[photo credit]

Just a quick note to let everyone know the site will be down tonight (1/24) at midnight for about an hour or so. We are moving onto a new server and planning out a whole new design flow, which I am extremely excited about. Tonight is only the server migration, but the new design will be unleashed in the near future. The site will have more content, more functionality and even more movie linkage (if that is even possible). Thanks for reading and hope you all are having an amazing weekend!

Coming Soon: Defiance

For movie fanatics all over the world, this is the morning we wipe our crusted eyelids, roll clumsily out of bed and collapse on the couch to see the live announcement of the Academy Award nominations. It is more than a testament to the passion we have for cinema, it is a statement of how much we want to quickly and violently debate the fairness of the Academy’s choices. So, let the debate begin…

Best Motion Picture of the Year

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

- Frost/Nixon

- Milk

- The Reader

- Slumdog Millionaire (deserves to win, most likely winner)

What can anyone do to stop the steamrolling power of the Slumdog? Pretty much nothing. Sweeping every category it was nominated in at the Golden Globes, Slumdog has all the momentum and all the passion of an Oscar winner. It’s uplifting, full of hope and adversity, and overall everything the Academy voters love to rally around. When it wins for Best Picture it will also help paint the picture of the Academy as a more international accepting body of voters. I give great credit to Benjamin Button and Frost/Nixon for both being incredible films, but I don’t see them climbing over Slumdog for a win. Milk to me is over-nominated and I would have gladly let this one go in favor of The Dark Knight or Revolutionary Road. My disappointment over the snubbing of The Dark Knight isn’t truly due to thinking it would win the category, but because it would have given some validation to the comic book genre and really helped to boost the idea that these are not just costumed vigilantes on a violence bender, they are incredibly complex and moving stories available to be enjoyed by adults as well as kids. As for The Reader, Ricky Gervais must have been right when he told Kate Winslet at the Golden Globes, “See, just do the Holocaust movie and awards just come rolling in.”

Best Achievement in Directing

- David Fincher: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

- Ron Howard: Frost/Nixon

- Gus Van Sant: Milk

- Stephen Daldry: The Reader

- Danny Boyle: Slumdog Millionaire (deserves to win, most likely winner)

This is the first time since 1944 where there is an exact match between the Best Picture category and the Best Director. Commonly the two awards go hand-in-hand, but there is usually one oddball or mismatch between them. Not this year and my feelings remain pretty much the same from the previous category. Danny Boyle will walk away the winner.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

- Richard Jenkins: The Visitor (deserves to win)

- Frank Langella: Frost/Nixon

- Sean Penn: Milk

- Brad Pitt: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

- Mickey Rourke: The Wrestler (most likely winner)

Now here is some excitement and tension for the night. The inclusion of dark horse Richard Jenkins throws a distinct wrench in the celebratory plans of Mickey Rourke, who took the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama. Jenkins hands down deserves the nomination and I am pulling for him to win. All these performances were incredibly strong, which could split the voting and leave Jenkins available for the sneak attack. The big money is on Rourke because of his Cinderella-esque return to the limelight, but I’m personally hedging my bets and putting some small change on Jenkins. Sean Penn can proudly stand here as the one thing I agree with in terms of nominations for Milk. He was the lightning rod for this film and it all hinged on his stellar performance. Langella and Pitt both were terrific, but the momentum and buzz are not behind them this year.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

- Josh Brolin: Milk

- Robert Downey Jr.: Tropic Thunder

- Philip Seymour Hoffman: Doubt

- Heath Ledger: The Dark Knight (deserves to win, most likely winner)

- Michael Shannon: Revolutionary Road

I was thinking about just leaving this area with one word, “Duh”, but that would steal my opportunity to praise and shout for the nomination of Michael Shannon. He was the most outstanding and powerful part of Revolutionary Road and I am thrilled he got the nod here. Yet, with that said, let me now return to my previous thought…

“Duh.”

Ledger takes this.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

- Anne Hathaway: Rachel Getting Married (deserves to win)

- Angelina Jolie: Changeling

- Melissa Leo: Frozen River

- Meryl Streep: Doubt

- Kate Winslet: The Reader (most likely winner)

Who is Melissa Leo and what is this film, Frozen River? Pulling a repectful Jenkins-like move, Leo throws this semi-strong category into a whirl. Hathaway and Winslet are the two obvious front runners, with Hathaway almost sure to take the Independent Spirit Award the night before the Oscars and Winslet still fanning herself off after the double grab at the Golden Globes for both her roles this year. Holocaust subject matter aside, I think Hathaway was stronger in her role as an ex-junkie struggling with reintegrating herself into her own family, where as if Winslet had been nominated for Revolutionary Road instead of The Reader I would be more inclined to begrudgingly hand it to her. Streep can’t be totally counted out, especially since all four of the main actors from Doubt got nominations, but I think she will fall by the wayside here. Maybe when she lands there, she can bring Jolie a drink, she’s been down there all year.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

- Amy Adams: Doubt

- Penelope Cruz: Vicky Christina Barcelona

- Viola Davis: Doubt

- Taraji P. Henson: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

- Marisa Tomei: The Wrestler (deserves to win, most likely winner)

Even though Vicky Christina Barcelona took home the Golden Globe for Best Comedy, I think Penelope is the only one is this category you can count out of the running. The two Doubt women, Davis and Adams, were both sensational, but they might end up splitting that audience in half. This leaves Henson and Tomei to battle it out, with Tomei a touch ahead since I think she only lost out on the Globe because she was battling Winslet on her night-of-all-nights. If Henson pulls it out here, she will most likely be one of very few of the thirteen nominations for Button that will result in a win.

Best Animated Film of the Year

- Bolt

- Kung Fu Panda

- Wall-E (deserves to win, most likely winner)

I’m still baffled by all the acclaim for Bolt, but it really doesn’t matter this year. Wall-E lost out on a Best Picture nod most likely because everyone just wanted to give it this award and be done with it. Plan on Pixar walking away once again, proud of its tiny trashman.

Best Adapted Screenplay

- Eric Roth: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

- John Patrick Shanley: Doubt

- Peter Morgan: Frost/Nixon

- David Hare: The Reader

- Simon Beaufoy: Slumdog Millionaire (deserves to win, most likely winner)

There’s a good chance Slumdog will continue its reign here, but it’s a strong category so anything could really happen. The Reader has pulled in lots of support and you can count on a huge studio push for the win, but the rest of the pack are no slouches either. Shanley wrote the play for Doubt as well as the screenplay and he was already heaped with acclaim for the stage version (surprisingly, the same holds true for Morgan with Frost/Nixon). Hare succeeded greatly with taking an incredibly minute starting point, a much loved, but much thinner short story, so his skill and credit comes from the expansion and illumination of tale we are lucky to not have missed. Anyone’s game, but I’ll lean towards the Bollywood train based on sheer momentum.

Best Original Screenplay

- Courtney Hunt: Frozen River

- Mike Leigh: Happy-Go-Lucky

- Martin McDonagh: In Bruges

- Dustin Lance Black: Milk

- Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon: Wall-E (deserves to win, most likely winner)

Again, this is a category where Milk really doesn’t fit. I don’t see it as an original story since it was a biopic and mostly a dramatization of the documentary, The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. It’s a good film, but not what I consider an original story. Then there’s that mystery movie, Frozen River, once again. I really need to see this. Wall-E deserves writing acclaim without a doubt since the first twenty minutes were done beautifully with virtually no dialogue at all. That’s talent, people. Happy-Go-Lucky and In Bruges are getting more acclaim since both movies had their main actors recognized with Golden Globes this year, but I think this one will still end in the incredibly cute storage bin of our friend, Wall-E.

Best Achievement in Art Direction

- Changeling

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (deserves to win, most likely winner)

- The Dark Knight

- The Duchess

- Revolutionary Road

The Duchess is a period drama and those tend to do well in this category. As for the rest, they are all incredibly picturesque and beautifully designed films, ranging from the aging, earthy tones of Button to the stark and stunning colors of Road, any of these films deserves the accolade on this night. Just for the sake of picking a winner, I’ll toss my tiny iota of support behind Button. (Sorry, Dark Knight, I still love you.)

Best Achievement in Cinematography

- Changeling

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

- The Dark Knight

- The Reader

- Slumdog Millionaire (deserves to win, most likely winner)

Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish the difference between Best Art Direction, which is how the film and its universe looks, and Best Cinematography, which is how the film is shot, which in turn show you how the universe looks. It’s a fine line, but this year I think the inventiveness of movement and pacing coupled with the saturated colors of India are going to bring Slumdog yet one more statue for the night.

Best Achievement in Costume Design

- Australia

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (deserves to win, most likely to win)

- The Duchess

- Milk

- Revolutionary Road

Except for The Duchess, these are all dramas set in fairly contemporary time periods, so the costume design was more about complementing the world and environment, whereas in Duchess gets to really show off the fashions of its 18th century era; big hair pieces, huge dresses and rib-crushing corsets. I’ll lean towards Button due it sheer volume of nominations and its clarity of vision inside the entire project, but this is truly a toss-up.

Best Documentary Feature

- The Betrayal

- Encounters at the End of the World

- The Garden

- Man on Wire (most likely to win)

- Trouble the Water

I can’t put “deserves to win” here since I have seen absolutely none of these. I love documentaries, but I happen to miss this grouping completely. I’ve heard amazing things about Man on Wire from both friends and industry readings, so I’ll go with that one.

Best Documentary Short Subject

- The Conscience of Nhem En

- The Final Inch

- Smile Pinki

- The Witness – From the Balcony of Room 306

Umm…[tries to read tea leaves]…uh…The Witness? Yeah, that’ll win.

Best Achievement in Film Editing

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

- The Dark Knight

- Frost/Nixon (deserves to win)

- Milk

- Slumdog Millionaire (most likely winner)

Although the editing in Slumdog was sensational, I am happy to announce I think there is actually a better choice in this category. Frost/Nixon tackled a nearly yawn-inducing subject, one last interview with an old and broken man, and turned into a harrowing, sweat-filled ride towed along by brilliant pacing. Do I think it will actually win, nope, but it most certainly gets my vote for most deserving.

Best Foreign Language Film

- The Baader Meinhof Complex

- The Class

- Departures

- Revanche

- Waltz with Bashir (most likely winner)

Bashir took home the Globe and you can expect it will do the same here. Nothing but praise has been heaped on this oddly animated drama and I am itching for my chance to witness it myself.

Best Achievement in Makeup

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (most likely to win)

- The Dark Knight

- Hellboy II: The Golden Army (deserves to win)

The real choice here is what you find more impressive, making something look incredibly realistic with a mixture of CGI and practical makeup or making something fantastical come to life with prosthetics and makeup? The former would give you Button as the winner and the latter would give you Hellboy II, while the only makeup worth celebrating in Dark Knight is the insanely creepy and dripping face of the Joker. I would like to see Hellboy win here for the amazing work not only on the main character, but also the underworld villain Prince Nuada and his sister, Princess Nuala.

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)

- Alexander Desplat: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

- James Newton Howard: Defiance

- Danny Elfman: Milk

- A.H. Rahman: Slumdog Millionaire (deserves to win, most likely winner)

- Thomas Newman: Wall-E

While this might be the happiest group of characters Danny Elfman ever scored for, I think he will lose and quickly return to his gothic roots. Slumdog has a good chance due to its unique international flavor and the Golden Globe A.H. Rahman is already carrying, but the other three are very much in the running.

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song)

- Peter Gabriel: “Down to Earth” from Wall-E (most likely winner)

- Gulzar: “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire (deserves to win)

- A.R. Rahman, Maya Arulpragasam: “O Saya” from Slumdog Millionaire

There is a distinct lack of the man commonly referred to as “The Boss”! Why Bruce Springsteen didn’t get a nomination for the Golden Globe winning song he wrote and performed for The Wrestler is beyond me. Also surprising is the exclusion of Academy golden oldie, Clint Eastwood, and his warbling diddy for Gran Torino. With those two oddly out of the limelight, Gabriel could indeed walk away with it for his heartwarming tune, but Gulzar’s tune is the ending credits number and backs up a huge Bollywood dance number, which helps lift the audience to their feet after all the yearning and struggling they just witnessed. I’m going to put my mark there, while internally wishing I could actually dance like that.

Best Animated Short Film

- La Maison en Petits Cubes

- Lavatory – Lovestory

- Oktapodi

- Presto (most likely winner)

- This Way Up

Presto is the only one I have seen since it was shown before Wall-E in the theater, but the whole thing is done with no dialogue and is gut-wrenchingly funny. Plus, it’s a Pixar joint, so just give it the gold and be happy they want to make more.

Best Live Action Short Film

- Auf der Strecke (On the Line)

- Mannon on the Asphalt (most likely winner)

- New Boy

- The Pig

- Spielzeugland (Toyland)

I’ll go with Mannon on the Asphalt because it makes me think of a montage of skateboarders faceplanting.

Best Achievement in Sound Editing

- The Dark Knight (deserves to win, most likely winner)

- Iron Man

- Slumdog Millionaire

- Wall-E

- Wanted

The fact Wanted can now call itself an Academy Award nominated film just tickles me. There was some great sound work by all the nominees in this category, but here I will lovingly and joyously put my ballot into the box of Dark Knight. From the sounds of the jet engine of the Batmobile to the bone-crushing thud of Ledger’s head hitting the interrogation room table, this was a symphony of audio accomplishment.

Best Achievement in Sound Mixing

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

- The Dark Knight (deserves to win)

- Slumdog Millionaire (most likely winner)

- Wall-E

- Wanted

Evidently Iron Man didn’t mix as well as they edited. Odd. Anyway, I’d still like to see Dark Knight get this, but I think the voting block might split this one up. There might still be enough uber-love for Slumdog to pull this one through for them as well.

Best Achievement in Visual Effects

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (deserves to win, most likely winner)

- The Dark Knight

- Iron Man

This is the one category where Button truly deserves to win, hands down. The character of Benjamin was so incredible and adorable, I couldn’t felt any more sympathy and yearning for him if he were sitting right in front of me. The only reason it worked was the sheer realism of this aged and decrepit child, so without any reservations, this one goes to them.

If you made it all the way down here, thanks once again for reading and I would love to hear your thoughts. Tell me I’m right, tell me I’m wrong, make me believe I missed out on something truly great or just let me know what you thought of that box of Raisinets you got at the movies (Were yours stale? Mine were last time, but I can’t stop getting them).
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Rating: 7 out of 10

There are numerous ways to tell a story. You can paint a picture which conveys one image, but a library worth of emotion. You can write a piece of music which seeps in behind the eyes and speaks even more directly to the heart. Hell, some people can even tell a story through the presentation of a seven course meal with a well thought out menu. Yet two of the most popular ways to tell a story are on stage and on screen and every now and again one story takes that perilous walk from one to the other. Sometimes the results can be fascinating, like opening up a whole new way to think about the characters and the story as a whole, but on other occasions all you do is sit back and wish you’d seen it in its original form. Sometimes, just sometimes, where you’re born is where you’re meant to stay.

As you might guess, that is how I feel about Doubt.

Doubt is a story about a power struggle between Sister Aloysius Beauvier, an overbearing, discipline-driven nun and Father Brendan Flynn, a younger, more socially-forward pastor that the Sister unwillingly works for. Sister Aloysius is alerted to a possible inappropriate situation going on between Father Flynn and a young boy in the church and she goes on a hell-bent tirade to root him out, no matter what the cost or the complete lack of proof she has. With conviction and passion on her side and logic and the absence of proof on his side, these two deeply entrenched personalities battle over truth, what you are allowed to do to get it and finally, if you really need it at all.

The story originated as a play written by John Patrick Shanley and he went on to write the screenplay and direct the film himself. In most cases you don’t get that lucky, to have the original creator still in such control over the new permutation, but Shanley made sure he kept the tone and power of the story intact during its newest transformation. In a certain respect that might be part of the problem. In the original play only four characters were in it: the nun, the father, the younger nun and the mother of the boy in question. With the film, many more people had to be created to fill out the world they lived in and on occasion it worked perfectly, creating fluid movement between the scenes with the major characters, but every now and again you could feel the presence of a band-aid type of moment, only there to hold things together while we got to something actually important. Also, I haven’t read the play or ever seen it on stage, but the character of the boy’s mother only has one scene in the film, albeit an incredibly powerful one, and it feels like she could have been made much more integral to the film. The dialogue is intense, pointed and incredibly crisp, but that much is to be expected coming from such an accomplished playwright as Shanely. As a play, Doubt had already taken home the 2005 Drama Desk Award, a Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Not too shabby.

In some of the transfers from stage to screen, the studios and directors will reach out to those actors already familiar with the material and bring in the original cast members (as was done with Frost/Nixon with Langella and Sheen), but Shanely made a specific choice to not invite his stage cast into the film project because he knew with the growth of the world he had to create for the film, those actors would have a harder time adapting to the new version of the story and they would feel out of place with the rest of the cast. So he brought in new blood to the project and I can truly say he chose incredibly well. Philip Seymour Hoffman took on the role of Father Flynn and he attacked it with the passion and sensitivity we have all come to know and expect from him. There is an honesty about him, even when he is playing a villain, that makes the audience side with him on nearly anything. Standing across the religious ring from him was Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius. She channeled every child’s worst nightmare of their Catholic school upbringing into this devout and devious despot. From the moment she lets her brain lock onto the possibility of Father Flynn’s misdeed, she tenaciously grabs hold, sets her head down and barrels over anyone and everything in her path. Like most movies born on the stage, this has some truly amazing scenes and one particular fight between Hoffman and Streep is stunning in the level of intensity, power and outrage they both escalate to. Shyly trying to not impede on the performances of her cast mates is Amy Adams as the young and innocent Sister James. She has the unwanted joy of lighting the match which burns through this entire piece and the second she lights it her face and heart drops knowing it will lead to something awful. Adams is still climbing the ladder of her already illustrious career and few are doing it with such variety and skill as her. It’s understandable that she would feel somewhat intimidated by tangling with Hoffman and Streep, but her talent holds up quite well in such company. Rounding out the original four characters is Viola Davis as Mrs. Miller. Davis only gets one scene in the entire film, so maybe it was the knowledge of that which made her decide to knock it completely out of the park. She shared time in that scene only with Streep, but instead of letting the audience revel in Streep’s already well-known talent, Davis injects herself with bravado, self-righteousness and gives Streep her only ass-whooping of the film. With only words, Streep looks like she has been bowled over by a cement truck by the end of a scene where the two characters simply walk down a small path. Davis went along to be nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama and it was well deserved.

In the end my reason for thinking it most likely works better on stage is due to the rest of the world feeling somewhat forced. The original four are still the only truly interesting characters and when we are away from them, we just end up wondering where they are. Also the tone and pacing is still very much that of a play and the film runs incredibly fast, so the ending feels a touch abrupt in my book. Shanely also mentioned in an interview that he wanted to make sure the audience left with a sense of doubt about whether the alleged event of Father Flynn ever really took place. Unfortunately for me, Hoffman’s performance never gave me too much feeling on his guilt and Streep’s inability to see any logic outside of her own made her seem too oblivious and misguided to be on the right side of the argument. There were some quick shots later referred to in an effort to shed a cracked light on Father Flynn, but it was too little too late for me.

Recommendation: This particular film with lose nothing in the shift from big screen to TV, so feel free to wait on that account. If you are a connoisseur of acting, this is a great example of some true pros at work, but if you’re looking for a more well-rounded plot, this might not fit the bill.

Reviews Coming Soon: Seven Pounds, Yes Man, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and many more…

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Rating: 7 out of 10

To the oppressed and abused, he was a legendary hero, to those in power, he was a dangerous revolutionary, and to the middle class hipsters in non-third world countries, he was a pop icon. It is truly an extraordinary person who can fill all these roles at once. He was a lightning rod, grabbing the electricity from the air, from the ground and from the people and using it to burn out the injustice he saw all around him. Whether you were a supporter, detractor or fair-weather fan, you can’t ignore the impact of the one they called ‘Che’.

Che is a gargantuan effort on the part of Steven Soderbergh to tell the story of one of the world’s most politically dynamic personalities. This film begins with his introduction to Fidel Castro and his unassuming beginnings in the armed resistance in Cuba, but it continues as we watch his rise in the revolution, his success in Cuba and his willingness and desire to keep the momentum going in other Latin American countries. The man detailed here is the strategist, the uncompromising moralist and a devout leader to his followers . The film follows his continuing revolution all the way to its tipping point and Che’s eventual downfall.

For any actor out there, starring in a four-and-a-half hour epic is a massive undertaking both in endurance and determination. It’s been a while since someone attached themselves to such a quest, but Benecio Del Toro bites into this role as if he knew this was what he had been waiting for his whole life. Del Toro never totally disappears into the character, but he does succeed in playing it with fire and passion which helps bring the audience through the slower sections. He attacks the story with an uncompromising passion for the cause and I honestly believe if Del Toro wanted to take a step into international politics, his charisma and intensity would win him plenty of respect. He also made one of Che’s main issues throughout his life, his battle with chronic asthma, so believable that during one of his attacks I could actually feel my own chest constricting. The only real question here is whether the audiences that see this film are going to be able to follow Del Toro seamlessly into his oncoming projects, like The Wolf Man. Parts such as this have a tendency to become nearly iconic and hard for an actor to shake off.

Although the character of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara is the central focus of the film, there is a plethora of other people introduced throughout the hours-long epic. The problem here is most of them have a tendency to drift into the background and become unrecognizable. This same issue came up with Milk and Sean Penn‘s performance and level of detail leaving all the other characters feeling flat and one-dimensional in comparison. Che is told in Spanish with English subtitles, so there were no discernible accents or patterns of speech for the smaller characters and an overwhelming amount of them were all dressed in the same green army clothes. So in a number of scenes it became a struggle to be emotionally connected to who had just been shot or which captain of a wandering faction had just been discovered. On the flip side, there are two cameos in the film of well known actors which become very jarring since no one else in the entirety of the piece is incredibly recognizable to American audiences. Lou Diamond Phillips steps on as the leader of one of the Communist Parties in Bolivia and his presence is not totally off kilter for the film, but it does snap the audience out for a moment and make them realize the movie in front of them is not a documentary, but a fictional retelling of those events. As much as it hurts me to say this, worse still was the cameo of Matt Damon. Personally I love Damon and think he is one of the best actors out there in his age group. His appearance as a missionary was played fine, but it did nothing to strengthen the film. All it did was make a number of the film goers laugh during Damon’s one and only scene. It felt like a behind-the-scenes gift from Soderbergh to Damon, who worked wonderfully together on all the Oceans movies, but it will go down in film history as one of the worst cameo choices in terms of tone and importance.

I give mounds and mounds of credit to Soderbergh for attempting such a mammoth film, but in the creation of something so large he fails to really capture the dynamism and attraction of its central character. All we receive here is the military man, the up-and-coming revolutionary who will follow his moral code to its inevitable end, but there was so much more to the man who became the godfather of guerrilla warfare. The passionate side of Che, the teacher of not only tactics, but ethics and morals to his followers is missing from this film. Also, Soderbergh has continually defended this film by saying it is not a glorification of Che, but simply a statement on his worldwide impact during those years, but he failed to really explore the backlash, even from the Cuban people, to Che and his guerrilla tactics. Also, in the editing and creation of the two chapters (how most of the movie going audience will see it, not as one four-and-a-half hour piece), Soderbergh stumbles into making the first half about Cuba incredibly more interesting than the second half detailing Che’s efforts in Bolivia. The first half shows the making of the man, the spark which set Che in motion, but the following chapter only serves as more jungle warfare and feels slightly redundant. I feel it would have served the piece better to remove some of the military movements through various countries and slip in more scenes about who Che was underneath the tattered and torn uniform.

Recommendation: When the film does return to theaters around the country in two separate parts, go see the first one and feel if your interest will carry you through the next one. On its own the first one will remain a strong piece, but the second will falter in comparison. Also, if the film truly succeeds in anything, it definitely makes people want to know more about the medical student who went on to try and heal entire countries.

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Rating: 8.5 out of 10

I still can still see myself, sitting on that brown tattered couch in the living room, wondering how much change has found its way into the holes in those old cushions. I held the remote control in my tiny hand and flipped constantly, trying to battle the onslaught of commercials for break-dancing tutorial videos and Nancy Reagan pleading for me to “Just Say No”. Very few things would make the flipping stop or could make me endure the advertising interruptions, and for many years the chief among those was none other than professional wrestling. What many people refer to as a fake sport is in reality nothing different than live theater specializing in acrobatics, fight choreography and mythological storytelling. These men, and now many women, personify the characteristics of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong and heart vs. strength. It may be dramatically simplified, but what goes on inside the squared circle week after week is at its core morality embodied by living, breathing warriors.

The Wrestler is the story of one such warrior, Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson. He once was at the top of the mountain and idolized by legions of fans around the world, but twenty years have passed since those days in the bright, bright spotlight and now the crowds have thinned and the venues have fallen farther away from the stadiums of his past. The effects of the constant battery to his body, from drinking, drugs and the matches themselves, have left Randy in a fight for his own livelihood. With a broken relationship with his daughter and a spark fluttering between him and a local stripper named Cassidy, he has to make a choice if the “real” world away from the cheers and jeers is worth losing the “fake” world inside the ring.

Directed and produced by Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler is much more than a raw tale of a broken man. This is a love letter to the stars of today and those of the past inside the wrestling world, known to many as “sports entertainment”. The film describes with painful acuity the reality of life behind the curtain and away from the crowds. The players behind the mythic characters deal with physical pain on an almost constant basis; bones broken, necks sprained, skin shredded. And on rare and terrible occasions, lives are lost in pursuit of giving the fans one more big pop. In crafting the fictional tale of Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson, Darren let audiences who might not ever watch a regular professional wrestling match in their life take a peek into how much dedication and passion these people have for the entertainment which so many people choose to write off as silly and childish. The film is shot honestly with a good deal of handheld camerawork, giving it a subliminal sense of documentary feel. It also jumps around somewhat, skipping beats of time, but that only lends more to the impression that the camera has been around this collapsing goliath for hours and hours on end, searching for those windows into his thoughts.

To get into the soul of a person, many say you have to go through the eyes and this pair happens to belong to the enigmatic Mickey Rourke. Like Sly Stallone enveloping the beef pounding fury of Rocky, Rourke silently struggles with the aching for some sort of connection and the stubborn pull of the spotlight, even as dim as it has gotten for him. It truly will go down as one of the most inspired casting decisions of this year. Rourke was a boxer for a number of years and was four fights away from a major title fight when his doctor told him to quit due to major neurological damage he had already sustained. This wasn’t the role he was born to play, it was the role he was beaten into playing beautifully. Who knows how many of the other story points in Randy’s life mirror those in Rourke’s, but very few people can disappear into a character the way Rourke does here. In recent years, I would say Heath Ledger was the only other person I have seen able to accomplish this feat on a regular basis. Holding strong on either side of this tragically pure performance were Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood. Tomei plays the aforementioned stripper, Cassidy, who also has to keep the line straight between a world of fantasy and the real world back home with her nine-year-old boy and a driver’s license under the name Pam. She lets go in a major way and dives deep into the pool of necessity to show where Cassidy comes from and why she does what she does. Wood plays Randy’s daughter Stephanie, who has been estranged from him for an unknown period of time. She only gets a small handful of scenes, but two of those rarities prove to be the best in the entire film. Wood has rarely strayed from the emotionally tortured characters, especially after her intensely powerful turn at sixteen-years-old in the indie drama, Thirteen. She is now the “it” girl for edgy and troubled young female roles, but we’ll have to wait and see if she can parlay that into playing those same women when she gets older.

In the end what Aronofsky made is a dedication to all those people who live behind their masks and the trials and tribulations they suffer through to make someone else’s day just a little bit better. It’s not wholly selfless; they all get paid for the masks they wear, but to many the money becomes secondary to the rush of the outside world stepping into their carefully crafted fantasy.

Recommendation: For the wrestling fans out there, this is a must see. It truly serves as a validation of your viewership to each and every pay-per-view match. For the rest of the audience, the strength of Rourke’s performance might just make you think a little next time you flip by the WWE on Saturday morning (that’s the World Wrestling Entertainment for those even farther outside the know).

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“Umm…actually, I have this thing about boats. They’re not really my thing.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Throughout movie history there has been a wide variety of classic couples, people you yearned to see on screen together again and again: Bogart and Bergman, Gable and Leigh, and Lancaster and Kerr to name only a few. But in 1997 another young couple cemented their right to being included on that list, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, in James Cameron‘s  record breaking film, Titanic. Even though the pair were one of the very few things in Titanic not awarded with Oscars or Golden Globes that year, they still lived on inside the hearts of the audience members who went back to see the romantic duo lean over that railing and declare their reign over the world. It only took eleven years for them to find a project to work on together again, but DiCaprio and Winslet have proven it was worth the wait.

Revolutionary Road is the story of a young passionate couple who meet, connect and yearn to spend their lives striving for the limits of experience. The story takes a only a brief look into their initial introduction to each other, instead opting to quickly jump years forward into their marriage only to find the passion has dissipated and their struggle now is against their suburban mundane existence. The couple, once wild and free, now find themselves deciding whether to stay in their current situation and try to make the best of it or to risk it all and run away to Paris in hopes of rekindling their love of life and their love for each other. It’s a war of contentment and  security versus passion and fulfillment and both sides fight dirty.

There was always one big threat looming over this film, that we, the audience, would look up at the screen and only see the Leo and Kate we remember from Titanic. The love struck duo fated to be together, but torn apart. All we would see would be longing glances full of love and hope and the rest of this new story would be lost in those memories. So, with that looming in front of director Sam Mendes, Mendes made a brilliant choice to jump very quickly into the deeply troubled marriage, nearly opening the film in a vicious fight on the side of the road. The anger and vitriol spilled on each other in that opening argument is more than enough to wipe away all previous visions of wistful gazes and romantic cuddling. DiCaprio rages against the self-imposed cage he’s stuck in, giving us the intensity and raw aggression we’ve come to expect from him (from performances such as The Basketball Diaries, Gangs of New York, The Departed, etc.). Now tie that aggression with the always impressive strength and surety of Kate Winslet and you’re locked and loaded for a true battle of the wills. Only actors who are completely trusting of each other could reach the fever pitch Leo and Kate achieve, which allows not only for touching moments of love, but also incredibly sharp attacks that cut deeper than any knife ever could.

Behind the dynamic duo there is a bevy of talented actors, including Kathy Bates, Kathryn Hahn and David Harbour, and heading into this film they had to know they were only bringing the trimmings and decorations to a party made for Leo and Kate, but one person decided to crash the party and steal some of the spotlight for himself. Michael Shannon plays John Givings, Kathy Bates’ son who happens to be on a short term visit from the local insane asylum. Now he doesn’t bash into the scenes ranting and raving, but his particular type of craziness allows him to cut through the bull and call people out on what is really going on underneath their shiny plastic veneer. Shannon has only three scenes in the film, but during each one of them you can’t take your eyes away from him. He is not only the spark-plug for those moments, but he becomes the lightning rod for the entire movie during a dinner scene which will go on my list as one of the best scenes on film in the last five years. The only shame in Michael Shannon’s performance is that he didn’t get a nomination for it. Here’s hoping the Academy voters are smarter than the Hollywood Foreign Press.

As much as I can rave about the wonderful acting on display in this film, those jewels are only achievable through the eyes and sensitivity of a talented director like Sam Mendes. Mendes keeps his tradition from American Beauty alive of painting picturesque communities of sterility and perfection, but all the while hinting and flashing light on the cracks growing underneath. There is always a deeper truth underneath the veil his characters show to the world and that’s where his real talent lies, making those people remove the masks in a believable and truthful fashion. I was on the lookout for subtle preferential treatment for Kate since she’s married to Mendes in real life, but both parties refused to pull any punches, once again proving the entire team’s commitment to powerful and honest filmmaking. Also proving that point is the completely anti-Hollywood ending, which I obviously won’t go into, but according to screenwriter Justin Haythe there was some push for it to be softened or changed, but Sam locked arms with him and demanded that it stay true to the original novel it is based on. If more people showed even half as much commitment to all the other film projects out there, the quality level we would reach would be unimaginable.

Recommendation: I’ll put this as plainly as I can: Before seeing this I was a locked in vote for Slumdog Millionaire for Best Picture of the Year, now I’m not so sure. My new fear is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is going to make this choice even harder, but for the moment I am blissfully unaware of that option.

Although numerous critics around the country have already had their own awards ceremonies and passed out a handful of gold plated statuettes, there are only two awards which really catch the eye of the mass populace: the Golden Globes and the Oscars. Most people feel a Golden Globe win for a particular movie is a safe bet for the Oscar, but since the categories are surprisingly different between the two shows, there is not always a direct overlap. Some of the nominees listed below are surprising and some are exactly what we expected to see, but let’s scroll through and I’ll let you in on where I think things might go (and also where I think they deserve to go, which can be completely at odds with each other). I won’t go through the TV nominations because I only watch a handful of shows, but I think we will see the usual suspects on stage that night: 30 Rock, The Office, House M.D. and anything HBO decided to make this year.

[The * denotes which movies I have actually seen]

BEST PICTURE: DRAMA

· The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

· Frost/Nixon *

· The Reader *

· Revolutionary Road (Most Likely Winner)

· Slumdog Millionaire * (Deserves to Win) WINNER

So far I have seen three of these movies (Benjamin Button and Revolutionary Road still to come), but Slumdog Millionaire is starting to look like the dark horse rearing up from behind. It has already won a couple of Best Picture Awards, which gives it a nice momentum, but in the Hollywood circles, Benjamin Button and Frost/Nixon seem to be the ones to beat. The surprise here is Milk and The Dark Knight being stepped over. I would credit Slumdog for knocking one of them out, but to see both without a Best Picture nod here doesn’t bode well for Oscar season. Personally, I think The Dark Knight still has a good chance, but Milk I believe will fall by the wayside in lieu of better films this year. Back to the Globes, from the ones I have seen, Slumdog deserves the win.

BEST PICTURE: COMEDY OR MUSICAL

· Burn After Reading *

· Happy-go-lucky

· In Bruges * (Deserves to Win)

· Mamma Mia * (Most Likely Winner)

· Vicky Cristina Barcelona * WINNER

Now this has always been a little bit of a sticking point for the Golden Globes. Do we really need the separation of Drama and Comedy/Musical? Couldn’t they follow along with the Oscars and just crown one movie Best Picture of the Year? I know the argument against is the Oscars don’t reward comedies nearly enough, and that part is true. The Academy should learn to step down from their weepy, heartwrecnhing high horse and celebrate films that make us laugh, even if it’s from a well-timed fart joke. But in the end, I think it is still worthwhile to be able to group and contrast all movies together and crown one a victor for the year. Anyway, onto the category at hand, the happy surprise here is In Bruges, which didn’t pull in major box office, but was widely lauded by the critics. I saw a screening of it early on and was blown away by how funny, irreverent and tight the script was, along with being impressed with the performances across the board from Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes. So, kudos to them and the team from In Bruges for a well-deserved nomination. Now cut that celebratory emotion out when we come to Burn After Reading, which is far from being the best we’ve seen from the Coen brothers. This was a quirky character piece, enjoyable in particular sections, but nowhere near awards potential. This nomination alone helps to prove the case for not separating the genres, because films like this slip onto the ballot. Woody Allen can be happy to get a nod once again, but I foresee him going home empty-handed that night. I haven’t seen Happy-Go-Lucky, but never take your eyes off the British when it comes to heartwarming comedies, they’ll sneak up on you. The real front runner here is Mamma Mia, which sparked a worldwide phenomenon and single-handedly helped Universal Pictures weather the current economic strain. At last count, it brought in an incredible $570 million dollars worldwide. People love their Abba evidently. I would love to see In Bruges take the crown, but I think Mamma Mia will be the one dancing on stage that night.

BEST DIRECTOR

· Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire * (Deserves to Win) WINNER

· Stephen Daldry, The Reader *

· David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

· Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon *

· Sam Mendes, Revolutionary Road (Most Likely Winner)

I always find it hard to differentiate between Best Picture and Best Director. If you have the Best Picture of the Year, most of the time that should indicate you’ve done the best job in Directing. It’s no surprise that we see the exact same movies here as we do in the Best Picture – Drama category. So for the moment, until I see the last two of these movies, I’m sticking with Danny Boyle and Slumdog for most deserving. As for who will actually take it, Mendes could split up the pack, but Howard and Fincher are the front runners.

BEST ACTOR: DRAMA

· Leonardo DiCaprio, Revolutionary Road

· Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon *

· Sean Penn, Milk *

· Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

· Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler (Most Likely Winner, possibly most deserving as well) WINNER

Sean Penn was the best thing going in Milk, so this is well deserved for him, but the critical buzz and momentum behind Mickey Rourke could make this the year of the grizzled warrior. I’ve yet to see The Wrestler, but his performance is said to be a career topper. Brad Pitt hasn’t been able to clinch a victory since his Best Supporting Golden Globe for 12 Monkeys. That’s not saying he hasn’t done good work since then, since he’s almost always in the race, but someone always sneaks by and pulls the golden statues from his grasp. Frank Langella won heaps of praise for his role in Frost/Nixon on stage as well as on screen, but it won’t be enough to overcome the rawness and sheer intensity of Penn or Rourke. That leaves DiCaprio, who may very well be amazing in the role, but I have caught it yet and I can’t tell whether this will be a disappointing or deserved loss for him.

BEST ACTRESS: DRAMA

· Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married * (Deserves to Win)

· Angelina Jolie, Changeling * (Most Likely Winner)

· Meryl Streep, Doubt

· Kristin Scott Thomas, I’ve Loved You So Long

· Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road WINNER

Anyone who knows me is well aware of my affinity for Anne Hathaway, but that aside, she does deserve all the accolades being heaped on her for her turn in Rachel Getting Married. It was a serious departure for her from her normal fare and served to prove once again the range and power she can handle. The closest behind her is Kate Winslet, who supposedly got this role pushed up for Best Actress instead of her performance in The Reader because the studio believes she has a better chance with this film. As you’ll read further down, this might work against her. Now Angelina found time in her efforts to become a living saint to churn out another nominated performance, but honestly this feels a little like “starf*#king”. She is an incredibly talented actress, but Changeling was really only one emotion for her the whole way through and felt a little draining by the time it was done. As for Meryl, Doubt is still to come on my list of things to see, but hopefully I’ll be able to separate my appreciation for her acting away from my deep-seeded loathing of religious zealotry. She’s going to have to fight hard to make that happen. Lastly, Kristen is a strong actress, so she could slip in with this small indie film, but it’s slipped past me as well, so they’ll have to make a strong push to the voters to make sure they’ve caught it and remembered it in the big ole’ mix.

BEST ACTRESS: COMEDY OR MUSICAL

· Rebecca Hall, Vicky Cristina Barcelona * (Deserves to Win)

· Sally Hawkins, Happy-go-lucky WINNER

· Frances McDormand, Burn After Reading *

· Meryl Streep, Mamma Mia *

· Emma Thompson, Last Chance Harvey

It’s hard to say who will win this. It’s a category filled with highly talented people, but out of the three performances I have witnessed, I’m putting my vote towards Rebecca Hall. She was able to overcome the sheer fact of being the main character in a Woody Allen film that barely got any billing on the posters because she was surrounded by A-List names, two of which were also nominated, and still managed to steal almost every scene she was in. There was an honesty in her which eclipsed the supporting players and truly made her stand out. Meryl deserves her share of credit for lending her voice and her talent to such an unlikely phenomenon, but it looked like it was more sheer fun than talent which brought this movie to the list. As for Frances McDormand, once again I can only say I don’t feel Burn After Reading deserves to be on the list at all. She was funny at moments, but this was not an award-winning role for her and barely seems to qualify as a lead actress piece. To Emma and Sally, I have heard good things on both fronts, but they are tougher movies to track down showtimes for.

BEST ACTOR: COMEDY OR MUSICAL

· Javier Bardem, Vicky Cristina Barcelona * (Most Likely Winner)

· Colin Farrell, In Bruges * (Deserves to Win) WINNER

· James Franco, Pineapple Express *

· Brendan Gleeseon, In Bruges *

· Dustin Hoffman, Last Chance Harvey

Javier is still riding the wave of love from the Academy last year and the praise for No Country for Old Men, so some of that will surely bleed over into this year. I’m not saying he wasn’t good in this film, but I think this will give him the little edge he needs to separate himself from the pack. Colin, on the other hand, has not had the best relationship with the award audiences or the Hollywood scene in total, but he really let himself dive into In Bruges and it really showed. Whether you like him or not as a person, you just can’t help laugh with/at him in this hilarious movie. Appearing all over the place in the last few years, James Franco scored a nomination for playing an incredibly realistic pot dealer and stoner extraordinaire, but once again I am surprised that the committees felt this was a truly worthy performance, especially with his role in Milk being overshadowed. Brendon Gleesn is equally good in In Bruges, but Colin just happens to be playing the more important and charged role, so he steals a touch more of the focus from the audience. If you follow Hollywood at all, you can never count out Dustin Hoffman in a race like this. He could do a five minute cameo as a salesman for Japanese tea and you could guarantee a Independent Spirit Award would be engraved and waiting for him.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

· Amy Adams, Doubt

· Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barecelona *

· Viola Davis, Doubt

· Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

· Kate Winslet, The Reader * (Deseves to Win, also Most Likely Winner) WINNER

This is a sparse category for me right now, with only two movies actually seen, but I think Kate will take this one home. Splitting the voters can sometimes work against you if you are going for both Best Actress and Best Supporting in the same year. Unless the Best Actress category is weak, the voters will most of the time give the conciliation gift of Best Supporting and pass the Best Actress onto someone else, which will benefit Anne and Angelina. I’ve heard good things about Marisa and her role in The Wrestler, but that could also be her getting swept up in the hype over Mickey Rourke. Doubt truly looks to be a heavy movie in terms of performances, so I’m sure both Viola and Amy are worthy nominations, but I’ll know more once I get a chance to view them.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

· Tom Cruise, Tropic Thunder *

· Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder *

· Ralph Fiennes, The Duchess

· Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt

· Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight * (Deserves to Win and Most Likely Winner) WINNER

This should be a fairly obvious category. Heath was entrancing as The Joker in The Dark Knight and his tragic demise only makes the story more poetic. Right now the only real question is who the studio will send up on stage to accept the award on his behalf (I think it should be Bale or Nolan). Even though the hype machine has built this up to epic proportions, Heath really does deserve the accolades. Robert Downey Jr. bit off more than anyone else could chew by doing modern day blackface in Tropic Thunder, but he pulled it off brilliantly and I’m thrilled he got the nomination. The same goes for Tom Cruise, who basically relaunched his career in the public’s heart with a hilarious turn as a meglomaniacal studio exec. As for Hoffman and Fiennes, both are extremely talented actors and I’m sure they do great jobs in their respective films, but this year belongs to Heath. No joke.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

· The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany)

· Everlasting Moments (Sweden/Denmark)

· Gomorrah (Italy)

· I’ve Loved You So Long (France)

· Waltz With Bashir (Israel) (Total guess, just so I have a choice noted) WINNER

Unfortunately I haven’t seen any of these, but the ones getting the most buzz are I’ve Loved You So Long and Waltz With Bashir. Bashir is also a crazy animated film, which could work against it in terms of voters thinking it is represented in the wrong category, or it could help differentiate itself from the pack and grab some swing votes. For me, this is totally up in the air.

BEST ANIMATED FILM

· Bolt *

· Kung Fu Panda *

· Wall-E * (Deserves to Win and Most Likely Winner) WINNER

Wall-E is a lock here and if something else goes down the Hollywood Foreign Press will never mean a damn thing to me again. The little story of “the robot who could” has already been winning awards, but not for Best Animated Feature, it’s been taking the top prize as Best Picture of the Year in a handful of critics associations. Kung-Fu Panda was very well done and worthy of nomination, but I can’t say I felt the same about Bolt. Bolt was cute, but didn’t give me the impression of a stand-out animated film. I still don’t understand why there are only three chosen for this category, since The Tale of Despereaux (still to be released) and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa both garnered some critical acclaim. Nevertheless, Pixar has dominated once again and Wall-E will safely be able to store this award away with all his other trinkets.

BEST SCREENPLAY

· Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire * (Deserves to Win) WINNER

· David Hare, The Reader *

· Peter Morgan, Frost/Nixon *

· Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Most Likely Winner)

· John Patrick Shanley, Doubt

This could actually go to anyone. Out of the three I have seen, I might lean towards Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire, but the momentum of the movie could work against him if the voters decide they don’t want to create a “sweep” type of situation. Peter Morgan and David Hare both did excellent jobs bringing history to the masses and making it intriguing. Critics are already saying great things on both fronts for Doubt and Benjamin Button, so they certainly cannot be counted out. I’d truly be happy anywhere the ball drops in this one.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

· Alexandre Desplat, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

· Clint Eastwood, Changeling *

· James Newton Howard, Defiance

· A.R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire * WINNER

· Hans Zimmer, Frost/Nixon * (Deserves to Win and Most Likely Winner)

Here you have three of the most cherished in the musical score business: Zimmer, Howard and Eastwood (who just has to prove he can do everything better than the rest of us ). I’m leaning towards Zimmer because his score did such a beautiful job of intensifying a story of two men in chairs sitting across from each other, but once again, I think this category is a toss up. In reality, they are all just lucky John Williams only worked on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, since no one really liked a damn thing about that travesty.

Best Original Song

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Rating: 9 out of 10

There are few things in life as exciting or exhilarating as watching a good fight. Maybe it’s the primate in us, a deep evolutionary need to see two people beat the piss out of each other in order to prove dominance. Maybe it’s the need to see a champion, someone we can look up to and model our own lives after. Or, on a slight chance, it’s the glimmer of hope we huddle around to keep us warm and keep our dreams from fading away, the dream that one day someone will topple the champ and change the world forever. Now you might think those emotions only get woken up during a purely physical battle, but if so, you are truly missing out on some of the best battles in human history. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated seven times in 1858 for control of the Illinois legislature and those verbal fencing matches were a preview of the power and eloquence with which Lincoln would bring to bear in his time as President. Almost exactly one hundred years later, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon took to the airwaves for the first ever televised debate between Presidential candidates. Those four on-air matches drew numerous comparisons to their predecessors of nearly a century before. Even in our latest election a highlight truly arrived during our one and only debate between Vice-Presidential candidates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. While it might not have been the intelligence and skill in the fight we were all watching for, it still made for captivating television.

Yet one thing all those previous moments lacked was the dark cloud of obvious guilt and shame hanging over the head of Richard Nixon after he resigned the Presidency in disgrace over the Watergate scandal. A man who achieved amazing and brilliant things during his time in office was forced to step down and hang his head for something he was arguably not the first to do, just the first to get caught red-handed. I’m not defending Nixon, but in the context of political history, including any number of the documented and undocumented crimes committed by our still reigning President, Nixon was a lightweight. But for the American people of the 1960′s, his betrayal of the public office was the lowest they had seen a President stoop to and they demanded action. After newly sworn-in President Ford issued a complete and unequivocal pardon of Nixon, it seemed as though the American people were going to have to drink and eat whatever they could get their hands on to cover up the bad taste. But then one man stepped up to the plate, determined to give the people exactly what they wanted.

This is not just a history lesson; this is the premise and plot of Ron Howard‘s new film, Frost/Nixon. David Frost was a British talk show host who came up with the idea of interviewing Nixon after his resignation, but his original motives were not entirely altruistic. Mainly, he was a master of television audiences and he could feel the ratings he would get for such an interview would be outrageous. Once he locked the interview in place however, it became a monster he almost couldn’t control. The film is incredibly small in scale, beginning the year where Frost came up with the idea and ending within days after the interview was concluded. We get to see the build up to the big interview, but the actual recorded and tastefully lit chat between the two characters is really the lynch-pin on which the whole film rests. Thinking about the premise beforehand, it’s hard to imagine there being an incredible amount of tension in the movie-going audience, especially since we know what happens, but quality filmmaking and intelligent storytelling can make any old story seem new once again. By the time Frost and Nixon sit across from each other, microphones pinned to their lapels, handkerchiefs folded and makeup invisibly applied, the intensity is palpable. It was akin to watching a heavyweight boxing match, except one contender had never really felt the blow of a well-landed punch before. Once he does, the fear in his eyes truly brings the audience into his mindset. Luckily for us, both in the theater and in history, fear that might make some men run will make others fight all that much harder.

Ron Howard has been making movies for a number of years now and won a number of accolades and critical acclaim, but Frost/Nixon might end up topping them all. With a very simple story he found a way to display two very non-simple people. There is tension, anticipation and weight all brought to bear on a simple interview which ended up changing the lives of not only the people in the chairs, but the worldwide audience as well. Howard also got his two lead actors gift-wrapped, Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost. Both actors originally played their roles on stage to massive acclaim, so heading into the movie, they had these characters down cold. There is definitely a difference between playing a role on stage and playing it on film, but the internal work and preparation by these actors is a virtual treasure chest in comparison to what you get on most film sets. The moment they appear on screen, you can feel the depth and skill both actors gained from all their time put in. Frank Langella disappears into Nixon, truly embodying Nixon’s confident walk and sweeping movements of his arms, his imposing intrusion into people’s personal space, and finally the stoop — which on anyone else would have made them look old, but with Nixon is just made him look dangerous and determined. On the other side of the ring, we have Michael Sheen, who shined as David Frost, the plucky and charming television talk show host. There are some moments where Sheen is just listening to Langella rant on and on and Sheen displays an amazing level of intensity, fear and nearly overwhelming nervousness just by using his eyes. He doesn’t even have to move to show the wave after wave of emotional turmoil this man goes through while trying to go toe-to-toe with “Tricky Dick”. Both actors are strong contenders for nominations in the award season.

Beyond the powerhouse duo in front, there is a wealth of strong supporting cast. Sam Rockwell, one of Hollywood’s best go-to character actors, delivers an impassioned performance as James Reston Jr., one of the researchers on Frost’s team. He is the emotional anchor for the team, representing the anger, fury and bitter disappointment of the American people, and if there is one thing Rockwell does better than anything else, it’s playing disappointment and disdain (try poking your head into almost any scene in Choke). Right alongside Rockwell is another amazing talent, Oliver Platt, who plays Bob Zelnick, the more political structure based portion of Frost’s team. Platt continues to do his thing with great talent and shine without ever stealing scenes or trying to make the moment about him. He can be the star of the show if cast that way, but his true talent is blending into an ensemble and making everyone around him better for it. If you’ve never really experienced Platt, I would happily and heartily suggest Casanova and The Three Musketeers, both brilliant comedic performances. A little on the lesser-known side is Matthew Macfadyen, who plays John Birt, Frost’s manager, who continually rallies the troops and sticks by his side even when things are at their most bleak. Macfadyen brought a great sense of strength and loyalty that kept the audience in check and never giving up on Frost and his ultimate goal. As if we needed another name to add to the list, this will benefit all those addicts of the “Six Degrees” game, Kevin Bacon plays Jack Brennan, Nixon’s Chief of Staff and most devoted servant. Bacon lays it on thick, the dogged determination and defense of Nixon, even in the final moments when it all is slipping away. A solid job from an incredibly consistent actor.

Recommendation: If you like movies about important moments in American History, you should like this. If you like Ron Howard films, you should like this. If you like purely character pieces, you should like this. If you are looking for sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, you might wanna move on by. Lastly, if you are like me and try to watch everything on the Oscar nominated list, I’m putting good money this film will end up on there somewhere, whether for acting, directing or writing. Save yourself the rush of trying to track it down during awards season and catch it now.
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Rating: 8 out of 10

You’re standing on the top of your local water tower, while below you is a moaning and clawing horde of the walking dead. Your pump action shotgun has proved mostly useless and you’re almost out of shells anyway. What could you do to summon help? Is there any way out of your self-made trap? What could you have done to prepare better for this onslaught of undead? These are all great questions that many people think they will never have to ask themselves, but in the world of Max Brooks those questions get asked each and every day and he takes them very seriously. (Kind of…)

The Zombie Survival Guide is a completely serious approach to the methods and training needed to withstand a zombie attack. The first section details which weapons are good to use (tried and true machetes will always outdo flashy firepower, like an Uzi), which terrains are best to travel in (cities are great for location protection, but easy to get trapped in, while the frozen tundra is technically your best bet), and what kind of equipment you should pack if you’re going on the run (surprisingly, this list is eerily similar to any well-prepared hunter). Once you have the basics down for offense, defense and escape tactics, the guide proceeds to detail the long and largely secretive history of zombie attacks all over the world. From the pre-historic regions of Central Africa to an attack on the Virgin Islands only six years ago, you’ll read case after case of cover-up, deceit and blatant denial of any existence of the zombie phenomenon. Unfortunately for those trying to keep it hidden, zombies have a long standing tradition of sitting and waiting for the right moment to strike.

Max Brooks is the son of comedy legend Mel Brooks and screen icon Anne Bancroft, so life in the entertainment world was in his blood. He also picked up from his father the truth that making people laugh is very serious business and shouldn’t be taken lightly if you plan on doing it well. He also honed his craft in the writer’s room of Saturday Night Live for three seasons and wrote for over forty episodes. I have no idea where he found the time, but in those crazy days of skit comedy and hair-pulling deadlines, he wrote this survival guide against the undead, which went on to become a New York Times Bestseller. The completely serious tone he maintains throughout the novel is critical to the underlying humor of it. He knows that true humor comes from when the person delivering the punch line doesn’t know it’s a punch line. There is an odd sensation while you move through the chapters where slowly you almost forget it’s a joke. I wasn’t getting any urges to stock up on kerosene or long-range rifle scopes, but there is a lot of truth tucked in between those pages. The survival techniques spelled out in the book could easily help any hiker or traveler stuck in the woods without food or one being chased by a bear. Those kernels of down-to-earth facts help strengthen the tone and keep the reader hooked in. In the historical sections, Max also brilliantly laid them out in chronological order, which allowed him to refer to past instances as the reason or cause of future outbreaks (as in cases were the zombies from one attack were not properly disposed of, only to come back years later to strike once more).

Max went on from the success of this book to pen his sequel, World War Z, which again is a seriously toned historical fiction detailing oral accounts from people who survived the worldwide outbreak of the zombie race. I actually read that one first, mainly because it was given to me as a gift, but the order of the two books matters very little in terms of enjoyment. World War Z is now being adapted into a movie for Paramount Pictures and Brad Pitt’s company, Plan B Entertainment. Max turned down the offer to write the script since he felt he wouldn’t get the best out of it, so the screenwriting duties fell to J. Michael Straczynski, who is currently enjoying great acclaim for his possibly Oscar nominated script, Changeling (not necessarily from me, but I’m only one voice among the many). No real word on what Max is working on now, but you can be sure it will be serious…seriously funny.

Recommendation: If you’ve ever read any of those other survival guide books, take a crack at this and see how easy it is to get sucked in. Also, this is a true goldmine for any fan of the undead.

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Rating: 6 out of 10

We sometimes cast a wistful gaze back into history and remember all the purely magical moments of our childhoods: learning to ride a bike, dumping out the first bag of Halloween candy after a monster haul, or playing with the first new family pet. All of these things hold a special place in our hearts and right alongside those for most of us is the memory of watching our first Disney film. Whether it was Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Steamboat Wille or Aladdin (had to mention it since it is still my reigning favorite from ‘The House of Mouse’), those magical cartoons had a profound effect on several generations and for that, Disney deserves a certain amount of credit. Yet, today things are slightly different. In the world of animated cinema Disney is scratching for third place on the totem pole, underneath the powerhouse studios of Pixar and Dreamworks Animation. It’s true, it can be argued Disney is on top of the pole since they own Pixar, but Pixar operates very much as a separate company and they gained their early success and prestige before Disney made the purchase. Disney is merely the distribution chain for the wonderment emanating from the minds and dreams of the Pixar creative staff. So the question becomes, does Disney still have the chops to compete in the animation circuit?

Yes, they do, as long as they are satisfied with coming in third.

Disney’s latest contribution is Bolt, the story of a dog who doesn’t know he’s an actor on a television show and ends up lost in the real world trying to find his owner, who was fake-kidnapped on the show. Along the way Bolt captures an alley cat in an effort to force her to lead him to the Green-eyed Man (his TV arch-nemesis) and also picks up a hamster that happens to be a fanatical fan named Rhino. Their cross country journey is full of adventures and mishaps, all in an effort to lead Bolt home and back to his owner. The journey is also an internal one for Bolt as he struggles with the realization that he is a normal, non-superhero type dog.

Bolt is a charming movie and should be enjoyable to most young kids out there, but the modern day marker for true success in this genre is how many adults can you attract without their children in tow? For that crowd, Bolt doesn’t offer a whole lot. The trailer was incredibly well-designed and caught a good deal of the highlights in the film, mainly showcasing the role of Rhino the hamster, who stole most of his scenes and felt light in the overall scope of the film. Boosting up his role might not have fit in the structure of the story, but it certainly would have brought up the laughs. Another point in which I think the movie fared really well was the depiction of the pigeons, both in New York and in Los Angeles. The movements and seemingly spastic thought processes in those birds were amusing no matter what they were talking about. Those animators really captured a brilliant idea of what it could be like to listen to their thoughts. The Los Angeles based pigeons…well, those were hilarious for a whole different reason, which I won’t go into for the sake of not ruining the scene. (The only pitfall here is it might only be funny to people who live out here and work in the entertainment industry. Even so, I’m lucky because I do live here and I did think they were the high point of the flick.) As for the main characters, Bolt made sense throughout the film and always stayed on a strong motivated course, but I just wasn’t endeared to him. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it was, but something lacked in making Bolt stand out amongst the cadre of side characters and he ended up being only a lynch pin instead of driving force for the story. The alley cat, Mittens, played well off Bolt and acted more like the Chorus in Greek and Roman theatre, providing the reactions of the common audience member, since Bolt’s own worldview was so skewed. Mittens continually reminded us that what was happening was more-or-less insane, but in the end also showed us what was most important. Surprising to me, Mittens felt more like the heart or emotional center of the film over Bolt.

With animated features another big hurdle is to find a cast of voices that not only fits the characters, but also doesn’t overshadow the movie itself. John Travolta provided the voice of Bolt and admittedly when the movie began I felt his voice was too old for the character and too aware of himself, but as it went on I felt Travolta settled into it more and became more attuned with the character. On the other hand, Miley Cyrus was not a terribly good choice as the voice of Penny, Bolt’s real life and on-screen owner. She was certainly picked for star power and to further connect the movie to the teen-and-under audience, but Miley’s voice is raspy, bordering on smoky at times and while that might work for her pop star image, it didn’t play coming from the mouth of a young, innocent looking girl.

One last interesting tidbit is Bolt was actually executive produced by John Lasseter, one of Pixar’s creators who now works for both companies. He was brought onto Disney Animation to help bring them back into the forefront of the animation world, but I can’t say I really felt that Pixar spark inside this movie. I have no doubt Disney will continue to move forward and fight their way onwards and upwards, but so far it has been a slow crawl for them.

Recommendation: If you have young children, jump on in, but if you’re heading out on your own, you better be a die-hard fan of children’s movies. Also, this is being offered in 3-D at some theaters, but feel free to skip that option. I saw the 3-D version and there wasn’t anything really worth the hassle of wearing those glasses and possibly fighting off the resulting headache.
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Rating: 9 out of 10

The last two months of the year always bring out the heavy hitters from both the studio pipeline and the independent circuit. It can almost become a test in itself to keep perspective about what constitutes a good or possibly great film. The bar of quality can get subconsciously raised so high that everything starts to either blend together or pale in comparison to one overwhelmingly powerful piece of cinema. Yet no matter how hard the struggle may get, everyone wins in the end because the audience is presented with a plethora of great films to enjoy.

I’m sure you see where this is going in terms of how I feel about this next movie. If not, please go back and read the first part again. Slowly this time.

Slumdog Millionaire is the story of Jamal, a young boy growing up in the poverty stricken parts of the big cities in India. Through a twisting and winding series of events he finds himself as a contestant on their country’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. His fame and wonder grows as he answers question after question correctly until he is on the brink of completing game and winning the grand prize. As most good stories do, this film begins with a question; how does he know all the answers? Is he cheating? Or is it written?

Simon Beaufoy, the writer of the screenplay, got the story from a novel called Q&A by Vikas Swarup. It’s true I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know how close the movie follows along or how much was creative license, but either way, the structure of the film is a beautiful example of intelligent and well-planned storytelling. Each question in the movie leads to another flashback, a new vignette into the history of where Jamal came from and the struggles he went through to get where he is. It allows the audience to get pieces of information that are only pertinent to the scene in front of it without having to wallow through sixteen years of a childhood. It also breaks the film up nicely and serves as a nice reminder when the footage you are watching is particularly harsh that he does make it through somehow, since we see him on the game show. The true power of the story is the celebration of love, destiny and the belief it is still possible, no matter what the costs. As mentioned previously, some of the footage, mostly in the first thirty minutes, can be very hard to sit through due to a few scenes of child abuse, alluded to and shown. The tolerance level gets pushed nearly too far, but at the last possible second the film turns the corner and those previous scenes now become the anchor to where it goes from there.

Danny Boyle, who directed this fine feature, is no stranger to telling love stories in the most chilling or tragic of circumstances (take a glance back at The Beach) or pushing cinema to new levels of uncomfortable (try some of the key scenes from Trainspotting or 28 Days Later). No matter if it’s love or death, Danny Boyle always comes to the plate with something visually interesting and compelling, never failing to leave a lingering impression which sparks conversation even weeks afterward. Beyond those intense scenes in the beginning, there are numerous moments throughout the film which stand out. I won’t go into them all here for the sake of saving surprises for the theater, but believe me, they are there. Another talent Boyle has is working with the actors, which should always be the main role of the director. The performances here from Dev Patel, who plays our lead Jamal; Freida Pinto, who plays the romantic interest Latika; and Irfan Khan, who plays the police inspector, are all incredible and worthy of mention. Dev is definitely the heart and soul and drives the film, but his skills are only exemplified by the support he receives in each and every scene by the other cast members. Dev has only one credit outside of this film, but I have no doubt it will be filling up nicely after this film makes the rounds. The same holds for Frida, who actually only has this single credit to her name, but with her presence, talent and striking beauty, she will be gracing the silver screen for years to come, if we’re lucky. Irfan was quite busy before this movie came along and that doesn’t look to be slowing down for him any time soon.

Now although everything up to this point has been glowing and full of praise, this film not perfect. I had one main issue coming out of the theater and it has to do with the character of Salim, Jamal’s older brother, played by Madhur Mittal. There is an obvious triangle in the film between Jamal, Salim and Latika, but even before that appears, Salim constantly jumps back and forth between an undying loyalty and love to his younger brother and in the next scene betraying him in the worst ways imaginable. Some might argue it is an issue of control and Salim’s constant battle to keep it over Jamal, but I’m not sure it is supported by the story. Whatever the case may be, the audience is never granted with any explanation of Salim’s motives and I feel it harms our ability to emotionally connect with his character. It is not a deal breaker by far in this film, but since everything else in the movie was done so well, this little fact stuck out for me.

Recommendation: This is a true must-see film. If you miss it in the theater or it doesn’t play anywhere near you, rent it the first chance you get. Strap yourself in and ride out the tougher stuff in the beginning of the film, you will not be sorry. Also, not to plug another film, but if you like great films with themes of undeterred love, check out Brick; it’s in my Top Ten Movies of All Time. Lastly, if you’re a fan at all of Danny Boyle, I would be remiss in forgetting to mention the under-appreciated and terribly under-marketed Sunshine, which was without a doubt one of the best Sci-Fi films of last year, if not the last five years.

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My eyes are shut. Please, please tell me when the crazed fans are gone.

Rating: 2 out of 10

There is not a person in the world who hasn’t heard the rags to riches story of J.K. Rowling and the legendary Harry Potter series of books. Those books, of course, led us to the movie franchise, which has generated so far over a billion dollars with three more movies to go (one for book six, while book seven will be split into two pieces). Yet as quickly as one legend is chiseled into stone, another one comes along, shaking the pedestal to knock down the reigning champion. Stephanie Meyer wrote the first book in her Twilight saga only 3 years ago and she is already hot on the trail of Harry Potter’s coffers. With the release of the fourth book, Breaking Dawn, the series as a whole has sold over 17 million copies and been translated into 20 different languages. So, with the literary world groveling at the feet of the Twilight series, begging for more, it was inevitable the movie world would come knocking. Does such a massive fan base guarantee success for the feature film adaptation?

Financially it always helps, but critically it doesn’t mean a thing. With an opening weekend of over $70 million dollars, Twilight is already a blockbuster and I’m guessing will finish up somewhere in the $400 million dollar range. This will mainly be due to the hordes of tween girls who will go see this repeatedly, like they did with Titanic, driving the box office receipts way past any critical value. Once you look beyond the dollar signs and the pre-pubescent obsession, the reality is this movie is barely watchable.

From the very beginning of the film it is terribly paced, trying to drain each and every sigh and wistful gaze from the moments on screen, which causes it to take over an hour to get to anywhere the least bit interesting. Finally, when that moment comes, it is over incredibly fast and done with such broad, clumsy strokes that banging your head against the chair in front of you begins to seem like a viable option to make yourself feel better. The whole thing drips with teenage melodrama, admittedly perfect for their direct audience, but to make a truly successful film it has to play to more than just a fraction of the populace. I’ve never had a problem appreciating a good movie, whether I was the correct demographic or not (look back on my review of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 if you need proof). The fact remains Twilight drags itself from scene to scene, on top of being badly performed. This is a shame to be added to the resume of normally skilled director Catherine Hardwicke, who I have personally raved to many people about her previous films, Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown.

Rob Pattinson, who plays Edward Cullen, the lovelorn vampire, has already ascended to fill the void left by Orlando Bloom from his Lord of the Rings days, but he has far from grasped what it takes to be an on-screen heartthrob. There is an art to the longing gaze, an inherent skill to the penetrating looks across the room, neither of which he possesses. He ends up coming off more like a borderline sociopath who might be suffering from any number of vitamin deficiencies. He also proves numerous times that opening your eyes incredibly wide doesn’t always emote intensity, some times it just comes off looking like you’re in pain. There are rare occasions when the lead actor can be propped up by the performance of his co-star, but this is not one of those times. Kristen Stewart, taking on the role of the lovestruck Bella, who although powerfully cute and physically perfect for the role, plays way too much with the awkwardness of meeting a boy you like before taking an enormous leap into the deepest love in the world. There is virtually no arc for her romanticism, it just appears instantaneously and is never doubted by either side. Also, without giving away any spoilers, there is something special about her character which draws her to her new vampire boyfriend, but yet again it is never explained or even explored. For the next film, which has already been signed and contracted, it would behoove whichever director it might be to watch Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist to see the correct way how to show two incredibly awkward teenagers fall in love without making the audience want to gouge out their own eyes. The painful and repetitive scenes between Rob and Kristen completely washed away James Van Der Beek and Katie Holmes from Dawson’s Creek, America’s previous winners for “Most Time Taken by a Fictional Couple to Just Get the Hell on with It!”

Not having read the book, and I pray it is better than the adaptation, there are also a number of things changed or altered from the vampire mythos. I’m all for new storytellers taking creative license and trying to make something traditional into their own, but the changes made here just ripped out the heart and soul of these maligned and tragic characters. From their over-romanticized reaction to direct sunlight to the absence of a single pairs of fangs in the film, all the creative team of Twilight succeeded in doing is making these characters the weakest and most pathetic vampires in movie history. I would make a comment about Buffy being able to take care of these poor specimens, but I honestly don’t think she would bother. She’d probably send Xander.

It was glaringly obvious that the movie was made with only one group in mind, the 12-14 year old girls, and if you were not a member of this group, you honestly didn’t matter. This tactic might make for a financially successful film, but the franchise will begin to suffer once its audience grows up between films and they start to be able to do more than just gape at a mysteriously gaunt boy on the big screen. My only hope is the studio learns from the Harry Potter series, which has gotten better and better as the films have gone on and they continue to satisfy the young fans of the books along with their parents and older siblings.

Recommendation: If your hair isn’t currently in pigtails, move along.

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Why did I park so far away on opening night. I’m gonna miss the previews!

Rating: 5 out of 10

There are characters out there so iconic, so ingrained into the hearts and minds of the viewing public, that when a new chapter in the series emerges we rush out opening weekend, our hands clutching popcorn and our eyes pasted wide. Only a chosen few have made it into this cherished realm of public trust, but none as long and as stylishly as James Bond. This weekend brought his newest episode, Quantum of Solace, and it marked the second in the reign of current Bond persona, Daniel Craig. He broke out the gates with extreme critical and public appeal in the remake of Casino Royale, but now it was time to see if he could keep up the excitement and appeal.

Excitement, yes. Appeal, less so.

Besides being incredibly well dressed at almost all times, Bond is known for action and this chapter goes for the gusto from the moment the cameras roll. The movie opens with an impressive car chase, which inevitably leads our hero from overcrowded roadways into a wonderfully photographed rock quarry. It was a bold choice to jump right into the action without any set up whatsoever, but for those out there who somehow avoided seeing Casino Royale, it definitely helps to understand where this scene fits in (approximately twenty minutes from the ending of the last film). Lots of gunplay, screeching tires and near misses bring the curtain up nicely, but having a strong opening does not guarantee audience support for the rest of the film. We need to be taken on a journey, not just shown an amazingly expensive episode of Fear Factor. There needs to be plot and story behind the action to raise it up, but Quantum had very little in the area of foundation.

The story jumps around incredibly fast, not enough to lose sense of what is going on, but just enough to not give us time to invest. The Bond movies seem almost addicted to making every scene take place in a different foreign country, which makes for some great camera shots, but terrible continuity of scenes. Also, much of this movie was sub-textually about James Bond mourning the loss of his love from the last film and barely controlling his rage while seeking revenge. We fully got the revenge motif, but the mourning was shown only in the thinnest of manners. A nicked photograph and an old necklace were the only links to his emotional center, but they were rarely used in the brief moments between gunfire and roof jumping.

On the adrenalin front, Bond delivers as usual. One of the nice changes I feel to the modern day Bond is the older films used to show him skillfully sliding from one place to another, jumping and landing perfectly on any surface and so forth, but Craig makes every leap seem based solely on guts and gusto, not tact and talent. Throughout the movie, he lands on balconies and terraces by crashing into some random piece of furniture. The only reason the bad guys don’t get away from him is the dogged determination which forms the core of who the Bond character is. I think the rougher, tougher Bond is an obvious reflection on society today and what we want to see in a hero. Not so much a person who can dodge a bullet, but one who can take two shots to the leg, one to the arm and an uppercut, yet still win the fight.

Surrounding Bond as always are a bevy of beautiful women and a cabal of agents, both on his side and against. Gemma Arterton was mentioned a while back, by myself and others, as a “Bond Girl”, yet in this episode she is actually not the top of that food chain. Olga Kurylenko is the alpha female here and is a much more complex character. In the beginning her and Bond are on completely different tracks, but over the course of ninety minutes of insanity their paths intertwine, both strategically and emotionally. While not being a complete knock out performance, she is steadily improving over her turns in the unfortunate back-to-back duo of Hitman and Max Payne. Gemma, definitely worth mentioning, does finally bring a little taste of the classic Bond, just enough for an homage to the old days of Connery and Moore. Her sultry style hearkens back to the female characters of the early films and makes us remember why we love to visit the world of Bond so much. Also, without revealing a blatant spoiler, her role brings up the most direct recall from one of the most well known Bond moments. Feel free to let me know if you see it (it’s hard to miss). Now Bond would be nothing without a dastardly villain to track down and capture and this time it’s provided to us by Mathieu Amalric. A very popular and well rewarded star in the French cinema, this marked the American debut of Mathieu, who played the corrupt CEO with the world’s creepiest stare, Dominic Greene. While I do understand not every Bond villain has to be one who can last a round with him in a fist fight, in fact many of them don’t fit that category, but something about the final confrontation between these two didn’t sit right. So much had to be stacked against Bond to make this even halfway feasible and even then I found myself wondering why it was lasting so long. In cases like this, I find it’s better to give the villain a skilled right hand man, who endures the final fight, and let the boss deliver a final speech before giving up or blowing up.

Orbiting around Bond are some other side characters, but the only ones worth mentioning are Judi Dench who returns to continue her role as M, Jeffery Wright as the CIA agent with a working conscience and Giancarlo Giannini as Mathis, the convict turned trusted friend of Bond. All of these actors did a fine job in their limited screen time, but even they couldn’t hold up the lack of plot or story connectivity.

Recommendation: Quantum of Solace is good for some action, but a lackluster follow-up to Casino Royale, the relaunch of the Bond franchise. The execs are going to have to wipe the drawing board clean once again and see if they can’t relight the spark they just had, because one more like this and the fickle crowd will start murmuring to fix the problem with yet another new actor as Bond, which is not the answer. Plus, in my humble opinion, Daniel Craig was born to play this part. So, catch the afternoon matinee if you are drawn to the tradition, but if not, try re-watching Casino Royale. Homemade popcorn is better anyway.

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Yes We Did! Yes We Did!

That was the chant last night as I stood in the ballroom of the Los Angeles Hyatt with an overwhelming crowd of Barack Obama supporters. I was given the amazing chance to volunteer and help make the event a success and I grabbed the opportunity with incredible enthusiasm for what the night would bring. I was looking forward to celebrating the oncoming victory with as many supporters as possible. I wanted to feel the rush of joy and hope flow through the crowd when the words “President Obama” appeared on the large projection screens all around us. The energy and excitement that ran through me last night made me realize why it is people get involved in the political process. It was an indescribable moment to be part of a group driven so directly by hope and belief, not money and self-serving ideals. Honestly, I can’t see myself ever going back to the casual observer I once was of the democratic process we are so lucky to be a part of.

That being said, I was saddened to see California’s Proposition 8 pass and ban gay marriages in our state. People who feed on separation and discrimination cheered last night as the measure gained its support, but let me issue a statement to the supporters of Prop 8: Enjoy it while it lasts, your time is coming to a close. It took 8 years for California to overturn Prop 22, which set up the first official ban on gay marriage, and when it passed in 2000 the support was 61% in favor of it, but yesterday Prop 8 only garnered 52% of the vote. Times are changing, people are opening their minds and their hearts to the truth and hope of real equality for all people. The youth of this state made their voices loud and clear, 61% of the 18-29 year old demographic voting against Prop 8, and those youth are going to grow up, they are going to start their own families and pass on the lessons of equality and love and in time their children will also gain the right to shape their state and make their voices heard. It may take months or years to once again remind people of the unconstitutional nature of this ban, but it will happen. The dark cloud sitting on top of California right now is a passing one and in due time we will all bask in the sunshine of equality, togetherness and real love for our fellow man.

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I’m sure you know my companion here. He’s in every comedy this year.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

It’s been a long time coming. Finally someone tackled the incredibly hard genre of porn parody in the mainstream film world. This area has been begging to be cracked open and poked fun at for decades, almost since the inception of porn itself. The missing link in this universal quest was waiting for the right director to come along, one with enough guts to get down and dirty with the humor, one with enough skill to handle the depravity of the comedy without losing the audience, and finally one with enough of a following that it wouldn’t matter if he videotaped a poster of dogs playing poker for two hours. That director has come and he bears the name Kevin Smith…or does he?

Zack and Miri Make a Porno is the childishly charming story of two best friends who find their wallets bone dry and no prospects for paying their long overdue bills until Zack has the brilliant epiphany of shooting a porno starring themselves. Leading this adult-themed romp, Zack and Miri pull together a cast and crew of porn outcasts and misfits, along with some familiar faces to the comedy world, and form a family they didn’t know they were missing until it was already there. Along the way Zack and Miri also deal with the most common question between two best friends of opposite genders: Will sex change us?

Before even breaching the doorway of the theater any audience member who knows the name Kevin Smith is prepped and ready for dirty jokes, loads of sarcasm and possibly male nudity, but after the past year of R-rated comedies and the explosion of Judd Apatow, none of those previous shock factors hold much weight anymore. What Kevin Smith had to rely on in this film was his own personal style of witty dialogue and banter, exemplified early in Smith’s career with Clerks, where Dante and Randal debate over the righteousness of killing unionized Storm Troopers in The Empire Strike Back. That conversation would never appear in any other director’s works, let alone in their heads. Unfortunately Zack and Miri didn’t reach quite the same level of kitsch or intellectual playfulness we are used to from Smith. There are certainly moments of it sprinkled throughout, but the overall feel was a let down from his normal style. This could be the result of what every director goes through while they try to expand their market and skills (and this will only be further detailed in 2010 with the release of Smith’s first horror film, Red State), but the main difference now is when Smith first erupted onto the scene he was the lone torch bearer for the R-rated comedy world and now Apatow has taken the flame and run with it. With Zack and Miri lacking the spark and wit usually associated with Smith, it is too easy to mistake this for any new director being towed along in the Apatow wake. Now don’t take this to mean I didn’t like the film, I most certainly enjoyed myself, but it just left me wanting more of the Kevin Smith-ness I yearned for (which was easily solved by a quick jaunt home and a return viewing of Dogma…God bless that movie!).

Adding slightly to the Apatow undertone is the casting of Seth Rogen as Zack, who has been pleasurably riding along with Apatow and his crew since the days of Freaks and Geeks. This is not a slight on Rogen at all, because he has certainly done his homework and made all the efforts to be where he is today, but a large number of his big projects, especially in recent film history, have been under the banner of Apatow films, if not directed by the man himself. So audiences have certainly come to know Rogen and the style he brings to any raunchy or over-the-line comedy, but I didn’t quite feel he brought anything new to the table this time. He proved once again he can believably deliver heartfelt dialogue and make the audience care, but that was a doubt he previously shattered in Knocked Up. I laughed at the moments he wanted me to, yet I still felt he won’t be overly remembered for this performance. Skipping up alongside Rogen is Elizabeth Banks as Miri. Banks is also not a stranger to fans of Apatow with her side character turn in The 40-Year Old Virgin, but she has been equally busy in recent history on a number of other projects as well. In this movie she tries to show us the internal struggle of a woman fighting to keep her most important friendship strictly platonic, while also filming a porn flick to save her from being evicted. What woman hasn’t gone through that? She has her share of moments, but again doesn’t leave anything completely memorable for the exiting audience. On other parts of the casting front we see some familiar names from Smith’s View Askew-niverse; Jason Mewes, or more commonly known as Jay of Jay and Silent Bob, and Jeff Anderson, who has been delighting audiences as Randal since Clerks. Mewes plays Lester, the low budget porn actor with incredibly useful talents and a well versed knowledge of any and all sexual techniques. Half of his dialogue, funny as it may be, comes off like a recital from urbandictionary.com. Anderson joins in as Deacon, the cameraman-cum-editor who finds himself in the most precarious of positions. Also well known to comedy fans is Craig Robinson, who in this film plays Delaney, Zack’s co-worker and newly crowned porn producer, but to most of the television audience out there he is better known as Darryl, the big, bad plant worker from The Office. Craig is on a hot streak right now many actors spend their lives dreaming for and the best part of it is, we the audience get the benefit of watching his comedic genius even more. Popping in to give the movie some realistic porn flavor are Katie Morgan and Traci Lords, the former a current adult film star and the latter one of the few to retire and make a mainstream transition.

There is one more person worth mentioning and I made sure to save the best for last, even giving him his own paragraph. Justin Long, a terribly underrated actor, turns in the most hilarious performance as Brandon, the gay porn star who first inspires the wild idea in Zack’s head. He only has two scenes in the film, one of which you must stay halfway through the credits to watch, but trust me, it is totally worth the wait. I shudder to think how many takes were blown when other actors lost their composure watching Long in this role. He grabs a hold of this utterly ridiculous persona and never lets go, practically daring the other actors to break character. His performance alone raised the score of this movie a full point in my book.

Recommendation: True die hards of the Kevin Smith clan might not be blown away by this, but it could possibly reach a broader audience previously turned off by Kevin’s normal banter and intentionally clever writing. It doesn’t end up on the bottom of my Smith totem pole (you’re still safe down there, Jersey Girl), but it does make me readjust what I expect to see from him in the future. Same skill, less nerdy wit.

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Can you teach me something by Journey?

Rating: 9 out of 10

Taking the ordinary and introducing it to the out-of-the-ordinary. That’s what Thomas McCarthy said about his films and their underlying stories. Actually, he probably put it a little more eloquently, but you catch the drift. This is indeed the core of nearly all filmmaking and good storytelling. It brings out the eternal question; What happens when the normal world is shifted, knocked askew by any number of forces and how will the people of that world react? Will they run? Will they freeze? Most importantly of all, what would we do in their shoes? Now before you apply these new questions to such deep and powerful films like Beerfest and Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo, let’s start out with something a bit clearer.

The Visitor tells the story of Walter Vale, an economy professor listlessly wandering through his days pretending to be busy so he can negate any chance for human contact since the loss of his wife. He reluctantly makes a trip to New York for a conference and finds a young couple illegally renting his apartment in the city. Being a decent person, he allows them to stay while they look for a new place, but in return he gets much more than new roommates, he finds the doorway to a life which has been passing him by.

Thomas McCarthy creates a wonderfully simple and beautifully timeless world for us so we can bear witness to one of the great abilities in human nature, love. You can break almost any story down into a love story, but The Visitor is one dealing with numerous types of love in one tale. There is the love of music, shown when Tarek, the young man living in William’s apartment, teaches William about the African drum. Through this new musical outlet, William grows not only as a drummer, but as a person as well, allowing himself to open up to the world walking by him and becoming a participant instead of an invisible observer. There is the love of a young couple, shown by Tarek and Zainab, his girlfriend. They are both living in the country under constant fear of deportation, ignorant retaliation and learning to do what they can to get by, but their love for each other keeps them together and puts smiles onto their faces in even the darkest of moments. There is also the love of a mother for her son, shown through the brave journey of Mouna, Tarek’s mother who travels to New York after five days of not being able to reach her son on his cell phone. Sure, that could sound a touch paranoid, but it was the reality this family was living in which made her so concerned. Lastly, just to top off the love-fest, this also tells the story of love coming again to those who have closed themselves off to the idea. No matter what the circumstances, no matter how long it has been, love can always breach those defenses and wake up the heart once more. All these different versions of love are delicately woven together and paired up with a powerful political sentiment around our broken immigration policies and treatment of illegals. Coming off heavy handed is dangerous when dealing with these themes, so subtlety is the name of the game here and McCarthy handles it with the same skill and honesty he showed us before in The Station Agent. As a writer/director his record is incredibly strong, so I recommend keeping an eye out for anything bearing his name.

As with most small stories like this one, much of the weight and success falls on the shoulders of the actors and their ability to deliver realistic, believable and truthful performances. Casting becomes a type of “make-or-break” decision for the project and Thomas McCarthy came well prepared to the table. He had Richard Jenkins in mind for Walter Vale from nearly the beginning and stuck with him even after Richard told him that he would love to play the character, but the movie would most likely never get made with him as the lead. Richard wasn’t saying this out of any type of martyr complex, but he has been a character actor for a great many years without a starring role and he knew his name would not carry much weight on the playbill, yet even with that fact staring him in the face, Thomas stuck to his guns and fought for Richard. After winning all necessary battles, Richard walked into the role with such amazing depth and sensitivity garnering him incredible buzz and murmurs of Academy nominations. If he doesn’t reach the heights of the golden statue this time, he shouldn’t be too heartbroken because I have no doubt a number of the independent awards and smaller organizations are going to give notice and heap praise. There were such small and nuanced details to every moment he portrayed, it was impossible not to feel for him during this journey. From platonic caring to romantic longing, Richard proved once and for all he is a lead actor and one to be learned from. Also involved from near the inception of the story was Hiam Abbass, who played Tarek’s mother, Mouna Khalil. She really fit perfectly with the style and grace of Jenkin’s performance, showing a quiet, reserved, yet insurmountable strength which propelled her character to do absolutely anything to be there for her son. As for the young couple, Haaz Sleiman played Tarek and Danai Jekesai Gurira played Zainab. Both were quite good and held up the incredible level of commitment and quality already being displayed in the film. Haaz boldly followed his ark of being hopeful and optimistic about life in America to barely contained rage over his mistreatment from ignorance and fear. Danai displayed the other side of being a foreigner in this country, the side where they try as best as they can to keep to themselves and not interfere or be noticed for fear of being deported. Her struggle displays one of the true tragedies of the story, where the yellow brick road leading many immigrants to our shores and streets ends on cracked pavement and broken promises.

Recommendation: The Visitor is an amazing film which really brings out the depth of feeling we yearn for from independent cinema. It has had a long and slow burn on the film circuit and at this time can already be found on DVD, so do yourself a favor and buy, rent or borrow this movie as soon as you get the chance. If you’re lucky, the story of Walter Vale might even inspire you to continue on your own journey, wherever it may lead.

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“Oh my, ummm…this is awkward. Can I return this one for something a little more, i don’t know, related to me?”

Ranking: 7.5/10

Some people refer to it as the “Oscar curse”, others mention it as “setting the bar too high”, but they all refer to the same phenomenon, once great success is achieved everything from that point forward is compared against it. Few directors still working today know this as well as Clint Eastwood. After winning a number of awards previously, he finally snagged the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Picture for his 1992 return to the Western, Unforgiven. Twelve years later he reached that height once more in both categories for Million Dollar Baby. With that amount of popularity and acclaim in your wake, critics and audiences begin to develop a particular impression of where your movies will take them. Each time Clint returns to the screen, it is another contest against himself to try and outdo his previous visions. Did it happen this time? Were new peaks reached in power and passion? Let’s find out.

Changeling is based on a true story about a young woman named Christine Collins whose young son was kidnapped in late 1920′s Los Angeles. This took place during a time of great scrutiny and negative press for the police department in LA, so her tragic situation was given an overwhelming amount of news coverage and spotlight. Desperate to garner anything in the form of positive press, the LAPD snatched up any attempt to find her boy, but in that desperate vein they returned to her a young boy who was not her son. Whether it was an honest mistake or collusion on the part of the police force, it didn’t matter, there was no way for them to back out. What followed was a closely guarded cabal of high ranking officers and elected officials who did everything in their power to silence the willful and impassioned young mother still crying for her real son to be brought home.

The story is a powerful one and at times you have remind yourself that it actually took place. The sheer audacity and corruption depicted nearly ruins any suspension of disbelief, but it’s because we live in a different time, a different society. Back then, women still had very few rights and a great deal could still be swept away with a back handed comment about them being “too emotional”. In the past we were still bearing witness to the classic adage of “absolute power corrupts absolutely”, which we can still see today if we look closely enough. Clint did a fantastic job translating this desperate tale to the screen, bringing every minuscule detail of the 1920′s – 1930′s Los Angeles back to life. He also continues to handle brutal levels of violence in a sensitive and classic manner, moving the camera away or playing with shadows just enough to let the audience fill in the darkness.

Yet, what a director is truly there for is to direct the actors and bring forth the most honest and pure performances possible. This is where Clint Eastwood is a living, breathing masterpiece. Angelina Jolie brings forth the tremors and troubles of the young mother, Christine Collins. There is no doubt playing this role was incredibly intense for her since she most likely drew from her own much publicized experiences as a mother. She once again glides from reserved, to frantic, to forlorn and lastly to resolute with the grace of an actress much older than her years. The only problem for her was she spent a good deal of the movie emotionally troubled, so there wasn’t very far she could still go by the time of the third act climax. In the end there was a sense of caring for her, but I felt the lack of a distinct moment of undenied connection from the audience. John Malkovich lays the heavy hand of responsibility on the LAPD in his performance as Reverend Gustav Briegleb, a local pastor who made it his main goal in life to bring to light all the criminal and despicable acts the police had committed under the guise of justice. John achieves the powerful and sometimes frightening level of surety and devout belief in his own actions, which is usually the signature of highly influential religious officials. Jeffery Donovan gets the part people either love or hate to play, the character left holding all the blame. As Capt. J.J. Jones, Jeffery scrambles erratically to cover up Christine Collins in any way possible, including having her committed to an insane asylum until she agrees to sign a document absolving the LAPD of any wrongdoing in her case. He definitely reaches deep into this character to bring out the desperation which accompanies his actions, but the one failure here is we can never tell how much he knew from the beginning, exactly how complicit was he, which affects how much the audience can blame him. Yet, with all these big names and accomplished actors in the film, scene after scene is stolen by Jason Butler Harner in the role of Gordon Northcott, a frighteningly imbalanced monster with a penchant for young boys. No matter who he was on screen with, Jason drew all eyes to him and punched his way off the screen into the guts and underbelly of the audience. When nominations are announced next year, I’m not going to be surprised to see some of these names in lights, but Jason is certainly one of the most deserving.

While there are times we complain something on screen is unbelievable or that it could never happen in real life, this film suffers slightly from the opposite effect, what we witness is based on real life, during a particular moment in time. The level of mental, physical and emotional abuse laid upon this woman is not only baffling, but shocking to the idea that it ever took place. The film follows a common structure of your underdog story, one against the many, but in the end I’m not sure whether there was enough retribution to balance out the agony she had been put through. Without that equality between protagonist and antagonist, the film can sometimes feel unfulfilled.

Bottom Line: Fans of Clint Eastwood will like the film, but possibly not love it. It still fails to reach the level of his previous works, but certain performances, specifically from Jason Butler Harner, are truly worth experiencing.

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On Nov. 4 people around the country will take place in one of the most monumental elections, and possible power shifts, in United States history. Much of the media exposure has rightfully been surrounding the race for the White House and our next Commander-in-Chief, but here in California, along with Arizona, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, citizens will also be voting on a number of different propositions including one which will create a Statewide Constitutional amendment defining once and for all marriage to only be recognized as being between a man and a woman. This clarification is being asked for by those against sharing equal rights with gay people who only want to get married and be recognized as such by their state governments. Let’s just look at that for one moment and I’ll put this into even simpler terms, the people voting yes on Prop 8 (as it is known in CA) are “prejudiced against one or all members of a particular group based on negative perceptions of their beliefs and practices or on negative group stereotypes”.

That last part is in quotes because it is the recognized government definition of a bigot.

I don’t toss harsh words around lightly and neither should anyone else in this battle of opinions, but this current fight to pass Prop 8 is too serious and life changing to be taken lightly. There is no reason, I repeat, no reason, to deny the right and pleasure of marriage to anyone, no matter their sexual preference. I have yet to hear a single argument in favor of this backwards and divisive proposal that was based on a shred of logic. One of the first things I heard coming from the other side was giving gay people the right to marry would be the beginning of the end for society as a whole. The Day of Reckoning would be upon us. Well, first off, we heard that in 2000 as well and nothing happened, and now others are saying it will be in 2012 at the end of the Mayan calendar. So something tells me if the end of society is around the corner, it’s not going to have anything to do with a couple of women wearing matching rings. Then comes the discussion around the end of procreation, since two men obviously can’t do it on their own. This is my favorite piece of paranoia since it makes even less sense than the world coming to an end. From 1959 to 1999 the population of the world doubled from 3 billion to 6 billion. According to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau the population is as of today at 6,730,193,803 and will crest 9 billion by 2040. Does it really seem likely that granting gay people the equal and fair right to marry will drop that number to zero? Do they picture in forty or fifty years the entirety of the world will disappear with some small surviving population of homosexuals laughing as their plan of world domination and destruction comes to fruition? This is text book fear mongering tactics and if they weren’t catching the attention and belief of so many people I would honestly believe it was a comedy skit. Tossing some more logic onto this, lesbian couples can most certainly have biological children of their own by choosing a donor or going to sperm banks and gay male couples can either go the surrogate route or adopt. There is never going to be a shortage of children to adopt, mostly born from heterosexual relationships who either didn’t want to or didn’t care enough to take care of them on their own.

Next we’re told that this is going to force parents to allow their children to be taught in school about acceptance of gay people and the homosexual lifestyle. I can understand their fears here. I’m not expecting everyone in the world who is homophobic to suddenly change, most of them will never change in their lifetime, but we can start doing our best to shift the incoming generation to a place of acceptance. Please notice, I said acceptance, not encouragement or enlistment. No one is trying to turn kids gay. The only thing kids should be taught is that it is not right to hate or discriminate against someone for who they choose to love.

Love. There is the real key to this whole debate. Supporters of Prop 8 argue they are protecting the sanctity of marriage. Here’s a few facts about how well the heterosexual population is protecting the sanctity of marriage right now: The divorce rate in America for first marriage is 41%, the divorce rate in America for second marriage is 60%, the divorce rate in America for third marriage is 73%. Exactly where is the honor and praise for the sanctity of marriage in that? Were all those couples just confused about what sanctity meant? Or maybe they just got it wrong on the first one, or second one, or third one…

The value and strength of marriage is not based around the genders of the people involved, it is based around the love and support they share and the desire to spend the rest of their lives together. Let me go back for one second and repeat part of that, the rest of their lives together. If a gay couple can make it the rest of their lives together, still as in love as they were when they first got married, it just might be time for them to start teaching classes at your local community college. As for children, it is in homes and families that cherish, celebrate and teach love where they will get the best upbringing, and those homes can be with straight couples or gay couples, it doesn’t matter in the least.

In California, this proposition was actually passed in 2004, but when it got up to the State Supreme Court is was overruled and deemed unconstitutional. I won’t claim every judge on the bench is a perfect human being, they are normal people and subject to faults, but in this case the only fault they were guilty of is having a conscience and following their moral compass. As a nation we have strove to end inequality decade after decade, generation after generation, and I hope that in the next generation we won’t even have to debate about this topic anymore because it will be the norm by then. Children will have grown up in a world not based around negative stereotypes and fear mongering, but a society of acceptance, understanding and respect.

If you’ve made it to the end of this political and social rant/essay, I appreciate your attention and thank you for reading. In no way am I trying to offend those who have their own beliefs about the homosexual lifestyle, just educate those who might be hearing differing facts on the subject. Also, not that this should matter, but I’m not gay or classify myself as a liberal. I’m a moralist and this is a simple clear case of right and wrong.

Click here to read more and donate to the fight against Prop 8.

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You mean to tell me the hidden Harry Potter novel is NOT in this folder?

There are certain things a country does when it goes to war, the economy usually booms into action, the populace rally behind the sitting President and Hollywood starts production on films portraying America as the patriotic force of good against whatever evil it is we are currently fighting with. And so it went during the early years of the Iraq War, but as time dragged on everything started to slip away. The economy slid into one of the worst depressions on record, the general populace turned on the sitting President with such vitriol and distaste it is a wonder he’s still in office, and lastly Hollywood began to show another side of the conflict, one where we were not cast in the best of lights. The movie going public usually eats this all up with a popcorn flavored spoon, but eventually there is a line crossed where the audience just doesn’t care anymore. We’ve moved on, the war has become old news and we don’t want to be reminded anymore about how badly we screwed the pooch. But films take a long time to go from start to finish, so this weekend we were graced with one more wartime vision, Body of Lies, this one from greatly acclaimed director Ridley Scott and powerhouse actors Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Russell plays Ed Hoffman, an arrogant, egotistical CIA operative constantly wired to the cell phone in his pocket and somehow managing to pillage information from halfway around the world while still attending his daughter’s soccer game. Leo takes the role of Roger Ferris, the rough edged man on the ground who provides Ed with his intel and carries out whatever orders flow through those encrypted phone lines. As with anyone who stays in those situations for too long, Roger is getting strung out and he starts to wonder if these secret missions and assassinations are really the correct course of action. Ed does what he can to talk sense into him, make him see the bigger picture, but Roger begins to think the two of them are picturing different things. Old loyalties are tested and broken, while new ones are forged in the heat of a silent war. Once again, it’s shown that every man must choose his own destiny and find out what he truly believes.

The main thing getting in the way of this film’s success is the timing. No matter how much action you put in, no matter how much drama you layer over it, the fact remains this is yet another Iraq War movie and the audience just isn’t there anymore. We have grown weary of seeing our enemies, the ones fighting against us and the ones claiming to be fighting for us. There will always be a place for war movies in the annals of cinema, but the market right now has become glutted with them, especially with the extra helping on documentaries on the subject. Deep down we all go to the movie theater to be momentarily distracted from what we see on the news every night and right now the voice of the people is speaking loud and clear on that point.

Yet, even if this movie had been released earlier by three or four years, I’m not sure it would have done much better. Ridley does his best here to set up tension and a good sense of paced action, but with only an hour gone from the opening shot I was already beginning to wonder how long we had left. The film seems to drag itself towards an end, which when it finally arrives has little to no impact. The story lacks a sense of closure, which possible stems from the reality of the situation in Iraq. There is certainly a ride to be had by watching this, but I’m not sure you finish the ride feeling any different than when you got on.

The excitement surrounding Russell and Leo getting to work together was palpable when the casting was first announced, but they both deliver only during certain scenes. Russell relaxes into the skin of Ed Hoffman, a man who can’t be bothered to think about the humanity of his actions because he has the safety of the world on his mind. Yet barely underneath that is his own desire to be recognized as the one who saved it. In particular moments of the film, Russell really flowed with the brimming confidence of Ed, but in other scenes he came off rather uncaring and unmotivated. Leo got a touch luckier in his role because all the drama and conflict really resides in him. He showed some good chops while playing the political game between Ed and the local contacts, but it never came up to the power of Leo’s earlier stuff, like The Basketball Diaries, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape or most recently The Departed, which he will forever be measured against. The one person who actually stepped out of the film and truly gave a measure of weight when on screen was Mark Strong, who played Hani the head of the Jordanian Secret Service. His cool demeanor was a translucent mask over an intimidating and unremorseful nature. Hani saw the world very plainly, those who were with him and those who were against him, and you knew which side you wanted to be on.

Recommendation: I can’t honestly say there is much here we haven’t already seen in the last couple of years with films like The Kingdom and Lions for Lambs. If you really want power and performance inside a war story, Ridley is still your man, just go rent Black Hawk Down instead.

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Here are links for two of the posters for the movies I mentioned in this review:

[ Click above to buy the poster]

2 out of 3 people in the poster are looking off to the left. The girl would be looking there too, but she’s playing coy.

Are you looking to step into a bit of the ole’ underground? Yearning for a taste of the underbelly of London? Maybe you’re just missing the sounds of those thick British accents as the words stumble into your ears and confuse more than inform you. Whatever the case may be, there is only one man who truly provides the cure for those ills…Guy Ritchie.

The man behind Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch is back once again with another chapter is his series of old school mob movies. RocknRolla follows along a certain tradition for Ritchie, fast talking and fast reacting characters keep the audience tense, because they have absolutely no clue what will happen next. Keep the characters unpredictable and keep the audience involved, that’s the key. Now, if you noticed the title of this review, you might be wondering where the connection to Quentin Tarantino comes in (and that is a most perceptive and valid question. Well done, reader). After the movie ended I turned to my friend and said, “One sentence review: The British Pulp Fiction.” He sat back, processed the comparison and smiled. “Yep, you’re totally right.” I’ll show you what I mean while giving a brief overview of the story.

RocknRolla follows a small gang of low level criminals known as The Wild Bunch, who get hired by a sexy accountant to rip off some big money from an even bigger mobster. What she didn’t know is our little hooligans were already in debt to the local crime lord, who was doing business with the “bigger mobster”. So money is stolen, circulated, recycled and everyone ends up chasing each others tails. Also, there is a painting that gets stolen and becomes the MacGuffin of the film, which is a cinematic term for an object that is central to the plot, but no one ever really sees it. People philosophize, people die and people are nearly sodomized.

If the specifics of the comparison aren’t gelling for you yet, here’s a breakdown:

- MacGuffins: Pulp Fiction has the briefcase which we never see inside. RocknRolla has the painting which we never see the front of.

- Crooks in way over their head: Gerard Butler and Idris Elba play the heads of The Wild Bunch and are constantly trying to keep one step ahead of being killed by the very person they are working for, just like John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson (more Travolta though, in this case).

- The Girl is the Problem: Thandie Newton is the instigator of the troubles which put Gerard into play, just like Uma Thurman goes after Travolta, thereby putting him in a situation of life or death.

- Multiple storylines: RocknRolla is not set up in the vignette fashion of Pulp Fiction, but both deal with a number of plot lines that all converge in the end to tie things up.

- Sodomy Interruption: Both films have a scene where a guy is about to be raped by a pair of leather clothed dudes, when someone comes in and makes the snap judgment on who to kill.

It can be argued that some of these things are common to all movies of the crime/mob genre, but so many together in one film makes the case a little stronger. I’m not saying RocknRolla is bad, not in the least, but I left feeling like I’d seen it before.

RocknRolla is not going to be remembered in history for iconic performances, like Travolta and Jackson, but there was some good work being done. Butler hams it up nicely as a crook-cum-swashbuckler with no dancing feet. His inherent suaveness comes to bear in his scenes with Thandie, but he also gets to show his willingness to play that in the direction of a different gender. Which brings up one big difference between this and Pulp Fiction, and this could be easily attributed to the time periods, but RocknRolla was doused in homoerotic overtones. From the sodomy to the gay side characters to the subplot of Butler and his best friend in the gang, it never gets too far away from it. This provided for some really amusing humor and grinningly awkward scenes. Idris gets to play the straight man, no pun intended, to Butler’s machismo and he achieves it well. There is a certain calm to Idris on screen which makes me certain he’s going to be around for a long time to come. Tom Wilkinson also gets to walk a little on the more wacky side as the crime boss of London, trying to prove he’s still the big fish in town and time isn’t passing him by. Thandie, who I’ve enjoyed on screen in the past, doesn’t travel much farther beyond eye candy on this occasion. Jeremy Piven and Ludacris drop by as music producers, but get paltry little screen time. The one person who will leave the biggest visual impression is Toby Kebbell, as Johnny Quid. He spends most of the film shirtless and brings back frighteningly skinny images of Chistian Bale from The Machinist. Bale still wins the freakish battle, but Kebbell kept enough muscle tone to still look dangerous as well, which gives him an edge. Lastly, blink and you’ll miss Gemma Arterton, who will be seeing much more of in the upcoming Bond film, Quantum of Solace.

Ritchie on the other hand delivers once again in more traditional style. As I mentioned before, fans of those two early films of his will certainly enjoy this. The attitude is there, the raw edge is there and the camerawork is rife with quick cuts and whip pans, just like we’re used to from him. He also wrote the film again, which helps even more keep the style intact. I think many people will be glad to see the old Guy Ritchie back on the silver screen. Yet, all his past successes could be wiped out by the possibility of greatness with his upcoming film, Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr. as the questioning crusader, Jude Law as the encyclopedic Dr. Watson and Rachel McAdams as lady love interest. I’m containing my excitement for this, but just barely.

Recommendation: A good flick, bordering on great, far from amazing. If you’re a fan of Ritchie from the past, you won’t be disappointed. If you’ve never seen a film of his before, feel free to check this out, but don’t stop here, see Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels as well. As for the theater experience, after the initial whip panning frenzy in the first ten minutes, it settles down and becomes quite enjoyable. I also recommend Rasinettes over Goobers (take that, peanut lovers!).

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I remember what it was like to blink. Those were good days.

In every actor’s career there comes a moment where the critics and audiences rally around jumping for joy about how they’ve just witnessed a breakthrough performance. As stunning as these performances are, the term “breakthrough” always felt a little out of place to me since it’s only on rare occasions the actor in question is relatively new. Most times they are people who have been pounding the boards and scraping the screen for years. In those terms, the breakthrough is nothing more than a large group of people seeing that actor in a new light for the first time, mostly in something they never imagined before. Now the newly colored spotlight falls on Anne Hathaway and her powerful turn as Kym in Rachel’s Getting Married.

The film is a slice of life piece detailing a small space of time, only a few days, where Kym returns home from a rehab clinic just in time for her sister Rachel’s wedding. Anyone who has ever taken part in arranging a wedding, especially one taking place in the family home, knows the extreme stress already present, so toss a young, partially unstable girl into the mix and top it off with a nice coating of family denial and dark skeletons in the hallway closet, then you get the full picture of this film. Relationships are strained, ties pulled so tight and taut they could snap and still they try to work it out through screaming, laughing and crying (not necessarily in that order). After all, it’s about a wedding, who’s not happy at those?

Before giving Anne her due credit, let me shed some light on someone most people won’t know off the top of their heads. Rosemarie DeWitt plays the title role of Rachel and she does it with the utmost tenderness and subtlety. What she brings across is the inherent hatred, resentment and unending compassion sisters can feel for each other, even through the worst of storms. With a film more comfortable in the category of “ensemble piece”, Rosemarie is the catalyst and pushes the energy along, changing and charging every one of her scenes. But the light shines brightest on Anne Hathaway as Kym, the ex-junkie, ex-alcoholic, ex-return rehab patient bordering on becoming an ex-family member. Audiences claim this as a breakthrough performance because they fell in love with Anne in The Princess Diaries movies, Ella Enchanted and the wonderfully wicked The Devil Wears Prada. Yet what they might not remember is she’s played rougher, tougher roles in Havoc and Brokeback Mountain, showing the more mature and adult side of her skills. So I wasn’t all that shocked to witness the brilliance she brought to this film, but I will celebrate it all the same. Anne jumps in and exposes a vulnerability, a cavern of pain and lost love, which drives the emotional core of the picture. From opening credits to the closing moment, she is the elephant in the room everyone must deal with and the magical point is this is the first time where the audience can begin to empathize with the elephant and not the onlookers. I can’t end the acting portion of this review without bringing up Bill Irwin and Debra Winger as well. Bill plays her father and churns out a tenderness only an accomplished actor such as himself could generate. There are such small moments, such tiny fractures in his facade which allow you to peer into the heart of a man trying to choose between his greatest love and his greatest loss. On the other side, Debra Winger plays her mother, who has chosen to block out the pain in her past and skate by the rest of her life, allowing the blackness and hurt to fester and suffocate any chance at a real connection with her daughters. As you can read, the acting on display here is sensational and will undoubtedly be remembered during awards season.

As a total film, I’m not sure the story reaches the same heights. A lot of great scenes and spectacular moments are created, but the story lacks cohesion. A particular subplot about the family and its deep love for music is mentioned and referred to over and over, but never fully explained or explored, which weighs down later scenes during the wedding celebration and the overlong musical sequences. During most of the musical moments, all I really wanted was to get back to the story, back to the family and to Kym. Also, the connection between Rosemarie and her soon-to-be husband Sydney (played by Tunde Adebimpe) never quite comes across. There is a wonderful moment during their wedding vows, but it could have been helped even more if their relationship had been more centered earlier on.

On the directing front, Jonathan Demme, with the assistance of a touchingly tender script from Jenny Lumet, helps craft a reality we can all believe in, a home we can all feel we’ve been to before. Much of this intimacy and nuance came from the free form style of camera movement, with the actors never knowing where and when the camera was going to appear on them. Everyone was basically playing everything from the moment he yelled action, so there were emotional surprises around every pan of the camera. That technique gave the movie a certain level of improv or even documentary feeling, like the audience was the most silent of voyeurs.

Recommendation: A powerful series of moments, filled with terrific acting, that don’t quite come together as a film. Certainly has great value to witness, but the theater experience might not be necessary. Also, this really is meant for those viewers not afraid to open themselves up to it.

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What do you mean those Indy fans are still pissed off? Man, they are persistent.

Shia LeBeouf is the boy with the golden ticket. We’ve watched him rise from talent on the TV screen in Even Stevens, make a breakthrough performance in The Battle of Shaker Heights (one of the winning films from the ambitious Project Greenlight) and land squarely in the middle of some of the biggest blockbusters of all time, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls and Transformers. His star is shining bright in the Hollywood skyline and nothing seems to be slowing him down…

except for the fact his acting skills are getting completely lost in terrible, and I mean truly terrible, scripts. Let’s give his newest visual extravaganza a look see.

Eagle Eye is the story of Jerry Shaw (LeBeouf), a young, brilliant son who never applied himself to anything and is scraping by in a droll existence dodging his landlady and bluffing money in poker games in the back room of his copy store job. This is also the story of Rachel Holloman (played by Michelle Monaghan), a pretty, young and bitterly divorced woman who’s trying to vicariously live out her wild youth through her friends, while dedicating her only strength and passion to her young son. These two seemingly total opposites are “activated” and sent kicking and screaming through a dangerous series of hoops by an unknown voice on their phones, who can seemingly track them absolutely anywhere. Jerry is forced into it because he’s been framed as a terrorist, while Rachel runs the gambit to save the life of her son. Together they try to stay alive long enough to figure out what it is they are supposed to accomplish.

*There you have the basic set up. From this point on, there are spoilers because it is impossible to write about the issues with this film without giving away the plot twists. You’ve been warned.*

There is no person on the other end of the phone. It’s a computer called Aria who was designed and built by the Department of Defense and is now on the warpath to eradicate the chain of command, all the way up to the President, because they disobeyed a tactical recommendation she gave them. So after all the hype and excitement around the movie, it turns out to be nothing more than a poor remake of WarGames. This is only made more offensive by the fact that I loved WarGames as a kid and amazingly enough the film still holds up today, which many from that time period don’t, especially when they have to do with computer technology.

The film pretty much unravels from the moment you are told everything is being run and designed by a rogue artificial intelligence. The trailers were specifically designed to hide this fact, giving off more of a “big brother” fright tactic, and I applaud that marketing plan, except the only time that works is when the true plot twist in the theater is more interesting than the one we already imagined. This is not the case with Eagle Eye. No computer system would ever create such a convoluted and hole-ridden assassination plot. Computer systems are based on logic, even the ones we give personalities to, but Aria decides to make Shia and Michelle run rampant through downtown streets in numerous cities, dodging death and destruction at every turn, only so they can get into Aria’s control panel and undo a biometric lock put in place by…wait for it…wait for it…Shia’s twin brother, Ethan Shaw. We’re supposed to believe that once this lock is removed, Aria can proceed with her plan to destroy the chain of command. Not bad, as long as the audience chooses to notice that by this point in the movie the plan had no way of stopping, even if the lock was still in place. All the pieces were already in motion and Aria was pretty much unnecessary to the assassination.

Seriously, I could go on and on about the plot holes and logical misfires in this script. They range from a cell phone which can be triggered to only light up in short bursts and used to relay Morse code (I don’t know about you, but one click on mine and it stays lit for at least three seconds, no matter what) to the fact that only one mini-mart shop in all of Washington D.C. has a security camera not hooked up to any external network. The amount of disbelief needed in this film to make it enjoyable is staggering, almost more than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Transparent Ego Issues. No one actually tried to make sense of anything in the film and it runs on the belief if you move the camera around fast enough no one will notice. Well I noticed and I’m nowhere near the only one.

D.J. Caruso, the director of this silver screen misfit, is teetering on the brink of becoming Michael Bay, which I’m sure to some people is not a bad thing. He could follow this path and keep making bigger and bigger movies with less and less attention paid to the story or plot, but there’s a certain amount of respect traded to the devil of special effects and deep pocket budgets. He won a ton of people to his side with his Rear Window homage, Disturbia, and gained Shia as his modern male muse, but this recent visual splatterstorm of nonsense has brought him back to square one. The cast of the movie, which also included Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson, kept up their end of the bargain, but no one could perform their way into anything meaningful inside the web of failed logic and shark jumping. The blame firmly rests on the shoulders of screenwriters John Glenn and Travis Wright, which is frightening since these two are currently writing the remakes of Clash of the Titans and The Warriors. If there is justice in the film world, let their directors know how to rewrite on set.

Recommendation: If you’ve read the whole review to this point, this part should be fairly clear. Feel free to make up your own mind, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m a writer myself and I know this review was rather harsh, but I call it like I see it, what I saw was a total mess.

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You mean I can only be nominated for one Oscar at a time? But whyyyyyy???

As September crosses into the present, film critics and aficionados everywhere begin grinning and twitching in excitement. Oscar movies are officially on their way to the nearest silver screen. With the ribbon of quality content being cut, the first expected contender came from the brotherly duo not unfamiliar with the Oscar machine, the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan. Fresh off the heels of their Best Directing, Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars last year for No Country for Old Men, the cinematic brothers brought us a new chapter in their visual memoirs, Burn After Reading, a throwback to the darkly humorous days of Fargo, which also won them a Best Original Screenplay statue. Into the mix of directorial style and writing finesse we gained the acting skills of Brad Pitt, George Clooney, John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton. Frances McDormand is also along for the ride, but she’s a Coen staple (and also married to half the duo, Joel Coen). This movie had Oscar potential written all over it, so the only question going in was would it live up to the expectations?

Swing…the ball connects…it’s going deep…almost there…awww. Ground rule double.

This is not an Academy award winning film and certainly not one of their best, but still a nice way to slide into the season of quality content over box office boffo. Burn After Reading is a quirky, silly tale following a disc of information thought to contain CIA secrets from a disgraced and angry analyst (Malkovich), which is found in a local gym and tightly grasped by the hands of a woman (McDormand) desperate for money to cover her plastic surgeries. Mostly what the Coen brothers are known for is the depth and creativity of their characters and this film does well to cover the bases on that point. Frances McDormand plays Linda, a terribly pathetic woman so deathly afraid of aging and the current state of her body that she has blinders on to the rest of the world and the happiness it can offer. She brings the solid level of commitment and shine we’ve come to know her for. Brad Pitt joins in with what has to be his silliest and least intelligent character to date, Chad, a constantly hyper-active, exercise fanatic who works with Linda at a gym called Hardbodies. I have to imagine this was a fun role for him to play since he hardly gets to let loose like this anymore, not since 12 Monkeys. He provided a lot of the early humor in the film, but also drops one of the biggest plot twists halfway through. Clooney brings to life Harry, a ex-personal bodygaurd with a penchant for compulsive lying and an addiction to sex. George only gets to be this wacky under the tutelage of the Coen brothers, so even while it’s not his best work by any means, it’s a fun reminder that he can indeed get goofy with the rest of the gang. Tilda plays the ice queen wife of Malkovich, while also having an affair with Clooney. Watching her in this role, along with some others, I wonder when her picture will be included in the dictionary next to “emasculating”. Not to be left out of any discussion about over-the-top characters, Malkovich plays his part to the hilt, but I honestly feel his best moments are in the opening scene. There’s not much of an arc for him, so only seeing him come to life early on really provides any surprise and unseen moments.

Burn plays inside the footprints of Fargo, but never quite catches up to it. The Coens obviously know their craft and continue to put material out there with their own voice and character stamp, but this film felt a little like a step back for them. Maybe it was just a way to resettle into the dark comedy they are known for after their detour into heavy drama with No Country. Also running parallel to this is the question of the marketing campaign. Again the trailer was cut in a fashion to show one type of movie, but once you were in the theater it became something different, not wildly so, but still there is a distinct shift in tone from wacky comedy to dark comedy, and sometimes those audiences don’t mix well. It’s like seeing a trailer for Police Academy and getting Rushmore. Two great tastes that taste awful together.

Recommendation: If you’re a devout fan, you’ve already seen it anyway. If you’re on the fence, wait until video. If you’re completely on the other side of the fence, you still read this far anyway? I’ll take that as a compliment. Thanks.

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No one knows it, but I’m watching The Fast and the Furious behind these lenses on repeat. Damn, I was good back then.

It can be tough to remind an audience of something they used to love long ago. Cut to eight years ago where fresh faced post-millennium crowds were stunned by the sheer machismo of a character known as Riddick and the actor who brought him life, known as Vin Diesel. Talk of the next big action star shot around town through phone lines, electric wiring and every wireless network available. Vin was handed the golden ticket, but unfortunately he chose to cash it in on the wrong show. After another huge boost from the Fast and Furious franchise, which he helped create, Vin walked away and jumped into XXX which turned out to be a huge disaster. Since then Vin has stumbled through the action world, briefly turning in a finely tuned family performance in The Pacifier, but never making it back to his once renowned action star fame. Here, in the dark, dreary world of Babylon A.D., Vin was set for a comeback. Poised on the edge of a Blade Runner-esque feature that looked to relaunch the man-myth in the same fashion as Pitch Black did all those years ago. Would it work? Would Vin muscle his way to the top once again?

Not this time.

Babylon A.D. is hamstrung from the start. Here’s a brief overview of the story: Vin plays a smuggler who’s pretty much left the game, but is dragged back in for one big score which could give him the chance at a new life. The deal is he has to transport a young girl into America in six days. Tons of people are after her for different reasons, which Vin tries to ignore at first, but finds himself tangled in her web. This last job forces him to make a choice between caring about himself or caring about others. On paper it all sounds fairly straight forward and easy to get across, but somewhere in the translation from page to screen this simple story became so convoluted and riddled with plot holes that the director himself went on a vulgarity laced tirade against the studio for ruining it. Matheiu Kassovitz railed against Fox Studios for cutting an extra seventeen minutes from the final cut and also not allowing him to shoot what he felt was an integral scene to the story. We as the audience will never know if those missing minutes would have turned the tide of the film, but when the credits to roll as it is the feeling of huge and important facts missing is inescapable. The most glaring of all is the big hook from the trailer where we see a rocket propelled missle explode within inches of the young girl, as if blocked by a force field, but where the field came from, how she created it or what it means about her powers is explained only in the most inept fashion. This would be the only moment the audience could emotionally connect with Vin Diesel’s character since he couldn’t understand any of it either.

In the acting realm, Vin didn’t do a terrible job. He brought back a little touch of the gruff, no nonsense brute we all came to love back in the day. Yet later in the movie he shows even he has an achillies heel, no matter how tough he may seem. A late in the third act crying scene was absolutely painful to watch and should have been cut from the first moment of rehearsal. Put him behind the wheel of a car or the trigger of a gun, but never, ever put Vin behind a sheen of fake tears. Michelle Yeoh tries to add some acting chops to the flick, but even she gets lost in the convoluted plot twists. Stuck smack dab in the middle of this bleak futuristic mess is Melanie Thierry, who plays Aurora, the mysterious explosion proof girl. Piercing blue eyes aside, she has the innocence and purity the role calls for, but not the experience and talent yet to pull the audience in with her.  Once again though, I hate to give her too much flack since everything really starts with the script and the writing just wasn’t there to support her.

In the end Babylon A.D. came to the screen as a great concept, but terribly executed and we’ll never know if that was due to the unfinished and unpolished script, terrible directing by Kassovitz or another example of a movie studio sticking its fingers where they don’t belong. Whatever the case, it was a missed opportunity for Vin Diesel to recapture his former glory. Luckily for him, he already signed on to return to his star making character in Fast and Furious, the fourth part of the franchise, reuniting all four members of the original cast. If done right, Vin still might get the bump he was looking for.

Recommendation: Watch Blade Runner again, or Equilibrium, or Gattaca, or take a nap.

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I’m sure there’s a joke out there somewhere to make about a movie with themes like this, but I’m not going there. So phbbbtttt…

Nothing sets the mood like walking into a movie already brimming with controversy before it ever hits a single silver screen. So it was with the new storytime vision of Alan Ball, writer of American Beauty and creator of Six Feet Under. With those two titles under your belt, every audience member knows they are in for something darkly humorous, unusually frank and powerfully uncomfortable. Once again, Alan Ball did not disappoint on any count.

Towelhead is the story of Jasira, a young thirteen year old girl reaching the inevitable point in her life where changes occur in her body and her surroundings, but none of the adults around her represent anything close to a good role model. Without proper guidance Jasira stumbles tragically into puberty and has to fight off racism, sexism and the primal urges of others as well as her own. Nothing makes sense to her anymore and a new fight emerges when someone actually tries to care for her and make her recognize right from wrong.

This film penetrates through layer upon layer of social taboo and almost dares the audience to flinch, maybe even leave if they can’t handle it. The depths of humiliation and abuse Jasira sinks into are troubling to say the least, but there does seem to be a method to the madness behind the scenes. The story does attempt to say something important about young children, especially girls, who are victimized. Too many times once a tragedy has occured in a young girl’s life, she is forever treated like a victim and never expected to fully return to a normal, well balanced life, but Alan Ball strove to show a different possibility. He created a world where Jasira suffers terrible act upon terrible act, but continues her fight for understanding and once she does fully come to grips with what is happening to her, it becomes a fight to take back control of her own life. Also brought to bear upon the social mindset is the dispicable parenting that takes place. Jasira is an all too common example of divorced parents using their child as a weapon against each other and losing all recognition of the small impressionable person in between. It’s not to say what happens in Towelhead happens to every child, I surely hope not, but the allusions drawn here are far from unheard of.

The thematics will feel somewhat familiar to those in touch with Ball’s previous works, but he claims to have not noticed that until after filming was already done. Also part of the excuse is Ball didn’t write the story, he adapted the script from the novel of the same name by Alicia Erian, a middle eastern woman herself. Together, Alicia and Alan both defended the use of the title Towelhead in the face of protests from American Muslim groups across the nation. It’s a gray area to be sure. Alicia and Alan actually changed the name to Nothing is Private before they screened at Cannes because they were so afraid of the reaction (and it’s still listed on IMDB under that title), but after the film was sold, the studio actually asked for them to change it back. Everyone involved seemed to feel the inherent racism in the title and the shocking nature of it was integral to the story they were trying to tell. Opposers feel it is sensationalist and only helps further the use of such a deroggatory term. In my opinion, it’s a tough sell to try and make them change it since it gets embroiled in a censorship vs. artistry dispute, but I do see a double standard in our country where this movie can get released and supported, but Nas is forced to change the name of his last album away from N****r for exactly the same reasons. I think that proves the point that we may have come a long way in the fight against racism, but it’s only against some cultures, not all.

OK, off my political soapbox, back to the movie. Like I expected, Towelhead is incredibly well done, but equally uncomfortable. Numerous times I shifted around in my seat because there was no way to watch the screen and feel at ease with what I was being shown. Alan made this effect possible with strong unapologetic writing and brilliant casting. Summer Bishil takes on the impressive and heavy role of Jasira and delivers a stunning performace, which for her is nearly a debut (she’d done some children’s TV movies before, but nothing of this level or caliber). Her nievete in acting only helped to make Jasira more innocent on screen, creating even more torment when that innocence is threatened. It was a inceredibly brave role to play and I would not be surprised if her name is mentioned around Oscar time. Aaron Eckhart once again proves he can play any kind of next door neighbor, the one you invite over and cook hot dogs with or the one you make sure you lock the side doors against. This time he plays the more devious and dispicable of the two and his commitment to the role was impressive and frightening to say the least. Playing the role of Jasira’s father, Peter Macdissi had an entirely new road to travel as a man ill equipped for fatherhood in America during this day and age, while also fighting off racism both against him and from him. My feelings towards his character were very close to those of Greg Kinnear in Little Miss Sunshine. Both were paternal characters who were incredibly easy to hate, but when the film tries to redeem them at the end, it feels like too little too late. I will say in Towelhead, Peter’s character makes a stronger turn in the third act, but so much animosity is built up by then, it’s hard for an audience to empathize. Trying to save adults everyone from being portrayed as completely inept is Toni Collette. She plays a pregnant neighbor on the other side who begins to see terrible possibilities open in front of her and does her best to protect and shelter the young girl, sometimes even from Jasira herself. It was a nice touch to make the character pregnant since it added an extra level of worry and panic over whether something like this could happen to her own incoming child.

Recommendation: This is not a sunny afternoon matinee and certainly, positively not a date movie. But, if you are a fan of good, powerful and emotional filmmaking, strap yourself in because this is a heavy ride. See it in the theater for that extra added power, since it won’t be so easy to pause or change the channel.

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Searching for the right words to start this review made me feel as dumb as the main character in this movie acts. The House Bunny is a low-ball comedy pegged deep in a summer filled with high concept humor, but does it succeed as a welcome break? Yes, but just barely.

Anna Faris stars in the movie as Shelley, a Playboy Playmate seemingly past her prime, who is unceremoniously booted from Hef’s paradise. In her search for work in a world which is wildly beyond her understanding, she stumbles into a sorority house on the verge of losing its charter because no one, and I mean absolutely no one, wants to hang out with the girls who live there. Shelley sees an opportunity to bedazzle and befriend these girls, turning them into the popular chicks on campus, while the girls see Shelley as the last ditch effort to save their house. Sweatshirts turn to hot pants, frizzy turns to fabulous and piercings turn to pedicures. But, in an effort to keep some sort of moral along the way, both sides learn what it really means to be a family and how much value should be placed on what other people think of you.

So there you have the basic idea, which is nothing terribly new. Beat for beat The House Bunny could be superimposed over other recent college romps as Accepted and Sydney White (the latter being a modern day re-telling of the fairy tale, Snow White). Not to say it doesn’t bring anything new to the table. The supremely odd characters created inside the sorority are worth a look, if not a shudder. Anna Faris does what she does best, play people so mentally vacant, so completely oblivious that the sheer fact they can remember to breathe on their own is a gold medal worthy accomplishment (like the Olympics reference? they’re everywhere!!!). In reality Anna is extremely intelligent and knows exactly what she is doing to keep her career moving along, in fact, she was an executive producer on this movie and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her taking the reins even more in the future. From her first big pop on screen in the original Scary Movie, it was easy to see there was more to her than a beaming smile and big, pretty eyes. She plays her roles with a fearlessness most actors can only strive for. The biggest benefit to The House Bunny is her co-stars seem equally trained and willing to look as blatantly stupid as needed. Emma Stone, whom I just reviewed in The Rocker, brings on one of the most uncontrollably awkward characters in the film and alongside Anna delivers the hands down funniest scene in the picture. As hardcore as she looked in her last film, she’s totally replaced it with social ineptitude on a magical level. Also helping to form out the rowdy bunch of misfits is Kat Dennings as their resident pierced, hoodie shielded, man-hater. Kat makes the shift through the film to uber-hottie a little too easily, but I think it was more due to not enough time to devote to her character, not the fault of the actress (who can also be seen co-starring in the upcoming Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist alongside comedy wunderkid Michael Cera). Finally, slipping in between the cracks in the credits, is Rumer Willis, daughter of action icon Bruce Willis. She also succeeds in being socially unfit due to her wearing a upper body metallic brace, possibly fashioned from some Victorian suit of armor. The main downside for Rumer is once the brace disappears, so does her character. Deserving a special mention is Dana Goodman, who plays Carrie Mae, a painfully funny mix of a lumberjack, a greco-roman wrestler, with a topping of Jim Carrey . They made no attempt to explain how someone so odd could exist, but we really didn’t need one.

Although the movie does level out and take on a level of charm, the opening thirty minutes are filled with some of the most painful and uncomfortable awkwardness I’ve been exposed to in a long time. It was there to serve the story and prove how socially oblivious these girls were, but the movie took it to such a level where I almost felt bad for laughing. Most of the opening gags were met with uneasy groans from the audience instead of chuckles and laughs of understanding. Once the girls make the switch from freak shows to femme fatales, the movie finds a much more familiar rhythm and plays that tune until the final credits. Another fault is the misuse in the cast of Kiely Williams and Kimberly Makkouk. Kiely plays Lilly, a mute girl who sends most of dialogue through text messages to the other girls. Her first appearance in the movie comes out of nowhere, or I suppose more literally she dives out of locked room off screen, but her initial outfit is terribly reminiscent of something the maid would wear in Gone With the Wind. The only reason this is worth mentioning is Kiely is the only African American actor in the movie. I’m not saying it was intentionally racist, just saying the wardrobe person took a nap through 400 years of her American History class. As for Kimberly, she plays Tanya, who has a whopping handful of lines in the whole movie and is only part of the outcast crew because she’s tiny, somewhere near dwarf status. While some people might find the few height jokes in the flick worthwhile, it just wasn’t enough to make her character necessary in the least.

I couldn’t possibly write about this without bringing up the continuing trend of casting musicians in feature films. In the role of Harmony, the pregnant member of the house, is Katherine McPhee, American Idol runner-up in Season 5. She does have an amazing voice, which is used in the ending credits and a cringe worthy karaoke scene early on, but she also got tons of notice due to her flawless looks. That imagery only continues in The House Bunny because even nine months pregnant it’s hard to believe college guys wouldn’t be tossing themselves in her path. Adding one more to the musical mix is Tyson Ritter, the lead singer of All-American Rejects. He does a turn as Colby, the long time super-crush of Emma Stone’s character. Not enough really there to say whether he’s a good actor or not, but honestly the character wasn’t cool enough either to make us understand why Emma liked him so much.

Recommendation: It’s a silly comedy that does earn some stripes in the latter half, but be prepared to ache with awkwardness throughout the opening scenes. Uncomfortability is the name of the game here. If you’re down for that, feel free to check it out, but you can honestly wait until video.

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The reason I am the only thing in focus here is sheer power of the “stare”. Don’t try it at home.

There has always been a trend in Hollywood to go back and remake classics, but the term “classics” is loosely defined between critically acclaimed movies and those which we just have a hell of time watching over and over again, sometimes re-coined as “cult classics”. Fans of both good and bad films raise their respective hands in horror and disbelief everytime another remake is greenlit, while others furrow their brows in confusion as to what inner voices compelled movie execs to take on that particular film update. So here we are again, witnessing the results of nervous hands reaching back into the annals of film history for something to bring back, something to put new wrapping paper on and re-gift to a whole new audience. Happy Birthday, Movie Fans; It’s Death Race!

The original film, Death Race 2000, was produced by legendary film icon Roger Corman, who also acted as one of the producers for the update as well. It was yet one more notch in the belt of an already stellar B-movie career, which included gems like The Little Shop of Horrors, Dementia 13 and Big Bad Mama. Another tidbit the former Death Race had on it’s side was the performances of Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine as Machine Gun Joe and Frankenstein respectively. Both were big names already, with Stallone only one year away from the stardom of Rocky, and these two actors lend a huge amount of camp value to digging through the DVD rental racks just to discover this timeless story of pre-eminent road rage. You might be thinking to yourself, without those two actors, how can this remake hold up? Well, the answer is simple, find a younger actor who can seemingly play absolutely any character with a car and a bad attitude: Jason Statham.

For those who have been living under a rock for the past ten years, Jason Statham is one of the most under-appreciated action stars of our generation. Launching himself to critical appeal in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998 he cemented his career moving forward by getting cast as the kung-fu thrilling, one liner spouting and impossibly percise driving lead in The Transporter. His trail through the movie ranks has been a tad wobbly at times, like his starring role in Uwe Boll’s In the Name of the King, but no one can fault him for striking while the iron is hot. Statham continues his streak in this flick with a heap of glaring shots through broken windshields and stare down moments after taking unbelievable punches and kicks to the head. The only piece missing for the true Statham fan is a distinct lack of martial arts, which makes sense on the story side of things, but I still wished for one good spin kick, ridgehand chop to the neck or even better, a homage to the greased pig fight ala Transporter style.

Surrounding our steely-eyed hero are a couple of people worth mentioning. Ian McShane, who is most recently known for mercilessly killing and beating people down in the Old West town of Deadwood, plays Coach, the institutionalized leader of Statham’s pit crew. Tyrese Gibson brings his own version of the stone cold glare over to play as the new Machine Gun Joe, which for one reason or another the new writers decided to make gay. Joan Allen takes a striking departure from her usual fare and turns in a stereotyped performance as the fiendishly powerful warden of the futuristic prison where the Death Race takes place. To get a literary glimpse into her role, picture her performance as Pam Landy from the last two Bourne films and turn the bitchiness up three more notches. Lastly, rounding out the cast, as well as her wardrobe, is the film debut of the dangerously curvy Natalie Martinez as Case, the navigator in Statham’s rolling wagon of destruction. The eye candy in this flick just got a little spicy.

The movie gives you exactly what you expect, fast cars, loud guns and explosions one after another. There are a few really impressive stunt sequences and the realism of the shots seemingly prompted the studio to put up a disclaimer at the end of the film to make sure people don’t go home that night and try to mount mini-cannons on the hood of their Honda Civic. One of the main things I can attack about this flick is not the movie itself, but the trailer. The first trailer to hit the screens was way too long and showed each and every plot twist. Admittedly, you don’t sit down for this with popcorn in hand expecting to be dazzled by well written story elements, but at least give the movie a chance to hit on all cylinders (oh hell yes, car references get me bonus points in this one).

Recommendation: It’s not bad for the die-hard Jason Statham fans and road rage enthusiasts, but for the genre it lands in, I might lean towards the recent decapitation-fest Doomsday. The theater experience is only going to help this one out, so hit up a matinée if you’re feeling the fire for it.

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There it is, the first Papa Gino’s I ever ate at. Your first spaghetti basket will change your life.

This summer we have seen everything in the realm of comedy from forty-year-old children and weed fueled action heroes to bumbling super spies and blackfaced primadonnas. It has truly been the summer of high concept, but the audiences are just about ripe for something solid, something familiar and something just under the radar. Who knew it would come in the form of Dwight from The Office?

The Rocker follows the dream which never quite came true for our main character, Fish. He was the drummer in a band, but in order to rocket their career to unheard of levels, they had to drop him. Drop they did, and Fish dwindles into obscurity and ambivalence towards life itself. Twenty years later the universe smiles on him once more and he gets the chance to play drums in his nephew’s band. Through a series of pop culture twists and turns the band ends up becoming an overnight sensation and Fish runs wild through the fields of his waking dreams, while learning the lessons of what it really takes to be the member of a band, not a one man show. Of course, he is not the only one learning lessons, but he’s the main dude on the poster, you know how it goes.

Getting myself comfy in the cushioned theater chair, I was fully expecting a slapstick style, overgrown childhood movie with Rainn Wilson taking charge of the blundering and buffoonery, but what flickered on the screen in front of me was much more than prop jokes and prat falls. The Rocker sneaks by the chuckles and laughter and weasels into your heart with a subtly touching story and some really soft moments. Rainn does get hit by numerous objects and suffers more than his share of bodily harm, but he also never wavers from believing his dream is right and true, not some childhood fantasy. The more subtle comedic moments are left to Josh Gad, who plays his socially awkward nephew/keyboard player. Josh delivers more than a few times and his style felt oddly akin to Dan Fogler ala Balls of Fury, a kind of straight line delivery for a ludicrous line on the page. Rounding out the bandmates are Emma Stone and Teddy Geiger. Emma personifies the “i-hate-everyone-but-the-people-in-this-band” chick, while Teddy has no problem with his sensitive, soulful lead singer persona. For those who don’t already know, this is a touch into the area of typecasting since Teddy Geiger already has a wildly popular album called Underage Thinking and he lent his pop music talents to almost all the original music in the movie. Since they were able to write songs from the characters perspective and not just layer in current pop tracks, The Rocker tips gently into the genre of musical, because the songs actually investigate the emotional state of the characters and move the story along. Also, while Teddy is selling movie tickets and soundtracks, Emma Stone is doing what few actors, especially at the young age of twenty, get to do; open two movies in the same week! The Rocker beat it to the punch, but The House Bunny opens this coming Friday and Emma co-stars in that alongside and Anna Faris and Rumor Willis. It’s a one-two punch for the young ingenue who last charmed people as the girl of Seth’s dreams in Superbad.

Lending a hand to the laugh level were a number of cameos and side characters. Jason Sudeikis from SNL drops by to play the slimiest of record label agents in recent movie history. There are moments you want to punch him, but then you wonder what might get on your hands and if it would wash off later. Christina Applegate plays Teddy Geiger’s mom and tries to balance out the adult-to-child ratio in the mix. She does a decent job and has some truly biting lines (rebutting being called a MILF by replying with calling the man a PILS, you’ll have to see it to get the definition, but I think my best friend will be using it for the rest of her life). Demetri Martin also shows up as the epitome of pretentious, film school drop out, ultra hipster music video directors and it gave me a medium level of anxiety just imagining being on a set with a character like that.

This was honestly the last movie I had any inkling would stir any feelings beyond a bubbling chuckle in my belly, but there is a sweetness to the story and an honesty to the message. It all boils down to follow your dreams, no matter the cost. If that message is spoken faithfully, no matter what story you wrap it in, there will be some people in that audience walking out a little lighter in their step, just itching to get home and pull out their old hobbies, guitars, etc. Don’t get me wrong, this is no Rocky, I doubt many people will suddenly become rock stars after seeing this, but they might just get a tiny bit of inspiration from the best place possible; somewhere unexpected.

Recommendation: I was completely surprised by it, but I’m a sucker for a sweet story. Some good comedic moments, but they are outweighed and outnumbered by the more heartfelt ones. If you’re looking for down-and-out comedy, this might no be crude enough for you. Yet, if you want something simple, with a nice rhythm, this could be the right beat for your Saturday afternoon.

p.s. Christina Applegate also holds one of the best honors ever, being mentioned in the P.M. Dawn song, Set Adrift on Memory Bliss. Let’s be honest, where can you possibly go from there?

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One of these things is not like the other, err..well, it is, but it’s not. (hint: one of them is British)

When the whole world is ranting and raving over the dark, brooding charisma of a vigilante crime fighter, where could we possibly turn to finally end the majestic run of the bat? Well, look no further than the most politically incorrect big-budget comedy in years. I guess five weeks of the gloom and doom of Batman finally did get us wondering, “Why so serious?”. Tropic Thunder rolled through the digital clouds this weekend and into theaters nationwide. It barely cleared the opening weekend take of recent R-rated comedic kin, Pineapple Express, but since Tropic Thunder was made for a ton more money people are wandering around claiming it was a letdown. Look, it took the #1 spot away from The Dark Knight, which had held it for five weeks, and claimed the spot for itself. No matter what amount of money it took in, this was still a success in its own right.

But let’s not focus on money, since it is the root of all evil (but I’ve been trained to handle it, so feel free to rid yourself of any and all unnecessary evil and send your spare money to me). The real success story for this film is the writing, the acting and the sheer brilliance of stupidity skipping and frolicking its way through the jungle. Jumping off the launching point with the fake trailers created for the fake actors in the movie, you already know you are in for something different, something that pushes the envelope of political and social commentary and satire. Tropic Thunder takes unabashed shots at Hollywood, not only for its reputation for prima-donna actors and bumbling directors, but also at its own tendency to turn any poignant social commentary into cannon fodder for the Oscar season. Critics want to brand the movie as insensitive to any number of groups, but what they refuse to see is the lambasting of Hollywood and its own culture as the root of the satire.

Intelligent writing will get your foot in the door, but it’s the actors who are going to have to walk through it. Performances from left to right were all above par and some were down right sensational. Robert Downey Jr. got a helping hand from the instant buzz created the moment people heard he was going to play his character in blackface, but once again the satire of the film keeps it from coming off as incredibly racist. Also lending a hand is Brandon T. Jackson, playing his rapper/actor crossover character Alpa Chino, who comically tries his hardest to correct the historic stereotypes Downey uses to embody his African American roots. Dropped into the lap of a less dedicated actor, the blackface would have completely failed and indeed come off as racist, but Downey confidently walks through the film totally unashamed, which allows the audience to feel unashamed at laughing at him. Ben Stiller, who also took the directing helm for this wartime parody, equally dove into the deep end of the pool with his action hero’s level of total obliviousness to the world around him. Feeling a little like the reverse of the situation in Hot Fuzz, where one man was sane and the entire town was mentally inept, Stiller provides a good deal of the less subtle humor. The only negative twitch I had here was the suspension of disbelief is stretched incredibly thin with Stiller. I could buy the totally out-of-touch actor persona, but once dropped in the legit war zone, it’s a little tough to buy Stiller continuing to live in his action film dream world. Jack Black comes through in the end of the film with his physical comedy king character, but he felt wildly underused for most of the film. Surprisingly, driving the plot and the story along was Jay Baruchel, who was the only mentally stable person in the entire film and he turned in a great performance.

Peeking around the corner of the frame, the cameos in the film are almost overwhelming. Steve Coogan, who should have had a much bigger role, was relegated to mere minutes of screen time, yet he made the most of them. Matthew McConaughey helps paint Hollywood agents in their bleakest light to date, while Bill Hader appears under the veil of the lowly studio-head assistant. Danny McBride, who is having the year of his life right now, steals scenes left and right as the pyrotechnics expert alongside Nick Nolte as the grizzled true life persona of Ben Stiller’s lead role. Saving the most notable cameo for last, Tom Cruise makes a triumphant return to the big screen as an overweight, unbelievably hairy, booty smackin’, cuss tossing Hollywood Studio exec. The hidden genius in this role is every moment he is talking smack about over-pampered actors and how they need to be treated, you know he’s poking fun at himself. Word on the street is Tom recently dropped out of his next action/spy thriller in turn for another comedy after hearing the positive buzz about his Tropic turn. If his career makes a dramatic upturn in the coming months, Tom honestly owes Ben Stiller a crisp million dollar check.

Topping off the whole experience is the great cinematography from John Toll and a wonderfully worked soundtrack, which brings the audience back to the time of epic war movies, but equally reminds us we are watching a send up of that very time period. I can’t say this is going to take in tons of money since the humor might be missed by people not familiar with the inner workings and insanity of the entertainment industry, but I hope there is enough kicks to the balls and fart jokes to keep the rest of the world happy.

Recommendation: It’s worth a look see. Save a couple bucks with the matinée ticket if you can, but check it out in the theater. The jungle, the explosions, the ridiculous trailers all work better in that environment.

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“Do you know someone named Godot? No? Damn…”

There are few times as a movie watcher when you get to be there at the beginning. By the time a directors name gets tossed into the open arena of critics and fans alike, they have already created a handful of theatrical visions and you find yourself scouring Netflix or Blockbuster trying to walk backwards through their cinematic resume. Well, this is one of those few times where you can say you were there when. In a small number of years you can act snobby at parties and brag about how you saw this feature length debut years before anyone knew about the following successes. What’s better than having intellectual ammo at the ready to feel superior about? Not much.

Let’s talk about the movie first, before we get into the behind the scenes masterminds. Dakota Skye is a superhero tale with a twist. Dakota is a young girl, only medium cute (a line from the movie, which is terribly inaccurate) and she has a secret power. No one can lie to her. Anytime someone distorts the truth around her, their real meaning and honest thoughts appear in front of her like subtitles in a foreign film. You might think this would be a great power to have, but once you start realizing how much people lie and what they really feel about you, life can seem pretty bleak. This is where Jonah comes in, a pleasant tinged stoner who seemingly never tells a lie. Meeting Jonah throws Dakota’s world into a spin because there are only two answers, either her powers don’t work on him or he really is the last honest person on Earth. Let the teenage confusion and angst begin!

The movie is really centered around the relationship between Dakota and Jonah, which places a large amount of the success on the shoulders of Eileen Boylan (as Dakota) and Ian Nelson (as Jonah). Thankfully both step up to the task. The chemistry on screen helps the audience sink into their world, reminding us about that time when we met the first person who got underneath all our walls and social defenses. Eileen shuffles her scuffed jeans and worn-in Chucks through a performance balanced between one part slacker, one part dreamer and one part trail blazer. Top off with a dash of jaded teenager forced to grow up too fast and you have the incarnation of Dakota. Her adorable presence on screen and earnest moments really center the film and keep the audience tuned in. Coming in to lend his assistance is Ian with a humble smile, honest face and almost effortless delivery. Certain scenes for him felt so natural it could have been mistaken for improv, just letting him go and feel the moment as it happened. You can expect to see both of these young actors in the coming years, that is, if you haven’t already caught Eileen in Greek and Making Change and Ian in Bratz and True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet.

Now both of those performances would not have been possible if not for the delicate touch of director John Humber. This is his first feature film and I can guarantee it won’t be his last to reach the silver screen. Dakota Skye has the feel and rough edges of a debut filmmaker, but there is a vision, a concept and a level of skill that cannot be denied. The whole story is visually told with delicate pacing, filled with engaging moments, leading up to a beautifully touching final scene right out of any major motion picture we see today (specifically in the romance genre, that is). If this is the beginning of a career, all I can say is I am excited to see what’s coming down the line.

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“If we all just agree not to stare at the weird bumpy thing at our feet, maybe it will go away.”

I know, I know. This is probably the last movie anyone expected to find reviewed on this blog, but the people who really know me can attest to the fact that I am a movie junkie. I will see virtually anything and the ones I might not see by myself, I will easily go along if it’s with another person. So lo and behold a night with my best friend and she wants to witness the story of the bedazzled wonder-pants. Far be it for me to deny her that right, even though I had the arguement of not having seen the first movie. Would I be lost? Would I understand the bond of these four young and troubled girls? How would I follow the twists and turns bound to pop up? I guess my years upon years of movie watching was actually just training for this moment. So away we go…

The next chapter in the tale of the denim divas follows them to all corners of the earth, but seperately. Each of the girls leaves for the summer to follow thier own path, their own heart and where it takes them is not always right along side each other. One goes to drama camp to find out her place in the theater might not be behind the curtains at all, while another goes to art school only to find drawing passion and heart can’t be done when the artist has closed hers off. One more girl learns the past is only as far your last conversation with someone you care about, while lastly another finds looking into the future is more frightening when you imagine it alone. Each young woman travels their own road and this story is how they find themselves and each other once again along the way.

After reading all that it might feel like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 has stuffed way too much into those wildly decorated jeans, but the movie shows itself to be a great example of intelligent and accomplished editing. Each storyline is touched on, taken in and then moved on from with impeccable timing, never overstaying its welcome and never leaving the audience wondering what was going on with the rest of the girls. Everyone is granted a wealth of screen time and that passes on to the viewer a level of visual respect, so we can decide for ourselves which person we want to route for (if not all of them, which in my case, it wasn’t, but I’ll get to that later). Credit is assuredly given to the director, Sanaa Hamri, for her work, but I want to lend a special round of digital applause to the editor, Melissa Kent, for really keeping a well balanced performance intact for everyone involved.

About those performances, let’s take a closer look at the set up and how it differs from the first time these pants made their appearance on the silver screen. We have four young up-and-coming actresses in Alexis Bledel, Blake Lively, Amber Tamblyn and America Ferrera. When the first movie came out Alexis was riding high on the back of Gilmore Girls mania, while Amber had recently enjoyed critical acclaim in her starring turn on Joan of Arcadia (although not the public rating support that usually accompanies such high reviews). This time around, Alexis and Amber have taken a back seat to the Emmy and Golden Globe winning America Ferrera from the critic’s wonder darling, Ugly Betty and the hype/buzz machine powerhouse of Blake Lively and her adolescent hormone extravaganza, Gossip Girl. Behind the scenes the dynamic may have changed, but on screen you would never know how far things had shifted. There is a palpable level of camaraderie between these four young girls, but how far that lasts when the cameras are off is hard to tell. Personally, the two current headliners, Blake and America, stole the show with their respective performances, especially Blake, while Alexis held her own and Amber fell a little flat. Part of Amber’s problem is she has the character with the least reason to support her. For most of the movie she is grumpy, frumpy and bordering on goth. While each of the other girls are stretching and reaching out, Amber’s character is retreating inward, causing a slight disconnect with the rest of the pack. On the other side of the gender line, there are the men in the picture. No teen chick flick is complete without the heartthrob young men to make the girls swoon, but in most stories there are also the jerks and brutish young punks who hurt or disappoint the girls first, which sends them running to the male best friend who they never looked at in that way before, but they see, and so on and so on. In this story I felt a little break in that belief in the world it created because every guy in the film was perfect. They were all total gentlemen, caring, sensitive, bursting with charm, and to top it all off most of them looked they had just walked out of the gym after a 24-hour work out bender (all except for Blake’s dad, which can be excused in this case). The only reason this stood out as a problem for me was they had every guy throwing themselves at their feet, so their only real problem was with themselves, and that makes for very few hurdles to jump over which are not self-imposed.

In the end the movie is enjoyable and the people in the crowd I was a part of all had their share of cheering moments. It’s a chick flick in its purest form, but that doesn’t mean all the boyfriends and best friends out there have to moan and groan when they get dragged to it. The theater experience really doesn’t bring anything special to it, so you guys out there might even be safe until DVD release, but once that comes, you better find yourself a comfy pillow on the couch because you can be sure this will get heavy rotation.

p.s. My friend would be remiss if I didn’t mention her issue with the casting of the male model character in Alexis Bledel’s story arc. Not a bad actor at all, but she got the vibe he (or his character) wasn’t really into Alexis, or her character, or her gender… Oh SNAP! And I would be remiss not to mention that since this is a sequel with no sub-title it will forever be known to me as The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2: Electric Boogaloo.

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“Apologize for making fun of my wind-up puppy collection.”

“Not until you apologize for making fun of my pitch for ‘Dumb and Dumber 3: The Dumbest’.”

“…”

In a cinematic climate recently proven to be tired of movies dealing with the current war in the Middle East, a new fighter enters the fray. Traitor attempts to be something different, a story dealing with the conflict in that part of the world, but also dealing with its effects on people of the Muslim faith in the Westernized world as well. On top of that daunting task, it also reaches for the goal of creating tension, action, anxiety and even a little humor in a deeply political thriller. Oh, and did I mention it was from a first-time feature director? Yep, that’s one big slice of pie to cut off. So how did it fare? Let’s start from the surface and work our way in.

If you’re any fan or connoisseur of cinema, you absolutely have to take your hat off to Don Cheadle. The man has a resume going back years and years and nary a miss in the bunch. There are a few stumbles (I’m looking at you, Swordfish), but overall once Don Cheadle is added to the cast, you’re film instantly takes a step up in the quality column. Going all the way back to Colors and his long stint on the highly acclaimed TV show Picket Fences, Don has only continued his trail of solid performances with the Oceans trilogy, Crash and Hotel Rwanda. In Traitor, Don plays a Muslim American who is caught not between his faith and the Western world, but between his faith and others who interpret the same faith differently. This is the real core to much of the fighting in the world today and this film seeks to uncover some of that for audiences which are nearly foreign to the concept of non-Judeo-Christian values being misinterpreted. Don continually resolves himself on screen with what he wants and what he has to do, all while holding the quiet and stoic presence he has come to be known for. It’s no surprise that his performance is filled with intensity and passion, since he is also a producer on the project and helped get it made under the banner of Overture Films. Once again this is a great example of desire and talent coming together with a well written story.

On the directing side, Jeffery Nachmanoff, who is also the writer, pulls visual influences from other character driven crime stories like Traffic and The French Connection. Traitor has a dirty, worn aesthetic which lends a helping hand to the gritty nature of the subject and landscape of the film. Jeffery weaves two stories together, that of our main characters challenges over his faith and the story of the other side, those people with no struggles over faith and how that can be abused by those in positions of religious power. It boils down to a moral tale about making your own choices and following your heart over the decisions and desires of others. It is a successful effort from this first time feature director, but it did have a handful of missteps. First and foremost, there exists a line where creating tension in the audience changes from excitement to uncomfortability and anxiety. We love being scared, we love being tense, hell, that’s how the enitre horror movie genre lives and breathes, but you can’t keep the audience in that physical and emotional state for too long at one time. Breaks, laugh lines, moments to breathe have to be interspersed to give people time to recoup and let the tension out of their muscles. Traitor sways over that line numerous times in the movie, especially during intercut scenes with a number of storylines happening simultaneously. Lastly, (*minor spoiler*) there is a moment where we are shown a number of ordinary Americans doing their daily routines, while in the background plays a news report about racial profiling and the rampant dissolution of civil rights of stereotypical Muslim looking citizens directly after the 9/11 attacks. The music, the visuals and the content was directed to make the audience feel and agree with the impropriety of the racial profiling, yet later on in the film we are shown that every person we saw during that montage was actually a terrorist as well. It went from telling us how we should trust our fellow man to needing to be prepared to fight off our local coffee store employee. (*minor spoiler over*)

Worth mentioning alongside Don Cheadle are the performances of Guy Pearce, who certainly doesn’t get enough screen time in the major studio films, and Said Taghmaoui, who plays Omar, the devout extremist who brings Don Cheadle into the terrorist fold. Both of these actors really helped shape the story and world on each side of Don and allow him to bring his full range to the movie as a whole, instead of just one storyline. Now, worth mentioning on the bad side of the scale, is the intentionally misleading trailer. The trailer makes this movie look like it’s the black version of The Bourne Identity, with car chases, fist fights and intense spy scenarios, but very little of that is actually present. It was only cut that way to entice American audiences who might otherwise not pay money to sit and watch a slow paced, heavily political tension piece, but that is what Traitor really is. Walking out, I was really happy I had seen it, but I definitely resented the trickery from the studio to try and get me hyped for something it didn’t deliver.

Recommendation: If you don’t mind the tension levels, check this out for sure. Oh, and to really freak out your friends with the wealth of your movie knowledge, add this movie whenever you’re talking about films from the mind of comedian Steve Martin. Yeah, they’ll look at you weird, but you’ll know you’re right. Enjoy the glow.

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“Do you think what they’re doing over there is illegal? I mean, in this state?”

“Man, I’m not even sure if it’s possible.”

Could it be possible the people behind Pineapple Express were so baked they didn’t even realize it got released on Wednesday instead of Friday? Maybe it was supposed to hit last Friday and everyone connected to it just woke up this morning and thought, “Oh crap. Umm…let’s just send it out now.” Or, the least amusing and most likely of the options, they wanted a jump start on opening weekend tallies and figured it might help them unseat the reigning champion, The Dark Knight. Whatever the reason might be, I’m glad for it because it broke up my week nicely.

Walking into the theater I had expectations only to be entertained, nothing more. My gauge was set to something just a little over Step Brothers, but not aiming for Superbad, Knocked Up or Beverly Hills Cop (added that last one in because it is by far one of the best R rated comedies of all time). What I got was something much different. This is more than a stoner film, this is a whole new genre, the stoner-action film. The genius of this is no one really ever broached this area since logic prevailed against it. If you have two stoners as the main characters, you can’t have an action film because they’ll sit around and do nothing the whole time. There was a brief poke into this with the release of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, but it wasn’t as much action oriented as hijinx filled. The Pineapple Express formula looks something like this: Smoke weed -=> Witness Violence -=> Smoke more weed -=> Cause Violence -=> Smoke even more weed -=> Go on completely ridiculous violent tangent. As odd as that might sound, it worked like a charm. If this had been shot as a wall-to-wall stoner film it would’ve gotten old within the first thirty minutes, but the fight scenes are so absolutely over the top and beyond hilarious it helped create a nice balance of pacing and energy from the movie and for the audience.

In front of the camera playing our two doobie loving heroes are Seth Rogen and James Franco. Rogen is on a streak which can almost not even be fathomed by most in Hollywood. Reaching back to his humble beginnings on the Judd Apatow led TV show, Freaks and Geeks, Seth has gone on to become one of the most powerful forces in today’s comedy world. Along with Apatow, his mentor, they have single-handedly created the resurgence of the raunchy comedy and infused it with enough heart to increase the audience base by double or more. Soon enough, Rogen will be the Kevin Bacon of the comedy world and you won’t be able to connect two movies without finding him or someone that’s worked with him. James Franco on the other hand, not the well known actor in the comedy circles, but he channels a mix of Rory Cochrane (aka Ron Slater) from Dazed and Confused and Jeff Bridges (aka The Dude) from The Big Lebowski. His relaxed facial expressions and foggy stoner logic throughout the film drive the reaction shots in scene after scene. Lastly, rounding out this baked-in trio is Danny McBride as Red, who in the public eye is just coming off his commendable comedy efforts in The Foot Fist Way. Even though Seth is walking tall in the movie world right now, he actually gets outplayed by both James and Danny who each turn in brilliantly toned and tempered performances. Also, watching these three in a fight scene together was one of the top five most hilarious moments this year.

Some people might not realize that Seth Rogen also is the producer or co-writer of a majority of his recent hits. Knocked Up, Superbad and The 40-Year Old Virgin, on top of this new super-stoner flick, have all felt the weight of his pen and his intelligence for storytelling. He’s got a new big screen adaptation of TV’s The Green Hornet coming up and it almost feels a little like Pineapple Express could be a gateway movie for the audiences to begin looking at him as an action/comedy star. He said in a recent interview he was worried about what was going to happen next since he came up with a lot of these movie ideas when he was fifteen and now he’s much older and has to start coming up with entirely new stories. He might be worried about it, but I’m not. Something tells me Rogen and the entire Apatow crew is going to be around for a very long time. The feeling in the theatrical comedy world right now is reminiscent of Saturday Night Live when you get that perfect mix of cast members. Let’s all sit back, pop open our choice of sugary goodness and enjoy the ride while it lasts.

Recommendation: Obviously I enjoyed the film and I would tell you to go ahead and check it out. The theater experience isn’t completely necessary, but I would do it anyway since you won’t have to wait months for the DVD to hit shelves. Plus, there are a few action scenes which can be helped by the big screen and sound. Oh, and for those wondering about the unanswered question, you do not actually have to be stoned to enjoy the movie.

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Someone told us playing in this tunnel would be “avant-garde”. What a bastard.

Every now and again you are pointed towards something which will shift your day, your mood, maybe your whole life, in a whole new direction. It would be a little presumptuous of me to say this band from Brighton in the UK will do all those things, but I feel safe saying they will at least catch you smiling without knowing it, maybe even reminiscing about another feeling lost so long ago. Either way, there’ll be an affect.

Passenger is a five piece band led by Mike Rosenberg and they slide into the pop/rock scene with a slightly different take on things. The melodies are sweet and the sound is earnest, but if you were to read the lyrics all on their own, you might think something wicked this way comes. The most notable track for the switch hit off their upcoming album, Wicked Man’s Rest, is “Walk You Home”, a upbeat diddy beginning in the world of puppy love and office crushes and ending deep in the shadows and high in the trees of stalkers and obsession. It actually took me a couple listens before I stopped bopping my head to the music and heard the lyric, “I’m the boy with restraining orders”. Can’t say that line pops up a lot in the love songs I usually listen to. Moving forward to a more straight forward track about loneliness and separation, there is “Table for One”, a beautiful ballad which paints not only a simple visual picture, but also an audio landscape to sweep the listener up into its arms. Then, just so we don’t leave out the other side of love affairs, the angry and angst ridden one, there’s “Do What You Like”, a song about letting yourself be played time and time again in the endless hope of winning in the end.

Each of the tracks mentioned above, plus all the others featured on their MySpace page and Official site, have a wonderful sense of purpose, a truth and honesty about feelings and emotions which we often don’t talk about openly. Adding an important extra touch is the humor and levity covering the songs and keeping them from becoming too heavy or melodramatic. Passenger achieves emo-pop power without the black nail polish, eyeliner and social morays.

For those people living in the LA area, Passenger is playing on 8/11 at the Hotel Cafe in downtown Hollywood. It’s a great venue, which I’ve been lucky enough to see them play at once before, and I can think of few better ways to spend a Monday night. Start your work week off right with some happy/sad/clever/infectious live music!

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Yep, I have no idea where his front foot is either. It’s mummy magic.

Movies are almost synonymous with one type of food; popcorn. Summertime is equally synonymous with one kind of movie; popcorn cinema. This would be the type of movie where you walk in, sit down with an overly large tub of possibly-buttered delight in your lap and shut the brain off. Just watch the action, be wowed by the explosions and chuckle at the one-liners you would only joke about, but never believe you would actually hear someone say on screen. Now it may sound like I’m mocking these flicks, but I’m not at all, we eat these up with both hands every year and this summer is no different. How do you think Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made such a ridiculous amount of money? So, tonight I bore witness to another lasting franchise in the candy coated adventure world and it’s new arrival, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

The first two movies were helmed by franchise creator Steven Sommers, but this time the reins were handed over to another Universal Studios master-at-arms, Rob Cohen. Rob is no stranger to the multi-sequeled storyline, but usually he’s at the front of it instead of coming in during round three. He launched such franchises as The Fast and the Furious, xXx and The Skulls. He also directed one of the more stand out martial arts movies of the early 1990′s, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. With all those credits on his rap sheet, you’d figure this project would be akin to giving a professional conductor one of Beethoven’s classics, a walk in the park. Yet this stroll down popcorn lane proved to be a more windy road than imagined.

The story takes place many years after the last chapter and Rick and Evie’s son, Alex has taken on the family business of digging up and uncovering the most dangerous of mummified enemies. This new foe happens to be an ancient Chinese emperor who once controlled the five elements and tried to take over the world, which seems to be a bit of a habit for these mummies. Once he is reawakened, the ride begins and we are off once again, racing around the continent to try and stop him from becoming completely immortal. The basic premise works and personally I was glad to move the location out of Egypt, since I felt they had played that tune as long as they could. Yet once you move below the basic storyline, all the connecting points seem to fall apart. I’m a huge supporter in the “willing suspension of disbelief”, which we all need to fully enjoy any movie, but this suspension was pulled just a few hairs past the limit. So many things take place which are never explained, never set up and sometimes never paid off. Once the momentum really got moving, every other scene was spent trying to figure out how we got there and what was going on. It had a little taste of Wanted, which also jumped absolutely huge logic holes for the sake of making something look cool on screen, but that film, under the insane vision of Timur Bekmambetov, pulled it off much better.

As for casting, back in the day this was going to be the bread and butter of Brendan Fraser’s career (who plays our dashing hero and young Indiana Jones homage, Rick O’Connell), but since the first movie I haven’t felt that same magic from his performance. Ever since then it has all felt like a shadow or almost a parody of the moments he created in the original. Also, in the first two he starred alongside Rachel Weisz, but she didn’t return to the sand and savagery this time and the studios were forced to either write her out or replace her. They chose the latter. In comes Maria Bello as Evie O’Connell, the spunky and adventurous librarian-cum-swashbuckler. I think Maria is a fantastic actress and I was wildly supportive of her turn in A History of Violence, but this was not a good fit for her. Her action scenes felt forced and overly silly, on top of her accent sliding in, out and completely off the British continent. From the original chapters, the only person to bring the exact same level, for better or for worse, was John Hannah, as Evie’s charmingly opportunistic brother, Jonathan. New to this series was Michelle Yeoh, an immortal witch hoping to stop the Dragon Emperor, and Jet Li as the Emperor himself. Michelle was fairly strong in her performance, but Jet Li spent most of the movie walking around as an animated Terra Cotta statue, so it’s a little hard to criticize any lack of emotion from the part.

It can be argued that acting skills and story structure have nothing to do with popcorn cinema, it is all about the special effects. We are there for the glitz, the glamor and the wonderment of things we have never seen before on screen. Unfortunately this visual extravaganza didn’t break down any walls in that realm. The statue effect on Jet Li’s character skipped back and forth between impressive and amateurish, while the practical effects and explosions failed to really pop the eyes open of the audience. The one thing standing out amongst the crowd was the Yeti creatures (don’t ask how or why they appeared, just let that one go). These imagined visualizations of the abominable snowmen provided not only some much needed freshness to the flick, but some decent comedy as well. Numerous times there was laughter peeling through the audience, but half of it was laughing alongside the movie, while the rest was laughing at it. Big difference, same result: entertainment. As many problems as this does have, I can’t say I walked out unamused. The plot holes and logic issues leave the script looking like a well used target down at the local gun range, but the jokes were plentiful and they kept coming until you gave in and laughed.

Recommendation: As I’ve said before, this is an action movie, so it can only be helped by seeing it on the big screen, but on this occassion I might just suggest waiting for TV distribution and sitting really, really close to the set.

p.s. I was once again reminded about why I choose to go to the Arclight Cinemas as much as possible. Tonight they gave out posters signed by Rob Cohen to people sitting in random seat numbers. Plus, if that wasn’t enough of a bonus for the night, Rob Cohen himself was there to introduce the movie. He mentioned that he made the movie for us, the fans, the general public, and not for the critics and bloggers (like myself). He said it’s about sheer entrainment, so whether you think it’s good or it’s bad, if you laugh at it during any point, his job is done. For me the job was done, but it might not have been the job he intended.

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I don’t know why or how, but Ryan Seacrest has totally hypnotized me.

Another weekend came along and you know what that means? Of course you do, it’s another comedy somehow associated with Judd Apatow. Within the last two to three years it is an inescapable fact; 65% of all laughter is attributed to this one man, along with 47% of newly coined sex jokes. He is the reigning golden boy of the comedy world and his latest stab at the laugh track to hit the screens is Step Brothers. Judd Apatow did reel himself back to only a producing credit, but we can all rest assured that even his name being attached got the greenlight to glow just a tad bit brighter.

Step Brothers is the story of Dale and Brennan, two grown men still living with their respective parents and forced to live together when their parents get remarried. Picture the Brady Bunch, but only one boy on each side who just happens to be 40-ish years old. Not the most original idea in the world, but this movie doesn’t rely on the plot to get people into those theater seats. It relies solely on the comedic talents of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, who play Brennan and Dale respectively. Will also co-wrote the story with John and director Adam McKay, while Will and Adam finished out the actual screenplay. Usually I’m not a huge fan of the actors having such a big part of the writing process, unless it was something they wrote years before, but in this case what you get is an extra sense of camaraderie from our two bumbling heroes. John and Will play off each other to such an amazing extent you might begin to feel the whole film is done in improv. Everything comes off as an instant reaction, exactly the way a twelve-year-old boy would react, which just happens to be where their emotional maturity is in this film. Both actors hit home runs on a number of the comedic beats and it was especially nice to see Will Ferrell hitting on all cylinders once again, after some heavy missteps in Kicking and Screaming, Bewitched and Semi-Pro. As for Jon, he proved once again why so many love working with him, because he commits to every little second he is on screen.

Now, sad to say, the strength of their characters is also the one problem in the movie. The first half-hour is fun, watching these grown men talk and act like pre-teens, but that trick gets a little dry mid-way through the film and it starts to stretch the disbelief a touch too far. The characters of the parents have a tough situation since they have to ride the line between showing love and compassion for their children and yet treating them like grown men. That dicotimy proved not only tough for the actors, but also for the audience. Eventually it just felt too unbelievable that these two characters could exist, not only in the world of this film, but anywhere.

The writing is strong and a good portion of the film is clever, humorous and in a few places surprisingly hilarious, but it never reached the level of the comedies we have been graced with over the past few years, like Anchorman, 40-Year-Old Virgin or Superbad. Apatow has mined diamonds from the creative caves in his head, but it is possible by becoming the golden boy of comedy, he might be the one man glut for laughers in the coming years. Does the bar still get set too high if you’re the one that set it? I guess we shall see soon enough. He’s got seven movies under his production skills for next year alone, even one more this year as well. Although that does sound like a lot, just remember, he’s bound to hit you with a really good dick joke somewhere. That should be enough to get at least one viewing.

Recommendation: Great performances, not necessarily a “rush to see in the theater” flick. Netflix + your buddies + drinks, that should be a good formula for this.

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My name is gonna be up there someday. Someone’s gonna see it up there and think, “Yeah, i wanna see her new film. Oh, and I really want a pack of Goobers too. Mmm…Goobers.”

For those movie going fans trying to resist seeing their third or fourth viewing of The Dark Knight, this weekend offered a nice exit from the gloomy streets of Gotham City. The highly buzzed about documentary American Teen from Nanette Burstein opened, giving audiences a chance to look back into their senior year of high school and relive all those little moments which feel so paltry now, but in the moment felt like the weight of the world was in each and every second. What does he/she think of me? Who should I ask to Prom? What if my friends don’t like my choice? The fun part was trying to differentiate between those questions and the other ones, the ones which would drastically change the course of our lives. Where am I going to college? How am I even going to pay for college? Who do I want to be? It can feel as if the entirety of our existence from that moment on is figured out inside those awkward and tension filled nine months. The fact we make it through at all is a miracle in itself.

In American Teen we meet five youngsters from Warsaw, IN and try to figure out which one we identify with the most, which in some cases could be more than one. First, there is Megan, the reigning Student Council President and all around over achiever, but once again the universe proves the old adage, “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely”. We witness Megan turn her high school network into an army of social assassins and she herself personally attacks and destroys anyone who doesn’t play along with her plans, even her best friends. Next we have Colin, the basketball star, who feels the pressure to dominate this year on the court so he can garner interest from college recruiters, but his personal motivation for points overwhelms his desire to be a team player and continue winning games. Then there’s Mitch, another player on the basketball team and rover in the popular click, but he makes an attempt to step outside their world and intermingle with the other social sects only to find his old friends rather unaccepting. Next is Jake, the band nerd, attacked by social invisibility, stifling levels of self-doubt and acne that needs something stronger than over the counter creams. He decides finding a girlfriend, no matter who she is, will solve all his social problems and fix his life, yet when he does get chances to make that connection, he still fails to see himself as anything but the loser. Lastly there is Hannah, the wild child in the group, not belonging to any group except the one with no labels at all. She plays rock music, dresses with more color than style and refuses to imagine her life continuing under the confines of religious conservatism in Indiana. So there you have it, the main achetypes of high school existence. Which one were you?

In terms of filmmaking, this is a solid documentary. There is a nice pace to the film and some very clever tools implemented to help the audience really dive into the minds of these chosen seniors. At some point in the film, each of the main characters (minus Mitch, who was almost a side character) has an animation sequence displaying their hopes, dreams and most inner fears. Some of them are poignant, while others remind us how deluded and rose-colored our visions were of the outside world at that age. A couple times during the film there were conversations used again, but in a new context, which isn’t at all uncommon, but since the people in the scene were obviously wearing the same clothes and you could tell it took place on the same night as a conversation we were shown from months before, it drops a little bit of the honesty from the moment. You start to wonder at which point in the film were you being manipulated. As I said, this is not unheard of in the documentary world, in fact it’s part and parcel with the genre, but it needs to be done a little smoother than this.

Emotionally it is a roller-coaster ride of angst, yearning, crushing self-defeat and explosive, giddy joy. There is no doubt somewhere along the way you will see something transpire on screen and think, “I totally remember that. I was right in their shoes!”. You also might find yourself identifying with someone you initially didn’t expect, proving once again we all have different levels to our character and they all don’t rest on the surface. In the end, this film doesn’t work without the inclusion of Hannah. She stands out among the rest as the heart and soul of the piece and she is the single character that you truly want to route for. Colin plays a close second, but Hannah really struggles through much more difficult circumstances during the filming and creates the biggest arc of all the participants. According to the Facebook celeb page created for her, i’m sure by the movie studio, she has “indeed turned into an asshole”, but let’s hope this was a terribly clever way for an intellgent and creative girl to keep from being flooded by a nation of new “best friends”.

Recommendation: If your a doc fan, this is worth seeing. If you want to remember your high school existance, this is worth seeing. If you didn’t go to high school or haven’t gotten that far yet, why not see what lays ahead?

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So this website shows all the people I’ve had sex with on my new show, Californication. Why couldn’t Chris Carter have been this cool?

The darkened theater, the echoing tones, the eerie music…then the red, circled X. We were back, back in the land of Chris Carter and his worldwide phenom, The X-Files. The added bonus of seeing this on opening night was the cheering and hollering the moment that iconic music started up. There was an energy flowing through the crowd (and no, it was not psychically induced by little aliens). We the fans of the original show have long missed the vocal monotone of David Duchovny and the serious, yet longing glances from Gillian Anderson. In the time since the last movie we have learned to trust again, stopped questioning what we see in front of us and let our belief go that someone somewhere is pulling the gossamer over our eyes. I was ready to be woken up, like Neo in The Matrix. I was ready to be told to believe once again in everything they told me not to.

But that didn’t happen.

Early on, director Chris Carter let us in on the fact the story was not going to continue any of the government conspiracy storylines, no alien abductions and certainly no bounty hunters from other worlds. The movie is a self-contained story which comes off the screen feeling like a normal episode of the show. Let me emphasize that, a normal episode, not a particularly good one. In a startling shift from the previous X-Files movie, this take on it was much smaller in scale and scope. It all centers around a small town over a three to four day period where young women are turning up missing and one happens to be an FBI agent, which prompts the bureau to re-enlist the help of the now defunct and retired Agent Mulder. Once the scent of the unknown and unsolved gets back under the skin of Mulder, he can’t be expected to do anything but solve the case and drag Scully along kicking and screaming.

Beyond the shallow and partially childish plot, the movie gives us a glimpse into what life has been like for our intrepid duo of non-believers since the show came to an end. The whole time the show was running all we ever wanted was for them to get together, but seeing them interact like an old married couple now just feels off the mark. There’s no spark there anymore, no playful flirting and it slips off the screen like a pair of roommates trying to figure out who gets to watch their favorite show tonight. Also, picking up the story after so many years they might have done a better job of letting us catch up to where they were in the relationship, but in two quick scenes and some semi-forced exposition we were forced to get in or jump off.

Surrounding our trenchcoated agents were Amanda Peet and Xzibit, playing two of the FBI agents who brought them on the case. Amanda wants to believe and seemingly did her homework on Mulder, but Xzibit’s character is not only against the inclusion of Mulder, he also bears a resentment and complete disbelief in his skills, which is never explained in the least bit. A number of other little moments flitter around the two newer agents and how they handle the old pros, but many of them are set-ups that never pay off. Billy Connolly turns in a decent performance as a pedophile priest with psychic abilities (you’d think he would have seen himself getting caught). He tries incredibly hard to make the character deep and interesting, but once again there feels like something is missing once the movie is resolved.

As the credits began to roll, I started to wonder if this would have worked better as a major TV movie event. They could have sold a ton of advertising and possibly garnered enough interest to re-launch the franchise with Peet and Xzibit as the new agents, but they went the theater route and we’ll just see if that pays off. This ends up being a fun walk down memory lane for the true fan of the show, who will surely get a kick out of one particular cameo (I’m not saying who…what would be the fun in that?) but for the rest of the world, or those who have finally moved on with their lives, this could easily be waited on until it comes on TV.

p.s. Personally, I’m just proud of myself for not starting this review with, “I wanted to believe this was going to be a good movie.” I’m going to keep a running tally of how many times that pops up.

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Are they still here? — I think so…—Are they awake?—I don’t know, you poke them!

In every summer there are those movies which arrive in your closest multiplex and you know the only reason to see them is to shut off your brain and look at all the pretty moving pictures. The special effects driven popcorn films are not meant to move the soul, deepen your understanding of the universe or make your heart go pitter-patter (although drop a few attractive people into the cast and you’ll at least get the pitter, maybe not the patter). Although it might seem like I’m talking down to these movies, I am most certainly not. We need them as much as we need all the others. We need to be able to walk into those darkened halls of cinematic experiences and let everything go, not be dragged through the emotional wringer, but calmly sit back and grin without even really understanding why we are. So, in that vein of movie making, we get the newest reincarnation of Journey to the Center of the Earth, and this time it’s in 3-D, ready to pop off the screen and into your box of Raisenettes.

Following closely enough to the original Jules Verne story, it details the journey of a small group as they travel down through a volcano into a world within the world. This time, they actually have a new piece of ammunition not previously available in earlier versions, the Jules Verne book itself. The story is contemporized by creating the idea that there is a semi-secret society of people who believe Verne didn’t really write the original story as much as transcribe it from real life experiences. Brendan Fraser plays our heroic professor who lost his brother ten years ago on an expedition and when those exact same geographic circumstances arrive once again, Brendan rushes off to see if he can gather clues as to what happened. Throwing a small wrench in the plan is his nephew, played by Josh Hutcherson (previously seen in RV, Zathura and Bridge to Terabithia), who gets dropped off to spend some quality time with his rarely seen uncle. The cast is rounded out by their deceptively skilled mountain guide played by Anita Briem (previously seen in Showtime’s The Tudors), which combined with Brendan helped bring about some pitter or patter for both sides of the audience.

Not expecting there to be much going on storywise, I wasn’t disappointed. Everything plays along a pretty straight line and even the laziest in the crowd could call all the shots well before they arrived, but we weren’t really there for that. We wanted to be wowed, amazed, transfixed by the new Real 3-D technology and feel the sensation of being enveloped in this mystical world. How did that work out? About 50-50. The 3-D effects we’ve been raised on mostly deal with things poking out of the screen at you, looking like they’re going to rub up against your cheek, giving you that unconscious tingle up your spine, but that mostly happened early on in the film and felt extremely forced. There is a visual tool presented quickly with a yo-yo that Josh plays with, but his constant winging of the old fashioned toy out into the audience caused not a single “ooh” or “ahh”. Saving some of the magic we were expecting is not what comes out of the screen, but what goes into it. The Real 3-D technology really shows its chops during expansive scenery shots where you can really see and feel the depth of the world on screen. The movie at that moment transforms into a window that more than ever you feel like you could just reach through and touch the rivers, streams and, not my personal recommendation, the lava flowing right on the other side. During those moments I was actually impressed with how far we’ve come in the 3-D space since Jaws 3 (but don’t ask me to see that one again, screaming like a girl once in a crowd was enough for me).

No matter how many special effects you toss at a crowd, we still need to be drawn into the movie by the characters and the actors portraying them. Josh and Anita both bring there own special something to their roles, but we all knew going in that this all rested on the well tempered shoulders of Brendan Fraser. He has become a poster boy for the wide-eyed, pure hearted hero who always finds himself in situations way beyond his comprehension. I give him full merits, he does those roles well, starting from his first major role in Encino Man through George of the Jungle, Blast From the Past, and of course, the Mummy trilogy. My only worry is in this film it’s starting to play a little thin. The same delivery, the same determined stare, it all rings way too familiar now and begins to seem like he has nothing else to give. I don’t believe he’s done showing his strengths yet as an actor, but to get some of that credibility back I think he needs to show his skills as he did in School Ties and Gods and Monsters. He is truly one of the few people who can transition from the big budget action genre into the indie drama space, but I would just like to see him do it more often.

The final verdict, since it is a 3-D film, if it has any chance of entertaining you it will have to be on the big screen, so don’t bother waiting for DVD, unless you have a sweet home entertainment setup. If that’s the case, tell me when to show up. I’ll bring the Raisenettes.

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[Click on the poster above to go to Art.com and buy the poster]

(Just no words)

This was what we’ve all been waiting for. The weekend to end all others this summer, most likely the year, possibly even years to come. The moon shone down on theaters nationwide as dedicated fans of comic books and gritty action movies alike lined up for the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight, the second in the revamped Batman franchise headed by director Christopher Nolan. The hype was dynamic, nearing the rampant fervor last held by Matrix Revolutions, but this time the anticipation and buzz machine wasn’t met with disappointment and disdain. The Dark Knight lived up to every expectation and exceeded most others. Much more than a comic book film, this piece of history breaks many of the long held rules and traditions of movie making. Without getting into too much detail, let’s just say the sun doesn’t shine down on our heroes very much and without that the audience is not given what would be considered the Hollywood ending. Nolan put his best foot forward and also had to stomp it down on the fact he wasn’t going to lighten this up, make it more palatable to the mass public, because I think he felt they were ready and they deserved it. He set the tone in Batman Begins and he keeps that gritty calmness on the same tightrope with tense anticipation and sliding levels of psychosis. The continuing character development of Batman running right next to the introduction of the Joker and Harvey “Two Face” Dent shows that Nolan is just as good on the page as he is on the camera. Nothing is left to chance, nothing is left unexplained, and that leads to everyone leaving the theater fulfilled.

What words could I possibly write about Heath Ledger’s performance. I was recently talking to my friends after we saw the film about how sad I was. Not only because we will only get one more chance to see new and original performances from Ledger (when his finished footage is used in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus), but also because this brilliant turn on the already once-made iconic role of the Joker will forever be marred by the events that followed it. There will forever be those people that will say we in the Hollywood community and beyond hail this role because of his death and not becuase of its sheer talent and genius. To those small and deluded voices I say this, Heath was an amazingly gifted actor and his interpretation of the Joker would have gone down in the record books no matter what happened to him afterwards and when the accolades and congratulation were lauded on him (an Oscar nomination is guaranteed, the win is probable) he would have accepted them with the same grace and humiliy he has shown so many other times before. He brought something new, something daring and something intentionally terrifying to this character. It’s incredibly unfair to compare his performance with that of Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton’s Batman because that film went in a totally different direction. Burton created a comic book world where Batman and his peers existed, whereas Nolan made a dramatic effect of creating our world, this day and time, which just happens to have Batman, and in turn those who will always turn up to fight against him. The final effect of all that work is a film with much more power, more substance and a raging river of emotions that rush over the audience.

Let’s not forget the other great roles in this film. Christian Bale brought even more to the Batman side of the equation this time, where we spent a lot of time seeing the person under the mask in the first film, now is our chance to see his psyche slide across that dangerously thin line between one personality and the other. One might use the term “the light and the dark”, but for the character of Bruce Wayne it is more approriate to think of it as “the dark and the pitch black”. Aaron Eckhart gives a little touch of his character from Thank You For Smoking and shows what happens when good people are pushed too far. Michael Caine brings a sense of class and stoic nature as always, showing a little more depth of the relationship between Alfred the loyal butler and his charge. Gary Oldman proves once more that he can be a skilled actor without showing how crazy he can be. Morgan Freeman, Maggie Gyllenhaal and a cameo by Cillian Murphy round out the cast, all refusing to let the quality and level of the film dip below outstanding.

Overall, this is a near perfect film. Running at 2 and 1/2 hours, I honestly didn’t feel one minute was overdone or unnecessary. One of the great successes of this piece is on paper this shouldn’t work at all. The normal rules of storytelling are completely shattered, the traditions of Hollywood movies (especially those that cost $180 million to make) are left whining and sputtering in the past. Chistopher Nolan has just secured himself a place in the annals of movie history as a great storyteller, accomplished director and soon-to-be most profitable moviemaker of all time. If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and go immediately. I didn’t see it in the IMax first because I was afraid I might miss small details, but now that I have had the Arclight experience first, IMax…here I come for Round 2!

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Also, here’s a link to one of the better posters to come out of the marketing campaign. Many of them were sensational, like the “Why So Serious” series, but this one had a particular creepiness to it which resonated.

So how does that connect to Friendship? What a good question! Here’s my answer. Friendship is a give and take relationship. You get out of it what you put in. If the friendship is solid and you call someone everyday to check in on them or just talk, you can very well expect that they will call you as well and think of you first when they need/want someone to talk to. On the flip side, if you put no effort in to keep in touch or show people that you still think about them, you can equally expect they will let you slip from their minds as well. It is the emotional equivalent of the one-lane/two-way street.

Added to this fun ride on the relationship road is the possibility that you and your friend might be driving different cars, traveling at different speeds or lastly, heading to different destinations. What’s to be done now? Truth be told, everyone is headed in different directions, but we can have very similar ways of driving there. That is the secret to being on the same road together, how do you drive your car/truck/Vespa/Segway? (does anyone know someone who actually owns one of these) There needs to a shared respect of the road and of the other people on it, but if someone starts flipping U-turns in the middle of the intersection or just plain ignoring those amazingly loud “drunk bumps” on the side of the road, maybe it is time to stop taking that road on the way to your personal destination. All that happens in those cases is you get slowed down, taken off course and sometimes redirected completely. The goal in friendships is to find those people that not only seem to be heading your way, but their driving style actually helps you even more. They might leave a nice tailwind for you to slide into or they could be clearing the way ahead, showing you all the possibilities that lie before you. Also, they know when to let their foot off the gas and let you move into the pole position, blocking for them instead of the other way around. Give-and-Take. What a novel philosophy.

So maybe it’s time to sit back and look at the road in front of you. Who’s on it? Where are they going and how do they plan on getting there? Is this particular road trip the one you need to be on? Trust me, if you even been on intensely long car rides, you know the importance of choosing the right passengers.

Safe and pleasant trips to you all. I’m packing Pop-Tarts and Pop music for mine.

The moment of delivery finally came. Pixar gave birth to yet one more instant classic character who rode his miniature tank treads into the hearts of adults and children across the nation. Bringing in $62 million in the opening weekend it stole the #1 spot easily (but fantastic job to Wanted for its #2 appearance at $51 million). Once again Pixar created something that parents and older siblings don’t moan and groan about having to bring their little ones to, in fact, the little ones might even be dragged there without a choice of their own. This is the creative key to their continued success, lure in the entire family.

So let’s get to the star of our show, Wall-E. He is a self-sufficient, solar powered, mini-roving trash compacter left on Earth to clean it after the humans evacuated to party in space. In the span of 700 years, Wall-E becomes incredibly lonely as most life on the planet, even artificial life, shuts down, but Wall-E refuses to quit and he fills his time with his own style of treasure hunting and antique collecting. His life takes a drastic turn though when a unmanned probe is sent back to Earth as a routine to check for signs of surviving biological life. This is the moment where we see that in its core this is one of the most classic stories ever told: Boy meets Girl, Boy loses Girl, Boy chases after Girl (there is one more step, but I have to leave something to chance, don’t I?).

Beyond the dazzling CGI animation, which by now is expected and consistently delivered by Pixar, the amazing beauty of this film is the simplicity of it. In the first thirty minutes of the show is covered in approximately four or five words of dialogue. Thoughts and emotion shine through the most minute of movements, the sound of Wall-E’s eyes focusing, the inflection in tone as he repeats one word over and over again, and the continually changing angles of his head. Wall-E reminds us of the power of silent film when we were shown emotion and meaning without being told through banal and brain coddling exposition. Throughout the rest of the film more speaking roles appear, but our two main characters run the gamut with only a handful of words between them. It’s a wondrous achievement in screenwriting and a powerful display of trust and belief on the side of the studio.

Surrounding our two main star-crossed lovers, Pixar gently tackles the idea of making a cockroach, one of the most universally hated insects on the planet, into a loyal and adorable friend, once again proving that anything in their hands is capable of becoming endearing. There is also a noticeable left-leaning bend to the story, somewhat in the vein of our last eco-friendly animated juggernaut, Happy Feet, where we get a slight glimpse of what our future might be on this planet if we don’t start to turn things around. On a more sneaky and capitalist note, you should also take note to what operating system is running everything 700 years into the future. I’m not going to give away the goat, but let’s just say we could name it “iFuture”.

Overall, this is one more grand slam for the wizards of animation at Pixar and one more DVD that I will be including in my library in the coming months. See this as soon as you can!

p.s. There is another one of Pixar’s great short films in front of Wall-E, which coincidentally, is also completely silent. Seriously, these guys are geniuses. They must eat that Smart Start cereal every morning. I’m gonna get me some…

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There are things in this life that no one is meant to deal with. Pressures and emotions heightened to such extents leaving normal human capabilities far behind. So what are people supposed to do then? Do they have to become superhuman? Do they have to make themselves more than everyone else just to stay afloat in a life proving once and again to be unfair towards them? I wish I could say no, I wish I could say that people could just take a deep breath and things will suddenly be alright, but ignoring that type of pain is comparable to standing on train tracks and ignoring the rumbling getting louder beneath your feet. We all need to step up in those moments and do anything we can to help deal with this unequal reality, not just the victims, but those people close to them as well. The hands of the victim need to unwrap from around themselves, where they desperately try to hold themselves together, and reach out for the arms, hands, shoulders and chests all ready and willing to share in whatever small piece of the burden available to them. I’ve spent my share of time locked up in my room, hiding from the light, hiding from the outside world, only in the hopes that someone would come looking for me, but the responsibility is on both sides. We need to learn to reach out so we can in turn teach others how to reach back.

I realize that this might seem a tad vague, which is intentional because those details are her story to tell or not tell, not mine. What I hope for, what I wrote this entry for is to remind everyone out there to take a moment today, tomorrow, every day to think about those close to you. Think about someone you haven’t spoken to in a while and drop them a line, just remind them you’re out there and that you care. Just that small offering of an ear to listen or a shoulder to lean on can mean the difference between seeing the light and walking towards it. And for those people who might be reading this and are on the other side of the equation, don’t wait one more second to reach out and ask for help. There are people who care about you, people who know and love you, even people who have never met you, they are all ready and willing to drop it all to be there for you when you need it. If you find your circle of friends and family not as strong or responsive as you hoped, don’t despair, there are so many others on call at that very moment. Please follow this link to the Find Help section of To Write Love on Her Arms. This list is only the tip of the iceberg of support services and hotlines. These people are here for you. You are never alone and it is never, ever too late.

2 – Hunter S. Thompson was a visionary, genius and possible lunatic, which in turn means that anything you create to talk about and feature his life, I’m gonna watch it. [via FilmDrunk]

3 – If you watch this video of an amazingly happy child and don’t crack a smile yourself, you need to look under your bed when you get home, I think you’ll find you left your soul there. We all deserve days where we laugh like that just once. [via Pandachute]

4 – I’m a fan of Seth Rogan, along with millions of other movie watchers happy about the upswing in popularity and profit for R-rated comedies, but I’m not sure I’m a big enough fan to endorse the idea of him playing The Green Hornet in an upcoming adaptation. I knew he was writing it and I’m fine with that, but he doesn’t seem like the superhero type to me. Even Will Smith got on my nerves with unnecessary quips and jokes throughout I, Robot, you think Rogan is going to go through any scene without a pot/dick/sex/fart joke? I’m willing to wait and give him a shot, but this is a risky venture for him, no two ways about it. [via Perez]

5 – You know what’s not a rsiky venture? Making Transporter 3! Jason Statham is coming back once again as the driver who just can’t say no to a job, then can’t say no to kicking the crap out of those who gave him the job. I’m predicting ridiculous car chases, chaser bullets everywhere and needlessly hot women (wait, is “needlessly hot” actually possible? I’m gonna meditate on that…) [via FilmSchoolRejects]

6 – Universal Studios is taking their recent fire as positive as they can and using the destruction as an excuse to rebuild and recreate something new in lieu of the 20-year-old King Kong attraction. Smart move, people. As iconic as it was, it was time to move on from that. They let go of the Back to the Future ride recently and that was at least 5 years its junior. My hope, drive-thru Wanted experience! Angelina Jolie dives down and shoots curved bullets around the tram all day long. Sweet… (although in reality, they should make it a Hulk experience. It could basically be the same set, just updated.) [via ComingSoon]

7 – Sometimes I wonder if people read this and then go out specifically to do exactly the opposite of what I wished for. Brett Ratner came out talking about how he wants to make the next Beverly Hills Cop for the 10 and 12-year-olds who don’t know the first film. Guess what? No one would have known the first film or any of them if they were originally made for the kids. It was an R-rated comedy and one of the nest ever made. They need to jump on this bandwagon and run with it instead of trying to continually trying to shove Eddie Murphy into the family genre. It worked for him for a while, but it’s time he got his mouth dirty once again. Hell, let him wear the Michael Jackson jacket again too, if that helps. [via FilmSchoolRejects]

8 – The creepy next step after buying these Joker themed playing cards is for everyone to show up at the game in Joker makeup. Now tell me who’s bluffing… [via FilmSchoolRejects]

9 – Someone needs to go back and digitally insert this necktie into American Psycho. It’s just too perfect. [via Uncrate]

10 – Here’s a little folk song to end the day entitled New Math. It starts out cute and kinda funny, then segways smoothly into totally irreverent and borderline hysterical. Kudos guitar playing sir. [via GorillaMask via ejb]

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2 – Turning from sequels, we go to the only logical place, prequels. J.K. Rowling said she would not continue any more books in the Harry Potter series, but she never said anything about going backwards. She wrote a prequel novel for the Potter-verse, but this is only going to sold for charity in an auction, no mass publication will be done. As gracious as this is, and I am sure it will pull in a healthy amount of Euros, I feel bad for the house that will inevitably get broken into by a mob of crazed quidditch players in search of the mythical tome. [via Starpulse]

3 – I’ve heard rumblings through my group of friends that I should start paying attention to the Fox TV starlet show, The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I usually would have been glued to this already by the casting choice of Summer Glau, but something kept me from feeling totally committed to it. Now they sweetened the pot by dropping in Shirley Manson, the lead singer of Garbage, for next season. Hello TiVo, goodbye productivity. [via ComingSoon]

4 – Is it possible the Coen Brothers will ever make a normal movie? I doubt it sincerely. Here’s a link to the Red-Band trailer for their next ecclectic collection of actors in Burn After Reading. [via WWTDD]

5 – This might actually crack a smile on the faces of all those dark, black nailed little girls in the world. Their heroine, Emily the Strange, is on her sad and angry way to the screen. Something tells me a PG rating for this is not forthcoming. [via ComingSoon]

6 – So a couple of teenage girls blatantly stole $150 from a 9-year-old girl scout who was selling those painfully addicting cookies. Two things are wrong with the video here; first, these girls have no concept of morality and a frightening absence of realization of their own effect on the world around them, secondly, these girls are obviously not right in the head because they stole the money and not the cookies. Seriously, they are like crack cookies! [via Today's Big Thing]

7 – Hopefully you haven’t tossed your computer out the window after watching that last scarred piece of humanity, but if you are lucky enough to keep your revulsion in check, here is your reward. You see, there are still some decent people in this place. [via YouTube via Diablo Cody's Blog]

8 – Sometimes, just sometimes, they get something so painfully right. I have no idea if the movie is going to be any good at all, but I hope they keep making these videos, because they are certainly worth the entire movie’s budget. [via The Superficial]

9 – Oh yeah, nothing says lovin’ like a good monkey suit. [via Garfield Minus Garfield]

10 – This is pure genius. Prints available here. [via TCritic]

P.S. There soon will be some changes to this blog. You will see more pointed posts about particular topics alongside those about random happenings on the web or in the entertainment world. Also, I just added two more links on the Charities page, so please take a look in there. I will be adding to that list more often now. Thanks for any support you can lend to these deserving causes.

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2 – What happens when the ex-White House Press Secretary writes a book about working in the Bush administration? Political sh*t storm. There’s already been plenty of people still in the administration to come out and condemn/tear down Scott McClellan, but you can be sure there will be more before this goes away. You can read an excerpt through the link and see that he doesn’t necessarily say that Bush is an idiot at all, just that he was horribly misled and deceived by the people in his own cabinet. I’m not sure which scenario makes my stomach turn more, but it’s time for a political antacid. [via Wall Street Journal]

3 – For those lucky ducks with nice new IBooks or MacBook Pros (you can add in the Mac Air, but I am still holding out on calling people lucky for having those), you can all enjoy some neat style and comfort along with protection for your expensive baby gadget. Since it looks kinda like an airmail pouch, you can convince people you are just always on the move. You jet-setter, you. [via JoshSpear]

4 – Is this just a glimpse into Jon’s mind or have we all started to hear burp from invisible fat cats? I think it’s time to refill my Xanax prescription. [via Garfield Minus Garfield]

5 – As excited as I am to buy and read Snuff, the new book from Chuck Palanhuik, that thrill only gets bumped up more by the first trailer being released for the newest movie in his adaptation train of films, Choke. I’m already interested since it is Chuck’s book, but you add uber-talented Sam Rockwell in as the sex-crazed, morally depraved lead role, a part he might have been born to play, well then, you had me at “Choke”. [via FilmDrunk]

6 – This is why we don’t want artificial intelligence. Eventually even the machines will be perverted. [via GorillaMask]

7 – I always wondered why Robin’s costume was so feminine. The truth is just shocking sometimes. [via GorillaMask via Crave Online]

8 – A little kid skates under forty cars and these people celebrate like he won independence for the country. Someone get these people cable TV stat! [via Pandachute]

9 – Not the greatest production value for this imagined conversation between Iron Man and Batman, but I chuckled quite a few times on my way through, so take that video! Advantage = Audio. [via Yikers]

10 – Everyone has dreams and everyone has projects they want to accomplish, but we hold ourselves back way more than we realize (or want to realize), but comedian Kyle Cease is not going to let us flounder in mediocrity. He’s writing a daily blog post for the next month where he is detailing one or more things each and every day he is doing to better his life and his career. The more pumped up he gets about it, the more he wants to inspire others, so take a moment or two to catch up on this blog and see if he can’t help give you that little kick in the ass we all need to start the ball rolling. Trust me, it’s not as hard as it seems to make that move from where you are to where you want to be. [via MySpace]

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“Why does there have to be protesters at every premier?!”

Nineteen years. That’s how long we waited for this movie to come to fruition. Nineteen years. Someone born after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade left the theater is no old enough to vote, get married and fly halfway around the world to fight for the right for this movie and many others to be made. For their sakes, I seriously hope they don’t see it. They’ll all go AWOL instantly.

Yes, I’ll get right out there and say it, I did not like the movie. In fact, I was fairly offended by time it was over. I’ve read a number of reviews that are cutting the movie a ton of slack because it’s an Indy film and we all just love him so much and we’re so glad to see him back, but there is only so much slack in the world and it must have gotten used up in the mere hours before I got to see it on opening day. I guess from now on I should keep an extra helping of slack in an airtight jar in my closet, just for these occasions. (There are spoilers from this point on, so if you still want to go in untarnished, stop here. Just know deep in your heart that I tried to stop you.)

Let’s see if I can list out just a small helping of the problems with this flick:

- The magnetism of the Crystal Skull (and other alien body parts): This little tidbit of information was brought out pretty quickly in the film as one of those cool tricks only Indy seem to know about, but for the rest of the film the magnetism became a choice of each individual scene. You could feel George Lucas think, “Should we have it attract metal here? Yeah that would be cool” or “Nah, that doesn’t seem cool here. Let’s not make it magnetic at all. Or how about we stop it’s magnetic powers with this mystical hemp cloth!! God, I’m a genius.”

- CGI – Spielberg has a well earned place in cinema history for pushing CGI to it’s limits and making it work. On the flip side, Lucas has an equally well earned place in cinema history for pushing CGI to the other end of the spectrum where he think he can just replace real actors from this point on. The quality and usage in Crystal Skull was borderline childish. The duck boat effects over the waterfalls, the unnecessary CGI in the jungle chase, the mind numbing alien ship evacuation, all of these felt like a freshman in animation school could have been impressed by his work, but not coming from Spielberg, who previously with War of the Worlds actually made me a tad skiddish going outside after the movie was over since I believed those things could be there.

- Indy’s age: Harrison Ford reportedly waited for a long time to find a script that he was happy with and took a respectful look at his age and the age of his character. This is what he agreed to? I can’t think of a fight scene where he got more beat down than in this chapter during the ant hill sequence, adding the fact that he is about twenty years older now. We needed Indy to be smarter, more clever, using that intelligence that he cultivated over a quarter of a century as a professor, but instead we get a completely ludicrous senior citizen MMA match in the dirt. Even the slightest touch of realism here would have seen Indy with a broken hip.

- Shia, the Monkey King: This almost ranks as the most disappointing part of the movie because they were just starting to win me back when Shia gets sucked up into the jungle trees. He gets wrapped up in a piar of vines that decide completely on their own to retract and pull him up into a mystical monkey kingdom, where in three agonizing seconds of screen time, Shia learns to swing through the trees like Tarzan and lead the monkeys on an all out assault against Cate Blanchett. If they had made a point earlier of saying all the monkeys in that region of the world were strict haters of Communism, maybe I could have joined in the fun, but they happen to leave that out.

- Indy vs. Nuke: Yep, why not? Let’s open this movie big since people have waited so long to see it hit the screen. What could possibly be bigger than showing Indiana Jones survive a nuclear blast in the first 20 minutes of the film? What could possibly not make sense about there being random lead lined refrigerators in a fake town? What could possibly not seem plausible about that same fridge being magically vaulted by the blast miles away, with Indy not only able to walk afterwards, but just plain able to get out of the fridge at all? Didn’t kids lock themselves in those and die all the time in the 50′s?

There are more things I could go into, but I’ll just leave you with those few bullet points. I’m all for continuing franchises and moving the story along as long as they are treated with the same intelligence and respect as the previous versions. This was not only denied the respect of a well written script, but it also managed to deny the respect of its audience. My advice now is for Spielberg to slow his downward spiral by moving as far away from George Lucas as possible, and if he likes a script from now on (as he supposedly did with the Indy version done by Frank Darabont, which Lucas vetoed), man up and shoot it. It couldn’t have been nearly as awful as what we got in the end.

Even worse is the fact that this will make a retarded amount of money, like previous crapfest Spider-Man 3, and further the studios and other directors to think making movies like this, no matter how bad, is a profitable and worthwhile venture. I’m begging someone with influence and opportunity to sit these people down, show them Once, Lars and the Real Girl, Brick, hell, make them watch the original three Indy films and see if they can’t remember what doing a good job really felt like.

2 – I know I’ve gotten older when I watch this video and the first thing I wonder about it, “Did they get clearance to roll down this road? What about cross traffic?” I miss being a Toys ‘R Us kid. [via pandachute]

3 – In a continuing desire to find new and innovative ways to donate and help others I came across this post about Give a Drop. Please check it out and help if you can. There are way too many things in this world that we take for granted without realizing millions and millions don’t have that same access to what we consider basic human needs. Give a little, trust me, it’s like giving back to yourself. [via JoshSpear]

4 – Just for those dudes out there who might have found there indie/quirky crush on Jena Malone wavering, watch this trailer for her new film and feel the flame once again. [via FilmDrunk]

5 – When you get these put into your house, you have one choice. Does this become a reference to King Ralph or There Will Be Blood. One of them ends up in a much larger cleaning bill. [via uncrate]

6 – With all the premiers being announced for next season, the one I was keeping an eye on was Heroes. NBC is going to relaunch the second season struggler with a one hour recap of the show to get everyone back up to speed, then a two hour season opener. Three full hours of Heroes. Will this win the fans back? Maybe. It has definitely won a spot on my TiVo, that’s as far as I will go just yet. [via starpulse]

7 – I love hearing stories about the loving and helpful people inside local churches, like this story about how they issued a restraining order against a family and their 13-year-old Autistic son literally banning them from attending because of his outbreaks. No offer to have him come in for more a private mass, no offer to assist in any way except to wipe their hands clean of a child they don’t understand how to deal with. Is he suddenly not one of God’s children? Hmmm…hypocrisy tastes familiar here. [via PerezHilton]

8 – A real tragedy for the film world, Sydney Pollack died over the weekend after losing a battle with Cancer. He was a brilliant writer and a consummate actor. The silver screen just got a little less talented. [via WWTDD]

9 – I want to openly say thanks to JoshSpear and his blog for not only providing such interesting things everday, some of which you see posted here, but for posting his appreciation for the band /Passenger, which after 30 seconds of listening I felt moved in a way that was more necessary than anyone, including myself, could have realized. Topping it off is finding out that they are going to be playing at the Hotel Cafe in LA on June 9, so you now all know where I am going to be that night. [via JoshSpear via MySpace]

11 – Somehow, deep inside, I always knew something was wrong with my cell phone, but I was nowhere near imagining this. I bet the IPhone is way a happier creature. [via Pandachute]

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2 – This is another technological revolution that we have all been waiting for. Philips is showing off a prototype for their 3-D TV that will work without the use of any glasses at all. For most forms of media this will make things even more awesome, but for porn this is going to make things increasingly awkward. [via CNN]

3 – I am an admitted junkie for journals and sketchbooks, so finding this online treasure of artistically designed moleskins pretty much made my week. [via JoshSpear]

4 – While everyone else is comparing how much they loved, or more likely didn’t love, the new Indy movie, I thought it would be nice to link you over to the new Lego Indy Game which will certainly bring you many more hours of enjoyment than the new film. [via Empire]

5 – How big is Iron Man you ask? Well, for the first time without any sarcasm or joking around, we can honestly say it’s so big that they are hearing about it in space. [via Starpulse]

6 – Even if this is only programmed as a kids toy, I really, really want one. Anyone who cares to challenge me in touch screen Pong is going down. [via gizmodo]

7 – Turn the volume down slightly on this because the dude’s voice can get annoying, but the visuals of 35 people getting balled in the head in 32 seconds is worth the effort.

8 – More shots being shown here of people on the set of Dragonball Z. I’m trying to block out visions from Double Dragon and the original Street Fighter, but they are so darn stubborn. [via Comingsoon via DBthemovie]

9 – Here’s another video where you might want to turn the sound a bit lower, not because of annoyance, but more because your head might explode like in Scanners.

10 – Looking for yet another way to give, or motivate you to give, well here you go. It’s the 29 Day Giving challenge. Take a look, you just might find you will get more than you give. [via givingchallenge]

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2 – You don’t often get a Double KO ending in MMA fights, but even rarer is getting it pretty much off the bat. Guess that’s one way to start off your fighting career. [via With Leather]

3 – This is the morning of your first day back at work after a vacation, something I have just recently had to deal with. Blarg! [via Garfield Minus Garfield]

4 – You thought our money was starting to lok funny now? Get ready for it to feel funny as well. There has been a long standing battle in the courts about the US monetary system being unfair to the blind since there is no way for them to differentiate between the bills, constantly depending on the honesty of tellers and cashiers for their correct change and payment. In that regard I am totally in favor of shifting the bills into a fashion that allows them to tell the difference, but I’m starting to think I should just save a couple of each denomination in a book somewhere since in twenty years they will be almost unrecognizable. [via CNN]

5 – The jurors in the R. Kelly sex tape trial have just been told that they are going to have to watch the tape in question, which might mean beyond convicting R. Kelly you might just find a couple over-excited jurors going to jail as well for enjoying it too much. His defense is saying that since the tape is most likely a copy of a copy at best, there is no way to tell who’s on the tape, but seriously, this is R. Kelly we’re talking about here. I’m going to be terribly surprised if he doesn’t start singing in the middle and chanting, “It’s good to be me. It’s good to R. Kelly!”. [via CNN]

6 – This is the most brilliant thing to come to the world of movie rentals in a long time. Mail order giant, Netflix, is unleashing a box that will set on top of your set and allow you streaming access to their entire catalog. For the same price as your normal Netflix membership, you will now be able to rent any movie at any time in their library (the section that is loaded up, that is, which will increase as time goes on). The only hindrance will be your connection speed to the network, but other than that, this is pure entertainment genius. [via Uncrate]

7 – Mr. Donnie Darko, Jake Gyllenhaal, has just signed on to play the lead in the live action adaptation of the video game, Prince of Persia. I’m not sure I ever really thought of Jake as video game hero status and I feel this is a risky move for him, but it’s in the capable hands of Disney Studios and recently they have proven they know how to pull through the big, big bucks. Look for this to possibly restart the marketing and production engine that ended with the last Pirates movie. [via The Hollywood Reporter]

8 – The phrase “There can be only one!” obviously applies only to the characters in the movie and not to the movie itself. Highlander is back once again, this time in the form of a remake of the first film, which admittedly brought a great story to life, but was very poorly done. My only issue with another remake is Highlander 3 was basically a remake of the first already, on top of the fact the last chapter of this story went straight to SciFi, skipping DVD. This might not be a franchise worth going back to, but I will be the first one to cheer for being proven wrong, as long as they incorporate the original Queen music. If not, heads are going to roll (get it? another Highlander reference! god I am witty.). [via The Hollywood Reporter]

9 – Chuck Palanhuik is back with a new book, Snuff, which deals with the story of three guys waiting in line at the world’s biggest gangbang. What could possibly get disturbing about that? [via The Cult]

10 – Christian Bale has reportedly signed on for three more Terminator films in the role of John Connor. I’m not sure there needs to be three more films, but this is interesting for a couple reasons. One, Bale is already playing Batman in the restart of that franchise and it seems to be going quite well, so how will that be impacted? Also, having him as John for three movies must mean the idea for the continuing story is not going to be jumping by years and years as we have seen previously. This feels a lot like the Batman move, restarting in a way the franchise from a new perspective, but can this be handled correctly in the poppy/glitzy hands of McG? I’m holding my judgment until I see some trailers. [via ComingSoon]

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