MovieWatch: "3:10 to Yuma"

"3:10 to Yuma"
Director: James Mangold
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 70
In a Nutshell: Through one game, The Great Randy Moss Experiment of 2007-08 seems to be working out pretty well for the Patriots. Even if he tweaks his hamstring and doesn't feel like trying for another down this season, he's already been well worth a fourth round draft pick. And through one day of post-game interviews, he's said all the right things about how the Pats are a team of supporting players and he's just part of the support, like he's the most expensive jockstrap in New England. And I'm pretty confident that even without Moss, Welker and Stallworth and Watson will be able to catch enough balls on their own. I don't know if that was another jockstrap joke.

As I was writing that paragraph, I was trying to think of a way to use Randy Moss as a clever transitional point into James Mangold's remake of "3:10 to Yuma." It has something to do with how Delmer Daves' 1957 original was already a pretty good movie to begin with (just like the Patriots weren't such a bad football team last year), but that doesn't mean that there's any harm in revving up the engine with a few new supporting parts (that's where Russell Crowe and Christian Bale come in), as long as somebody respectable is at the helm. In that scenario, James Mangold somehow gets wildly inflated into becoming the cinematic equivalent of Bill Belichick. So I'll stop.

Follow through after the bump for my thoughts on "3:10 to Yuma," thoughts that make no mention whatsoever of the presumptive Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots.

Click through...

There are few Western genre tropes more common and recurring than the lone man standing up for what he knows is right, even if everybody around him lacks his integrity and convictions, and for that reason I've always sortta lumped the original "3:10 to Yuma" in with superior films like "The Ox-Bow Incident," "High Noon" and with moderate tweaking, "Bad Day at Black Rock," which all came earlier. That doesn't mean that "3:10 to Yuma" isn't without merits, particularly in the lead performances by Van Heflin and the evil-against-type Glenn Ford and in its ultra-lean 90-minute running time.

Mangold's film has been expanded to nearly two hours and, as a result, the new "Yuma" lacks the urgency that drove the original. It takes a lot longer for noble rancher Dan Evans (Christian Bale) get the wicked Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to the town of Contention, where he'll be put on a train to a prison to be hung. My filmgoing companion preferred the original movie's focus on the near-real-time wait for the train, where Dan and Ben test each others' mettle and come to inevitably learn important lessons about what constitutes manliness in the Old West.

Mangold's version muddies the waters by expanding on the Western milieu. He introduces fiercesome Injuns (whose faces are never seen) and he emphasizes the role of the encroaching railroad in the eventual elimination of the West's wide open spaces. The extra time also leaves room for plenty of reminders that Ben Wade is a vicious killer. In the original, Ford's character is insidiously and charismatically bad, but it's easy to fall under his sway. Crowe's character commits acts of violence before our eyes, killing people who skuzzy, but also one or two people who probably deserved to live. Dan's impressionable teenage son (Logan Lerman) says he detects the good in Ben, but it's only Crowe's lively performance (and the character's somewhat ham-handed artistic side) that makes us see what the kid sees.

If Crowe's Wade is more hiss-ably evil in this version, Bale's Dan is more ambiguously weak-kneed. I guess my read on Heflin's character from the original was just that he was a man beaten down by life, nearly out of chances to keep his family afloat. Bale was able to hint that some of Dan's misfortune was self-inflicted.

Extra time has also helped to flesh out four or five supporting roles from the original, giving actual substance to railway man Butterfield (Dallas Roberts), Doc Potter (Alan Tudyk), spectacularly suspect Pinkerton Byron McElroy (Peter Fonda) and, in particular, Ben Wade's right hand man Charlie (Ben Foster). It's hard not to be intrigued by Foster's career choices and he's always engaging to watch, even if his gonzo mannerisms are becoming increasingly familiar. After seeing this movie, "Alpha Dog" and Foster's contribution to the trailer for "30 Days of Night," I have a pretty good idea now of what constitutes a Ben Foster performance. He's becoming predictably unpredictable.

To some degree, "3:10 to Yuma" has been reimagined not as a fast-and-cheap B-movie, like the original, but as a star-studded Hawks or Ford film. Certainly Mangold has kept the Western revisionism to a minimum, aided by Marco Beltrami's uber-Western score and Phedon Papamichael's cinematography, which is full of images of manly men shot from low angles against the harsh natural terrain. This is an old-fashioned story well-told.

[Side note: Was there a reason for the Luke Wilson cameo that comes half-way through the movie? Were we going for a "Hoot" reunion with Lerman? It was needlessly distracting and Wilson's presence didn't add an iota to the movie, so I guess I'm wondering who thought there was a benefit to his being there.]

Tweet

MovieWatch: "Gone Baby Gone"

"Gone Baby Gone"
Director: Ben Affleck
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 70 (but I've gone higher and lower in my mind)
In a Nutshell: Regular readers know that I teased y'all back in July after seeing "Gone Baby Gone." I was supposed to interview Ben Affleck for Filter, but then that didn't happen (I'll forgive you someday, Ben), but I didn't wanna jump the gun by discussing a movie that wouldn't be out until October.

Now, of course, the industry trade papers have jumped the gun (they're all-powerful and get to do that) and while Variety was quite positive, The Hollywood Reporter critic spewed all over himself, saying "[I]t's going to be remembered as one of the best crime movies of this decade."

The thing that's prompting me to write is that my own feelings about the movie were inextricably tied to my affection for Dennis Lehane's Kenzie-Gennaro mysteries, while neither critic for either trade publication seemed to have read the books. I'm not insulting either of 'em, just explaining how their reactions were fundamentally different from mine.

So here's what I'm gonna do. After the bump, I'm gonna give a very basic not-quite-review of the movie, giving NOTHING away. Just a few things I liked, a few things I didn't. Then, after the proper spoiler space, I'm going to do a little bit of comparing of the book to the movie, particularly the fundamental ways in which the movie didn't succeed for me, in regards to the book.

Click through...

The most important thing to know about "Gone Baby Gone" is that if you didn't know it was directed by Ben Affleck, you would never know from watching it. That is to say that "Gone Baby Gone" doesn't feel like the work of a first-time director, nor does it feel like the work of an actor whose greatest asset over the years has been his glibness and gift for aware self-analysis. Despite narrative sloppiness, mostly in the adaptation process, "Gone Baby Gone" is a somber (a word likely to be attached to "Gone" as much as "twee" is to "Pushing Daisies) and mature film, a project full of great performance, authentic local color and the kind of moral pulse that you don't see very often in Hollywood films. "Gone Baby Gone" has things on its mind.

Casey Affleck is an odd choice for the lead role, but he contributes just enough assertiveness when required that he carries the film. The supporting cast is sterling, though nearly all of the South Boston accents waver erratically. Standouts include Amy Ryan, Titus Welliver, the welcome return of John Ashton and the always reliable Morgan Freeman. The obvious Oscar bait, to my mind, is Ed Harris, whose Remy Brousard is all exposed nerve endings, an ultra-intense man whose loyalties and ethical codes are entirely unique. Michelle Monaghan is disappointingly wasted as Angie Gennaro, but more on that in a bit.

[AMMENDED: My apologies. In listing the actors who made the greatest impressions in this fine cast, I totally forgot to mention Michael K. Williams. Now, you might think that the fact that I forgot to mention him meant that OMAR didn't leave an impression. That would be false. He passes through the background in one early shot and then you have to wait another 45 minutes for him to return, but he's every bit as searing and striking as fans of "The Wire" could hope for. I don't know what's going to happen to Williams' career after "The Wire" is over.]

"Gone Baby Gone" tip-toes around a number of familiar genre cliches and most avoids the worst, though familiarity sets in at certain points, particularly when the decisions made by individual characters become increasingly murky.

[OK. Spoiler time. Or maybe not. I'm not going to discuss anything in the movie in ultra-explicit form, but I'm going to compare Lehane's novel to Affleck's movie and so reading from here may tell you more than you want to know. You've been warned.]

I don't know why Affleck decided to begin a possible Kenzie-Gennaro film franchise with the middle book in the series. Because the ongoing serial plotlines are minimal, it might be an exaggeration to compare it to starting a "Lord of the Rings" franchise with "The Two Towers," but to my mind it's close. "Gone Baby Gone" finds the main characters in a very specific point in their relationship and if you don't understand how they arrived at where they were when they start to book (or movie) it's really hard to understand the choices they make by the end. It really *is* a journey, a journey that Affleck and co-writer Aaron Stockard have mostly skipped.

"Gone Baby Gone," remarkably, isn't the darkest of the five Kenzie-Gennaro novels, but it may be the most somber, the one that carries the most gravity. Certainly its villains are the most human. It still retains plenty of humor, the fabulous banter between characters that Affleck and Stockard have mostly removed, perhaps because it didn't fit with the tone of the movie they crafted.

The person who suffers most, without any question, is Gennaro. I LOVED the casting of Michelle Monahan in this role, but I never would have guessed how how little the actress would get to show off that brassy, sexy spark that she brought to "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang." Because Kenzie and Gennaro begin "Gone Baby Gone" already in a relationship, you miss out on the two books of flirtation, the 20 years of accumulated sexual tension. You also lose out, unfortunately, on any sense that this is an equal partnership. The case in "Gone Baby Gone" involves an abducted child and in the movie, Gennaro's reaction verges on gender stereotype. She makes a choice by the end of the movie that doesn't make a lick of sense, nor does it have any gravity because of the overall lack of equality on-screen. If you've read the book and you know about Gennaro's past -- her bloodlines in organized crime, her abusive ex-husband, her time with Kenzie -- it makes sense and it couldn't be more serious. Affleck didn't have time for Gennaro's full arc and Monaghan's performance and the weight of the film suffer. If "Gone Baby Gone" is successful, I'd love to see Affleck tackle another one of the books, this time bringing back the real Angie, letting Monaghan loose.

The will disappoint fans of the book. Fans of the books will also be confused by Casey Affleck's Kenzie, because it isn't close to the character in the book. Lehane's Kenzie, is very much a product of his upbringing, not necessarily the biggest man or the toughest man or the smartest man, but a man who invites danger with his mouth, his fists and his gun. By the end of the books, his entire body is a road-map of scars acquired in the line of duty. It's harder to tell how Casey Affleck's Kenzie is a product of his neighborhood and there's no trace of the book's fast-talking, charismatic, trouble-seeking Kenzie. Instead, it's a Casey Affleck character, albeit the most aggressive the actor has ever played. This Kenzie is withdrawn, introspective and reserved. When pushed against a wall, though, he fights back and those moments were my favorite in the movie. I liked the hints that if it had been required, Casey Affleck could have played the book's Kenzie, but his brother wanted to take things a different direction. Once I got over those reservations, I mostly accepted and enjoyed what Casey did.

The change fans of the book will find hardest to forgive is the near-elimination of Bubba Rogowski, probably Lehane's most beloved supporting character. Lehane's Bubba is a hulking "Soldier of Fortune"-style mercenary, a sociopath who terrifies the very worst criminals in Boston, but remains fiercely loyal to Kenzie and Gennaro because of past kindnesses. I defy anybody coming to "Gone Baby Gone" without knowledge of the books to even tell me who Bubba was. Yes, there's a character named "Bubba" in the movie, but there's barely a shred of Lehane's character. I'd honestly have preferred if the character had been eliminated entirely than to see him shrunken and unremarkable in this manner.

I could probably go on. But I won't. It turns out that I actually didn't give anything away in that spoiler section. Good for me!

Tweet

Another TV Roundup ("Mad Men," "Damages," "Tell Me You Love Me," Etc.)

Fall can't get here soon enough. I want to see second episodes of "Pushing Daisies" and "Chuck" and "Reaper." I want to meet House's new condos. I want to meet the new top models. I want to continue the process of waiting for Ted to meet the mother of his children.

I'm tired of summer TV, for the most part. This week's "Big Brother" double-elimination left a house of unappealing jerks and while this week's "Top Chef" finally saw Howie get a well-deserved boot, I'm not sure if I'm really rooting for anybody.

Well, at least I'm rooting for the Red Sox. If the AL MVP race is over and A-Rod has won, can I at least lobby to get Mike Lowell into the Top five in the voting? I go back and forth as to whether the AL Rookie of the Year should go Dice-K, Pedroia, Okajima or Pedroia, Okajima, Dice-K. And is anybody noticing the statistics Papelbon has suddenly out up? 77 Ks in only 51 innings. A .135 opponents BA. An ERA of 1.58? That's Cy Young stuff.

Anyway, click through the bump for some quick thoughts on the shows I'm using to fill the time until the real season begins... The good ("Mad Men"), the bad (Sorry "Damages") and the done ("Entourage"... Whew).

Click through...

"Entourage" -- I don't remember the last time "Entourage" made me laugh out loud. That's not good for a show the TV Academy thinks is one of the year's five best comedies. But I won't go into that. I have just one question: Was having "Medellin" be unbearably awful an interesting creative decision? It was definitely the most predictable choice. After all, E has been the unheralded prophet for years now and if he kept saying that Billy made a bad film, everybody was supposed to listen. It will ultimately allow the show to bring Maury Chaykin's Harvey back next season and that's good. I just don't know how this sets up an interesting upcoming season. Fun in the editing room? And... Um... Pre-Production halts on "Silo"? At least if the movie had been good, "Entourage" could have done the a season about Vince's quest for an Oscar, the award show circuit, the Oscar hype machine, etc. For that to work, Vincent would have needed a good publicist, a publicist like Debi Mazar's Shauna.

"Damages" -- I hate the expression "Jump the shark," but if I were to ever feel inclined to use it, a relevant time might have come with this week's episode of "Damages." The revelation that Lila, the dead fiance's woman-on-the-side, wasn't just a man-stealing tart, she's a lying, pathologically jealous, single-white-female-style stalker went one step too far. I was never interested in the dead fiance in the first place and I've been increasingly disheartened by how obsessed the show's writers seemed to be with that revelation (at the expense of telling us *anything* about the Frobisher case), but barring some sort of extra link that ties Lila to either Glenn Close's Patty or directly to Frobisher, I have to call shenanigans. "Damages" was supposed to be the story of an innocent young attorney whose life gets hijacked by a brilliant legal shark, but it's been four or five episodes since Patty did anything brilliant, much less anything legally viable. My buddy Josh is also disappointed with this direction, but he tries rationalizing the Lila red herring, going so far as to link her "Fatal Attraction"-esque arc to Close's famous bunny boiling role. I'm not even vaguely convinced. In fact, I've given up any hope of being invested in either the discovery of who killed the fiance or what Patty has to do to crush Frobisher. I'm just killing time til "Damages" ends.



"Mad Men" -- "Mad Men," on the other hand, continues to be a show that I find myself strangely invested in, so much so that the amorphous lack of narrative has ceased to even be an issue. Do I still want to know why Betty's (January Jones) hands were shaking and how her therapy is going? Yeah. Would I like more excuses to see Joan's (Christina Hendricks) canoodling with Roger (John Slattery)? Absolutely. Do I prefer the episodes that feature Maggie Siff's Rachel? Sure. But I actually rewound Don's smackdown of the lipstick mogul three or four times, loving Jon Hamm's delivery of the line "Listen, I'm not here to tell you about Jesus. Either he lives in your heart or he doesn't..." Killer stuff. I liked the Don back-story with the hobo, with the one quibble that it was so obvious that the Hobo's entire ethos had spurred Don's personal reinvention that I was minorly astounded that we didn't get a big reveal in which the hobo said his real name was "Draper." Also on the Don front, I continue to love his interactions with the comic bohemian caricatures, especially the last kiss-off where the proto-hippy warns him that he can't leave their pot-filled apartment with cops standing outside and Don merely straightens his suit and spits out "*You* can't" and leaves.

Also, while other people remain unsure about the relationship between Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and Pete (Vincent Kartheiser), I was amazed by how well the two actors played the scene at Peggy's celebration party, where Pete, unable to celebrate anything himself, tells her he doesn't like seeing her this way -- happy? out-going? just drunk? -- and leaves her dancing along, increasingly crushed. I'll just direct you to Alan's far sager comments on this week's storyline for Salvatore, which Bryan Batt used to turn the character from a cheap joke into a the show's most human character in one scene.

"Tell Me You Love Me" -- I have nothing to say on this one, except that it embarrasses me how many of my critical colleagues treated the show like it's porn and giggled nervously about all of the sex scenes and how graphic they were and whether or not they were simulated and other such nonsense. First, those critics should all spend a few minutes watching some actual porn, even late-night Cinemax stuff, just for a clarification. Second, the show isn't even vaguely sexy. Stars Ally Walker, Sonya Walger and particularly Michelle Borth certainly are plenty sexy, but whining middle class white emotional dysfunction is like saltpeter to me.

Tweet

Could "Pushing Daisies" be any more Twee?

ABC's "Pushing Daisies" remains my favorite new show of the fall.

In my rave not-review for the pilot, though, I observed that "Others are likely to find the visuals, narration (courtesy of audiobook legend Jim Dale) and storybook format to be a little twee, but I didn't." Sepinwall promptly turned around and, indeed, compared the degree of twee (Hey, that rhymes!!!) in the "Pushing Daisies" pilot to creator Bryan Fuller's similarly twee "Wonderfalls" and "Dead Like Me."

Currently a Google search for Pushing+Daisies+Twee gets you only 646 hits, but that's a number that I figure will go up, particularly in light of the press release sent out by ABC today making it clear that the show's first episode, set to air on October 3, will be called "Pie-lette."

You see, the show's about a guy who bakes pies (and resurrects the dead to help him solve crimes) and the first episode of a show is usually called its "pilot" and...

SO TWEE!!!!!

Stomach-churning twee-ness aside, ABC has been doing a surprisingly good job of trying to support "Pushing Daisies," a show that's already got its place reserved in a Brilliant-But-Cancelled line-up. The ads and billboards and general promotional push have done a decent job of establishing the show's mixture of dark comedy and day-glo whimsy. If it makes it through November Sweeps, I'll be stunned.

Anyway, expect a more substantive post of some sort -- Review of this week's "Damages" and "Made Men"? A MovieWatch on "Gone Baby Gone"? -- a bit later. I just had some blogging muscles I wanted to flex. and I wanted to roll my eyes at "Pie-lette."

Tweet

MovieWatch: "Rob Zombie's Halloween"

"Rob Zombie's Halloween"
Director: Rob Zombie
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 24
In a Nutshell: John Carpenter's "Halloween" is a genre masterpiece characterized almost entirely by insinuation -- faceless shapes in the shadows, implicating point-of-view shots, a minimalist insistent soundtrack. It's one of the scariest movies I've ever seen, but by today's standards, it could probably get a PG-13 rating.

To remake this classic of insinuation, Dimension naturally enlisted Rob Zombie, a director whose instincts couldn't possibly run more counter to the aesthetic of Carpenter's original. I've seen Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects" and the nicest thing I can say about his body of work is that Rob Zombie has never insinuated a darned thing. Zombie's films are as raw, nasty, sloppy and obscene as he wants. He doesn't tip-toe or pussyfoot.

I didn't like either of Zombie's first two films, but "The Devil's Rejects" was a notable step forward from "Corpses," which was the work of an inept amateur. The qualitative leap between first and second features had me wanting to see Zombie's "Halloween" against my better judgment. I knew Zombie's version wasn't going to be Carpenter's, which would probably annoy me. But what I hoped was that working within the structure of a classic, Zombie's lesser narrative tendencies might be tamed and he might make an interesting and distinctive alternative text.

Follow through after the bump to see if I thought Zombie succeeded (the Fien Print rating probably ought to give some indication).

Click through...

The sad reality is that Zombie's "Halloween" falls short not for tinkering with Carpenter's classic, but for not tinkering enough. Zombie's never been much of a storyteller and he uses Carpenter's original script as a crutch as he distinctly runs out of energy in his film's second half.

For around 40 minutes, "Halloween" is a near-glorious mess, as Zombie takes the better part of an hour to do what Carpenter did in five minutes -- He delves deeply into the mythology of Michael Myers, showing the events that pushed the kid (Daeg Faerch) build up to his first Halloween night massacre. Zombie crafts a mythology that couldn't be more predictable if you've seen either of his first films. The character practically sings his litany of misfortunes like a Jet belting his heart out to Officer Kruptke ("I've got a social disease!"). It's pretty silly stuff -- Zombie's profane idea of dialogue makes all of his characters sound like the inbred offspring of David Mamet low-lifes (they're not as literate, but they do use profanity as punctuation) -- but it's also occasionally disturbing and fresh.

Then, after 15 years of incarceration -- during which time The State really ought to have prevented Michael from having extensive use of the weight room -- Michael escapes. That's when Zombie checks out. You figure his pitch to Bob Weinstein probably didn't get much deeper than Michael's backstory, so after going his own direction for his first act, Zombie suddenly starts ripping Carpenter off left and right. He's stealing characters, camera set-ups and punchlines, as well as every murderous beat of Michael's killing spree. And guess what? Zombie's never been a slasher director previously (both "Corpses" and "Rejects" are from a very different genre) and as a slasher director, he sucks. I just saw the movie an hour ago and I don't remember a single creative active of violence from its second act. This Michael's M.O. is overkill -- whether he stabs or chokes or bludgeons, the only thing that matters is that he does it for long enough to yield 30 or 40 seconds of screaming, followed by protracted Victim Crawls. Michael leaves each of his soon-to-be-corpses with just enough energy to slide across the floor, leaving a trail of blood as they grasp at the horizon for futile salvation. Neither the characters nor the killings in the movie's second half are even slightly memorable and the movie becomes increasingly unpleasant (and it starts off at a pretty unpleasant spot).

I'm not sure if there was a way Zombie could have rescued that film's second half, frankly. The dedication of time to Michael's backstory isn't a bad idea except for this most simple of facts: The idea of Michael Myers growing up in a perfect, white picket fence version of suburbia, somehow inexplicably developing into a soulless killer and returning to tear shit up and get an inexplicable revenge? That's creepy. The idea of Michael Myers grown up in a Rob Zombie-approved hillbilly hell, developing into a serial killer familiar to anybody who has ever looked at a case study (or Ed Gein or a dozen other famous wack-jobs) and returning to his Rob Zombie-approved hillbilly hell for one particularly reason? That's not creepy at all. It's banal and predictable. Carpenter's unmotivated Michael Myers ("He was just the quiet kid next door") may not be a psychologically rigorous as Zombie's ("Well, yeah, his mother was a tramp, his step-dad was an abusive drunk, he got picked on in school and he liked to kill and skin animals... I guess probably we might have seen this coming"), but it's scarier.

And what was up with Michael's mask, anyway? In the original, it's never explained how Michael comes upon the white-washed Shatner mask that he butchers in and it's much scarier as a result. In Zombie's world, Michael's slutty sister's braindead boyfriend pops up on Halloween thinking it's cool to don a Michael Myers mask after sex. Michael, already obsessed with masks puts on the Michael Myers mask for his early killings and then hides it under the floorboards, as if anticipating his return 15 years later. As to why this mask resonates with him? I doubt Zombie could explain.

What else to say about this new "Halloween"? Well, Zombie likes to get everybody to deliver identically shrill and screechy performances, so it's no wonder his whole ensemble -- Wife Sheri Moon Zombie, William Forsythe, Bill Moseley, Leslie Easterbrook, Sid Haig and Ken Foree -- shows up, along with logical additions like Brad Dourif and Danny Trejo. Among the younger cast members, famous kiddie runaway Scout Taylor-Compton is no more annoying than Jamie Lee Curtis in the original and ditto with her slutty teen friends. There's something more than a little distressing about how Zombie films Hanna Hall's naked body, but I guess the actress best known as Young Jenny from "Forrest Gump" had a little image adjustment in mind. Oh and Malcolm McDowell, such seemingly perfect casting as Dr. Loomis, has never been forced to deliver worse dialogue, which is saying something for a guy who starred in "Caligula."

What the heck was I expecting?!?!? I mean, this is a movie called "Halloween" that they released in late August out of fear of the "Saw" franchise!

Better, I guess.

Tweet

The Seven Year Itch...

I'm sure I should say something about this week's superior "Mad Men" (Love Don Draper's revenge!) or about this week's creative nadir of "Entourage" (Stale 9/11 flight humor? Deus Ex Kanye? Inexplicable disappearing Anna Faris? Kill this show now!) or about the recent events on "Big Brother" (I can't believe God let Amber down like that... Ought to tell her something) or about the fact that the presumptive NL Rookie of the Year Ryan Braun is a MoT (They call him The Hebrew Hammer, I call him The He-Brewer) or perhaps about the season premiere of FOX's "Prison Break" (Michael in a Panamanian Prison? Stupid. Robert Wisdom as the Emperor of Said Panamanian Prison? Brilliant) or about one of the coolest things I've ever stumbled upon in the Internet (Hasbro's special section dedicated to G.I. Joe's Kung Fu Grip). Maybe I'll get to some of that eventually.

Instead, I just want to very quickly reflect on something that will probably matter only to me.

Almost exactly seven years ago (either today or tomorrow... I've lost track) I moved to Los Angeles to begin grad school at USC. In a city where virtually nobody's a native and everybody is a variable degree of immigrant, seven years is neither a long time nor does it make me Fresh Off the Plane. However, as I pass the seven year plateau, Los Angeles claims an important place in my heart as it becomes the place I've spent the plurality of my life.

It's a wee bit odd to reach 30 without having lived any city (I'm including multiple residences within the same general location) longer than seven years, but I'm sure there are few other military or academic brats in the same boat with me.

Los Angeles passes Jackson, Mississippi, where I lived between the ages of 7 and 14. It's always been bizarre to me that I've had to say I spent the plurality of my life in Mississippi, both because it wasn't necessarily my favorite stop and because nobody knows what the heck "the plurality of my life" means. Now Mississippi can just go on that list of places I've lived -- Seven years in Mississippi, four years apiece in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, four or five years smooshed confusingly between Iowa and Minnesota, a year in Tennessee, a year (my first) in Oakland, a year in New Hampshire, six or seven months in London.

Does that make me a Los Angeleno? I hope not. If it does, I may need to start scouting real estate in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Who wouldn't want to be a Yooper?

Tweet

MovieWatch: "The Bourne Ultimatum"

"The Bourne Ultimatum"
Director: Paul Greengrass
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 76
In a Nutshell: When listing my favorite films of 2004, I ranked Paul Greengrass' "The Bourne Supremacy" as my 8th favorite movie of the year and it might have been higher. The film had a perfect nihilistic ending, with our hero walking off into the snowy streets of Moscow after *not* killing somebody. Then Greengrass and company had to go and mess with things, tacking on a sunny and relatively upbeat ending in New York City, wrapping up the story and opening things up for a sequel. FEH!

On his commentary track for "Supremacy," Greengrass admits that they had trouble coming up with the right conclusion and that what eventually made it on screen was the product of extensive group-think, sort of an uneasy consensus.

For my money, the most satisfying thing about Greengrass' "Bourne Ultimatum" is that it somehow manages to validate the last scene of the earlier movie. The bland coda to "Supremacy" and reshot and repurposed in the middle of "Ultimatum" and suddenly the scene has meaning and context, suddenly it's another mind-game in a franchise full of mind-games. If I believed for a second that anybody wrote the original scene intending to bring a new spin to the sequel, I'd be impressed. But I don't. And actually I'm even more amazing and pleased that in preproduction on "Ultimatum" somebody realized that they could salvage what went wrong on the earlier movie.

The rest of my musings will be after the bump.

Click through...

[While I may have already thrown out a few spoilers for "The Bourne Supremacy," I'm gonna go into "Bourne Ultimatum" spoilers from here, so be aware...]

If I prefer "Supremacy" and maybe even "Identity" slightly over "Ultimatum" it shouldn't take away from what has now become cinema's most consistent action franchise, a series so reliable that it disappoints me to hear talk of ending things at a trilogy. I understand that they're rolling the dice with any subsequent films, practically begging for a let-down, but so far the "Bourne" movies have been exemplary in terms of using the finest actors and craftsmen in the industry in the blockbuster field. When the summer of 2007 is weighed in the balance, most of the sequels well have to go in the "sucked" category, with "Harry Potter 5" and "Die Hard 4" going under "better than expected," but only "The Bourne Ultimatum" goes down as "darned good."

I guess I felt like the story of "Bourne Ultimatum" tied everything up too neatly. I preferred "Supremacy" with its "drop you in the action/leave you in the action" pseudo-arc. The friend I saw the movie with said he preferred that "Ultimatum" told a full story and that "Supremacy" had problems standing alone, but I liked the "Empire Strikes Back"-ness of the middle installment. The less I know about Jason Bourne, the better, it turns out. Damon's performances in these movies may play the same single, intense note, but to my mind that makes the character every bit as instantly recognizable and iconic as Eastwood's nameless Western heroes. We never wasted time in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" trying to figure out the backstory for Eastwood's character and I don't know that Bourne is more or less watchable knowing that he may or may not have had some sort of past with Julia Stiles' Nicky.

I'm pleased enough that the people from Bourne's past seem to repeat themselves and that he can't kill one without an identical shadowy government figure popping up. It took me a long time in "Ultimatum" to fully ascertain that brilliantly taciturn, Oscar nominated, John Sayles-trained character actor David Strathairn wasn't playing the exact same guy that brilliantly taciturn, Oscar nominated John Sayles-trained character actor Chris Cooper played in the first movie. And if Albert Finney and Brian Cox's characters weren't siblings, they were at least kissing cousins.

I also continue to love that the "Bourne" movies are a leftist inversion of Eastwood's Dirty Harry films. As many killers as Harry Callahan tracked down, the real villain was always the bureaucracy that kept making it harder for him to shoot first and ask questions later. Jason Bourne, though, is faced by a government cabal that, thanks to 9/11, can now operate without a shred of accountability. Bourne doesn't want anybody dead. He just wants a little government oversight, some checks and balances, a few Congressional hearings. He was trained to be a heartless killing machine, but Bourne is a Big Government softie.

Lost in Greengrass' gift with stomach-churning car chases and action sequences is the fact that he doesn't require millions in smashed automobiles and mangled stuntmen to create a tense action sequence. For me, the best scene in "Ultimatum" was Bourne attempting to navigate Paddy Considine's intrepid reporter through London's Waterloo Station and away from intrusive CIA agents, ubiquitous cameras and one nameless assassin. In addition to making me want to hop on the Tube to Waterloo Station and then head over to the National Theatre to see a show, the sequence worked entirely because of Christopher Rouse's editing, John Powell's score and Greengrass' unparalleled ability to create disorientation without ever sacrificing a sense of space and geography. Whether on a scale model of United 93 or on the streets of Tangier or Paris, Greengrass is happy to mess with the viewer's head, but he never loses a clear grasp on where the movie is taking place.

But for all of my admiration of Greengrass' work, I loved the stylistic transition for Doug Liman to Greengrass between the first and second films and I wish the franchise had gone to a different indie director for the third, just for fun. How about urging Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu to get off his mopey, self-righteous high horse and make an international action movie? What about seeing if Gus Van Sant can take his experiences with Damon to the not-so-logical next level? What would Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck do with a paranoid studio feature?

Anyway, since I'm a month late to catching this movie, I assume that all of the observations I think are so clever have already been made. So I'm gonna stop here.

Tweet

MovieWatch: "The Simpsons Movie"

"The Simpsons Movie"
Director: David Silverman
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 59
In a Nutshell: The opposite of "Harry Potter 5," really. I had low expectations for "The Simpsons Movie" after the early trailers and buzz, but then people started saying, "It's not great, but it's as good as we could have hoped for," so that raised my hopes. Sure, that probably shouldn't have boosted my hopes *that* much, but I came away marginally disappointed. Not hugely disappointed. But marginally.

Then again? How disappointed could I possibly have been in a movie that brought me Spider-Pig. Like all of the very finest "Simpsons" gags ("I hate every ape I see/ From chimpan-A to chimpan-Z"), the "Spider-Pig" theme makes me giggle every time I sing it to myself. Of course, I knew the Spider-Pig song going in and I don't know if the movie gave me anything more memorable.

Additional thoughts after the bump...

Click through...

"The Simpsons Movie" took many of the right approaches to bringing the series -- which I still watch religiously every Sunday night -- to the big screen. Unlike the "Family Guy" direct-to-DVD movie, it wasn't just three episodes stapled together, sutures visible at all times. Instead, it was a 22 minute episode that was fleshed out and expanded to 80-plus minutes, only showing occasional signs of bloating. The Homer causes Springfield to get deemed an environmental disaster and stuck under a dome could have been covered in the standard episode length, so they padded it with a trip to Alaska, Bart's brief desire to be adopted by the Flanderses, Lisa's crush on a randomly introduced Irish boy and Grandpa's random gifts as a soothsayer. Oh and they added Spider-Pig, who set the plot in motion, but vanished entirely from the second half (at Comic-Con, Matt Selman [Penn alum!!!] said that off-screen, Spider-Pig was killed by Dr. Octo-Pig or Dr. Pig-to-Pus...). So, unlike the "South Park" movie, "The Simpsons Movie" felt padded and, honestly, slow and bloated in places.

First complaint: How do you have a "Simpsons Movie" without a coach gag? Even a built-in couch gag within the film some place?

Second complaint: Not quite enough brains. At its very best, "The Simpsons" throws cultural references around like mad and despite how semi-timely many of the pop culture nods end up feeling (impressive given the long lead time for episodes), they're almost never dated with the repeats come along. I think an effort was made to down-play pop culture and politics and anything contemporary in the movie, perhaps to aid its shelf-life and perhaps to aid play in foreign markets. Regardless, I didn't feel like there was enough intelligence. Plus, despite the extra large screen and room for additional details, I didn't get the sense that the movie was as chock-full of visual references and in-jokes as I might have liked. I appreciated the various self-referential "We're a movie based on a FOX TV show" moments, but I may have wanted more of that.

Third complaint: Sure, I love The Simpson family. But we got less of the supporting cast that you might in a standard 22 minute episode. Give me more Lenny and Carl. Give me more Mr. Burns. Give me more Chief Wiggum and Ralph Wiggum. Give me more of Dr. Nick and Gil and Apu and Bumblebee Man and Krusty and Kang & Kodos and Mr. Teeny. How is it that Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel had a bigger part than so many of those favorite characters?

Fourth complaint: This is just me, but if I were the members of "The Simpsons" team, I'd have tried to find a way to pay tribute to Phil Hartman in the movie somewhere, even if that just meant a Lionel Hutz reference or a Troy McLure movie playing at the Aztec. I'm sure there are several other folks from the "Simpsons" voice roster who have passed on (including guest voices like George Plimpton ["And a hotplate!"]) who might have warranted salutes, but Hartman kind of deserved one.

I laughed and chuckled, but probably less hard than I laugh at a good episode of the show, especially on a per-minute basis.

So it wasn't awful. And perhaps if I hadn't waited over a month to see it, I would have felt less build-up. But I wanted a wee bit more.

Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig/ Does whatever a Spider-Pig does/ Can he swing/ From a web/ No he can't/ He's a pig.

Tomorrow? "The Bourne Ultimatum."

Tweet

Catching up on "Mad Men," "Damages," "Big Love" and "Entourage"

Back in the stone age, before TiVo and 500 channels of cable and before the networks began half-heartedly programming the summer months, it was possible to take a vacation from this job in early August and know that you'd return home as connected to the entertainment universe as you were before.

I've already mentioned how behind I am on movies and this weekend I attend to see "The Simpsons" and "The Bourne Ultimatum," which I view as two of the major stumbling blocks on my road to overall connectivity.

But that makes no mention of the TV I've been catching up on the past five days, shows I'd been in a deficit on for well more than my two AWOL weeks. I've watched seven episodes of "Big Love," six episodes of "Mad Men," three episodes of "Entourage," three episodes of "Damages" and three episodes of "Top Chef." I accepted that I would never catch up on "Big Brother" and deleted all of my DVRed hours (but tuned back into regular episodes). And I know that I still need to watch the last staggering gasps of "John From Cincinnati," though I have the leisure of knowing that that show is finite.

Because at least one reader has expressed frustration at my lack of posting, click through after the bump for my thoughts on some of those shows I've been catching up on. Otherwise, you can just wait for a "Simpsons Movie" post later in the day.

Click through...

"Mad Men" -- I loved the polished exteriors of the pilot, but was a bit concerned that the show's use of dramatic irony for humorous purposes might become a stumbling block. I've now made it through seven episodes and most of my concerns have been allayed. "Man Men" is still a show in which precious little happens and yet I'm watching it with a level of enthusiasm I don't have for anything else on TV this summer. Much of my pleasure in the show comes from the remarkable lead performance by Jon Hamm, an actor who wasn't even vaguely on my radar previously. Hamm looks like a prototypical man for the '50s, so it isn't surprising that most of his early work was below my radar. He has the kind of square-jawed manly looks that casting directors just don't like anymore when they're preferring to cast leading men who are less handsome and more pretty. He has the same problems that Nathan Fillion would have if Fillion didn't come equipped with that perpetual ironic smirk that makes him generally employable. As his wife, January Jones has almost the exact same problem -- she's too pert, too blonde, too seemingly generic. Both actors have been complex, both with their delivery of the show's twisty, antiquated, wordy dialogue and with the slew of physical mannerisms the show's directors seem to crave. But really the entire "Mad Men" cast is exceptional, including the reliable John Slattery and the vivacious (and then some) Christina Hendricks, Vincent Kartheiser (who I'd have thought too contemporary an actor previously) and Maggie Siff (another actress I may never have noticed before). The mystery of Don Draper's (Hamm) past is probably the most reliable ongoing plot, but I'd watch every week even if nothing carried over. There's some fantastic stuff in Episode Seven for those who haven't made it there yet.



"Big Love" -- I've heard a lot of buzz about how "Big Love" has really come into its own in its second season and I'm not sure I agree completely. In the first season, I had a pretty good sense of Bill Hendrickson (Bill Paxton) and his motivations and the risks he had to take to protect his lifestyle. I guess the Season One finale shocked Bill's system so badly that he determined he'd do whatever it took to keep his family safe that Season Two has been spent with Bill making one wrong decision after another for 12 episodes. In this respect, Season Two of "Big Love" has been a bit like Season Two of "Weeds," which focused on Nancy Botwin's wrong-headed quest to become a big-time dealer, something that could only have left her life in Season Three disrepair. Season Two has shifted away from the kind of "Ooooh... The Compound is Wacky and Scary" episodes that fueled the first run of episodes, though we met a different polygamist sect led by the brilliant Luke Askew's Hollis Greene and discovered that Old Roman Grant was just a big softy. As Bill has become less and less sympathetic and more and more clearly doomed to take a big fall, Paxton's performance has become less interesting (he isn't an actor who plays complexity very well). So the second season has been about appreciating the supporting and fringe players. Different parts of this season have showcased Ginner Goodwin (my favorite wife), Amanda Seyfried (who ought to have a well-written TV show built around her), Melora Walters, Grace Zabriskie, Bruce Dern, Matt Ross and Tina Majorino (she could co-star in Seyfried's well-written show... Rob Thomas could write it). The season finale of "Big Love" is coming up this week and I'm not optimistic that our happy polygamist family will be quite so happy and unified when things start off next year.



"Damages" -- The problems with this show couldn't be simpler: The more time we waste on Anastasia Griffith's reluctant witness Katie and Noah Bean's soon-to-be-dead fiance David, that's less time we have to spend with Glenn Close's Patty and, more importantly, Ted Danson's Arthur Frobisher. That seems pretty obvious, right? Less time with the attractive and less experienced younger actors and more time with two of the best actors on TV? And yet "Damages" keeps losing me, every single week, by wasting time on subplots I don't even vaguely care about. I've also ceased to care about the flash-forward framing devices, because that over-saturated stuff has stopped showing me things I couldn't have guessed myself. I'm also continually perplexed by how Rose Byrne's Ellen is being written -- I'd like to see more of the extremely smart and capable lawyer we're continually told she is and less of the callow, deer-in-headlights obliviousness Byrne has been forced to play. The combination of Patty Hewes' (Close) omniscience and Ellen's obviousness makes for an odd sort of drama in which the show's supposed heroine spends every single episode playing catch-up and never develops any kind of agency or active intellect. So really, I just hope we get more of Danson and more of Zeljko Ivanek's wonderfully bizarre Atticus Finch impression in the weeks to come.



"Entourage" -- Sepinwall doesn't know why I bother anymore, since he claims he's only watching as a way to get to "Flight of the Conchords," a comedy that hasn't hooked me in the way I'm told it should have. I wish I knew why I bother. The show has become truly awful in this rushed fourth season. "Entourage" used to just be silly Hollywood wish fulfillment, but it's become a show written by people with ADHD, incapable of sticking with any plotline long enough for it to become a story. What's the state of Vince's career at this point? He's gone from a huge star to unemployable to a huge star and at least to the best of my knowledge, he hasn't had a movie released since "Aquaman." I have backlash on the week-to-week back-and-forth on whether "Medellin" is a smash or a disaster or a smash and I'm not sure I have a clue where Vince and the gang are even living at this point or how they're affording to live there. What happened to Turtle's fling with talent management last year? How have the ratings been for Johnny's TV show? And why do the writers think that viewers are just tuning in for the cameos and thus subjecting us to appearances by folks like Mary J. Blige and Brian Grazer? Note the law of diminishing returns in Gary Busey cameos -- So good in Season One, So bad in Season Four. I've been OK with Anna Faris' recent turn, though it's unclear if she's engaging in actual self-parody or parody of the public perception of her image or what. I'm guessing Debi Mazar as reduced availability because of her baby, but is there anybody else out there who would rather see twice as much of her and half as much of Rhys Coiro's enfant terrible Billy Walsh? I guess I keep watching because I remember that as recently as last season, I used to really enjoy "Entourage." Maybe if they take a good long writing break after this season's over, the show can bounce back. Don't the writers know that once you're forced to resort to casting the Sklars (Jason and Randy, who I find funny talking about sports and little else) as bickering brothers, you might as well throw in the towel? Bring back Carla Gugino!

Whew. OK. I've got a movie to go catch...

Tweet

MovieWatch: "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"
Director: David Yates
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 68
In a Nutshell: [Before getting to my wildly out-of-date review (I've been BUSY!!!!), I've gotta ask: Am I the only one who can't handle 3-D? Physically, I mean. I'm going to blame my astigmatism or something, but even with the newest technology and the snazzy new glasses, 3-D still makes my eyes water and my head throb and the actual payoff isn't close to worth it. For a movie like "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," that wasn't a huge problem since only the last 20 minutes required the use of glasses, but when I hear that James Cameron is going to force me to watch "Avatar" in 3-D, my brain already begins to hurt. That aside, I saw the not-so-new Potter flick at the IMAX screen at Jordan's in Natick, Mass, which happens to be one of the oddest places I've ever seen a movie. No, it's still not as odd as the outdoor theater in Athens where I kept being distracted from "The Sweet Hereafter" to look up at the Acropolis, but there's something darned weird about marching through a furniture store to get to a movie. Not quite as big a screen as what you'd get at Los Angeles' fancier IMAX theaters, but incredibly comfortable seats and appropriately bone-rattling sound. But enough of that digression...]

As everybody who hasn't spent the past month at Press Tour, Comic-Con and on a remote island in the Atlantic may already know, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is a nice rebound for the franchise after Mike Newell's aggressively bland "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." I confess, before continuing, that I'd heard enough negative buzz about the movie from people I respect that my expectations were properly lowered. Thus, I enjoyed large parts of "Harry Potter 5," even if its 3-D enhanced climax may have been largely wasted on me.

Follow through after the bump for any additional thoughts...

Click through...

To start with, I didn't much care for this particular book. It had a distinct beginning-of-the-end feeling wherein it was the first of Rowling's novels not to be essentially self-contained. It lays an awful lot of groundwork over a ton of pages, but its storytelling is really scattershot. Michael Goldenberg's adaptation is surprisingly smooth, then, eliminating large plot strands without causing me to bend my memories to recall what had been trimmed, at least not more than once or twice. Goldenberg's script can't change that "Order of the Phoenix" is all about transition rather than destination, but I didn't feel like I'd wasted my 135 minutes.

If I were to list the things I most appreciated about "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," I'd have to start with its occasionally inspired glimpses of realism, for which I largely credit director David Yates, a respected TV helmer with no experience at all in films of this scale. The movie's opening sequence, a Dementor attack in a London suburb, may be one of the most cinematic moments in the big screen franchise to date -- the haunting images of outcast Harry at a playground enhanced with the threat of casual teenage cruelty, rather than anything supernatural. Even after that first scene, though, Yates took the time to remind viewers that the universe of Harry Potter is just on the outskirts of the Muggle world that the rest of us inhabit.

For the rest of the franchise, I'd like to suggest a moratorium on critics being allowed to say "This is the darkest Harry Potter yet!!!" That's just plain lazy, kids. We get it -- Each of J.K. Rowling's books was darker than the one before, as the kids matured and were more capable of facing darkness. The movies? They just follow suit. So guess what? "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" is going to be "The darkest Harry Potter yet!!!" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" will also be "The darkest Harry Potter yet!!!" Get over it. Or at least find a new pull-quote.

That being said, "Harry Potter 5" is the darkest Harry Potter yet!!! Sigh. That's not even necessarily true, but as the actors have aged, they've been allowed to let their performances get just a bit more tortured. Or at least Daniel Radcliffe has, mirroring the book-by-book transitions that took Harry from an innocent boy to an increasingly mopey and annoying teen. Since Radcliffe is generally more believable playing Harry as a whiny pill than anything human, this is a good thing.

The other kids have matured in ways that have altered how their characters can be depicted. For example, with Rupert Grint through the worst of his awkward phase, Ron seems a bit more present in this movie than in the last one, ditto with Matthew Lewis' Neville, who I feared might vanish from the franchise entirely after puberty struck. You'll notice, though, that the camera can't afford to linger very long on Tom Felton's Draco Malfoy. Emma Watson continues to be good enough as Hermione that I wish Rowling hadn't essentially cut her character adrift in the closing books.

England's finest actors continue to be wasted in this franchise in near-record numbers. Alan Rickman and Gary Oldman have the best moments here, but folks like Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, David Thewlis, Jason Isaacs, Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson have rarely seemed less valuable. Imelda Staunton is the biggest new adult addition and despite being perfect casting, her Dolores Umbridge feel even more one-note on the big screen than she was on the page. Helena Bonham Carter also joins the cast as Bellatrix Lestrange and manages to play the part exactly the way you'd think Helena Bonham Carter would play it, which may or may not be a compliment. I look forward to seeing a bit more of Natalie Tena's Tonks as well as George Harris' Kingsley, since both of those characters have increased profiles in the final chapters.

The movie's best new piece of casting, actually, is Evanna Lynch, who makes a rather amazing Luna Lovegood. Somehow a character whose winsome quirkiness always irked me in the books felt human and Lynch's reactions stole nearly every one of her scenes. I also look forward to seeing more of the mostly CG house elf Kreacher in the final installments.

How about the 3-D part of the IMAX experience? My moviegoing partner had seen the movie in 2-D and she said that it was more probably more exciting in its enhanced form. Certainly the hail of falling prophesy orbs and the shattered Ministry of Magic windows got a boost. The climactic showdown between Voldemort and Dumbledore (not really all that climactic in a general sense, but the movie had to end somewhere) probably played better with sparks flying into the audience. But darned if my head wouldn't have felt better if I could have just watched those last 20 minutes without the huge glasses that made the entire audience look like deceased Old Navy pitchwoman Carrie Donovan.

But at least I got out to see a movie. I still have a ton more catching up to do once I return to Los Angeles.

Tweet

MovieWatch: "Superbad"

"Superbad"
Director: Greg Mottola
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 69 (I'd actually have gone with something a point or two lower, but I'm happy to honor the low-brow sensibility of the film)
In a Nutshell: An absurd percentage of media reporting is just trendspotting and when the media catches hold of a cover-all catch phrase that it (we?) likes, it rides that sucker til the pony collapses and dies. I've never been as sick of a reductive phrase, for example, than I am of "Torture Porn," which has become critical shorthand for dozens of disparate movies that both do and don't deserve to fall under the heading.

Why, then, have I not read an adequate one or two or three word deconstruction for the output of the Judd Apatow Empire, for the slew of films and TV shows that Apatow has producer, written or directed in the past decade, dating back to "Freaks & Geeks" (or maybe "Cable Guy," if you're so-inclined). Is it something as simple as Outcast Porn? Or Underdog Porn? Or Geek Porn? Something reflecting the way that films like "40 Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" and now "Superbad" allow viewers to get off on the celebration of outside-of-the-mainstream male heroes, to both laugh at the characters but simultaneously liberate them from stereotypes. However, while porn is participatory, the participation is essentially self-contained and profoundly limited. Apatow's films are about recognition, both from the actual freaks and the geeks in the audience, but maybe also from the people whose high school years were more socially fruitful. Maybe Nerdsploitation or Jewsploitation or Goofsploitation would be a better term? Perhaps that tie into the fact that while many blaxploitation films were, indeed, exploitative -- written, directed and produced by mainstream white men to take money from black audiences -- many of the best were generated within the African-American community itself. Even though Apatow has a fabulously hot and funny wife (Leslie Mann) there's no doubt that his youth mirrored that of his protagonists. Seth Rogen isn't playing at being the funny, husky, Jewish-Canadian. That's who he is. Other members of the Apatow Family Ensemble -- Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Jason Segel -- are striking for how truly comfortable they are both with the roles the play on-screen and, at least to some extent, embodying them in real life.

Anyway, that's just me thinking out loud. Any suggestions?

Follow through after the bump for my thoughts on "Superbad."

Click through...


I saw "Superbad" almost a year to the night I caught last summer's underrated "Accepted." I caught both films in early screenings at Comic-Con, which meant that both films were being screened for their core audiences. And both comedies were darned well-received. "Accepted" wasn't a smash hit or anything, but its $36 million gross far exceeded its budget.

Check the Zap2it Comic-Con blog for my initial reaction to the movie (some of which will be repeated below) and some of the funnier moments of the post-film Q&A.

Because I liked "Accepted" -- it's loose, rough and far funnier than it has any right to be, given its pedigree -- it isn't damning "Superbad" with faint praise to say that the new flick is far, far superior in every way. It's the story of three guys who would traditionally be depicted as losers -- Hill, Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse -- who attempt to acquire alcohol to secure their entrance to a key pre-graduation party and, hopefully, into the undies of a trio of previously unobtainable women -- played by Emma Stone, Martha MacIsaac and Aviva.

Even by "Porkys" standards, "Superbad" doesn't have much of a plot, but the script by Rogen and Evan Goldberg is magnificently digressive. The characters are on a Rabelaisian journey in which the specific events hardly matter. What matters are their conversations along the way -- the lewd, rawkus, inappropriate, occasionally brilliant conversations that feel distressingly believable and familiar. The movie is as raunchy and stupid as any 15-year-old could hope to see (assuming they buy tickets for a less R-rated movie and sneak in), but Rogen and Goldberg are stealth-smart and the film's love of language is always evident. Greg Mottola's direction is focused on making the movie look as jagged and naturalistic as possible, but mostly letting the comedy breath.

The thin narrative (and its over-long 114 minute running time) and aforementioned naturalistic visual style combine to keep "Superbad" from feeling like a "whole" movie at times, certainly when compared to the Apatow written-and-directed "Knocked Up" and "Virgin." While the best parts of those two films were still just the scenes in which the main characters sat around and shot the shit, you left with a sense that a full story had been told and that, occasionally, the resources of the cinema had been invoked. "Superbad" is mostly a string of those shit-shooting moments strung together toward a conclusion that isn't quite as satisfyingly heartwarming as it thinks it is. As such, it's very possible that "Superbad" is a funnier movie -- laugh-for-laugh -- "Knocked Up." It's certain to inspire repeated viewings and there's a good chance that its dialogue will be repeated and woven into the overall vernacular to an extent not seen since "Napoleon Dynamite" (an awful movie that totally could be called "Nerd Porn").

Although not quite as loaded with Apatow-friendly cameos as "Knocked Up," "Superbad" still features folks like Martin Starr and David Krumholtz in small roles, while Carla Gallo is the center of one of movie's most memorable scenes as a particularly aggressive dancing girl.

Now why, I ask you, isn't Sony using my pull quote "A rough-and-raunchy tribute to being geeky and white." Why?!?

Tweet

I'm Back Like Chris Tucker...

Did you miss me?

Sigh. Probably not.

I've been off the grid for a while. There were three weeks of Press Tour, followed by Comic-Con, followed by a desperate attempt to meet a series of last minute deadlines for Filter. In the past month, I've seen exactly two movies -- "Superbad" and "We Own the Night" -- and I haven't been able to blog on either of 'em... It's my goal to get a blog post up for "Superbad" before the movie's actually in release this Friday. Gotta have goals.

I did, however, get an actual vacation. Seven days of sun, Kosher shellfish and Anne of Green Gables memorabilia in Prince Edward Island. So while I didn't see any movies last week or even watch a single full episode of TV, I did read five books, which would really impress you if you knew the pace at which I read.

They weren't exactly intensive or scholarly books I read, of course. They were exactly the kind of books you're supposed to read if you're on a beach and you already panicked to finish "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" in anticipation of inevitably ubiquitous spoilers at Comic-Con (a concern that was ultimately overblown). Actually, as I think about it, I mostly read books that are going to become movies later this fall.

I read Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend," a nifty vampire yarn I should have read when I was 12 as a way of knowing just how totally Stephen King (my literary idol of the time) was ripping off Mattheson's prose style. I zipped through Scott Smith's "The Ruins," a chilling read, though I may not be tired of Smith's by-rote fatalism after this book and "A Simple Plan." I plowed through Richard Yates's "Revolutionary Road," a book I probably should have read long ago, one that's almost sure to be slaughtered by Sam Mendes despite the note-perfect casting of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead roles. I read my third Cormac McCarthy book of the year in "No Country For Old Men," which has me eagerly anticipating the Coen Brothers' latest flick. And I also wasted little time going through Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere," just because it happened to be in the pile of available options.

Whew. Anyway, I'll try to get my blog on again a bit later in the week, but I wanted to reassure my half-dozen readers that this space hasn't gone fallow.

Tweet

'HIMYM' Co-Creator Talks 'Method & Red'

On this blog, I do many things. I review TV shows, review movies, rant about the entertainment industry and periodically mention the Red Sox. One thing I've never been accused of using this blog for before is actual reportage. I save that stuff for the Zap2it blog, where I can delve into the serious journalistic business of interviewing Adrian Pasdar about whether or not he conditions his beard.

But at CBS' Press Tour party last night, I (along with my Zap2it colleague Rick) conducted an interview that dealt, at least partially, with subject matter that's utterly useless for Zap2it, but completely on-topic for this blog... A little show I like to call "Method & Red." I like to call it that, because that's its name.

In any case, follow through after the bump for my discussion with "How I Met Your Mother" co-creator Carter Bays about "Method & Red" and this blog's ongoing campaign to get the show released on DVD [Sign the petition!]...

Click Through...

At Zap2it, we have a great collective love for "HIMYM," and therefore a respect for Bays and cohort Craig Thomas. That respect only grew when Rick pointed out to me that before "HIMYM," Thomas and Bays' credits included "Method & Red," but not just "Method & Red," the episode titled "The Article," which featured not only music critic Keith Debeetham, but also self-explanatory childrens' entertainer Downtown Clowny Brown.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), Bays was initially unconfused when we approached him at the party about Keith Debeetham.

As he explained, "Keith Debeetham was the editor we worked for at the 'Late Show.' He was the guy, day in and day out, we'd be putting together skits for the show and he was the guy we'd be editing it with, so it was shout-out to him."

Ooops. Poor research on our part. When we explained that we meant "Method & Red," he remained largely enthusiastic.

"It feels like a dream," he laughed. "I'm not sure I actually worked there. It was a very surreal dream."

Thomas and Bays arrived on "Method & Red" after they'd put in their time writing for "Late Show with David Letterman" and "Oliver Beene."

"It was funny, because they'd just signed Craig and I to a deal at Fox," Bays recalls. "We were freshly on a deal and they looked down their roster of shows and they're like 'What show do you put these two white guys from the suburbs on? Oh wait! We have a deal with the Wu Tang Clan! OK. Yeah. Let's get them together. Yeah. That'll work.'"

Did they spend any wacky times with Method Man and Redman?

"I think I met them both once, but yeah, I didn't really work close with them," he laughs. "We just wrote the script and then left. I feel bad, what a journeyman kind of experience it was."

I mention this blog's ongoing campaign to get "Method & Red" released on DVD, asking if he wanted to join the plea.

"Of course I do! Well, no. Here's my plea -- My plea is wait until after the writers' strike, when the writers actually get paid for the DVDs and then release it. That's my plea. Don't buy it until I'm getting a cut of it, America."

Tweet

My 2007 Emmy Nominations Rambling

Here's a fun little game if you want to know why I can't bring myself to care about the Emmys: I want you to go to the official nomination page and do a word search for either "The Wire" and "Wire."

See? Wasn't that fun? So much for the Emmys, eh?

If, of course, you still care about an organization that last year lauded Ellen Burstyn for 20 seconds of screentime and a bad accent, follow through after the bump for a typical amount of ranting and raving...

Click through...

I'm Happy About...

Hugh Laurie's failure to secure a best actor nomination last season was one of the more peculiar gaffes in recent Emmy memory. Even if "House" occasionally stumbled this year, particularly in the arc featuring David Morse (somehow Emmy nominated for that work), Laurie's work never faltered and in addition to playing his usual cycles of drug addition and misanthropy, he had fantastic arcs of internal conflict as well.

I'm glad to see the Academy finally understanding that Steve Carell's work on the office isn't being done in a vacuum. Rainn Wilson was an obvious and deserving supporting nominee -- yes he plays his part to the back of the auditorium, but that's exactly what a supporting performance is supposed to be. And Jenna Fischer deserves to win purely for her five second reaction shot at the end of the finale. Maybe next year John Krasinski and Melora Hardin can get their nominations?

I'm even happier to see Neil Patrick Harris get his due for his "How I Met Your Mother" work. This feels like a gateway nomination to perhaps get overall acceptance of the show next year? It's still a shame that Kourtney Kang couldn't get a nomination for "Slap Bet," the season's best overall piece of traditional comedy writing.

Somehow Mary-Louise Parker wasn't on the board last year for "Weeds." Very odd. Glad to see that rectified this season and glad to see the series get a well-deserved outstanding comedy nomination. I'd have thought Justin Kirk was a worthy comedy supporting actor candidate, but I guess we need to keep recognize Jeremy Piven for doing the exact same thing over and over again on "Entourage."

Speaking of "Entourage," that's good nomination for Kevin Dillon, even though the Johnny Drama character has had a really spotty assortment of episodes this season. Actually, I don't think "Entourage" was really deserving of that comedy series nomination for last season and I'd have gladly replaced it with "HIMYM."

But good for "30 Rock" and all of its various nominations! I thought the pilot was mediocre, salvaged mostly by Alec Baldwin's performance, but as the season wore on, I began to appreciate everything else about the show, particularly Tina Fey's subtle work -- since when does the Academy honor SUBTLE? -- in the lead.

Oh and I'm also relieved that the Academy punished "24" for a season that went beyond self-parody at certain points. Kiefer Sutherland's work never faltered, though, so I can't entirely begrudge that grandfathered nomination. But Jean Smart? Yeah, she got nominated last year, but her performance this season was one hammy episode in which she committed an act of violence that FOX promised would be the most shocking moment in "24" history and yet was never mentioned again for the entire season. Weird.

I'm Unhappy About...

The first observation, the one that all of my critical peers will probably also be making today, is that "Friday Night Lights" got jobbed. From what I can see, network TV's best drama received exactly two nominations, including one for Peter Berg's work on the pilot. While that's two more nominations that "The Wire," that's still pathetic. Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton and the writing staff deserve better. I think the absence of technical nominations is rather stunning, honestly. Cinematography? Editing? Sound design? We're talking location shooting with sports action here. Give it up from "Friday Night Lights," kids. It's well-established that Emmy nominations don't mean a darned thing to viewers, but giving the show its due couldn't have hurt NBC's promotional cause.

Really, there's nothing to be said about "The Wire." Michael K. Williams, I'm feelin' you, man. But "The Wire" was always ignored. Why did the Academy forget about "Deadwood"? Actually, they didn't. The show earned six technical nominations. But where's previous nominee Ian McShane? Where is the always deserving Robin Weigert? And where, most criminally, is Gerald McRaney, whose villainous George Hearst was a career-revitalizing revelation?

I was glad to see "Dexter" get a nomination for its main title design. Well deserved. But where did the rest of the show's nominations go? Where, mostly, did Michael C. Hall's lead actor nomination go?

Lots of second tier and mid-tier nominations for the ever-erratic "My Name Is Earl." And good to see a nomination for Jaime Pressly as supporting actor. But did anybody see the episode where the cat-allergic Randy dated a cat woman? If you saw that episode, tell me how Ethan Supplee gets left off the final ballot. Seriously.

Lorraine Bracco? Really? I know this was the last season for "The Sopranos" and we want to do our part to send that show off to heaven with a bang, but what did Dr. Melfi do this season? And what did Lorraine Bracco do? It's not that she hasn't deserved nominations in the past, but this year I'd make pleas for Weigert, Adrianne Palicki, Aimee Teegarden, Lisa Edelstein, the gal who played Snoop on "The Wire," Elizabeth Mitchell, Sarah Paulson, C.C.H. Pounder, et al.

There are also shows that you just can't expect Emmy voters to remember. It's good to see a visual effects nomination for the first episode of "Drive," but what about some editing nods? And how about tech nods for the pilot for "The Nine"?

And thus, Kristen Bell ends her three seasons on "Veronica Mars" without an Emmy nomination. That's not surprising, but it isn't right. That's still better than Lauren Graham ending her seven season run on "Gilmore Girls" without an Emmy nomination.

In its first season of operation, The CW picked up a single Emmy nomination for sound editing on "Smallville." Huzzah.

If You're Betting: Yeah, you could put a few bucks on "The Sopranos" in just about every category, but if I were wagering my own personal fortune, I'd put ever cent on Helen Mirren in the lead actress, miniseries movie category. I love that her competition there includes Queen Latifah.

Tweet

MoviesWatch: "Rescue Dawn"

"Rescue Dawn"
Director: Werner Herzog
Fien Print Rating: 79
In a Nutshell: [Before getting into my thoughts on what is probably the best movie of the summer, let me clarify something from my review of "Transformers." Several people have made it clear to me that they didn't buy my contention, made early on, that "I like people, I guess." It's well established that I prefer talking pigs, cooking rats and monkeys of any form to people. I guess what I was trying to say is that if I have to choose between watching "Michael Bay's Rock-em-Sock-em Robots: The Movie" and watching, well, anything in which somebody exhibits any sort of human characteristics whatsoever, I'm going to take the latter. Now "Steven Spielberg's Rock-em-Sock-em Robots: The Movie" versus next summer's Happy Madison Joint "Rob Schneider Talks With a Funny Accent and Poops Himself"? Well, the jury's still out.]

Follow through after the bump for my thoughts on "Rescue Dawn."

Click Through...

Werner Herzog almost never makes movies that aren't Werner Herzog Films and "Rescue Dawn" is such a Werner Herzog Film that he's had to tell the same story twice in less than a decade. I caught 1997's documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" via Netflix and enjoyed its Herzogian tale of one man's single-minded determination to first fly and then to remain alive in the face of great inhumanity and all manner of natural obstacles. The decision to make "Little Dieter" into a narrative film didn't seem necessary, but the casting of Christian Bale was too perfect to resist.

In Bale, Herzog may have finally found a perfect replacement for the late Klaus Kinski, an actor willing to absolutely cripple himself to commit to a role, only without Kinski's trademark instabilities. Of course, Kinski's instabilities played off Herzog's own instabilities and certainly yielded moments of genius. Perhaps it's that lack of creative friction that keeps "Rescue Dawn" from reaching the heights of a "Fitzcarraldo" or "Aguirre, Wrath of God." Or maybe Herzog was respectful of the fact that he was making a true studio film here and kept himself emotionally in check. Or maybe, and this is my personal favorite theory, the reliable 20 point/10 rebound stability of first-time producer and power forward Elton Brand kept things under control.

Bale gives exactly the kind of "My cheek bones will terrify you, but my eyes will still burn with life" performance that you'd expect. He remains a criminally neglected actor by the various award-giving bodies and I fear that he's going to keep doing projects like this and "The Machinists," films were the lines between acting and actual malnutrition becomes unrecognizable. I think that if the Academy would just throw an Oscar nomination he way, he might be inclined to eat again.

"Rescue Dawn" is a straight-forward POW film shot without excessive Hollywood plot points and traditional dramatic beats almost until the very end. It's about survival, but not in a way that requires any sort of story arc, which is a huge relief. Thanks to Herzog's dedication to the film's environment, the tension is organic (pun sort of intended) rather than contrived. The stagnant streams, overgrown jungle and harsh cliffs are more carefully and humanely depicted than any of the Laotian or Vietnamese soldiers, to be sure. Herzog doesn't build the movie to key places like Capture, Escape, etc, because survival is just more complicated than that, so the viewer is never lulled into believing that the next obstacle Bale's Dieter faces will be his last. This hell could go on forever. That's not what viewers are necessarily looking for in the summer movie season, so "Rescue Dawn" is a tough sell.

In addition to Bale, the film features several other strong performances, though the supporting work is mostly one-note. Steve Zahn's emaciated Duane showcases the most dramatic work yet from the comedic character actor, but this isn't necessarily the kind of thing you'd want to encourage him to keep doing. On the other hand, I would gladly suggest that Jeremy Davies keep doing his Charlie Manson impression over and over and over again for as long as people will pay him. That sucker is pure gold.

Oh and in a piece of casting that will amuse me and maybe 5 other people, I loved seeing Toby Huss as Spook, one of Dieter's fellow pilots. You see, they were bombing Laos and Huss is perhaps best known as the voice of Kahn on "King of the Hill," surely TV's most familiar Laotian.

"Rescue Dawn" has been on the shelf for a long time, largely because MGM never had a clue how to make anybody see it. A slow roll-out as alternative programming in the summer isn't a bad choice, though I wonder if the failure to give the film a November/December berth will cost it Oscar attention and a place on critics' Top 10 lists. That might be a shame.

Tweet

MovieWatch: "Transformers"

"Transformers"
Director: Michael Bay
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 45
In a Nutshell: I've already been asked, so you needn't bother: Given that "Transformers" is a Michael Bay movie based on a Hasbro toy line, how could I possibly have felt like I deserved anything more than I got out of it? Put more simply still: What the heck did I think I was plunking down my 12 bucks to see? They're robots in freakin' disguise. What more is there to it than that?

Sigh. I like people, I guess. Michael Bay doesn't need people and doesn't care about humans in his movies. So it's no surprise that Bay can't humanize man or robot in "Transformers." Thus, it's a 135-minute movie that's supposed to have global ramifications, but builds to a loud, bruising 45-minute conflict that takes place on two blocks of downtown Los Angeles (going by an alternative name for no good reason). In that conflict, CGI blurs bounce off each other accompanied by a fantastic and hard-working sound design.

I'm going to continue to ramble after the bump, OK?

Click through...

I don't have to understand or be interested in the plot of a movie like this. And I didn't and wasn't. But there have to be human stakes, somewhere. Characters we recognize and empathize with have to be put in jeopardy and possibly even die, assuming they weren't played by top-billed actors. The audience has to develop sufficient hatred for the villains that we root for their death in the most bloodthirsty, vigilante sort of way. It has to be us or them.

As dazzled as I often was by the visual effects in "Transformers," I never cared if the heroes succeeded (and, since they were only facing CGI blobs that never felt real for a second, I never felt that any of them were in danger). What's worse is that I never cared if the Decepticons were defeated.

In order to root against a villain, at least so far as I understand it, the villain's opposition to good or moral action has to be clearly understood. If a villain is out to kill humanity, you have to both understand why the villain wants to do away with humanity and feel that the desire is based on an actual hatred. For my money, "Transformers" don't work in large part because the Decepticons don't really care about humans. They don't care about global destruction. They care about an inanimate cube. Humans are collateral damage, but they lack the requisite reason for destroying Earth and its inhabitants. They don't hate us, so we don't fear them. I know that they were going to bring all of our machines to life or enslave us, but the movie gives less than a minute's time to illustrating that potentiality.

Oh no! Our Mountain Dew machines would come to life?!?!? That's the last straw. Damn those Decepticons.

Damn Megatron! And damn... that other Decepticon. And the other one. And that little nasty one! If I hadn't played with Transformers a bit as a kid, I wouldn't have even remembered any of the names of the miscellaneous Decepticons, but even remembering their names is pointless, because few of them have any noticeable characteristics or individual personalities. The Autobots aren't much better, though it's made clearer which GMC automobiles they're affiliated with and they're given repeated names. When Optimus Prime introduces them, he also explains their individual roles within the Autobot army -- munitions, medic, etc -- and then none of them perform any of those specialized roles within the movie. That's annoying. Despite the Autobots each having jobs and voices, one of them died and I both didn't feel a thing at the time and then didn't remember his death when it was mentioned later. Again, zero impact.

I guess it's not like the humans were making any impact either. Shia is fine, though his character spends the first half of the movie as a stammering and annoying dweeb and the second half of the movie staring at things in awe. His romantic foil, played by Megan Fox, looked phenomenal, but I kept wondering where she found time to sneak away to reapply her skank make-up. Josh Duhamel makes a bland but pretty action lead. The only actor who seems to be having any fun is John Turturro, who comes out of left field around the half-way point, seemingly out of a different movie entirely. Also in a different movie entirely? Bernie Mac.

But the coolest thing about the cast is that it has my two favorite government agents in recent TV history, with both Glenn Morshower (Agent Pierce on "24") and Michael O'Neill (Agent Ron Butterfield on "The West Wing").

Yes, the Transformers are a marvel to behold as realized by the various different effects houses. But when I played with Transformers, there was a connection between form and function -- different Autobots and Decepticons took different finite forms and the form they took impacted the powers they were able to utilize. In Michael Bay's "Transformers," the robots are much more malleable and the ones that don't transform into airplanes and helicopters seem perfectly capable of coming darned close to flying, etc. Also, with the original Transformers toys, it was always cool that that fighting robot fit perfectly into that sporty car, with no extra pieces and no additional size. In the movie, I didn't believe that Bumblebee had once been the size of a Camaro. He suddenly become vastly larger and more complicated when he went from car to fighting robot. That annoyed me.

I was also irked by how shiny the Transformers were, even at night when there were no light sources to create that reflection. They also seemed a bit weightless, like I never got a sense of how loud they were or how strong. They were able to wander around chatting on Shia TheBeef's lawn and not only did it take a while before they messed with the grass, but at no point did Shia TheBeef's parents hear them. That also annoyed me.

Perhaps the biggest way that the movie could have been fixed for me is if the humans had had any active agency in bringing about the climax of the plot.

[I'm going into spoilers here for the last act, so stop reading please if you haven't seen the movie or figure to see it some day.]

Our plucky and resourceful humans do, indeed, help bring about the end of the movie, but not through any learned behavior or particularly admirable skills or discoveries. At no point do the humans learn the weaknesses of the Decepticons, allowing them to take advantage of said weaknesses for victory. No, at some point Josh Duhamel's character hops on a motorcycle, rides under one and shoots it in the crotch and it goes down. Ummm... OK. I guess that's fine. It was dumb luck, but whatever. And Shia TheBeef brings about the final climax of the movie by jabbing the cube in Megatron's chest, an action that was never even suggested to him as a possibility (Optimus Prime volunteered his own sacrifice, but never explained anything about why it would work to the kid, much less that a similar course of action would work on a different Transformer... Again, dumb luck). And nearly 1/3rd of the movie's plot was built around Rachael Taylor and Anthony Anderson's techno-savvy characters, but descript their centrality to the narrative, they play no purpose in the plot. The characters meander around for a while, allow for exposition and then call in an air strike which, from what I recall, didn't lead to the demise of a single Decepticon. Then, in minimal aftermath to the excitement, those characters don't even appear. They just vanished. That's bad writing and a waste of time. Why couldn't those characters have been there for a reason?

[Spoilers done.]

And, in fact, review done. Sure, I could ramble on, but what's the point?

Tweet