Random Factoid #403

4 09 2010

This factoid is about 175 too late, but better late that never, right?

I made my first “Marshall and the Movies” licensed product back in March as a thank you to someone who saved my hide during a performance by finding a misplaced prop.  My thank you was two CDs featuring my picks of the best movie music of 2009, both songs and score.  I won’t be making you all one because that would be piracy, but I’d be happy to share my selections with you all and link to any YouTube videos I can.

Have any other bloggers made unofficially licensed gear?  Or am I some sort of pioneer?  While you ponder those two questions, let me lay out my lineup for you below.

Best of 2009 – Songs

  1. This Land Is Your Land (Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings) – “Up in the Air”
  2. Us (Regina Spektor) – “(500) Days of Summer”
  3. Fallin’ and Flyin’ (Jeff Bridges and Colin Farrell) – “Crazy Heart”
  4. Almost There (Anika Noni Rose) – “The Princess and the Frog”
  5. You’ve Got Me Wrapped Around Your Little Finger (Beth Rowley) – “An Education”
  6. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (The Smiths) – “(500) Days of Summer”
  7. Stu’s Song (Ed Helms) – “The Hangover”
  8. Angel in the Snow (Elliott Smith) – “Up in the Air”
  9. All Is Love (Karen O and the Kids) – “Where the Wild Things Are”
  10. Cinema Italiano (Kate Hudson) – “Nine”
  11. All My Days (Alexi Murdoch) – “Away We Go”
  12. Hold On You (Jeff Bridges) – “Crazy Heart”
  13. You Make My Dreams (Hall & Oates) – “(500) Days of Summer”
  14. Help Yourself (Sad Brad Smith) – “Up in the Air”
  15. Three Best Friends (Zach Galifianakis) – “The Hangover”
  16. Cat People (David Bowie) – “Inglourious Basterds”
  17. Smoke Without Fire (Duffy) – “An Education”
  18. I Can See In Color (Mary J. Blige) – “Precious”
  19. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want (She & Him) – “(500) Days of Summer”
  20. The Weary Kind (Ryan Bingham) – “Crazy Heart”
  21. I See You (Leona Lewis) – “Avatar”
  22. Candy Shop (The Dan Band) – “The Hangover”
  23. Up in the Air (Kevin Renick) – “Up in the Air”

Best of 2009 – Score

  1. The Green Leaves of Summer – “Inglourious Basterds”
  2. Waltz in the Street – “An Education”
  3. You Don’t Dream in Cryo – “Avatar”
  4. Stillness of the Mind – “A Single Man”
  5. High-Speed French Train – “Fantastic Mr. Fox”
  6. Married Life – “Up”
  7. Discombobulate – “Sherlock Holmes”
  8. Jake’s First Flight – “Avatar”
  9. Jenny’s Theme – “An Education”
  10. Enterprising Young Men – “Star Trek”
  11. Carlos – “A Single Man”
  12. Carl Goes Up – “Up”
  13. Rabbia E Tarantella – “Inglourious Basterds”
  14. Finale – “Nine”

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F.I.L.M. of the Week (September 3, 2010)

3 09 2010

My so-called Comedy Week comes to a conclusion today with this “F.I.L.M. of the Week,” a little indie comedy by the name of “Rocket Science.”  It’s a great high school movie, covering a group that gets very little cinematic coverage – the debaters.  Conceived by documentary filmmaker Jeffrey Blitz after observing Spelling Bee contestants and reflecting on his own adolescence, he creates a very authentic high school environment where youth is neither sneered at nor idealized.

The movie’s hero is perhaps one of the unlikeliest debaters, a fifteen-year-old with a stutter by the name of Hal Hefner (Reece Thompson).  With his speech impediment, he is not naturally drawn to the art of rhetoric.  Like so much in life, he winds up doing it to get a girl, in this case the team’s star debater, Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick).  After her previous partner dropped out of school because of an embarrassing mid-speech moment at the state championships, Ginny enlists Hal to be her new sidekick.  His venture into the world of debating is a funny-sad mix of love, lies, and betrayal (only not set against the backdrop of an implausibly corny ABC Family series).

Blitz and the movie received plenty of accolades from the Sundance Film Festival and the Independent Spirit Awards, and all laurels are much deserved.  “Rocket Science” is an honest look at the development of our selves and values in high school, something everyone goes through in those for years.  As someone still undergoing these changes (albeit in their final year), I definitely found that the film spoke to me on a very personal level.  Much like you don’t need to be Greek to connect with “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” you don’t need to be a debater to get this movie.  The lessons can apply to any group or activity in high school.

Want to know how Anna Kendrick became Golden Globe, SAG, and Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick?  Look to “Rocket Science” for the answer.  Jason Reitman, writer/director of “Up in the Air,” wrote the part of Natalie Keener specifically for her after seeing her play Ginny.  I certainly wouldn’t have stumbled upon “Rocket Science” had it not been for Kendrick’s wowing turn in “Up in the Air,” and I’m certainly glad I discovered both her and this both heartwarming and contemplative movie.


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Random Factoid #402

3 09 2010

Cinematical brought up an interesting topic – foreign movie titles and their relevance.

I’ve had plenty of exposure to them, as anyone who has been reading this blog since January knows.  I spent three weeks in Argentina, driving past plenty of movie theaters and billboards.  Some movies kept the same title (“Sherlock Holmes,” for example, needs no translation).

But there were plenty of wacky titles, my personal favorite being the change from “It’s Complicated” to “Enamorándome de mi Ex,” translated to “In Love with my Ex.”  Not even kidding, I think that’s actually a better title.  I did a whole report before my trip on movies, and an important part of my presentation was the changes in titles.  Since both Argentinians and Americans love movies, they would make great dinner conversations.  It helps to know that “Avatar” is still “Avatar” and “Despicable Me” is “My Favorite Villain” (“Mi Villano Favorito,” for any Spanish scholars out there).

Here are some findings based on the articles report:

“Get Him to the Greek” has received a limited release in Paris, retitled as American Trip, while “Youth in Revolt” has been changed to “Be Bad!”. The former sounds vanilla, though the German version, pictured above, looks better; I prefer the Spanish title, “Todo Sobre Mi Desmadre,” which sounds positively decadent (“All About My Total Chaos?”). But I like the idea of Michael Cera trying to “Be Bad!” (love that added exclamation mark, and the phrase comes straight from the movie). In Mexico it’s known as “La chica de mis suenos” (“The Girl of My Dreams”), which sounds pretty sappy.

It’s interesting to see how movies play under different titles in different countries.  A lot of times it’s because our cultural lingo doesn’t read well outside of America, but sometimes it’s for other reasons.  Any titles you wish you could change in English?  I know I’d change “Knight and Day” to … well, something else.


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REVIEW: Death at a Funeral

3 09 2010

It’s a funny thing, the remake of “Death at a Funeral.” The British original in 2007 turned the title, which implied the melancholy proceedings of a sacred ritual, into something totally unforeseen – a laugh riot.

There are those of us who think two decades is too soon for a remake, but Neil LaBute turns around the hilarious original for a Hollywood treatment in under three years. Essentially, there’s no reason for this remake to exist other than to make the script more digestible to a mainstream audience. Nothing new is brought to the table, no retooling or adding is done. It’s practically a shot-by-shot remake, claiming that swapping accents is enough to warrant the millions of dollars to produce the movie.

It’s a strange experience to watch these often funny stars, including Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, and Tracy Morgan, running around doing a half-hearted version of the original movie.  In fact, it’s almost like an out-of-body experience as we watch them utter virtually the same lines and run through the same motions as the British actors did – but never come close to matching their comedic brilliance.  Surprisingly, the funniest member of the ensemble is James Marsden, who truly embraces the farcical nature of his character and plays it up to hilarity.  However, we only get to see glances of the zonked Marsden, never prolonged scenes.

I find there no reason to watch this movie when a clearly superior alternative exists.  Sure, this version has a few laughs and is hardly unfunny, but why choose chuckles over the howls that you can have watching the original?  If you had the choice between a rotting apple that looked nice and a fresh apple with a little bit of dust on top, which would you eat?  This “Death at a Funeral” looks nice on a poster, but at its core, the movie is pretty rotten.  There’s no reason NOT to go off the beaten path to watch the British version.  C /


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Random Factoid #401

2 09 2010

I’ll take “Over-The-Top Movie Promotions” for 400.

Question: What’s the most ridiculously extravagant way to promote “Tron: Legacy?”

What is throwing a massive neon dance party at Disney World?

That is correct!

I’m not slamming the idea, just to be clear.  I see nothing wrong with lavish promotion because clearly Disney is trying to have their “Avatar.”  I’ve never been to a big movie promotional event because those don’t usually happen in Houston.  If I lived and blogged in Los Angeles, then maybe I would have.  I certainly like the idea of studios trying to reach an audience in more creative ways that a TV ad or a trailer.

But this, to me, just seems like a huge expenditure.  It will surely be a sight, have no doubt about that.  As for how effective this will be in marketing the movie is more suspect.

If I was headed to the Disney park, I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to see this.  How about you?


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REVIEW: Hot Tub Time Machine

2 09 2010

Walkmans and legwarmers and tracksuits, oh my!

It’s a blast back to the ’80s in “Hot Tub Time Machine,” the raunchy romp that defies the laws of physics.  A sort of irreverent “Back to the Future,” the movie has no science to back up what is happening.  Then again, do you expect much to back up the premise that a hot tub could transport a group of four drunk guys 25 years into the past?

Thanks to the bubbling portal, the four losers in 2010 get a chance to be their younger, cooler selves in 1986 (with the exception of Clark Duke’s gaming Jacob, who has yet to be born).  In their hangover logic, they decided that they need to do exactly as they did when they lived the weekend the first time.  For some of them, it means promiscuous escapades; for others, it means taking punches.

For those of us who didn’t live through the decade, for better or for worse, the movie still manages to be funny.  It’s not some giant ’80s inside joke; there are some nods to “Back to the Future,” both through situations and the perfectly cast Crispin Glover as a creepy bellhop, but they don’t make the movie any less accessible for those who haven’t seen it.  There’s plenty of universal humor that anyone can laugh at – provided they check their maturity at the door.

The bulk of the comedy comes courtesy of Craig Robinson, who plays Nick, the guy whipped by his unfaithful wife to the point that he takes her last name.  Robinson has been gold on “The Office” for several years now and has done many memorable supporting roles, often times being a highlight of those movies.  If “Hot Tub Time Machine” isn’t enough of a testament to his comedic talent to give him a headlining role over Chris Rock (or any other tired comedian, for that matter), there is truly no justice in the world.

Everyone else is good too, just no one on the level of Robinson.  Most of the jokes centered around John Cusack come at the expense of his own fame in the ’80s.  The woebegone Lou, played by Rob Corddry, is the most crass of the bunch, which guarantees a few laughs.  Duke’s Jacob is great for those of who didn’t live in the decade as he gapes in amazement at the social climate.  And then there’s Chevy Chase as the hot tub repairman, who is just plain creepy.

But the movie’s best facet (and the one that will make it stand out among recent comedies) is its willingness to forget teaching a lesson and just have fun.  It doesn’t pretend to have scrupulous morals; really, it doesn’t pretend to have any morals at all.  “Hot Tub Time Machine” is four guys having fun, and for once, Hollywood’s rules don’t spoil it.  B+ /


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Random Factoid #400

1 09 2010

As you might have noticed, I watch a lot of movies.  Just how many?  I’ve found myself wondering the same question on multiple occasions.  However, I never actively pursued a guesstimate number of how many movies I have seen in my lifetime until I saw Cinematical‘s post on the death of Gwilym Hughes.  Recognize the name?  Perhaps you should, and here’s why:

The world record-holder for movie watching has died. Gwilym Hughes, 65, watched more than 28,000 movies in his lifetime and held the Guinness World Record since 2008, according to BBC News. Hughes didn’t see his first film until he was 8 years of age, but more than made up for lost time, averaging 10 to 14 films per week in his later years. That works out to an average of 500-700 movies per year (?!). Hughes, a painter and decorator, kept detailed records on every movie he saw.

Can you imagine?  2 movies per day!  Don’t get me wrong, I love to watch them as much as anyone.  But movies are a nice treat for me, something that I enjoy doing to escape from the stress of my normal life.  If I watched them that much, I think they would lose a certain entertaining quality that is quite crucial.

Here’s a special confession on this my 400th day of blogging.  I’ve been waiting for the right time to reveal this side of my obsession, and Hughes’ death seemed to be an appropriate time to bring this part of me to the surface.

I keep a VERY detailed record of my moviewatching activity in a series of PowerPoints.  I make one for every year, keeping a track of all the movies I see released in that year.  I order them first by date, then in alphabetical order.  A slide looks something like this:

The color scheme is on a three-year rotation.  I also add animation to the slides for the rare occasion that I actually want to browse the PowerPoint in slideshow mode.  Heard enough?  I think I’ve written enough…

Anyways, I have kept one slideshow per year for every year of the 2000s (I only started in 2004) and have one slideshow for the three decades prior.  From each of these slideshows, I’ve come up with a rough estimate that I have seen between 1,500 and 1,800 movies in my lifetime.  I’m not going to go through and count each one because that would be an incredibly time consuming, and fairly unrewarding, process.

So what’s your estimate?  At almost 18, do you think you had seen as many movies as I have?


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Oscar Moment: Pre-Festival Predictions!

1 09 2010

Well, folks, I’ve given you 14 Oscar Moments so far that have examined and analyzed the potential awards contenders of 2010.  Today begins a new chapter of the Oscar hunt with the beginning of the Venice Film Festival.  Next week, the Toronto Film Festival will kick off, and soon there will be various festivals in New York, Telluride, and London.

No more idle chatter. This is real.  It’s the time of the year when we separate the weaklings from the true players.  And so I begin before the madness with a few opinions of my own, a set of predictions that I have formed from merely the raw slate as is.  I’ll probably look back at this list and laugh; last year, I said “It’s Complicated” would be nominated.

So, on with the show!  (I’m skipping the screenplays for the next set of predictions.)

Best Supporting Actress

  1. Keira Knightley, “Never Let Me Go”
  2. Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”
  3. Barbara Hershey, “Black Swan”
  4. Hailee Steinfeld, “True Grit”
  5. Marion Cotillard, “Inception”

This is a category that likes proven young talent, so I think Knightley makes a good first pick for a winner.  Melissa Leo is clearly well-liked enough by the Academy to score a nomination for a no-name movie like “Frozen River,” so I think pretty mainstream Oscar bait like “The Fighter” bodes well for her chances.  I threw Hershey in the mix because I feel like the Academy will love “Black Swan,” and Best Supporting Actress likes veterans as well.  I’ve never even heard of Steinfeld, but she’s young, and this is the category that gave Tatum O’Neal and Anna Paquin the big prize in their teen years.  And just for fun, I threw in Cotillard as a wild-card.  She’s already won an Oscar, and I get the feeling the Oscars want to nominate her again.

Best Supporting Actor

  1. Christian Bale, “The Fighter”
  2. Sam Rockwell, “Conviction”
  3. Andrew Garfield, “The Social Network”
  4. Vincent Cassel, “Black Swan”
  5. Mark Ruffalo, “The Kids Are All Right”

An entire slate of first-time nominees?  Dang … I honestly have no idea how this category is going to play out; I just picked from some movies that I thought would be big.  Four of the five are from Best Picture nominees (riskiest bet being Cassel), and I threw in Sam Rockwell because his performance looks REALLY baity.

Best Actress

  1. Annette Bening, “The Kids Are All Right”
  2. Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”
  3. Jennifer Lawrence, “Winter’s Bone”
  4. Michelle Williams, “Blue Valentine”
  5. Julianne Moore, “The Kids Are All Right”

I’m sensing Bening vs. Portman with maybe a little bit of Jennifer Lawrence to make things interesting.  It’s time for Bening to get one, if not for “The Kids Are All Right” then at least as recognition of how amazing she was in “American Beauty.”  Then again, Natalie Portman is going way out of her good-girl comfort zone, even farther than “Closer,” for “Black Swan.”  She’s definitely a force to be reckoned with this year.  Lawrence is the up-and-comer of the season, which always adds some fun.  Williams, a previous Oscar nominee, is a good bet based on how emotionally wrenching her role is.  And Julianne Moore needs to show up somewhere this year; it appears they are campaigning her for lead where she belongs.  Honestly, they should move Annette Bening to supporting.

Best Actor

  1. Mark Wahlberg, “The Fighter”
  2. Jesse Eisenberg, “The Social Network”
  3. James Franco, “127 Hours”
  4. Robert Duvall, “Get Low”
  5. Ryan Gosling, “Blue Valentine”

It feels like a Wahlberg kind of year.  He’s been nominated before, but this is a role that is born for him to play.  More on that later in the inevitable Oscar Moment, though.  Everyone else has better days ahead, or, in the case of Robert Duvall, already has an Oscar.

Best Director

  1. David Fincher, “The Social Network”
  2. Mike Leigh, “Another Year”
  3. Christopher Nolan, “Inception”
  4. David O. Russell, “The Fighter”
  5. Darren Aronofsky, “Black Swan”

Fincher rides “The Social Network” train to victory.  Mike Leigh gives him a good run for his money because the Academy loves him way too much.  Christopher Nolan finally gets a much deserved Best Director nomination.  David O. Russell gets in because his movie is loved.  And Darren Aronofsky gets in for the same reason – except he has a rabid fan base that will try to push him to victory.

Best Picture

  1. The Social Network
  2. The Fighter
  3. Toy Story 3
  4. Another Year
  5. Black Swan
  6. Inception
  7. Never Let Me Go
  8. The Kids Are All Right
  9. Blue Valentine
  10. 127 Hours

I’ve read one review of “The Social Network,” but that alone has convinced me that the movie will win Best Picture.  If it’s as good as that review claims, it will be one of the most zeitgeist-tapping movies EVER.  After “The Hurt Locker” got in touch with the American psyche in Iraq last year and won Best Picture, the prize will move back home for “The Social Network.”

I’m just picking up really good vibes from “The Fighter,” mainly because it’s the “little movie that could” story that propelled “Slumdog Millionaire” to victory in 2008.

“Toy Story 3” could actually win.  No joke.  But enough people have to raise the question of “Who cares if it’s animated, it’s the best movie of the year?” to overcome the hurdles.

“Another Year” becomes the critical darling of 2010, likely a critics’ circle favorite, and thus impossible to ignore.

I’ll admit that I caught a peek at some early “Black Swan” reviews from Venice and this is the real deal.  It’s in.

“Inception” plays into the mix, although outside the old-fashioned five, because it’s the big summer hit and for “The Dark Knight” reparations.  Such a combination has to equal a Best Picture nomination.

“Never Let Me Go” is the obligatory literary adaptation bait.

“The Kids Are All Right” will get in because of its great critical standing.  It’s going to have a hard time making a serious run, though, because of the mediocre box office receipts.

“Blue Valentine” is going to be so hard-hitting and gruelingly real that I think the Academy can’t ignore it.

And finally, “127 Hours” gets in just because the Academy loves Danny Boyle and can’t think of anything else to put in.  Or wait, maybe that’s me who can’t think of anything else to put in!

What are your thoughts?  Who did I leave off?  Where am I dead on?


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Shameless Advertisement #18 – September 2010

1 09 2010

Well, folks, summer is officially come and gone.  It’s fall, for better or for worse.  At first, it will bring us frustration with Hollywood’s garbage, but later, we will get some good Oscar material.  Who knows, maybe we will even get some this month!

This might not be a terrible September.  The poll indicated that there are a variety of movies of interest scattered throughout the month.  This weekend’s “The American” and “Machete” each received a vote, as did the September 24th opener “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.”  I’m not sure if the two votes for “Legend of the Guardians” were in jest as I ripped the movie apart, but nonetheless, I still have to mention its popularity.  It tied for first place with “The Town,” which I will declare the winner because that’s the kind of authority that I have as the author.  Here’s what I wrote in the September preview post:

I have absolutely no idea what to make of the trailer for “The Town.”  But with a cast including the likes of Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, and Ben Affleck for the former, which opens in wide release this weekend, I’m definitely in.

I was intentionally vague because I featured the movie in an Oscar Moment only three days later.  Here’s what I had to say there:

…the trailer is a muddled mess and just watching it did not sell me on this being one of the ten best movies of the year.  We are resting on the laurels of the people involved to call it an awards prospect.  Would I be writing this if the movie were directed by Antoine Fuqua and starred Matthew Morrison from “Glee?”

Here are my reservations about calling this a contender for the big prize.  We’ve seen studios roll out Oscar hopefuls in September, seeing if they gain enough footing in the awards race.  They reserve the big guns for November and December, and any movie that disappoints in those release slots dooms the studio.  So these mixed-bag candidates often find a home in early fall.  Usually, the movies are either action or drama with the starpower on (and perhaps off) the screen to generate buzz provided that the movie is any good.

I’m definitely excited for this just as an attraction for a pretty slow month.  Here’s the trailer another time because that’s the territory that comes along with the shameless advertisement.

And onward to what you can expect from “Marshall and the Movies” in September!

Fincherfest! What better way to celebrate the week leading up to the hotly anticipated release of “The Social Network” than by revisiting director David Fincher’s previous films?  I’ll cover each and every one of the versatile filmmaker’s movies the last week of September.

Oscar Moment Week! After the dust settles from the Toronto and Venice Film Festivals, I am dedicating the entire week of September 20-24 (at the very least) to covering the hottest products emerging from the festivals.  I’ll for sure cover the big names premiering at the festivals like “Black Swan” and “127 Hours,” but hopefully there will be some discoveries worth writing about as well.

Classics Corner!  Seriously! Things got pretty hectic at the end of the month, so I didn’t get to write my monthly column in the timely fashion that I had laid out.  But I promise it will be back once, if not twice, in September.  Boo yeah!

Podcast!  Maybe? I make no promises here as I don’t have any sort of definite recording schedule set up for the podcast.  But if not this month, then at least by October.  If they do happen, look for it at the end of the month.

Save Yourself! I’m back with a Best Picture nominee you absolutely need to avoid – and it’s going to stir up some intense conversation.  Prepare yourself because that post is headed your way in the next few days.

And all this is just on top of the weekly “F.I.L.M. of the Week” column, reviews and Oscar Moments that pop every so often, and, of course, the random factoids.  All features are subject to change, and I may wind up adding some features later too.  But I’m sure going to try hard to stay on my schedule here.

Have a great September at the movies!  (P.S. – It’s weird to think that the second shameless advertisement ever was September 2009.  A year … woah.)


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REVIEW: The Bounty Hunter

1 09 2010

Have you ever watched a movie and wondered what could make an actor’s standards drop so low?  Even if you haven’t before, you will watching Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston slog through the miserable “The Bounty Hunter.” You may not have held either of these actors in the highest of regards anyways, but it’s easily a career low for both stars.

The movie is an action comedy – well, if you count Butler punching a few people as action and a few pity sneer as comedy.  We’ve never quite seen a plot like this, where exes fight with stakes as high as prison, but it never feels the slightest bit original.  In fact, it just feels like an old trip down Memory Lane, mimicking every sort of used gimmick with ex-lovers.  But boy, Memory Lane has never looked so run-down or shabby.  It’s time for some renovation.

It’s the typical “hate turns to love” romance story as Butler’s bounty hunter Milo gets to track down ex-wife Nicole, Aniston’s flighty news reporter who foolishly misses her court date over an article.  He finds her and begins hauling her to jail, and on their journey, they suddenly start to realize that they never gave their marriage a fair shot.  I’d call it a dumbed-down Stockholm syndrome, but something tells me the writers of this movie don’t even have the intelligence to use Wikipedia and look it up.

Don’t even mention the writers adding insult to injury by trying to add complexity to the plot by adding in other storylines.  Honestly, if anyone wants to spend nearly two hours of their life watching this movie, they want to see it for Butler and Aniston.  The last thing we want is to have our time wasted by anything that detracts from the main story – sorry, Jason Sudeikis, but you really stink here, and Lorne Michaels would fire you if you ever did anything this bad on “SNL.”  D /


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Random Factoid #399

31 08 2010

I’m a huge Lost fan (and this whole movie blogging gig has kept me from watching the final season … grr), but I would never be THIS obsessed.  According to Entertainment Weekly, a theater in Britain will be showing all 80 hours of the show in one sitting!  I can’t even imagine sitting in a theater for more than 3 days.

Although some people are willing to take their love to the extreme, everyone shows it in some way.  Face it, we all have our obsessive moments when it comes to pop culture.  Don’t try to hide it.

My ultimate feat is watching an entire season of “24” in one day, virtually uninterrupted.  But when it comes to movies, my binges are less impressive.  I have always wanted to do the Best Picture Showcase at AMC, but it always interferes with rehearsal (this year, however, the ceremonies are a week earlier, so it might just work).

I can’t think of any inspired movie marathon that I’ve done, unfortunately.  I wanted to do a “Lord of the Rings” marathon over the summer, but the time just never presented itself.  Maybe when life settles down some this spring…


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REVIEW: She’s Out of My League

31 08 2010

“She’s Out of My League” makes an entire movie out of the question we asked all during 2007’s “Knocked Up” – wait, how can that attractive woman be with this disgusting slob?  No chance they would be together had he not gotten her pregnant, we thought to ourselves.

It could have been a movie about inner beauty, about falling in love with someone’s personality rather than their appearance.  Yet it’s exactly because Kirk (Jay Baruchel) is a little lacking in the looks department that Molly (Alice Eve) decides to give him a chance.  Tired of the narcissism of guys as good-looking as she is, she drops her standards a little bit in the hopes of finding a decent guy.  The fact that someone as beautiful as her could fall for an average joe like Kirk shocks his immature friends at work, a circle of four that serves as a poor man’s version of Seth Rogen’s stoner pals in “Knocked Up.”

This isn’t a movie from the so-called “Apatow Factory,” and it shows in several key missing components.  Aside from Kirk and Molly’s relationship, we don’t really buy any of the other characters or their relation – Molly’s foul-mouthed best friend, Kirk’s strange family and ex-girlfirend situation, or any of his work friends.  They are an incredibly improbable bunch – a confident self-obsessor, a loser who claims to have all the answers, and a married dork.  And maybe I’d have an easier time getting to like them had the actors not been substitutes for the people who could actually play them right.  In an ideal world, Jason Segel would be the self-obsessor, Jonah Hill would be the loser, and oddly enough, Baruchel would probably be playing the dork.

But thankfully, Eve and Baruchel work as the 2010 make of the Katherine Heigl-Seth Rogen pairing.  Eve manages to be a lot more likable and down-to-earth than Heigl (which apparently isn’t too hard), and Baruchel has a very dorky charm about him that proves to be quite winning.  Yet this appeal and chemistry can’t atone for the dearth of laughs in the movie.  Frankly, it just isn’t funny, something that I blame mostly on the uninspired script.  Baruchel tries his best to breathe some life into it, but nothing really works.

It’s a shame that this movie wasn’t better for Jay Baruchel, who really has a likable, average-joe charm about him.  He really deserves a breakout role to make him a marquee name, but he’s more recognizable for a movie where he didn’t show his face, “How to Train Your Dragon,” than he is for anything else.  It will come one of these days, but for now, we wait.  C+ /


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Random Factoid #398

30 08 2010

Are you keeping track of how your favorite movie characters are dying?  Daniel Engber at Slate is.  In an impeccably well researched article “Terra Infirma,” he charts the decline in the use of quicksand in movies for the past few decades.  Really, the only movie I can remember that employed the natural phenomena is “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

I feel like quicksand has become, in a way, an antiquated cinematic device.  It was something simple to replicate, and people just expect more for their money with an army of computer graphics engineers available.  If you have the time, I highly recommend you read the article (confession: I’ve only skimmed because I have so little time).  Here’s an excerpt from the beginning:

The fourth-graders were unanimous: Quicksand doesn’t scare them, not one bit. If you’re a 9- or 10-year-old at the P.S. 29 elementary school in Brooklyn, N.Y., you’ve got more pressing concerns: Dragons. Monsters. Big waves at the beach that might separate a girl from her mother. Thirty years ago, quicksand might have sprung up at recess, in pools of discolored asphalt or the dusty corners of the sandbox—step in the wrong place, and you’d die. But not anymore, a boy named Zayd tells me. “I think people used to be afraid of it,” he says. His classmates nod. “It was before we were born,” explains Owen. “Maybe it will come back one day.”

For now, quicksand has all but evaporated from American entertainment—rejected even by the genre directors who once found it indispensable. There isn’t any in this summer’s fantasy blockbuster “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time”or in last year’s animated jungle romp “Up.” You won’t find quicksand in “The Last Airbender” or “Avatar,” either. Giant scorpions emerge from the sand in “Clash of the Titans,” but no one gets sucked under. And what about “Lost”—a tropical-island adventure series replete with mud ponds and dangling vines? That show, which ended in May, spanned six seasons and roughly 85 hours of television airtime—all without a single step into quicksand. “We were a little bit concerned that it would just be cheesy,” says the show’s Emmy-winning writer and executive producer, Carlton Cuse. “It felt too clichéd. It felt old-fashioned.”

Engber may have hit on this, but here are my conclusions on the sucking dry of quicksand in cinema.  First, Americans want blood.  They want bloody satisfaction, something that can only be delivered in the form of a body.  Quicksand robs us of that joy by sucking the victims under the surface of the earth.  Second, there’s no way to vitalize the quicksand escape.  There’s no creativity involved; you either pull yourself out, have someone help you get out, or you die.  Pretty simple stuff.

But going even farther beyond quicksand, looking at the chart of the decline of quicksand made me realize how little I actually remember movies, particularly action movies.  They just all run together.  I can barely remember “The A-Team” from two months ago; anything around five years ago is a muddled mess.  So in my mind, does it really matter that the art of death by quicksand is dying?  Is anyone lamenting this?


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REVIEW: Cop Out

30 08 2010

The first joke, so to speak, in “Cop Out” involves the mispronunciation of the word homage by Tracy Morgan’s idiotic cop.  He says it as it appears, phonetically sounding like “home-age.”  Any lover of sophisticated art – or really just anybody with common knowledge, like Bruce Willis as Morgan’s brutalized partner – cringes, and perhaps simultaneously laughs.

Although Morgan’s Paul can’t pronounce the word, he is well aware of its meaning.  He loves to pay homage to cinematic tough guys, particularly the “bad cops,” in an attempt to make himself intimidating to the accused criminals.  It works about as well as an iPhone that’s gone through the spin cycle in the washing machine, which is to say not very well.  However, it does provide amusement for the other guys at the station, as well as us, the audience.  It’s like watching a montage of Tracy Morgan’s “SNL” impressions, and it’s hard not to get a kick out of watching him butcher great lines from classic movies.

The joke of paying homage keeps coming up throughout the movie in bits and fragments, always good for a nice chuckle.  But the movie lags and bores when Morgan has to play the hopelessly pathetic character written for him in the script.  One has to wonder how he can choose such hackneyed fare when his day job is working for Tina Fey, one of the brightest bulbs in the comedic universe at the moment, on “30 Rock.”

And then there’s our old friend Bruce Willis, playing the character as bored as we are.  He’s supposed to be the straight man in the routine, but he just looks bored and ready to head back to his trailer.  While such emotions can be a character choice, there has to be some variety to give off the faintest illusion that he’s not on the screen just to cash the paycheck that follows.  I don’t know what he thinks will come first, the AARP check or the offer to reprise John McClane for “Die Hard 5: Just DIE Already!”

In a year where “The Other Guys” cornered the market on making the stale buddy cop genre somewhat bearable, it seems that “Cop Out” is “The Other Cop Movie” of 2010.  This is a title made even more insulting by the fact that it’s directed by Kevin Smith, the mind behind some of the great independent movies of the 1990s.  I haven’t seen any of his earlier movies, but based on this, I’m not very keen to go back and examine his collection.  It seems to me that Smith is like the M. Night Shyamalan of comedy – a meteoric rise followed by a steep fall.  “Cop Out” isn’t bad enough to be called rock bottom, but any worse and Smith gets dangerously close.  C /


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Random Factoid #397

29 08 2010

Is this a joke?

The Angelika Film Center, the biggest “art house” theater in Houston, unexpectedly shut its doors today.  Apparently it was plagued by problems with the landlord. Grrr.

With 8 screens, most of which were dedicated to independent cinema, it was definitely a huge resource as a blogger.  Now Houston, the fourth biggest city in the country, is left with 3 SCREENS to show independent movies (at the River Oaks Theater).  Please tell me I’m dreaming?!

I fully intend to write letters to theater owners in Houston telling them that they need to pick up some of the movies that the Angelika was going to show.  If I don’t get to see “I’m Still Here” or “The Tillman Story” because of the theater’s negligence, I will erupt like Vesuvius.  I’m already having nightmares of December whenever everyone else can see awards movies but Houston will have no screens to show them on!

I’m very distraught, as you can tell.  On a blogging level, this is like a death in the family.


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