Waco Kid put together. Let's see THEM draw while flipping all over the place.) Looks quite a bit like Lara, too. But a good star does not a great action movie make. After all, Brendan Fraser seems like he would be a good action star. His movies suck ass, though. It also takes a good director. They got Simon West (Con Air and The General's Daughter). Oops. In the words of Jet Li, "That was a mistake!" Yeah, Con Air wasn't totally bad, but it wasn't very good, either. And The General's Daughter was one of the worst movies of the 90s. It started the trend of Travolta's sucking again. (West is currently working on a big screen version of The Prisoner. God help us all. I've never seen the original show, but if I were Patrick McGoohan I would be looking for a lawyer.) Is this the guy we want to start a new franchise? I didn't think so. So let's get him for this one! So what's Tomb Raider about? (According to the guy in the ticket booth, "I don't know, ma'am. Do you want a ticket?" Friendly cuss, isn't he?--By the way, this was said to a woman behind me. I don't look like a woman.) Lara is a mega-rich archeologist who is pretty much a digger for hire. She has a complete arsenal at her disposal and a top tinkerer (Noah Taylor from The Year My Voice Broke, Flirting and Almost Famous) at her beck and call. Now she's on the trail of pieces of a sacred triangle that, when brought together, will allow the holder to control time. Yeah. That's what I said. Apparently her missing father (John Voight, who else?) was on the trail of it when he went missing. Now a secret society is after it in order to control the universe...or something like that...and they've sent a couple of other archeologists after them, one of them being an ex-boyfriend of Lara's. So we have a love interest, an evil guy, and evil society and love for a missing father. What more could you want? How about some good action and characters that we care about? Ok, so some of the action was ok. It wasn't a total bust. And the first scene of the movie with Lara in her practice tomb fighting her robots was almost exactly like the game. Angelina even grunted a lot just to make sure that we never forgot that she was a sexual being. And, by the way, these guys know exactly who their audience is. Even in the Arctic, Lara is wearing an ultra-tight tank top and nearly camel-toe inducing pants. Oh, and she gets by with a long parka made out of some thin material with a fur hood. Meanwhile the guys are all freezing their asses off in heavy coats and other Arctic gear. I guess what really pissed me off about this movie was all of the rip-offs. Even if they weren't actual rip-offs, they reminded me enough of other movies to seem like it. I'm wondering if Harrison Ford can sue. Not only did Lara jump off of a high cliff into a waterfall to escape her enemy, but she also did the old, "Oh, you've got a sword? Too bad. I've got a gun." trick that Harrison invented. And then there's a set piece that made me expect Angelina to pop out one eye, hold it up to look around with it and say, "Gelfling? No Gelflings left! All dead!!!" Is there nothing new under the sun? (Still kind of impressive, though.) And why did Angelina look so much like Bono? (Kudos to the producers for scoring Elevation from U2's new album, though. Great song.) I don't know. I just expected more, I guess. I wanted more from my girl. Both of them. Everything looked great, but there was no real substance to any of it. I know, it's just a video game movie. What more do you want? Maybe something more than a two hour commercial. (See? I told you I'd get back to it.) It did make me want to play the games again, so maybe it did it's job. But I want to play them to remind myself of why I liked the games so much. The movie almost made me forget. Somebody kick George and Steve in the ass and make them show these pissants how it's REALLY done.

Phantom Of The Paradise (1974)/Tommy (1975)

admin — Thu, 28 Jun 2001 17:00:00 +0000

Sometime in the late 60s (1969 to be exact) Pete Townshend created a genre called "rock opera." Now, some think that this was generally a mistake. And maybe they're right. After all, it seems that Pete was about the only one who could really make it work and even he has a problem with it now. But up until 1980 the genre thrived. It wasn't until 1973 that it flew over to the screen with Jesus Christ Superstar, a show that, depending on the amount of taste you have, is either one of the greatest musicals ever or one of the most pretentious pieces of crap ever made. Personally, I have no taste, so I kinda like it. But the next year was when things really got started. Brian DePalma brought us his vision of what the rock opera really should be. He took the basic story of The Phantom Of The Opera and twisted it to fit the times. Now the Phantom is a pop song writer named Winslow Leach (William Finley from a bunch of DePalma's early films) who was disfigured and imprisoned by uber-producer Swan (Paul Williams who is short in stature, but long in annoyance). Swan, you see, will do anything for a hit and he stole Leach's rock opera and is using it to make his own stars. Now Leach has to use his anger and the girl he loves Phoenix (Jessica Harper from Suspiria and My Favorite Year) to get his revenge on Swan and somehow make Phoenix love him again. Not easy since Phoenix has become an "I'll do anything" variety of fame-seekers. Round the cast off with an evil henchman who is just doing his job (George Memmoli from Mean Streets and New York, New York), an enthusiastic and very gay Alice Cooper-like lead singer named Beef (Gerrit Graham from The Man With One Red Shoe and "The Critic") and a Faustian subplot involving Swan and Leach and you get the idea of what this movie is like. Over the top and very strange. By today's standards it's pretty cheesy (Phoenix does a lot of dancing during her audition for a pissed off girl) and the music is actually pretty damn bad, but blame Paul Williams for that. The only good thing he ever did was write the music for The Muppet Movie and Muppet Christmas Carol. (Surprisingly, the music from this flick was nominated for an Oscar. Must have been a pretty slow year.) But, if you can put yourself in 1974 (or even see it as the cheesy fun that it is) it's a pretty damn funny movie. Kind of horrific at times, too. If you're a fan of the genre or of DePalma's it's definitely worth seeking out. Good time capsule of a time when groups with names like The Juicy Fruits were actually seen as a threat to pop sensibilities. (Of course with groups like N'Stync and The Backdoor Boys topping the charts these days it looks like the Swans of the world are winning.) Watch for a few times when you can actually see what Swan's Death Records was originally called. They superimposed a lot of the logos over the old ones so that Led Zeppelin wouldn't sue them for using the Swan Song label. (I like Swan Song better than Death. As obvious as it is, it's at least a little bit clever.) The next year the world was finally treated to a movie version of the opera that started it all. Ken Russell released his version of Tommy. Now, the album is one of the greatest rock albums of all time. (Although The Who were able to top themselves the next year with Who's Next, but that's a different story.) It tells the story of young Tommy Walker, a boy who witnessed his mother and father murder the mother's lover. After telling him that he didn't see or hear anything and wouldn't tell anyone about it, he closed up inside himself and couldn't see, hear or speak for years. His parents try everything to get him to open up, but nothing works. He just keeps looking at himself in the mirror and playing pinball. When he finally is released he sees himself as a new messiah and tries to start helping everyone see what he sees. His family, of course, sees it as a way to make money. The music is full of loneliness, pain, innocence and loss of innocence. As personal as the Tommy's journey seems to be (I'm fairly certain that most people have never seen their parents kill someone and been pinball wizards) the story is also universal. It's basically the ride that everyone takes while they're growing up. We're awkward and don't want to talk to anyone because we're afraid that we're going to make fools of ourselves. Then we start thinking that we're free to do anything we want and we indestructible. Then, just as suddenly, we realize that we suck just like everyone else and that maybe we should be a little more careful. It's something that all teenagers can relate to. Tommy's cries of "See me. Feel me. Touch me. Heal me." have been said by all of us at some point or another in many different ways. It's one of the most heartfelt moments in rock history. That's why Tommy is still popular today and why Pete Townshend can always find new ways to exploit it. Not only that, but it's a pretty scathing commentary on false leaders. Tommy's parents try everything to get him out of his shell including drugs, religion and real doctors. Nothing works until they finally figure out that it's them who are doing it to him. Then he becomes just like they are. Then there's the movie. Russell has his own vision of the story and for the most part it's the same, but he's taken a lot of the feeling out of it. He's also changed the inciting incident to the mother (Ann-Margaret) and lover (Oliver Reed from Gladiator and Oliver!) killing the father (Robert Powell from Russell's earlier Mahler). This changes things a bit because now Tommy is always having visions of his father who is trying to help him get out of the shell and keep him on the straight and narrow. This isn't to say that the movie isn't good. No, it's certainly a very interesting movie and good in its own weird, Ken Russell way. The sets are pretty amazing as are some of the situations that he paints his lead characters into. If you've ever wanted to see Ann-Margaret in her hey-day being dowsed in soap suds (and who hasn't?), chocolate sauce (hmmm.) and beans (umm.) and then writhe on a long, cylindrical pillow then this is the movie for you. And the cast is full of some of the biggest names in rock at the time (and, mostly, even now). Eric Clapton does a pretty killer version of Sonny Boy Williamson's Eyesight To The Blind amongst a bunch of Marilyn Monroes. (Although, much as I love Eric, he's one of the worst actors in rock. He couldn't even act like he was playing guitar. For even more evidence see Blues Brothers 2000. He has one line and he screws it.) Elton John plays the Pinball Wizard and, of course, does a GREAT job with a role that he talked Rod Stewart out of taking. Good for you, Elton. (But Rod did end up doing a version of the song and didn't do to badly on it.) Tina Turner was perfect, if a bit over the top, as the Acid Queen. (The original choice was apparently David Bowie. Love ya, Dave, but Tina's much better looking...and more female.) But the center of the movie is, of course, the music. And it's still great, even when it's performed by other people. (Well, except for Jack Nicholson, but he doesn't count.) And Roger Daltry has to be one of the best actors of the rock world. He actually conveys emotion! Now, if we could only get him, Jon Bon Jovi, Mick Jagger and David Bowie in the same movie together we might have a rock movie with some decent acting. So, while this isn't really a very good movie, it is extremely interesting and worth seeing a couple of times. In fact, it probably gets better with each viewing. And, as much as I love the album, this is probably the best movie that COULD be made of it because it not only conveys the story, but the time that it came from, too.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

admin — Fri, 29 Jun 2001 17:00:00 +0000

That's how I felt after sitting through SEVEN FUCKING COMMERCIALS BEFORE THE MOVIE!!!!! You know, if they're going to do that they should lower the damn prices. They're obviously getting paid pretty damn handsomely for their captive audience. I think they could afford to go back down to at least $7. But let's get to this movie. Two of my favorite directors are working together on this one and it shows all over the place. Stanley Kubrick had been working on this one for years before he died. Now Steven Spielberg has picked up the reigns and tried to finish it the way he thinks Kubrick would have wanted it done. For the most part I think he succeeded. Yes, this is Kubrick filtered through Spielberg's eyes, but it's also Spielberg filtered through Kubrick's eyes. But let's talk a little bit about story before we get into semantics. Not too much, though. I wouldn't want to ruin it. David (Haley Joel Osment) is an android made to look like an 11 year old boy. His creator, Professor Hobby (William Hurt), made him to love unconditionally. He's delivered to two people who aren't allowed to or can't have their own children, they say a few magic words to him and suddenly they are Mommy and Daddy and David will love them forever. To try David out Prof. Hobby sends him home with Henry (Jason Robards from Fandango and American Beauty) and Monica (Frances O'Connor from Bedazzled and John Woo's upcoming Windtalkers). Their son, Martin (Jake Thomas from The Cell), is in the deep freeze waiting for a cure for whatever it is that he has. Monica forms a bond with the mecca-boy that Henry is a little worried about. Then things get weird when Martin comes out of his coma and comes home to find a new kid in his place. What would any normal kid do? He torments David until it looks like David is a danger to his family. Now David has to make it alone in a hard, prejudiced world that would sometimes rather see his artificial bones boiled under hot acid than help him become a real boy, which is what he thinks will make his Mommy love him and let him come back home. Now, let's talk about the differences in Kubrick and Spielberg. There are some who think that everything Kubrick touched was gold. I think even die-hard fans of Spielberg (including myself) know that he's fouled up a few times. 1941 is, of course, the worst offender, but there are others along the way. Kubrick tended to be very anti-technology. Anytime a high-tech thing came along in his films it was usually something evil, like HAL 9000 or the desensitizer in A Clockwork Orange or the Doomsday Machine. Spielberg, on the other hand, tends to love technology. Ok, so it screws up occasionally (Jurassic Park), but, for the most part, it's a good thing. It makes life better and easier for everyone. Kubrick was a very cold filmmaker. His characters were only there to tell the story. Did we really care that much about Dave in 2001? Not really. Yeah, we wanted him to destroy HAL, but that was just because the computer was so evil. Spielberg, though, specializes in making us care about the strangest characters. He made us care about an ugly little alien (most of us, anyway...I never really cared about the movie itself), a salty old sea captain, a German sweat shop owner and even a guy who is willing to give up his family for a bunch of little aliens with big heads. His films are warm and touching, even when there's a lot of action going on around the characters. Which brings us to another difference. Spielberg is, for the most part, an action director. He makes popcorn movies with brains. (Usually. Lost World was a little short on the brains department.) When he makes a serious film it still has its share of emotional ups and downs. Kubrick never really cared much for action. Spartacus is about as action packed as it got for him, and that was his least favorite film. Even Full Metal Jacket was pretty devoid of action, and it took place during a war! His films are intellectual exercises that are sometimes impenetrable. So how do they work together? Very well, actually. Spielberg seems to understand exactly what Kubrick wanted for this film. There are, of course, times when Spielberg took over for Stan's spirit, but if the movie wasn't as cold as Kubrick's other films, it was certainly coolish. The only time that I winced was one scene near the end that involved David finally meeting a character he had been looking for for a long time. I can't say too much because it may give away too much, but it's a VERY badly written scene that everyone in the audience actually laughed at. When EVERYONE realizes that a scene is bad, you know it's bad. Spielberg certainly took over at the end when the movie takes a turn for the, well, different. He wrote the screenplay (for the first time since Close Encounters) and you can tell that he's still preoccupied with the same things he was way back when. Interesting ending if not what we expected from the rest of the movie. This is a fairy tale, though. And it ends much like a fairy tale would. Yes, there are references to Pinocchio all through the film, but there are other tales thrown in, too. A little bit of Sleeping Beauty, Hansel And Gretel and a lot of The Wizard Of Oz. Not to mention a LOT of Blade Runner. But what's it really about? Oh, you could say that it was about the prejudices of man against machine. Or maybe a lobby against artificial intelligence. (But, since this is a Spielberg/Kubrick film, we're not really sure if it's anti or pro A.I.) But what I really think it's about is a search for love. The one thing that is driving David through all of his travails is his undying love for his Mommy and his need for her to love him back. It's something that we all must do, so we can all relate to David's plight. That is the core of the film and what ties all of us with him. That's what makes it such a bitter-sweet film. And some of what scares us about David. He does some pretty disturbing things in order to make sure that he is the apple of Mommy's eye. But he's not the bad guy here. He never does anything to hurt anyone, it's just a thought that occurs to us throughout the film. What would he do? How far would he go? And the fact that we still like this kid is due mostly to the amazing performance by Haley Joel. This kid blows me away everytime I see him. It's kind of scary that a 12 year old kid can get this into this complex of a character. He proved himself in The Sixth Sense, but this goes well beyond even that. It just serves as more proof that Haley is, in fact, an android built by Hollywood to prove that they can do things without real actors. Jude Law was actually their first experiment, but he hasn't really done any box office. They're both here, though, looking very artificial in ways that only they can. And while we're on the subject of Jude, his character is kind of annoying. He plays a love-bot, or something like that. (THIS is what scares me about artificial intelligence. Women may find out that we real men aren't all we're cracked up to be and then only robots will get laid. Imagine. A woman can deal with the crap that a real man gives her or she can get a six foot vibrator that can think. And our species dies. Scary.) Anyway, Jude's character is the only truly annoying character in the entire film. Even the little stuffed bear that follows David around (like Jiminey Cricket) isn't as annoying...even though it looks like an Ewok. But I digress. This is actually a pretty amazing film. Yeah, it does have a similar story to Bicentennial Man, but it's so much better, deeper and more interesting than that piece of dreck. It goes on a little too long and, after two hour plus of Kubrickian glee, we have an ending that kind of sticks it's head out and says, "Hey! I'm Steve! Remember me?" But I was able to forgive its flaws because the flaws were even pretty damn good. (Except for that one scene.) I will definitely want to see this one again and hopefully get even more out of it. Listen closely (or don't, because they're pretty obvious) for cameos by Chris Rock and Robin Williams.

Kiss Of The Dragon

admin — Sat, 14 Jul 2001 17:00:00 +0000

The boring part of the evening was sitting through SEVEN COMMERCIALS!!!!! AGAIN!!!!! Yes, there were seven commercials and only five previews. (Granted, one of the commercials was REALLY funny--an M&M spot with two parents who are worried about their boy being so interested in "the green ones"--but I was still pissed off.) Let's get to the previews: JEEPERS CREEPERS--This looks like Urban Legend-Final Dumbass. It's directed by Victor Salva (director of Powder--I'll be skipping this one because of his weird, sick indiscretions that were brought up around the time of that one's filming) and stars, well, nobody at all. Two kids are driving around wondering what happened to a friend of theirs and see a mysterious man dropping a very large, wrapped object into a hole. When they investigate ("You know the part in the horror movie where someone does something really stupid and gets killed because of it? This is that part!" You mean, where they say a really stupid line?) Turns out that there's a monster living in the hole that feeds on human flesh every 23 days...and one of the kids has something that it wants. I think it was the utter stupidity to be talked into "acting" in this movie. It looks really, really bad. Maybe if I can get in for free...but I doubt it. Terrible title, too. THE OTHERS--This one actually looks pretty creepy. Nicole Kidman is a single mother (I think) in the early part of the century and her daughter sees ghosts. The old lady who helps them out knows about them, but she's kept quiet all these years. And then Nikki starts to believe. The synopsis on the IMDb says that it's just after WWII and that the kids have a weird disease where they can't be in direct sunlight. When they start to break the rules of the house (which are equally weird) things start happening... It's directed by Alejandro Amenabar who did the awesome Spanish film Open Your Eyes with Penelope Cruz. With him behind the helm this could be this year's Sixth Sense...and I don't just mean because it's about a kid who sees dead people. It actually looks pretty cool. I'll be there with squeaky shoes on. JOY RIDE--Paul Walker and Steve Zahn play brothers on a trip to pick up Leelee Sobieski (Paul's girlfriend). On the way they start playing with the CB radio (!) in Paul's car. Steve gets a trucker to meet a fictitious girl at a motel and then they get the room next door to see what happens. What happens in murder. (How do you like that? Real synopsis talk.) Then the trucker becomes psycho and starts following them to make them pay. This could be really, really bad, but I like the cast and Spielberg's Duel comes to mind. (And that movie didn't look too good, either. Classic, though.) The director (John Dahl--Rounders, Red Rock West, The Last Seduction) is also pretty good. I'll check it out on a slow day, maybe on video. EXTREME DAYS--This is about a bunch of guys (one of which was Rufio in Hook--I've seen that movie WAY too many times if I can actually recognize one of the Lost Boys) who go on a road trip (lots of those lately--funny how that works) and play extreme sports along the way. Then they meet a girl. Things happen. Sports are played. Sex is probably had. Pretty damn thin thread to hang a movie by. I can't imagine that this is too good. Maybe a free rental on a day where I don't need to clip my toenails. OSMOSIS JONES--Ok, I actually saw this preview before A.I., but I figure it needs hearing out. And that is only because it's directed by the Farrelly Brothers, who I used to have respect for. This, however, looks like one of the worst movies of the year. Bill Murray is a loser. Now, though, he's losing his health. Luckily Osmosis Jones (voiced by Chris Rock) is there to the rescue. Jones is a white blood cell and he's out to protect Bill no matter what. I can't believe that Peter and Bobby had anything to do with this mess. (Of course, I've only seen the preview. It could actually be good. But I doubt it.) The animated parts don't look like they were even thought through and the live action parts look, well, mediocre. Yeah, there's the typical gross stuff for the Farrellys, but it doesn't look funny at all. This may actually be one of their flicks that I avoid out of respect for them. The fifth preview was for Planet Of The Apes, but I don't need to say anything about that. Looks cool and I'm all over it and Estella Warren. Now, how 'bout that Jet Li? Jet plays Liu Jian, a Chinese cop who is in France to help the French police catch a Chinese criminal. The guy they're staking out can finger a bigger crime boss, so care must be taken. Unfortunately for Jian, the French cop on the case is Jean-Pierre Richard (Tcheky Karyo) who is dirtier than Pam Anderson's only interesting movie. He's already planned on killing the guy and framing Jian for it in order to, well, they never fully explain that. I think he just hates foreigners. A bit of a cliché for a French guy, huh? Along the way, Jian meets up with one of the hookers that Richard has on his payroll, Jessica (Bridget Fonda). He has not only gotten her addicted to heroin, but he's spirited away her daughter which he constantly holds over her head. When Lethal Weapon 4 came out American didn't know what hit them. Who was that Asian guy who very nearly kicked Mel's ass? He was awesome! As big of a Hong Kong fan as I have become I was still a novice at the time and had maybe only heard of Jet in passing. But I certainly took notice after seeing him in his American debut. Then came Romeo Must Die, a not bad actioner that seemed to be the movie that Chow Yun-Fat wanted to make with The Replacement Killers, a fun action movie with nothing much at stake. Yeah, there was some mention of China, but it wasn't very important to the story. Both movies were fun, but were ultimately a little on the cheese side. But the lead actors were charismatic enough to pull them through the mire. Now comes Kiss Of The Dragon, the movie that The Corruptor wanted to be. The Chow Yun-Fat movie was dark, sinister, had racist undertones that made the Chinese factor important and, overall, was just plain boring. Not even Chow could save it. Kiss Of The Dragon, on the other hand, is never boring and always interesting. Not to mention that the action scenes kick ASS! And this time out there were no wires to hold Jet back. It was all anti-gravity, cue-ball kicking amazement. Maybe it was so good because it was a Hong Kong/French collaboration. Everything was shot very artistically and made the action seem as if it was actually made to be pretty, even if it took place in the seediest of places. Of course, Luc Besson is a master of that sort of thing. No, he didn't direct this one, but he may as well have. He co-wrote (from Jet's story) and produced it making sure to keep his hand in the batter the whole time. There are so many bits that look like they could have come out of La Femme Nikita or The Professional that I almost felt like I was watching one of those movies. And the thing that REALLY makes it look French is the fact that everyone is so pale. Even Jet looks more white than Chinese. Do the French just not know how to light? One thing that's kind of strange coming from a French guy is the portrayal of the French people. They seem to be an ugly people who really hate outsiders. Now, of course that's the stereotype, but wouldn't Luc want to break that stereotype? Maybe. But he did get a great performance out of Tcheky as a Gary Oldman-esque psycho cop. Bridget was even pretty good as a "hooker with a heart of gold" who helps Jet and starts to fall for him because he's the only person who ever treated her with any respect. But, as much as she trusts him, she is more scared of Richard. And who wouldn't be. The guy is crazier than a guy trapped in a Wookie suit in the Sahara. And then there's Jet. He actually speaks a bit in this one, so we can see that he can still act. (Not that you really need to speak to act, but...you know what I mean.) Big difference for him in this one, though. In all of the movies I've ever seen him in he's always been very calm. Very collected. Very Buddhist. This time out, however, he is full of rage. He sees Richard as an entire country out to get him and his people. He feels the oppression that the Chinese have suffered in this country for hundreds of years. And that pisses him off. As the title suggests, he's more like Bruce Lee than a Buddhist monk who has to fight in order to keep the peace. (He even uses his acupuncture skills against his enemies. By the way, is the Kiss of the Dragon real? I just don't see it.) He doesn't seem to give a shit about peace here. It's all fight, damn the rest. This time there's more at stake than just a girl and her family. Jet and Luc did put some kung fu clichés into the mix, but it almost looked like they were calling attention to the clichés. Jet opens a door at the police station to see about 20 guys in the middle of a karate class...all wearing black belts and night sticks. For a split second he seems to wonder why these guys are even here. There's a rather random fight with a humongous black guy who seems to burst through a wall. There's a pair of twins who are martial arts masters. (And they never speak.) One of the bad guys even motions to Jet to "come get some" like Bruce and Lawrence do. This time, however, Jet counters with the same signal and they fight over who has to come to whom. Pretty funny stuff. This is what makes me forgive the clichés, bad dialogue and even some of the plot holes. (Why is Bridget in France? Why does her daughter have a French accent? Why does she talk so loud right outside of a building that she has just escaped from?) The fact that it rose above the clichés and gave us a story that we actually care about. A story of anger and repressed rage. Not to mention some of the best action scenes I've seen in quite a while. Let's hope that this movie gets Luc out of his Messenger slump. Maybe the next movie that he actually directs will be good again. He certainly still knows how to produce them. After all, he made the best and darkest action flick of the summer. Probably the best movie that a Hong Kong star has made over here. (And, yes, that includes Rush Hour.) But let's try to get Jet into a movie where he doesn't have to say, "That was a big mistake." I would rather not have that be his "I'll be back."

Planet Of The Apes

admin — Mon, 30 Jul 2001 17:00:00 +0000

Yeah, the times have changed, haven't they? But first, some previews. (Not as many commercials this time (only two), so I won't bitch about that. But, as good as Britney looks in the Pepsi commercial, I don't really care to see her on the big screen anymore. Unless, of course...) JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK--This could be the movie of the summer. For all of you who think that Kevin Smith is a one-note boy and can't make a real movie to save his life, well, you may keep thinking that. BUT he has learned how to move his camera. Quite a bit. And from what I hear this is his best movie yet. Not to mention the fact that he may actually be able to make Will Farrell funny. This movie looks fuckin' awesome, man! (Hey, just trying to keep with the genre, here.) It's gonna rock like Slayer! By the way, did they suddenly allow R-rated movies to be trailered on PG-13 movies again? Good for them. ZOOLANDER--And Ben Stiller strikes back, too. After the near debacle that was The Cable Guy (but I really liked it, actually) ol' Ben has had to rebuild his reputation. Yeah, everybody still thinks he's funny, but they lost quite a bit of money on that one. Well, now he's back with the story of a really stupid male model who is out to save the world from Will Farrell. (But aren't we all. And what the hell is he doing in two movies this year? ACK!) This flick could be totally stupid, but Ben rocks, so I'm excited. And, yes, the audience (and I) laughed quite a bit at the trailer so, dumb as it looks, it's funny as hell, too. Can't wait. SHALLOW HAL--And the Farrelly Brothers strike back. They need to build their rep back, too after the last three movies they've been involved in (Say It Isn't So, Me, Myself And Irene and Outside Providence...Osmosis Jones doesn't look too good, either). This one will hopefully bring these guys back from near one hit wonder obscurity. Jack Black stars as Hal, a man who only wants hot chicks. Someone comes along and makes him see the inner beauty only. Now he's in love with Gwyneth Paltrow who, to him, looks like, well, Gwyneth Paltrow. But to everyone else (including best friend Jason Alexander) she weighs about 500 pounds. Looks like it could go either way, but I'll see it because of the Brothers and Jack. Here's hoping. FROM HELL--Speaking of brothers, this is the new one from the Hughes Brothers of Menace II Society fame. Now, these guys haven't made too many flicks, but they have all been about the problems of the urban black man in one way or another. That's why it's a bit of a surprise to some people that they're doing a movie about Jack The Ripper. Personally, I'm always glad to see filmmakers branch out into other things. It's an interesting project for these guys and it looks awesome. Johnny Depp (in another role like Sleepy Hollow...only less Angela Lansbury and more Sherlock Holmes) is on the trail of the first famous serial killer and Heather Graham is his love interest and maybe next on the killer's list. Now, the involvement of Heather is a bit frightening because she's not what I would call a strong actress. And giving her an accent to deal with can't be a good idea. But I'm all for this flick and I'll be there with squeaky shoes on. BANDITS--Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton as bank robbers with hearts. They kidnap the families of the bank presidents at night and then force them to empty out their banks the next day. Of course, they fall in love with a girl who ends up riding with them. This doesn't sound like much, but with Barry Levinson at the helm it could turn out ok. It looks pretty funny and a little touching. I'll be there for it even if only on video. Haven't seen a Levinson flick that I didn't like. (Of course I didn't see Sphere.) THE TIME MACHINE--Ok, so this is only a teaser and there is really nothing to go on, but I'll see this one. Guy Pearce is really cool and the story rocks and it looks like they've got the SFX right. Hopefully the script matches. It would be cool to have a good sci-fi flick like this again. And now the reel deal. (Sorry.) Lately Tim Burton has been on kind of an anti-roll. Now don't get me wrong. I still really like his movies, but they've been getting a little weak. (I know at least one person who disagrees with me, but he doesn't like Timbo too much anyway, so screw 'im.) The last great movie he made was Ed Wood. Mars Attacks was a little too silly (but I liked it for it's sheer weirdness) and Sleepy Hollow was a little too much like a slasher flick. Not a really bad movie, but almost not even a Tim Burton film. This time out he has decided to remake a beloved sci-fi classic. Dangerous territory, Timbo. Especially when dealing with the memory of when a certain gun-toting actor was actually respected and wasn't too busy toting guns. Who knows what he might do to you if it sucks. In the dark. In the night. This isn't really a remake, though. No Statues Of Liberty poking their heads out of the sand here. No, this is the story of Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg), a pilot in the U.S. Air Force in some undetermined future where everything looks like Kubrick's vision of 2001...except with monkeys in cages. When Davidson's ship comes upon a space storm they send everyone's favorite monkey out to investigate. When he disappears Leo takes it upon himself to go after him. Of course he disappears into the future and crash lands on a jungle planet right in the middle of a bunch of humans running away from a bunch of apes. They're caught and brought back to the ape city where Leo meets his captors and they figure out that he has just a little too much spirit to be a useful slave. Limbo (Paul Giamatti from Man On The Moon and Private Parts) deals in slaves and isn't too happy with his current selection. But he finds a buyer in "human-lover" Ari (Helena Bonham Carter). Soon enough Leo, Daena (Estella Warren, who almost makes me want to see Driven. Then I remember that Stallone is in it.) and Ari are on the run along with all of the other humans (including Kris Kristofferson in full-on Blade mode). On the apes side is General Thade (a completely unrecognizable Tim Roth), a megalomaniacal military leader who wants only to control everything no matter what. (Although we never really find out why he killed a couple of apes who found Leo's ship. There really didn't seem to be anything to hide. Nothing they could figure out, anyway.) His right hand man, Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan from The Green Mile), wants only to serve apekind. By the way, Thade's army looked great, but everytime they showed up I expected to hear the Wicked Witch of the West's theme. Will Leo ever get home? Will the humans and the apes learn to live together? Will there be peace and harmony on the planet? Will Mark Wahlberg fuck an ape? All of these questions and more are answered in this two-hour movie that, as cool as it looks, doesn't really go anywhere. Was it the acting? No, the acting is fine. Some is actually really good. Tim Roth was amazing. Sometimes I forgot that I was watching a human. Of course the make-up helped, but Tim WAS an ape. Everyape did a good job, but he was the best. Helena was probably second on the list. A little too sexual I think, but not bad at all. Even though the acting was good to great, Tim is always at his best when he is working with at least one of his old stalwarts, Johnny Depp, Michael Keaton, Paul Reubens and Jeffrey Jones. When he works with more than one he's usually awesome, Sleepy Hollow notwithstanding. Here they are all strangely absent and it shows. Too bad. (Speaking of acting, keep an eye out for the original ape-hunter in a small, but crucial role. "Damn them. Damn them! DAMN THEM TO HELL!!!!") Was it the special effects? Definitely not. The make-up and SFX were perfect. I would not be surprised to hear Oscar calling Rick Baker once again. Was it the music? Of course not! Danny Elfman is back and he is in his element: weird sci-fi music. It's a great score for a mediocre movie. Was it the direction? No. Not particularly. A lot of people didn't see Burton doing this. It's very different from anything he's ever done before. Well, I say, not really. He's always been a master at finding the strangeness in normality. (Check out Edward Scissorhands and Beetljuice.) Now he's reversed that. It's the normality in strangeness. "How did they [the apes] get like that?" "How else would they be?" There were bits in the original that brought out a kind of twisted sense of humor about how apes would emulate man. ("I now pronounce you ape and wife.") We see some of that here, too. Ari's father has a dinner party where an old male ape and a young female ape joke about their past vacation. Later we see them preparing for sex. Pretty funny stuff. Was it the story? Ah! I think we're getting somewhere! Yes, the story had more holes than George W. Bush's military record. And this is where the real spoilers begin. My capsule review before spoilers is this: entertaining enough (although I did kind of close my eyes for a few seconds near the end--not out of fear, but out of near ho-humness) but it really doesn't add up to much. Not nearly as cool as it could have been. (It had a really cool Twilight Zonish ending, though. Kind of a homage to original scripter Rod Serling, I guess. Didn't really jibe with the precedings, though.) Maybe James Cameron should have directed it. But I'm glad Der Arnold didn't star. Now let the spoilers begin! First off, if the character that Chuck plays, Thade's dad, shows him a gun made by humans. This never shows up again. Chuck dies before he can explain exactly what it is, so I can see why Thade wouldn't understand it. But it was totally useless to even bring it up. And, does this mean that Chuck knew EXACTLY what happened? Yes, he knew that apes were once caged by humans, but did he know that their God, Siemes, was the first to take over the humans? And why exactly do they want to keep all of this from the rest of the apes? Wouldn't it make them feel better that they overtook their oppressors? When the humans find Leo's ship and use the engines on the ape army, those apes would die. In fact, there would be nothing left of them. Instead, there were live apes (just knocked out) within about 20 feet of the engines. Not gonna happen. And the biggest hole of them all, what was with the ending?! Yes, it was VERY cool. Did it fit with the rest of the movie, though? No. Not at all. So Leo finds the Lincoln Memorial and it's got Thade's face on it. Why? He's not on the planet that he came from. He's on Earth. Ok, so maybe the apes took over the universe. But wouldn't it have been a little difficult for Thade to take over when he was defeated? So he didn't die. He was ridiculed and everyone hated him. Not to mention the fact that he was in a cage. ALSO, not to mention the fact that LEO WENT INTO THE PAST AGAIN!!! Thade wasn't even born yet, much less taking over other planets! Why did history change? It doesn't make any sense at all. But it makes for a cool, open ending. Will there be sequels? Well, maybe. But if, after this record breaking weekend (sad) things die off real quick (which they very well could do because word of mouth sucks for the movie) there won't be jack shit coming from this franchise. That's too bad because it could be good. Turn it into a director's franchise. Maybe Cameron could take the reins of the next one. Maybe Ridley Scott on one. Maybe bring Robert Wise out of retirement. Ok, maybe not. But it's an idea.

The Anniversary Party

admin — Wed, 01 Aug 2001 17:00:00 +0000

When you think about digital video you think ultra-low budget films with no-name actors and even more no-name directors. This is the format for film students and people who just can't afford film, right? Well, George Lucas is changing all of that with Episode II. He's filming a large portion of that little flick using Sony's new digital camera. But before Georgie can get his out and before the Polish brothers got their new one out (Jackpot, filmed with the same camera), Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming gathered up three million dollars and a few of their buddies and made this little flick about a couple, Sally and Joe (Leigh and Cumming), who are celebrating their sixth anniversary. They had broken up for a while, but got back together just months before the big date. Now their friends are helping them celebrate, but everything is falling apart around them. Joe is a novelist who is directing his first feature based on his newest book. Sally is a popular actress who is at the age where no one wants to hire her. Not even her husband for a role that everyone knows was based on her. Instead he has hired Skye Davidson (Gwyneth Paltrow), a young actress who Sally is VERY jealous of and thinks that Joe is going to run off to fuck her every chance he gets. (Strong relationship, huh? But they really do love each other.) And then there's the director of Sally's current film (John C. Riley) whose wife (Jane Adams from Wonder Boys and Happiness) is a speed freak and is obsessed with her pager that only her babysitter seems to have the number for. Sally's co-star (Kevin Kline) and his wife (Pheobe Cates in her first, and probably only movie since 1994's Princess Cariboo) brought their kids along. They're so absorbed with themselves and their family that they hardly realize that their friends' lives are falling apart right before their eyes. But they're good people and they try to help out as much as possible when they finally realize what's going on. Joe's publisher (John Benjamin Hickey from General's Daughter, Bone Collector and Love! Valour! Compassion!) and his wife (Parker Posey) invited Joe and Sally's next door neighbors (Denis O'Hare from Sweet And Lowdown and Mina Badie, Jennifer's half-sister from Mrs. Parker and Georgia) to create a little publicity. Denis is also an author and they have been feuding about Joe's dog for the last year or so. Now they're supposed to make nice, but that's not so easy. Sally's best friend (Michael Panes, who was billed as a creative consultant for MTV's Austin Stories…too bad he's not even from Austin!) is a Peter Sellers look-alike who is always depressed about the current girl he's after. One of his first lines is in response to Sally being happy that he brought his violin. "Actually it's a machine gun. I was thinking about shooting myself." Depressed as he was he ended up being one of the funnier characters. (In a telling bit of personal info, as soon as he started talking my friend bumped me and said, "Hey, you're in this!" Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing. I'm every bit as witty and funny as that dude!) So that's the story. There's an added bit about Joe's sister and Sally's pregnancy that doesn't exist, and those do end up being major parts of the plot, but the main point is the characters themselves. Joe and Sally are very well drawn and we really believe that these two people really love each other, it's just hard for them to put their egos aside and really be IN love with each other. The rest of the characters are just secondary and only take up little snippets of time from Joe and Sally. They're almost just sketches of real people. (And I seriously hope that Jennifer and Alan didn't base Kevin and Phoebe's characters on them. I didn't really like them that much. And, yes, those are really their kids.) The only problem with the movie itself is that it seemed to drag after a while. I kept thinking, "How many crises can these people have?" It probably should have been cut by about 15-20 minutes. Other than that Jennifer and Alan did a great job writing, producing, directing and acting in this little flick. Now, a note to theatre managers everywhere. (Sort of.)The print that I saw of this was HORRIBLE!! Since it's shot on video I probably wouldn't have noticed if I wasn't with someone who saw it in a good theatre in New York. She said that it looked and sounded great there. Here it was dark, a little washed out and the sound was terrible. There were moments when the music (interesting music, by the way-mostly sounded like 60s lounge music) drowned out the dialogue! And there were scratches all over the end of it. (A fact that was pointed out ad nauseum by my theatre snob buddy. He works the Telluride Film Festival every year so, of course, he's an expert and has to show it off. Of course that didn't mean a damn thing to me when he drowned out a couple of lines of dialogue more than the music ever did. Isn't that right, buddy?-He'll be happy that I mentioned him.) Overlooking the bad print, this was a great little movie. I can't wait to see it on DVD where I can actually see it the way it was meant to be seen.

Rush Hour 2

admin — Sat, 04 Aug 2001 17:00:00 +0000

So, what were the previews like this time out? Well, as soon as we got through the fuckin' barrage of commercials we found out. Most were the same as Planet Of The Apes, but there were two worth mentioning. TRAINING DAY--Denzel Washington plays a cop who may or may not be corrupt. He practices street law. Arrest a lot of people, but let some of them go if they're going to take out other scum. Take a little graft every once in a while if it helps. Whatever it takes, that's what you do. Enter Ethan Hawke, a rookie who is set up with Denzel and doesn't understand his brand of justice. Does all of this sound familiar? Yeah, of course. Sounds like any of dozens of cop movies, most recently the boring Chow Yun-Fat/Mark Wahlberg vehicle The Corruptor. (It's even directed by Chow's director for The Replacement Killers...also not a good sign.) That scares the shit out of me. But this one looks like it could be better than most if only because of the involvement of Denzel. And Ethan's pretty cool if he doesn't have as good of taste as Mr. Washington. I'll be in line for it. ALI--Michael Mann takes on the World Heavyweight Champion of the World and his actor is...Will...Smith. One of the skinniest black men on the face of the earth. I have no doubt that he can handle the part (well, maybe some doubt), but can he fill the gloves? This guy probably doesn't even weigh as much as I do even with all of the muscle, and he's about a foot taller! But I'm sure it'll be a great movie. It looks really good and Muhammad Ali has had a really interesting life. Another Oscar flick for Mr. Mann? Probably. An Oscar for Mr. Smith? Well, we'll see. Now, how 'bout that little Jackie Chan flick? At the end of the first Rush Hour, Lee (Jackie) was on his way back to Hong Kong and Carter ($20 million (!!) man Chris Tucker) was going on vacation and had just been offered a post at the FBI when he gets back. "Shove it up yo ass!" is his reply and he leaves. Now, after two days (that's three years to you and me, kids), he's still on vacation in HK with Lee who can't seem to stop working in order to show his new friend a good time. When part of the U.S. Embassy is blown up killing two people, things really heat up. Was it Triad boss and betrayer of Lee's father Ricky Tan (John Lone from The Last Emperor and M. Butterfly)? Or was it LA hotel owner/mobster Steven Reign (veteran comedian Alan King)? Or was it Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight, Hu Li (Crouching Tiger cutie Ziyi Zhang)? And is Isabella Molina (Roselyn Sanchez whose only credits seem to be the bomb Held Up a bit part in Captain Ron, but she's a hottie) really trying to help them or is she in on it, too? All of these characters were connected, but we never really get to understand why or how. All we know is that there is a big counterfeiting ring and someone has the plates. There's a Vegas casino called the Red Dragon (an indication as to what director Brett Ratner is doing next, the prequel to Silence Of The Lambs) that helps launder the money and Hu Li who likes to blow shit up real good...and look REALLY good doing it. So the plot is a little contrived and maybe a bit too complicated for a movie of this type, but it does all come together by the end and it almost makes sense. But the main part of the movie is the action and the comedy. Does it deliver? About as well as the first one did. Yeah, it's no Drunken Master II, but what is? It's still a hell of a lot better than that crap-fest that was Shanghai Noon and probably better than what will be Shanghai Knights. As annoyed as I can get with Tucker he wasn't too bad in this one. I'm still a little annoyed that he got $20 million for this one, though. What's that all about? Is he really that big of a draw? Before the first one he was "that guy who dressed like Prince in The Fifth Element." Or Smokey in Friday, which didn't do all that well on it's theatrical release. Could he carry another movie without Jackie? Well, I guess that remains to be seen. Chris Tucker or not, Don Cheadle and Jeremy Piven stole the scenes they were in as a Chinese Soul Food restaurant owner and a stereotypically gay Las Vegas tailor respectively. (Don's best joke was calling Carter 7-11. You figure it out.) Ultimately, I guess what they're going for here is racial togetherness, but they're going about it in a really weird way. This was one of the most racially diverse audiences I've ever seen a movie with. Lots of black people for Chris Tucker, a few Asian's for Jackie and a bunch of white folks there because of both of them. In the next installment (which there will be one) there will be an added element for the Latinos. It's Lethal Weapon for the "Can't We All Just Get Along" set. That said, this movie has a lot of racial stuff going on in it. Carter can't get enough of making fun of the Chinese people, always talking about how they're two feet shorter than he is or calling them all Chin. Occasionally there's a black joke from Lee (or even from Carter), but it's usually against Asians. Now, supposedly these are post-PC times, which is all well and good. It's still a little weird to hear this many racial slurs in the name of comedy. Ok, I admit it. I laughed. But speaking of racial harmony, in order to promote that they actually had people from two different areas of China. Most were from Hong Kong and spoke Cantonese. Ziyi, on the other hand, is from Mainland China and can't speak Cantonese, so she went ahead and spoke her native Mandarin. Now, to most people Chinese is Chinese. In fact, I hate to say it, but to me Chinese is Chinese. If I'm really paying attention I guess I can kind of tell a difference (Mandarin has more "sh" sounds), but it took my roommate who has been studying up on this for a while (don't ask) to point it out. It must have been confusing and a little insulting to the Chinese cast to realize that we Americans really don't care what language they're speaking as long as it sounds Asian. These guys probably could have been speaking Japanese and the producers wouldn't have noticed. Sad. Back to the real review, though. Was the action good? Yeah, it was pretty good. There was a cool set piece with a bunch of bamboo scaffolding, a good fight scene in a massage parlor and even Carter had a pretty good bit with Hu Li. Was it as good as the first? Well, actually, it's been a while since I've seen the first one (my plans of watching it at work were kind of thwarted by my boss actually staying all day...DAMN HIM!!!!), but I can imagine that Jackie's a couple of years older (he's 47 now!!), so he may be slowing down a bit. There was a lot of action here, but it seems like it's not quite as fast as his scenes have been in the past even 5 years. Still better than most American action stars can do, though. I enjoyed seeing him kick ass, as I always do. So the whole thing was worth it, but it's a little sad to watch Jackie get older. I love the guy and he can still move faster than anybody, but he's just not as good as he used to be. I guess that kind of comes with the territory of breaking every bone in your body at least once and having a hole in your head the size of a dime (or whatever). This sounds like a bad review, but it really isn't. Yeah, the movie has its flaws and isn't as good as it could have been 10 years ago, but it's still a lot of fun. It's actually one of the better movies I've seen this summer. (Except for A.I. and Kiss Of The Dragon, of course.)That, however, is kind of a sad thing. It's cool, but it's not THAT cool. Certainly worth seeing, though, if you're a fan of either of the leads. By the way, if anyone can tell me where the hell Chris Penn was in this movie I will personally, well, e-mail you a thank you note. I didn't see him anywhere, but according to the IMDb he's there playing a character called Clive. Who knows?

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

admin — Tue, 07 Aug 2001 17:00:00 +0000

Back in 1993 there was a little movie about a small band of people being stuck in a park with a bunch of dinosaurs. We were all absolutely dumbfounded as to how real those CGI dinos looked. Now, at that time the guys who made these creatures said that they couldn't do hair and still make it look good. But that was fixed in a little movie (and I mean it this time) called Mighty Joe Young starring the most perfect woman in the world, Charlize Theron. Yeah, the movie was kinda lame, but the ape (and Charlize) looked awesome! Even the hair. But we still couldn't make people look real. (Although some have said that Haley Joel Osment was their first experiment.) Now we've gone a step further. SAG's worst nightmare has happened. A movie with realistic CGI people. These guys don't look like Woody and Buzz. They look almost as real as you or me. Well, me anyway. And, yes, that's the main reason anyone went to see this movie. Was there a plot? Yeah. Was it interesting? Yeah. Was it really good? Not really. But I'll outline it real quick. Dr. Aki Ross (Ming-Na from Street Fighter, "ER" and Mulan) is the last hope for a dying Earth. (The only human outposts are bubbled cities near where there used to be real cities like New York.) Somehow the planet has been overrun and practically killed by a bunch of "phantoms." These are creatures that can't seem to be killed easily and they literally rip the souls of their victims out of their bodies. Aki has five spirits within her that will, according to Dr. Sid (Donald Sutherland), help rid the planet of these infernal phantoms. The problem is that no one believes them. The basis of their theory is a legend that there is a spirit within the Earth. This spirit somehow explains what's going on with the phantoms from another planet. Along the way Aki and Sid meet up with Grey (Alec Baldwin looking more like Bruce Campbell) and his ragtag group of soldiers, Neil (Steve Buscemi, who finally gets to look like a normal human being...even if that human being is Luke Perry), Ryan (Ving Rhames) and Jane (Peri Gilpin from "Frasier"). There's some sort of romantic history between Aki and Gray, but we never really learn too much about it except that it was never really resolved before. So that's one fairly predictable plot point. And then there are bad guys head up by General Hein (James Woods). He wants to fire a laser into the core of the earth and hopefully destroy all of the phantoms. Unfortunately, that could spell the end of the planet, too. That seems to matter very little to him, though. Excuse me while I have a strange interlude, here. Is it just me or does this sound like a very timely thing going on? We've got a small group of people trying to save the planet in a peaceful way that helps the spirit of the planet survive. Then we have a loud mouthed schnook who wants to blow the shit out of the enemy with a giant weapon even if it means destroying the very planet that they all live on. Even after he finds out that he's totally wrong he just goes right ahead with his plan. Why didn't they just call him General Bush? Let's hope we never hear our "president" say the line I quoted at the beginning. So that's the story. Like I said, it's interesting, but it's a little cliched. And it has nothing really to do with the games. Now, I've played one of them (Final Fantasy XVIXIXXXIMSXI, if I'm not mistaken) and the world doesn't even look like this. Yeah, there's a bubbled city, but beyond that it's pretty much nothing like this movie. But, then again, the games don't really follow each other, either. They're just kind of tied together by name. Whatever. Not to worry. There's plenty going on with the visuals to keep you awake through some of the dumb dialogue (and Neil gets most of that) and hackneyed plotlines. Now, let's talk about those visuals. The CGI was totally amazing. It was, at times, possible to forget that you weren't watching real people. (The voice acting didn't hurt, either. For the most part they were all pretty dead on.) The skin looked real with tiny flaws in it. The hair looked real with some of it actually out of place. (Although on Aki it seemed to be the same strand all the time. I know she would have had it straight at SOME point.) The only problem I had was the problem that all CGI characters will probably have for a long time. A lot of the characters move very strangely. A little too fluid and bouncy. (Do we really dip our heads as we turn around? Maybe you do, but I never have.) A lot of little hand movements that don't quite ring true. Aki stands just like Gwyneth Paltrow. You know, things that make them look slightly not quite human. By the way, you can tell this was a Japanese production. All of the creatures had long tentacles like all demons seem to in Japan. And one of them even tried to go for Aki's crotch! Then again, who wouldn't? She's pretty hot for a toon. But then, I got a thing for rabbits.--A slightly arcane reference, but if only one person catches it it's all worth it. So it's not a great movie, but it's definitely interesting. And the animation is amazing and makes it worth sitting through it's hour and a half length for a matinee price. It's probably about as good as we're going to get for a video game movie. Definitely see it on the big screen, though, if you intend to see it at all. And apparently we can look forward to seeing Aki in another movie sometime. Not another Final Fantasy flick, but in a totally different role. Yes, the toons are getting jobs. Funny, that. By the way, this is my 200th review! Somebody buy me a drink. (All those who know me are laughing right now.)

Made

admin — Sun, 19 Aug 2001 17:00:00 +0000

I remember when Swingers came out. I didn't see it. I really wanted to see it. But I didn't see it. Then it came out on video. Finally I saw it. That was about the time that I really started getting interested in independent film. (Yes, I was a bit of a late bloomer.) And I saw Swingers. I thought that it was the greatest guy movie ever made. Jon Favreau and Doug Liman (with the help of Vince Vaughan and the rest of the cast) fashioned a story, as it were, about guys, pure and simple. This is how guys think, act and talk. Especially a group of good friends like that. They build each other up just to shoot them down again, but they're always there for each other whatever happens. This is probably why a lot of women don't like Swingers. Sorry ladies, but that's how it is. There are guys who are as big of jerks to women as Vince's character was who can turn right around and be the best friend a guy could have. And women love those guys. There are nice guys out there like Jon's character who get dicked around by women. It happens all the time. When I heard that Jon was coming out with a new movie that he wrote (and this time he directed and produced, too) and that Vince was going to be his co-star again, I got excited. This was going to be good. A mobster movie? Even better! Well, it turns out that my excitement was well founded. These guys know how to turn characters around and make them into something they really shouldn't be: likable. Bobby and Ricky (Jon and Vince) are a couple of losers in L.A. Bobby is a construction worker who has ties to the local mob boss, Max (Peter Falk). His girlfriend, Jessica (Famke Janssen, who's looking kinda rough these days), is a stripper who works for Max. Of course this causes a lot of tension in their relationship since he's her driver and he has to watch her strip for other guys. He really wants to be a boxer, but he's not very good. Ricky is Jon's loser friend from high school who is trying to help him out, but he needs more help than Bobby ever would need. He's volatile, loud, obnoxious and, worst of all, dumber than the day is long. Everything he does pretty much turns to shit. Jon got him a job on his construction site, but he can't even hold that down. All he has to do is sweep and he can't seem to do it for more than five minutes at a time before he needs a break. Then, after Bobby beats a guy up who tried to touch Jessica, Max gives him a chance to join the club. He wants to send him to New York to make a delivery for him. But Bobby wants Ricky to come along. Max doesn't like Ricky because he lost his cleaning truck, but since Bobby vouges for him he allows him to go. Bobby and Ricky's NYC adventure is best left to the movie. Let's just say it involves money, danger, mayhem, dance clubs, Sam Rockwell as a hotel bellman and Sean "The Man Who Would Be Puffy" Combs as an NYC gangsta who learns to hate Ricky as much as Max does. Jon has turned into a great writer. Yes, his two main characters are the same as the ones from Swingers (Bobby is less of a puss than Mike and Ricky is MUCH more obnoxious than Trent), but they work so well, why mess with a good thing. And these are characters that Jon and Vince are great at playing. (Apparently Vince is a lot like Trent in real life. Go figure.) My only complaint here was the fact that Ricky was a little TOO obnoxious. Some of his scenes were just painful to watch. ("So you're the Red Dragon!") And some were just down right nasty. ("Get the fuck out of the room!" as he throws water on Sam Rockwell.) He's just an asshole sometimes. And there's no way that he wouldn't have gotten himself AND Bobby wacked real early on. (Especially in NYC.) But, as this is a comedy, we'll suspend our disbelief and just go with it. Was Jon's direction any good? Well, it's a little rough, but he does a good job. Lots of hand held shots that seemed a little out of place. Give him a couple more movies and I bet he'll be great. And if he had any hand in the music choice I give him a LOT of credit. From Dean Martin in L.A. to the gangsta rap in NYC it all worked really well. The best, though, had to be the last scene in NYC. Shot like an old Western complete with cool Ennio Morricone-like music. Great stuff. This was a really cool movie. Maybe not a great one, and maybe not quite on the level of Swingers, but it's really cool and a lot of fun. I think Mr. Favreau may be in danger of being L.A.'s version of Woody Allen soon. And that's definitely a compliment.

Telluride Film Festival 2001 8/31-

admin — Mon, 03 Sep 2001 17:00:00 +0000

Two weeks, a move and one horrific Tragedy later I think I might actually be ready to write reviews of movies that I saw at the Telluride Film Festival. This is just one way to help get things back to normal. Whatever that is these days. For two weeks I was in Telluride, Colorado helping to set up for and run the Telluride Film Festival. A friend of mine has been going for the past four years and, ever since that first year, he has been trying to get me to go with him. For one reason or another (school, work, sheer laziness) I haven't been able to go. Until this year. And it was a blast. I worked hard, met some really cool people and saw some great films. What's the difference in this and South By Southwest? Well, first of all, you've got the beautiful scenery of Telluride. It's amazing. This small mountain town is enveloped in the Rockies. It's like nothing you've ever seen in your life. It has now been added to my list of places that I would almost be willing to live outside of Austin. (And that's a really short list. Believe me.) Second, there's the absence of press. Granted, there's not a whole lot of press at SXSW, but when compared to Telluride, the press is almost a litany. The people who run Telluride actually don't allow very much press in. That way the celebs can feel free to run around town without being followed by lights and cameras. There is a little press (Giovanni Ribisi was interviewed for a bit for Shot In The Heart, an HBO movie that he is in.), but it's not obtrusive. And it was great. Sundance is for businessmen. Telluride is for film geeks. And then there's the theatres themselves. Everyone has Dolby Surround sound. But the really amazing thing is that there are only two that are actual theatres. The rest are in a high school gym, a community center, a convention center, a park and a Mason's Hall. But if you walked into the Max Theatre and didn't know that it was a school gym, there's no way you could tell. (To all of you SXSW fans out there, I still love that film festival. And, to their defense on the theatres, they don't HAVE to work on them too hard because most of them are already theatres.) So, after a week and a half of digging ditches (something I never thought I would do for a film festival), getting sunburned all to hell and carting heavy equipment around, the festival finally started. And, as much as they tell you that Telluride has a higher quality of films than any other festival…well, I'm probably not supposed to say this since I was a worker bee, but they have just as much crap as everyone else. But they do get some great new films and a lot of amazing classics, as my reviews will show. Let's get started with those, shall we? METROPOLIS (1927) Gone are the cheesy songs of Georgio Moroder's color-tinted 1984 version of Fritz Lang's silent sci-fi classic! Back is the live music accompaniment! This is the first time I've seen a silent film in a theatre with a real band playing the music, and The Alloy Orchestra did an amazing job at keeping a futuristic, industrial tone while still making it sound old-fashioned enough to fit with a film made in 1927. And they managed to sound like an entire orchestra. Not bad for three guys. The movie itself is a bit dated and naive by today's standards ("Mediator between hand and brain must be heart!"), but it's story of man vs. science is a timeless one and what few special effects there are are almost better than some of the digital ones we see today. It's a future-Frankenstein story where the doctor isn't the focus. The hero is. You can see all of today's sci-fi coming out of this one film. From the themes to the characters to the look of the film itself. Yeah, the acting is a little old-fashioned, but we can still feel these characters. When the robot becomes a real girl we can feel the pride of the doctor who created her and the fear of those around them. Salman Rushdie, who chose this film to be shown at the festival, said that the vision of the future tells a lot about the time that that vision came out of. That is never more true than for this film. Fritz Lang may have ended up hating it, but screw him. This is German Expressionism at its best. ALPHAVILLE (1965) In 1965 Jean-Luc Godard was in dire straits. He still wanted to make films, but he had no money. So what did he do? He made a sci-fi film, of course. He grabbed up American tough-guy actor Eddie Constantine and the character he was known for playing, Lemmy Caution, and put them into a story of intrigue and death. Only it was set about 50 years in the future. And it was a parody of the hard-boiled detective story. The story itself is rather hard to follow. In fact, I could barely tell that there was a story at all. Something about trying to find a way around the fact that the leader of the planet he is on has outlawed love and feeling. (The leader only shows up in voice-overs that sound like someone trying to say the alphabet while burping. A little disturbing, but funny in a weird way.) But he is starting to feel love (or lust) for a young female alien (Anna Karina). The low-budget nature of this film almost saves it. If it had been full of special effects and cool costumes it wouldn't have been nearly as effective. As it is it's a very funny private dick movie that just happens to take place on another planet where everyone looks like Sam Spade. Just imagine a world where the hero saves the planet not by killing someone, but just by having Godardian voice-overs that really don't make a lot of sense to the rest of the film. And yet, they almost do. Almost everything about this film was funny. The acting, the dialogue, the cars (mostly Ford Galaxies)…even the music was a great send-up of old mystery movies. The only complaint I have is that every once in a while (and more frequently towards the end) Godard threw in a bunch of really annoying beeps and neon lights. One of my co-workers said that this was a Brechtian device used to piss off the viewers and catch them off guard. Well, it worked. I didn't like that. Other than that, this was a great send-up and re-thinking of both sci-fi and the pot-boiler. SOLARIS (1972) You have to have a lot of patience to watch an Andrei Tarkovsky film. That's what my buddy found out. He didn't even make it through the opening credits of this one. Of course, those credits took up the first five minutes of the film! And they were just regular old, white on black credits. No action going on behind them at all. Yes, Solaris is something that frightens most mortal men: a three-hour Russian sci-fi epic. But I was ready. I was prepared. My ass was ready for a long sit-down. It helped that I had seen it before. This is the kind of film that makes me feel stupid. It's long, not totally exciting and has lots of meaningful shots that I just don't really get until someone else explains them to me. I do, however, think this is a great film. Funny how that works. On the surface, the film is about a man who is sent to a space station to find out what happened to the crew. All of them are dead (including one of his best friends) but two men. Why did they die? Well, we're not sure. But when our hero gets there he is assaulted by his own dreams. His wife, who died years before, starts to visit him. In the one laugh in the whole movie, one of the other survivors pulls a midget back into a room. (I almost thought I was watching a David Lynch film. Or maybe Adam Sandler had gotten ahold of this print.) But that's the surface story. What it's really about is the persistence of memory and how that memory effects our present. The hero's vision of his wife was exactly the way he remembered her, but she was different somehow. And it effected the way he did things on the station because of his confusion over the differences. Was he remembering her differently? Or was this someone else pretending to be her? Or was it just his imagination running away with him? Now, you may ask, why did this movie have to be three hours long? Well, maybe it didn't. It could have been cut to 1Â½ hours and told the same story. (Maybe cut out the five minute traffic scene where nothing happens but driving.) But it wouldn't have been as effective. We had to feel the confusion of the characters in order for the underlying themes to really set in. And it's ambivalent ending wouldn't have made as much sense. This is a deep film and one that is very hard to watch. There are no special effects, not a lot of dialogue, only the one laugh and a lot of thought going into the viewing experience. This is probably the only film where people actually broke out into individual discussion groups after it was over. I wish they had broken out DURING the film. Maybe it would have helped a little bit more. Tarkovsky didn't entertain on purpose. In fact, he felt that, if he entertained, he didn't do his job right. Keep that in mind if you ever decide to watch any of his films. They're difficult films, but well worth the time and effort. And, if you're already a fan of the film, watch out. First off, this is the only good print left in America, so you probably won't see it on the big screen again. Second, James Cameron is planning a remake. Hmmm. Solaris with explosions. Can't wait for that. THE GOLDEN FORTRESS (1974) In the fourth and last of Rushdie's picks that I saw (the others were the three sci-fi classics-he also chose two other Indian films), we follow a young Indian boy who can somehow remember his past lives. He thinks that he grew up in The Golden Fortress. Unfortunately, a couple of thieves are chasing him because they take the "golden" part seriously. The boy does have a couple of helpers, though: a Sherlock Holmes type guy and his young charge. Satyajit Ray, director of the classic Apu Trilogy, directed this family film in the early 70s. Soon after its release it was never heard from again. In fact, I believe that this is the first time it's been seen in America since its initial release. It's very cool that they found this film since it is by an important director of Indian cinema. That doesn't, however, make it a good movie. In fact, it's a bunch of fairly interesting characters doing fairly interesting things in a VERY boring way. At two hours it was way too long for a family film and way to uninteresting for anyone else. Granted, I was pretty damn tired when I saw this one, but I fell asleep just about every other line and never felt like I missed anything. I probably didn't since not everything was subtitled! I have never seen any other Indian films, let alone any other Ray films. Hopefully this is not really considered one of his best. I heard that it was very commercial compared to his other films. Lots of "action" and "laughs." It was all pretty realistic until the end when suddenly things got really cheesy. A gun being kicked directly into someone's hand, bad one-liners (a man screams as he's thrown from a train and the hero says, "It sounded like the end of something.") and just sheer stupidity all around. And what was worse was the fact that the central character, the kid, was not interesting at all. I was actually dreading every time he came on the screen. I would have rather stuck with the Sherlock dude for the whole movie. He was at least trying. Someone said that the film almost mocked reincarnation, which is central to India's religious beliefs. I didn't get that out of it. The kid was never used as a joke because of his supposed ability. He wasn't believed at first, but finally his parents decided to check it out by hiring the detective. All in all, though, this deserves to be released in some form because of who directed it. Maybe a minor video release. But it really was not a good movie at all. And that's a shame, because it could have been a really charming little family film. ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS The new Dogma 95 film is uncharacteristically sweet natured. It's a romantic comedy about a group of lonely people in a small Danish town who become a family and fall in love through their Italian class. It becomes to important to them, in fact, that they start to think of it as the central factor of the boring little lives. Surprisingly the Dogma style (no artificial lighting, handheld camera, partly improvised dialogue…basically just "real") works really well with this kind of story. I wouldn't suggest doing it on the next Julia Roberts film or anything, but it almost makes it more believable to have it shot like this. I'm still not used to the sound editing, though. There's just no continuity at all. No background noise in one shot, next shot has a car driving through the background. Kind of distracting. Very sweet little film that could actually be a big hit for Dogma from director Lone Sherfig. THE CAT'S MEOW When I heard that Peter Bogdonovich's new film was playing the festival I got excited. I've always liked ol' Boggy no matter how dirty of an old man he is and no matter how many mediocre movies he's made lately. Then I heard that Kirsten Dunst was in it. That REALLY got me excited. (Although I started thinking about how Boggy was probably after her through the whole damn shoot.) When I found out that it was based on a story that Orson Welles had told Peter about how Thomas Ince may have really died, I was ready to enjoy it a lot. You see, Tom Ince (Cary Elwes) was a very important producer/director in the early days of American film. In 1924, he and a bunch of Hollywood types (including Charlie Chaplin (Eddie Izzard who looks too old to play Charlie in 1924), Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumley) and Louella Parsons (Jennifer Tilly)) were invited to spend a weekend with William Randolph Hearst (Edward Herrmann from The Lost Boys and "Oz") and his young mistress, Marion Davies (Kirsten). Chaplin was seen by Hearst as a threat to his relationship with Marion and he was paranoid for the entire trip. But Hearst was trying to make her a star, but he was going about it all wrong. He was putting her in costume dramas when everyone knew she was really a comedic actress. And, of course, Chaplin and Ince could help her. Try telling that to a man like Hearst. (For more of the Hearst/Davies relationship, watch Citizen Kane. It's all laid out on the line there.) So they all go out, party, get laid, drink, whatever. Meanwhile, Hearst is getting extremely jealous of Mr. Chaplin and his friendship with Marion. A bunch of stuff happens that I can't go into without letting too much out of the bag (although it may not really matter), Ince ends up dead under mysterious circumstances and everyone goes home. Now, that doesn't sound nearly as interesting as the story really is. There's lots of intrigue and mistaken identity and jealous rage and whatnot. Check out the biography for Thomas Ince at the IMDb. Now, with all of that mystery this should have been a pretty exciting movie. And with all of those celebrities it should have been pretty cool. Unfortunately it wasn't. In fact, it was rather boring. The problem wasn't with the story. Not even really with the direction. It was mainly the performances. With all of these great actors (and all of them are at least cool at times) none of them really shine. The closest is Miss Dunst, who looks the part, but she acts a little too modern. I think she's been in too many dumb teen comedies and has forgotten how to act in anything else. (In all fairness, she's a little young for the part. Marion was about 27 at the time of the original incident.) This should have been great, but it fell so short as to be a total disappointment. Oh well. Better luck next time Boggy. AMELIE This is the new film from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director of the classics Delicatessen and City Of Lost Children. (Marc Caro, co-directed those two, was also named as a co-director of this one, but he's not mentioned on the IMDb. Who knows?) This time out, though, it's not a total weirdo-freak story set in another world. It's a simple romantic comedy seen through the eyes of a weirdo-freak who wants it to be in another world. And, when seen that way, it is really something special. Amelie is a girl who was brought up by her non-touching father, who she loved, after her strict mother was killed by a woman who accidentally landed on her while committing suicide. The whole first part of the movie is about Amelie's upbringing and is told by a narrator. There is very little dialogue, but it never gets annoying. Then, after Amelie grows up, we find out that she never really loves anyone. In fact, she's not even sure if she can. When she finally sees someone she thinks she can love, he runs. The rest of the film is her chasing him in weird and wild ways. She tries to help out her friends in their searches for meaning to keep her mind off of her own search. In fact, she gets so caught up in their searches that she almost forgets that she needs to search for herself. With this film Jeunet has done what all filmmakers wish they could do: take a fairly simple romantic comedy, give it a twist and some visual flair (ok, a LOT of visual flair) and turn it into greatness. He has got to be the most visually inventive director I've seen in a long, long time. Every shot was like a work of art. This was my favorite of the festival and my favorite of his films. (Even better than Alien Resurrection! Ok, so I'm one of the only ones who liked that one.) Of course I could identify with the character quite a bit, too. And speaking of Amelie, Audrey Tautou was awesome. She didn't have a lot of dialogue to work with, but she did it all with her face. She made us laugh, think and fall in love with her all in the space of about five minutes. There was just nothing wrong with this film. I recommend it to everyone who likes, well, anyone who likes movies, basically. DRIVE-IN MOVIE MEMORIES Many years ago there was a thing called the Drive-In Movie. It was a place where people (especially teenagers in the 50s and 60s) met, watched movies and had fun. (A lot of times more fun than their parents really wanted to know about.) Then something happened. The drive-in died out. Now you're kind of hard pressed to find them. But they're back in this cool little documentary based on a couple of books that have been put out about the majesty that was the drive-in. A lot of celebs showed up in support of America's second favorite pastime. Leonard Maltin, Barry Corbin, Burton Gilliam (from Blazing Saddles, which had its world premiere at a drive-in!), Sam Z. Arkoff and many others from established stars to B-movie queens. (No Annette Funicello, though. What's up with that?) Even though I have only been to one drive-in (a double feature of Gung-Ho and Pretty In Pink many years ago. I remember Rad being played on another screen nearby.) this made me nostalgic for the old days. It almost made me want to open one up just to keep the memory alive. The only real problem I had with the movie was the overlapping dialogue in some parts. They would fade one person out and fade another one in right over the last one. I kept missing what the new person was saying because I was trying to hear the first one. That kinda sucked. But the rest of the movie was great. Check it out if you ever get the chance. I think it's an HBO thing. There were a lot of those this year. THE DEVILS (1971) Ken Russell is an enigma in filmmaking. He's just as exploitative as Russ Meyer and Roger Corman, if not more so, but because he's so stylistic a lot of people take his films as real art. They actually respect him. There are those, however, who think he's just stupid crap. He is Britain's most controversial director and he revels in that title. All the violence and T&A you can handle. All this from a little guy who looks like he could be your sweet, British grandfather. To a lot of his fans this is his best film. It is a play about Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave in her strangest performance), a French, hunch-backed nun who runs a convent in the 17th Century. She is so strict on her nuns because she is sexually obsessed with Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed, England's best brooding over-actor), the spiritual leader and head priest of the town. He is the only thing in the way of Cardinal Richelieu taking over the town and, in effect, the whole country. How to get rid of a priest who is very popular? Why make him the devil! The Cardinal brings in a rock star, erm, witch-hunter who makes all of the nuns think that they have been possessed by the devil because of Grandier's wrong-doings. He actually give them permission to debauch in order to frame Grandier. (You haven't lived until you've seen a bunch of naked nuns running around trying to have sex with anything that moves. The religious right hates this movie.) Russell does a really good job of bringing the past into the 70s. Yes, everything looks very 17th Century, but there is an aura about the film that sets it directly in the early 70s. (Especially the long-haired witch hunter who acts more like an extra from Hair than a priest.) He also brings his weird sense of fun to what could be a totally depressing story. With phallic shaped hypos squirting white, creamy liquid being used to exorcise her vaginally, this is an interesting and disturbing film. We're laughing at first and then getting suddenly very squeamish. When he chooses not to show something (which isn't often) it's even more disturbing. You just know that if Ken Russell won't show it it must be REALLY bad. Oh. Did I say fun? Well, as I said, it all goes to a very high yech! factor very quickly. From this movie I mainly learned that Ken really hates organized religion. Between this film and Tommy (and, to some extent his later Lair Of The White Worm and Crimes Of Passion) there are so many things to offend anyone who goes to church regularly that I'm not surprised that Mr. Russell has a hard time finding people to really like his films. Personally, I wasn't offended, but I didn't altogether like the film, either. It had its moments, but I just wasn't fully interested in the characters and I got bored after a while. But the performances were great, everything was done with a lot of flair (of course) and, like it or not, the film sticks with you for a while afterwards. It's worth it if you're a fan of exploitive, offensive films or Ken Russell. But, then again, those goes hand in hand. THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE I saw this one on the same day at The Devils. It was a Satanic night for me. This one, however, didn't try for offensive. It tried for creepy. And, boy, did it succeed. Guillermo del Toro (who now lives here in Austin, which I love telling people even though no one knows him…hopefully that will all change soon) brings us his new horror film. He says it's a Spanish Civil War story with a ghost in it. But the ghost had a pretty big role. Young Carlos is left at an orphanage after his parents are killed. Unfortunately he's given the bed of another boy who died a little while earlier. The other boys resent him for taking the dead boy's place. Luckily the boy finds solace in the presence of Prof. Casares (Federico Luppi from Men With Guns in a great performance) and Carmen (Marisa Paredes from Life Is Beautiful and All About My Mother), the two teachers at the orphanage. They are lovers, but the Professor has lost his ability to, um, satisfy. Enter (literally) Jacinth (Eduardo Noriega from Open Your Eyes). He is the bad guy of the movie. He may be with Conchita (Irene Visedo), but he fucks Carmen on the side even though she's older and only has one leg. Meanwhile, all of the kids are having adventures of their own. Carlos is being outcast by Jaime, an older and bigger boy who seems to be the leader. But Santi, the dead boy, is trying to get Carlos's attention. He appears to Carlos at night and tries to tell him something. Of course, like Haley Joel Osment's character in The Sixth Sense, he's too scared to get the message. After the success of Cronos everyone was waiting for del Toro's next film. Then came Mimic. Everybody forgot about him real quick. Now it's time for him to make his comeback. This movie rocks! Guillermo has brought us something that seems to have disappeared lately, an intelligent supernatural thriller. (Although I still haven't seen The Others. I hear that one's great, too.) The Spanish Civil War is a great backdrop to the story of the lonely orphans and the people who care for them. And he actually uses the time period. Of course, everything is helped along by the fact that there is nothing creepier than ghost children. Especially when they're saying things like "Many of you will die" in a low whisper. And, speaking of the kids, they were all great. Since there were so many I thought that a lot of them would be sub-standard. It's hard to find good kid actors these days. But all of these kids were great. And, even though there are a lot of kids in the cast, this is not a movie for them. There were quite a few kids in the audience. My first thought was, "Did these people see Mimic or Cronos?" No, this is a very adult thriller that just happens to center around a bunch of kids. Pretty damn violent. The only problem I almost had was the bad guy. He was almost too evil. BUT, unlike Titanic, it worked this time. He was still believable and hateable. (Hey, I'll create words whenever I want to. Shut up, Spell Check!) Also, maybe I'm stupid, but what did the title object have to do with anything? The Prof. showed Carlos a human fetus with an exposed backbone calling it the Devil's Backbone. What was the significance? Science vs. superstition? Pro-choice vs. anti-abortion? The Farrelly Bros. vs. good taste? What's up with that? But it was a great movie. The second best at the festival that I saw. I think everyone should check it out. You'll have to read because it's in Spanish, but fuck it. You only live once, right? It's a great flick. THE YOUNG AND THE DEAD Tyler Cassity is a man with a mission. He is out to make sure that the Hollywood Forever Cemetery is the #1 cemetery in Hollywood. And, so far, he's done it. This is a documentary about a young man who decided that cemetery work was for him at a fairly early age. He has brought the HFC out of bankruptcy and turned it into a money-making business using technology, patience and a lot of heart. He and his crew not only bury the dead, but they make mini-documentaries about their lives so that people who visit the gravesite can see just what these people were doing in life. It's an ingenious idea that has gotten them a lot of customers. On the other side of things is Forest Lawn Cemetery. They are very traditional and, actually, pretty damn cheesy. There are statues all over the place that actually talk to the visitors. When you walk into one of the cathedrals on property, you can push a button to listen to the history of the cathedral. And then a replica of The Last Supper appears right before your very eyes. That's just too much. I would want to run away from that place. This documentary is very Errol Morris-ish. It shows these obsessed people, but it never makes you think that they're really crazy. In fact, you kind of start to identify with them after a while. These guys are living their lives to the fullest while they are surrounded by death. In a way it reminded me of HBO's new show, "Six Feet Under." They are a family doing what they need to do to survive. And that involves burying people. By the end of this film everyone in the audience wanted to go out and LIVE. The only real problem anybody had with it was that it was too long. There were a couple of segments that could (and should) have been cut. We really didn't need to know about one of the guy's having an accident. It's a good human-interest thing, but it slowed the movie down to a crawl. And there was actually a little too much of the Rudolph Valentino memorial services that happen every year. It was interesting to a point, but we all got kind of bored with it. So check this out when it pops on HBO. It's well worth the sit down time. THE FORGOTTEN DISNEY Once upon a time, Walt Disney wasn't just a brand name. He was actually a very well respected animation kingpin. He did a lot of shorts that even such early film luminaries as Sergei Eisenstein were in awe of. What happened? Well, besides Walt's death, he started making feature length animated films. A lot of his shorts towards the end of the Silly Symphonies era (which only lasted from the early to mid-30s) ended up being experiments for Snow White. Then all of his attention was focused on the longer form. Some say that this was not what he wanted originally, that he actually liked his shorts better. Leonard Maltin and a few Disney experts brought 10 of these shorts to Telluride to watch and talk about. They are, for the most part, innocent little time capsules. There is no spoken dialogue (it's all sung if there is any dialogue) since the music is the important thing. It tells the story. Yet for all their innocence, there is a certain amount of reflexiveness of the times (Mae West, Bing Crosby and Harpo Marx all make appearance, in bird form, in Who Killed Cock Robin?) and a dark side (in The Three Little Pigs, one of the most popular cartoons of all time, there is a picture of "Father" on the wall…he's a link of sausage. "Uncle" is a football in the remake.) In the early days there was no dialogue, spoken or not. Hell's Bells, while simple as far as animation is concerned, was an anarchic, no story-line short that is just gag after gag. (These are the ones Eisenstein liked so much.) Then they started to bring stories in. When color was brought Disney's animators had to create new colors for shading. It had never been done before. The Old Mill also brought a new technology. It was the first to use a real close-in in animation. They used a 10 foot metal frame with glass cells that could be removed to allow the camera to move downwards towards the background. Now this is common place (and horizontally), but they were the first. The Goddess Of Spring was actually an embarrassment for the guys, but it was the first real test of human animation for the studio. (Animals were always used before because it's just easier. Humans are VERY difficult.) In preparation for Snow White they brought in someone who had done it before (I can't remember his name) and sort of succeeded. It's not all that great, but it wasn't too bad. And it's interesting to see their first experiments. Musicland is a really cool one that uses jazz and classical music to show different musical instruments in a fight over a couple of Romeo & Juliet type characters. A lot of fun. And then there's The Three Little Pigs. The song, "Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf" was never meant to be a hit, but it became a rallying cry during the Depression. The short ran for nearly 10 years. One place in New York actually drew beards on the pigs on the poster. They got longer as time went on. This was the first time that the characters were actually different from each other. Each pig had a separate personality and you can kind of tell what they were thinking. This is a version that hasn't been seen in a while, too. It had a joke that was deemed offensive during the big push for political correctness. The wolf shows up in a Jewish costume trying to get the pigs to buy a brush or something. Now it's back and all is, well, weird in the world. This cartoon was so popular that it was actually remade during WWII as The Thrifty Pig. The smart one built his house of Canadian War Bonds and the wolf was a Nazi. Other than that the two are almost identical. Both are pretty damn funny. Overall these are pretty cool. Not as good or funny as Warner's later cartoons, but they were probably more groundbreaking and just as important. Disney revolutionized the art of animation and kept topping himself. Watch for a DVD of the Silly Symphonies coming from Mr. Maltin sometime next year. THE FAT GIRL A couple of years ago I saw Catherine Breillat film Romance. Ok, so I saw it because I heard that it had a lot of explicit sex in it. So sue me. But I did see the Blockbuster version, so everything was cut out, dammit. But, you know, even with the sex (and there was still quite a bit of it) I was thoroughly bored. It just wasn't a very good movie. And most said it wasn't one of her best, so I'm not just stupid. But I figured I would give her another try with her new one. And I'm sort of glad I did. For the most part. This was actually a retrospective/tribute to Breillat, so it started out with a bunch of clips from her earlier films. That made me want to check out some of the older ones and even give Romance another try. Her new one, The Fat Girl, is about a couple of teenage sisters who are very close even though they fight quite a bit. Go figure. One of them, Elena, is a very pretty, sexually active virgin who wants to lose it to just the right guy. The other, Anais, is the girl of the title. She's not very attractive and she knows it. She's never been with a guy at all and she has no illusions about what her first time will be like. She wants it to be someone she can just fuck and forget. Just any guy will do. Their parents are pretty much absent. Oh, they're there, but they may as well not be. They don't really seem to care about their daughters too much. The family is on vacation and the girls are pretty much on their own. Elena and Anais meet Fernando (who looks like Ewen McGregor) and Elena is instantly in love. The two of them go through some pretty explicit scenes with Anais watching in another bed right next to them. That's gotta be disturbing. The relationship between the two girls is very well shown. They have a real love-hate thing going on. Mostly love, but they get on each other's nerves so easily that they can sometimes turn on the hate very quickly. And it's not just the writing. The girls are very good actresses. And their differing ideas of sex are explored with sensitivity and ease, just like it should be. It's not easy on them or us, but it seems to be easy for the filmmaker to show it. As the person who introduced the film said, "Sexuality is the adventure of young girls." We guys got off easy. We just wanted to roll around in the mud and climb trees. The girl had to find other ways to have adventures. And those were much harder. The problem with this film was the ending. It is a nearly pointless act of violence that leaves us devastated and wanting to beat the filmmakers. They make us love these characters and then they pull the rug right out from under us. Someone explained why it worked, but that only helped a little bit. I still thought it was only there to shock and make the entire theatre jump about six inches. (And they did. It was pretty amazing.) I don't think that Anais wanted to really HATE her first time. She just wanted to be indifferent to it. So watch this movie with a warning. It's very good, but the ending will kill it for you. MULHOLLAND DRIVE And now for the big premiere of the festival. It was a surprise to everyone when it showed up on the schedule a day or so into it. It's David Lynch's new film and, like all of his films lately, it is completely un-understandable to anyone outside of Lynch's mind. Betty (Naomi Watts from Tank Girl and Dangerous Beauty) is an all-American girl (funny since Naomi is British) who is trying to break into show business. She gets off of the airplane with her new friends, a pair of old folks who promptly creep us out with the too-wide smiles as they drive off out of the movie. (Or do they?) She stays in her aunt's apartment (landlorded by the semi-creepy Coco played by Lynch's latest career resurrection, Ann Miller) but soon meets another, more un-invited guest. Rita (Laura Harring from Exit To Eden and Little Nicky) is just lying on her aunt's bed. She makes Betty believe that she's a friend of her aunt's, when she is actually just getting out of a car wreck where she lost her memory. As the truth comes out, Betty and Rita set out to find out exactly where Rita came from and who she is. Throw in the world's most inept hitman, weird ties to a mysterious mob boss in an empty room, a director who doesn't want to change his cast (but he's forced to by a very funny and menacing Dan Hedaya), a mysterious box with a key, a character switch somewhere in the middle of the movie and a couple of Â¼ scale old people and you've got all the ingredients for a perfectly weird and inexplicable Lynch film. The first half of the film was like Blue Velvet. So much so that I could almost equate all of the characters to characters in that film. (Betty was both Laura Dern and Kyle MacLachlan. The director dude was Kyle all the way. Rita was Isabella Rossellini.) There was even seemingly a homage to the earlier (better) film when a woman started singing Roy Orbison's "Crying" in Spanish. VERY beautiful part of the film. Then it suddenly turned into Lost Highway, which is not really a good thing. I think everyone was with it until then. And what was Robert Forrester doing in this one? He was in it for about one minute, but he got pretty high billing! Totally wasted. In all fairness, this was going to be a tv series until ABC decided that it was too weird. So, about a year later, they finally got backing to finish it as a feature and filmed about half an hour more so that it had a real ending. That could explain the bizarreness of the whole thing. On second thought, no. Dave's just bizarre all on his own. The movie was cool, but it's just one big question mark. I really do wonder if David understands his own films. If you're a fan check it out. If not avoid it because it won't change you. BUT if you're a fan of lesbians you might want to check it out. The two leads get pretty down and dirty for a little bit. So that's it for Telluride flicks. It was fun while it lasted and I hope to be able to do it again next year.

Terrorism Strikes Deep In The Heartland

admin — Tue, 11 Sep 2001 17:00:00 +0000

What the FUCK can terrorists be thinking? They have got to be the stupidest people in the world. A cowardly, hopeless act of destruction and violence like this can only be done by people at the end of their ropes. Yes, they wanted to call attention to their cause…and they succeeded. BUT, we don't know what the hell their cause is. It's not like they left a calling card. And now other people are speaking up saying that they did it. Someone else is trying to take credit for their actions. That's gotta piss them off. But if they say anything they know that they're dead. They fucked with America. That's something you don't do. AND they fucked with an American symbol of commerce and capitalism. That's something you REALLY don't do. Especially when we've got a gun-totin', trigger happy oil man in office. He's libel to blow up the whole world just to get these 10-20 pricks who did this. Today a very horrible thing happened. (And that's an understatement.) Four commercial airliners were hijacked and plowed into three different places. The first was, of course, the World Trade Center (a symbol of our economic strength), which is no more. Who knows how many people are dead. The second was the Pentagon (a symbol of our military power), which is only partly torn up with about 100 casualties. The third was some field out in Pennsylvania (um, don't ask). Only the people on the plane died. This one some people think was meant for Camp David. Nice. This is the first time that something like this has really hit me. Usually I'm able to distance myself from it. "Oh. Oklahoma City? That's sad. A lot of people died. Sucks." And I don't mean to dehumanize what happened there, but it's just the way I was. It was like a movie. This, though. It may look like something out of Deep Impact (especially with all of the different angles that CBS keeps showing), but it's real. It's the World Trade Center. It's gone. Completely. 50,000 people working in two pillars of concrete and steel. Probably half of those people are gone with the Center. I'm at work as I'm writing this and everyone here is walking around in a bit of a daze. People are canceling meetings left and right. I had to be in a meeting for a couple of hours and was almost happy to get away from this unbelievable shit. Every time I see a news report, which is surprisingly often considering the fact that I'm at work, I get a lump in my throat, no matter how many times I see the Statue of Liberty almost get engulfed in smoke or a guy falling out of a 100th story window. This is a landmark that I had seen. I had walked around it. Even if I was in NYC for only two days, it was still a very big part of those two days. How could it not be? How cheap is life to these assholes? I know they think it's noble to die for their cause, but when we don't know what the cause is, what's the point? It was a lot of pointless deaths. Maybe they're scared of us because life is so precious to us. To them one or one million, it doesn't matter because we're all "going to a better place if we serve whoever it is we believe in." Fuck that. I want to live for a while. So did all of those people in the buildings and on the planes. If they really want to die for a cause, why don't they strap a bomb to themselves and walk out into the ocean, leaving a trail of papers saying who they are and why they died? That's MUCH more effective. How does something like this happen? We don't know. Nothing of this magnitude has ever happened to us. Not here at home. Not in America. Dan Rather called it the "Pearl Harbor of terrorism." (Not that Pearl Harbor wasn't an act of terrorism in and of itself.) This is something that has happened on our own soil. Something that shows us that we are indeed touchable. At least with Pearl Harbor, though, we knew exactly what was going on. We knew who to go after, what their cause was and where they were. This time we know nothing. (Unless, of course, the government knows something we don't. Highly likely. Tonight (I'm writing this in installments...I'm not at work now) there was bombing in Afghanistan. Who's doing it?) What would I say to these fuckheads? Watch your asses. You hit us in the "economy" and the "power", but they were just symbols. Now the Trade Center is our Alamo. You know what the Texans did after the Alamo? They trounced Santa Ana's ass at San Jacinto. And it's not only the U.S. you have to be weary of. No, you now have the whole world against you. It was, after all, the WORLD Trade Center. It was a part of world economy, not just American. And the other super powers of the world are on our side (for the most part, anyway). I don't care if you're the Libertarian's People's Front or the Front of the Libertarian People, we'll come after you when we find out who the hell you are. (And we've got an idiot in the White House who will probably try to sic Star Wars on you.) So you've done your job. You've scared us. You've gotten our attention. But now what? Are you going to show yourselves? Or are you going to make us guess like the cowards you are? You've done a terrible, terrible thing that completely undermines what you were trying to do. Now you're the bad guys to everybody. No one will hide you. No one will care. You're all alone. You're members of the walking dead. Fuck you. Life goes on. Now, those are some pretty strong words from such a peaceful guy as myself. You may be saying to yourself, "Mark! Do you want to start a war over this?" Of course not! War is NEVER the answer. Even killing one person is rarely ever the answer. And it probably wouldn't even be a good idea to kill these guys. More would just take their places and the dead guys would become martyrs. Those are the most dangerous kinds of leaders. What I mean by that is I know my fellow Americans. Things like this are exactly what brings out the Patriot in us all. We WILL band together behind some leader (although I highly doubt that that leader will be Dubya, but maybe we'll all be surprised) and rise up against our enemies in one way or another. (In a side note, Dan Rather actually had to say, "No matter what you may think of him…" about Georgie. Funny that we have to say something like that. And, is it me, or was George's "moment of silence" in Florida the shortest moment you've ever not heard? It wasn't even a moment. More like a sec.) Now all we can really do is pick up the pieces and go on. And wait for the first TV movie and cheesy tie-in pop song by Mariah Carey. So, as I look out on the Austin skyline, still in a state of shock in the late afternoon, I think about this catastrophe in NYC and the war zone that Lower Manhattan has become. And I think about what would happen if one of the buildings here were hit. And I think about all of my friends and family who would be affected by it. And I hope that we never have to worry about something like that ever happening here. I hope… (Of course someone would really have to hate live music and pretentious film geeks for that to happen.) And if you're wondering how I can still joke at a time like this, it's how I deal. Now you deal.

America Fights Back....In The Wrong Way

admin — Sat, 15 Sep 2001 17:00:00 +0000

Ok, so I've been hearing some pretty disturbing reports lately. And I don't just mean the fact there is a big gaping hole in New York City and that the Pentagon now only has four sides. And it's not even that we are now minus who knows how many thousands of lives in those two areas. No, the disturbing reports have to do with the fact that some of us are becoming our enemies. Yes. There are some normally peace-loving Americans who have taken it upon themselves to begin hating and hurting Arab-Americans. This, of course, will not stand. First off, as much as we all suddenly want the bad guy to be Osama Bin Laden, we're still not 100% sure that that's who it was who unleashed this hellish event on us. For all we know it could have been some terrorists of the more homegrown variety. That would be pretty fucking sick, but it still could be. It's happened in the past. So let's not forget that, whether they're wearing a turban or a baseball cap, everyone who lives here are, indeed, Americans. And they hate what happened just as much as you did. It doesn't matter if they're white, black, brown, purple, polka-dotted...whatever. There isn't even a full percentage point of Arab-Americans who agree with what the reasoning (whatever it is) behind the attack. One of the guys I work with who is from Iran was asked if he had gotten any grief from anyone. "Only from my wife." He's got a sense of humor about it, but he did end up saying, "Well, I know it's coming and we'll just take it as it comes." It pisses me off that he has to know it's coming. It shouldn't be a given. Yeah, we all want blood, but not American blood. And another thing, no one over here brought this on us. I don't care what Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson say. This is not about us "losing God." This is about someone who believes something different from us and deciding that we are wrong enough to kill. It may actually be religion based. If it is then it's still not God striking his hand down to smite us. It's someone who has a fucked up, twisted version of his own faith. In that case, it just goes to prove my theory. Religion is the one thing that has killed more people than anything else in the history of man. Now, it's all well and good for those who go for it as long as they realize that there are others who believe differently from them. No one is going to Hell for believing that Allah, God, Buddha or Paul McCartney is the end all-be all of Supreme Beings. Fuck Jerry and Pat for saying that Pro-Choicers, People for the American Way, Feminists, ACLU and other groups like that actually brought this on us by being "anti-God." None of those groups are anti-God. They are pro-freedom. That's something that J and P don't quite understand. There's a little thing in this country called "Freedom of Religion." Our fore-fathers may have been Christian (maybe), but they realized that not everyone was. And they also seemed to realize that those who weren't needed to be protected from those who were. THAT is why God has been "taken out" of the schools, government and other public places. Not everyone believes in a Christian god. If we try to force it down their throats they're libel to force something even more objectionable down our throats. The other day there was a memorial service held in the National Church in Washington D.C. (I think that's what it's called. Something like that, anyway.) They played it on one of our local radio stations (maybe all of them), and I was able to listen at work. One of the first speakers was a woman who told us that this was a house of worship for people of all faiths, whether they be Christian, Jewish, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, whatever. Now, her list was certainly not all inclusive. How could it be? But the one omission that was a very important one to say was Muslim. Not only is it the most prolific religion in the world, but it is the faith of Arabs. Muslim should have been the among the first mentioned to help send a message of tolerance. Whoever wrote her speech may have slighted an entire segment of the U.S. population. Even though I'm not a religious person at all, I still wanted to be at one of the services. That's what church really is: a place for people to share their grief, joy, sorrow and happiness. It's NOT a place for hate. At least it shouldn't be. And for those men and women out there who are helping to clean this mess up, I commend you. I wish that I could be there with you, but my stomach, heart and mind probably wouldn't be able to take it. I think I've said enough for one night. Here's an opinion from my friend who occasionally contributes to my site. He's much more eloquent than I am, so check out what he thinks about the whole thing. I think we're in agreement. My family wasn't in any serious danger regarding the recent kamikaze attacks on the land of the free and the home of the Atlanta Braves. My aunt and uncle live in Alexandria, VA, across from the capitol, but they were nowhere near the Pentagon. I E-mailed them to make sure, and they're okay. My brother lives in Boston now so he was probably closest to the action, since several of those planes took off from Boston. He might have passed them on the freeway. In fact, since the attack they've arrested a couple of people at a hotel he passes on his way to work every day. I know a a couple of people who live in Brooklyn, but they weren't even in the city at the time. So maybe the whole thing isn't such a PERSONAL personal thing for me, but of course, you don't have to lose a leg to hate car wrecks. Here are some of my main worries. First, no one knows for sure exactly who did this. No one seems to be entertaining the possibility that someone other than Bin Laden may have been responsible. When the building blew up in Oklahoma city, at first everyone thought it was the fault of middle-eastern terrorists. As it turns out, it was some military types with bizarro political axes to grind: a bunch of white-trash loonies as American as watery beer. And we may still not have captured all of those guys. While the police are out on the hunt for ethnic-looking guys with grudges, are they going to pay any attention to the McVeighs out there, or the abortion clinic bombers? I hope so but I doubt it. They're a bit too white to gain our attention now. And its much more fun to hunt down foreigners, isn't it? The truth is that we're more in danger of being blown into little tiny red pieces by homegrown terrorists than by swarthy, turban-sporting extras from an old Jon Hall/Maria Montez movie. There really is no difference, morally or otherwise, between the kind of bible-thumping freak who wants to blow up a family medical clinic to protect a fetus and the twisted sacks who blow themselves and the odd building up in a plane crash for Allah. But we love to play the race card, so we're going to go looking for the ay-rabs, perhaps creating opportunities galore for terrorists of the domestic variety. To be sure, Osama Bin Laden is one bad mother-scratcher. Sometimes he seems a bit TOO perfectly evil, however. Just like a Bond villain, he's a rich, well-educated and highly intelligent head case who once worked for OUR side (a la John Malkovich in IN THE LINE OF FIRE) against the reds in Afghanistan. All he needs is a mountain fortress....hey, I guess he kind of has one of those, too. Neither Shane Black nor Steven DeSouza nor any other of Hollywood's top hacks could have created such a perfect villain. And he's inspiring TV pundits and newspaper columnists to imitate movie tag lines like, "you don't know what America's made of, but you're about to learn." Is there a WAG THE DOG-type situation going on here, a crisis literally made up to jump-start an administration that still fights its (genuine) aura of illegitimacy? Well....probably not. Or at very least not entirely. But you can bet that the military-industrial complex is going to milk this for every penny they can squeeze out of us. They'll even use it as an excuse to fund dubya's death star program, though even if that money-waster worked it wouldn't have stopped what we all saw on TV the other day. Frighteningly for those who think that differences of opinion bring us closer to the truth, there don't appear to be many doubting Thomases in the media about what is now assumed to be our almost unanimous assumption-that this is entirely the fault of middle-eastern terrorists, with Osama Bin Laden at center square. And yes, Osama Bin Laden used to be on our side. Dude was a financial supporter and fighter for the Mujahadeen resistors who made monkeys out of the mighty Soviet army in the 80's when they tried what the Brits tried a century earlier without success-to conquer Afghanistan. Since he and the USA shared a mutual enemy, Bin Laden and his fundamentalist homeboyz were trained by the good old cee-eye-ay to fight the commies. He learned well, apparently-the CIA now seems to have trouble finding out where he lives. There's an old Buddhist saying: you create your own monsters. The evil whose name is Osama Bin Laden was in fact made to order in the US of A. In our zeal to defeat communism we made numerous pacts with numerous devils, and this one has come back to collect. I hope we don't make the same mistake with THIS war. Another big problem is the suspension of civil liberties that will inevitably occur after this, something that, again, both the government and the media are touting as a necessary evil. I don't mind not being able to take knives on airplanes and I certainly want higher-quality employees with thorough background checks behind them working airport security and the like. However, what does this mean as far as monitoring of E-mail messages, phone calls, etc? I live in Japan so I'm used to my phone calls being listened to by the feds (the NSA listens to ALL calls into/out of the USA and has for decades), but I'm not so sure I want them listening in on some of my messages to my girlfriend. Oh, its nothing illegal, but its just a bit embarrassing for people not sleeping with me to know what I say to someone who is. And what about lawyers talking to their clients and other cases where information legally HAS to remain confidential? Will that now be suspended? What about my medical records-does the CIA want to know about my visits to doctors in Japan, in case I may have had a grenade grafted to my colon? This big brother stuff is going to be a much more bitter pill to swallow than we think. There have been a lot of reports throughout America of assaults on middle-easterners and people of middle-eastern descent. They are assaulting innocent people......to protest the assault on innocent people. Why are there so many people willing to become the kind of monsters that they supposedly hate? My friend Pat, is an Iranian-American and he remembers back during the original hostage crisis people who had known him his whole life and never had a grudge with him started to hate him. I really feel for him and his family now, since they not only have the same worries as the rest of us, but they also have to worry about drunken rednecks chucking bricks at their house late at night in a fury of "patriotism." Times of crisis are said to bring out the best in people, but apparently it also brings out the worst. There are a million other issues that I must take as an American with an unusually contrary opinion, but I have to say that I am just as angry as anyone else is about this hole we've found ourselves in. I want blood too, but I want to know for sure that we're getting the right guys (or gals, on the off chance that this is the work of pissed-off lesbian separatists offended by the phallic majesty of those tall buildings). Just as the 2000 election and the coup that followed woke America up to the frailty of our democracy, so these acts show how secure from attack our country really isn't. I have to travel internationally at least twice a year, and I will never look at an airport the same way again. Or a building for that matter. Or a person.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

admin — Wed, 19 Sep 2001 17:00:00 +0000

Some people ask me how the fuck I can watch stuff like this. Well, first off, I have a very strong stomach for bloody, evil (and fake) violence. I have no idea where the hell that came from because none of my family likes stuff like that. Second, I just like the thrill of horror films. That split second of sheer terror that comes from some masked madman jumping out from behind a couch with a knife. Of course it's always a little more lasting when that guy is actually scary, like Michael Myers and not just stupid like Jason Vorhees. Third, a couple of friends of mine are REALLY into this sort of stuff and they got me into it. (Especially the guy who is actually going to be reading this. Thanx, man. Thanx a lot.) Now, for the main event at hand. I can just see the casting call for this movie. "Must not mind being bare-ass naked and having horrible, nasty, painful things done to their genital area." Of course, that is pretty much the casting call for any real cannibal film. This one is the one that started and ended it all. Yeah, by 1979 there were a lot of cannibal flicks out there and there were even more afterwards. But this one was the most horrific and disturbing of the bunch and, as such, it has built up quite a cult following. Being kind of hard to find doesn't hurt that status, either. Imagine my shock when this little gem (!?) showed up on the menu (pun intended, of course) at the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin. It came complete with "real cannibal food!" (That consisted of Cream of Sum Yung Guy (ha-ha), Handburgers, and German Sausage Links--made with real, young German boys!) The movie starts with beautiful shots of S. American jungles and some very "nice" music. (It's actually really cheesy, but it's supposed to be soothing.) I guess this is all here to lull us into a false sense of security. It almost worked. Maybe if I hadn't known what was going to happen eventually... The story is reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project. (I guess maybe that should be the other way around, huh?) Four documentary filmmakers go to South America to seek out the jungle cannibals. As they get deeper into the jungle things start to go wrong. Their guide gets killed by a snake, they get lost and then they start to go a little crazy. Jack, Alan and Mark decide that they want to torment the natives a little and, for the most part, Faye (Alan's girlfriend) gets in on the action. When the filmmakers go missing an old professor of theirs, Harold, goes after them with a couple of guides who actually know what the hell they're doing. They have to recover the footage of these guys' fates. Due to the guides intelligence they secure the trust of the natives and don't get eaten. When Harold gets back to New York he has to decide whether or not to release the material. Of course the sensationalistic producers want all of it out there complete with dramatic music (which it isn't...it's kind of dumb, but soothing in a way) and fancy editing. What they don't know is exactly why the kids were killed. This is where we see the most graphic and disturbing footage of the whole film. Now, anyone who is into this sort of thing will love the actual cannibal scenes. They're shot with full-on graphic-ness so that we get to see every detail. What most of us DON'T like are the scenes of animal cruelty, because we all know that those are real. (This movie was actually banned in its native Italy because of this. Why is it that all zombie/cannibal flicks seem to come out of Italy? Someone should write a dissertation about that someday.) These guys really did cut up a giant turtle and pull out its innards. They really did stick a knife in a muskrat. That was probably the most disturbing part of the whole movie, with a close second being the "rape with a rock" scene. (This was not done by the filmmakers, it was a punishment by the natives for adultery. But, in a sense, it was done by the kids.) This ain't no Cannibal! The Musical. Suffice it to say that by the end of their footage I wanted the kids to die. So how was the movie itself? Well, the acting was really bad, some of the "natives" were suspiciously Caucasian and the direction was, well, ok. Not a great film by any means, but if you're into this sort of flick see it. It is kind of the Holy Grail of cannibal films. It wasn't as graphic and bloody as I thought it would be, but I can't really imagine it being much worse. By the way, the documentary footage of the Vietnamese assassinations that were supposedly faked by Alan were actually real. This was supposed to be director Ruggero Deodato's (legendary Italian director of such "masterpieces" as The Last Cannibal World (aka Jungle Holocaust), Atlantis Inferno, Straight To Hell and Body Count--none of which have I seen) version of irony. I don't know that he really succeeded, but there you go.

America Tries To Heal

admin — Sat, 22 Sep 2001 17:00:00 +0000

For the first time we heard something a couple of days ago that we never thought we'd hear: George W. Bush sounding like a real leader. He didn't sound too much like he was saying, "I'll show THEM that I'm compassionate." (which he's been sounding like ever since he took office). And that ever-present smirk was held back far enough that some people may not have noticed it. But he actually said some intelligent things, too. Things like the fact that we're not after all Muslims in the Middle East, only the ones who promote violence...something most of us already knew, but we weren't entirely convinced that the government did. He also said that the people who kill and commit violent acts in the name of Allah blaspheme His name, because the Muslim faith is a very peaceful faith. Truer and more forceful words have never come out of his mouth. Did Ben Stein start writing presidential speeches again? But this isn't what I originally came here to talk about. What I wanted to talk about is our healing process. For the first time in the lives of my generation we are uncertain. Oh, we've all had our moments: "Will my job last?" "Do I have enough money to get by?" "What will my future kids think about this?" "When will Sting find his talent again?" But now we're asking more difficult questions. Questions like, "What will happen to our country?" "Will we have to live in fear for the rest of our lives?" "Why did this happen?" Goddammit, we're scared. And we have every reason to be scared. This is something we haven't seen since Pearl Harbor, and, horrible as that was, even that wasn't as tragic as this. This was over 5,000 innocent, peaceful people, not a few hundred military men. But what happens when we do start this war? This isn't a typical war, as the President said. This is a war with a small group of people who know how to hide. Some of them our own CIA trained, so that makes it even more difficult to ferret them out. We can't just go in with bombers or missiles because then we'll only hit the innocents. And that will cause all kinds of hell with the governments of even the countries who support us. Unfortunately we have to go in with ground troops. That means that we send our guys into their midst and a bunch of them get killed by the millions of guys who really know the desert. And, if this becomes a Holy War, then we might be screwed at first. That's when it will become a World War. And that seems unfortunately likely. But that's not even what really scares me (although it frightens the fuck out of me that Pakistan has the Bomb even if they are on our side for now). What really gets me is the fact that these guys aren't afraid to come over here. We've already seen what they can do with a couple of airplanes. We had better be SUPER-secure if we start killing these guys. Otherwise they'll come over here with a couple of trucks and we'll be minus even more buildings. And they are the most dangerous kind of enemy: the kind who aren't afraid to die for their "cause." One guy with a bomb strapped to himself could take out a hundred of our guys. I don't mean to be all doom and gloom over this, but these are the things we have to be ready for. We're going to lose a lot of our guys over there and possibly some people over here. These guys will fight until their very last guy is dead. And if any of them are left alive they will just keep bringing in new recruits, possibly whose brothers were killed. And we all know what that means. But there is a ray of hope in all of this. It's a long shot, but my thoughts on what this could lead to is a new form of peace the likes of which we have never known. Maybe not total world peace, but the closest we've had in hundreds of years. You laugh, but as we speak the Palestinians and the Israelites have a cease-fire going for the first time in many, many years. Countries all over the world, even ones who were very precariously on our side, are now our allies. In London the changing of the Royal Guard was done to our National Anthem using our flag. People in Germany were waving our flag. Hell, even the major networks worked together on a telethon for the victims of NYC and Washington D.C. If we can (and this is stretching it A LOT) end terrorism that would take out a lot of the wars around the world. The Taliban is the sponsor of a lot of them, and that is mainly what we're fighting. But enough with my flights of Lennonian fantasy. Right now we're just trying to come to terms with what happened. And our celebrities are trying to help as much as possible. If you check out www.cbs.com's David Letterman page you can go to Dave's Monologue and watch how he reacted. My God. I have never seen anything more heartbreaking in my life. He comes so close to breaking down throughout the speech that I thought he was going to have to leave the stage. A couple of paraphrased highlights, as it were. "We're told that people who did this were zealots fueled by a religious fervor. A religious fervor. If you live to be 1,000 years old will that make a bit of sense to you. Will that make a goddamn bit of sense." "We've lost over 5,000 fellow New Yorkers. And you can feel it. You can feel it and you can see it. And it's terribly sad." Smokey Robinson was right. There is nothing sadder than the tears of a clown. Everytime I think about any of Dave's speech I nearly get choked up. It hurts to watch, but it was more comforting and healing than anything our government has said in the past two weeks. If CBS has any sense they will keep this on the site for a long, long time. Even David Bowie, who lives in NYC now, wrote something on his website (www.bowie.net if you don't know) about the resilience of the New Yorkers and how utterly sad it is to walk the streets. When Ziggy Stardust starts showing emotion you know something horrible has just happened. And through all of this Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has stood tall and made us feel like we can go on, New Yorkers or not. If Bush screws things up and doesn't get a second term (which I hope to God he doesn't screw things up, but I also don't want him in a second term) I would not be surprised if this guy was forced to run. So it's time to pick up the pieces and find a way to go on. Even after almost two weeks it's hard. I've done my best and am able to actually forget about it for brief, very brief seconds while I work, write, live and, yes, even laugh. But there's always this little thing in the back of my mind thinking, "5,000. Gone." And I must be a good actor, because no one seems to be able to tell. And I would be lying if I said that I wasn't scared for the future, because I am. But I just keep on hoping that the Powells and the Rumsfelds in our government can keep a handle on the Bushes and the Ashcrofts. This is something we don't want to go wrong. If some of this is rambling keep in mind that I, just like David Letterman said, have to hear myself speak in order to make sense of some things. And it doesn't always work. Yes, my website has turned into somewhat of a journal. Sorry 'bout that.

Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back

admin — Sun, 30 Sep 2001 17:00:00 +0000

It's good to know that, after five movies, a character hasn't changed a bit. But first, let's have some previews. NOVOCAINE--Steve Martin's new flick looks to be a pretty cool murder comedy, the directorial debut of the writer of one of the strangest movies I've ever seen, Arizona Dream. His name is David Atkins and I'm interested to see what he can do. Even more interesting is the fact that Danny Elfman wrote the theme and his old Oingo Boingo pal, Steve Bartek, wrote the score. But I can't wait to see Steve in his second turn as a dentist. He was awesome the last time, but, of course, the character's a little different this time. This time he's accused of murdering someone and he's (I think) having an affair with Helena Bonham Carter while his wife (Laura Dern) tries to figure out if he is, in fact, fucking someone else. Hope it's good. THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS--So Wes Anderson has (hopefully) another masterpiece coming out. This one looks every bit as good as Rushmore, and we all know how I LOVED that movie. (Almost enough to marry it.) This time out he's made a movie about everyone's family. Only this family happens to be filthy rich and everyone's a genius. After the kids are all grown up, the father (Gene Hackman) brings them all back together to try to make things right after years of being a total dick to them. With a cast including Hackman, Angelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, all THREE Wilson boys, Bill Murray, Danny Glover and Alec Baldwin how could this go wrong? I've already heard that it's the best thing Mr. Anderson has done, so I'm all over it like stink on a loading dock. Great preview, too. And now it's time for the Big Cahoona. The film of the summer. The last in the View Askewniverse. Yes, you read that right. This is the last time we will ever see Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) together. This time out, after getting a restraining order put on them by Randal (Jeff Anderson) they can't hang out in front of the Quick Stop anymore. So they try to hang out at Brodie's (Jason Lee) Secret Stash. He tells them that they should be rich from the movie being made about Bluntman And Chronic, the characters they were the basis for in Holden (Ben Affleck) and Banky's (Jason Lee) comic book. So, of course, they run to Holden's, yell at him (at least Jay does), and find out that, not only does he not have any rights to the characters anymore (he sold them all to Banky), but people on the internet ("What the fuck's the internet?") have been bashing Bluntman and Chronic ever since the movie was announced. They decide that they have to go to Hollywood and stop the movie from being made so that they can get laid in peace. This they now do. Go to Hollywood, that is. Not get laid. Along the way they meet up with George Carlin, Carrie Fisher, the Scooby Gang (in a funny, but obvious bit), Shannon Doherty, and a whole slew of other guest stars. (And let me tell you something. There's nothing quite so disturbing as hearing Mark Hamill say "Cocknocker.") They also meet up with a gang of animal activists that is made up of 4 beautiful women (Elizabeth Shannon, Eliza Dushku, Ali Larter and Jennifer Schwalbach Smith (Kevin's wife)) and one really dopey guy (Seann William Scott, sounding like he was doing a Jim Carrey impression throughout his part). Will Jay finally get the girl of his dreams? Will Silent Bob get the ape of his dreams? Will they stop the movie from being made? Will they go out in a blaze of glory? Well, let's put it this way: This is the funniest fucking movie I've seen all summer! Yes, finally, there was a movie that kept me laughing the whole way through, and it wasn't unintentional laughter. The thing about this movie is that you kind of have to have seen the other four (at least the three that took place in Jersey: Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy) to get all of the jokes, but it's not absolutely imperative. The characters that show up from the other flicks are introduced in a way that keeps the newbies from being left out in the cold, but it doesn't explain so much that we feel like we're being beat over the head with them. And since part of the movie takes place in Hollywood there's room for all sorts of Hollywood jokes, especially at the expense of Miramax. Some work and some fall a little flat, but most are pretty damn funny (although there was a little too much winking at the camera...almost literally). There are plenty of cameos to keep the star watchers interested, too. (Watch for Eli Marienthal (Stifler's brother from American Pie and the voice of Hogarth from The Iron Giant) and a certain horror director who is returning a favor.) A lot of the cameos even go so far as to make fun of themselves. Ben and Matt send themselves up hilariously (so, Ben, how many dead hookers have been "disappeared" from your trailer) and it looks like Gus Van Sant is so busy counting his money that he doesn't have time to direct anymore. And I never thought I would laugh at anything that James Van Der Beek ever said unless it wasn't supposed to be funny. Apparently he (and Jason Biggs, too) has a great sense of humor about himself. What were the problems? Well, the aforementioned winking was a bit much. Chris Rock's Chaka Luther King (the director of Bluntman And Chronic) was maybe a bit too militant. And then there's Will Ferrell. Will, Will, Will. What do you do with a problem like Will? Well, first of all, STOP CASTING HIM!!!! He just wasn't funny in this at all. His version of an inept federal wildlife marshal was insulting to inept people. I think I laughed at him once, and it was because Will himself was so stupid, not the character. Why do people insist on calling him funny? One character (Mustafa in Austin Powers) doesn't make him a comedy institution. He just always seems to be reaching for laughs instead of just grabbing them when he can. Other than that the performances were probably better than any of the other Kevin Smith flicks. Jason Mewes seems to have learned how to act a bit (although he did kind of break character in the final credits scene, but they were just partying, so who cares?). And Shannon was the epitome of the cute girl who starts falling for the big, dumb lug. Hell, I was falling in love with her. Then again, that's not that hard. Any girl who likes it when you call her "Boo-boo kitty fuck" has to be cool, right? But seeing Jason Lee in both parts I started to realize that both of his characters are a lot more similar than I thought. So we learned a lot from this movie. We learned the origins of Jay and Silent Bob (watch for Kevin's son as young Silent Bob), how far Bob would go to stay out of jail (thanks to Diedrich Bader's (The Drew Carey Show) character) and how far Jay would go for a ride. And, of course, Jay learned a lot about women. Oh, and Kevin learned how to move the fucking camera! Not only did he get a budget again (there was a big explosion and quite a few special effects), but the camera looked like it might have been handled by a real filmmaker! He's come a long way since Clerks. It'll be interesting to see what he does next now that this is all over. I, personally, can't imagine what he could do except for maybe some underground comic movie. I guess we'll have to see. I'll definitely be in line for it.

Hearts In Atlantis

admin — Fri, 05 Oct 2001 17:00:00 +0000

One note to the theatres: LOWER THE FUCKING PRICES!!!!!!! NNNNNOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!! Hmmm. Do previews sound good? Only when the sound is turned on. K-PAX--What would happen if E.T. had been played by Kevin Spacey and he went to a psychiatrist played by Jeff Bridges? Well, we're going to find out pretty soon because that's the basic premise here. And strangely that doesn't look like a bad thing because, unlike E.T., we don't know for sure if he's an alien or not. We just really want him to be. Plus Kevin is a MUCH better actor than that little brown potato. Any movie with these two guys is worth seeing at least at matinee price. I'm all over it. RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS--After you get over the absolute dumbness (and awkwardness) of the title this looks like it could be a cute movie with some heart string pulling and some patented Drew Barrymore slapstick. The problem is that it reminds me too much of the Natalie Portman debacle Where The Heart Is with a few shades of Drew's not so much good Home Fries thrown in just to annoy the hell out of us. And what time period does this take place in? In the high school days she looks oh-so-60s, but in her married to Steve Zahn days she looks like 90s white trash, which I guess could still be 60s. Well, I'll give it a shot on video just because I like Drew and Steve. Not a lot of hope for it, though. (Although there are some laugh out loud funny parts of the preview.) HEIST--I've probably said something about this one before, but it's David Mamet, so I'll say it again. This movie looks AWESOME! A Mamet action film. (Actually, the action probably takes place over about two minutes of screen time, so let's not get our hopes up.) And we've got Danny DeVito, Gene Hackman, Delroy Lindo, Ricky Jay and Rebecca Pidgeon. What could go wrong? Well, Sam Rockwell, but we won't hold that against Dave. This looks great and I can't wait. And I'll try to never rhyme again. HARRY POTTER--Ok, so I admit it. I took the plunge and read the book. And, as much as I hate to admit this, it was good. (Hey, it had shades of Star Wars. What can I say?) And now the previews are starting to look really good. They've always been interesting, but this new one looks, well, nearly magical. Maybe Chris Columbus can make a good movie again! One quibble: the kid playing Harry, while he looks EXACTLY like Harry on the cover, doesn't seem too excited by what's going on around him. There's only one shot of him where his eyes are wide in wonder. The rest are of him looking like he's trying to be shocked, but he looks really tired. His eyes are kind of drooping. I hope that's just something in the preview and he fixed it for the rest of the flick, but it's in an awful lot of shots. I'll still be there for it, though, fighting the hordes of kids. (That's scarier than anything Harry had to face.) And now the real film. Stephen King has always had a certain love of the early 60s and childhood. He's great at conveying the time period and the friendships that develop at that time in our lives. Just look at his best work (I think), "The Body." That story is a prime example of his gift. Lots of description and four boys who are so well drawn that it's almost hard to tell if we remember them from the book or our lives. That gift is in full force with Hearts In Atlantis. The book is broken up into five sections (I'm actually in the middle of the fourth right now.), the first of which, "Low Men In Yellow Coats," is what this movie is based on. The whole book is about Vietnam and its impact on the people who lived through it. Pretty lofty for a pulp horror writer, but Mr. King has at times risen himself above that rather dubious title. "Low Men," however, takes place a few years before we even knew where Vietnam was on the map even though we already had a few soldiers thinking about going over there. In 1960 Bobby (Anton Yelchin) has just turned 11 and gotten a very special gift from his mother. He just doesn't know it yet. It's an adult library card. Now he can check out things like Steinbeck, Welles, Lord Of The Flies, whatever. What really changes his young life is the new neighbor, Ted Brautigan (Anthony Hopkins). This strange old man opens up a whole new world to Bobby and his friends, Carol (Mika Boorem from The Patriot, and Mighty Joe Young) and Sully-John (Will Rothhaar from Jack Frost and Kingpin). A world of literature, mystery and a deeper meaning. And a world of the Low Men. The Low Men (minus the Yellow Coats for the movie) are men who are, for some reason, after Ted. They leave signs up around town for lost pets and things as signals that they are coming. And worst of all, they can feel you. They know when they're close to Ted or Bobby. Ted and Bobby strike up an instant and deep friendship. And Ted lets Bobby in on some of his secrets, such as his psychic gifts (and Bobby even shares some of them for a while). But he doesn't tell him everything. He only tells him to be on the lookout for the Low Men and he'll give him a dollar a week for doing that and reading the newspaper to him every day. When Bobby's mom (Hope Davis from Arlington Road and The Daytrippers), who doesn't trust Ted as far as she could sling a piano (one of her favorite phrases), has to leave town for the weekend she has no choice but to leave Bobby in Ted's care. That's when things take a turn for the worse. Now, in the book there are some really weird supernatural things going on, including a reference to King's on-going series, The Dark Tower. It seemed to come out of nowhere at the end and I was hoping that they would tone it down for the movie. Luckily, they did. (The Low Men seem to just be FBI guys or something in the movie.) I went into this movie expecting big things. We've got a great story, a good director (Scott Hicks who did the excellent Shine a few years back), a great screenwriter (William Goldman who wrote Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, Princess Bride, Misery and lots of other classics) and some great actors (Hopkins and Davis). And I had heard that the kids were also great. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when NONE of the characters were very well developed and I couldn't get into any of the relationships. Hell, Sully-John was only in the movie for about five minutes. Granted, he wasn't involved in the main action of the story, but there was a reason for it. A lot of what happened wouldn't have happened if he had been there. BUT he was still an important friend to Bobby and Carol. They were an inseparable trio. The movie starts to develop that and then just lets if fall away. And even Bobby and Carol didn't seem as close as they were in the book. The movie starts with an adult Bobby (David Morse) going to Sully's funeral back in the hometown (shades of Stand By Me) and finding out that Carol also has died. He breaks down. Then we start the flashback. I never really got the sense that this summer is why he broke down. Yes, she was his first love, but Morse's narration did more to invoke that feeling than anything the kids did. There were only two scenes devoted to this. The rest hardly even dealt with Bobby and Carol. There were plenty of scenes with Bobby and Ted, but even that relationship was a little weak. It may be hard to show a child/grown-up friendship these days with all of the molestation stories going around, but there has to be a way to show that it exists. The filmmakers seem to think that showing Bobby try to hug Ted is enough to show that they love each other. There's got to be more than that. And why didn't Ted like to be touched? They talked about it a little, but not enough to really understand. And did Bobby's mom seem as distrustful as she should have been to commit her final act of desperation/betrayal? Not really. She didn't seem to really NEED to leave town, either, so it was a little weird that she would leave her kid with this guy who she doesn't trust and made allusions to him maybe molesting Bobby. There was true desperation in the book. In the movie it just seemed like stupidity. Most of the performances were ok with Hopkins', of course, being the best. He is understated and poised throughout bringing a heart and pain to the character. The kids, on the other hand... I'm not sure who said that Anton was "amazing" as Bobby, but I think they must have been watching another kid. This kid was no better than any other child actor, falling prey to the old trap that they all fall into at one time or another. He is self-conscious and tries to find something to do with his hands. Sometimes he just kind of leaves them hanging in the air for no apparent reason. He kind of reminded me of Fred Savage in the first few episodes of The Wonder Years. Not so good. And Will as Sully-John was even worse. Mika was the best of the bunch, though. She almost gave me faith in child actors again. She might actually go on to have a real career here. (For those of you thinking that I'm being a little harsh on the kiddos, sorry. Can't be gentle just because of their ages. I have to be an equal opportunity offender. Actually I know that kids have a harder time of it than adults, so hopefully they'll grow out of their awkwardness. They could have potential, it just didn't show in this movie.) I think the main problem with this movie was that it was about an hour too short. There needed to be A LOT more development. And remember, I'm still reading the book, so I'm still emotionally involved with the characters. I care about them. They are my literary friends at this point. So I should have been even more susceptible to caring about them here. Well, I didn't. And that blame should go squarely on Goldman's shoulders. Lately he's been on an inverse roll. The General's Daughter? Absolute Power? The Chamber? What's he thinking? Can he still write? And why is it that some writers think they have to change minute details? Bobby's dad's name was not Bobby in the book. It was Randy. Why change it? That's just weird. Let's hope that someone else picks up the second and best story of Hearts In Atlantis. Maybe Rob Reiner or Frank Darabont since they seem to be the only ones who can do anything with King's non-horror stuff.

Meanwhile, One Month Later...

admin — Thu, 11 Oct 2001 17:00:00 +0000

So it's been a month since our nation took a hit in the balls and we're still recovering. We're still scared, but we're almost able to stop thinking about it long enough to have some fun. Even Jay and Dave are making jokes about things connected to the tragedy. Not the tragedy itself, but Bin Laden, airplane security, stuff like that. Of course, some people have crossed a line that none of us knew was there before Sept. 11. Gilbert Gottfried found out the hard way when he got booed (not that that hasn't happened before) when he said that his airplane, which was supposed to be a straight trip to LA, had to make a stop at the Empire State Building. Pretty fucking bad, huh? And yet I thought it was kind of funny. Am I a bad person? No. I just deal with things differently. Sorry, but, yes, my friends and I have made some pretty crass jokes about all of this. None that I would make in more (ahem) polite company because I know their place. Now, for the big question: is comedy still a functioning part of our society? Is irony still alive? Will The Daily Show ever go back to making fun of everything? The answer: a resounding "YES!" Not right away, of course. I haven't watched The Daily Show since the attack, but I hear that it's just gotten sillier and less pointed. That's fine for now, but things will go back to "normal" probably within the next year. We'll be sensitive for a while and we won't make fun of the president (too bad...he's still not worthy imho), but it will come back. What is probably keeping it from coming back is the kid gloves that everyone is treating things with. Things like editing the World Trade Center out of shots of the NYC skyline. They cut it out of Zoolander, Spider Man and a bunch of other flicks. Glitter didn't cut it out and it got what was probably the only applause that movie ever got. Other movies have postponed their release dates because they take place in NYC. The Sidewalks Of New York won't come out until November because of it. "New Yorkers aren't ready to be funny yet." Are you kidding? They may not be ready, but they need it. Serendipity, another NYC based romantic comedy, came out on time and it's becoming quite the hit. A friend of mine went to see Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back the day the day of the attacks. He just needed to get away from all of the bad news. It may have hampered his enjoyment of the movie, but it was part of his healing process. Get the hell away from it for an hour and a half and just enjoy yourself. I saw the movie a couple of weeks after and, even with the many references to terrorism in it, I loved it. I laughed my ass off. Now other decisions have been ok (the postponement of Collateral Damage...I know we're not ready for that...but were we ready for it before the attack?), but others have just been dumb. They changed the poster of The Last Castle because there was an upside-down American flag in the background. That's something that I bet a lot of (intelligent) people wouldn't have thought anything about. They would not have thought, "Oh, this is an unpatriotic movie. Fuck it!" They would have thought, "Oh, these guys in this picture must have some issues. Fuck 'em. Let's see the movie." We need escape. That's what movies are for and that's what we all see them as. We go to a different world. We get the hell out of this fucked up world that we're living in right now. Movies, music, books, whatever. That's what we need most right now. A friend of mine who is working on films said that he felt like he was wasting his life making these stupid little movies while kids his age are about to go risk their lives to protect our freedom. Well, in my opinion, what we filmmakers (and I know I'm a little presumptuous in including myself in that group, but fuck it, this is my website) are doing is just as important. We're showing that freedom will live on no matter what they do to us. And we're giving people hope. Someday we'll even make this whole thing seem real to kids who weren't alive when it happened. (Hopefully in something better than Pearl Harbor, though. And will Dubya be a hero in it? More on that later.) So I was sitting here tonight listening to my roommate lament the fact that Bush was talking while Friends was supposed to be on. (Either a comment on how much we need entertainment right now or a comment on my roommate. Not sure which.) But I was also listening to Bush speak. First off, they should never let him answer questions off the cuff. He sounds like he's looking for the answers on someone's lapel. Second, why is he waging war on a large plantation from an old four hour soap opera of a movie? What did that house ever do to him?! And third, I keep expecting him to say, "Because there is no 'I' in 'Amercu'!" But enough about his speech impediment. (Although I am a Texan, my accent isn't THAT bad. God, I hope not.) As I was listening to him take great pride in the new office that he thinks he created and all of the things that the government is now doing to protect us (he said that about 50 times, none of them really comforting me) I couldn't help thinking about some of the things that I've read lately. Things like the fact that Clinton tried to take a lot of the precautions that we are now taking in case we're attacked again (and, unfortunately, I have no doubt that we will be attacked again). Precautions like the Office of Homeland Defense and the heightened airport security. And guess who stopped him. The Republicans. They said that this was an imaginary fear that we didn't need to pay any attention to. Some are calling it treason that they're lying and trying to blame all of this on poor Clinton. I don't know about that because I'm not that militant, but it is pretty bad. I try to support whoever is in office (although I'll give him A LOT of hell), but it's hard with these guys. Especially after watching Duck Soup again and realizing that, as much as I love Groucho, he reminds me of Dubya in that movie. ("If any form of pleasure is exhibited, report to me and it will be prohibited. And so shall it be, this is the land of the free!" "Americans better watch what they say and watch what they do." Not too different. And, yes, I know Bush didn't say that, but it was one of his cronies who is really running this show.) Is this the time to rail at the king? Well, actually, yes! This is the exact time! If the emperor has no clothes, by God we should tell him. We should make it known that not all of us totally agree with everything that's going on right now. Do I agree with the military action? Well, I knew that we had to do it at some point. The problem is that we may not be doing it right. I'm very glad that we're trying to be careful and not kill any innocents. The problem is that the Taliban are telling their people that we ARE killing thousands of innocents. How do we block that? How do we make sure that, even if we kill Bin Laden, that someone else even worse won't take his place? How do we know that Hussein isn't behind a lot of this? I guess we're doing all we can do, but it doesn't seem like it's right. The food drops are a nice try, but a lot of people think that's a bad idea because a lot of them get dropped into minefields. People are dying to get food. Mainly kids. Not to mention the fact that some of the food packs look like mines and now people are being told, "Well, they could be mines, but they could be food. Take your chances." And of course these fucking people who are saying, "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." aren't helping a damn thing. My friends, that has got to be the most wrong-headed, ignorant thing I have ever heard in my entire life. It sounds like something one of those terrorist fucks would say. Yes, you're dropping down to their level. I actually heard a guy say today, "They're pissed off that we're killing innocents. Too bad. We should kill more." Now, of course, this was a piece of white trash saying this, but it hurts to hear that sort of shit. I can't believe that some of my fellow Americans are actually thinking this way. You remember that little thing called The Enlightenment? Yeah. Life is precious. All life. Even the lives of people not in your country. There is, however, one man whose life isn't precious to me anymore. (I know it was a man. No woman would be that dumb or sadistic.) He is the man who did this to us. Whoever he is, Bin Laden or not, he is the biggest piece of shit on this planet and should probably die for his crimes. Yes, Mr. Peace is saying that. But fuck him. He did something that I never thought was possible. Every time I see a plane go over my city I watch it hoping that it's not going into a building. Every time I hear someone scream (even in laughter) I cringe a little bit. Every time someone around me sneezes I worry a little bit. (Although I don't think the Anthrax "outbreak" really has anything to do with this...besides, who cares if those guys get back together? They'll disappear again. They suck.) He took away my security. He took away my innocence. Damn him.

The Others

admin — Sat, 13 Oct 2001 17:00:00 +0000

How do you get creepy without the use of special effects? Well, first you think of Roseanne Barr naked. Then, after that creepiness wears off, you build suspense with an intelligent story, great actors, near-perfect direction and an unobtrusive score. But I get ahead of myself. First we'll creep into some previews: THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO--I have been trying to read this book for about three or four years now. I can't seem to finish it not because it's bad (au contrar, it's actually very good), but because the language is a little different from what I'm used to. Not to mention the fact that the copy I'm reading has very tiny print and very thin paper, so it never seems like I'm getting anywhere. So I put it down for a year or so after reading about 50 pages. Luckily they're making a movie of it. (Not that they've never done that before, but this one I'll actually see at some point.) Also luckily they've cast Guy Pearce, Richard Harris and Jim Caviezel. (But what's Luis Guzman doing here? Love the guy, but is this his sort of flick? Let's hope so.) Possibly on the unlucky side is the direction by Kevin Reynolds. What was the last good movie he did? I don't think Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves counts, although I kinda liked it. Fandango was great, but that was way back in 1985. Now he's too busy fighting with that other Kevin on the set of Waterworld and trying to direct Sam Jackson in 187. Not much of any interest. I hope he can do this justice, but I'm not holding my breath. A review on the IMDb already says that it was nothing special. Oh well. Better luck next time. IRON MONKEY--Ok, I'm cheating here. I've seen this one. But I want to take the opportunity to plug it to you if you haven't seen it. (Although I know that my audience of one has already seen it, so what the hell am I doing?) This is one of the best martial arts flicks I've ever seen. It's a prequel to the Once Upon A Time In China series and is just as exciting, if not more so. There are no real stars in it that we know of (although Donnie Yen is pretty big over in Hong Kong), so I'm a bit surprised by it's big release over here. But it is awesome. And don't be so quick to judge because there's a kid in it. Sze-Man Tsang, who plays young Wong Fei-Hung (Jet Li's character in OUTIC) is a VERY good martial artist. And he's not whiny in the least, as about half of the child actors in Hong Kong tend to be. So check it out if you're into martial arts flicks. You won't get much better. BONES--A hip-hop horror movie. Didn't they try this back in the early 90s with Def By Temptation? Yeah, that one slipped away unnoticed, too. This time, though, they've got real star power. Snoop Dogg plays the bad guy. You read that right. Snoop Dogg acts. Of course he's done it before (but I've only seen him in Half Baked...perfect casting), but this is, I believe, the first time he's headed up a real movie. Can he be this much of a villain? Probably. I've always thought he was a little menacing in a really weird sort of way. But enough about Snoop. Pam Grier's in this one, too! That's why I'm a little excited about it. That and it's a horror movie. Gotta love those. One question, though: Since most of the kids in it are black, how do they know which one to kill first? (Bad, bad, bad...) DON'T SAY A WORD--Michael Douglas as a psychiatrist. (Quite a stretch, huh?) Brittany Murphy as a very disturbed mental ward patient with a secret that everyone wants. Mike's daughter gets kidnapped. Now he wants what Brittany has. (Oh, don't we all?) This looks like a good little thriller and Brittany is already getting notice for her performance. Cool! I've always liked her. And her half whisper of "I'll never tell." has to be one of the creepiest teasers I've ever heard. Gotta see this one soon. Time for the real movie now. Grace (Nicole Kidman) is a strict, Christian mother in 1945 England. Her two children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley) have a horrible aversion to light. If they get into any light above a candle they will break out, stop breathing and eventually die. She's left alone to take care of them because their father, Charles (Christopher Eccleston from Shallow Grave and Gone In 60 Seconds), is in France fighting in WWII. Because of all of this Grace is always on edge. The slightest noise can set her off about her migraines. This is also why she has one very strange rule: no door can be opened until the one before it is shut and locked. After Grace put an add in the paper for servants (the last one left suddenly) three people showed up on her doorstep. Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan from Waking Ned Devine and The Ewok Adventure!) is obviously the leader of this little crew and she soon becomes the nanny and housekeeper. Mr. Tuttle (Eric Sykes from Heavens Above! and Splitting Heirs) is the kindly but slightly addle-brained gardener. And last, but not least, is Lydia (Elaine Cassidy from Felicia's Journey), the mute housekeeper who is always by the side of either Mrs. Mills or Mr. Tuttle. Luckily the new help has worked at the house before, so they know it like the back of their hands. This means that they won't run into stuff in the darkness that Grace and her family are forced to live in. But for the past few weeks Anne has been complaining about seeing ghosts. Grace, who doesn't believe in ghosts or anything superstitious (funny that she's such an overly devout Christian...and, yes, this contradiction is brought up a few times), constantly yells at her little girl to stop the foolishness. She must be just lying, right? After a while, though, even Grace starts hearing things. At first she tries to blame the new help, but then she starts to second guess herself. Are there others in the house? The less known past that the better. Let's just say that there's a great twist at the end (although it does call into question the writer's thoughts on a mother's love) and a lot of suspense leading up to it. As I've said before, there's nothing creepier than kids with ghosts. If that's the case, then this has to be the creepiest movie I've seen since The Sixth Sense. Director Alejandro Amenabar, who directed the excellent Open Your Eyes, knows exactly how to build the suspense and then pull the rug out from under you in a good way. This movie, along with The Sixth Sense, the original Haunting and The Blair Witch Project show us that you don't need a lot of money to make a great horror film, just a lot of imagination and a good script. And good actors don't hurt, either. There's not a misstep in the bunch here. The kids are very good (the little Drew Barrymore clone, Alakina, is especially good--she torments her brother, but we still love her) as are the servants. But it's Nicole who really shines. There have been talks of an Oscar nomination for her for this one or Moulin Rouge. I haven't seen Moulin Rouge yet, but I can't imagine her being any better in that than she is here. Grace is obviously a very loving mother, but she's also a very exasperated mother. Her children's condition has nearly driven her to the edge (and there is talk of "the time mummy went mad"), but she manages to keep herself under control for the most part. She does have some weird ideas about how to teach her kids about God, though. Telling them that if you deny Jesus you go to "children's limbo" doesn't exactly help the cause. And then wanting them to deny something that they know is true (the ghosts in the house) just makes it worse. And even through all of this we still like her. Now that's amazing. (Especially by the end.) Amenabar's script helps out quite a bit, too. Never too wordy, it gives us just enough information to make us wonder what the hell is going to happen next. Yes, it has it's contrivances, but they work very well in the world he creates. I don't think that photo sensitivity of this order is a real affliction, just an invention to make sure that the house is dark throughout the film, especially when the children are around. But it works so well that you can forgive its obviousness. And where did the fog come from? Who cares? There's not much more terrifying than when Grace is trying to make it to town and gets lost in the fog. All we see beyond her is soupy white. The audience starts squinting their eyes trying to see if that really is a dark figure coming towards her or if it's just a trick of the light. If you're a fan of real horror movies this is the movie for you. Not a lot of flash, just a lot of chills and style to spare. Oh, and intelligence...something that's been in short supply this year. This is a damn near brilliant thriller the likes of which we don't see very often anymore. And watch for those producer credits. I'm surprised that Nicole didn't have one of the names scratched through on every copy just out of spite. (Hint: He's in the English language remake of Amenabar's Open Your Eyes and can't believe that he could actually get someone pregnant.)

Don't Say A Word

admin — Sun, 14 Oct 2001 17:00:00 +0000

Michael Douglas is threatening to make psychiatry his second job. Luckily, he does a great job at playing them. This time out he plays Dr. Nathan Conrad, a New York psychiatrist who has recently started working uptown. But his buddy back at the psych ward, Dr. Louis Sachs (Oliver Platt in another neurotic performance that he needs to get out of to show everyone that he can really act), get him back for one more job. Elizabeth (Brittany Murphy, looking more and more like a non-anorexic version of Sarah Michele Gellar everyday) has been moved from hospital to hospital for the last ten years. Funny thing is that she has been diagnosed differently every time. Now she's under Sachs's care and he doesn't know what to do with her. Problem is that it's the night before Thanksgiving and all through the Conrad house there's a wife, Aggie (Famke Janssen) with a broken leg and a little girl, Jessie (Skye McCole Bartusiak from Cider House Rules and The Patriot), both of whom are excepting daddy home to bring the turkey. What none of them know is that Elizabeth is about to string them up in her world of fear. You see, Patrick (Sean Bean from GoldenEye, who is in full-on baddie mode) has been chasing her around for the last ten years. She has a number that he wants that will somehow help him find a jewel that he stole ten years ago. It cost her dad his life and now it may cost Jessie hers. And Patrick and his band know every move that Conrad makes because of their techno-toys. No cops. No phone. No telling anyone. Period. Meanwhile, Detective Sandra Cassidy (the ultra-hot Jennifer Esposito) is trying to figure out who killed a girl and dumped her into the river. She's slowly being pointed to the trail of Patrick. This is a pretty tight little thriller. The story isn't too inventive or taxing and there are a few leaps of faith that must be taken on the part of the audience (Why would an intelligent cop like Cassidy not know that Potter's Field was on Hart Island?), but there's enough tension to keep us from thinking about that for too long. There were also a lot of clichés. Cassidy is your typical hard-boiled female cop who yells at guys who say anything about the way she looks (although he was a little crass about it) and is probably a lesbian. (Listen to how she talks to "baby" on the phone. You know it to be true.) Patrick is a little over the top and hate-able in every way. There's a character who starts to get attached to Jessie. Sachs is, of course, a walking cliché. And even Jessie is a bit of a cliché. She's cute and all when she does things that she could only learn from her dad (trying to get her captor to talk to her so that she is a person to him and not just a victim), but it's a little over-used by now. But none of those things mattered while I was watching the movie. For those two hours the movie was great. I especially liked the editing (picture and sound). There were some New Wave moments and some sound effects that almost didn't fit the picture (a plastic rod coming out of the inside of a cast does NOT sound like a metal knife coming out of a scabbard), but they totally did. Very cool. Most of the performances were also very good. Mr. Douglas was his usual standout self and Famke was about as good as always. But the real performance to watch here is, of course, the mental patient. This is the kind of role that Oscar loves because it's an actor who doesn't usually get noticed and she is doing a great job of being an extreme. They don't like normal people. This is why someone like Albert Brooks (a great, normal comedic actor) will never win an Oscar, but someone like Brad Pitt, who loves playing extremes (and is very good at it), will probably be nominated again at some point. They hate normality, although that's harder to play. All that aside, Brittany was very good as the schizophrenic who may just be a very good mimic. I think she is at the beginning of a great career, but then I've always kind of watched her knowing that she could be really good. (But what the hell is she doing in Summer Catch? Bad move, Brit.) So if you go see this, don't go expecting a great thriller or anything. It's kind of a pulp movie, but it may be a step above the rest. Not something that you're going to think about for weeks after seeing it, but it is definitely entertaining. And I applaud the filmmakers' decision to NOT edit out a couple of buildings that are on everyone's minds lately. Of course they probably didn't because they didn't think anyone would notice them. They were pretty dark shots.

The Princess And The Warrior

admin — Mon, 15 Oct 2001 17:00:00 +0000

In 1999 Tom Tykwer came out of nowhere with an explosive new movie called Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run to us Americans). It turned conventions on their heads and cause a sensation in a year that was full of great unconventional films. This is very strange considering the fact that, from what I hear, all of his movies before this were pretty mediocre, formulaic films. Now with his follow-up to that masterpiece he has re-teamed with its star, Franka Potente (who is also his girlfriend--watch for other familiar faces from Lola, too) and decided to not try to top himself in terms of destroying film conventions. Instead he tells a fairly straight forward story with a lot of hidden corners and dark secrets. Sissi (Potente) is a nurse in an asylum whose life is so normal as to be boring. She never really gets out of the asylum and is almost as much of a prisoner as the people who are committed there. And she seems perfectly happy with her sad little life. Until the day she meets Bodo (Benno Furmann). He's a petty thief who, while running away from a couple of store clerks (I think that's what they were), causes Sissi to be hit by a truck. His ignorance of the accident turns out to be bliss when he ends up hiding under the same truck Sissi was hit by. He saves her life and she falls in love with this mysterious man who cried while he breathed into her trachea. His pain was so obvious to her that she couldn't help but want to help him the way he helped her. After she recovers she goes in search of her savior. What she finds is not exactly to her (or anyone else's) liking. Tykwer seems to think that life is ruled by coincidence, fate and pain. Not a single character is unscathed in this film, but it all goes into making them into complete human beings. There are so many shocking scenes where someone just suddenly lashes out at themselves or at others that, after a while, we almost start to expect them. Almost. But he never loses us because it's all so real. And this time, like I said before, it's all pretty conventionally filmed. There's hardly anything tying it to Run Lola Run. Except for two things: 1) the enigmatic lead actress and 2) a strong desire for the main characters to control their lives. Sissi and Bodo's lives are so out of control that they think there is no way to reign them in. Little by little they start to realize that they are the masters of their fates. And, while Lola was the ultimate master of her fate and was allowed to try, try again, Sissi and Bodo aren't given that freedom. They have to work at it even after things happen to put them right back where they started at emotionally. And I guess that's the real moral of this story: We all seal our own fates. And I think that Tom and Franka have done that with this movie. They are now known as a team that can do no wrong. This is a great film that is every bit as good (if not better) as its predecessor in all areas. I don't know if it'll be eligible for an Oscar because it came out last year in Germany. But it should be up for at least Best Foreign Film. Maybe even Best Picture since not much over here is this good. Go see it if you get a chance. One complaint, though. Why is it that Sony Picture Classics felt the need to switch the title around? Maybe because the "Princess" was more recognizable over here? Who knows? Whatever the reason I guess it doesn't really matter too much, but it's the principle of the thing.

From Hell

admin — Sun, 21 Oct 2001 17:00:00 +0000

'Twas time for some previews, milord? SPY GAME--Robert Redford and Brad Pitt in a movie together? How will we ever tell them apart?! Tony Scott brings us yet another movie about a young guy (this time a CIA agent) being trained by a retiring guy. But as hackneyed as that plotline is, this time it looks like it could be quite good. Lots of action and paranoia. Could it be that Tony is trying to make an unofficial sequel to 3 Days Of The Condor with its star like he did with The Conversation and Enemy Of The State? As long as it's as good as that one we'll be alright. Hopefully it's better, though. FRAILTY--Matthew McConaughey comes out of hibernation (or does it only seem like he's been away for a while--that last movie he was in (The Wedding Moron) was a big hit, but does anyone remember it?) to play the brother of a possible serial killer. The problem with the preview is that I didn't really get that from it. I'm not sure what I got from it, but it wasn't that. Looks like it could be good, anyway. And Bill Paxton not only plays Matt's brother, but he directed it, too. Hope it's good. I've always like ol' Bill. THEATRE OF BLOOD--Wait a minute! This is an old movie! That's one of the pleasures of seeing a new movie at the Alamo Drafthouse. They show old trailers that go along with the movie. This one is an old Vincent Price flick where he plays an actor who kills himself after he gets bad reviews. (If only some more recent actors took this advice...just kidding...maybe.) But then the critics start being murdered in horrible, bloody, nasty ways. Is Vince still alive? Is he a ghost? And is that Jeff Lynne from the Electric Light Orchestra standing next to him on his throne? Weird. I've got to seek this one out. Looks like a hoot. (Wait. Did I just say "hoot"? What's wrong with me?) TIME AFTER TIME--This one I have seen and it's, well, pretty good. Malcolm McDowell plays H.G. Wells and invents a time machine. David Warner plays Jack the Ripper who promptly steals Wells' time machine and comes into the modern times. Mary Steenburgen plays Wells' love interest. It's pretty much just late 70s/early 80s cheese, but it is a cut above. Now for the real movie: The Hughes Brothers, who have until now been known as "black directors," have decided to take on the Jack the Ripper story. Johnny Depp plays Inspector Frederick Abberline, one of the best detectives in Whitechapel (one of the worst slums in 1888 London). He's actually semi-psychic, but the only time he seems to see things is when he's in the opium den. Sgt. Peter Godley (Robbie Coltrane from GoldenEye, The World Is Not Enough and, of course, The Pope Must Diet) has to come in and wake him up every once in a while to make sure he gets his job done. But he's usually on the job, and when he is he's brilliant. This is when Mary Kelly (Heather Graham not doing too badly this time, although she looks a little rougher than usual...go figure), a local prostitute, and her friends start being butchered one by one. But it's the way they was done. 'Twas the way they was done that calls for a man of Abberline's talents. So Abberline and Godley start following the trail of the Ripper (although they rarely ever call him that), start realizing that it must be an educated man, get stopped by some of their superiors and start losing hookers left and right. And, and Abberline and Mary Kelly start to fall for each other. As far as history goes this movie is almost complete bullshit. There was no connection between the victims (except that they were all whores, sorry, "unfortunate women") and, as far as I know, there was no great psychic after them. This seems to be a conglomeration of all of the myths and theories about Jack that popped up years later. Things like the thought that it may have been a prince or one of his minions. Unfortunately, according to one of the top profilers in the business, John Douglas (he was the basis for Scott Glen's character in Silence Of The Lambs), Jack was most likely just some lower class bum who was just passing through, maybe even retarded. A far cry from the distinguished gentleman we've all come to know and fear. So the history is questionable. But as entertainment this is some great stuff. The Hughes Boys know exactly how to build the suspense and make you fear an unseen character. AND they know that you don't have to show every gory detail. Yes, it's a gory movie, but there's more implied gore than actual screen gore. They'll sometimes give you flashes or far away shots, but rarely will it be up close and personal. That makes it all the more real, like we're actually flies on the wall as opposed to the corpse. But it was still too much for some people. The attention to detail was pretty amazing, too. Never ones to go out of their own time (except for the disowned Dead Presidents...but that's not too much out of our time) the Hughes Bros. have proven that they can do it better than a lot of the posers out there these days. Johnny was, of course, awesome as the haunted inspector who has to save his love from a killer as he tries to save himself from "the dragon" of opium. Kind of an "Ichabod Crane Gets Serious" type of role. More Sherlock Holmes and less Angela Lansbury. Robbie, always undervalued as a dramatic actor, was also great as his ever as Abberline's ever-tortured friend and co-worker who has to keep up with his boss all the time and keep him from knowing how worried he is about him. It's a great little horror/suspense film about our first serial killer. It does something that we always try to do with horrific events: it tries to make sense of it. This event may be far in the past, but we're still trying. And maybe a movie like this will help us to take our minds off of another, more recent horrific event that we just can't make sense of.

U2 - Elevation

admin — Mon, 05 Nov 2001 18:00:00 +0000

The quote I chose sounds totally sarcastic, but it really isn't. Not long after The Towers came down, this was one of the first songs that I went to. "I can't believe the news today. I can't close my eyes and make it go away." Now, nearly two months later, the song, along with about two more hours of U2's songs, helped an entire audience come together as one and get through its feelings about this national tragedy. Pretty lofty for a rock band, huh? But U2 has always been more than just a rock band to its loyal legion of fans. Those of us who are in the U2 "in-crowd" consider their concerts as near-religious experiences. This is only my second U2 concert (and the first one I only really saw about half of because I had to go backstage to help strike the stage...not as cool as it sounds. The best thing I can say is that The Edge drove by on a golf cart about 30-40 feet away from me.), but I would have to say that this is their best tour since the old days of The Joshua Tree/Rattle And Hum tours. Certainly their most intimate. But let's start at the beginning. The concert was at the Frank Erwin Center, which has to be one of the smallest venues that U2 has played since before The Joshua Tree tour. But I think it helped make this a very intimate evening with some of the biggest rock stars in the world. And being on the floor in front of The Heart, didn't hurt, either. (The Heart is a heart shaped pit just in front of the stage. Bono uses it as a runway to walk out into the crowd. From where I was it looked like he was walking just above the crowd, maybe from hand to hand or maybe just levitating. And the people inside were going wild.) Then there's the opening band: No Doubt. Yeah, the group that is almost in the "has-been" category opened for the band that by all logic should be in there with them. (But, because they ROCK they will never be has-beens.) What was really surprising is that No Doubt was actually great! Full of energy. Full of life. And full of some pretty damn cool songs. Even "Don't Speak" was brought a new lease on life. And their new songs rock pretty hard. But enough about the hottie with the Hammer pants (Gwen Stephani still looks really good in short shirts) and the drummer with the diaper (their drummer still looks like a dork). They weren't the main attraction and they knew it. Gwen kept saying things like, "Are you ready for U2!!!???" She sounded just as excited to be opening for them as we were to see them. After No Doubt we had about half an hour to wait until Bono and the boys came out. So we had to listen to some techno-babble music for a while. Then Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground came on and a strange thing happened. People cheered. I've never heard an audience cheer pre-show music. That's when I knew that this would be awesome. The crowd was really into it. Then, just to make my evening complete, they started playing my other favorite band, The Beatles. "All You Need Is Love" came on and everyone cheered again. Then "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." More cheering. We still love these guys. Somewhere in the middle of the song I leaned over to my friend and said that it would be really funny if, just after the Beatles sang, "Biiiiilllllyyyyy Sheeeeearrrrrrsss!" they stopped the song and U2 came out and did a cover of "With A Little Help From My Friends." Little did I know how close I was. They did stop the song and U2 came out, in full house lights, and did "Elevation." It rocked harder than the album version and everyone was on their feet. (Not that we folks on the floor had much choice. No chairs.) Then "Beautiful Day." Even better than the original. The audience was part of the show this time out. Last time it was all about props, big stages and huge tv sets. This time, though, it was about the music and the togetherness of the masses. The house lights were up for quite a while during the show and when they were down there was almost always a spot somewhere in the arena shining on us. This first part of the concert reminded me of how it must have been to see The Doors in concert. Hear me out, here. Bono and Jim Morrison are both kind of considered poets of a generation. They both know how to get the audience going. They are both amazing performers. They both front bands that aren't quite backing bands, but you can't help but feel like there's got to be some envy going on. And they both tend to do a lot of onstage posing. BUT it works so well for both of them that no one (except their worst critics) faults them for it. But suddenly the evening took a different turn. It was no longer about fun. It was about a large group of people sharing their emotions, being of one mind and just being. When they started to bring out "Sunday Bloody Sunday" all of us knew that it would be mentioned, but we didn't know that it would be done without words and so effectively. There was a rage in Bono's voice that I could hear in the audience as we all sang along. I could feel it coursing through me. When he sang over and over "No more! No more!" we all felt it. When he ended the song with "I'm sick of it!" so were we. And as he sang "Tonight we can be as one" we all believed him and we were as one. All of us shaking our fists in the air with rage and catharsis. And then, during the instrumental break, Bono stopped, picked up an American flag from an audience member and just embraced it for about a minute and a half. At that moment he had all of us. For the rest of the evening we were his and every song helped us to come to terms with the feelings that we've had for the last two months. Even though none of the songs were written after the events of Sept. 11 they all seemed to be written for it. Even "Where The Streets Have No Name" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" seemed to be filled with the hurt and loss we've all suffered. From "Please" (about religious and political fanatics...Who knew?) to "New York" (obviously). From "Walk On" (which had already been picked up by some news stations as a theme for the heroes) to "One" (during which they scrolled the names of all of the passengers of the airplanes and the NYPD and FDPD who were killed over a screen behind them and all over the audience) to their heart-felt rendition of Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On." Yes, some of it was pretty shameless and manipulative, but we've all come to expect a lot of drama at a U2 show and it worked so well that no one really noticed. For most of the concert I don't think there was a dry eye in the house. But that was a great thing. This concert was one of the most cathartic, amazing things I have ever been a witness to. And I'm not just saying that as a huge U2 fan. I'm saying that as someone who has just seen a huge group of people come together, get over their differences and just enjoy a great band. After "One" I saw a group of friends nearly in tears just hold each other. But they weren't tears of sorrow really. They were tears of relief and release. You may think I'm putting a lot onto these four guys from Ireland. After all, they're just a rock band. But tonight was really something more. In another time, another place this may have just been another concert. But in our time and our place it was almost like a rock and roll sermon saying that, no matter what, we can get through this and be even better than before. "One life, but we're not the same. We've got to carry each other." Or another theme of the night: "You've got to leave it behind." Don't leave behind the memory, but leave behind the pain, the fear, the hurt and even the anger. And then try like hell to find a way to make this world a good place. As Bono said, these people hopefully didn't die in vain. There is a togetherness that the world is feeling right now the likes of which we have never seen before. And tonight I felt it in a small little auditorium in Austin, TX. If music has that kind of power maybe that's what we should be fighting with.

Shallow Hal

admin — Fri, 09 Nov 2001 18:00:00 +0000

How do you make an extremely shallow guy and make him actually lovable? Well, first off you have the Farrelly Brothers direct the movie. Then you get Jack Black to play the guy. Hal (Black) is the most shallow man in the world. He is looking for a perfect woman who is beautiful, thin, interesting and with a great ass. He has such a problem finding that woman (go figure) that everyone around him is starting to think that his standards are set just a tad too high. When he meets Tony Robbins (a self-help guru who looks a little too much like Ben Affleck) in a elevator and pours out his life story, Tony "de-hypnotizes" him so that he saw only the inner-beauty of everyone. So now he sees all of these beautiful women everywhere and, somehow, he is able to talk to them and they love him. What he doesn't realize is that no one else is talking to them for a reason. These girls have huge noses and bad teeth hair that's falling out. Then he meets Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow). She's perfect. She's beautiful, witty, cool...everything that Hal wants in a woman. And SO much more. She also happens to weigh about 400 pounds. When Mauricio (Jason Alexander finally getting a good role after Seinfeld was canceled, but he could still probably do better) sees her he tries to save his best friend from a fate that he thinks is worse than death...social unacceptability. Now, this story has so many chances to be totally offensive. There are so many fat jokes that could have been made and so many times that we could see some of the other characters as just an in to a bunch of really lame lines. There's a guy with spinal bifida who was always the life of the party and had every reason to love life even though he had to walk on all fours. So, to all of those people who are protesting this movie, Screw You. Watch the movie and then you'll understand that it's not insulting at all...just like the rest of the Farrelly's films. The performances are pretty much great. Jack walks that thin line between totally shallow and totally cool extremely well. In fact, he comes off as much less shallow than his best friend. Jason Alexander is such a dick that, even when he's trying to "help" his friend, we think it's for very selfish reasons. Even the beautiful girls who play the girls that Hal hits on are great. Even though they're beautiful, they seem to know exactly how not so pretty girls act when they're hit on. They're geeky, awkward and embarrassed as only a girl with a big nose and fucked up teeth can. But they're hot. Go figure. In fact, the only performance that doesn't really measure up is, unfortunately, one of the most important. Gwyneth Paltrow is actually not very good here. Yeah, she looks great (except that fat suit isn't so good. You can definitely tell it's a fat suit), but she just seems to be kind of drifting through a lot of the movie. And that's too bad. She's got a lot of great lines and physical gags that a better actress could have made really funny. Overall, though, this was a very fun movie with a good message. Looks are only part of the story. Beautiful women can be hell to get along with (especially if they're totally vacuous), so find someone who is cool and you'll find the beautiful no matter what. Watch for Jack's Tenacious D partner Kyle Gass and ex-Daily Show correspondent (and Jack's girlfriend) Laura Kightlinger as Hal's co-workers.

Waking Life

admin — Sat, 10 Nov 2001 18:00:00 +0000

Back in 1991 Richard Linklater came out of nowhere with Slacker. Now, as much as I love the fact that Austin helped to start the indie binge of the 90s, I never really saw what everyone else saw in this movie. It's just a bunch of meandering speeches that, overall, don't mean a damn thing. Nothing really adds up and we don't give a rat's ass about anything that happens. The only part that was even mildly amusing to me was the bit about Madonna's pap smear. In fact, that's the only thing I remember about that movie. That and I think someone gets hit by a car. I couldn't tell you if that's true, though. I could be making it up just to make the movie a little more exciting. Then Rick started making real movies with real storylines. Dazed And Confused was awesome. Before Sunrise was even better. SubUrbia (the only one not written by Linklater) was also really good. And The Newton Boys, well, I seem to be the only one who liked that one. But who cares? I had to make up for my indifference to Slacker, right? Now Rick has gone in a direction that no one would have ever seen: the philosophical animation film. Hell, it's not even a genre that anyone knew existed! There's no real story here to speak of. Think of this as Slacker with more brains (in fact, maybe too many brains for some) and an even more philosophical bent. Wiley Wiggins (from Dazed And Confused, Love And A .45 and the awful Boys) is an aimless twenty-something who drifts back into his hometown only to get picked up by a guy in a boat/car (for a ride, not some weird sex thing) and promptly gets hit by a car. What happens to him from there is something that could only happen in this movie: he moves from one person to the next as they tell him about their theories on life, evolution and dreams. Wiley is only drifting through life ("sleep walking through his life or wake walking through his dreams") and isn't even sure if his life is actually life or just a dream. If it's a dream, he can't wake up from it. First off, let me say this: if you have no interest in this sort of philosophy, avoid this movie. It's extremely heady and not everyone is going to understand it. Hell, I consider myself slightly above average in the intellect department (there are a LOT of stupid people out there...look at the success of The Mummy movies) and I didn't get all of it. In fact, the first half hour was very much like sitting through a philosophy class. And I reacted to it in the same way that I would a class. I really wanted to be interested and really wanted to understand, but I just didn't. So I almost started to nod off. He just goes from one person to the next for about 20 minutes of the movie and they pontificate very loudly about their thoughts. At one point he walks up to a guy, says "Hey, man." and the guy goes into a speech. Now, I realize it's only a movie, suspension of disbelief and all that, but come on! No one does that! But then a very strange thing happened. Something clicked and it all started making sense. There was a reason for this unrealistic sort of speech. And when they started talking about dreams it got very interesting. By the end of the movie (which leaves more questions than answers) I loved it and wished it had gone on longer than its 97 minutes. And the animation fits the story so well that you almost forget that it is animated. But it would be a shame to do that because it's animated in such a cool way. Linklater shot the whole thing on digital video then had a huge team of animators (including Wiley) rotoscope the whole thing. But they didn't do it in the normal Ralph Bakshi way. They did it in their own wacked out styles. Backgrounds move in fifty different directions at once. Eyes don't quite stay on bodies. Words form in peoples' lips. Characters suddenly shift styles. And let me tell you, I think the animation helped a lot. A friend of mine told me that Rick thought that the movie would be too pretentious if it hadn't been animated. I think he was right. With Wiley floating all over the place and people just suddenly bursting out into Platonic verses it would have seemed like Rick had gone off the deep end and finally made a movie showing just how crazy he really is. But in animation you can do just about anything, and he did it all here. (Including violence. One scene is so jarring as to seem like it's in a different movie. I don't think anyone in the audience saw it coming at all.) And I think the animation helped Wiley's acting. There was no more playing with his nose in this one. (I HATE that!!!!) Keep an eye out for Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy playing two people who could be their characters in Before Sunrise. Also watch for Austin musician Guy Forsythe (playing a ukelele), Adam Goldberg (from Dazed and Saving Private Ryan), Steven Soderbergh and Rick himself. This is a pretty brilliant film from some one who we've always known had it in him, he just needed some time to come up with it. Now, is he really this smart? Or did he have a lot of help with the writing? That's the key question here.

Battle Royale

admin — Sun, 11 Nov 2001 18:00:00 +0000

(I'll try to keep from making any jokes about a "Battle Royale with cheese" here. It just wouldn't fit.) About a year ago a buddy of mine who live in Japan (my audience of one, actually) told me about a movie that I never thought I would see in the States. Not because of its incendiary topic. (The Japanese government and school system was NOT very happy about this film.) Not because of its violence. (Although it is VERY violent.) But because it all happens to young teenagers. And it's all done by young teenagers. But somehow The Alamo Drafthouse and the Austin Film Society managed to get a beautiful print of this film from...well...I don't know where. I'd rather not know, actually. Ok, scratch that. I do want to know because I'd like to know how to get my hands on copies of really bizarro movies like this that there is no way in hell we would ever see in the local multiplex here. Shocking Images, maybe? But I bet you want to know about the movie. Well, I guess I've kept you in suspense long enough. Imagine Lord Of The Flies with guns, cross bows and pot lids. Imagine The Most Dangerous Game with 41 teenagers. Now imagine that it was done by the government and the school system. I believe a little setup is required here. You see, in Japan the teen suicide rate is sky high. The kids go to school for nine years in preparation for a test that is literally going to decide their lives for them. If they don't ace it (not just pass, but ACE!) they're screwed for the rest of their lives. Even their families think that they're a disgrace. So that's where this film came from. In some weirdo freak world the Japanese government has passed the Battle Royale Act. The kids have been getting too far away from their adult counterparts and have been treating them with disrespect. This frightens the adults, hence this horrific law. It says that, if a teacher deems a class worthy, they are sent to an island and told that there can be only one. Each of them are given a bag full of bread, water and a "special weapon." Some get crossbows or axes ("super lucky!") while some get pot lids or binoculars. They are also locked into collars that explode if a) they linger in danger zones, b) they try to take them off or c) there is more than one alive at the end of the three days. Great idea, huh? You fear the younger generation, so you send them to kill each other. So a class is chosen by their old teacher (Kitano "Beat" Takeshi in a brilliant over the top performance) because he had had enough of them. One of the kids cut his leg while he was running away from another kid. That was the last straw. So the kids are drugged and taken to the island and have the rules explained to them in bloody fashion. (Some kids don't even make it to the "game.") Our heroes are Noriko (Aki Maeda in her first film) and Shuya (Tatsuya Fujiwara who has been on Japanese tv for a few years), a couple of kids who have been friends for a long time, but they've always kind of denied their real feelings for each other. I don't want to give away too much, so I'll stop there. But there are many memorable and disturbing scenes to keep us up at night. A very young girl covered in blood, holding stuffed animal and smiling because she won last year's "game." A scene in a lighthouse that shows just how paranoid friends can be when their lives are on the line. A scene where a guy tries to use the situation to get sex from a girl he's been in love with for the past year. The whole movie is full of these kinds of images and questions. What would we do to survive in a cut-throat world like this? What will we do to our friends if we think that they could betray us? How far would we go to survive? Would we kill the ones we love? This kids are great at showing themselves being normal kids with innocent thoughts and then turning into blood-thirsty, paranoid villains in a split second. They are also very good at showing the unrequited love that they all seem to feel for someone. (Don't we all at that age? Hell, even as we get older?) When the pressure is on things come out. And sometimes it keeps them innocent while other times it makes them worse than they would be otherwise. As I said before, Takeshi is also great as the horrible man who puts the kids through this shit. He's cold, calculating and actually pretty funny. He's so dead pan as he tells the kids in his announcements that he's disappointed in them for not killing more of their classmates that it makes a lot of his scenes pretty comical in a menacing way. Speaking of which, there were actually some pretty good moments of comedy in this dark, dark film. There is a training video (starring the hot Yuko Miyamura who is the voice of Chun-Li in the Street Fighter games) that just goes over the top with cheese as it tries to educate these kids on how to kill. "Remember, kids! Shoot to kill!" Giggle, giggle!) This humor was welcome after seeing the horrific acts we have been seeing kids commit. The absurdity of some of the situations and some of the lines that Beat has were just enough to almost keep us from being overwhelmed by the tragic images we were watching. A lot of the deaths were very cartoonish, but I think that was just because that's what would work best with the age group we're talking about here. It made it more disturbing and makes the kids seem even younger, I think. But I think this is why a lot of people were laughing at them. I, however, couldn't bring myself to laugh. Near the end there is a painting that is revealed. It got a huge laugh. I didn't find it funny at all. I didn't think it was supposed to be funny, actually. And I don't think it was the filmmaker's fault, it was the audience. They were all there for the gore and loved it on that level. Maybe a more reverent audience to see this film with would have been nice. Director Kinji Fukasaku (director of MANY groundbreaking Yakuza films that inspired Beat's entire career) has brought us an important film about fighting for survival in a world of evil and fighting to be number one in a system that doesn't help you along. It's a black, black, black comedy that is so dark as to be a very disturbing drama. I can see why the Japanese government and school system was pissed by its very existence. But I think it needs to exist, even if it will never be released in America. I guess it's not as important for us as it is for them.

The Shrub's America

admin — Sun, 11 Nov 2001 18:00:00 +0000

So Jim is a kid who just got out of high school. He's on student aide to help him get through college without working too much. It's pretty hard to get good grades when you have to work a lot and his family's somewhere in the lower middle class. They couldn't afford his college on their own. He's got a job at a local computer company a couple of nights a week, but it's just for spending money and it never really interferes with his schoolwork. His girlfriend, Jennifer, comes from a pretty rich family. She's never had to worry about anything. Always been kept in the nicest of clothes, school's paid for by her parents, new car...the works. Well, one day they find out that she's pregnant. How? They used the pill. Unfortunately there's nothing that they can do about it. Roe vs. Wade was overturned and Jennifer no longer has any legal control over her body. She thinks that they're too young to have kids and Jim just isn't ready for the responsibility. They're only 18! She tells her family that she'll give it up for adoption. Unfortunately, when the baby is born, she can't bear to part with the little girl. Jennifer decides to leave Jim and go it alone. He's got his school to worry about. He doesn't need a family. All of the begging and pleading he does can't keep her. But now that federal funding has been cut to the school he can't get financial aide anymore. He has to work 40-50 hours a week just to squeak by and his family can't help him. So he drops out of school. What about his education? Well, he can't survive without money and there's no one to help him. Meanwhile, Jennifer's parents have disowned her because she got pregnant and didn't get married. The baby, Mae, is born deformed because of the pills she took trying to get rid of it. She knew that she wouldn't make it alone and there are no government programs to help her out because she's a single mother. She ends up getting pregnant again because her new boyfriend doesn't believe in allowing women to carry contraceptives. When he forgets she gets the short end of the stick. Two weeks after finding out she goes to the hospital for internal bleeding. The hanger worked. The first baby goes to a mental ward. Back on Jim's side of the world, he loses his job because a big corporation moved in next door. The small business he worked for closed down. There was no help and they couldn't compete. So he's out one job and he can't find another one. Who's going to hire a high school graduate for more than $5.50 an hour? And, besides, who's got jobs? The economy is so bad that everyone is being laid off. But Unemployment can't help because their funding's been cut, too. Suddenly we're in a depression. And what about Jim's family? Well, his brother, Bob, and his partner are forced to hide away and are constantly being harassed by cops because what they're doing is illegal. They share the love that no longer dares speak its name. Funny how just three years ago it was cool to be gay. And Jim's dad, who is retired, had social security, but now that it's been privatized it's all gone. The company who was supposed to be investing it for him lost it all in the market crash. Now there's no income coming in. And since the government no longer has control over health insurance, the company raised the premiums. Now, Jim's mom, who has contracted cancer from the tainted water in the river, can't get into the hospital. Her husband just couldn't afford the premiums. And the bloodstains on the carpet are really putting a strain on their marriage. But the real strain comes when their quiet next-door neighbor gets himself a gun. The guy's had three prior arrests for armed robbery, but his fake id allowed him to immediately go to a gun show and get a new one. Now he's taking it out on the family next door. Jim's dad becomes a statistic. Of course, Jennifer's family, remember the rich ones? They're living it up since they got all sorts of tax cuts. They also saw the downtrend of the market and got out just before the bottom dropped out. Now they can be free to live their posh lifestyle while the rest of the country goes to hell with their estranged daughter in it. Their other daughter who's still in high school is learning about a God that her parents don't believe in. They're Hindu. So Jim is on the streets with no money for even the cheapest rent, his family's about to join him and his gay brother is ducking for cover. And Jennifer? Oh, she's unable to have any more kids. The one she did have was taken away from her because she couldn't support her. Her neighborhood is full of people who carry guns. Too bad she can't tell who has them. But there's still a chance for my buddy Jim, because we accidentally bombed a little known country with our brand new satellite. And that little country happened to have nuclear power. Since Jim's not in school anymore he's off to a place that he's never heard of to fight people we never had any problem with. But on the way over there his plane goes down and he ends up in a wheelchair, minus one arm. So now he's back in America, or what's left of it, out of a job and unable to work. He can't get money because there are no more programs to help the handicapped. He's put into the same institution that his daughter is in, but he doesn't know it because she's forced to stay locked in her room all day. And they're both left to eat beans from a blender for the rest of their lives. We may as well cut my buddy's legs off as soon as he graduates from high school, shoot his family, tie his girlfriend's tubes and burn down his hometown. It would be faster and less painful. This is a pretty drastic dramatization, but this is the way the Shrub seems to want his country. The rich get richer while the middle class disappears into the lower class. And forget about helping the kids out. The government programs that actually help the education system that Dubya says he cares so much about don't need to be there. And that missile deployment system that's not ready to be shot up into space that the Fichus tree wants so badly to send up there could very well go off and start Dubya Dubya III. (Maybe that's what it stands for.) It's survival of the fittest in Bush's America...even if the fittest lose their footing and slip through the cracks. They must not have been too fit.

My Name Is Ivan (1962)

admin — Tue, 13 Nov 2001 18:00:00 +0000

Out of the mouths of babes. And this time I don't mean hot girls. I mean actual babies. I need to stop finding movies about little kids doing horrific and (supposedly) adult things. It's getting depressing. The Austin Film Society is doing a Russian New Wave series and their second film is Andrei Tarkovsky's debut from 1962, My Name Is Ivan. It's about a 12 year-old boy named Ivan (Kolya Burlyayev aka Nikolai Burlyayev from Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublyov) who is being employed by the Russian Army during WWII to spy on the Germans. Exhausted from being on the front lines, he falls into a bunker where Lieutenant Galtsev (Yevgeni Zharikov) takes him in, but doesn't believe his stories of being a soldier. How could this kid with an angelic face have seen the horrors that he talks about? But when he calls Captain Kohlin (Valentin Zubkov) the story is confirmed. This kid has actually been spying for their army and is now back to report. After much going back and forth, Kohlin decides that Ivan would be better off in a military school. He's done his duty, now it's time to be safe. But Ivan doesn't want to hear it. He's a soldier now and has to keep doing it. It's in his blood. Ivan's ad hoc family of Kohlin and Galtsev try to keep him safe, but how can you keep a child from harm in the middle of a war? For the times (just after WWII and a time of great upheaval in Russian history) this is surprisingly anti-war. It shows the horrors of war through the eyes of a child who has seen it all and doesn't realize that he really can't help as much as he thinks he can. The war is shown as an evil that really isn't necessary. It's more childish than the adults make it seem. It kind of reminds me of Sting's song "Children's Crusade." How could we send kids to do this kind of job? Yes, they're smaller and can get by with things that we can't, but what's the cost? They lose their innocence and become hardened. They are no longer children and they aren't adults. They're something created by the system that probably couldn't live in the real world anymore. Tarkovsky's near brilliant anti-war/violence statement has a lot of his pet themes and images that he would develop later in his career. The dreams and flashbacks of a time when Ivan was still a real child are poignant and help to remind Ivan and us that memory can help us through the present. Tarkovsky has put in a lot more natural places than there are in most war films. There are quite a few scenes in a forest of birch trees which looks great in the black and white film and is sometimes menacing, sometimes reassuring. There's lots of water, this time signifying danger. (I believe in his 1971 sci-fi epic Solaris (the only other Tarkovsky film I've seen so far) it was more solitude and safety...not sure, though. Pretty impenetrable film, that one. Great, though.) When Ivan's mother (safety, of course) is killed and water is splashed over her, we realize that Ivan isn't really safe any more. It's surprisingly short for Tarkovsky whose films usually clock in at no less than two and a half hours, usually three. But this one is a tight 92 minutes and pretty fast paced. There's not a frame wasted. (And no five minute traffic scenes!) Ivan's plight is given to us in a way that makes us feel pain for him and his "family." We want to save him from the horror, but we know that we can't. He's already been there and, at this point, he's older than any of us in the audience. If you get a chance to see this film (I'm not so sure that it's on video or DVD) go see it. It reminds me of a cross between Kubrick's Paths Of Glory and Spielberg's Empire Of The Sun, both amazing films in their own right. But this one deserves to be remembered, too. It's a great lost film of Russian cinema. Painful to watch, but important and worth the trip to the art house.

K-PAX (or, Close Encounters Of The Interrupted Cuckoo's Nest)

admin — Wed, 14 Nov 2001 18:00:00 +0000

What happens when you take two of the best actors in the world (Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey) and put them in a movie together where they play doctor/patient? Unfortunately, not a whole lot apparently. But let's start at the beginning. Previews: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING--Ok, do I really need to say anything? This is going to rock so much ass that we won't even know what hit us. Peter Jackson is an awesome director and this is right up his alley. I can't wait for the Christmas season so that I can go see it again and again. (Of course, I'll give the same preview review to Episode II when I finally see it on the big screen. So far I've only seen it on my computer and it's not too impressive. But it's only a teaser. The movie will be MUCH better than Episode I even if it has a stupid name.) SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK--Ok, I'm cheating here. I saw this one on the beginning of Waking Life, but I forgot about it. First off, I have to say that I really like Edward Burns. I think he's pretty damn cool whether he directs his films or not. But the last one he directed (No Looking Back) sucked horribly. And it really doesn't look like this one is going to be a whole lot better. But at least it's a comedy, which he's better at. The problem is that this one looks like really bad Woody Allen. All these characters who have links to each other and they all love each other's partners. And they walk around the titular places of strolling talking and lamenting. I hope I'm wrong, but this looks like just another link in Eddie's downturn. A BEAUTIFUL MIND--Yet another thoughtful drama of an inspirational real man from Ron Howard. But Ronnie seems to be really good at things like that, so I have a lot of hope for this one. And Russell Crowe looks like he's putting in another Oscar worthy performance. Can't wait! Lots of paranoia and...well...math. But it still looks really good. ICE AGE--And this is another cheat. I've only seen this one on my computer. (I think. I could have already written a preview of it, but I don't think so.) But it's so good that I have to say something. This animated feature starring Ray Romano is probably going to be as funny as any old Warner Brothers cartoon is the preview is any indication. Every time I see it (which is quite often by now--I have to watch it occasionally when I have a few minutes at home) I'm nearly tearing up with laughter. Damn near the funniest trailer I've ever seen. Can't wait for the full movie! Check it out if you can. I don't want to give too much away, but it involves a very cold squirrel and the nut he loves. Awesome! And now, the review proper. K-PAX is the planet that Prot (Spacey) claims that he's from when he's picked up by NYC cops at a train station. He seemed to just appear there, so maybe... Mark Powell (Bridges) is the doctor who is put in charge of finding out what's wrong with this guy who doesn't seem to respond to any medication. What really confounds Mark is the fact that Prot seems to know things about the area that K-PAX supposedly spins that only three or four astronomers know, even some things that they don't know. He also has a way with the other patients that Mark can only envy. Mark, of course, has problems of his own. He's alienated (pun not intended until I noticed it...then I left it in just to punish you) his family for so long that he doesn't know how to act around or react to them anymore. He's on his second wife (the beautiful Mary McCormack from Deep Impact and Private Parts) and his son from his first marriage doesn't speak to him anymore. (Just once I'd like to see one of these movies where the doctor wasn't just as fucked up as the patient. Don't Say A Word did a pretty good job of this, but it's only the exception that proves the rule.) First off, this movie was pretty cliched. And I'm not just talking about the "patient heals doctor" storyline. The patients were all clichés from movies I've seen before. There's the Derek Jeter character (no, Derek's not in the movie, but the guy playing this character looks enough like him that we forget that it's not him), the woman who won't leave her room because she's waiting for someone, the young girl who won't talk to anyone...the list goes on and on. I guess there are only so many "crazy people" characters out there, so they're bound to be repeated soon enough. But so often? The only real twist is the fact that the ending kind of leaves it open for us. It's totally open to interpretation. (Here's a spoiler. Just highlight it if you've seen it or don't give a rat's ass.) Why does there always have to be a traumatic incident in their past? Why can't he just be from K-PAX and leave it at that? And the incident is totally predictable. Suck! The great thing about the movie is, of course, the performances of Spacey and Bridges. They're awesome as always. Unfortunately that doesn't make the script and story any better. Ok, so it's not really a bad movie. It's pretty enjoyable at times, actually. Prot is pretty funny when he does the "fish out of water" routine, like eating a banana without peeling it and such. But it's not nearly as good as it could have or should have been. And that's really too bad. I hope that sometime soon these two guys get together in a really good movie. Director Iain Softley (who also did one of my favorite movies, Backbeat, the awesome Wings Of The Dove and, well, Hackers) did an alright job with it, too. He knows when to keep it light, but maybe he gets a little bit too heavy of a hand sometimes. See it at a matinee or wait for video, whichever is cheaper in your area. You won't miss much by not seeing it on the big screen.

Serendipity

admin — Sat, 17 Nov 2001 18:00:00 +0000

Fate tells me that I have to start with previews, so here they are, O Mystical One. GOSFORD PARK--Robert Altman brings us another ensemble comedy mystery with an amazing cast...with one definite exception: Ryan Phillippe. What the FUCK is this guy doing in an Altman film?!?! He doesn't even deserve to be in Greg Araki movies. And they're making him do an accent! Idiots. This guy needs to realize that all he is is a face and once that's gone everyone will realize that he's wanted in Hollywood about as much as a clod of dirt at an obsessive-compulsive meeting. But I digress. The movie doesn't look too bad and I'll see it because Altman rocks. (Although lately he's been on a bit of a downturn. Dr. T, anyone? Didn't think so.) GANGS OF NEW YORK--From one master who almost seems to have lost it to another master who hopefully hasn't. Martin Scorsese has decided to go back in time to the early days of New York to show how the boroughs were formed. And he's bringing Leo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis and (gulp) Cameron Diaz along with him. Hope Cameron can keep up, but I'm a little worried about her. And it almost looks like it could be Far And Away 2. (Lots of bare-fist fighting.) But I trust Marty and I can't wait. The trailer still says Christmas 2001, but I think it's been pushed to Summer 2002. Too bad. This is a big one for a lot of us. Now, in other news, I say we stage a boycott of Regal Cinemas. Yes, I love my Arbor theatre (the ONLY art theatre left in Austin, thank you very much), but Regal is really pissing me off. All theatres have commercials before the movie now, but these guys are really pushing the limits. There were only three previews (the other one was Fellowship Of The Rings), but there must have been about 7 commercials. It really made me never want to go to another Regal again. It's getting fucking ridiculous. BAN THE COMMERCIAL!!!!! Now Fate has brought us to the issue at hand. How was Serendipity? Jonathan Trager (John Cusack in another self-deprecating, sad-sack type role) is a frustrated documentary filmmaker in New York just trying to find a Christmas gift for his girlfriend. When he chooses the same gloves as Sara Thomas (Kate Beckensale looking more lovely than ever) Fate has changed the course of his life forever. She's one of those girls that we all think we will find, but few of us ever do. She's perfect. Unfortunately, she's attached and mystical. She believes that, since they are both seeing people they should let Fate decide on whether or not they will ever meet again. After their few hours together she tells Jonathan to write his name and number on a $5 bill and she does the same in a copy of Love In A Time Of Cholera. (What a romantic title.) If they find the respective items again, they were meant to be together. If not, then they go their separate ways never to think of each other again. But, of course things don't work that way. Seven years later Jonathan is about to marry Halley (Bridget Moynahan from Coyote Ugly) and Sara (now in San Francisco) is about to marry Lars (John Corbett from Northern Exposure). But neither of them seem to be able to stop thinking of "the one that got away." What if they had just run off together? What if they run into each other on the street? So they both decide to search NYC for their long-lost, um, whatever they are to each other, dragging their best friends (Molly Shannon and Jeremy Piven...Cusack's actual best friend) along for the ride. Molly and Jeremy almost steal the movie away from John and Kate. Jeremy especially is very funny as Jon's best friend who works for the New York Times. He's neurotic, paranoid and, most of all, loyal. But the show is really stolen for the few minutes the Eugene Levy shows up as a salesman at Bloomingdale's. He's hysterical. He's got that dorky know-it-all down perfectly. He should, though. He's been playing it his whole career. These kinds of movies always hinge on the performances of the lead characters. If you don't believe their relationship the movie falls apart. Luckily the leads here were really good and, for the few minutes that they were on screen together, they had a lot of chemistry. Hell, I totally would have fallen for Kate, er, Sara. Even though they both were about to marry other people you really wanted them to dump those people and get together. And I actually liked Halley. Lars was a bit pretentious. He was a new age musician. Good dig at that particular genre. (Unlike that dumbass movie Forces Of Nature.) And speaking of new age stuff, this movie didn't really seem to know how it felt about that. Lars was obviously a joke. Molly Shannon's character runs a new age shop, but she doesn't believe any of it. But then there's Sara who believes all of it. And the whole story hinges on this belief. But this didn't matter at all. It was a great movie. Probably the most romantic movie I've seen in years. But afterwards I couldn't help feeling kind of drained and a little depressed. These people wasted seven years because they were going to let Fate decide whether or not they belonged together. They actually took the chance that they would never meet again. By not saying anything and not looking for each other sooner, they put their happiness on the line. But, you know, some waste a lot longer and get less.

Spy Kids

admin — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 18:00:00 +0000

So Robert Rodriguez wanted to do a movie that his kids could watch. What, From Dusk Till Dawn wasn't good enough for them? Surprisingly enough (ok, not so surprisingly because Robert is basically just a big kid and know what they want to see) this was a really cool little flick. Lots of action for the kids (but no one dies and there's not a lot of violence) and enough comedy for the kids and adults to enjoy. Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez (Antonio Banderes and Carla Gugino from Chicago Hope) are your typical, everyday, normal, boring, mega-rich parents to two typical kids, Carmen and Juni (Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara). The only thing Carmen lives for is getting away from her family and the only thing Juni lives for is his favorite tv show, Floop's Fleebles. (Or something like that.) What the kids don't know is that their parents were once the two greatest spies who ever lived and they worked against each other. (Although I don't remember a time when we were spying on Spain...but I digress.) Fortunately for the kids they didn't fulfill their mission, which was to kill each other. Instead, they fell in love, got married and retired to a normal family life. But something has called them back into action. One of their old spy friends, Donnagon (Beavis & Butt-Head creator Mike Judge) has dissappeared, and Gregorio thinks it has something to do with Juni's hero, Floop (Alan Cumming in yet another foppish and wacked out role--kind of like a really demented Willy Wonka, if you can imagine that). Meanwhile, Floop and his minion, Minion (Tony Shalhoub from The Siege and Men In Black) are trying to sell their ideas to Mr. Lisp (Robert Patrick) and his Financiers. Their latest (and best) one is an army of robot kids who know everything that spies know, but they're stronger, smarter, faster and cuter than the real things. When the Cortez's get captured by Floop and his men, er, Thumb-Thumbs it's up to the Cortez kids to save the world. This is actually a great family flick. Yeah, there's some really creaky dialogue and some pretty awkward moments (would Carmen have really started screaming "How do you work this thing?" the instant she was carried away by the jetpack? Probably not.), but there's a lot to like here, too. ("Ooohhh, shiiiiiitaki mushrooms.") For those of us into in-jokes, there's quite a bit going on, too. Terri Hatcher's character name is Miss Gredenko (but no one ever asked her if she was safe...too bad), Mike Judge and Richard Linklater (although I never found his "Cool Spy") are in it as are some local surprises. In Mr. Lisp's group of Financiers are Louis Black (one of the head guys at South By South West) and Charles Ramirez-Berg (one of my (and Robert's) profs at U.T.). Charles is the one at the table just to the left of the door just before the first kid robot comes through it. Just in case you're interested. Also in that group is freakin' Dick Clark!! How did Robert get him in there?! Weird. And keep an eye out for a special guest star as the Cortez's boss at the very end. Let's just say that Robert keeps his friends. So, despite the fact that the previews looked kind of silly, this is a really cool movie. Lots of imagination flowing through this one. Can't wait for the sequel!

The Stendhal Syndrome (1996)

admin — Sun, 25 Nov 2001 18:00:00 +0000

Ok, so some of the dialogue is a bit clunky, but nevermind that. A few days ago I watched a DVD called Tender Loving Care. It's pretty interesting from the standpoint of technology (it's done by the same people who did the computer game The 11th Hour) and psychology, but the story isn't anything too special. Basically it's a story about a couple who have pretty serious psychological problems and the nurse who comes to "help" them. She may or may not be a psycho bitch with a degree. The interesting thing is that between each segment of film John Hurt (yes, THE John Hurt) pops up with a brief synopsis and his feelings (he is a mentor to the nurse) and then asks the viewer psychological questions that determine the outcome of the film. Many of the questions (pretty much all fill-in-the-blank) deal with art and sex. The most interesting question, I think, was "Art should never ____." The answers were a)Disturb, b)Arouse, c)Excite or d)Inspire. To me there is no answer. Art should do all of that. (Not all at the same time, of course...although it would be interesting if it could.) I chose disturb after much deliberation only because that's the least pleasant of the four feelings, but I feel that art that doesn't do at least one of these four things is not art at all. It's only a pile of paint, or a roll of film or a sheet of paper with ink on it. I have been a fan of Dario Argento for a few years now and have always found his films disturbing, but in a very fun way. Suspiria, although ultra-violent and not a little frightening, is a fun film to watch and I could watch it over and over again. (Or course, to some of you that may seem a little sick...but screw you, this is my website.) That's the way a lot of his films are. You feel disgusted watching them, but, if you're into that sort of thing, you can't wait to see another one. With The Stendhal Syndrome, though, Argento has done something new. He has made a truly disturbing and horrifying film. I still can't wait to see another one of his films, but I don't know that I could watch this one over and over again. Maybe because it's so realistic. There are no witches, no phantoms, no little girls with strange powers over bugs...only a female cop and a rapist who won't let her out of his clutches. Detective Anna Manni (Argento's daughter, Asia from B. Monkey and Argento's Trauma and Phantom Of The Opera) has just had a really rough time in an art museum. She suffers from something called The Stendhal Syndrome, a psychological affliction that renders its victims unconscious and terrified when confronted with disturbing works of art. She begins to hear voices and the paintings start to come to life. Then she falls, knocks her head on a bench and is out. When she's finally out of the museum a very nice man, Alfredo (Thomas Kretschmann from U-571 and the upcoming Blade 2) gives her back her purse that she left along with some money for a cab home. Unfortunately for Anna she meets up with Alfredo again. He is the rapist that she has been after for the last few months. He attacks her and another woman and kills the stranger, leaving Anna psychologically scarred promising her that he will be back for her. After the attack Anna is a changed woman. She's cut her hair very short and has started to dress like a man. She won't let her boyfriend, Marco (Marco Leonardi from Like Water For Chocolate, From Dusk Til Dawn 3 and the upcoming (finally) Texas Rangers), also a cop, touch her. But when he talks about how long it's been since they made love she nearly rapes him. So say too much more would be a crime. Let's just say that the movie turns into a trans-gendered/backwards/turned on its head Vertigo/Psycho. Very Hitchcockian in a great way all the way down to the blonde wig that Anna puts on for the last half of the film which makes her look a bit like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. (Only in one scene, though...but you'll know it when you see it) There's really not much bad about this film (except for the occasional trite dialogue as shown above and some nearly bad (and out of place...did we need to see the pills go down Anna's throat?) digital effects--the first ones in an Italian film). But it's very interesting from the psychological side of things. It shows us exactly what goes through the mind of women who have been very brutally raped. Hell, after the two horrifying rape scenes (that Asia and her father found VERY difficult to film...can't imagine why) I felt like I had been raped. I wanted to kill the guy as much, if not more, than Anna did. After all, I had grown to love Anna (in a purely cinematic way, of course). Asia put a lot of heart into this character and it shows. It's probably the best acting I have ever seen her do. And Alfredo was performed with such vigor and gusto and sheer delight that he seemed all the more evil. So what are rape victims capable of? Well, watch the movie. And in watching, see what this kind of attack can do to a woman. What kind of world she begins to live in. This may be a very extreme version of it, but I can imagine that every victim in the world can relate to it in their own way. But I'm not sure that I would recommend it to one of them. This is a movie for the rest of us who can't truly understand. It's an important film in Argento's canon and definitely one of his best. To come at a point in his career when a lot of people thought he was over is all the more amazing. Thank you, Troma, for getting this one out here in his original form. (Kind of a strange one for them, huh?)

Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone

admin — Fri, 30 Nov 2001 18:00:00 +0000

Hey kids! Let's review some magical previews! JOE SOMEBODY--Tim Allen's new opus. Has there been a less funny trailer this year? Nope. Not a one. Let's move on. SCOOBY-DOO--I used to love this cartoon as a kid, but, then again, who didn't? And the teaser had me going, too. It looked and felt like a teaser for a new Batman movie complete with a Danny Elfman like score. But, alas, a not bad teaser does not a good movie make. In fact, it doesn't even make a decent movie. The cast has a lot to do with that. And, while I have no quibble with the female cast (Linda Cardellini (who?!) looks great as Velma and Sarah Michelle Gellar was inspired casting as Daphne), but that male cast has to go. Freddie "Where's My Skill" Prinz, Jr. and Matthew "Every Role Is Insane" Lillard must die. That's all there is to it. These guys (especially Prinz) shouldn't be allowed to propagate, much less act. And now they're going to ruin a classic. Hopefully this will be quickly forgotten and we can get back to loving the old shows. THE MAJESTIC--The first good preview I saw tonight was of Jim Carrey's latest bid for an Oscar. He's an ordinary guy (maybe) who loses his memory and wanders into a small town. The catch is that he looks like the local dead war hero. The whole town rallies around him and he decides to re-open the old theatre and it brings hope back to the town. Any movie about the cinema bringing hope back to a community is alright in my book. And since Frank Darabont directed it I'll be in line for it. BIG FAT LIAR--A small town kid (played by Frankie Muniz, Malcolm from Malcolm In The Middle) somehow meets up with a big shot producer (Paul Giamitti) who steals the kid's paper and turns it into a big hit movie. So the kid goes to LA to claim his credit. This movie looks totally stupid, but Frankie and Paul are both great so...it'll still be stupid. It'll just have a good cast. Maybe I'll check it out on video. JIMMY NUETRON-BOY GENIUS--Didn't this movie come out, like, a year ago? And no one liked it? I remember seeing previews so long ago and I even saw a review for it! What the hell is it doing back? It looks totally awful. I don't even think little kids will be into it. Skip it. SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON--This is the story of a stallion before the West was "won." 20 years ago it would have been narrated by John Denver. Now, though, it has to deal with a no name cast. (At least, I didn't recognize the narrator. For all I know it could be Tom Cruise.) This looks like the kind of movie that didn't even interest the filmmakers. But the animation is awesome! It looks like a combo of hand drawn and computer and some of the backgrounds are breathtakingly beautiful. And the herd of horses was definitely animated, but they moved like real horses. Again, maybe I'll check it out on video, but I'm in no rush. A WALK TO REMEMBER--Another teen romance flick. This time, though, it has Mandy Moore in it! And we're supposed to be excited about that. She plays another beautiful dork who is asked to help a jock out with his homework. Then they find out that they really like each other, but he doesn't want to because he's popular and she doesn't want to because she's a loner. She even uses the "secret friend" line that I've seen in some other flick like this. The problem is that I started to eat this preview up. Mandy and her boy toy (Shane West from, well, does it really matter? Just rent any old teen flick and someone who looks like him will be in it.) actually have some real chemistry, and that's what it takes to make these kinds of movies work. And, since this one isn't a comedy, it could actually be, well, not too horrendous. Of course, this was just a preview. The biggest problem is that it's based on a book by Nicholas Sparks (Message In A Bottle). Strike #1. Actually, that counts as two strikes. The second strike is that, even though according to the IMDb (I know it's not the greatest source of info, but it's all I've got) it's supposed to take place in the 50s, all of the kids look REALLY modern. But they could have just taken it out of the 50s and into the 00s for the movie. So, the real third strike is that Mandy sings in it. 'Nuff said. Whew! They really pushed the envelope with the previews this time. In fact, a lot of theatres were pretty pissed off about that. The movie's already 2 1/2 hours long. This caused us to be in the theatre for nearly three hours! For a kids' movie!! The good thing was that it didn't feel like three hours at all. The movie moved at a really fast pace. But, no matter how fast it moved, it didn't disguise one of its (and the book's, for that matter) main problems...it didn't really go anywhere. The main story line didn't really seem like it was the main story line. It was pushed so far back and there was so much other stuff going on that we didn't really get to pay much attention to the real story until the very end. But we'll get to that later. What is Harry Potter about? Well, obviously you muggles don't know anything about anything, do you? And that's the last time you will ever see me write that word. Never really liked it. Harry Potter is the son of two great people, one a wizard, the other a witch. Unfortunately, they were killed by another great wizard. But, for some reason that is as yet unexplained, he couldn't kill Harry. After the Potters' death, Headmaster Dumbledore (Richard Harris) and Prof. McGonagall (Maggie Smith) take Harry to his aunt and uncle's (Fiona Shaw and Richard Griffiths) house for them to raise away from the fame that he would ultimately have in the magical world. But these two people are two of the most evil non-magical people in the world. They keep Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) in a small closet under the stairs and blame him for everything. Meanwhile, their fat and psychopathic son is doted on and given at least one more gift every year for his birthday. (He's up to 38--and he's only 11 or so.) But one day Harry is accosted with letters from Hogwart's School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry. When Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) comes to pick him up he starts on a new adventure of being the great and powerful Wizard Of...um. I'm getting a little carried away, huh? So he goes to school, makes some friends (Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger played by Rupert Grint and Emma Watson), makes an enemy (Draco Malfoy played by Tom Felton), gets an owl, plays Quidditch (don't ask--it's much too complicated to explain in a mere review). Oh, and he finds out that there's a conspiracy that may topple the school and it may involve Prof. Snape (Alan Rickman) and Prof. Quirrell (Ian Hart). And maybe even Hagrid. Now, first the good stuff. This is a truly exciting movie. I kind of wanted it to go on for a little while longer. (Although, I will have to admit to falling asleep towards the end, but I've had a hell of a day, so cut me some friggin' slack! Sorry. Sorry.) They cut out parts that didn't really seem important (there's a whole subplot with a dragon that is cut down to it's most basic components...but that's a good thing), but they also cut some out that are pretty important. But I'll get to that in a minute. All of the actors do their best, but it's Alan Rickman who really shines. He's awesome as the creepy and mysterious Prof. Snape. Now the bad: The actors did their best with what they had. They weren't given a whole lot of character to work with. Granted, the book didn't really get into a whole lot of character, either, so maybe they had a good excuse. But they all do look their parts. (Although I could have done without a lot of Ron's facial contortions.) The main story line (the conspiracy) was pretty much delegated to background movement. That's almost true in the book, but at least there's something really interesting going on there. We have a subplot with Malfoy constantly trying to interfere with Harry's education (he only shows up a few times in the movie), we've got quite a few Quidditch matches (the movie only has one) and there are little touches that, while difficult to include in a movie aren't impossible. There's a lot of humor that is missing from the movie. (Although director Chris Columbus does manage to get a few of his little slapstick devices in there. Only one really works because it's totally unexpected. I'll only tell you that it happens when the kids are trying to fly their brooms for the first time.) And speaking of those brooms, the special effects weren't so special. There's a lot of obvious blue screening and quite a few times when the kids go from real to CGI and suddenly have really thick and immobile limbs. I've seen better effects on cheapo shorts on the internet. That's too bad, too. And what the hell was up with the ghosts? They had a reason for being there in the book. Here they just kind of drift in and out. Which means that John Cleese was TOTALLY wasted as Nearly-Headless Nick. The main problem, though, is the fact that the movie isn't nearly as magical as it could have been. There were opportunities for deviances from the book that aren't taken because the studio was too scared to do it. Hell, they got in trouble when they moved the kid's scar from where it was on the cover of the book. (Just a side note, they never say in the book where his scar is. The pictures were drawn with no input from author J.K. Rowling.) So is the movie worth the hype? Well, not really. Is it worth the $14 bazillion that it's making in the box office? Definitely not. Is it good and worth seeing? Definitely. There's enough magic here to still make it entertaining, but I can't help but think that Steven Spielberg would have had a freakin' field day with it. (Then again, I've never really liked Chris Columbus. His only really good movie was Mrs. Doubtfire and that would have been nothing without Robin Williams. (Since Robin seems to like working with Chris, maybe he'll show up in one of the future installments of the HP series. That would be cool!) And really, was Home Alone THAT good? Nope.) Now for my theory on Harry Potter and the Star Wars connection. (Bare with me, here. I'm a geek.) I seriously think that J.K. Rowling is a HUGE Star Wars fan and wanted to kind of re-write that story in the world of magic. Harry is a young boy who has no idea that he is a great and powerful wizard whose parents were also very powerful. He is sent by the leaders of his kind to be raised by his aunt and uncle who don't want him to know about his past. He is taken to a place where he can learn his skills and everyone knows exactly who he and his parents are. And they think that he could be the most powerful wizard yet. His parents were killed by someone who is feared by everyone, but no one wants to talk about him. I'll take this one step further and say this: In the movie they do not show Harry's father get killed. It's only his mother who is with Harry when she is killed. AND they never show the guy who killed her. Keeping in mind that I haven't read any of the other books, I think that Voldemort is Harry's father and he "killed" the father in the same way that Darth Vader "killed" Anakin. So that is my theory, and that is what it is. Let me know what you think. I've never actually heard anyone else make this connection (and, in fact, I've gotten some strange looks when I've made it), but on the IMDb there's a link to Star Wars from the "References" page. So, maybe... And what the hell is up with the damn title? Why did they not think that American kids would know what a Philosopher's Stone was? They actually thought that the word philosopher would scare the kids away. Bastards. It almost makes me want to never read any of the other books. But I know I will because they take about two seconds to read. Oh well. So much for protests.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Rings

admin — Thu, 20 Dec 2001 18:00:00 +0000

Before we get to the motion picture event of the year, let's hit some previews that bear (or bare) looking at (or lÃking Ã¢t): SPIDER-MAN--This looks like it could shape up to be one of the best comic book movies ever...but don't they all look like that from the previews? Then again, this one has a perfect cast (Tobey Maguire as Spidey--you laugh, but he's a great Peter Parker, Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane, Willem Defoe as The Green Goblin and any movie with Bruce Campbell in a small role is worth it's weight in film) and the perfect director (Sam Raimi--hence Mr. Campbell's appearance). I can't wait. It's going to rule my knees. JOHN Q--The latest Nick Cassavetes flick (of whose earlier films I have seen a whopping zero, but I've seen one of his dad's!) pits Denzel Washington against the insurance companies. He plays a poor dad whose son needs an operation to live, but he can't get the right insurance in order to get it done. So he has no choice but to take the hospital hostage. This brings in Robert Duvall and Anne Heche. Looks better than it sounds, but it still could suck. But with Mr. Washington in front of the camera and Mr. Cassavetes behind it I have hope. TIME MACHINE--Guy Pearce goes from having no memory to collecting memories of the past, present and future in this new adaptation of the classic HG Wells book, which...I...haven't...read. (I've read War Of The Worlds, though!) It looks a little like it could end up being Past The Planet Of The Apes, but I have a little more hope than that for it, even if they gave the director's chair to HG's great grandson or some shit. It looks pretty damn cool, actually. And Guy is always fun to watch. I'll be there. And now on to the business at hand, being the review of The Fellowship Of The Ring. First off, let's get down to brass tacks. I just read the book earlier this year in anticipation of the films, so I guess I can't say that I'm a "real fan." I have, however, always been intrigued by the world that JRR Tolkien created almost half a century ago. My dad had a really big book of The Hobbit with pictures from the old cartoon and I used to look through it all the time reading bits and pieces here and there. But I never actually read the book until about three years ago. Finally, when these films started to threaten to come out I read the whole set. And it took for fucking ever. But I'm a slow reader, so there you go. I did, however, love the books. I don't know that I would read them again right away, but that's mainly because it took me so damn long in the first place. But the world that Tolkien has created is so intricate and perfectly developed that it is a place that I can see visiting over and over again. And I can tell why he's influenced so many people not just in the fantasy world, but in the real world, too. ("Frodo lives!!!") But this isn't a review of the book. It's a review of the movie and, although they are entwined, they are not the same thing. Oh, don't worry all you Frod-heads out there, the story is pretty much intact. There are a few omissions (for time...it's already three hours long. Can you imagine how long it would be if the whole first book was interpreted?) and a few changes (Arwen (Liv Tyler) is introduced a little earlier), but for the most part the story is all here. But the important thing is that the mood of the source is still here. That mood of beautiful foreboding. And the characters are exactly as we imagined. For those of you who don't know (although I can't imagine that there are too many of you out there. This series is maybe second to Star Wars in popularity....maybe.) The Lord Of The Rings is the story of the journey of a young Hobbit named Frodo (Elijah Wood) to take the One Ring to the pits of fire that it was originally made from in order to finally destroy it. The One Ring controls the actions of a bunch of other rings that were given to the leaders of Middle-Earth thousands of years ago by the evil wizard Sauron (so far only played by a computer image). With Frodo are the Fellowship of the Ring: the Men, Boromir (Sean Bean from GoldenEye) and Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen); the Elf, Legolas (Orlando Bloom); the Dwarf, Gimli (John Rhys-Davies from Raiders Of The Lost Ark); the Wizard, Gandalf the Gray (Sir Ian McKellen); and the Hobbits, Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin), Merry Brandybuck (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin Took (Billy Boyd). And, amazingly, they each have their own personalities! (Well, Merry and Pippin are kind of comic relief--more so than in the book--and therefore have less distinctive personalities than the others, but we can't hold that against them because they're so cool.) Along the way they meet up with others who are there to hurt or help them such as Elrond (Hugo Weaving from The Matrix), the king of the Elves at Rivendell; Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), the grandmother of Arwen and queen of the Elves at Lothlorien; Saruman, the Wizard (Christopher Lee, who is the only member of cast or crew to have actually met Mr. Tolkien and reads the book every year); Bilbo Baggins, Frodo's uncle and original bearer (in The Hobbit) of the One Ring (Sir Ian Holm, voice of Bilbo in the animated version of The Hobbit); and, of course, Gollum (voiced by Andy Serkis). Followers of Tolkien will be sad to hear that Tom Bombadill, a pretty important character in the novel, was pushed out of the movie. Oh well. I hardly missed him. The ones that I WILL miss, however, are the Ents. They show up in The Two Towers, I believe, and I think I heard that they were also jettisoned. Now THAT'S a shame. So, in keeping with the fact that this is only on third of Frodo's adventure, there is no ending to this movie! Remember that when you go see it (and you WILL go see it). The first book didn't really have one, either. It was originally conceived as one really long novels in three parts, but the publishers made Tolkien put it out in three separate books. So the first two books really don't end, they just kind of cliffhanger. And that's what the movies are doing. That's good. Believe me. So what has Peter Jackson (The Frighteners, Dead Alive, Heavenly Creatures) done? He has pretty much done the impossible. He has taken one of the best loved books of all time and put it on the screen in a form that HE would like to see it. He couldn't listen to every fan in the world because he would have had millions of dissenting opinions. He took the mood and feel of the original source and turned it into a masterful film of action, intrigue and mystery. (Are you listening, Chris Columbus?) AND he kept it pretty damn faithful. And I loved every minute of it. In my opinion this was the best movie of the year. And, just to keep the real fans at bay, there are a lot of little bits that included that only they (or people who have just put the book down as they walk in the theatre as my roommate did, who actually caught these) will catch. The Fellowship camps out under the stone Trolls from The Hobbit, Galadriel has a swan boat that kind of hangs out in the background...the kind of things rabid fans will pick up on and think is really cool. The cinematography was absolutely beautiful. There were a lot of "Ooh! Look at this! Isn't it beautiful?" shots, but fuck it. When it looks like this I can live with that. I know I want to go to New Zealand, no matter what all the Australians say. After all the hype do I even have to talk about the performances? Of course the two Sir Ians were great. McKellen IS Gandalf. He's fucking amazing. But I don't think he can be anything else. Elijah has put in his usual great performance, too. For anyone who was against a little American kid from Iowa playing the British creation, screw you. It's hard to imagine anyone else playing Frodo now. And, after sending Peter an audition tape of him in full Hobbit regalia, I doubt that Pete had any doubts, either. Everyone else was uniformly great. Cate Blanchett finally plays a role she was born for, an Elven Queen. And Viggo is perfectly rough, sensitive and commanding as Aragorn. One question, though: Does everyone in Middle Earth have blue eyes? (Thank you again to my roommate. Damn she's observant. Damn her.) So, go see this movie NOW! It's an emotional roller coaster of an action film. Not since American Beauty (or even AI or Titanic...sorry, I still like that movie a lot) have I been so enthralled with a world and so attached to characters. I have always been kind of amazed by Peter Jackson, but now I know that I had a reason to be. He came from small movies that no one saw (some of them REALLY gory) and has now made a movie series that may just get him a permanent audience and win the hearts of Tolkien fans everywhere. He and the studio took a huge chance on this (what with filming all three at the same time at a HUGE expense), but, as far as I'm concerned, it paid off. Now, if only I had a fast forward machine to get to those next two movies.

Happy 2002

admin — Sat, 05 Jan 2002 18:00:00 +0000

As is par for the course for me, I'm running about a week or two late on this, but I don't care. I've got a lot to say about this next year. This Christmas was different. I think everybody in the world felt it. In the wake of our national disaster we all felt a little closer to our friends and families. We all realized just how precious they really are and I could kind of feel that this holiday season. Oh, sure there was the normal crass commercialism (Now! That's What I Call Christmas!!) and feelings of "Christmas sucks!" (I have two friends who still hold this opinion. Lighten up!) A lot of us tightened our belts (I actually had to loosen mine a bit...5 extra pounds! Crap!), but we still managed to have a pretty happy season and the stores were still fairly happy. I actually did something that I didn't think I would get a chance to do for a long time: I went to Wisconsin to see family up there that I have never met. That's always an interesting experience, especially when you've never seen a white Christmas and you're going some place where if it doesn't snow in early December you start thinking that hell has frozen over. So my trip began with a quick hop up to Chicago in an airplane. American Airlines, no less. I was a little less than impressed with the security down here in Austin, but it was ok. Then when I got on the plane something kind of shameful came over me. Ok, something very shameful. I saw an Arab guy with a turban and started to get a little worried. Yes, racial profiling happens to the best of us. But then I started to think about it. This guy is taking a HUGE risk in getting on an airplane in America (or pretty much anywhere, for that matter) with a turban on his head. First off, how stupid would it be for an actual terrorist to do that? Second, I started worrying for this guy. If he so much as got up to go to the bathroom he would have all 100+ people's eyes on him. One false move and there could be at least two people on top of him. That's gotta be a pretty daunting thought to be going through anybodys mind, and you know it was crossing his. This poor guy would have to sit in his seat for fear of being thrown down on the floor of the cabin. That's pretty awful. So that's what I was worried about more than anything during the entire ride. I never noticed if he got up or not. I doubt that he did. Up in Wisconsin it was cold as hell, but it was worth it. I met great-aunts, cousins, a foreign exchange student from Hungary and my 85-year-old great-grandmother who is still just as sarcastic as ever. Gotta love that. And no one ever argues with her. That's the way I want to be when I hit that age. Still quick and witty as hell. Some people have called her cantankerous or ornery. That would involve meanness, though. Never once was she mean. She was just gently prodding. And very funny. So I had a nice, quiet Christmas up there and then came back down here for Christmas with everyone else and that was pretty much that. Christmas with the family, and we've never seemed so close. (I was even less impressed with the security at O'Hare. They didn't even check my huge carry-on because they were too busy arguing with a guy over whether or not his cell phone was stolen from the x-ray machine. Asshole.) Meanwhile, our boys are still over in Afghanistan fighting what people are calling a fight for freedom. The government is saying that the terrorists are only waiting for the right time to strike again while we've got them on the run. So what does that leave us to do? Well, I'm not sure. As a normal citizen all I can think to do is hope. There's a new year upon us. Let's use that year to help bring peace to this world. In the past America has used it's big bank account to send weapons to hopeful "friendlies" in order to keep the bad guys at bay. Well, that hasn't paid off too well. It's time to send someone like Jimmy Carter to talk to these folks and get them just see the stupidity of what they're doing. They're taking lives, innocent or not, and putting them in the hands of a bunch of warmongering assholes who couldn't give a damn about the little people. Well, guess what guys, the world is full of us little people. We outnumber you by about a million to one. We just lack the money and skills to take over. We also lack the hatred and the evil thoughts. So, as we go through the next year, let's remember that, yeah, 2001 was one of the worst years in the history of the world, but 2002 has to be better. Let's try to make it one of the best and most peaceful years ever, no matter what that bastard across the sea wants to do. Let peace reign.

Ocean's Eleven

admin — Sat, 05 Jan 2002 18:00:00 +0000

Let's get to some swingin' previews, eh Sammy? HART'S WAR--So Bruce is back with an Oscar hope, huh? And this time, not only do we have to deal with Clooney's (I think) upcoming version of Hogan's Heroes, but we have to deal with Bruce doing a serious version of it. Truth be told, this looks really good. It's about a group of POW's near the end of WWII who find a chance to help America find a munitions plant that everyone thinks is a shoe factory. When one of their men is accused of murder, Bruce and Colin Farrell (from Tigerland and American Outlaws) are going to try to defend him while using the trial as a way to attract attention to the plant. Looks like Bruce is in top form here (even though he has hair again) and it could be a great movie. And director Gregory Hoblit (Frequency, Fallen and Primal Fear) hasn't misstepped too many times lately, although Fallen was a bit of a letdown. I'll be there for this one. COLLATERAL DAMAGE--After Sept. 11, this flick was pushed back indefinitely because of the terrorism subject. That and the studio was finally realizing that Arnold Schwarzeneggar vehicles just aren't worth it anymore. Now I guess they figure that the American public is ready for a film about a man who is out to kill the terrorist who killed his family. They may be right. I can see an Americentric flick like this doing really well right now. And, with a great cast (John Leguizamo, John Turturro and Elias Koteas) and a solid director (Andrew Davis--The Fugitive) this could be what Arnie needs to get himself out of the doldrums of bad cinema. But Davis isn't really a golden boy. He also did Chain Reaction, Steal Big, Steal Little and A Perfect Murder. And I really didn't like Under Siege too much, either. (I seem to be one of the few, though.) Well, either way, I always like Arnold no matter of his politics and I'll give it a shot. It certainly looks better than End Of Days or The 6th Day. Can't be much worse. (For the record, I didn't see 6th Day and I wasn't the one who rented End Of Days, but I did think it was total crap.) ORANGE COUNTY--MTV Pictures comes back with the story of a young man (Colin Hanks--Tom's son) who has dreams of getting out of his little town in the titular county. He wants to be a writer (something his dad, John Lithgow, of course doesn't understand) and put in a application to Stamford. When his records get screwed up with a loser's records (by Lily Tomlin, no less...what the fuck is she doing here?) he has to go set the record straight. With the help of his loser brother (Jack Black, who may make me see this crap), he's going to go see the dean (Harold Ramis). This movie has a great cast for such a stupid piece of tripe. Among the other small roles are Chevy Chase, Catherine O'Hara, Ben Stiller and Kevin Kline. How the hell they got these people together I'll never know, but I want their casting agent. It looks like it could be fun in that Dead Man On Campus way and, as shitty as that one was, it was still pretty funny at times. I might give it a shot at matinee prices. And now for the main event! Let's head down to Vegas. Ocean's Eleven is, of course, the story of a boy who meets his Caribbean queen in a dream. When he wakes up, he goes outside to find her in his car. And, since I can't think of any more Billy Ocean songs I'm going to end that lame-ass joke right now. Back in the late 50's Frank Sinatra got an idea. He and his crew, The Rat Pack or, as they liked to be called, The Summit (Frank, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford and sort of Angie Dickenson) wanted to hang out in Vegas for a while. But they didn't want to pay for it and the studios kind of had them locked down. So they came up with the idea of making a movie based in Vegas. And the movie shows that haphazard nature. Released in 1960, the original Ocean's Elven was uneven at best, but there's a coolness and fun about it that makes it a classic. It's a great party flick. Nothing you need to pay much attention to, but it's something you have to see if you're into any of the Rat Pack boys. Fast-forward to 2001 when ace director Steven Soderbergh gets to idea to bring together of bunch of his favorite actors from his movies and make a fun heist flick himself. A remake of Ocean's Eleven. And it's better than and almost as cool as the original. It's about a guy named Danny Ocean (George Clooney) who just got out of prison. He immediately goes to Hollywood where his old buddy, Dusty Ryan (Brad Pitt), is teaching the stars to play poker. (This is a great scene where Joshua Jackson and Topher Grace (an alumni of Soderbergh's Traffic) spoof themselves and their dumbass image. I gain more respect for these guys the more I see them do this kind of stuff.) Soon Danny is talking Dusty into helping him rob three casinos in Vegas on the same night. But before they can take on this daunting task (something that is impossible. According to their friend Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould) only three guys have gotten close to even robbing ONE casino and they were all caught (or killed) before they got to the parking lot) they have to assemble a crew. This motley crew consists of expert pick-pocket Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon), old-school thief Saul Bloom (Carl Reiner in his best role, acting or directing, in years), inside man Frankie Cattone (Bernie Mac), ace drivers Turk and Virgil Malloy (Scott Caan and Casey Affleck who I can only guess got the role because of Matt), acrobat Yen Mu-Shuu (real-life acrobat Shaobo Qin), munitions expert Basher Tarr (Don Cheadle) and computer hacker Livingston Dell (Edward Jemison from Soderbergh's little seen Schizopolis). Add in Reuben, Danny and Rusty and that's where you get your eleven. But in Danny's way is the owner of these three casinos, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia in his first big production since 1998's Desperate Measures). He's one of the biggest men in Vegas and has a habit of making people disappear, and then their families suffer. A real bastard. Why would Danny choose this guy to piss off? Easy. A woman. Tess Ocean (newcomer Julia Roberts...well, it says "Introducing"!) to be exact. Danny's ex-wife is now with Terry and Danny knows that this is a horrible idea. So, for her safety, Danny's robbing the casinos. Right. Even though this version is tighter and more formal than the original you can tell that these guys had just as much fun making it as Frank and the boys did back in 1960. And that's what makes this movie so cool. Is it a great film like Traffic or Erin Brockovich? No. It wasn't meant to be. It's just a really fun heist comedy. And everybody works so well with each other that it's hard to believe that they all haven't made a lot of movies together. (Of course Don Cheadle is used to filling Sammy Davis, Jr.'s shoes. He played him in the 1998 bio-pic The Rat Pack.) That said, everybody puts in really good performances here. And Julia gets better looking the older she gets. Very strange. And Soderbergh, since he's worked with most of these guys before, knows what he wants from each of them and knows how to get it. And, for us movie geeks, there are all kinds of little in-jokes, most of which I didn't catch because I was having too much fun with the movie to pay attention to the little details. (Just to keep you watching, check out Brad's tattoo, a cup he holds at the circus, the name of the guy Terry says can watch the fight on HBO, the crowd at the fight and one of the guards that Virgil and Turk (their names are a reference, too) talk to during the heist. His face isn't shown, but you hear his voice. There are plenty of others, but I don't want to take all of the fun away.) This is a great flick. Then again, when was the last time Soderbergh made a bad movie? The last one that I heard was bad with The Underneath back in 1995, and I've really only heard that from one person. (This is his eleventh movie, by the way.)

Vanilla Sky

admin — Wed, 09 Jan 2002 18:00:00 +0000

Let's mind fuck over to some previews, huh? UNFAITHFUL--So how many movies is Richard Gere going to be in this year? This time it's Adrian Lyne's remake of the 1969 French film The Unfaithful Wife. Not too memorable of a preview, so I'm not really looking forward to it. Whatever. The Mothman Prophecies looks more interesting. PANIC ROOM--Can David Fincher do any wrong? (Ok. Shut up about Alien3. Not his fault (not really, anyway) and it was his first movie.) This time out he throws Jodie Foster in a small room in her new house with her daughter where she has to survive a brutal gang of thugs (including Forest Whitiker, Jared Leto and Dwight Yoakam) who want something in the titular room, which is full of security monitors and a phone with a separate line. This looks like it could be really freakin' stupid in anyone else's hands. But, since it's Fincher, I'm all for it. He makes it look awesome. A study in paranoia gone wrong. I can't wait! WE WERE SOLDIERS--This has some of the scariest words in the English language attached to it: "A Film By Randall Wallace." The man can write, but as a director (see The Man In The Iron Mask) he leaves a whole fucking world to be desired. Not as bad as some, but certainly not as good as I had hoped he would be. Well, I hope he's gotten better, because this movie looks like it could be awesome. Mel Gibson (who hopefully took over a few times for Mr. Wallace just to show him how it's done) is a Southern soldier in Vietnam. Among his soldiers are Greg Kinnear and Chris Klein. It looks like it's going to examine both sides of the ocean. I'm always up for a new Mel flick, but I'm really hoping for this one to be great. Of course that could just be because I'm an out of time hippie. I dunno. Ok, now for the real puzzle: Why do big name directors (in this case, Cameron Crowe) decide to do remakes of classics (like Psycho) or foreign films (in this case Alejandro Amenabar's 1997 mind fuck Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes to us monolinguistic assholes))? Especially if said films only came out five years ago! It's not exactly a habit that I'm fond of, but whatever. I'm not a Hollywood big-wig, no am I? But when I heard that Cameron was going to be making this one I got, well, actually I got a little worried. Don't get me wrong. I love Cameron Crowe and his last movie (Almost Famous) is among my favorites now. But he's never done anything approaching mysterious. He's great at smart romantic comedies that not only make you love the protagonists, but also convey a sense of the time that they take place in. But this is a weirdo freak sci-fi type flick that leaves you wondering what the hell you've just been watching for the last two hours. How is he going to do with that? Well, not too badly. Not great, but not bad. David Aames (Tom Cruise in his second lead role for Mr. Crowe) is a bad boy. He's rich, fairly famous and can have (and does have) any woman he wants. Right now he's with Julie (Cameron Diaz--it must have been confusing on the set), sort of. She's a friend who he sometimes has sex with. What David's best friend, Brian (Jason Lee) calls a fuck buddy. But David's world is about to be turned upside-down. When Brian brings Sofia (Penelope Cruz) to David's party the two instantly find something in each other's eyes. And poor little Brian is pushed to the side. When Julie goes psycho and starts following him around is when things get dangerous. Soon she follows him over at Sofia's apartment and waits for him to come out the next morning. She takes him for a ride and takes the car over a bridge, killing herself and completely disfiguring David's face and body. And this is where things get really weird. We (and David) start wondering where his reality is and what he's making up. There are scenes of him in a prison talking to a psychiatrist (Kurt Russell) about a murder, but who was killed? Is David's face really fucked up? (He wears a mask all the time in the prison that looks like a cross between Chris Klein and Michael Myers.) Can Tom Cruise act without his face? The answer to that last question I can tell you: um, sort of. Ever since Eyes Wide Shut he's been a little weird. There are a lot of pregnant pauses in his acting that are getting on my nerves to tell you the truth. Granted, I've never liked the guy, but he's gotten all Kubrickian on us and he's not too far from becoming William Shatner, although his pauses aren't in the middle of sentences. Watch the scene where Julie picks David up for the ride of his life and you'll see what I mean. He tries to get in his car, but something just keeps stopping him. I could just see Ed Wood off camera telling him, "You've got to get through that car door, but it's hard. No, not that hard." And I don't ever want to see Tom Cruise emulate a Bob Dylan album cover ever again. (By the way, he says that he's just turning 33 in the movie. Good try, pal. Now, get in line for the 40+ year-old Hollywood Icon Bus to join Mel, Tim and Val and don't forget your wrinkle cream.) Other than that the movie was pretty good. The rest of the performances were about on par with the actors' usual performances. And I'm glad Jason Lee now has someone besides Kevin Smith to further his career. And I'm talking about Cameron, not Tom. The other Cameron was just as hot as always even if she was kind of an evil bitch. (In all fairness, David was a total asshole.) And who knew it would be such a turn on to hear her say, "I swallowed your cum." YOUCH! Strangely, Tom's relationships with the women were only partly good. He wasn't in very many scenes with Cameron, so we didn't really get a chance to see them together. What we did see was mostly scary. But he and Penelope, who he is now linked to in real life (how fuckin' cheesy--Cruise and Cruz. Stupid.), he only had real chemistry with in a few scenes. And the main one involved her being topless. Funny, that. Other than that they were ok together, but nothing too special. Of course, he and Nicole didn't exactly light up the screen together in any of their movies. Tom and Jason, however, almost looked like they actually could have been buddies here. (Funny how Tom acts better with guys than he does with women.) In fact, their friendship kind of reminded me of mine with my best friend. Although I would hope that my bud would never steal my girl away from me. (Although there are those who think he would.) I'm not so sure that I really believed the other male relationships, though. David and the doctor seemed to think that they had some kind of father/son relationship going on. I just didn't quite see that. Yeah, David reached out to his doctor, but I never got the Good Will Hunting feel from them. And I certainly didn't get a To Kill A Mockingbird feel, which is the movie they show clips from to exemplify the two of them. They were just a doctor and patient. Watch for Noah Taylor (the road manager from Almost Famous) as Edmund Ventura. Funny thing about him is that he was also in an Australian flick called Flirting back in 1991 with...Nicole Kidman. D'oh! Also watch for Johnny Galecki, who I didn't notice until the credits rolled. If he's who I think he was he needs to lose some weight. His character name was Peter Brown. A reference to a Beatles' insider? With Crowe there's no telling. And, of course, there was Alicia Witt as a secretary and Tilda Swinton as her personal idol. And, most surprising of all, a certain blockbuster director who is currently about to release a new sci-fi film with Tom has a very quick cameo at David's party. How cool is that? But, what really rocked here was, of course, the music. Crowe has not lost his touch with the music. From Peter Gabriel's "Solisbury Hill" being used during a particularly playful scene between David and Sofia to The Monkees' "Porpoise Song" during a sex scene (I never knew The Monkees could be ominous) there wasn't a single musical misstep. And Paul McCartney's new title song was great, too. (How'd this guy get so close to an ex-Beatle?) I didn't hear R.E.M.'s new song, but he did use "Sweetness Follows" to great effect. Lots of little musical references, too. I don't think Cameron will ever be able to make a movie where the main characters aren't obsessed with music in some way. And I have no problem with that. There was a kind of sad reference to my four favorite guys, though. Kurt talks about how a patient of his went through a life changing experience and it made him suddenly be more happy about life. "One day his favorite Beatles was John and the next it was Paul." (First off, I resent the inference that John fans aren't happy about life, but that's for a rant of a different day.) Then Tom says, "I always liked George." Funny that even a month and a half off it's still sad. But, enough about the next soundtrack I have to buy, the real disappointment is the fact that the movie isn't the mind fuck that it's made out to be. I've seen the original (although it was a couple of years ago) and I remember being totally blown away by it (and the girl in it who seems to be such a Hollywood "It Girl" lately that she can even reprise roles in remakes of movies that she's already been in). There were so many questions running through my mind. "What does it all mean?" being the main one. At the end of this one I had no questions. They made it painfully obvious exactly what was going on at the end. Everything was kind of tied up into a neat little bow. It didn't end any earlier or later than the original, but there was more explanation. Then again, I could be forgetting something about the original. Other than that there was nothing changed that I could tell. Oh, the sex scene was a little less steamy (dammit), but David and Sofia even meet each other on what seems to be the same park sidewalk as in the original, complete with fall leaves everywhere. And it opens with the same message from David's alarm clock: "Abre Los Ojos. Open Your Eyes." Yes, they go that far to bring the memory of the original to it. Weird, huh? So, love the soundtrack, like the movie. It wasn't bad, but it could have been so much more surprising and just different. Not a bad experiment for Cameron, but I hope he does better the next time he goes out on a limb like this. And I hope he writes something for himself.

The Man Who Wasn't There

admin — Fri, 11 Jan 2002 18:00:00 +0000

I couldn't get my mind off of her. I knew I should be able to, but there was just something about this dame. Maybe some previews would help me wash the sin away. THE SWEETEST THING--Oh, Cameron Diaz, I love you and I would watch you in just about anything. But come on! This looks like some of the crappiest romantic comedy fodder I've seen in a long time. With a just under the radar cast (Thomas Jane, Christina Applegate (yeah, she counts as "under the radar" now) and Selma Blair) if it finds its way into the hit department it could break out some new stars. It does, however, have promise on one hand: Nancy Pimental (ex-writer for South Park and ex-co-host hottie on Win Ben Stein's Money) wrote it and she's pretty damn funny. But the preview only shows one really funny part involving some take-out food wrapped in foil in the shape of a swan. Cameron finds it in Christina's car weeks after it should have been eaten and thrown up (sorry, Cam, but you are getting a little thin, there) and throws it out the window. Chaos ensues. I dunno. Could be good, but it really looks dumb. But it's named after a good song. Maybe that'll help. Only one new preview? Oh well. No help there. Maybe the main feature will dull the memory. By now I think everybody and their dog knows exactly what to expect from the Brothers Coen: the unexpected. They hop genres like Dean Martin hopped bars. They also tend to have a central item that the whole movie is really about. Oh sure, there's the story and characters and all that jazz, but that's not what I',m talking about. I mean that Miller's Crossing may have been about gangsters and double-crossing, but what it was really about was hats. O Brother was about hair gel. The Big Lebowski was about a rug. The Man Who Wasn't There is all about hair. Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is a barber who accidentally gets himself mixed up in a film noir plot to get some money out of his wife's lover. Ed is not really a happy man, but he doesn't know any other way, so he's content. His wife, Doris (Frances McDormand) works at Nirdlinger's, a local department store, as a bookkeeper. Her lover, Big Dave (James Gandolfini), is the owner because his wife is the old owner's daughter. When Ed gets a chance to make some money in dry cleaning from a traveling con man (Coen main-stay Jon Polito--and as far as we know he's a con man...there is a question), he decides to finally shake up his wife's affair. (He hasn't until now because, "Hey, it's a free country.") He sends a note to Big Dave to leave $10,000 (the amount that Jon needs to help start up his new business) or he will tell everybody (including himself since the note is anonymous) everything. But when Big Dave finds out things get really fucked up. Ed kills Dave in self defense (in a scene with some of the best dying sound effects ever, just as I would imagine someone would sound if they were stabbed in the neck) and it just gets worse from there. This is a great little diversion for the Coen boys. Not up with some of their best work, but even the Coens at their worst is great. The pace is deliberately slow and I think that caught a few people off guard. I heard a woman saying that it was boring and the story was stupid. I nearly asked her if she would have rather seen Harry Potter in the theatre next door. The cast was awesome with Billy Bob being the natural standout. Even though he's content with his life you can tell that there's some pain back there because of some choices left unmade. He never smiles and always has the same sad, confused look on his face. "How did things ever go so far?" you can hear him ask in every frame. In fact, in his voice-overs he does ask this question, but this version of him knows in the end. If only he had just kept cutting hair, which he focuses on whenever things get a little out of hand. Some of Billy Bob's best acting since Sling Blade. The rest of the cast was almost as good. Frances, I don't think, can put in a bad performance. She was as good as always as the sometimes drunk wife who always wants a little more. James was great as slightly less threatening Tony Soprano. Not to say that he's a one-note performer, but it's hard to see him in a role outside of his hit tv show. This time, though, he's almost like a big, laughing teddy bear until he gets double-crossed by someone he thought was his friend. Tony Shalhoub, as a show-boating, fast-talking lawyer, is also great here. In my opinion he's one of the best character actors of our time, right up there with Steve Buscemi. He doesn't get much credit, but I keep pulling for him. And, just to add to the noir feel of the film, it's all shot in black and white. Beautiful black and white, in fact. I think this movie comes closest to actually looking like an old 40s noir than any film in recent memory. Pretty cool movie from a pair of genius filmmakers. For fans it'll be near bliss. It's no Blood Simple, but it's still a lot of fun and more intelligent than 85% of the crap out there. For non-fans it'll be...what am I talking about? Who's not a fan of the Coen Brothers? They rock and everybody knows it. If you're a big noir fan (including the books) you might catch some obscure references to earlier stories. I didn't, but there are a couple under the IMDb's trivia page for this flick.

Bandits

admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2002 18:00:00 +0000

No previews this time because they were all for movies that I've already previewed. One of the dangers of going to the Discount Cinema. That and the spikes in the seats. It would seem the Billy Bob Thornton is having a bit of a resurrection this year. After the debacle that was his sophomore directing job, All The Pretty Horses, it looks like Hollywood has forgiven him and given him three great roles in just one short year. There's been The Man Who Wasn't There (a great little Coen Bros. confection-noir) and, most recently, The Monster's Ball (a racially charged drama about an executioner who falls in love with the wife of a man he had to execute. Haven't seen it yet.) But first there was Bandits, the latest from Barry Levinson. Terry (Thornton) and Joe (Bruce Willis) are escapees from a prison who decide to go on a bank robbing spree in order to go to Mexico and open a resort. They come up with the ingenious plan of kidnapping the bank president the night before the robbery, thereby forgoing all of the alarms and phone calls of a normal daytime robbery. This way it's just one person at a time and they can contain everybody. But they need a driver, so they find Joe's cousin, Harvey (real-life Fonda kid, Troy Garity). Unfortunately, as honest as Harvey may be, he's dumber than a brick. Then, after the second robbery, the real spanner shows up in the works: Kate (Cate Blanchett). She's a disenchanted wife and a huge Bonnie Tyler fan (which is a little disturbing--two Tyler songs show up in the soundtrack). When she hits Terry on his way to the meeting place, things get a little, um, hairy. Through the course of spending time with the boys she starts to fall in love with them. Yeah, she's a hostage, but she's also taken them hostage. This is a great little comedy with Levinson's usual genius: extremely well drawn characters. Even in his lesser films the characters are great. Here we get the free-spirited, but down-hearted wife who doesn't want to choose between two men she just met. And Joe is a strong man's man who, while he's not as dumb as Harvey, he's still not real high in the brains department. He acts on impulse and always thinks that that's the right thing to do. Terry, though, is a hypochondriac who thinks everything through WAY too much. Everybody has a lot of fun with their roles and puts in some awesome performances. Bruce is as good as he's ever been, even though he's got hair. Cate is great, too. She looks amazing as a blue-green eyed red-head, especially by blue refrigerator light. But Billy Bob is the real star here. He may be a bit too Woody Allen at times, but that's as much in the writing as it is the performance. ("I look danger right in the face and I laugh at it and make funny faces.") This is the first time I've ever really seen him do physical comedy and he's great at it. (Terry and Cate's dance is hysterical.) Thornton and Willis were almost like Lemmon and Matthau in The Odd Couple. In fact, Billy Bob even paid a little homage to them when he started to make a weird nasally noise near the beginning. This flick may not be anybody's favorite of the year (it's pretty predictable, after all--Levinson may be a great director, but he's pretty safe), but it's a fun movie, and I really think that's all it's meant to be. It's good to see Levinson going back to his comic roots. As long as he stays away from sci-fi I think we're ok. One minor annoyance, though: so-called comedian Bobby Slayton as tabloid reporter Darren Head. With his weird voice and awful lisp, this guy would never be an announcer for Little League, much less one of the biggest "America's Most Wanted" type shows. And he was just annoying. Not the role, really, just him. (Although he wasn't too bad as Joey Bishop in The Rat Pack. But, then again, Joey isn't exactly the least annoying person in the world. But he's cool just because he's the last surviving member of the Holy Summit.)

Black Hawk Down

admin — Wed, 23 Jan 2002 18:00:00 +0000

Let's battle some previews first. MR. DEEDS--As much as I sometimes like Adam Sandler (and he is really funny off and on), I kind of resent the fact that he's using a classic Capra film to further his career. He's not my first choice to replace Gary Cooper and, while the movie looks kind of funny (and has Winona Ryder who stole my heart a long time ago) I don't like the fact that Adam's character has a frost bitten foot that has no feeling in it. Although it is kind of fun to watch John Turturro beat on Adam's leg with a fireplace poker. 8 MILES--I have to admit, I want to see this movie. Yeah, it's the "Eminem movie," but it looks like it's going to be more than that. It won't turn out to be Cool As Ice because a)say what you like, but Em does have some talent and b) it's directed by Curtis Hanson, director of such modern day classics as L.A. Confidential and The Wonder Boys. How did that happen?, you may ask. Well, I don't know, but I'm glad it did. Oh, and one more reason it won't be as bad as all that, it's a drama. Like, a real drama. It's about life on the streets, not some wannabe hipster who burns into town looking for tunes and some quick sex. It's actually about Eminem's hometown of Detroit and the 8 mile stretch of road that separates the white poor folks from the black poor folks and the violence that happens there. I'm not saying it's going to be a masterpiece, but it will at least be worth a look. Maybe even if you don't like Eminem or rap. You gotta like Curtis Hanson. MINORITY REPORT--So Tom Cruise moves from Kubrick to a man who made a Kubrick movie. Spielberg's new one has something to do with a future police force that act on a crime before it's committed. When one of their own (Tommy) is hunted, hilarity ensues. Actually, seeing as how this is a Spielberg flick I'm really excited about it. It looks great. Too bad about that Tom Cruise shaped growth on the film, though. BAD COMPANY--Who gave one of our greatest living actors (Sir Anthony Hopkins) permission to choose a Jerry Bruckheimer/Joel Schumacher flick to sully his reputation with? And who thought it would be a good idea to pair him with Chris Rock?! Now, I like Chris and all, but he's not a very good actor and, in fact, he's usually kind of annoying in movies. (Nurse Betty not withstanding.) This looks like a really dumb action flick about Chris posing as his twin brother who was killed while working for the CIA. Hopkins brings Chris in to keep the spy game going even though Chris is a street hustler who seems to have no real conscience. This is gonna suck. We may have lost the previews, but we will win the review! (Ok. That was really lame. I apologize. The writer of that last "quip" has been sacked.) Why are we so preoccupied with war films? What is it about the average American (if there really is one) that makes us all want to see what war is all about? Maybe it's because it's something that about 75% of us (thank God) will never truly understand. We'll never know what it's like to lay our lives on the line. To trust those lives to a group of guys who, until about six months to a year ago, were complete strangers, but are now our best friends in the entire world. Or to see those best friends get their body parts blown off all for a "cause" that we don't really understand. That is part of what movies like Black Hawk Down are trying to help us with. This time, though, it's not about WWII or Vietnam or even something so well known as the Korean War. This time it's the invasion of Somalia in 1993, something that a lot of us had forgotten about. Specifically it's about one particular day in that invasion. A group of Rangers and Delta company men were supposed to go into a market in Mogadishu to capture two of the evil warlord's men. It was supposed to take half an hour, an hour tops. Fifteen hours later we had lost 18 men and most of the rest were wounded. This is one of those movies that's kind of hard to review. Like The Thin Red Line it seems to be less about the characters than it is the feelings that the filmmakers have on war. But, like Saving Private Ryan, it's also about the brutality of the war and the blood that runs the ground. In fact, I've read one review that compared it to the last battle scene of that film. Rolling Stone said that it was like that scene for two hours with no let up and that was the downfall of the film. I'm not sure that I agree with that. The real downfall is the fact that we don't get to know anyone. I just told you pretty much the whole story without giving you any character details at all. And you almost don't need any. But, for the star watchers out there, I'll try to name a few people. Staff Sergeant Matt Eversmann (Josh Hartnett, who seems to be everywhere these days) is the second in command of the Rangers. He and his men (actually led by Master Sergeant Paul Howe (William Fitchner)--I'll never understand ranks and leadership in the military) go into the town in humvees in order to take the men they need and get out. Company Clerk John Grimes (Ewan McGregor, who is not too good with the American accent this time out) is a typist who has never seen battle because he can type. (I guess I'll get lucky if I ever get called up.) He says he's pissed about that, but when he gets the chance to go he's scared shitless. Lt. Colonel Danny McKnight (Tom Sizemore) is the man who goes back more often than anyone else to get his men out. He and his humvees drive around the town for hours trying to get to the downed helicopters of the title only to be thwarted at every turn. The Deltas in the Black Hawks are sent mainly for coverage. But, when Private 1st Class Todd Blackburn (Orlando Bloom in his first real non-elven role) falls out of one of the helicopters, they have to come in to rescue him. Chief Warrant Officer Cliff Wolcott (Jeremy Piven playing his same funny as hell character) is piloting the first one to go down and start all of the hell. Back at home base is Major General William Garrison (Sam Shepard almost looking like Craig T. Nelson) who has the unenviable task of telling the boys in the field that help can't get to them for hours. Ridley Scott films the battle scenes with his usual masterful hand (and his usual buttload of smoke and fog). There were times that, just like in Private Ryan, I thought I was really there. But, because of the distance of the characters, I still felt like I was in a movie theatre watching the bullets fly. (Am I contradicting myself? Oh well. You figure it out. My feelings contradicted themselves.) All of the actors did a fine job, but no one really stood out. (And do all soldiers have Texas accents? AND do they all have young, boyish faces? After a while they all started to look alike...one more thing to distance you from any of the characters.) But watch for Ewan Bremner (Spud from Trainspotting), Eric Bana (who is stepping into Bill Bixby's shoes as Dr. Bruce Banner in Ang Lee's version of The Hulk...more prepositions, please!) and Tom Guiry (from the 1994 version of Lassie, The Sandlot and Tigerland--I worked at Cockbuster Video for too long if I know this guy's name). I said before that the movie seemed like it wanted us to know the feelings of the filmmakers more than the characters. That's true, but it took a while to really get to those feelings. At first I didn't get a sense of anything. But, by the end I knew that Ridley and the boys think that we shouldn't have been over there. (There's a very literal shot of Sam Shepard wiping up the blood of the young men that he sent into hell. Very simple and obvious, but I've never seen it on screen before. It was one of the better anti-war moments in the film.) What do I think? Well, that's hard to say. America has made it a habit of getting into fights that aren't ours and it's gotten us in a lot of trouble. (Recent events included.) But we are also the most powerful nation in the world. It's maybe part of our duty to help out when we're needed. But how do we tell who the good guys are? That's the real question. Sometimes it's easy, but sometimes it's impossible to choose the right one. And I think some of the more "patriotic" of us out here are going to be a little disappointed to hear the line I mis-quoted horribly above. Those guys are sent out there to do a job. They're fighting for themselves and their buddies. They could usually give a fuck about us back home unless we're related to them. But for the hours that they're under fire even those closest to them take a back seat and they would probably sell their own mothers out to get them out of the hell they're in. I don't blame them. As much as some people don't want to hear that, screw you, it's true. Put yourself in their shoes. On second thought, don't. I don't wish that on anybody. So, did I actually like this movie? Yes, I did. Was it the greatest war movie ever, as some critics are hailing it as? No, not at all. It was a very good movie and should be seen but for the greatest ever, go rent Private Ryan again. Or even The Longest Day or Platoon. I guess I was just a little disappointed that it was kind of a popcorn movie. A very good one, but a popcorn movie all the same. Not nearly as disturbing as I had been lead to believe.

Oscar Predictions 2002

admin — Wed, 13 Feb 2002 18:00:00 +0000

Accepting for Jim Carrey is a person who was actually nominated. Ok, so this year I thought I would actually get my predictions in pretty quickly. No more of this putting it off until the day before the show for me. No, no. I'm doing it the day after Hollywood begins rubbing itself. So here they are. The 2002 Oscar Nominations: BEST PICTURE-- A BEAUTIFUL MIND GOSFORD PARK IN THE BEDROOM LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING MOULIN ROUGE! Erm, so I've been a little re-miss in my duties, here. I've only seen one of these. But I can make an educated guess. A Beautiful Mind I've heard was a little over the top, but still pretty good even if it's hardly based in any kind of fact. Gosford Park is supposed to be a return to form for a classic 70s director. (Yay, Altman!) In The Bedroom I heard from a co-worker was about on par with a Lifetime Network weeper. Not too interested. Moulin Rouge! I actually own a copy of and still have yet to see it. I'll post a review as soon as I do, though. But it seems to be a real love it or hate if film. I'll probably love it. My money is actually on Lord Of The Rings. It was the best movie I saw this year (even over A.I. amazingly enough). Everything about it was great. Besides, it's the longest film on here, so it has to win, right? My only question here is where the fuck is Memento, pretty much the only form-bending film this year? It was actually challenging AND really, really good. An amazing film that barely got noticed at the big show this year. Two noms (Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing) and they call that good. And I would still put A.I. in here. Maybe take out In The Bedroom. I dunno. BEST DIRECTOR-- ROBERT ALTMAN--GOSFORD PARK RON HOWARD--A BEAUTIFUL MIND PETER JACKSON--LORD OF THE RINGS DAVID LYNCH--MULHOLLAND DRIVE RIDLEY SCOTT--BLACK HAWK DOWN I'm not quite so re-miss here. I've seen three of them. Wait. Three?! That can't be right! I only saw one of the Best Picture noms! But yes! In a strange turn of events there's more than one director in this category whose movie didn't make the top spot. Pretty amazing. While I've always liked Ron Howard, I don't think he has enough clout to win again. Not for this movie. I also don't think that Black Hawk Down was good enough for a nom here. I like Ridley a lot, but this wasn't one of his best. David Lynch? He may deserve it, but probably not for this one, either. Although he did an amazing job on a film that no one can understand without the help of some hallucinatory drugs. I'd say either Altman or Jackson. Altman because he's amazing with big ensemble casts and he's become a classic Hollywood director without actually being a part of Hollywood (a strike against him for this sort of thing, actually). Jackson because he pulled something off that not many others could. He made an amazing film out of an amazing book that no one thought that anyone could get right. I can't decide which one is more likely or which one I think should win. So it's a tie. BEST ACTOR-- RUSSELL CROWE--A BEAUTIFUL MIND SEAN PENN--I AM SAM DENZEL WASHINGTON--TRAINING DAY WILL SMITH--ALI TOM WILKINSON--IN THE BEDROOM Damn. I haven't seen any of these. I can guess again, though. Russell probably won't get it. He just won last year and that only happens to Tom Hanks, right? Denzel, I hear, was the best thing about Training Day and he was actually a bad guy! Will Smith buffed up a LOT for Ali and these guys LOVE physical transformations, so he's got a good chance. Tom Wilkinson I've only really seen in The Patriot, but he was very good. I didn't even know he was in In The Bedroom to tell you the truth. The winner here? Probably Sean Penn. The man hates acting, but he's amazing at it. The problem here is that, from what most critics say (because no one else is seeing the movie), I Am Sam is pretty putrid stuff. It was custom made for Sean to win an Oscar, though. But I might see it eventually. All of the music is covers of The Beatles. Then again, maybe I'll skip it and just listen to Rubber Soul again. BEST ACTRESS-- HALLE BERRY--MONSTER'S BALL JUDI DENCH--IRIS NICOLE KIDMAN--MOULIN ROUGE! SISSY SPACEK--IN THE BEDROOM RENEE ZELLWEGER--BRIDGET JONES' DIARY Only seen one of these, too. I'm a tool. Halle got buzz as soon as Monster's Ball came out, so I'm not surprised here. Will she win? Probably not. She's got no real clout in Hollywood and this is, after all, more of a popularity contest. Sorry, Halle. Judi could win one of these in her sleep. Lately she gets nominated for anything she's in as long as it doesn't also star Pierce Brosnan. Nicole, I hear, was awesome in both of her big roles this year. (I actually saw The Others and they were at least half right. She was great.) Can she win for a musical? No one's done it in a very long time. Sissy was the only good thing about In The Bedroom from what my buddy says. I'll pull for her, though, since I know a family member. But the real surprise here is Renee. Bridget Jones' was great, but was it this good? Well, maybe. She was certainly much better than expected. And Oscar loves an accent. I'll say Judi or Nicole, though. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR-- JIM BROADBENT--IRIS ETHAN HAWKE--TRAINING DAY BEN KINGSLEY--SEXY BEAST IAN MCKELLEN--LORD OF THE RINGS JON VOIGHT--ALI Jim who? This guy has shown up in a lot of movies that I've seen, but I still don't know who the hell he is. The Academy will probably have the same problem. So, am I reading the next name right? Ethan Hawke? The kid from Explorers? (I bet he'd like us to forget about that one.) The guy from Reality Bites?! Don't get me wrong. I like Ethan a lot. He's gotta be cool. He's from Austin! But I'm a bit surprised to see him in the Oscar list. It'd be cool if he won, though. I hear he was great in this one. Same with Ben, actually. Better than he's been since Ghandi. He could surprise us and take this one, too. Jon Voight, huh? Is he good again? What about his turn as Lara's dad in Tomb Raider? That was pretty amazing. (Feel the sarcasm.) My money's on Sir Ian. He was Gandalf. There's no one else in this world who could play that role. And besides, he's the only member of the British Order who's had two action figures made of him from two separate franchises. Go Ian! BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS-- JENNIFER CONNELLY--A BEAUTIFUL MIND HELEN MIRREN--GOSFORD PARK MAGGIE SMITH--GOSFORD PARK MARISA TOMEI--IN THE BEDROOM KATE WINSLET--IRIS Excuse me while I wipe the drool from my face while looking at the category. Jennifer is one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood today. (And she seems to like to show off her ample bosom lately. More power to you, babe.) Don't know a damn thing about the movie, but I heard she was great. Love ya, Jen. Helen and Maggie are always amazing. They may cancel each other out, though, both of them being members of the older British contingency. Marisa Tomei? She's still alive? Oh yeah. She was in The Watcher, wasn't she? Nobody else remembered, either. And some of us chose to completely forget the fact that the movie even existed. Including Marisa. She may be amazing in In The Bedroom, but she won't win for it. Kate is one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood today. (And she seems to like to show off her ample bosoms in almost all of her movies. More power to you, babe.) Don't know a damn thing about the movie, but I heard she was great. Love ya, Kate. (And I envy the hell out of a friend of mine who met her. Bastard. Didn't even call me.) BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY-- AMELIE--GUILLAUME LAURANT AND JEAN-PIERRE JEUNET GOSFORD PARK--JULIAN FELLOWES MEMENTO--JONATHAN NOLAN AND CHRISTOPHER NOLAN MONSTER'S BALL--MILO ADDICA AND WILL ROKOS THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS--WES ANDERSON AND OWEN WILSON Just two here (how the fuck did I miss Royal Tenenbaums?! I'm an idiot), but they were both awesome. I'm gonna have to go with Memento, though, for the Citizen Kane award. It's the best movie not nominated for Best Picture. BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY-- A BEAUTIFUL MIND--AKIVA GOLDSMAN GHOST WORLD--DANIEL CLOWES AND TERRY ZWIGOFF IN THE BEDROOM--TODD FIELD AND ROBERT FESTINGER LORD OF THE RINGS--FRANCES WALSH, PHILIPPA BOYENS AND PETER JACKSON SHREK--TED ELLIOTT, TERRY ROSSIO, JOE STILLMAN AND ROGER S. H. SCHULMAN Only two here, too. As much as I liked Shrek I'm gonna have to go with Lord Of The Rings. (Although I hear that Ghost World was really good and may deserve this one.) BEST ANIMATED FEATURE-- JIMMY NEUTRON: BOY GENIUS MONSTERS, INC. SHREK It's about damn time they added this category. They could have used it about ten years ago, although at that point Disney probably would have been dominating. This time, though, Disney isn't even really represented. Monsters, Inc. is sort of Disney, but only be default. It's really Pixar. (And how did I miss this one, being a huge Pixar fan? I'm a moron.) Jimmy Neutron? What the hell? I swear this movie came out two years ago to awful reviews and then disappeared. Now it's out again to fairly good ones. I still, however, don't care. Nope. Shrek is all over this one. Great flick. BEST ART DIRECTION/SET DIRECTION-- AMELIE--ALINE BONETTO AND MARIE-LAURE VALLA GOSFORD PARK--STEPHEN ALTMAN AND ANNA PINNOCK HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE--STUART CRAIG AND STEPHANIE MCMILLAN LORD OF THE RINGS--GRANT MAJOR AND DAN HENNAH MOULIN ROUGE!--CATHERINE MARTIN AND BRIGITTE BROCH Wow! A category that I've seen three movies in! And it's a stupid technical one that I'm not a great judge of. I will, however, say that Harry Potter doesn't really deserve to be in here. The art direction was slightly above average, but it wasn't all that imaginative, really. Amelie and Lord Of The Rings had pretty damn amazing sets, though. I may have to go with Amelie here, though. LOTR had to have great sets or it would have fallen apart. Amelie, however, could have been told without the cool background. But, because they were so awesome, the story was that much better. Strange sets in a story that takes place in a (somewhat) normal place is a lot more interesting. But I bet Moulin Rouge! gets it. Just from the previews I can tell that. BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY-- AMELIE--BRUNO DELBONNEL BLACK HAWK DOWN--SLAVOMIR IDZIAK LORD OF THE RINGS--ANDREW LESNIE THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE--ROGER DEAKINS MOULIN ROUGE!--DONALD MCALPINE Only one that I haven't seen here! Awesome!! Any time there's a fairly mainstream movie shot in black and white it's nominated. Hence, The Man Who Wasn't There. And the cinematography was great here. I condone this nomination. Actually, all four were great and it looks like Moulin Rouge! was shot really well, too. This one's kind of a toss up, but I'll go with LOTR just because I loved it so much. I bet The Man Who Wasn't There or Moulin Rouge! gets it, though. BEST COSTUME DESIGN-- GOSFORD PARK--JENNY BEAVAN LORD OF THE RINGS--NGILA DICKSON AND RICHARD TAYLOR THE AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE--MILENA CANONERO HARRY POTTER--JUDIANNA MAKOVSKY Once again, LOTR has the edge here. Yeah, Gosford Park and Affair Of The Necklace (anybody remember this one?) are both old-timey flicks with old clothes and Harry Potter has some imaginative stuff (sort of), but LOTR has them all beat. Besides, who would give an award to someone named Judianna? BEST SOUND-- AMELIE--VINCENT ARNARDI, GUILLAUME LERICHE AND JEAN UMANSKY BLACK HAWK DOWN--MICHAEL MINKLER, MYRON NETTINGA AND CHRIS MUNRO LORD OF THE RINGS--CHRISTOPHER BOYES, MICHAEL SEMANICK, GETHIN CREAGH AND HAMMOND PEEK MOULIN ROUGE!--ANDY NELSON, ANNA BAHLMER, ROGER SAVAGE AND GUNTIS SICS PEARL HARBOR--GREG P. RUSSELL, PETER J. DEVLIN AND KEVIN O' CONNELL Pearl Harbor? Nominated for an Oscar? Wow. It may actually win something here. The sound was pretty damn good. But I'll go for Black Hawk Down. Moulin Rouge! will probably win, though. BEST EDITING-- A BEAUTIFUL MIND--MIKE HILL AND DANIEL P. HANLEY BLACK HAWK DOWN--PIETRO SCALIA LORD OF THE RINGS--JOHN GILBERT MEMENTO--DODY DORN MOULIN ROUGE!--JILL BILCOCK Memento all the way here. This film was edited so well that you almost didn't notice that it was backwards. If it weren't for characters coming back to life there's no way. But I bet Moulin Rouge! gets it. By the way, why do they bother putting movies like A Beautiful Mind in categories like this? Sure, he may have some schizophrenic episodes, but do they call for really cool editing? Probably not. It is, after all, a Ron Howard flick. I guess they always have to get one normal flick in here. BEST SOUND EDITING-- MONSTERS, INC.--GARY RYDSTROM AND MICHAEL SILVERS PEARL HARBOR--CHRISTOPHER BOYES AND GEORGE WATTERS II I shouldn't even bother with this one. Pearl Harbor's going to win. Monsters, Inc. doesn't have a chance in Hades. BEST VISUAL EFFECTS-- ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A.I.--DENNIS MUREN, SCOTT FARRAR, STAN WINSTON AND MICHAEL LANTIERI LORD OF THE RINGS--JIM RYGIEL, RANDALL WILLIAM COOK, RICHARD TAYLOR AND MARK STETSON PEARL HARBOR--ERIC BREVIG, JOHN FRAZIER, EDWARD HIRSH AND BEN SNOW I've actually seen all of these! I can't believe it! And, much as I loved LOTR and thought that the battle scenes of Pearl Harbor were great, I'm gonna have to go with A.I. here. Two reasons for this: 1) The visuals were awe inducing. My mouth was wide open for most of the film. It kind of made me feel like a kid seeing a really fantastical movie again. Not that LOTR didn't, but 2) this is just about the only thing that A.I. is nominated for and I want it to win something. BEST MAKEUP-- A BEAUTIFUL MIND--GREG CANNOM AND COLLEEN CALLAGHAN LORD OF THE RINGS--PETER OWEN AND RICHARD TAYLOR MOULIN ROUGE!--MAURIZIO SILVI AND ALDO SIGNORETTI Was the old makeup really that good in A Beautiful Mind? I heard that one of them looked really good, but the other looked like an actor with old makeup on. And Moulin Rouge! was just dancer/hooker makeup. It looks good in the previews (as I'm sure it looks good in the movie itself), but was it really that different from anything else? LOTR, on the other hand, changed people into creatures with all kinds of state-of-the-art latex type stuff. I go for this one all the way. BEST SONG-- "UNTIL..." BY STING (KATE & LEOPOLD) "MAY IT BE" BY ENYA (LORD OF THE RINGS) "IF I DIDN'T HAVE YOU" BY RANDY NEWMAN (MONSTERS, INC.) "THERE YOU'LL BE" BY DIANE WARREN (PEARL HARBOR) "VANILLA SKY" BY PAUL MCCARTNEY (VANILLA SKY) "There You'll Be"!?! That was the worst damn song I've ever heard. It made me want to flee the theatre as soon as it started. And they're nominating it for an Oscar?! I hate to quote Tom Cruise, but sometimes you just have to say, "What the fuck?" Randy won't win just because he won't. I think it's in his contract. Let's see...Yep, there it is. "Be nominated every year and never win." Sting was nominated last year and no one noticed. Probably the same this year. The Enya song wasn't bad, but it was nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the music in the movie, so let's move on. That leaves us with Sir Paul. He's on a bit of a rebound lately. His last couple of albums have been great and people are paying attention to him again, albeit for the wrong reason (that gawdawful "Freedom" song--his heart's in the right place on that one, but his brain took a vacation). "Vanilla Sky" is actually a pretty cool song. Kinda folksy and pretty good. I vote for him. (And don't let the fact that I'm a HUGE Beatle freak fool you. Paul pisses me off more than any other artist a lot of the time. Lots of talent and no interest in using it at times.) BEST ORIGINAL SCORE-- ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A.I.--JOHN WILLIAMS A BEAUTIFUL MIND--JAMES HORNER HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE--JOHN WILLIAMS LORD OF THE RINGS--HOWARD SHORE MONSTERS, INC.--RANDY NEWMAN Wow. This one's a toss-up. LOTR or A.I.? I loved the music in both of them. But, true to form, John Williams' score for A.I. may have been a little overbearing. Edge to Howard Shore and LOTR. BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FEATURE-- EL HIJO DE LA NOVIA (ARGENTINA) NO MAN'S LAND0 (BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA) LE FABULEUX DESTIN D'AMÃLIE POULAIN (FRANCE) LAGAAN: ONCE UPON A TIME IN INDIA (INDIA) ELLING (NORWAY) I've only seen one of these (Amelie), but No Man's Land also played Telluride and I heard it was really good, so I'm not surprised to see it here. I'm going for Amelie, though. Just an amazing and uplifting film. (I hate that word, but how else do you describe it?) This year I'm skipping all of the shorts and documentary categories. I don't mean to demean any of the nominees, because it's a great accomplishment to be there. I know I'd like to be there. But these categories seem to be more for their families. Does anyone know fuck all about any of them? I know I don't. But I will put one in here: BEST ANIMATED SHORT-- FIFTY PERCENT GRET--RUAIRI ROBINSON AND SEAMUS BYRNE FOR THE BIRDS--RALPH EGGLESTON GIVE UP YER AUL SINS (2001)--GAFFNEY, CATHAL, O'CONNELL AND DARRAGH STRANGE INVADERS--CORDELL BARKER STUBBLE TROUBLE--MERIDETH AND JOSEPH E. Ok, so I don't know a damn thing about any of these...but one. For The Birds was an awesome little Pixar flick that played (I believe) before Monsters, Inc. and at Spike & Mike's...LAST YEAR!!!!! What's it doing on here? But, since I'm such a big Pixar fan, I'll let it slide and let them win. This time... So that's it for this year's predictions. I had fun. Hope you did, too. (Actually, I don't really care. Besides, if you weren't having fun you wouldn't be reading this far.) Now, on that fateful day in March, we'll see if I'm right.

The Royal Tenenbaums

admin — Thu, 14 Feb 2002 18:00:00 +0000

Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) is a family man who didn't really want a family. He has two boys of his own, Chas (Ben Stiller) and Richie (Luke Wilson), and an adopted daughter, Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow). That's how he introduced her to people: "My adopted daughter, Margot." His long-suffering wife, Ethel (Anjelica Huston), raised them all to be geniuses without the help of their father, who left them at an early age. Chas, who always had a head for figures, became a successful stock holder. His wife was killed in a car accident that somehow spared their two sons, Ari and Uzi, and their dog. Now he's a shattered man who thinks that his kids could be killed at any moment by anything. Richie was once an extremely talented pro tennis player who let it all go and started a sailing trip around the world because of his undying love for his adopted sister. Margot is a cold, distant woman who won awards for writing at an early age. When her father belittled a play that she wrote in 6th grade, she closed up. She eventually married Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray), but never really cared much for him. He spends his days studying a disturbed young boy and his learning disabilities. Their neighbor, Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), always wanted to be a Tenenbaum. He, himself, had a secret crush on Margot, but never did anything about it until he learned of his best friend's obsession with her. Now he is a successful writer and a disturbed cowboy and drug abuser. Royal comes back into their lives at the same time that all of their lives are falling apart and they are coming back home to their mother. He tells them that he is dying and is ready to make amends. Richie is receptive and wants to help his father. Chas is abusive and wants nothing to do with him. He belittles his brother for wanting the reconciliation. Margot is cold and distant, not really caring one way or another, although she seems to hate her father. Meanwhile, Ethel is being romanced by her accountant, Henry Sherman (Danny Glover). Most of the family is against it, but only Royal really shows his hostility. And remember, this is a comedy. Only Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson could write a script this funny, insightful and intelligent about a family that has no real redeeming qualities. Every member is screwed up and they don't really seem to care. Let me re-phrase that: They want to change, but they don't see how they can and don't want to put the effort into the change. The only one who really seems to want to is Royal himself and he's the biggest asshole of them all. ("Oh yeah. We've got another body buried here, don't we?") After Rushmore we all knew that Wes and Owen had more talent than most of the morons working in Hollywood today. Hell, some people even knew it when Bottle Rocket came out. (I need to see that one again. I don't remember it too well.) So when I saw the preview for this one (although it's not nearly as good of a preview as the one for Rushmore) I knew I had to see it. They're nominated for Best Original Screenplay and I can see why. This is a great script. And the actors all match it beat for beat. There's not a false move anywhere. And I do believe that Mr. Hackman may have been robbed this year. This is one of his best performances in the past ten years. And I think that Bill Murray needs to sign a contract with Wes and only play lovable sad sacks in his movies from now on. He's awesome once again. There's a lot of talk about the similarities and obvious influence that Orson Welles' Magnificent Ambersons had on this movie. Well, I've actually never seen Welles' chopped up masterpiece, but I can see where the influence pops in. Not only is it about a dysfunctional and arrogant family with weird affairs going on all around, but Anderson is starting to direct like a young Orson. He uses every bit of the screen and fills it with important bits of information. His use of the wide screen is pretty amazing. I can't imagine watching this movie in the chopped up pan & scan version. He's still got it in the music department, too. Mark Mothersbaugh is back to do the score (and a great instrumental version of "Hey Jude" which, for some reason, doesn't show up on the soundtrack album) and he sounds great. The same kind of plinking music, but it sounds completely different here. It's just as dysfunctional as the family it's portraying. The non-original music is also perfect. From The Clash ("Police And Thieves", "London Calling"), The Stones ("She Smiled Sweetly" and "Ruby Tuesday"--also not on the album--and played in the wrong order from the album she's playing it from, but that's nit-picking), The Beatles (the "Hey Jude" cover, John Lennon's "Look At Me"--I think he has to have a semi-obscure John song in every movie), Nico ("These Days", "The Fairest Of Seasons") and all the way up to Elliott Smith ("Needle In The Hay") and even a little Peanuts music ("Christmas Time Is Here Again"). It's all great. He definitely ranks up there with Scorsese and Cameron Crowe when it comes to picking just the right music for a scene. A couple of references to Anderson's last film: when Hackman is driving the go-carts (to Paul Simon's "Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard") with his grandkids (check out his hat) and Jason Schwartzman is one of the announcers during Richie's fateful tennis match. Awesome. If this movie had not been written by two of the smartest guys in Hollywood today, it would have ended up as a family drama on the Lifetime Network. Luckily, Wes and Owen decided that we should see ourselves how we really are, but in a much more entertaining, and very exaggerated way. Hell, I would probably kill myself if I had a family like this. The movie is really funny, but it's really sad, too. We may see a little too much of ourselves in the characters. But we all saw a little too much of ourselves in Max Fischer, too.

Storytelling

admin — Wed, 20 Feb 2002 18:00:00 +0000

Once upon a time there were some previews... UNFAITHFUL--How many movies is Richard Gere going to put out this year? I'm figuring that this one has been sitting on the shelf for a while. (It's an Adrian Lyne film, after all. He hasn't been doing too well lately.) All in all, this one doesn't look too bad. It's about a married couple (Gere and Diane Lane) who seem happy until Diane has herself a li'l ol' accident that sends her right into the arms of Olivier Martinez. so Richard sends a PI after her. Ok, so it's not exactly covering new territory, but it at least looks suspenseful. And, if there's one thing that Lyne knows how to do, it's build a little suspense (Fatal Attraction). (Of course, that's about the only thing he knows. When he gets away from that (Indecent Proposal, Lolita) he tends to kind of flounder.) I might check this one out on video, if only for Diane. Gotta love Cherry. WAKING UP IN RENO--Charlize. That's really all I need to say: Charlize. The hottest thing going in Hollywood these days. I love her. Other than her, this movie looks really bad. (I will give it the fact that it has a few funny lines. Hearing Billy Bob Thornton say, "I'm zestfully clean!" has a weirdo humor to it.) It's about two couples (Billy Bob & Natasha Richardson and Charlize & Patrick Swayze...wait...Patrick Swayze!?! What the fuck?!? No!!!! Charlize! Nooooooo!!!!) that go on a trip to Reno. When Billy Bob and Charlize sleep together it starts a whole chain of events that...well, one of the posters looks like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Another video title, but I have to see it for Charlize. Meanwhile, in another part of the world... Todd Solondz made a name for himself by creating weird characters with strange obsessions in his second feature, Welcome To The Dollhouse. (His first was the little seen Fear, Anxiety and Depression back in 1989, but no one seems to care about that one at all.) If he only put that one movie out I think his name would still be remembered. (Personally, I haven't seen it, but I'm working on it. Soon, hopefully. Especially for the people I borrowed it from.) Then he did himself about 15 better and made Happiness, a movie about anything but. Sure, everyone's in the pursuit of happiness, but none of them have it or ever really achieve it. (Except for maybe the kid, but that's a different story altogether.) A great film that's definitely not for all tastes. This time out he hasn't really outweirded himself, but he's brought in a new theme along with all of the old ones. Everyone is still looking for happiness that they will probably never find, and there's still some sick sexual stuff going on (some so explicit that he had to block it out with a big red box) including rape (yep, that's the one with the block), but this time they're also telling stories about each other. In the first segment, "Fiction", Vi (Selma Blair from Cruel Intentions) is dating Marcus (Leo Fitzpatrick from Kids), who has cerebral palsy. Vi really opens him up and makes him want to be a great writer. So he reads his story, based on his newfound love, in their writing class. When the professor (Robert Wisdom) pans it, they start a chain reaction that leads to the offending scene. (Even with the red block covering everything it's a little difficult to watch.) Next is the real meat of the movie, "Nonfiction." This is the story of a sad sack documentary filmmaker, Toby (Paul Giamatti from Big Fat Liar, Private Parts (PIG VOMIT!!) and Man On The Moon), who decides to make a film about high school kids and how things have changed for them since he was in high school. Whether he's doing this to impress an old flame is still up for grabs. Enter Scooby Livingston (Mark Webber from Snow Day and Drive Me Crazy), a totally non-motivated teenager who thinks that his family is completely insane and that he has a shot at having a late night talk show, "like Conan or early Letterman." He just kind of drifts through life listening to early Elton John albums, which makes even his brother, Brady (Noah Fleiss from Joe The King and Josh And S.A.M.), think that he's gay. His youngest brother, Mikey (Jonathan Osser from Eight Days A Week) is just about the most precocious little kid you're ever going to see. He asks their housekeeper what she likes to do when she's not working, "like right now. You're just babysitting. You're not really working." Marty (John Goodman) is the leader of the family, but he doesn't seem to have much power unless he resorts to yelling and threatening. He wants what's best for Scooby, he's frustrated by the kid's lack of interest in everything. Their mother, Fern (Julie Hagerty), is a very meek woman who thinks that every Jew is a survivor because their family fled the Nazis. So Toby and his cameraman (Mike Shenk(!) from American Movie) start to film Scooby and his family, slightly changing the concept of the film to make Scooby the star. (His editor (Franke Potente from Run Lola Run and The Princess And The Warrior) doesn't help matters much, either.) But at what cost? At what cost?? Solondz has taken the art of storytelling and baked it down to its basic form here. In one line, he describes what we all know of storytelling, but didn't realize it: "Everything we write, whether true or not, becomes fiction." Even people who proclaim to tell us exactly how it is or even care about us are doing it to entertain. The final shot of the film shows how true this is. As with Happiness, there really isn't a false move in this film. All of the actors are pretty amazing (with Giamatti a real standout as the sickeningly wishy-washy Toby) and the writing is dead-on. There really isn't a "good guy" in the film. Not even the youngest kids are innocent. (Watch out for Mikey. He's a little asshole.) Of course the movie isn't for everybody because of this. And, because no one comes out unscathed, even those of us who can put up with a lot will come out pretty well disturbed. But we don't go to Solondz's films to feel all light and happy at the end. We go to see exactly what we get: a bunch of people worse off than we are doing things that we hope that we would never do. But there's a part of us that is afraid that we might act just like them. So, basically, we're seeing a distorted mirror. Maybe not distorted enough, though. I'm not so sure that this movie is as good as Happiness, but it is a great movie. Check it out. Or wait until the DVD when we can actually see the whole thing without the red block. (And maybe even some of the deleted scenes with entire characters that were cut out. James Van Der Geek, erm, Beek, Heather Matarazzo (from Welcome To The Dollhouse) and Adam Hann-Byrd were all cut--and at least Beeker had a significant role. Too bad. I guess we're just out one more amazing Van Der Dork performance. "I don't wonte......yo rape scene!")

Moulin Rouge!

admin — Thu, 28 Feb 2002 18:00:00 +0000

There used to be a genre called "musicals." People would actually burst out in song whenever the mood hit them (and it did more often than was often necessary). Now, I know that sounds totally unbelievable, especially when you consider how fucking popular those kinds of movies were. There were, for a period of about 30 years, musicals being churned out by the dozens by the big studios. Especially MGM. Somewhere around the mid-60s, after big musicals like My Fair Lady and The Sound Of Music taking Best Picture awards at the Oscars in 1964 and 1965, respectively, the genre died out almost completely. The last of the big-budget studio musicals were probably 1967's Camelot and 1969's Hello, Dolly. While they're not the best, they serve as a swan song for one of the most popular genres this side of the Western. Oh sure, there were small resurgences (Grease in 1978, Little Shop Of Horrors in 1986), but things were looking pretty desperate for the musical. Even the longest running off-Broadway musical of all time (The Fantasticks) had a lot of trouble being filmed. (It was filmed in 1995, but not released until 2000--even with a New Kid in the lead role! Well, maybe that's a reason to keep it shelved all those years. But why cut it?) The only studio that ever really succeeded with musicals on a regular basis was Disney, and that was only because they were animated and were seen as kids' movies. And then there were the rock movies that always did well, like A Hard Day's Night, Jailhouse Rock or KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park. But, overall, the traditional musical just kind of died out. Then a strange thing happened. People started to buy tickets to Broadway musicals! Classics like Guys And Dolls and new shows like The Producers started to be the talk of the town. How did this happen? Now was the perfect time to resurrect the musical film. And Baz Luhrmann (Romeo + Juliet and Strictly Ballroom) saw his chance. He had always wanted to bring the musical back, so why not strike when the iron is luke warm. And boy did he ever strike! With a great and willing cast, a great selection of classic rock songs, a simple story and some of the most imaginative sets and costumes I've seen in a long time, he struck with a vengeance. Christian (Ewan McGregor) is a penniless writer who just wants to SING!, er, write. He desperately wants to be a bohemian, but he doesn't really know how to become one. So, leaving his English home, he goes to Paris to find himself. Instead, he finds Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo made to be even shorter than he actually is) and his merry band of mirth-makers. They take him on an adventure to the Moulin Rouge, the premiere night club/bordello/theatre of late 19th Century Paris. Then something amazing happens. He meets Satine (Nicole Kidman), the star courtesan of the Moulin Rouge. She's actually supposed to seduce The Duke (Richard Roxburgh from Mission: Impossible 2), a man who could possibly finance a real play for the Moulin Rouge's owner, Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent from Bridget Jones' Diary, Topsy-Turvy and Little Voice) and turn it into a real theatre...and make Satine a star. But there are a few problems (of course...without one there wouldn't be a movie, right?). First off, Satine thinks that Christian is The Duke and accidentally falls in love with him (a big no-no in the courtesan world). Second, Christian, who is eventually commissioned to write the play, doesn't have anything written. In order to cover up his affair with Satine he comes up with the story of a penniless sitar player in India who falls in love with a courtesan. But the evil sultan wants her for himself, so they have to hide their love. But the sitar player's sitar can only speak the truth and give the whole thing away. Yeah, so that's the basic story. Not a whole lot there, but it's just enough to make this a film to remember. And, besides, how much story does a true musical need? Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. There are problems. Things work out. But Baz puts a different spin on things. Right up front we know that Satine is dead by the end of the story. And Christian is, of course, distraught. He's writing the story of their love as (I guess) a novel. So there's a feeling of dread all through the movie, no matter how light the tone is. (And it gets VERY light at times.) This isn't really a movie you watch. It's one you experience. You go to the theatre or pop it in your DVD player (don't watch this one unless it's widescreened. You'll miss too much.) and just get swept away by the overpowering nature of the whole thing. Even if you don't like musicals I think it will still amaze you. The acting is pretty uniformly great with Nicole being the natural standout. She's just a very beautiful woman. (Even when she looks like she's just come from the set of The Others.) Anytime she's onscreen it's hard to take your eyes off of her. She just draws all attention to herself. And, in this case, that's a great thing. That's what she's supposed to be doing. Much better than her ex has ever done. Ewan is equally good as the sad-sack lover of love who doesn't really know what love is. Broadbent was great as the over-the-top owner/father figure. Leguizamo was, well, Leguizamo as a very diminutive center of artistic attention. And Roxburgh was pretty good (if a bit too Max Shreck-like) as the bad guy. He just reminded me of the villains in the old silent films who used to put damsels in distress when he tied them to railroad tracks. But I guess it fit with the rest of the movie. And, surprisingly, all of them can sing! I had heard that Ewan's was the best (and it probably is), but Nicole's was also very good. She does a pretty great impression of Marilyn Monroe on the Diamonds Medley (which includes, of course, "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" and "Material Girl"). The rest of the time she just sounded like a girl in love. And speaking of music, the choice of music was perfect. "Like A Virgin," "Children Of The Revolution" (sung by Bono!), "The Sound Of Music" (in a great homage to the classics), "Roxanne"...all of them were set perfectly to images that are pretty unforgettable. But best of all there was "Your Song." Elton John's best ballad is put to great use as the love theme and Ewan's performance may not be better than Elton's (how could it be?), but it's almost more passionate. He's feeling every word. And the only original song, "Come What May," was also very good. But it's better in the movie than it is as a single. Too hip-hoppy. My favorite, though, has to be the "Elephant Love Medley." It's just fun to pick out the songs as they go by. And it's amazing how the songs just blend together as one. Who would have thought that Phil Collins and U2 could sit together harmoniously? But I guess the real star here is ol' Baz himself. His vision of a modern musical is so amazing that it's hard to see anybody else's after it. It's cartoonish, garish and beautiful all at the same time. The sets, costumes...everything. There's not one bit of this film that isn't saturated in color and flash (just like the old days, but with a more up to date feel, of course) and, for some reason, it works really well. A friend of mine told me that this movie was made for me. It's got plenty of pop culture/music references, it's got a "love conquers (almost) all" theme and it's got Nicole Kidman in it. Well, in that case, it's made for all of us. Because isn't this what love is all about? Singing in your heart, confusing feelings, everything is more beautiful than it really should be, doing things you normally wouldn't do... But then there's all that death and "Lady Marmalade." (I hate that bitch.) Like Romeo + Juliet, the first few minutes are a little bit off-putting, but soon enough you get into it and almost become one with the film. I may have a hard time deciding which film I actually think is the best of last year, this or Lord Of The Rings. Weird.

SXSW 2002 - Citizen Toxie

admin — Fri, 08 Mar 2002 18:00:00 +0000

With that line from the deleted scenes of Fight Club, Lloyd Kaufman brings Troma into a new era of offensiveness. Yes, folks. We're ready once again. South By Southwest is in full force. And it's my time to tell you all about the new movies that you need to watch for and some oldies that you may have forgotten about. And to start things off I gotta tell you about the newest Troma flick. South By has, ironically, chosen to honor MPAA miser, Jack Valenti at the same festival that he gives a retrospective to Lloyd Kaufman, founder and king of the smut filled Troma Films company. If you wanted to give Jack a heart attack you would probably want to show him two Troma films back to back. And, if you wanted to give Lloyd a heart attack, well, you probably couldn't. But the best way to try would be to show Jack two Troma films back to back. After the dinner, Lloyd called Jack the man "who has done more to fuck up independent film than anyone else in the world." I couldn't have said it better myself. (Although I probably did, because that's not exactly a direct quote. You know me.) But really Lloyd is a very nice guy. And he's always excited about meeting his fans. I've had the honor of hanging out with him a couple of times since he's been in town and you just have to love the guy. He's not afraid to say anything about anybody and he's always very, very funny. And his minions (including Barak Epstein, director of Cornman--I feel bad now about giving that movie such a HORRIBLE review...but it was really bad) let me put on the Toxie mask for the Texas premiere of Citizen Toxie! Talk about your dream come true!! But, really, I'm not here to talk about my adventures with Lloyd. (Ok, maybe a little bit.) I'm here to review his new movie The Toxic Avenger has kind of turned into a folk hero in the homes of gore fans everywhere. Back in 1985 when he made his debut no one really knew what to make of him. I mean, this guy was a hero, but he squashed peoples' heads and he was mutated! But he found his niche. And it was usually right in the crevices of the brains of college students everywhere. And since that first flick back in the 80s there have been two really lame sequels (apparently, I've never seen them) that no one likes at all. But now Toxie's back and better than ever. This time out there are TWO Toxies for the price of a quarter of one! The Diaper Mafia have decided to take the Tromaville School For The Very Special hostage and they're killing a kid every 13 minutes (or something like that). It's up to Toxie to save them! He and his sidekick, Lardass (Troma regular, Joe Fleishaker) are sent in to save the retar...erm, very special kids. Unfortunately, the leader of the Diaper Mafia has an evil plan to get what he wants. He's strapped a bomb to himself that will go off five seconds after his heart stops beating. So, of course Toxie kills him and has five seconds to save the kids, impregnate his wife and get himself and Lardass to safety. By a weird stroke of fate, though, Toxie gets sent to another dimension called Amortville where Noxie is the evil leader. But where's Noxie? Lloyd is kind of like a John Waters for the 80s, 90s and beyond. John's not making movies like he used to, so someone has to take over. In comes Lloyd with his heroes that kill as many good guys as bad guys and chop sticks through eye. And since almost all of his ideas come from the paper, they are actually satire. Toxie was originally based on a story about toxic waste being dumped near a neighborhood. This one is no different. He uses Toxie to comment on Columbine (The Diaper Mafia) and our problem in Jasper, TX (a black man being dragged by a couple of white supremacists behind their truck--this one was VERY uncomfortable). But, remember, this is a Troma movie, so while it deals with some serious issues on one level, it's pure Z-grade entertainment on the surface. And Citizen Toxie delivers more than almost any of their other features. I still like Terror Firmer better, but this one is pretty damn close. If you love Troma, do yourself a favor and see this movie if it comes to your town. If it doesn't come, rub it and see if it will. If it still doesn't come, petition your local indie theatre. Promise them lines around the block (and there will be) and maybe you, too, can get Troma to your town.

SXSW2002--Last Party 2000/Return Of The Secaucus 7 (1980)

admin — Sat, 09 Mar 2002 18:00:00 +0000

LAST PARTY 2000 In 1992, Donovan Leitch (son of Scottish folk singer Donovan) co-wrote and co-produced The Last Party, a scathing documentary starring Robert Downey, Jr. about the two parties and their political agendas. This time around Donovan is co-directing, Philip Seymour Hoffman is the roving reporter and the election is a lot more controversial. It's the election that ended up being one of the darkest periods of our political history. The only time that the Supreme Court ever chose our president for us. Hoffman takes us behind the curtain as it were and shows us that both parties are evil, corporate whores. (As one guy quotes (and I wish I remembered where the original quote was from), "The only difference between the parties is how quickly they drop to their knees.") Hoffman says he's not political, but he's obviously very liberal. Luckily he manages to be pretty non-partisan here. The most disturbing scene to me was the scene in the gun show where a guy tries desperately to defend his right to own assault rifles and how curiosity won't kill his kids because he teaches them everything they need to know about guns and lets them shoot them. He's probably the same type of guy who says that sex education makes kids want to have sex even more than they would without it. Make up your fucking minds, guys. It's one or the other. Not both. Then we go straight to the Million Mom March where Rosie O'Donnell gives probably the most passionate speech of her life. I almost started liking her. This is a great documentary that any American should watch. While it's made by liberals, it's not particularly nice to either side. And, in this day and age, this is exactly what we need. It pissed me off all over again. RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS 7 John Sayles is one of America's best unpopular directors. When I try to explain to people who the hell he is I always bring up Lone Star. While this is one of his best films, it's a real shame that they don't really know any of his others. Sayles is one of the recipients of a retrospective this year (the others are Lloyd Kaufman, Albert Maysles and Jaime Hermosillo). They're playing the newly remastered and reprinted versions of his first four films, Secaucus, Lianna, Brother From Another Planet and Matewan. Unfortunately, this is the only one I have gotten to see at the festival. For his directorial debut back in 1980 (he had written a couple of flicks for Roger Corman including Piranha) Sayles just gathered some friends together and wrote a story about them turning 30. (Write what you know, right?) He wrote about a group of friends who get together every year to catch up, hang out and, occasionally, hook up. Yeah, it's a lot like The Big Chill, but I think this one may be better. Like that one, though, it caught on with quite a few people of its generation and became somewhat of a phenomenon. And I can see why. Since it was made by a group of friends who were going through the same life changes as the characters, it's funny, poignant, touching and, most of all, real. It's a little rough, but I can forgive that. (The fades, which John warned us about in his intro, were TERRIBLE! Scenes would fade in and out with no real rhyme or reason. Luckily he's learned how to use fades to their best advantage.) The acting is pretty good all around, although there's really not many people that most of us recognize. Sayles is in a pivotal role as are Sayles regular David Strathairn (Sneakers, Limbo, Matewan), Gordon Clapp (NYPD Blue) and Adam LeFevre (You Can Count On Me, Hearts Of Atlantis). No big names, but they were all John's friends and most of them had only done at most a little acting. Not bad, really. If you liked The Big Chill, give this one a try. (If you can find it, of course. It's a little hard to locate, but it's worth it.) It's a first time director who had no money at the time, but as long as you can forgive its roughness it's definitely a great movie.

SXSW2002--Hell House/Master Of The Game

admin — Sun, 10 Mar 2002 18:00:00 +0000

HELL HOUSE This Halloween my roommate told me that she was going to a haunted house in Dallas. Turns out that she accidentally went to a church "haunted house." They wanted to "scare the Hell out of kids." Personally, I thought it was pretty evil of them to not advertise exactly what they were doing. They were trying to convert people using Halloween as a scare tactic! How could they?! Then I found out that this is a common practice! Churches all over the country are putting on morality plays and calling them haunted houses! Pretty crazy world out there. This documentary is about the first on at the Trinity Assembly Of God Church in Cedar Hill. (The sign is always shot with the minister's head where it makes the it read "Ass of God." Can you tell where the filmmakers are coming from?) The film follows the exploits of the Trinity Christian School and Church in making the tenth annual Hell House and telling us exactly how the expect to show these punks just how their lives are going to Satan. They decide on an abortion scene, a rave scene (where the "date rape drug" comes into play) and a scene involving domestic violence. All of this is framed by the story of a demon stealing souls, including the souls of an AIDS victim (because he's gay) and the girl who is raped (she kills herself). While the doc is actually very funny, it's also very disturbing. It's really hard to believe that there are people out there (and FAR too many of them) who think this way. They actually believe that people choose to be gay and that AIDS is a punishment for it. They truly think that it's better to kill abortion doctors than it is to abort fetuses. And who told them that Harry Potter and Magic games were bad? Is it because Harry can make bread rain from the sky and turn water into wine? It's fucking entertainment, folks. It's not going to lead kids to "the dark side." And, besides, I thought that speaking in tongues was bad. What are these people doing yelling nonsense while they're praying? But I digress. (It's hard for me to keep my reviews being just reviews and not commentaries.) It's a pretty well made doc that tries to keep from making these people look like too big of idiots, but it's very hard when they go on and on about how they can't remember what the date rape drug is really called (I don't think they ever get it right) and they can't figure out what a pentagram looks like. (It doesn't have six points, kids.) I never thought I'd agree with a bunch of pierced punks, but the kids at the end made more sense than anyone in the doc. Probably the scariest fucking movie I've seen in a long time. See it if you get a chance. Definitely worth it. MASTER OF THE GAME This was the first indie film shot in the Austin Studios and I really wanted to like it. Too bad. The story is great! It's about a group of Jews who escape from a bunch of Nazis only to end up in a cabin with four more Nazis who are trapped because of the rain. After they kill three of the Jews they find out that one of them is American (why? Probably because the actor couldn't do a German accent.) and they spare him. Why? No real reason. Then the Jew decides that, in order to survive, he's going to play a game with the soldiers. He's going to switch uniforms with the commander and have all four of them wear prisoner uniforms. Then he's going to be in charge of everything except the weapons. Oh, the Nazis will still be in charge, but he will be giving orders. Will he get them to admit to his superiority? Or will they get fed up and shoot him? I vote for the latter, but I think we all know how this one turns out. Here are my problems with this: 1) No way in hell is any Nazi going to listen to this guy for more than two seconds before shooting his face off. If the Nazi was alone and unarmed (and maybe wounded) then MAYBE he'll listen and agree with some of it. But he would never give up his uniform. 2) The fact that the main Jew is American only makes it seem as if the message is that Americans are smarter than Germans, not that all groups deserve to live. It would have been much more interesting if they had all been German. 3) The whole movie pretty much took place in one cabin. That means that there was NO movement at all. There could have been, but there wasn't. There were a whole lot of dialogue scenes with only over the shoulder shots of two actors who didn't seem to want to move at all. MOVE YOU ASSHOLES!!!! BE INTERESTING!! 4) In one scene a Nazi is holding a gun on another Nazi. The less powerful one decides to demonstrate why all orders should be followed no matter what. He pisses on the ground and orders the one with the gun to clean it up even though he didn't do it. Then he gets a grenade, pulls the pin and holds it up saying, "You shoot me, I drop it, we all die. You don't clean it up, I drop it, we all die." What I say is, "Shoot the asshole, he drops the grenade, you have time to pick it up and throw it out the damn window." Any soldier (not to mention a lot of us civilians) know that it takes about ten seconds for a grenade to go off. Why don't these guys? Other than that, the dialogue was great and the acting wasn't bad. (Although some of the accents were either fleeting or very bad.) It also looks very good for a digital feature. (But I hate the fact that it's got bars on the top and bottom of the screen even though the screen is "widescreen." Damn those digital cameras.) I think that this great premise would have worked a lot better in a different setting. Maybe the corporate world. Or a class struggle today. No Nazis or Jews. That just didn't make any kind of logical sense. But it's always fun to watch a premiere in the movie's home town. Every name that came on the screen got a huge hand and a lot of screaming and whistling. ("Costume design by..." "Yay!!!!" Weird.) But there were 100 cast and crew there! That's more than I've ever known to be in one place at the same time. Even during filming! Can't wait for someone to pick this premise up and make a really good movie out of it. Hey, wait a minute...

SXSW2002--Chelsea Walls

admin — Mon, 11 Mar 2002 18:00:00 +0000

Ethan Hawke is cool. And he's from Austin. You gotta like the guy at least a little bit. Lately, though, I think he's gotten a little pretentious. He's writing books left and right. He's making movies with Richard Linklater that no one fully understands. And now he's directing his first feature that, like Waking Life, is a little above most peoples' heads. There's a difference here, though. Whereas Waking Life was a great movie, Chelsea Walls is not. The movie is not really about a story so much as it's about a place. The Chelsea Hotel in New York City has been the home of many artists and poets through out its history and apparently this time period is no different. I won't go through everybody's stories because there's just too many characters to go into. Basically everybody is sort of connected in some way if only by seeing someone in the hallway occasionally, but their stories are all told at the same time in little bits and pieces. There's Kris Kristoferson (who is GREAT as a drunk novelist who loves all sorts of women all the time), Uma Thurman (who is alright as a woman who loves her husband/boyfriend (played on the phone by Ethan), but he is never around, so she's hanging out with Mr. Kristoferson), Robert Sean Leonard and Steve Zahn (a pair of brothers who are trying to make it as guitarists, but can't sleep long enough to make themselves healthy) and Rosario Dawson and Mark Webber (a couple who read poetry to each other that (I think) Rosario is writing). A bunch of other actors show up in small roles that I don't remember too well such as Vincent D'Onofrio, Natasha Richardson, Tuesday Weld, Frank Whaley and Kevin Corrigan. There's a lot of poetry going on around here and it's all very good. (Although I'm not sure what the old man who shows up on an elevator (with Isaac Hayes no less!) is all about. He just keeps reciting poetry throughout the movie to no one at all.) Special mention has to go to the one that Rosario and Mark read to each other. It's the one that I got the quote above from. One of the best poems I've heard in years. Ethan's not a bad director and I think he has potential to become better, but he needs to not be so pretentious. There were a lot of people who were actually pissed off at spending an hour and a half with these people. That's not so good there, Ethan. No more poetic pontifications that don't really hold together for you! And it moves so slowly, too. I actually fell asleep a couple of times. (But I was really tired, I swear!) But it was fairly well written and very well acted. So I said something nice about it. Other than that it's not really to be recommended except for the die-hard Ethan fan. Too bad, too. I was really hoping it would be great. But, to kind of even things out, Jimmy Scott (who has a documentary in the festival about him) does a GREAT version of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy".

SXSW2002--Six In Austin

admin — Tue, 12 Mar 2002 18:00:00 +0000

Back in 1965, the French New Wave was in full force. This and their love of their hometown led filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jean Douchet, Jean-Daniel Pollet and Jean Rouch to direct an anthology film called Six In Paris. Now six filmmakers in Austin have decided to do the same thing. These six short films (although a couple of them seem a lot longer than the whole movie does) show different sections of Austin as the filmmakers see them. Not all of them work, but what do you expect from an anthology film? David and Nathan Zellner's "Rummy" takes place on Mount Bonnell. (Now, those of us in Austin don't need any of you non-locals to tell us that "Mount" Bonnell is really just a big hill, so, fuck you, keep it to yourselves.) A couple that has long since broken up meet again while taking a short walk and have a really superficial conversation catching each other up. But the guy seems to be paying an awful lot of attention to the girl's dog. Why is that, do you think? A slow start with an ending that's a real kicker. And one of those gags (not sure if it was intentional or not) is probably the funniest thing I've seen during the whole festival. Gonzalo Gonzales' "Beset" is a creepy little thriller about a girl who moves into a high-security condo after almost being attacked in her previous apartment. The whole thing is shot on surveillance cameras to add extra menace to the story of the girl and her creepy maintenance man. Not too bad, but I heard a lot of "Why would she do that? Is she stupid?!"'s in the audience. That's its only real downfall. The main character seems to be the dumbest girl in the entire world. Kat Candler's "The Absence Of Wings" ends the trio of obsession themed shorts with a bang. A Catholic high school kid is obsessed with a girl who is going to become a nun. He thinks that she's too good to go to the dance. "You're not like the others. You shouldn't go." After his verbally abusive father finally hits him (he has only hit his wife up until now) the kid takes matters with the girl into his own hands. Probably the most disturbing of the films I've seen this year, I'm not sure if I liked it, but it's probably the best of the six here. Geoff Marslett's "Out Of Bounds" really didn't have much point. It's supposed to be a high school satire, but I don't think it really added up to much. The funniest part was the choir that was headed up by an insane woman trying to turn Romeo & Juliet into a musical set in a high school against the backdrop of an algebra class. Just not very good at all. Bob Ray's "Wrecked" is another pretty good one. Greg Gondeck (who I actually went to high school with--hence why he's the only actor mentioned by name in my review) plays a man who wakes up to find that everyone he knows is being fired from his company. So he takes out his revenge. Not too sure about the end (a little too Twilight Zone-ish, I think), but it's not bad and is one of the better ones here. The final one, Zack and Wyatt Phillips' "Carlos" is probably the worst one. I know Zack and Wyatt are the ones who came up with the concept of the whole project, but they need to learn how to write compelling story. This is about a man who has to ride the bus to go pick up his kid at elementary school. Along the way his wife keeps calling him to make sure that he's on the right track and that he's still going. Personally, I thought that her constant calling was REALLY annoying (as did the man in the film) and that his ride to the school was REALLY boring. I don't understand what made them want to make this except for the fact that we got to see a lot of Austin from the windows of the bus. I guess this is what happens when filmmakers love their city a bit too much. And then there's an ending that is unnecessarily depressing and out of the blue. It could have been a good two minute short, but they stretched it to nearly twenty minutes. If you get a chance to see the whole film you should check it out. Even with the bad ones, the good ones kind of make up for it. And it's a good way to see our fair city and some of the talent that's festering here.

SXSW2002--Friends Forever/The Toxic Avenger (1985)

admin — Wed, 13 Mar 2002 18:00:00 +0000

FRIENDS FOREVER Friends Forever is a band from Boulder, Colorado that can't seem to get a real gig. So, instead of playing in clubs they play outside of the clubs out of their van. "How" you ask? Nate has his drum set wedged into the back of the van and a keyboard set on the side while Josh plays his guitar while crawling and falling out the window. This documentary, shot on a combo of 8mm, DV and surveillance cameras, is a little hard to watch. These guys are definitely interesting, but because a lot of the film is so grainy and the guys are so inept (at least, they put on a great air of being inept) they get a little old pretty fast. And then there's the music. They sound kind of like The Fugs or The Godz, a couple of punk bands from the late 60s that Lester Bangs was so in love with, but with less tone quality. Completely talent free, but they've got a passion. so they circle the continent in their beat up VW Micro-Bus and their truck and piss people off because they're trying to get rock and roll back to what it originally was: a rebel sound coming from real rebels. And I can totally respect that. That's why I wanted to see this so badly. They get cops, neighbors and passers-by pissed off at them. The only people who seemed to like them are the guys at Troma Studios where they received a personal greeting and Troma Diplomas from Lloyd Kaufman. Unfortunately, Lloyd got their band name wrong. Oh well. These guys actually played at the festival on Monday night right next door to a party that Troma was throwing. I didn't get to see them, but I heard that one of them stuck a carrot up the other's ass. Luckily there was no ass carroting in the movie, but I was hoping for a little more John Waters-esque antics. But they're just a band who play in a van. Still pretty interesting, though. This is, after all, what rock and roll is all about: a couple of buds hanging out, having fun and playing music...even if the music is nearly unlistenable. THE TOXIC AVENGER (1985) Sometime in 1984 Lloyd Kaufman read a news article about a toxic dump that was pretty close to a small town. And suddenly a hero (and a brand name) was born. Until The Toxic Avenger, Troma made nothing more than soft core skin flicks about baseball teams and high schools. But now there was a brand new way of thinking about their type of exploitation: cheap gore effects!! They could make things ooze, fester and bleed for about five bucks and make a killing. And so they did. Unfortunately no one really knew what the hell to do with the movie, so it nearly died. If it hadn't been for the persistence of Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz in making more and more of these kinds of movies and the love of gore of a few insane million of us, Tromaville may have been wiped off the map as soon as this crazy little movie came out. Speaking of the movie, let's get to it, shall we? Melvin is a nerd. There's no way around it. He's one of the biggest (and most annoying) dorks in film history. He mops up the Tromaville Health Club and manages to piss everyone off as he does it. Finally the dumb jocks and their girlfriends get sick of it and play a prank on Melvin. One of the girls makes him think that she really likes him, makes him put on a pink tutu and leotards and lures him into the dark locker room. There, of course, is waiting the entire clientele of the club. Melvin jumps out the window directly into a vat of toxic waste which makes him into (du-du-dum!) The Toxic Avenger!! While he's getting revenge for his life of torture he meets Sara, a hot, blind girl who sees him for what he really is, a good hearted monster with one eye dangling out of its socket. Toxie runs around Tromaville saving people and making up for lost time with Sara. This certainly isn't the most outlandish of Troma's flicks (and not nearly as offensive as the newer ones, but that's not saying much). But it does offer up a child's head being crushed by a car. In fact, as Lloyd says, it's the only film in history to feature said incident that was turned into a children's environmental cartoon! The only complaints I really have are that Melvin was one of the most annoying characters I've ever seen (outside of a Gregg Araki movie, that is) and that the print they showed appeared to have been cut all to hell! (I guess that's why the head of SXSW felt comfortable bringing his kid and still give an award to Jack Valenti.) They would get to a good part (a guy's hands being put in a vat of hot grease or a fat guy getting disemboweled) and would suddenly cut away! If it weren't for the head crushing and the nudity, this version could have been shown on USA Up All Night. But it's a classic. And I love it. Not as much as Troma's more recent fare, but it's still great.

SXSW2002-- Charlotte Sometimes/Tribute/Kinky Friedman: Proud To Be An Asshole From El Paso/Tromeo And Juliet (1996)

admin — Thu, 14 Mar 2002 18:00:00 +0000

CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES Behind this Cure song title lies a film about the desperation behind unrequited love and the search for something else. Micheal is a young Asian man who rents out half of his childhood home to Lori. Lori's boyfriend, Justin, understands that Lori and Michael are "just friends." But isn't it strange that she always tends to go over to Michael's place after she's had sex with Justin? Enter Darcy. She's a free-spirited young woman who Michael meets at a bar. He starts spending more and more time with her to the annoyance of Lori. Could she be falling for Michael? Or is she still in love with Justin? And we all know that Michael really loves Lori, so what's up with Darcy? You may think know exactly where this movie is going, but trust me. You don't. I guess the biggest selling point of this movie for the festival was the fact that the cast is all Asian, but there's barely a hint of it in the subject matter. It's a universal story that everyone can relate to in some way, but it just happens to have Asians in the lead roles. That's a great thing, in my book. There are, however, two scenes that do call attention to their Asian-ness. One is when a white guy sends a rose over to Darcy's table. She and Micheal both give the guy a very evil stare before dropping the rose on the table and leaving the bar. The second (and best) one is when the four leads go to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Justin is only half Asian (like writer/director Eric Byler), so he is a little bit left out of some of the conversations. That's actually one of the best scenes in the whole movie. The conversation is real. It feels as if it was improvised on the spot by four very good improve actors. And for these two scenes the only two Asians in the audience (that I noticed) wanted to suck the director's dick during the Q&A. This is a great movie with very good performances. You can tell early on how everyone feels about each other even if they can't. The only problem I had with the acting was that Michael sometimes seemed to need some help getting his words out (maybe a crowbar would help), but it seemed to work pretty well for the character. Give it a shot if it gets full distribution. It's obviously shot on video, but get over it. That's the way things are going. TRIBUTE This is the greatest documentary I have ever seen. Uh-huh-huh. Huh-huh-huh. Ok, maybe not, but it's a lot of fun. After seeing the cinematic abortion that was Rock Star (complete with tag team lead singer) I decided that being in a tribute band had to be just about the saddest existence possible. Not if you're just out to have fun with it (as local bands like The Eggmen (Beatles' tribute) or The Diamond Smugglers (Neil Diamond taken to perverted "heights") do), but if you're really serious about it then you may as well put your head in front of a shot-gun and wait for a squirrel to come along and pull the trigger for you. Think about it. These guys have no chance of ever becoming big. Oh, sure, there's the occasional "Ripper" Owens (ok, there's only one story like that, never to be repeated again), but most likely you're doomed to play someone else's songs in cheesy costumes in a dive bar for the rest of your musical career. You can't get famous on someone else's songs. (Unless you're Rod Stewart, but that's another documentary. And, really, that's not a dig at him. He's great at covering Dylan. I like his version of "Forever Young" a lot better.) So what's left for these guys? Not much. They go to their crappy day jobs, get off work, get with their buddies and then take their night job a little too seriously. Or at least they take their fandom a little too seriously. Tribute is the story of Larger Than Life (KISS), Bloodstone (Judas Priest), The Missing Links (The Monkees), Escape (Journey) and Sheer Heart Attack (Queen). All tribute bands. All going nowhere fast. These are the guys who take it all too seriously. The guys who think that, one false move and reality comes crashing in on their party and they are no longer their heroes. And I guess that's true, but they aren't their heroes. And no one brings that point home better than who they call Superfan. He's a fan of Queen. Ok. Let's rephrase that. He's insane for Queen. He's gone from collecting albums and posters and gone on to painting the album covers and hanging them on his wall. He has a shrine to Queen complete with incense. When he goes to a Sheer Heart Attack show he gets nervous. He sees it as his only chance to see Queen live since he decided not to go to their last US tour in 1982 (the Hot Spot tour, for those of you keeping track). When SHA's lead singer got a job in Germany in an opera, Superfan was devastated. He thought that it would be a good idea to get the singer a girlfriend over here so that he wouldn't want to leave. (Somehow I doubt that the guy would have wanted a girlfriend, but anyway...) The most frightening thing about Superfan is that we can all see a little of ourselves in him. Yeah, he takes it too far, but there's that little part of all of us that probably would take it that far if it wasn't so damn geeky. Let's just say that this was just about the best documentary I've seen this year. It's fun, scary and informative all at the same time. And isn't that what it's all about? Or maybe it's about being your hero until you actually think that you ARE your hero. Either way, this is better than Rock Star ever even thought of being. I don't know how you'll see this, but the short before Tribute was just as good. It was called Ace's High and was about a group called, strangely enough, Ace's High. They are an Ace Frehley tribute band. That's right. All Aces. And the real kicker is that they dress as Ace through the 70s with distinctions that only a true fan would even notice. One is "Destroyer Ace," one is...um...Ace...from 1974. Yeah, well, I'm not really a fan, so I couldn't tell. But they spent a lot of the time of the short talking about how he was the only talented one in the group and it was time for a tribute. So they play only Ace's material with the band or his solo stuff. Great concept and a great little flick. Hopefully it'll show up on IFC or something. KINKY FRIEDMAN: PROUD TO BE AN ASSHOLE FROM EL PASO No one can sum up Kinky Friedman in an hour long documentary, but Simone de Vries tries. And the strangest thing about this woman who is here to teach us about one of the strangest characters in modern Texas history is that she's from The Netherlands! That's right! It took a foreigner to do this. As a lot of people know (but a lot don't), Kinky Friedman started his life of semi-fame as a country singer. Of course he didn't sing about your typical country fare. He and his band, The Texas Jewboys, sang satire. Songs like "They Just Aren't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore" and "Get Your Biscuits In The Oven And Your Buns In The Bed". You know. The kind of stuff that pisses off every non-thinking person in the universe. After that brush with fame, Kinky became a writer. He's been writing mystery novels (starring himself) for about 15 years now and has a very loyal following, including President Clinton, who is actually in this film! Yes, ol' Bill shows up quite a bit talking about The Kinkster. How did Simone do that? She asked. A lot. What happened, though, was that no one bothered to ask the President until about her 10th time. They thought that it wasn't even worth it. But, as soon as they asked him, he agreed. It's just that easy, folks. If you get a chance to see this doc, do it. It may not give a complete picture of Mr. Friedman, but that's about all your going to get unless you're him. TROMEO AND JULIET Lloyd Kaufman always says that if Shakespeare had been about to get away with squashed heads, pierced nipples and penis demons in his plays, he would have. And Tromeo And Juliet proves it. We all know the story, right? Young Tromeo Que and Juliet Capulet are on opposite sides of a feud between their fathers. But when they fall in love, all hell breaks lose. This was the first Troma film that I saw all the way through, so I have a special place for it in my heart. It's not as good as some of their later ones, but it is the beginning of the new Golden Age of Troma which as culminated in Terror Firmer (also starring Will Keenan) and Citizen Toxie. This one isn't nearly as offensive to the more offendable out there, but it has its moments. Some of the scenes between Juliet and her dad are disturbing even by Troma standards. And it may be a little too punk for my taste. There are an awful lot of piercings and tattoos running around here. Not too in to that. I do wonder what the news article was that inspired this one, though. (Lloyd says that all of his movies are inspired by the news.) Maybe domestic violence? Or incest? Not quite as satire inducing as a toxic waste dump near a school or movies causing violence, but it'll do. Watch for the Sgt. Kabukiman car crash and listen to some of the best music to ever be used in a Troma film. This time it actually doesn't suck...too bad.

SXSW2002-- One Thousand Years/The Search For John Gissing/The Last Waltz (1978)/Journeys With George

admin — Fri, 15 Mar 2002 18:00:00 +0000

ONE THOUSAND YEARS Throughout time, man has been on the lookout for one thing: love. And say what you will about it, everyone needs it. It may not be all you need, but you do need it. Which, of course, brings us to the film at hand. Maria is the one who is searching for love. No, she hasn't been doing it for the titular time period, but I'm sure it seems that way to her. She's the kind of person who says, "I'm not afraid to spend my life alone. I am not a loser." When she and her roommate, Emma, meet Keith, things take a turn for Maria. She falls for the tall alterna-boy almost instantly. And he kind of takes to her, too. They start hanging out quite a bit. Meanwhile, Emma is withholding her secret love for Maria. She tries to tell her, but it only comes out in a story about two time travelers who come from two different times: the man from 1,000 years in the past and the woman from 1,000 years in the future. They find out that they are not so different and start to form a bond that helps them to sort out the strangeness of their new world while they look for a book that will help them save all three time periods. This is Gabriel Fleming's first film and, for the most part, you can kind of tell. Which is certainly not to say that it's a bad film. Actually, it's quite good. But it might be a little bit too slow for its own good. (I think he did that on purpose, too. He admits that it's slow, but had not real qualms about it. Which is fine.) And the film looks really good, if a bit dark at times. But, if Fleming can get over that hump (which he also admits to falling into) he has a lot of potential. But what is really on display here is the writing, which he also did. The story is a universal one and the time travelers fit perfectly as a parallel with the story going on in the film's real world. They are two people from two completely different worlds who find out that they are still compatible with each other despite their differences. And, instead of making the Maria/Emma thing totally overt, it's done all in longing looks from Emma. It's subtle, yet hard to miss. (Unless you're Maria, that is.) It's a great movie that everyone can identify with. If it makes it to video or cable (which, unfortunately, seems to be the only two places taking digital features these days) check it out. It's worth the 90 minute investment. THE SEARCH FOR JOHN GISSING Now, just for a change of pace, we'll move on to a near re-make of The Out-Of-Towners. Well, not totally a re-make. More like a half re-make. The first half of the movie follows the Barnes's, Matthew and Linda (Mike Binder and Janeane Garofalo), as they try to navigate London. Matthew has just gotten a transfer from his company and all of their arrangements are being made by John Gissing (Alan Rickman showing his amazing comic timing). Unfortunately for the Barnes's, Gissing is on his way out because of Matthew's transfer, so he's not going to make things easy. The second half of the movie is the Barnes's trying to figure out how to keep Matthew's job while thanking Gissing for all he's done for them. While it's not a great film or anything, it is a VERY funny corporate farce with some great performances from everyone. Rickman, who doesn't do a lot of comedy, is awesome. (Watch for the scene with the ice cube. It's a small thing, but it was one of my favorite bits. It's the subtlety that rocks here.) And, of course, Binder (who also wrote and directed--damn site better than his last directing/writing job, The Sex Monster. That was pretty abysmal) and Garofalo are hilarious together. But have I ever seen Janeane put in a bad performance? Hell, I even liked Mystery Men. So maybe you shouldn't listen to me. THE LAST WALTZ (1978) Unfortunately the names Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson don't mean a whole lot to modern rock audiences. As far as most people under the age of about 40 are concerned, their memories have been overshadowed by the likes of John Fogerty and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. While those guys are great, these five musicians formed one of the most important rock bands in history. For those of you who don't know, The Band started out as The Hawks, backing forgotten popster, Ronnie Hawkins. Then, after becoming Bob Dylan's best back-up band in the mid 60's (the one that got him booed off the stage for going electric), they changed their names to their rather original name that everyone knows them by. After Dylan's motorcycle accident they holed up in a house in Woodstock called Big Pink. Hence their first album as a self-contained unit, Music From Big Pink. That one and their next one (imaginatively titled The Band) are two classics of late 60s country-rock. With songs like "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" (later made into a full-fledged hit by Joan Baez), "The Weight", "Wheel's On Fire" (later re-recorded by The Byrds and even later by The Pet Shop Boys as the theme song to Absolutely Fabulous), "Up On Cripple Creek" and "I Shall Be Released" the boys released some of the anthems of the 60s. After some albums that aren't quite to highly regarded (mainly due to the fact that leader Robbie Robertson wasn't playing as big of a role as he was on the first two albums) they stopped in 1978. (They did reform in the late 80s without Robertson for some albums that are supposedly pretty good, but they went nowhere with modern listeners.) By the time the original Band decided to call it quits they had been going for 16 years. And Martin Scorsese, being a huge fan, tried like hell to get the job of filming the event for prosperity. Luckily for all rock fans, he got the job. The Last Waltz is the film that he came up with from all of the footage that he shot. It's a combination concert film/history of The Band. And it's still one of the greatest concert films ever shot. Of course it doesn't hurt that the concert was legendary. All of The Band's friends and supporters came out to play with the greatest backing band in history. The likes of Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Dylan and Neil Young all lend their talents to the send off and they are all pitch perfect. And of course Scorsese makes the film rise above its concert roots. With his signature moves he makes the camera a sixth member of The Band. How the hell he managed to make the guys not even notice his constant presence I'll never know. He's right up their noses for most of the concert! And his interview sessions are just as enlightening as the music is. He asks some tough questions at times and gets some honest answers. But mostly it's a look back at where they came from and why they were splitting up. Scorsese's influence can be seen all the way to Rattle And Hum here (another great concert/interview film). When is he going to do another concert film? Maybe for The Rolling Stone's last tour. But the music is the real star. The Band's music is still alive after all these years. There's just no keeping a good tune down and these are some of the best. You know a concert film is good when the movie audience is applauding every song. (Of course that may have been just because Robbie was in the audience. Who knows?) Hopefully the re-release of this film will revive some interest in The Band. We may not get a true reunion out of it (Danko and Manuel have both passed on to The Great Gig In The Sky and Robertson is immersed in his largely ignored solo career that only fans, critics and Bono have really noticed), but at least their albums might sell again and they'll finally get the recognition that they deserve from a whole new generation. But that's probably too much to ask from my generation. Most of them were raised on Duran Duran and Michael Jackson. But for those lucky few of us who know what we're talking about The Band will always be there. And so will The Last Waltz. JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE And let's get one more political flick in here. Alexandra Pelosi was a producer for NBC news when George W. Bush decided that it was time for another Bush in the White House. She was part of the media junket that followed Georgie Peorgie around while he stuck his foot in his mouth and generally made himself look like a fool to the rest of the world. And she (being a flaming liberal like yours truly) was there with her little video camera to capture it all. And, luckily, George took a liking to Alexandra even though they couldn't agree on politics at all. What we got out of the deal is basically a home movie showing Dubya behind the scenes of his campaign. We also get some confessions that I hadn't heard anywhere else. (Who knew that they "We knew who 'they' was" speech was actually a press mistake? But couldn't he have caught it as he was saying it? Is he that much of a robot the he had to say everything that the teleprompter was telling him to say?) What we don't get is a really good feeling about our current president. Sure, he seems a little more human now (he does have some charisma as long as he's just talking one on one with people), but he doesn't seem a whole lot smarter. And he also doesn't really seem like he really wants the job all that badly. He's just kind of doing it as a goof. And what's with the non-alcoholic beer, George? I thought you weren't an alcoholic. (Of course, maybe he isn't. Any real drinker knows that you NEVER drink non-alcoholic beer. Hell, I don't drink and I know you don't drink that piss. What's the point of drinking something that tastes like ass (as all beer does, don't deny it) if it doesn't give you any of the "benefits"?) As Alexandra said before the movie, this is just her home movie. It's very rough and hard to understand at times, but I can forgive her that because she didn't really have a really big intention of this going anywhere. But, being just girl with a camera allowed her to catch a lot of unguarded moments with the Boy Who Would Be Pres. as he tried to give her love advice and get her to vote for him. (She didn't.) And, by the way, Hunter S. Thompson was right about press junkets. They're basically the animals of the campaign and the plane ride is just one long party. Like Last Party 2000, this movie pissed me off all over again, but in a lighter way. It's a lot funnier and less pissed off than the other film, but that's to be expected. Alexandra doesn't seem like the political type, really. She just wanted to catch the experience. I've heard that this might have gotten picked up by HBO (although that could have just been a rumor...if you're interested in picking it up call her to make sure--don't want to ruin her chances), so keep an eye out for it. It may get chopped up, though, which sucks. It doesn't need editing, just a little sound help.

SXSW2002-- Blade II/a message to short filmmakers everywhere

admin — Sat, 16 Mar 2002 18:00:00 +0000

And so the Festival is over. And what better way to end it than with a bang like Blade II. (Actually, I saw some shorts after this, but more on that later.) For those of you who didn't see the first one, Blade (Wesley Snipes) is a vampire killer with a difference: he's half vamp, half human. But now he has to team up with the vampires in order to kill a race of beings that could destroy every last vampire on Earth. Right now these things are only feeding on vampires, but what happens when they're done with them? That's the whole story. Yeah, it's a little weak, but nearly in director Guillermo del Toro's (Cronos, Mimic and The Devil's Backbone)) words, "I'm not trying to make high art. I'm trying to make a movie that will get some popcorn into you and make you go 'Egh!'" (He also said that, as opposed to his other movies, this one is "about as subtle as a fart in a space suit", but I'm too classy to repeat that.) And he succeeds with flying vampire parts. But I guess there's a little more to the story. Blade meets up with his old partner again. Somehow Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) managed to miss when he shot himself in the last one (!) and was kept alive by the vampires to torment Blade. So Blade brings him back to the land of the living and gets his old friend back. But new friend Scud (Norman Reedus from The Boondock Saints and Mimic) isn't so sure about Whistler 2.0. What if the hunger is still there? And how about this new vampire chick who is occupying Blade's time with fighting the new breed. Her name is Nyssa (Leonor Varela from The Tailor Of Panama and Texas Rangers) and she's one tough chick. In fact, she almost kicks Blade's ass when they first meet! She and her crew (including Ron Perlman and Hong Kong superstar Donnie Yen who also choreographed a lot of the action sequences) have been specially trained to fight these things and now begrudgingly have to work with Blade to get rid of them. But what really matters here is the action. And there's action to spare. Donnie Yen has choreographed some pretty amazing fight scenes where Snipes gets to show off his knowledge of martial arts. Del Toro and his actors all seem to be having the time of their lives making this flick. Where else do you get to see Snipes play with swords and generally be cool while kicking ass? (He's always kicking ass, but how many times is he actually cool?) And Ron Perlman is great as the smart-ass vampire that we love to hate. He's got it in for Blade and never lets up. (The role started out with about two lines, but del Toro and Perlman beefed it up a little.) It's a lot gorier than the original, but in a cartoonish way. That's probably the only way it got its R rating. (Although Troma is always cartoonish and they never get an R. What's up with that?) And, just to remind us that this is a comic book movie, first and foremost, del Toro loads it with comic book images and scenes from cartoons and anime. (Watch for the Powerpuff Girls in a real quick cameo. They're on TV, of course. Don't watch for them walking across the street to a club. They're much too young for that.) And keep in mind that every image is del Toro's. There was no second unit team on this one. He wanted every shot to be his own. He would only do this if he had total control...and if he got to do Hellboy next. (Which he finally is doing with Perlman in the title role!) Problems? Well, where's Karen? If you'll remember, she was a member of his Vampire Haters team at the end of the first one. I guess the superheros woman always has to disappear so he can get a new one in the next movie.) And then there's Whistler, but I've already gone over that. This is a great popcorn flick if you can turn your brain off and just go with the blood flow. And if you have a pretty strong stomach for vaginal monsters. AND NOW FOR A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR: I love shorts. I especially love funny shorts. Those always seem to work the best. That's why I absolutely love to go to the Midnight Shorts Program and SXSW. This year there was an animated short that Steve Martin wrote called Morto The Magician. It was pretty damn funny. (Morto is a completely inept magician who manages to crush birds, saw women in half and feed tigers.) There were really good ones, too, including Never Date An Actress. And then there were two that were just outstanding: Nougat and Interview With Spike Jonze. Nougat is about a kid who plays the titular candy in the school Easter play about candy. He hates his life. No one really knows what he is. But at the Halloween play he gets his revenge. Interview With Spike Jonze is just what it sounds like. But this time he's not the one being funny. It's the idiot interviewer who doesn't know how the hell to work his camera that is the joke here. I have no idea if this was a real mistake or a put-on, but either way it's funny as hell. The best of the Animated Shorts Program was one called Profiles In Science. Dr. Albert Chung is the discoverer of movement among inanimate objects...including his loafing son. This is one of those shorts that builds as it goes. No one really knew if it was serious or not until about the middle of its five minutes. Then the educational video turns into high comedy. But there's always a problem with shorts programs...and that problem is, of course, the bad ones. This year the worst of the lot was one called Hillbilly Robot. Unfortunately it was also the longest. At 24 minutes it was hardly a short. In fact, the only thing it was short on was laughs. (Wow. That was WAY too easy.) This was so bad that no less than two people told me to go see the Midnight Shorts, but leave for 20 minutes when it starts. As near as I could tell it's about a hillbilly who is a robot. Everyone hates him because of his mechanical insides. But his son sticks up for him even if his wife can't. You see, she's completely comatose for some reason. She's found lying on the side of the road by some Russian hillbilly who pisses on her head and decides that he loves her. The only laugh I got out of this was from the son. He's a 100% talent free breakdancer who wears boxing gloves while he dances. When one of the kids starts doing The Robot he freaks out on him. That was at least mildly amusing. All in all, though, I agreed with the guy who shouted when it was all over. "That sucked!!!" (Yes, someone actually did that. Bad form, old man.) Now, here are my tips for those of you who are thinking of making your own short. 1) MAKE IT SHORT!!!! If you can tell the story in under 10 minutes, it's a short. If not, don't bother. No one will watch it. People will get up and walk out unless it's particularly riveting. (I have seen some of those. George Lucas In Love is pretty long, but it's also very funny.) 2) If the whole thing is based on an inside joke, don't submit it anywhere. No one wants to see something that is only funny to you and 3 of your closest friends. That's what begets shorts like Hillbilly Robot. It's crap. 3) Don't do experimental and then cry when people don't understand it. If you're not Darren Aronofsky you probably shouldn't be doing experimental anyway. The worst piece of film I've ever seen was a 5 minute video of a wok shot with a red filter as it fried different objects. My friend who I was with actually changed seats so that he couldn't see the screen anymore. When it was all over most of the audience laughed. There were, of course, those three people who pretended to "get it." They clapped and said that it was brilliant. Personally, I think the only experimenting going on here was on the audience. 4) If you do drama make sure that it's really fucking involving. If it isn't then you're just wasting our time. At least with a longer movie, even if it's not very involving you can get into the characters. With a short there's no time to really get to know the characters. This is why comedy is better for shorts. 5) If it's animated you need more than a grandma stroking a cat saying things like, "I love to stroke my wet pussy." While that's funny for a little bit I just felt that there really should have been something a little more. It got a little tiring when the grandma shaved her cat. 6) Make sure that the short makes sense to the general public. That may seem like it goes along with #3, but this is something wholly other. This year there was a short called Christmas On Mars by one of the guys from The Flaming Lips. If you didn't read the synopsis there's no way that you could tell that it's about the making of a movie starring them that isn't out yet. Otherwise it looks like some kind of weird Spinal Tapian venture where these guys got together to make a "making of" video about something that doesn't exist. But this time it was just plain boring. This kind of thing only works at a festival if it's about a movie that everyone knows like last year's The Man On Lincoln's Nose about art director Robert Boyle. Everyone knows North By Northwest. (And if they don't they don't belong at a film festival.) I guess that's really about all I can think of. I know this is kind of hypocritical since I've never really made a short. (I don't count the stupid ones I did for class. I only had a real passion for one of them and there were too many rules put on me for that one.) But life is full of shit. Get used to it. But never get used to bad film. Just make fun of it. Besides, we short filmmakers need all the help we can get. (I've got a ladder if anyone needs it.)

Oscar Winners 2002: The Cream Of The Crop?

admin — Mon, 25 Mar 2002 18:00:00 +0000

For my predictions, check this out. So, did the Academy forget that Steve Martin was the best host that they had had in many years? And did they forget what a good movie was? But I get ahead of myself. I'm not yet over the loss of sleep (only 3 1/2 hours. WOO-HOO!!) from staying up to watch the marathon Academy Awards Ceremony last night. Five hours. My God. How the hell did Whoopi Goldberg manage to make it last for five hours? The old men of the Academy haven't lasted five hours since before D.W. Griffith made his first student film. Whoopi gave the show a big ol' shot of Viagra, played with us for a long, long time, set us up for a big climax and then left us with the biggest set of cinematic blue balls since Episode I. And it's very interesting that I should bring up Mr. Griffith. The influence of his first big film, Birth Of A Nation, is finally starting to erode all these years later. (As much of a cinematic visionary as the man was, he was a racist asshole who glorified the history of the Klan, calling them American heroes. Not such a good guy.) This was the first year that, first of all three black people were nominated in the top acting categories and that two black people won those two categories. Quite a step. But (and here's where my strange politics come into play, so don't read this paragraph if you don't care), should this be as big of a deal as it was made to be? Shouldn't Denzel, Will and Halle be seen as actors and not black actors? I guess, in this world of prejudice and stupidity, we are forced to see these folks as "black people" and not just people. That's too bad. I wish that it hadn't been such a big deal for this kind of thing to happen. And here's another "but": does the fact that this is such a big deal mean that the Academy is not colorblind enough or that Hollywood itself isn't colorblind enough. There just aren't very many parts for black people, so it's hard for the Academy to choose one in each category. Not that any of that makes up for the fact that there seems to not even be one in each decade. Well, whatever the circumstances, I'm very happy for Halle and Denzel for their wins. I haven't seen either movie, but I know that at least Denzel was due. But, once again, I get ahead of myself. Why was Tom Cruise the opening speaker? Does no one realize that he's an asshole and not a very good speaker? He was fucking boring, just like most of his performances. If I remember right there was one laugh during the whole thing, and it was unintentional. He didn't seem to be in on the joke. Hopefully the creators of this show will see that and get someone a little better than Tom next year. They couldn't do much worse. ("Uma!...Oprah!...Uma!...Oprah!...") How was Whoopi? Well, she's no Steve Martin, but she wasn't bad. She kept up with the audience (the Smith Family bit was hilarious--Will, Jada AND Maggie!) and kept herself mostly clean--dammit. (Except for the one little bit about the girl screaming in the mezzanine--"Just clean up after yourself, honey.") But how was it that she wasn't able to keep the show moving? I don't understand how it ended up being nearly five hours long. Nothing seemed to drag and no one went on way too long. (Well, there was Robert Redford...) I guess the biggest surprise to me was Woody Allen's first appearance at an awards show ever. But he did it for his city. He was funny, self-deprecating, egotistical and heartfelt and I loved it. And Nora Ephron's montage was beautiful. I'm glad she chose this time to be a good filmmaker again. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson were hilarious when they presented the Best Costume award. Another bit for an Oscar compilation tape. But what was up with the Cirque du Soleil? Did we really need that? Yeah, they're amazing and they're certainly better than Debbie Allen, but it was just kind of ridiculous. No Bjorks this year, though. Kind of a disappointment. The closest thing was Gwyneth Paltrow and her SoCal vampire costume and Cameron Diaz and her "I just rolled out of someone's bed" hair. A lot of tributes to 9-11, which I guess is nice, but I didn't feel like dwelling on it last night. But without the tributes the Woodman wouldn't have been there. Sidney Poitier is always cool to see and I'm VERY glad that they gave him a special award. He's an amazing actor who broke down so many barriers when he won his Oscar back in 1963. As for the Parade Of The Dead this year, I'm glad that they included George in there. He did a lot of work with film and helped to get at least two classics made: Life Of Brian and Time Bandits. And, yes, for those of you keeping track, I still get a lump in my throat. I also loved the bits and pieces with the stars telling us what their "life changing cinema moment" was. But what was up with Britney Spears? She was on right after Aretha Franklin! What does that say about what they think of Aretha? She's talking about a real movie (that I have, of course, forgotten) and then Britney comes up with Pretty Woman. Pretty Woman!! I was waiting for her to break down and say, "I just love it when they finally let her shop!" Sad. But Errol Morris's montage at the beginning was great. Gotta love the guy. But was it a surprise to anyone that Laura Bush's favorite movie was Giant? I didn't think so. But let's get down to business. Where should we start? Bottom or top? I guess I'll start with the top. BEST PICTURE: A BEAUTIFUL MIND Ok, so I haven't seen this one, yet. But still, what the fuck were they thinking? I have heard nothing but, "Ah, it's alright" to "That was the worst fucking movie I've ever seen." Never, "Oh, it's so amazing! Best movie ever!!" which is exactly what I heard with both Lord Of The Rings and Moulin Rouge! (Can't forget that '!') This is probably the biggest upset since Saving Private Ryan. Even bigger than last year, because at least people liked Gladiator. But I guess they gave it to Ronnie because he made Apollo 13 and they forgot to give it to him for that. (Although I still wouldn't have chosen it over Braveheart. Sorry, Ron.) This is a bit of an embarrassment for the Academy. They chose a film that played with the conventions of the truth and was basically a very ordinary film as opposed to giving it to the film that will be seen and loved for generations to come. The last time they did that (1977) they had an excuse. Annie Hall is a little more revolutionary than Star Wars. I'll give them that. But this year it's inexcusable. I like Ron Howard and all, but he did The Grinch. 'Nuff said. BEST DIRECTOR: RON HOWARD--A BEAUTIFUL MIND See above, but with a little bit more. Heaven forbid that the old farts on the Academy give this to someone who actually deserves it. After all, he did a zombie movie!! Peter Jackson can't be worthy! Fuck them. He should be holding the Oscar instead of Ron "Whatever you want, Mr. Studio Boss" Howard. BEST ACTOR: DENZEL WASHINGTON--TRAINING DAY A great actor wins for what I hear is a mediocre movie. Well, it's not unheard of. As ordinary as I hear the movie is, I've also heard that Denzel was pretty damn amazing. I'm glad he beat Russell, though. Especially after I heard (I was turned away at the time) that Russ was looking pretty livid when Denzel won. Fuck him. He doesn't need two in a row. He probably should have won for The Insider and not Gladiator. Take that, Russell "Someone Pisses In My Cereal Every Morning" Crowe. As has been noted about a million times by now, Denzel is the first black man to win Best Actor since Mr. Poitier won back in 1963. Good for him. He deserves to be the one. He's awesome. But was he really winning for Malcolm X all those years ago? Possibly. BEST ACTRESS: HALLE BERRY--MONSTER'S BALL Once again, I haven't seen it, so I can't say whether or not she deserves it. I haven't been overly impressed with her acting in the past (although I never saw Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, but she was great in Bulworth), but she's not bad. And she's beautiful, so that doesn't hurt at all. Big news here, of course, is that she's the first black woman to win Best Actress ever. (Of course, she's half white, so does that count against her?) And we wondered why Whoopi was the host again after they said that they would never allow her to host again. They knew what they were doing. A couple of people I know thought that her outburst was a bit unfounded and they hated her speech. Screw 'em. I've said it before and I'll say it again: This is what these award shows are all about. I hate it when people just walk up, collect their award, thank a couple of people and then leave. (Are you reading this, Steely Dan?) They're supposed to blubber and fumble over words and be in shock about it. And she handled it perfectly. She took the time to recognize those who went before her and those who are her contemporaries and then started thanking people. Ok, she thanked everyone. Even her lawyer. Twice. But who cares? She was great. And did you get a look at Renee Zellwegger? She was crying for her, too. You can't say that we Texas folk aren't supportive when other people beat us. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: JIM BROADBENT--IRIS Did he win for this one or for Moulin Rouge!? Well, the jury's still out. I haven't seen Iris, so I can't tell you, but he was awesome in Moulin Rouge!. And he's great in general, so good for him. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: JENNIFER CONNELLY--A BEAUTIFUL MIND Ok, love Jennifer. I always have. And, of course I'm happy for her. One question, though: WHAT HAPPENED TO HER BEAUTIFUL BREASTS?!?! They're gone! For the past 15 years guys have been dreaming about those full beauties and in one fell swoop they're just gone. I just don't understand it. Hopefully it was just the dress, but how could a dress hide them that well? I think I've lost my faith. BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: JULIAN FELLOWES--GOSFORD PARK Hmmm. Over Amelie and Memento? I doubt it. Haven't seen it yet, but it seems to be a fairly formulaic (as far as Altman goes, anyway) comic mystery. Memento, on the other hand, was a form-breaking film that will be remembered forever as one of the best films of the naughts. Amelie is probably a close second here with The Royal Tenenbaums as a VERY close third. Love Robert, but his film couldn't have been better than those three. Not in the writing department, anyway. BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: AKIVA GOLDSMAN--A BEAUTIFUL MIND So let's give it to the screenwriter who decided what was and wasn't really in this guy's life. Let's give it to the one who played with facts in order to make a more homogenized version of a very interesting man. Let's give it to the studio slave. Lord Of The Rings is still the winner here, in my book. I would even give it to Ghost World over this one and I haven't even seen A Beautiful Mind. (Ghost World is very good, by the way. Go rent it today!) BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: SHREK Was there any doubt in our minds here? This was the best of the kiddie fare this year. But I do still wonder where Waking Life is. Liked what they did with this category when they presented the award. Always nice to see animated characters in the audience. Especially when they walk on Spielberg's head and tell the audience that they want to make love to all of them. BEST ART DIRECTION/SET DIRECTION: CATHERINE MARTIN AND BRIGITTE BROCH--MOULIN ROUGE! Once again, any doubt in our minds? Although I'm sure that Amelie and Lord Of The Rings gave them a run for their money. At least Moulin Rouge! won something, though. BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: ANDREW LESNIE--LORD OF THE RINGS It's about damn time it won something. Well deserved, I might add. Probably the most beautiful movie of the year. (And the best.) BEST COSTUME DESIGN: CATHERINE MARTIN AND ANGUS STRATHIE--MOULIN ROUGE! Again, no surprise here. It's a big, garish musical with amazing costumes. The Academy loves that. BEST SOUND: MICHAEL MINKLER, MYRON NETTINGA AND CHRIS MUNRO--BLACK HAWK DOWN Well, at least it wasn't Pearl Harbor. Kind of a surprise, but not really. The Academy loves war movies when it comes to effects like this. And I don't blame them, really. This kind of stuff takes a LOT of work and this movie had some great sound. I'll allow it. BEST EDITING: PIETRO SCALIA--BLACK HAWK DOWN Instead of Memento or Moulin Rouge!, huh? I can't agree here. But, as I said, the Academy loves war movies and they certainly seemed to love this one. (But it still wasn't up for Best Picture even with Ridley Scott as Best Director. As it should be.) BEST SOUND EDITING: CHRISTOPHER BOYES AND GEORGE WATTERS II--PEARL HARBOR Well, at least it wasn't Pearl....Hey, wait a minute! What do you mean Pearl Harbor won an Oscar? That can't be right? I demand a re-count! I guess it had to win something because those battle scenes were pretty amazing and at least it was something like this. I guess I'll allow it. For now. BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: JIM RYGIEL, RANDALL WILLIAM COOK, RICHARD TAYLOR AND MARK STESTON--LORD OF THE RINGS Much as I loved LOTR, I still would have gone with A.I. here just to give it something. That was an amazing film, no matter what you thought. And the SFX were just as amazing. BEST MAKEUP: PETER OWEN AND RICHARD TAYLOR--LORD OF THE RINGS Of course. Do you really think that mascara or old makeup could win over face casts and Hobbit feet? Hell no. BEST SONG: "IF I DIDN'T HAVE YOU" BY RANDY NEWMAN--MONSTER'S, INC. And this is the REAL shocker. After 16 nominations and no wins, Randy finally gets his little gold guy by beating out Paul McCartney. For the first time in his life, Randy Newman is bigger than the Beatles. Worthy? Well, I'm happy for him because I love the big ol' tub o' fun, but this song sounds just like all of his other Disney songs. I still vote for Paul here. His was the best song of the five. (I won't even mention the other three songs. Not worth it, really.) BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: HOWARD SHORE--LORD OF THE RINGS I guess John Williams canceled himself out, James Horner was a hack and Randy Newman was, well, Randy Newman. (Can't have two wins for him in the same year.) That leaves Shore's beautiful score for LOTR. I'm all for its win. It's hard for me to really comment on these, though because I know next to nothing about this kind of thing. If it's not awful I usually don't notice it. BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM: FOR THE BIRDS Surprise! Pixar won again!! Although, I did see this one about two years ago at Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Animation Festival. Funny how time goes by without the Academy even knowing it. It's a great short, though. Yay, Pixar! Never heard of any of the Documentary or Live Action Short noms, so let's move on to the last one. BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: NO MAN'S LAND (BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA) Huh? Ok, what makes a foreign language film? This one, if I remember the previews right, was mostly in English! Besides, could it be better than Amelie? I doubt it. That was just an amazing film. This one I heard was pretty good in Telluride, but there wasn't nearly as much buzz about it as there was for Amelie. I'm gonna have to go with Amelie, here, especially considering that it was in a foreign language. So that's it. No more Oscars for this year. I didn't agree with hardly any of them, but that's the great thing about opinions: they're all different. And this is the great thing about the Internet: I can finally force my opinion on people around the world. Until next year, make better (and more honest) movies than this year's Best Picture winner.

Resident Evil

admin — Thu, 28 Mar 2002 18:00:00 +0000

And that quote over there's about as deep as it gets, folks. But first, let's shoot some previews in the head. FRAILTY--So Bill Paxton thinks he can direct now, huh? Well, we'll see about that. Actually, this looks really cool. Matthew McConaughey plays Bill's son who is finally going to the police many years after his father started killing people who he thought were demons. Well, that's what the voices told him, anyway. And why would the voices lie? Of course no one believes him. (Would you believe that he's Bill's son? There you go.) And 37 days later we get the movie. (According to the IMDb, this was shot in 37 days. Anybody corroborate?) The preview makes it look suspenseful and actually a little bit scary. I hope it's good, 'cause I like Bill. He's a pretty cool guy. And Matthew's not too uncool, either. But I'm always a little wary of stars directing their first features. But, since Bill's not a huge star and apparently pretty down to earth, this could be pretty good. THE SCORPION KING--The kingdom........that created a warrior. The warrior..........that became a king. The movie........that became a joke. More of the same, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Does anyone actually have any interest in seeing if The Rock can actually act? Yeah, he did his own stunts, but who cares? He's a fucking wrestler! Of course he does his own stunts! He does his own stunts in the ring. The best thing about this movie is this synopsis from the IMDb: "This movie is a prequel of a sequel of a movie that was a re-make of another movie that was made 70 years ago." Sums it up pretty well. And the movie's just as convoluted, I'm sure. THE NEW GUY--Ok, DJ Qualls was pretty funny as the grossly nerdy guy in Road Trip, but can he carry a movie by himself? Well, we're about to find out. This one has him as (guess what?) the nerdy guy who does something awful to get expelled from school. He goes to prison (!) where he learns how to "be cool." Then he goes to the high school across town where everyone sees him as a bad-ass. The best part of the preview (besides the hot chicks, including Eliza Dushku) is when fellow inmate Eddie Griffin tells DJ that "prison is a lot like high school. The sex you want, you don't get and the sex you get, you don't want." Yep. Pretty sad. Let's move on, shall we? I think it's time to use these big guns on some fuckin' zombies! First of all, let me just say that this is a zombie movie. Let me also say that it's a movie based on a video game. Both of those mean that you have to lower your standards a bit. Ok, a lot. A whole fucking lot. The next thing is, is there really much of a built in audience for this movie? Well, not really. The games were really popular for a period of about one year. I don't really hear much about the games anymore, but, then again, I don't hang out in video game circles too often. In fact, although I own at least one of the Resident Evil games, I've only played them probably a total of about 15 minutes. Then I put my Playstation up never to break it out again. Not that the game wasn't cool, but I kinda grew out of the whole thing. Which doesn't stop me from spending a lot of money at Dave & Busters. Dammit. Anyway, enough about me and my gaming habits. Resident Evil the movie is about Alice (Milla Jovovich), a young woman who has woken up in the shower (natch) of a huge mansion, but she doesn't know how she got there, what she's doing or even who she is. So, of course, she dresses in a slinky red dress and starts looking for people. She meets up with Matt (Eric Mabius from Welcome To The Dollhouse and Splendor), a cop from nearby Raccoon City, and they both soon meet up with a crew of people with masks and very big guns led by the guy from Fine Young Cannibals. (Actually, I have no clue who the hell he is. I actually thought he was Tony Todd, but his name is nowhere to be seen in the credits.) The crew is also made up of Rain (Michelle Rodriguez from Girlfight and The Fast And The Furious), JD (Pasquale Aleardi from a bunch of Swiss films), Kap (Martin Crewes) and a bunch of other folks who really don't matter too much as they die pretty early on. As the crew gets picked off, Alice and someone who appears to be her husband, Spence (James Purefoy from A Knight's Tale), start to piece together their memories. But are they telling each other the whole truth? And do they really know the whole truth? The truth is that a big corporation called The Umbrella Corporation (isn't that used somewhere else? I can't think of it, but I know I've heard it before) has developed a virus that turns people into zombies. Now Alice and her friends, who get trapped far below ground in what is called The Hive, have to fight off the scientists and office workers who are now infected with this virus. On bite or scratch and they become a member of the walking dead. The only way to kill them is, well, you know. It's all the same. But they also have to fight with The Red Queen, the "brain" of The Hive. She is a central computer who seems to have gone mad and killed everyone in The Hive. Did she have a reason? Well, I think I gave that away, but does it really matter? This is a zombie movie. All we need to know is that lots of dead folks are running around fucking with the living folks. And they, in turn, have to fuck up the zombies. Is the movie good? Well, not really. I'm not going to lie to you. It's not going to win any new converts to the video game to movie genre. BUT the real question is, is it a good zombie movie. And that answer is Yes. It's no Night Of The Living Dead (although George Romero was supposed to direct this one...too bad he didn't. And watch for a reference to Day Of The Dead), but what is? It's a lot of fun and people get killed in new and creative ways. (I especially liked the dicing scene.) And it manages to scare up a few scares. A lot of them are of the "complete silence broken by a unrealistically noisy entrance," but they worked. One thing that kept if from being totally stupid is the fact that they didn't feel the need to show everything. A lot of times they only suggest that something happens. When someone's head gets smashed into a ceiling by an elevator, we hear a sound effect, but we don't see the face get smashed and the neck get ripped. That's a good thing in this case. It was much more suspenseful and scary that way. But I have heard that a lot of gore was cut out for the MPAA (of course) and that the DVD will have a special unrated version with a lot of gore added back in. Hopefully they put both versions on one disc, because, while I want to see the other version (because I'm a sicko), I kind of like this one. Paul Anderson (not Paul THOMAS Anderson) is no stranger to the video game genre. He directed the last successful movie like this, Mortal Kombat. I didn't see that one, but I did see its sequel (not directed by Paul), and that sucked ass. So did Soldier. I heard that Event Horizon wasn't too bad depending on who I'm talking to. So he knows his way around action and suspense. Sometimes. Luckily this time he did. Milla is as good as always, if not better than usual. But that's not saying a whole lot. She's pretty bad normally. But she was kinda cool as a bad-ass here. I almost believed it when she broke the dog's neck with her foot. (And there was a lot of neck breaking going on in this movie. I don't think I've heard that sound effect this often since the last Crosby family picnic I was invited to.) Michelle doesn't get too much to do here. Actually, she hasn't had too much to do since Girlfight except brood and be in love with someone who is either doomed or bad for her or both. I guess we'll never know if Girlfight was a fluke or if she does indeed have some talent. Everyone else is at least passable, but since they're virtual unknowns I won't bother with them. (But doesn't the girl in the beginning look a lot like either Milla or Jeri Ryan? Maybe a cross?) So, if you like zombie movies or like the games (and those are NOT mutually exclusive) check it out. If not, avoid it at all costs. And just to let you guys know, they leave it open for a sequel. Did you really believe any differently?

Death To Smoochy

admin — Mon, 01 Apr 2002 18:00:00 +0000

Hey, kids! Let's see what's on tap for the future! THE SWEETEST THING--I think I've brought this one up before, but it bares bringing up again for one thing: Cameron Diaz's ass. It's all through this preview. And it looks as amazing as ever. And does anyone know where they dug Jason Bateman up from? I thought he and his sister were on some remote island together where incest was still considered best, like England. D'oh! HOLLYWOOD ENDING--A new Woody Allen movie!! And I've got to finally see one in the theatre. This is the year! This time out Woody is a director who was big in the 70s and 80s (not autobiographical at all) and is now seen as a liability. When Tea Leoni gets him a job directing a big budget Hollywood movie he goes blind. Sure, it's all in his head, but he's still blind. How the hell is he going to make a movie? Not a bad premise and Woody is going back to his old physical comedy schtick. But I've seen some of these jokes in Terror Firmer and they use the same joke three times in the trailer. ("Which one? This? Or this?" "Yes.") But I'll be there for Woody no matter what. It'll be good to see him fall over some chairs and off the side of a scaffolding. Not to mention see him working with the most L.A. guy out there, George Hamilton. How's that gonna work? MURDER 8Y NUM8ERS--I really hope this one's good. If it is it'll be the first good movie that Sandra Bullock has made since, well, I'll have to go with Speed. Barbet Schroeder directs Sandy in a mystery about a new FBI profiler (our little golden girl) pitted against two high school kids who are out to commit the perfect murder. I'll give them points for making the murderers teenagers (and not casting Freddie Prinz, Jr., but instead going for relative unknowns Ryan Gosling (The Believer) and Michael Pitt (Bully)) and for naming the movie after a semi-obscure Police song. (It actually got them in a little trouble when the song came out back in 1983. People didn't get the irony of it.) It looks good, so I might give it a shot. And Sandy's not falling on her ass, so it'll be good to see her stretch a little. Especially in those tight cop pants. (Heh heh.) Now kiddies! Let's get to the show!! Guess what! Robin Williams is allowed to fucking say "fuck" again! Fuckin' A!! After a few years of "feel-good" movies (all rated PG to PG-13 except for the one good one, Good Will Hunting--although I will have to admit really liking What Dreams May Come) he's getting back in touch with his dark side with three movies coming out this year where he plays a psychopath (this one, a remake of Insomnia (the original starred his Good Will co-star, Stellan Skarsgard) and One Hour Photo). I'm genuinely excited to see his movies again! But I'm pissed off at him for charging so much for tickets to see him do stand-up. $65-100? Why, Robin? Why!?!? Anyway, I digress. Rainbow Randolph (Williams) is America's most popular kids' show host. And with lines in his theme song like "some say grab while others say snatch!" and "size doesn't matter when it comes to friends!" why wouldn't he be? But when he's caught in a scheme to make money off of the little tykes, no amount of fairy dust can save his career. Enter Sheldon Mopes, aka Smoochy (Edward Norton). He's basically an idiot, but he's got high morals and there's no way he will ever be caught doing anything wrong. The show's producer, Frank Stokes (John Stewart) thinks Smoochy is just the ticket. But his partner, Nora Wells (Catherine Keener looking A LOT better than she did in Being John Malkovich) just thinks Smoochy is a total boob and that they can do a lot better. When Randolph gets wind of his replacement all hell starts to break lose. You see, Smoochy must die. Then Rainbow Randolph can come back on the air and all will be happy in Rainbowland again! But when the Irish Mafia and a charity that's run like the Mafia (lead by Harvey Fierstein of all people--imagine getting the gayest man in Hollywood to play a mob type figure. Irony at it's finest.) get involved things get dangerous for everybody. This is one of the greatest premises to ever hit Hollywood. It's the back-stabbing backside of the kids' entertainment industry. Who doesn't want to see a big purple walking carpet get shot in the face or beaten to death with a crow-bar? Is it as good as the premise promises? Well, not quite. Oh, it's very funny. There was hardly a second where I wasn't laughing at something on the screen. And it was certainly dark and biting enough. The problem was the pace. It just moved too damn fast. (Now there's a complaint you don't hear everyday.) It seemed to be more manic than maniacal. We didn't really get a chance to care too much about any of the characters, not even Sheldon who we're supposed to identify with (I think). But there are enough very funny parts and great performances (especially Edward and Robin) to recommend it. Robin's manic overacting works here to great effect. His meltdown over the course of the film is a classic. The only performance that needed a little work was, surprisingly, Catherine's. There are a few scenes where she's just downright awkward to watch. She makes some really weird squinched up faces that she seems to think her character would do. Or she just kind of wriggles as a reaction to something. It's just bizarre. Director Danny DeVito (who also plays a small (as if there's another type he can play), but pivotal role as Sheldon's shady agent) is great at dark comedy. Check out War Of The Roses if you don't believe me. And I, personally, liked Throw Momma From The Train. It's not as bad as everyone said it was. A friend of mine said that this would invent a new genre: the screwball noir. (Thanks Krista.) That may have already been done with The Hudsucker Proxy (and probably a few others before that, but I can't think of any), but this one certainly expands on the formula. (And, yes, there is a relationship that goes along with the classic screwball comedy. Guess which one.) It goes that one step further and becomes pretty hysterical in the process. Yeah, there are times where it tries a little too hard, but, overall, it's not bad at all. And, while there are some predictable bits it does manage to keep you on your toes. I do have one problem with Danny's direction, though (along with the pace): Robin's dance sequence. That could have been great! But instead it was a little awkward because the camera was too close to Robin throughout the whole damn thing. Danny needs to watch some of those old Gene Kelly musicals again before he does another number like that. So, if you're up for a good, dark time check it out. But don't expect too much. It's no great shakes if you think about it too much. Just really cool. And watch for Danny's Taxi/Cuckoo's Nest buddy Vincent Schiavelli in a small role at the end. And the IMDb says that Salma Hayek is in it. I think I would have remembered that, but I guess I could have missed her. Must say it's a doubter, though. Let me know if you see her. Biggest laugh? Watch for Robin's reaction when he spills coffee on himself. It's a little thing, but it kept me laughing for nearly five minutes. Now, kids, I'll shut up. But remember, profwagstaff loves all of you! Just put the axe down.

The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion

admin — Wed, 17 Apr 2002 17:00:00 +0000

Now, we all know that Woody Allen has not been up to his usual standards lately. I mean, Small Time Crooks? Come on! And it doesn't look like he's coming out of that stupor anytime soon. (Although the previews for his new one, Hollywood Ending, look pretty good.) This time out he plays CW Briggs, an insurance investigator who is in a war with a new efficiency expert, Betty Ann Fitzgerald (Helen Hunt). She's out to make the office into a modern (for the 40s, anyway) machine whereas he's ready to keep things the way that they are and run on gut instinct and sexual harassment. When the two of them are hypnotized by Voltan (David Ogden Stiers) at a party they are made to think that they are helplessly in love and trapped on a deserted island. Of course, when they wake up from the trance they have no idea that they were even hypnotized. A few days later Voltan calls CW and whispers his secret word to him. He then sends the little nebbish detective on a search for some very valuable jewels. CW wakes up and no recollection of ever even seeing the jewels so, unbeknownst to him, he's after himself. There's some almost interesting stuff going on between CW and Betty Ann, but it's all been done before. They hate each other in real life, but in their hypnotized lives they are madly in love with each other. Are they only acting out their actual fantasies? Or is it only the power of suggestion? And what's the inevitable conclusion to this sort of thing when there's Woody Allen and a young woman involved? I think you know. I think the whole idea has kinda been done to death. Who hasn't seen a movie about people who do strange and even illegal things under hypnosis? Come on. Raise you hands. I guess I liked the movie and all, but it wasn't anything very special or memorable. I think Woody needs to slow down and maybe make a movie every two years instead of every year. Maybe he could get all of the good jokes together and make one great movie instead of two mediocre ones. Because there are some good gags here, but they're kinda few and far between. Maybe if he had put this one and Small Time Crooks together something pretty good could have come of it. As it is we've got two of Woody's lesser flicks that are just good time wasters as opposed to the great films that he used to put out.

Spider-Man

admin — Fri, 03 May 2002 17:00:00 +0000

It's that time, True Believers! Time for one of the greatest super-heroes of all time to finally make his big screen debut!! But first, some previews: THE HULK--And first up is another great and misunderstood hero, The Incredible Hulk. And who better to direct it than--Ang Lee? Well, nobody thought he could do a kung-fu film, either, but he passed that test with flying colors. But now the only color he needs to get right is green. (Who among you didn't see that one coming?) And I think he'll pass. The man has yet to make a bad movie. (I even liked his Civil War semi-epic with the once and future Spidey, Ride With The Devil.) And anyone who saw his BMW short knows that he at least cares about the project. The cast looks good: Jennifer Connelly (who ALWAYS looks good), Nick Nolte, Sam Elliott and, in the lead role, Eric Bana. Wait. Who? Well, he's huge in Australia as a comedian, but pretty much nobody here. He really wowed them in the film fest circuit in the title role of Chopper. (Never heard of it? Neither have I, really. But a friend says it was awesome. I guess I'll have to see it.) And he was in Black Hawk Down. Other than that, I dunno. I'm sure he'll be fine, though. This is just a teaser, so there's no scenes from the movie. Can't tell you much, but the teaser looks kinda cool. Can't wait for it. STAR WARS: EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES--Please let it be good. Please let it be good. PLEASE let it be good. It WILL be good. If the new trailers are any indication, this is gonna rock ASS!! This is gonna rock so much ass that Warren Beatty will have to catch up to it. And guess what? NO JAR JAR!!!! Well, he does (I hear) make an appearance in the movie, but he's shuffled off very quickly to be a senator (!!) and then isn't really heard from again. And he's not in the trailer at all. And who can resist Yoda on his little floating plate? I'm hard just thinking about this one. (And Natalie in her ripped uniform. That's pretty hot.) THE SWARM--Irwin Allen has done it again. He's collected a great cast (Michael Cain, Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Katherine Ross, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant) and put them... Wait. Ben Johnson and Henry Fonda are dead. This can't be right. You're right. In a nod to this week's big-ass premiere, The Alamo Drafthouse (the coolest theatre in the fucking WORLD!!) has decided to start the film off with some vintage trailers of "classic" bug movies. The Swarm, Bugs, and some cheesy 50s flick with a man who turns into a spider. For some reason I can't remember the name of it even though they said it 50 times in the trailer. We were all repeating it with the announcer by the end. A couple that they missed: Kingdom Of The Spiders (Shatner at his best!) and Kiss Of The Spider Woman. (Oh come on. You know they should have.) But all of those pale in comparison to the main feature, one of the most kick-ass, interesting and well played comic book movies EVER! "Ever?" Yes. Ever. Period. I think we all know the plot, but let's recap. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is a poor sap of a high school senior in New York City. He was raised by his Aunt Mae (Rosemary Harris) and Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson) and has been in love with Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) since she moved next door to him in 1st grade. Unfortunately, not only is he a poor sap, but he's painfully shy. He may be a genius, but he can't talk to people to save his life. Things take a turn for the weird for him when he goes on a field trip to a science lab with "super spiders." One of them escaped its tank and decides to make a quick meal of some of Peter's blood. But at least he got up the nerve to talk to MJ! But not until after his best friend, Harry Osborn (James Franco who kept striking me as looking like James Dean...until I realized that he was the kid who played Dean in a recent biopic. Well, he's better than Casper Van Dien.), gets to her first. When Peter goes to sleep that day (right after getting home because he's feeling like shit) he's a 90 lb. weakling. (And, by the way, Tobey has NEVER looked as skinny as they made him look in that disoriented scene. He looked like a Holocaust victim!) When he wakes up he's suddenly buff boy, finds all the energy in the world and has things sticking to his hands. Meanwhile, in another part of NYC, Harry's dad, famed scientist Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe), is creating a little havoc of his own. He's in charge of an experiment that makes people stronger just by breathing chemical gases. When he is threatened with losing his government grants he tries it out himself. That's when things go horribly, horribly wrong. He goes crazy (much like one other test subject did, but with a vengeance) and kills an opposing scientist. The kicker is that he doesn't know he's doing it. Soon he's terrorizing the city with a brand new mask and a flying machine that his company built. He's dubbed The Green Goblin and history is born. But The Human Spider (dubbed Spider-Man by a wrestling announcer--Sam Raimi stalwart Bruce Campbell) has a few tricks up his sleeve (literally) to save his city and his girl. And ever since his uncle was killed by a car-jacker Peter has a score to settle with the baddies of NYC. There's a lot to love about this movie. It's fast paced, true to its source (although I'm sure there are little things to quibble about--like the fact that Peter makes his webbing naturally instead of creating it in his home lab), the casting is great, the action is exciting and Kirsten has some major titty hard on going on in that rain scene. (Oh, the rain scene. You all know the one I'm talking about. The one in the preview where MJ kisses Spider-Man while he's hanging upside-down. Gotta be one of the sexiest scenes ever put on film. Well, in a comic book movie, anyway.) But one of the best things is that it was so true to life, which is one of the best things about the character in the first place. Peter Parker is a loser. He always has been. He's a nerd who happens to have all of these great powers. And because of those great powers he can't get anything right. He's always late for work (a fact alluded to here). His home life is in a shambles (not really mentioned here since he's not with MJ through the whole movie). He's always tired as hell. The city doesn't know whether to love him or hate him. He's so busy saving people that he doesn't have any time for anything else. (Another thing alluded to here in a rather heartbreaking way.) But Peter's more than just a loser, he's all of us. We've all had that girl that we were totally in love with, but couldn't get. We've all been the butt of other people's jokes. We've all felt like a complete outcast. (Even you popular kids. Don't deny it.) And who better to play this sort of hero than Tobey Maguire? He's a perfect sad-sack. He's proven that time and again in movies like The Cider House Rules and The Ice Storm. He's got that tragic hero thing going for him and he uses it well here. Kirsten, is great as the girl next door who should be with Peter, but she never quite figures it out until...well, watch the movie. Their romance is played out so well that, while it's going on that's all that's going on. The super-hero thing gets put on the back burner and we forget all about it. And that's a good thing. Believe me. When Peter finally does start to be able to talk to MJ he does it in such a real way that you would think that Tobey really was in love with Kirsten. (Of course, there are those of us who think he is no matter how much they both say, "No, actually, we're just good friends." Who go to Telluride together. And the beach together. And follow each other around like little puppy dogs--ok, he does the following, but still...Who could blame him? Look at her!) Let's just hope that this role doesn't turn Tobey into another romantic comedy dork and that he keeps taking good roles. And then there's Willem. He's AWESOME as the green guy. First off, the guy barely needs the mask. He's freakin' scary enough to look at as it is. But when you actually make him into a bad guy with two personalities he's all that much more menacing. And the fact that Norman sees Peter as more of a son than his own son makes their confrontations that much more interesting. The rest of the cast is just as good. And it's always good to see Cliff Robertson in movies. You just don't see him much anymore. And watch for Sam's brother, Ted, in a small but recurring role at the newspaper that Peter eventually gets a job at. And the IMDb says that Stan Lee is in it, but I don't remember seeing him. Let me know if you see him. Mr. Raimi does a great job of keeping the pace going even through the slower parts of the story (of which there thankfully aren't very many). And he's obviously a HUGE fan of comic books because he knows the formulas and plays with them all the time. (Check out the "big choice" scene.) And he actually takes the time to show us exactly how Peter came to terms with and learned how to use his powers. That's something that no one has really dealt with before. Yeah, we saw Clark Kent break down because, even with all of his powers, he couldn't save his Earth dad, but we never saw him accidentally derail a train because he ran into it when he was learning how to run. (Of course he did live with his powers all his life, so there's less of a chance to mess things up there.) This time, though, we get to see Peter figure out how to use his webslinger, how to swing from building to building and even design his costume. (Watch his drawings. There's one of future bad-guy Venom in there.) There are even some homages to other heroes. A great Superman nod (and not the one in the trailer where Aunt Mae tells him that he's not Superman..there's another more subtle one) and a few spots that just reminded me of the Batman series. And special effects! This ain't no Electric Company Spidey. Nope. This is the real thing. No longer do we get cartoon webs and Spidey just jumping into windows to thwart the baddies. Now we get him swinging around the streets of NYC and perched on top of buildings contemplating his life of crime-fighting and how he's going to make ends meet. There's lots of CGI going on here, but it's all pretty seamless. There are a couple of times when Tobey's face is showing that it's pretty obvious that we're watching a computer with his face glued onto it, but other than that it's almost hard to tell when the CGI ends and the real people begin. It's a great flick. Lots of fun and actually pretty damn romantic for a comic book movie. Unlike X-Men (a good, but not really great comic flick), we actually care what happens to ALL of the characters thanks to the acting and David Koepp's (Panic Room, Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible) script. And, unlike most comic movies, we care more about and are more interested in the good guy than we are the bad guy! Now THAT'S a strange phenomenon. So, no matter how sick all of the hype has made you, go see this movie! It's so much fun that you'll forget that you saw Spidey's masked face on all of those phone ads. My buddy that I saw it with said that it made him feel like he did the first time he saw Superman in the theatre back when he was 8. Now that's the sign of a good comic movie. Hell, it actually made me want to read some comic books and I'm not a fan of them. (Just the movies, really. I'm an odd, odd man.) And that's something you can believe in, True Believers.

Changing Lanes

admin — Sun, 05 May 2002 17:00:00 +0000

Watch out!! There are previews headed right for us!!! THE SUM OF ALL FEARS--So Ben Affleck is taking over for Harrison Ford, huh? Well, it looks like they've changed the timing of the novel and made this a prequel to the others since the new Jack Ryan is quite a bit younger than the old one. Now he's not married and seems to be just starting out in the CIA. Good move. I couldn't see Ben being the same guy with Thora Birch as his daughter. This actually looks pretty damn good. I'll be in line to see it. K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER--The 19th in the blockbuster series! This time out Jim Belushi and his doggy pal are out on the prowl...for bad! Luckily, Harrison Ford comes along and wipes them out before they can fuck up his movie. Harrison stars as a Russian submarine captain who holds the fate of the world in his hands. I think he's sent to dick with some Americans in a ship and he's got the nuclear bombs. What to do? What to do? This looks like it could be great. And just about everything Harrison is in is at least watchable. (Except for Random Hearts, but I won't hold that one against him. He was in a very weird place at that point in his life...I hope.) I can't wait for this one, although I hope he's not just trying to say, "Hey, look! I can be Sean Connery again!!" (For those of you who don't get that, George Lucas always said that Indy was an updated version of James Bond. And I think Harry did a great job of living up to that legacy, don't you?) Ok, swerve over here and we'll get to the movie at hand. Gavin Baneck (Ben Affleck--just can't get away from him today, huh?) is a young lawyer who has just been made partner in a high powered firm. He's on his way to defend his firm against accusations that they got a dying man to give his charitable organization to the firm after his death. All he needs to do is show that he gave them power of attorney and they've won. Case closed. Doyle Gipson (Samuel L. Jackson) is a recovering alcoholic who is trying to get his ex-wife to stay in NYC so that he can see his kids. He even goes so far as to try to get a loan on a house that they can live in so they don't have to move to Oregon. Unfortunately for both of them they sideswipe each other on the FDR turnpike and their lives get turned upside-down when they are both late for their respective appointments and Doyle has Gavin's power of attorney file. But Gavin is in too much of a hurry to help out his fellow man and leaves him in the rain to fend for himself. So Doyle loses his chance to keep his kids and Gavin looks like a fool in his trial. But he's given until the end of the day to find the file and get it to the court. He does, however, tell his bosses (Sidney Pollack and Richard Jenkins) that he got through the trial with no problems. Meanwhile, Doyle is close to the edge and keeps thinking of ways to get back at Gavin...and you know it only escalates from there. This movie is like Falling Down times two. We've got two characters who are basically good guys who get caught in desperate situations. They bring out the worst in each other and feel forced into doing bad things. And that's what this film is all about, really. When good people go bad. (Say what you will about lawyers, but this guy does have good intentions...eventually.) Both leads do a good job in their respective roles, especially Sam. He's always just on the edge of being scary and sympathetic. We know why he's doing what he does even if we don't always agree with his actions. Ben's character is almost the same way, but since he's a lawyer we're a little less able to sympathize with him. Director Roger Michell (Notting Hill!) does a great job of building the suspense of "how far will they go?" but keeps it at bay enough for us to know that this isn't really a suspense film. It's more of a study on human nature and what we can be driven to. And I think that's why I liked it so much. Both of these guys' lives are crumbling around them and we get to see how they react in our modern society where it's money that matters and damn the guy next to you. Maybe not the best film ever, but definitely worth checking out and very interesting.

Paul McCartney - Driving USA

admin — Fri, 10 May 2002 17:00:00 +0000

Everyone knows that I'm a HUGE Beatles' fan. In fact, that doesn't really begin to cut it when describing how I feel about these guys. I own all of their albums (on CD and a few on vinyl--I even bought the American version of Rubber Soul on cassette because it has a false start on one of the songs--geek), I know their music so well that I don't have to play it to hear it, I read books, I have posters...I'm a freak. I missed my chance to see John and George. I saw Ringo back in the early 90s with his first All-Star Band. I saw his son, Zach, there and at The Who concert I went to about a year ago. (I went for The Who, not their ringer drummer...didn't even know he was going to be there.) Hell, I even saw Julian back in '89 or '90. So when I heard that Paul McCartney was touring again AND coming to Dallas I knew I had to go. So, as you can see, it's very hard for me to be unbiased when it comes to seeing Paul in the flesh. Of course I loved it. But I think that even someone who thinks Paul is ok would have thought that last night rocked ass. The evening started with one of the strangest opening acts I've ever seen. No band. Just a bunch of Cirque de Soliel type folks walking around the audience in (mostly) 17th century garb acting as if they were very surprised by their surroundings. And very strange synth music playing. I immediately started trying to figure out which one was Paul. I had him pegged for the guy in the suit with the umbrella. But then it all kept going on. And on. And on. I was getting worried. But, hey. He's Paul McCartney. He doesn't need a normal opening act. But finally it started to get kind of cool. They all made it onto the stage and did their little dances (including a very small woman who was putting herself into positions that were at once disgusting and exciting all at the same time). Then they all just kind of disappeared. And the first strains of real music showed up. And there was Paul's silhouette on the screen behind a big shadow of his Hofner bass. And we all knew that the God was finally here. He kicked things off with a rockin' version of "Hello Goodbye." Maybe not one of The Beatles' best songs, but certainly one of their catchiest and it was a great opener. Then he burned through "Jet" like it was brand new. The entire night lasted nearly three hours and he never took a break. (Not bad for an old geezer.) And he only played four songs off of the new album. (I don't count the infernal "Freedom" as being on the album. It's a bonus track that I, personally, could have done without. More on that later.) And I believe he only played one from the '80s! The rest were all from his days with his two bands. But he did it with such abandon that it never seemed like a trip down amnesia lane. It was all fresh, as if it had just been recorded yesterday. He, of course, did tributes to all of his fallen friends when the band left him alone with us for a while. For John he played "Here Today" from his overlooked 1982 album Tug Of War. It's a beautiful song about someone who never got to say what he really wanted to say to an old friend. For George he told us about how much George loved the ukulele. Every time people went to his house for dinner the ukuleles would come out after the meal. He would go to conventions for a British comedian who played it and was even in his fan club. (Imagine having a Beatle in YOUR fan club!) And then he played a touching version of "Something" on a ukulele that George gave him while showing pictures of him on the jumbotrons. Later in the evening, after the rest of the band joined him again, he played "My Love" for "the lovely Linda." Probably one of Wings schmaltziest songs (along with "Silly Love Songs," thankfully ignored for this show), but it worked this time. Even it couldn't dampen the spirit of the night. And, since it was for Linda... And speaking of the band, they are the reason that the night stayed so vibrant and fresh. There are some oldsters out there (ahem, Ringo) who take on a bunch of their contemporaries and drive them around the world on tours that are basically nostalgia fests. And, while those are fun, they seem a little outdated. It makes the music seem as if it's from a completely different era, which, of course, it is. Paul (and Neil Young and a few others) take a different route, though. They go out and find some awesome, YOUNG musicians to play with them. Granted, these guys are sometimes still pushing 40, but they're a hell of a lot younger than Paul. (I actually have no clue as to how old the guys in Paul's band are. All I can do is guess from their looks, but they all look fairly young compared to the old man.) Two of the guys (Rusty Anderson (guitar) and Abe Laboriel, Jr. (drums)) played with Paul on Driving Rain and one of them (Paul "Wix" Wickens (keyboards)) has been with him since 1989's Flowers In The Dirt. And the other guitarist/bassist (Brian Ray) has been around the jazz circuit for a while. And together they sound awesome! And what's more, they can all harmonize. Including the drummer! I hope they stay with Paul for a while, because this could be his best band in a long, long time. But back to the music that they made. Paul chose a good mix of Beatles and Wings classics to throw at us. Nothing too sappy (except "My Love," which, as I said, worked pretty well this time out) or cheesy. And a few surprises. I never thought I would hear "C Moon" live! And "Fixing A Hole," which he has never performed live until this tour. But, of course, there were the old standbys, which still rock the house. "Maybe I'm Amazed" is still one of my favorite rockin' ballads and I think is played at every single Paul McCartney concert. And "Band On The Run" sounded great. Probably the best moment was "Back In The USSR." That song just about brought down Reunion Arena! Things were almost slowing down, but everyone was right back with him when he dug that one out. It was amazing. And I really had no idea that Stalin looked so much like Reagan! Paul certainly knows how to connect with his audience. There were thousands of us there (maybe slightly exaggerated), but when he told us about when he was getting a massage ("I went to Tokyo once..." [huge applause] "No, not that time." [bigger applause]--Never thought he would reference THAT again.) it was as if he was talking to a couple of old friends. Yeah, he was occasionally cheesy (I could have done without him saying "Howdy" when he finally greeted all of us, and holding his heart after "Live And Let Die" with the pyrotechnics was a bit much--yeah. We know. You're getting old. But I'm glad he's still doing the explosions on the side of the stage), but he knew what we were there for and he gave it to us in a pretty personal way. Gotta love the guy. The only time I wasn't connected was when he played "Freedom." Yeah, I know. It's a song for us, but I don't really want it. I totally appreciate the sentiment, but it's just a bad song. Even with a few thousand people around me I couldn't bring myself to sing along or stand up with everyone else. I thought that maybe hearing it live would do something for it, but it really doesn't. It still sounds like it was written in about 10 minutes by a 12 year old. It still sucks. But besides that, I had a LOT of fun last night. It was a historic event in my mind and something I'll never forget. He's a showman and he knows how to put on an AMAZING show. As my friend that I saw it with said, "I'll be telling my kids about that one." And, who knows? Maybe they'll be able to experience it for themselves. Paul says he'll keep doing it even if they have to wheel him out on stage. Go Paul!

The Sweetest Thing

admin — Tue, 14 May 2002 17:00:00 +0000

It's always a bad sign when you walk into a theatre and the movie has already started five minutes before it was supposed....and no one's complaining. When this first came out I was really excited that a) Cameron Diaz was going to do what she does best--outrageous comedy and b) Nancy Pimental wrote it. I've liked her since the first time I saw her on Win Ben Stein's Money. She was funny, quick and smart. So it really disappoints me that her first writing job is slow-witted, stupid and only funny because of how dumb it is. Cameron tried, but she didn't have anything to work with, so even she fell kind of flat. The story (what there is of it) is about a California girl, Christina (Cameron), who is only looking for Mr. Right Now. And that's really the only advice she can give her friend, Jane (Selma Blair), whose boyfriend just dumped her: "Just look for Mr. Right Now and that 'Now' will drop off naturally." Then, when Christina and Courtney (Christina Applegate) are trying to raise Jane's spirits, Christina runs into a guy who she immediately hates....and then falls for. He's Peter (Thomas Jane ) and he's just there to hang out with his brother (Jason Fucking Bateman!!!), not to find a woman. After they part ways (with a "Have a nice life," no less) Christina can't get her mind off of him and decides that she wants to go to his brother's wedding so that she can get the man of her dreams. The rest of the movie is pretty much just Christina and Courtney on the road to get to the wedding in time to find Christina's Mr. Right. (Jane couldn't come because she was too busy with her job and having sex with her new dumbass boyfriend...all the time...with very embarrassing results...all the time. I think the movies main problem is that it just tries too hard. WAY too hard. And to be many different things. It tries to be a sweet romantic comedy. It tries to be There's Something About Mary. It tries to be a guy's movie for girls. It tries to be totally gross-out. It really only succeeds in being gross and over the top. And then, when it has potential to be funny, it runs it into the ground. Like when they accidentally see Jane's new man naked and Courtney slips out an, "Oh my cock!" Mildly amusing. But they keep saying it! Or when they go into a movie montage ("Do we have time for a movie montage?" That was kinda funny.) and start coming out of the dressing room in famous get-ups from other movies. They come out as the characters from Cameron's old buddy's movie, Dumb And Dumber. And then Courtney dresses up like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. The saleswoman comes up with a jewelry box and snaps it on her hand. Courtney laughs. And laughs. And laughs. And just to be different, she laughs some more. They go back to her laughing (sometimes in fast motion!) about 15 times during the montage. It stops being funny after the first time. And it's not really funny to hear an old man say, "Fuck Grandma!" and make faces everytime someone brings her up 500 times. There were some almost genuinely funny moments (like Christina trying to get out of a locked room by saying, "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!"), but they're killed pretty quickly. How Nancy and director Roger Kumble (Cruel Intentions 1 AND 2) managed to make such a mess out of a movie like this I'll never know. They certainly had the talent behind them. Everyone seems like they're game (especially Selma who has to pretend to have a guy's dick stuck in her mouth for about 5 minutes. That takes guts.), but nothing really comes of it. And, just to ruin part of the plot (stop reading if you care), before Christina and Courtney get to the wedding there's nothing there to indicate that it might be Peter and not his brother who is getting married! Throughout the movie we're told that Peter's brother is getting married. His brother says things to him like, "That's why you're in the wedding!" Later, Peter says something to his brother about spending the next 50 years with the same woman. His response: "Don't say that! It's frightening. She'll probably be able to tuck her tits in her socks by then." Sounds like a guy who doesn't really want to get married, but he's still getting married. It does NOT sound like a guy who could be his brother's best man. Now, I know that they were trying to keep it a secret that Peter was the one getting married, but they basically wrote on the screen "Peter's brother is the one who is getting married. Not Peter." Then they pulled the rug out from underneath us. BAD FORM!! Anyway, to pull a Spinal Tap-ian review, this movie can be reviewed in three words: The Shittiest Thing. If you do watch this movie, though, stay through the credits. Some of the out-takes are kind of funny (and you get to see more of Cameron and Christina in their bras and panties) and there's a Ferris Bueller type credits tag at the very end. (I didn't stay that long. I read about it on the IMDb.) AND you'll get to hear the funniest thing in the entire movie: a version of "Eternal Flame" by someone who sounds like (but hopefully isn't) Elvis Costello. Now THAT'S comedy.

Star Wars Episode II: The Attack Of The Clones

admin — Thu, 16 May 2002 17:00:00 +0000

Been waiting for this moment we all have. But first, some previews to review we have. DIE ANOTHER DAY--Bond #20 is about, um, well...what are they all about?! Some doofus wants to rule the world and decides to take Bond on. The doofus fails and we all live happily ever after while Bond humps the girls. And this time it's Academy Award winner Halle Berry. This marks the first time the a Bond girl has won an Oscar before she was actually a Bond girl. AND it was directed by Lee Tamahori, the New Zealand director of Once Were Warriors and The Edge. (Of course he also did Mulholland Falls and Along Came A Spider, so this could totally suck.) Rumor has it that Michelle Yeoh's character was supposed to come back. Unfortunately she couldn't make it. Too bad. She was one of the best parts of Tomorrow Never Dies. This is only a teaser, but what a teaser! It starts off with hundreds of naked women laying on top of each other. Any movie with that in the trailer I have to see. And it's a Bond flick, so of course I'll be there. THE MATRIX RELOADED/THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS--Finally these fucking movies are coming out! After writers' strikes and deaths in the cast we will finally see Reloaded....next summer. BUT Revolutions comes out a few months later! So we'll get them all in one fell swoop. (You hear that, Lucas? We don't have to wait three damn years!!) Just teasers again, but the movies look pretty damn cool with even more of the same bad-ass special effects we came to love in the first one. Can't wait, even though it means that I have to see Keanu try to act again. UNDERCOVER BROTHER--What the hell is this? And why is it trailered on a Star Wars movie?! This is an Eddie Griffin flick where he becomes a James Bond type figure. It looks totally stupid in a funny sort of way. And it's got Denise Richards (no talent, but who cares?), Chris Kattan (sometimes funny), Dave Chappelle (also sometimes funny) and Neal Patrick Harris (HUH?!?!). Oh, and Billy Dee Williams (YES!) and James Brown! I might actually go see it for them. Oh, and for Doogie. MINORITY REPORT--A real trailer for this one! Nice and long, too. This movie looks better and better after every trailer they put out. I can't wait to see it even if it does have the loser Cruise in it. Hopefully he won't ruin it for me. But it is Spielberg. I'm sure I'll like it. And now, let us move on to the next subject, young padewan. Yes, indeed. It's time for another one of George Lucas' toy machines to get going. Yesterday I made a big mistake. I watched The Phantom Menace again. I know, I know. I said I liked it when I reviewed it after seeing it the first time. But I've seen it three times since then and it seems to lose something for me everytime I see it. Face it. There's a lot to hate about that movie. First off, it just moves too damn slow. There's a lot of talk about the Trade Federation and the Senators and the votes of no confidence and midichlorions and all that crap. I know it's the first part of a series and we have to be introduced to the characters and all that crap, but all of that exposition could have been done SO much better. And then there's the obvious: Jar Jar. He's annoying. No. He's worse than annoying. He's one of the most obtrusive fucking characters to ever come out of anyone's imagination. Not since Mickey Rooney played a Chinese man in Breakfast At Tiffany's has there been such an offensively annoying character on the screen. There's also the dialogue: "Always two there are. A master and an apprentice." "Yes, but which was killed? The master or the apprentice?" Thanks, Mace. You didn't need to repeat the whole fucking line. We heard it when Yoda said it. Oh, and we can't forget all of the "Yippee!"s and "This is so wizard!"s that came out of Anakin. In fact, even the things that I really liked about the movie (the pod race and the lightsaber scenes) didn't seem as cool this time around. The whole thing just kind of had an air of yech around it. So, I don't know, maybe my expectations were lowered this time out. I was still excited about the movie, but I wasn't as fanatic about it. I didn't buy any merchandise. I didn't think about it constantly. I didn't re-watch all four of the other movies. I didn't see Lucas as some kind of untouchable god. I did, however, wait in line for about two hours to make sure that I got the best seats that I could. And I did look forward to enjoying a good movie. And this time out I was not disappointed at all. In fact, this movie kicked some serious ASS! Should I sum up the story? I guess so. If you don't want to know anything about it, you may want to skip the rest of this review, but I'll try not to give too much away. After an attempt on Senator Amidala's (Natalie Portman) life, she is placed under the care of Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his young padewan, Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen from Life As A House). Anakin has spent the past ten years of his life dreaming about Amidala and his mother. (Not together, of course. His dreams of his mother are painful, whereas his dreams of Amidala are probably of the wet variety.) Eventually, though, Obi-Wan is sent to find out who tried to kill the young Senator which leaves Anakin alone with her. Lucky for him. Or is it? They constantly find out that they have feelings for each other, but they also know that they can never be together. Well, Amidala knows, but Anakin is resistant to the idea. While Obi-Wan is led off to one planet chasing the bounty hunter Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison from Once Were Warriors and Vertical Limit), Anakin and Amidala are supposed to be staying on Naboo. But, of course, Anakin decides that he has to try to find out why his mother seems to be in pain, so he goes back to his home planet of Tatooine to find her. Meanwhile, Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) and Yoda are back on Coruscant trying to figure out what the hell is going on between Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), Jango Fett (whose son seems to be just as ruthless as he is) and a rogue Jedi, Count Dooku (Christopher Lee). And through it all are the lovable droids, C-3PO and R2-D2 who are finally meeting each other and becoming the ambiguously gay droids we all know and love. So what did Lucas do right this time? Damn near everything! First off, there was a LOT less of Jar Jar, and I think that helped more than anything else. He was made a Senator and is basically shipped off within the first 15 minutes. He does show up again later on, but his part is cut way back and he's not nearly as annoying this time out even when he is speaking. AND we get an all new reason for hating him. Second, there's more action. In fact, this movie is nearly all action. We've got great lightsaber duels, a fun chase scene that reminded me maybe a little too much of The Fifth Element (and I also expected Harrison Ford to show up killing replicants), a cool scene with the three principles fighting some CGI animals and a lot of shooting and slicing and dicing. And Yoda kicks ASS! There's more angst going on here, too. In Phantom Menace, Anakin was just a sweet little kid who said stupid things at times. (Not to mention a strange taste for much older women.) He didn't really seem to have a dark side at all. That may have been the point, but it didn't really work. This time, though, Hayden Christensen has figured out exactly how to portray a kid who is in turmoil. He's in love with someone when he can't be. He's searching for his mother who may be in great pain. He's sick of being "held back" by his teacher because he knows that he's more powerful. He's just got a lot going on under the surface that plays into what will happen down the road. In fact, the only problem I have with the kid is that he sometimes sounds like he's from New York and he draws his words out...making him sound like a very angsty Christopher Walken. But I guess the little girls probably liked him. And, just for them, there's a scene where he's got his shirt off. Just kind of inserted in there a bit gratuitous, I thought. The romance between Anakin and Amidala is played out pretty well, too. Maybe not quite as classic as Han and Leia (I could do with a few more "nerf herder" lines being thrown back and forth), but their love is more the forbidden kind. Instead of not wanting to love each other, but being unable to hide it, they desperately want to love each other, but must hide it. And, even though there are some kind of cheesy scenes (them rolling down a hill on top of each other), it works pretty well. And, if they were in it I never saw the N'Sync boys. And that is SUCH a good thing. But I also didn't see Warwick Davis. Now, that's just wrong! What does he do wrong? There is some. This isn't as perfect as Empire by any means. Some of the dialogue is still clunky. (But when wasn't it in this series?) I would rather not have heard 3PO say, "This is such a drag!" or "I'm beside myself!" You'll see why, although you can probably guess. And, speaking of these guys, they didn't seem as natural as they used to. Maybe they just met, so they're not quite up to their bickering selves yet, but they just didn't seem like they really worked together as well this time out. (Not to mention it was really weird seeing 3PO as a CGI being for a few seconds. It's just not right!) And someone did say "I've got a bad feeling about this," but it seemed like an afterthought. It was kind of at an inappropriate time. And, speaking of CGI, it's pretty amazing here just as it was in Episode I. But I still like the old fashioned SFX better. Sure, Yoda wouldn't have been able to kick ass as well, but the puppet just seemed more real than the new CGI version of the old toad. (And I call him that with the utmost respect and love.) There was a lot of talk about how Lucas only wanted this shown on digital projection because he knew that the effects wouldn't look right on film projection. And I even heard that they DIDN'T look very good on film. But I don't think it looked bad at all. Sure, there was a strange graininess to some of the shots, but it wasn't distracting at all. In fact, if I hadn't been looking for it I probably wouldn't have noticed it. (Great. Now I've ruined it for you. Sorry...maybe.) I would, however, LOVE to see it projected digitally. Unfortunately, there are only two theatres in Texas showing it that way. One is in Plano, of all places, and the other is in some other little pissant town. How's that for irony? That's all I can really think of that was really wrong with the movie. Little complaints, they are, too. Basically, the movie rocked my plimsoul. Fuck all those critics who said that it sucked (Entertainment Weekly, Roger Ebert, etc.). They're idiots. This even won over one of my hardest to please friends who was ready to hate it the way he hated Phantom Menace. So, I'll be seeing this one again and I'll be waiting breathlessly for three years to see how the story turns out the way we all know it will. George has won me and probably a lot of other fans back.

Y Tu Mama, Tambien

admin — Fri, 17 May 2002 17:00:00 +0000

Hey! Yo! I gotchya previews right hea! LUCKY BREAK--From the director of The Full Monty comes yet another movie about a group of friends doing something that they normally wouldn't do because they're desperate. This time, though, it's a bunch of prisoners who are in a musical because that's what their warden loves. And they're using it to get out. This guy hasn't done a movie since 1997 and he follows that huge hit up with more of the same. Well, at least he's working with Olivia Williams, who is on my British hottie list. Maybe it's a renter. MEN IN BLACK II--Speaking of more of the same. The problem here is that it doesn't look nearly as funny as the first one. That one was big, loud, kinda dumb, but a lot of fun. This one just looks big and loud. You would think that it would be fun to see Tommy Lee Jones not understand what the hell's going on around him, but it just kinda makes him look dumb. I'll see it, but I don't have very high expectations. LIKE MIKE--I'm cheating a bit because this was actually on Star Wars, but I forgot about it. Sorry. That precious L'il Bow Wow stars in his own cute little movie about a boy who has no talent at basketball until he gets a pair of shoes that have Mike's name on them. Then, suddenly, he's pulling amazing antics at professional basketball games. What the fuck are these people thinking? (I hope you heard the sarcasm in that last paragraph. I was laying it on pretty thick.) Just because a kid has a hit record and a famous uncle does NOT mean he has any real talent. So, of course, give him a movie deal. This is going to be Like Shit. And now for a movie that I should have seen at South By Southwest, but I knew it was going to get released, so I saw something that I don't remember instead. I had heard a lot of people say that this and ZigZag were the best movies they saw at the festival. Luckily, I finally got to see this one. Don't know about ZigZag. It's got Wesley Snipes backing it, so hopefully I'll get a chance at that one, too. This one is about a couple of high school buddies, Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal from Amores Perros, another film I missed at last year's SXSW) and Tenoch (Diego Luna from Before Night Falls and the upcoming Frida and John Carpenter's sequel to Vampires), whose girlfriends are leaving for a few weeks after graduation. So what are a couple of affluent Mexican kids to do? Road trip!! Well, that wasn't the original plan. They had actually planned to just kind of kick around town and try to get laid. Instead, they meet Tenoch's cousin (by marriage--that's very important), Luisa (Maribel Verdu). She's an older woman whose husband has just cheated on her. It's time for her to make some changes in her life and these two boys look like they could help. The three of them take off for a beach called Heaven's Mouth. Unfortunately, it doesn't exist. The guys just made it up to get this hot, older chick to hang out with them for a week or so. The rest of the movie is basically the three of them learning about themselves, sex, the outside world, women, men, sex, politics and sex. Did I happen to mention sex? The movie starts off with Tenoch and his girlfriend banging away at each other in her bedroom. We're talking everything but actual penetration is showing. In other words, this is not an art film for your grandmother. This is a foreign movie about kids and how they actually are. There's a lot of nudity and sex in the later years of high school and college and there's a whole lot of it in this movie. But it's never exploitive like it is in some of Larry Clark's movies. It's just real. BUT I was a little tired of seeing the guys' dicks. I know, you don't get a lot of dick in the movies these days (especially since Ewan McGregor has put his up), but did it all have to be in one movie? The sex scenes were great (grand total of FIVE!), but I was a little uncomfortable sitting in a theatre full of old people. Just a little weird for me. (And when I say full, I mean there were about 10 of us there. The weekend that a Star Wars movie opens is the best time to go see other movies...but go see Attack Of The Clones first. It's awesome!) But that's not all it's about. These guys are best friends. They know everything about each other. (And when I say everything, I mean everything--"Mine is only 5mm shorter than yours!") They're always together. They're the kings of their own worlds. (The fact that the two actors are actually best friends since, like, the 2nd grade, doesn't hurt the performances at all.) Unfortunately, they find out that there are some things that they don't know about each other. And the same thing goes for Luisa. There are things that she doesn't know about herself that the boys get out of her. Things that she's actually dying to get off her chest. (And, no, I don't just mean her bra.) There's a lot of political stuff going on here, too. The three travelers are from the upper crust part of Mexico and when they are trying to find this beach they're going through some poor parts that they've never seen before. Even if they don't necessarily notice it all the director/writer (Alfonso Cuaron who also did Great Expectations and A Little Princess) makes sure that we notice it. All sound will stop while a narrator tells us the story of what's going on outside the windows of Julio's car. This makes the whole thing almost a documentary about the state of Mexico just before the ruling class lost power. This is a great film that everyone should see. It makes a lot of important points about how we all see our lives and the lives of others. The running commentary about the people outside of the three main character's lives goes right along with the troubles that our heroes are having between themselves. Of course, if you're offended by male and female nudity and two high school boys kissing each other, then you might want to skip it. (Yeah, they did that. A bit shudder inducing.)

Donnie Darko

admin — Fri, 31 May 2002 17:00:00 +0000

It's a damn shame what production companies will do to keep movies from us. Anytime they think we aren't smart enough to figure a movie out they'll make the director change it, put it on the shelf for a while, deny its release for good or just bury its release. In the case of Donnie Darko they took the last road. The film was only released in three cities (New York, L.A. and Austin) and took a couple of awards at Sundance. Other than that I've talked to a lot of people who have never even heard of it. And they all live in a city that it was released it. Granted, it only lived for about a week in the theatres here, but our best theatre (Alamo Drafthouse) picked it up about a month before it hit video and it ran for about a month or so. So, what's it all about, you may ask. Well, that's where the problem with promoting this film comes in. It's so hard to describe that they had no idea what the hell to do with it, so they buried it. If it's too hard, ignore it. All it took me to want to see it was an "Anatomy Of A Scene" episode on IFC (I think). They showed a scene near the beginning of the movie where a lot of the characters are introduced set to "Head Over Heels" by Tears For Fears. It starts with a sideways shot of the back of a bus that Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal from October Sky and ~shudder~ Bubble Boy) steps out of. The shot follows him around the school yard and then follows different characters in fast, normal and slow motion in order to keep up with certain parts of the song that fit certain characters. It's a truly amazing scene that showed me that the director (Richard Kelly) was going to be a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood. And this is a Drew Barrymore movie! But let's start at the beginning of the movie. I don't know if I'll do justice to the plot, but I'll try. It's 1988 and nobody understands Donnie Darko. He's a truly disturbed young man, so that may be part of it. His teachers, his friends, his family...none of them really understand him. But a big factor in that is that he doesn't really understand them. He goes to a psychologist (Katherine Ross from The Graduate and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid), but she doesn't even begin to understand what's going on in his head. She can't understand why he sleep-walks all the time or why he can't seem to just be a normal kid. Donnie's life changes when the new English teacher, Miss Karyn Pomeroy (Drew--who pumped a lot of money into the film--good for her!), tells the new girl, Gretchen (Jena Malone--young Ellie from Contact and Stepmom) to sit next to the boy she thought was the cutest. Yes, against all logic, she chooses Donnie. And it's weirdo love at first sit. (She's a bit of a freak, too.) And there are even more changes when a jet engine falls into Donnie's room. Luckily he was out sleep-walking when it happened. Meanwhile, the school is trying to get everyone to listen to a motivational speaker name Jim Cunningham with a dark secret.(His secret, of course, is that he's played by PATRICK SWAYZE!!--But please don't hold him against the movie. He doesn't do too bad of a job.) And did I mention the 6ft hell rabbit named Frank (James Duval from a lot of Gregg Araki's travesties of film) who told him that the world was going to end within the month? Yeah, I didn't think so. (This costume should have had a chance to be a HUGE hit for this Halloween. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone will pick up on it. Maybe I'll go as Frank this year.) As the movie goes on it goes from John Hughes-type comedy (the good ones from the 80s) to psychological thriller, to sci-fi, to "What the fuck was that?" freak flick. And it really takes either seeing it more than once or seeing it with someone who's seen it more than once to fully understand everything that happens in it. Let me tell you a few things about what you need to know to really understand it. First off, the line that I quoted isn't actually in the movie. It was originally in the scene where Donnie is talking to Miss Pomeroy about her getting fired. He asks what he should tell the kids when they ask about where she went. When Richard Kelly gave the script to Francis Ford Coppola to read (his nephew, Jason Schwartzman, was supposed to play Donnie) he told him that he had no idea what he was trying to say with it. Francis circled that line and handed it back to him saying, "That's the whole point right there." And then he cut the scene down. There's a part where Gretchen says that Donnie's name sounds like a superhero. He says something along the lines of "How do you know I'm not?" Apparently he is somewhat of a superhero, but most of that was cut, too. Or at least it wasn't made very apparent in the film. Most of the other stuff you need to just see for yourself in the deleted/extended scenes on the dvd (there's 20!), but one warning. Don't watch the last one. I can't tell you what it was because it'll give away the end of the movie (something I wouldn't do for the world), but it's a scene that the director didn't want to film, and I totally understand why. It's something that the audience doesn't need or even want to see. I will say this, though: Watch for a pretty blatant E.T. reference and a shot of someone reading Stephen King's It near the beginning. There's another reference towards the end that brings that one full circle. There are a lot of shots of scenery (and of kids popping up against that scenery) that are reminiscent of Stand By Me. And check out the movies that are playing as part of the "Frightmare" at the local theatre for Halloween. Why is the movie so good? Well, besides being totally different from anything else, very well written, acted and directed and being totally absorbing and realistic (even though it deals with imaginary psycho rabbits and time-travel), it touches a nerve in all of us. Donnie may be totally fucked up, but he's full of angst that all of us have had. Where can we find love? Why is our family crazy? Where are my friends when I need them? And why is it that the world seems to be against us? All of the actors do a great job, but special props need to go to Jake Gyllenhaal for his portrayal of one of the darkest characters in a long, long time. He's an all American private school kid, but he's got so much fucked up stuff going on in his head and he has no idea why. He was pretty amazing. I also couldn't help but notice how much he looks like Tobey Maguire here. Yeah, he may have been a pretty good Peter Parker, but he would probably have been too dark. But he would have been perfect for another dark "hero" of this summer: Anakin Skywalker. He's got the menace and the creepiness that wasn't necessarily missing from Hayden Christiansen, but could have been perfected with Jake in the role. And I don't think that Jake would have been so whiny. I guess we'll never know, though, since Lucas had to go with a pretty boy. (And I think we all know that Anakin's hair could have darkened a LOT since he was 8. I would have accepted it.) (Watch Donnie's older sister, too. She's played by Jake's real sister, Maggie, from Homegrown, Cecil B. Demented and 40 Days And 40 Nights.) What's wrong with the movie? Well, it's certainly not perfect, but it's pretty damn close. The only problems that I can think of right now (it's been a few days since I've seen it) are the fact that there's just too much cut out and the fact that Donnie's parents (Mary McDonnell--from Dances With Wolves and a bunch of John Sayles' films--and Holmes Osborne from Election and Bring It On) are Republicans. That may seem like a weird complaint and it really isn't because I'm a die-hard Democrat. It's because they seem to be against everything that Republicans are for. Maybe that's a conscious thing. I hope it is, but I can't really figure out what it means except that, if they were for the things that Repubs are for we wouldn't like them just like we don't like one of Donnie's other teachers who seems to hate literature. And there's a Martha Dumptruck type character named Cherita Chen (played by Jolene Purdy) who is constantly made fun of...usually by Donnie's friends. (He does have them, although they don't seem very close.) Why are they so mean to her? Because she's fat? I don't think so. That's not what they make fun of. No, they make fun of her because she's Chinese (which she doesn't look until the very end). Is this necessary? Not really. It's just kind of maybe a homage to those John Hughes flicks where Chinese people are stereotyped into oblivion...possibly. I don't know. It didn't really make a lot of sense to me and was just a little jarring to the tone of the film. Donnie defends her a little, but that didn't really help. This one of the great lost films of 2001. A lot of people said that there were no good movies in 2001, but I'm here to prove them wrong. Do something that 20th Century Fox didn't seem to want you to do: rent Donnie Darko. I guarantee you, even if you don't see what I saw in it, you won't forget it. I still can't stop thinking about it after a few days. It's freaky, weird, funny, heartbreaking and just plain awesome. And check out the soundtrack, too. The score is pretty awesome in its understatement, but the songs that are chosen are perfect. Echo & The Bunnymen, Tears For Fears, Joy Division, The Church, Duran Duran...and none of the songs that you think of immediately when you think of these bands. Gary Jules and Michael Andrews (who wrote the score) turn in an amazing cover of the Tears For Fears song "Mad World," which is the only song with vocals on the album. That's too bad, because it would be cool to have all of the other songs on there as well. I actually don't have it, but I hear it's short, but worth every penny. Or, better yet, just buy the damn DVD. Believe me. It's worth it.

The Plastic Emino Show

admin — Wed, 12 Jun 2002 17:00:00 +0000

In 1970, a 29 year old man from Liverpool recorded what became the most painful rock record to ever hit the listening public. It was a scream from the most anguished and hurt places of the human heart. From the pain of losing his mother to the disillusionment of stardom John Lennon And The Plastic Ono Band covered it all in a spare style that no one ever thought would have come from a member of The Beatles. If John had never been with The Beatles, he still would be remembered today as being one of the most honest icons rock has ever given us. Now, zip ahead with me 32 years where a 28 year old rap artist with two multi-platinum albums under his belt has recorded another opus of pain and anger. From absolute hatred of his mother to a disillusionment with stardom, he's put it all out here for us. Yes, I have the audacity to compare Eminem with John Lennon. But hear me out. Let me start out by saying that I have never been a rap fan. Ever since its appearance on the music scene back in the mid-80s (I know it was earlier than that, but I was a white suburban kid) I have bucked against it and talked about how dumb it was. Leave it to an enigma like Eminem to change that. Maybe not totally. I have yet to run out and buy Tupac's latest CD. (That dude has a better career dead than he EVER did alive. Most of us white boys had never heard of him OR Biggy before they got shot. Yeah. Our heads were kind of in the ground. Shut up.) But I have all three of this Detroit kid's albums and, through him, maybe a bit more respect for the industry itself. Now, back to my semi-uninformed review. With his third album, The Eminem Show, Em has taken all of the shit that people have dealt him, no matter who they are, and put it all on record. Sometimes he runs back to the cover of his snide, dark humor ("Business"), but a lot of times he just deals with his pain and the people who caused it ("Cleanin' Out My Closet," "White America"). But how the hell can I compare JL to MM? Well, I'll tell you. Personally, I kind of think the two guys are kind of kindred spirits. (And a million Beatles' fans just went to another website.) Not that I think they would have been best buds or anything. Hell, John would have been against Em because he would absolutely abhor the violence in his lyrics. He chose to make headlines with more peaceful ventures like his Bed-Ins and Bag-Ins and all the other -Ins that he and Yoko did. He wanted to be a clown to take the headlines away from the war. How did he get rewarded? The government had a file on him four miles long and eventually tried to deport him from his beloved New York City. (Of course, he probably would have lived longer if they had succeeded. A wrinkle even they didn't think of...maybe.) Even before that he got in trouble for slipping out with the thought that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Thousands of Bible-belters burned their records and never forgave him. He tried to apologize for it (although begrudgingly--his comment wasn't supposed to be taken as seriously as it was, AND it was said in confidence to a journalist friend), but even that blew up in his face. Four or five years later he would have revenge by having a hit with a song telling us that "God is a concept by which we can share our pain." ("God") And in 1970 it was almost unheard of for an artist of John's stature to use words like "fuck" and "cock" on a record. But there they were, edited out of the lyrics sheet "at the insistence of EMI." Em, on the other hand, is controversial for his violence. He raps about killing his wife, raping his mother and ripping "bitches" tits off. Oh, and he's a bit of a bigot, to put it nicely. If you take him seriously he seems to hate women and gay people. But he's an equal opportunity hater: he hates everybody. Now, erm, I know there's no one out there who can condone almost anything this guy says. Even if he's joking, which, hopefully he is. Hell, I like the guy and I'm not totally sure that he's not serious at some times. Personally, though, I think he says a lot of it to a) piss people off and b) show us how awful our world really can be. He's showing us how things are in the areas of life that most of us just don't want to go to. He's got a sensitive side, though, and we'll get to that later. One big difference between these two guys is the feelings about their families. Both of them were abandoned by their fathers and held animosity towards them for the rest of their lives. In "Mother," John says, "Father, you left me, but I never left you. I needed you, but you didn't need me." Quite a difference from Em's "My faggot father must have had his panties up in a bunch, 'cause he split. I wonder if he even kissed me goodbye. No, I don't. On second thought I just fuckin' wished he would die." ("Cleanin' Out My Closet") Somehow, though, they seem to almost be saying the same thing. John's dad actually came back into his life during The Beatle years, but he really only wanted to get money out of his famous son. Asshole. John's mom, on the other hand, was always put on a pedestal. She also abandoned him (and he says almost the same thing about her as what he said about his dad in "Mother"), but she did it because she knew she couldn't take care of her son. She left him with her sister, Mimi, and came back into John's life when he was very young. Unfortunately, just after they repaired their relationship, she was taken away again by a drunk driver as she was walking away from Mimi's house. John's love for his mother touched his music throughout his career, "Julia" from the White Album and "My Mummy's Dead" from Plastic Ono Band are the best examples. Em's a little less forgiving, with good reason. He hates his mother. I think that, if he were given a chance, he would make her not exist. She's been trying to sue him for making her out to be a pill-popping bitch from hell, which she kind of seems to be. She even put out an album to try to counter-act anything that he said about her. It didn't work. Everyone would rather believe that she made Em think he was crazy for years in order to get money for his "afflictions." According to John, his parents "didn't want me so they made me a star." ("I Found Out") And they were "Just wishing for movie stardom." ("Remember") But "Look at me. Who am I supposed to be?" ("Look At Me") John was never really able to figure out exactly what being a star was really all about. It wasn't until those last five years of his life that he really felt comfortable with it. He was able to walk the streets of New York without a million people running up to him for his autograph. (Unfortunately, one of them who did came back for more later.) Before that, though, all he really wanted to be was a working class hero. Eminem has the same kind of view of stardom. He's got his two characters that he hides behind, and then there's Marshall Mathers, the real guy. But "Nobody wants to see Marshall no more. They want Shady. I'm chopped liver." ("Without Me") He realizes that fame is a weird business. "But it's reflection of self. We just explain it, and then we get our checks in the mail. It's fuck up, ain't it?" ("Sing For The Moment") He also doesn't seem to know how the hell he got so far: "I don't wanna quit, but shit, I feel like this is it, for me to have this much appeal like this is sick. This is not a game, this fame, in real life this is sick. Publicity stunt, my ass. Conceal my fuckin' dick." And could this be his last album? "If I could go back, I never woulda rapped. I sold my soul to the devil, I'll never get it back. I just wanna leave this game with level head intact." ("Say Goodbye To Hollywood"--By the way, is Em a Billy Joel fan?) And one last comparison: both of these guys have ended up being pretty much model fathers. John started out badly with Julian. He left Cynthia and pretty much never looked back, although the two did see each other and Julian had a cameo on John's Walls And Bridges album in 1974. But when Sean was born in '75, everything changed. John quit the business and set his sites on being the best father he could be. And Sean has never forgotten that. John was killed when he was only 5, but he has only fond memories of his dad. And he's got a song on the last album to come out before the murder, "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)," one of the best songs ever written from a father to a son. (It's also got one of the greatest lines ever written: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.") With Em things aren't quite so cut and dry. After a messy (and almost murderous) divorce from Kim, he finally got custody of Hailie Jade. He has devoted his life to making sure that she has everything that he didn't have, including a good, loving home. Strange for a guy who talks so much shit and violence on his albums. But he says that he "wouldn't let Hailie listen to me, neither." (Eh, I know this is on the album, but I can't find it. Any help, here?) And he even SINGS a song for her ("Hailie's Song"--of course) and does a duet with her ("I Think My Dad's Gone Crazy"). One thing that's a little weird is that, even when he's singing to or with his daughter, he still cusses enough to make a sailor look at him and say, "What the fuck, dude? Calm down!" But none of this actually tells you if I think the album is any good, although you can probably guess. I think it's great! Probably the best one he's put out. (A friend of mine says that it's actually one of the best hip hop albums ever! I'm not exactly qualified to say that, but I figured I put it out there to see how many complaints I get.) "Cleanin' Out My Closet" is the best track, but a lot of the other ones deserve mention. "Say Goodbye To Hollywood," "When The Music Stops," and "Sing For The Moment" (complete with Aerosmith sample and a positive message!) all warn of the dangers of fame from an insider's point of view. (Is there any other kind?) "Hailie's Song" is a cute little crooning opportunity for Em where he lets the song in his heart burst forth for his little girl. "My Dad's Gone Crazy" is a funny track with Hailie providing the chorus and some comments along the way. (Note to parents, I'm sure she wasn't in the studio when he did his part. Uh-huh. Sure.) "White America" starts things off with a bang against everyone that has come up against him in the past year. And he acknowledges the fact that, if he were black, no one would say a damn thing about what he says on his record and he wouldn't have sold half as many albums as he has. Probably true. There are, however, a few tracks that aren't really up to the standard of the rest. One in particular actually bothers me. "Drips." Now, I understand that it's about AIDS and having unprotected sex and all that, but with lines like, "Pussy residue on my penis" even I was a little shocked. And I don't shock. That seems to be all this track is here for. The whole disease angle is almost secondary to using the word "pussy" as often as possible. (And, is it just me, or does the word "penis" just sound dirtier when rappers say it?) And there's the ever annoying presence of Ken Kaniff. I've never liked that character (he's just fucking creepy) and the fact that he gets the last word here really pisses me off. The fact that Em has to be the third or fourth person to release a song called or about "Superman" is kind of annoying, too. (Although it is kind of funny hearing him constantly say "Yo" and "Ho." And it's not too bad of a song.) Where are all of the Silver Surfer songs? One bit of his personal life that I apparently haven't heard about: What's up with him and Mariah? She's mentioned all over this album. Did he actually do her or is he just making fun of her? If he did, more power to him. Everybody needs a little crazy lay sometimes. So, yeah. Great album. I think I've gone on for a little too long (No, really?!), so I'll leave it at this: It's nice to know that there are still some artists out there who aren't afraid to put their personal lives on record. It seems like there's way too much music out there that could have been written or performed by anybody. I say, the more personal, the better. It makes it emotionally hard to sing along to, but fuck it. Rock and roll (or hip hop) ain't supposed to be easy.

Jason X

admin — Thu, 13 Jun 2002 17:00:00 +0000

I really wanted to quote the movie here, but it's just not worth it. Yep. That's right. Jason's at it again. This time, though, he's about 500 years in the future on a ship going towards Earth 2. (No, not the cheesy tv show from the mid-90s. But it's almost as bad.) Now, the Friday The 13th movies have always had a little something in common with the Alien movies in that their time line is all fucked up. (And this entry borrows even more from the better series.) But the Alien series explains that affliction, somewhat. Their hero, Ripley, is propelled through time either by being frozen (in order to keep her alive on those long-ass space jumps) or being cloned (to keep her alive after being killed by the alien). Jason, on the other hand, never gets his explanation. The title cards on the movies (which used to come out about one to two years apart) just say "10 years later" or something to that effect. All of that jumping would put the last one right around 2090. This one actually starts off in the future, though. Not as far as it probably should (it's only 2011), but far enough for us to believe that cryogenics have almost been mastered. Jason Vorhees (stunt man and everybody's favorite Jason, Kane Hodder--although how anyone can tell them apart is beyond me), has been chained up in a maximum security, er, warehouse (?) on Lake Crystal. (That's right. Back to the scene of the original crime...but with different scenery this time.) The problem is that this guy, who (it's explained later) has killed more than 200 people, is being watched by a lonely putz with a gun and doesn't even look chained up well enough to keep Anthony Hopkins at bay. But he's about to be transported to a research facility. You see, his ability to regenerate tissue is too valuable to let whither away in an empty room. Or so some general dude thinks. Rowen (Lexa Doig, who seems to be attached at the hip to Gene Roddenberry's projects--she's in Andromeda right now and she has been on Earth: Final Conflict and TekWar, which isn't really Gene, but it is Shatner's baby) knows that Jason's a dangerous killing machine, though and she tries to stop this general looking guy. He gets his way, though and is quickly killed off in normal fashion. But Rowen is smart. She lures Jason to the cryogenic freezer (where she was trying to put him in the first place) and locks him in. After she starts the freezing process, though, he stabs her (through a 5 inch metal door, no less), breeches the chamber and they're both frozen. Jump ahead a little over 500 years. A group of students (of course) are out on some kind of field trip to Earth 1, which is completely uninhabitable by now. (I guess the Republicans took over for the last time.) They pull both Rowen and Jason back onto their ship and revive Rowen, healing her wound with "ants," tiny bugs that somehow manage to heal the human body with amazing results. (One kid gets his arm chopped off by the frozen Jason and has it reattached within seconds of laying on the table with the ants living in it...or something. The students (all of them hard-bodied teens, of course...not a pasty face among them) and their professor (Jonathan Potts from, uh, didn't recognize anything...nevermind) all figure that the big, ugly dude with the machete frozen in his hand is dead. Fortunately for the producers of the film, he's not and he starts killing kids left and right. After that everything is pretty predictable, but what do you expect from a Jason movie? Startling plot devices? Intelligent dialogue? Distinguishable characters? Fuck, no! You want death! You want tits! Well, we get half of that here. As much as they didn't skimp on the death (one girl gets her face cracked off, another guy gets screwed...literally) they sure as hell skimped on the tits. There are exactly two sets of tits in this movie and they belong to some moderately attractive 80s chicks. Even the chick who had them hanging out through the entire flick (Melyssa Ade--the middle of her top was missing and two sticks were put there in its place. It was quite nice.) manages to keep her top on throughout. Hell, even the horny chick who has sex (Melody Johnson from the MTV movie Jailbait and The Virgin Suicides--HEY! She's got real credits!) keeps her shirt on or her breasts covered. What kind of shit is that? All of these chicks are supposed to be totally naked through half of the movie. (In all fairness, I think there was one topless scene of one of the main characters, but the discount theatre I went to had the bottom of the screen overlapping the bottom drapes, so her tits were invisible. I think it also ruined a joke about her nipples not being real. Bastards.) To add insult to injury, the basic premise of the movie is lifted directly from the Alien movies. (Hence my opening shtick.) This is totally acknowledged by the writer. (Todd Farmer writing his first thing ever. Before this I don't think he had even written a school paper.) He even named his character (yes, he's in it) Dallas. And there's a "surprise" robot chick (Lisa Ryder also from Andromeda...and is it a coincidence that her last name is Ryder?) and a whole bunch of military types with big-ass guns running around dark hallways with lots of leaking pipes. Not to mention a female heroine (whose name starts with an R) and some "company" dude who wants to make money off of their discovery. But unoriginality (or "homage" as Todd probably puts it) doesn't excuse sloppy writing. Rowan at one point picks up one of her new friends' guns saying that shooting one was "just like riding a bicycle." One of the other girls says, "What's a bike?" How did she know they were called bikes? And when the fuck did Rowan learn to shoot a future gun? Are they just like our shotguns, 'cause they sure as hell don't look like them. Not to mention all of the bad one-liners. Some that could have been avoided or even bettered. ("He's screwed." You know exactly what happened to this guy. I was hoping they would have someone who was looking for him say, "Stop screwin' around!") And don't get your hopes up too much. The new and improved "Uber Jason" isn't on screen long enough to really show us what he can do except for deflecting bullets spewed by the leather-clad android chick. (She gets upgraded, too. And for the better. She's every geek's dream girl.) I don't know. Maybe I was hoping for a revitalization of the series. What I got instead was a really bad straight to video B-movie on the big screen. And I guess it was fun in that respect. And that's all we can really ask of Mr. Vorhees and company: a fun time of killing and mayhem. And a lot of hot (although clothed) chicks. But at least Michael Myers gets real names in his movies.

Will we forget?

admin — Mon, 24 Jun 2002 17:00:00 +0000

That's something that The Assholes will never truly understand. So, it's been a little over nine months since the Big Event and we still haven't caught the asshole who did it to us and we don't really seem to be any closer to finding him. Oh, we've found a couple of the guys who almost had something to do with it, but none of the really important folks. And we found some dude who is said to have thought about building "dirty bombs," regular bombs with nuclear waste hidden in the tip. When they explode they contaminate a couple of city blocks, but do little more than scare the shit out of everyone in the city. (A few a bit too literally.) The problem with this guy is that the government is going back and forth on whether or not he was a threat before or after he was caught. They caught him a little over a month ago, but then they said that there was no danger until two or three weeks AFTER he was thrown in jail. Huh? You know, they really need to watch this guy a little closer if he's a threat while he's in jail. So, basically, it looks like the government could be pulling another Rosenberg case out of their collective asses. But we may never know. Yeah, our civil liberties are still at stake. The Republicans are telling us that they have to check our e-mails and keep tabs on all of us. While they're at it, why don't they put barcodes on the back of our necks and scan us every time we go through a doorway. Oh, wait. They're already thinking about doing that to the people who come over from other countries...even England. It's really hard for me to think about all of this and come up with an objective opinion about it. I want to catch these guys as much as the next guy, but I don't want to give up my freedom to do it. Democracy without Freedom is...well...Communism. It's Orwellian Communism. It's a rough dilemma. We need to do something, but we need to be careful before we start taking ourselves into a nightmare that not even Fritz Lang could come up with. But let's get back to that title problem. Here's a quote that seems to have pissed a lot of people off lately: "The Bond films work exclusively by themselves. People go to these movies to escape from life. Hollywood is going to go back to making these kind of action movies. And September 11th will fade in people's minds because there is money to be made. It's about commerce."--Pierce Brosnan People were totally offended by this. They're calling for a public apology for it. There are people almost ready to start a war with Ireland just because Pierce is from there. (But then they remember that U2 is from there, too.) I hate to tell you folks, but he's right. He may have said it in a way that didn't exactly get the point across the way he meant it, but he's right. Think about it this way: On Dec. 7, 1941, if you had told the people of America that, one day 50 years from then, there would be an overblown Hollywood epic made about the events of the day, they wouldn't have believed you. They would never have believed that Hollywood would be so crass as to make a movie (especially not a popcorn movie--not that they had that concept back then) about hundreds of military men being killed while they were sleeping in one of the most peaceful bases in the world. Why was Pearl Harbor (the movie) made? Money. Plain and simple. Michael Bay may have said that he wanted to preserve the memories of the men and women who died in that attack, but, believe me, he ain't that deep. Yes, someday, maybe 50 years from now, there will be a movie about four airliners crashing into the three different spots on American soil. Search your soul. You know it to be true. This is being blown out of portion just like John Lennon saying that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus. At that time, it was true. The kids of the mid-60s would have traded their religion (if they had it at all) to just listen to the new Beatles' record. John may have put it in a way that was a little harsher than he meant it (or maybe not...he wasn't supposed to be quoted. He was just talking to a friend...who happened to be a reporter.), but he spoke the truth. And the same goes for Mr. Brosnan. He spoke the truth maybe a bit too harshly. He doesn't need to apologize, just rephrase. There's a big difference there. We will never forget what happened on Sept. 11, 2001 just as we will never forget what happened on Dec. 7, 1941. But get less of our attention as time goes on. We will have a day to commemorate it, books written about it, documentaries made about it, narrative films of it, what have you. But it will become less painful to think about it. It's the way of human nature. We will move on eventually. My God, we have to. If, in 50 years, we're still thinking of that day every single day of our lives and are unable to function because of it, we may as well give up the ghost now. If that happens, then the bin Ladens of the world have already won. I may not understand why Osama and his little boys decided to attack a country of good, hard-working, Springsteen-fearing folks, but I do understand something about American nature. And I think Pierce does, too. It's the rest of America that doesn't want to understand that part of themselves.