Saturday, January 13, 2007
The Weekend Image Depot: 1/13/07
The weekend is upon us and automatically it prompts us (fine, me) to be lazier than usual. So, time for less words and more motionless motion pictures for you all to peep, judge, laugh at, wank to, etc. All you have to do is scroll. It's easy!
Hairspray
For more Hairspray pics, click here.
Rush Hour 3
For more Rush Hour 3 pics, click here.
Shoot 'Em Up
For more Shoot 'Em Up pics, click here.
Source: Collider.comDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading The Weekend Image Depot: 1/13/07
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Shaying What's On Your Mind
Oh dear. It looks like the saga of The Hobbit has finally taken a big turn for the worse, as New Line head honcho Bob Shaye has told Peter Jackson in no uncertain terms that we'll see Beelzebub ice skating before he works with him again. Shaye, the man responsible for ensuring Freddy Krueger survived for at least seven movies (and even appeared in one) has apparently told PJ "You'll never work for me again", according to CNN and message board supremo Ta.
Here's what's come out from the two corners:
Shaye: "I don't care about Peter Jackson anymore," Shaye said. "He wants to have another $100 million or $50 million, whatever he's suing us for. He doesn't want to sit down and talk about it. He thinks that we owe him something after we've paid him over a quarter of a billion dollars. ... Cheers, Peter."
Jackson: "Fundamentally, our legal action is about holding New Line to its contractual obligations and promises," Jackson said. "It is regrettable that Bob has chosen to make it personal. I have always had the highest respect and affection for Bob and other senior management at New Line and continue to do so."
This all started over a lawsuit by Jackson's Wingnut Films against New Line that essentially said they fiddled the books and withheld profit from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Then New Line came out and said they'd let Jackson return to do The Hobbit and "an unnamed Lord of the Rings prequel" if he dropped the suit, to which he said foxtrot oscar. Both men are busy right now, with Jackson working on The Lovely Bones and finding a home for Halo, and Shaye directing The Last Mimzy, which presumably is not about the last vahjin on the planet. Ahem.
Still, money is what it's all about, and Shaye of all people should know how much dough a Jackson-directed Hobbit would bring in. So whether this is an irreparable relationship might not matter when the almighty dollar is concerned. It just depends on who'll budge first.
Source: CNN, TaDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading Shaying What's On Your Mind
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
News Round-Up: 1/10/07
The Jackass boys are coming together for Hosed, a more "traditional" film described as "a broad comedy about an uncoordinated, over-enthusiastic volunteer firefighter who is finally assigned to a firehouse where he has to deal with a band of misfit firefighters from the wrong side of the tracks, played by [Chris] Pontius, [Steve "Steve-O"] Glover, [Preston] Lacy and [Jason "Wee Man"] Acuna with Pontius playing the leader of the band." HBO Films teamed with Madonna's Maverick Films for this which seems to be spawning stupid "Madonna Gets Hosed" headlines all over the internet.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Those clamoring for the film version of Fox's hit show 24 are gonna have to wait a little longer. Okay, maybe a lot longer. Speculation based on some Kiefer Sutherland yammerings had pointed to the possibility of the 24 movie beginning to shoot sometime this year, but show creator Robert Cochran, who appeared on Larry King Live last night, pretty much debunked that by saying that if a film does get made it'll probably be at the end of the show's run. Which probably won't be anytime soon judging from the current "Jack Bauer Power Hour" ratings.
Source: AICN
J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost, Mission: Impossible III) is doing the tricky PR juggle of convincing both Star Trek fans and non-fans that his reboot will be worth a shit: "On the one hand, for people who love Star Trek, the fix that they will get will be really satisfying. For people who've never seen it or know it vaguely, I think they will enjoy it equally, because the movie does not require you to know anything about Star Trek. I would actually prefer [that] people don't know the series, because I feel like they will come to it with an open mind." Watching the tightrope these guys have to walk is always kind of amusing. Good luck, Abrams!
Source: Entertainment WeeklyDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading News Round-Up: 1/10/07
The Lesser Of Two Evils?
Rob Cohen, the awful Howie Mandel-looking director behind The Fast and the Furious, xXx, Dragonheart, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, and the Andrew Clarke defended Stealth, is in negotiations to direct The Mummy 3. This means that the even more awful Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Van Helsing) will be nowhere near the donut lens for this one. Huzzah?
Films like The Mummy 3 are completely unnecessary and somewhat frustrating since you know they're most likely going to be crap, but one hopes that maybe a decent journeyman helmer will get attached to at least give us a possibly unexpected good time. Joe Johnston (Hidalgo, Jurassic Park III, The Rocketeer) was going to be this guy and that felt okay in my book since both Hidalgo and The Rocketeer are quite a bit of fun, but I guess his deal fell through. Too bad. So instead they bring in Rob Cohen, a guy who seems to specialize in testosterone-driven films that appeal to guys whose balls just dropped and are itching to swagger 'em. This will simply mean that The Mummy 3 will be unintentionally hilarious, which I guess isn't so bad.
So what else does Cohen have on his plate? He was attached to a martial arts film called Arrow from Warner Bros. back as early as May of 2006. IMDb doesn't agree, however. He is apparently still doing the Russ Meyer bio-pic now titled King of the Nudies (the old [and better] title was Big Bosoms and Square Jaws).
Source: Dark HorizonsDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading The Lesser Of Two Evils?
South Park Is A Musical Too!
Update: Shortly after the news broke that Mamma Mia! will make the leap from stage to screen, Variety dishes out the news that Oscar nod magnet Meryl Streep, still buzzing from her role in The Devil Wears Prada, has nabbed the lead role in the upcoming ABBA-laden musical adaptation. This, of course, automatically puts Mamma Mia! up for awards contention. Thanks to message board denizen and news sleuth extraordinaire "Ta" for the heads up. -- George Merchan
People that know movies, or people that have read a couple of books about Hollywood so they can pretend to know movies, often talk about smuggling. I learnt about it from watching A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies which is invaluable for cheating on your movie geek exams. Smuggling is when an artist works within a commercial system, creating mainstream product, but sneaks in more personal concerns, weightier themes or controversial subjects underneath the 'nice' surface without anyone noticing. Also people still hate 70's Scandinavian pop group ABBA for being a really uncool, cheesy, stupid, sappy pop group only liked by little girls of all ages and homosexuals. ABBA were, in fact, great smugglers, bringing in dark material and melancholy underneath the shiny pop surface, and they should be respected for this. I'm not sure a film adaptation of the Musical Full OF ABBA Songs, Mama Mia! - which is really uncool, cheesy, stupid and sappy - is going to help with this.
Take 'The Winner Takes It All', written by Bjorn (or Benny. all these Northern Europeans look the same to me) about his very bitter break-up with with The Blond One, and sung by The Blonde One back to Bjorn. That's some weird emotional shit right there. There was also a depth to the women's characters in the best ABBA songs. Sexual without being slutty, Strong without being masculinised, vulnerable without being weak. These songs remain light years ahead most pop fare released today, and they were dead catchy too.
A musical was produced in 1999 in London called Mama Mia!, which cobbled together 22 of ABBA's songs and weaved a decidedly unlikely story about a soon-to-be-wed young lady trying to find her real Dad on a Greek Island. Songs would be introduced randomly with lines like "hey, do you remember what nick-name I used to call you? What was it?...Oh yeah...CHIQUITITA!"
Very popular with little girls of all ages and homosexuals, the musical has taken over £1bn in ticket sales since it opened, and inspired other 'Shove A Famous Band's Songs Into A Musical' shitfests like We Will Rock You (Queen), Tonight's the Night (Rod Stewart) and Movin' Out (Billy Joel).
Tom Hanks' Playtone is trying to bring it to the screen. Tom Hanks' sort of musical, That Thing You Do, about a one hit wonder band, is actually a lot of fun, and certainly a lot better than the faux-50's stylings of Grease. Phillida Lloyd, who is a famous stage director who none of us have heard of, is hoping to make her directorial debut with this film.
Musicals, which died out in the 60's after having been one of the most successful, and large scale, genres of Hollywood movie almost since movies began, have had a sort of resurgance of late, becoming the goto genre for Oscar Bait films that don't involve terminally ill retards (make a musical about one of those and watch the deals come in). Chicago did well a few years ago and Dreamgirls is doing fairly well at the box office and still has quite a bit of what they call 'heat'.
Let us all kneel down and pray that, while we hope that all these nice people have long and sucessful careers, Mama Mia! crashes and burns at the box office so as to ensure that we never, ever, under no circumstances, see a film adaptation of We Will Rock You. You just know it would be directed by Joel Schumacher.
Source: Hollywood ReporterDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading South Park Is A Musical Too!
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Trucked
I hope you all enjoyed my little trip into redneck country. I didn't get beaten up for being a fag, I didn't get raped in a truck stop and I didn't wake up married to a hyphenated crack whore living in a trailer park. I only covered three truck films because a: three is actually a good number for Internet articles and b: I couldn't be bothered to watch any more. To wrap things up, here are some great truck films I didn't cover. Not included is Transformers: The Movie.
Duel: Steven Speilberg's 1974 film about an ordinary man being terrorised on backroads by a huge truck for not much reason at all. We never get to see the trucker, so telling us this is a film from the city-man's point of view, with the backroads of America now a place of fear instead of freedom and the strange backwards creatures who inhabit it now closer to monsters than humans, so different they are from modern 'ordinary' people. It's a good film and a nice reversal of perspective, but it's also the same film as Jaws, and Jaws is much better.
The Wages of Fear: Clouzot's 1953 masterpiece about desperate colonials stuck in South America trucking explosives across dangerous country for enough money to leave the place for good. It has the idea of independent men trying to live free (or, at least, free from justice), but they are all failures, at the bottom of society, forced to drive unsafe trucks for some cash by a wantonly exploitative company. It is by far the best 'truck' film mentioned in these articles, but it's using trucks as a way to explore the inside of desperate men's souls, where films like Convoy seek to explore the role of truckers in the mythical soul of an entire country.
Sorceror: 1978, William Friedkin. I've not seen this, and my bastard DVD rental service doesn't bastarding carry it, but then it does have a reputation of being a 'forgotten' film. It is a remake of Wages of Fear, and I would love the idea of some 70's Hollywood executive getting very excited by the idea of mixing the low-brow, populist trucker films with prestige, arty film-making by, for example, getting the director of The French Connection to remake some French movie from the 50's that had trucks in it. 'It can't fail!' he cried, as he sniffed some of that fancy new white powder everyone had been talking about.
Big Trouble in Little China: John Carpenter is a grumpy cuss, and making a film revolving entirely around taking the piss out of exactly those sorts of modern cowboy trucker heroes I've covered in these articles seems exactly like his style. Well, that and magical kung fu zombies. Kurt Russell plays Jack Burton, the greatest hero in the world, who drives the Pork Chop Express, the greatest truck in the world, while eating the greatest sandwich in the world. He's also a complete idiot who swaggers, John Wayne style, around San Fransisco's Little China completely oblivious to what is really going on while genuinely believing he is the hero of the story. In actual fact his little kung fu immigrant friends are doing all the work while he is mostly trying to get his end away with Kim Cattrall. Don't worry too much about the socio-political subtexts in this movie though, there's magical kung fu zombies at the end which are, you know, more fun.
Keep on truckin'!
Discuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading Trucked
New Series Of Mr. Ed Planned
Independent distributor THINKFilm has picked up the rights to a documentary called Zoo. Zoo is about a man who enjoyed having horses fuck him. The man died in 2005 of massive trauma of the anus. There's not much else to this story.
The documentary makers claim the film is about tolerance and perversion, and exactly how much of the later we, as representing the former, are willing to accept in others. This is a very valid debate, especially in a time when the religious lunatics of our countries are trying to ban gay.
Nonetheless, this is a film about a horse fucker. I heard a rumour that the suction of a cow's vagina is so strong that, if you reach orgasm within one, the force of the vagina will rip your penis off. I heard that the texture of a pig's vagina is the closest in all the animal kingdom to a human's. I heard if you fuck a sheep on the edge of a cliff, they lean into it real nice. And so on.
I'd suggest that the Internet will explode into a frenzy of donkey sex jokes around the time this film gets a release, but donkey sex frenzies are pretty much normal around here.
Source: Documentary BlogDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading New Series Of Mr. Ed Planned
"What's The Matter With You, Kid?!"
Stanley Kramer's 1963 classic comedy ensemble It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World has influenced all sorts in entertainment as well as inspired lots of homages, parodies, and rip-offs both on television and the big screen. And now almost 35 years later, people close to the original film have decided to give it a sequel that sounds like it could be potentially retarded.
Ed Bass, one of the producers behind "Bobby," and Karen Sharpe Kramer, the widow of "Mad World" director Stanley Kramer, have teamed to make a sequel to the comedy classic. Titled "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD World," the film would be, like the 1963 film, a large ensemble movie mixing comics and dramatic actors. The two began planning a sequel, but Kramer became ill, and the project was put on hold.
The story follows the descendants of the characters from the first movie who are thrust into another madcap chase to find a cache of money after it is revealed that the money found in the first movie was counterfeit.
No director is attached, and Bass and Kramer plan to finance the film independently. The duo want the sequel to be have an even bigger cast than the original, and they hope to involve actors from the original movie.
George Barris -- the car designer and car customizer behind such famed screen vehicles as the Batmobile, the Monkeemobile and KITT, the car from "Knight Rider" -- is designing cars for the movie.
Counterfeit? Descendants? Okay. I'm always a bit suspicious when the trades paint sequels, prequels, remakes, etc. as these sort of long lost gestating projects that the originators had always intended. It comes across like nice, neatly packaged PR speak, but honestly, the hell do I know? The premise does sound a bit half-baked, but the good thing about this type of film isn't really story or concept but the ensemble and creative team behind it. However, George Barris' involvement kinda worries me since the focus should be on the characters and their insane stunts and not on weird new goofy cars, which the original had none of.
Will this be another Rat Race or something actually legit? I guess we'll know soon enough. If nothing else, it'll at least raise awareness for the original film which you should all promptly watch if you haven't.
Source: The Hollywood ReporterDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading "What's The Matter With You, Kid?!"
Shyamalan Employable
The New Year brings new hope and new perspective on life. M Night Shyamalan has just announced that he is finally making a film not based on one of his original ideas. You read the words of a man who defended The Village: last summer's Lady in the Water was shit. The story is called Avatar: The Last Airbender, based on a Nickelodeon cartoon about magic martial arts types defending air worlds from fire worlds or something. It's aimed at 6-11 year olds, which is media euphemism speak for stoned college students. What decidedly isn't a story is that this puts Shyamalan's Avatar against James Cameron's Avatar.
Cameron, the mighty king of 15 year old action films, is definitely moving forwards with his Avatar project, about alien worlds, virtual reality and $200m, but it has only just been officially greenlit by the saps at Fox paying for it and won't come out until at least 2009.
I can't imagine a film I'm less interested in seeing Shyamalan direct than a rip-off of Dragonball Z, but at least the poor boy's getting work. The Lady in the Water was shit. Time will tell us if he tries to inflict his brand of portentous guff on this film, turning what should be light, kiddie fare into a Matrix sequel for 8 year olds.
The noise about these two films having the same name will disappear soon enough, with the safe bet being on Shyamalan's project moving its 'Avatar' to a subtitle.
Source: VarietyDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading Shyamalan Employable
Monday, January 08, 2007
DVD Review: Crank
Lions Gate Films and Lakeshore Entertainment
present a Neveldine/Taylor film
Starring Jason Statham Amy Smart Jose Pablo Castillo
and Dwight Yoakam
Music by Paul Haslinger Edited by Brian Berdan
Cinematography by Adam Biddle
Produced by Michael Davis Gary Lucchesi Tom Rosenberg
Skip Williamson Richard Wright
Written and Directed by Brian Neveldine and Mark Taylor
Being honest, I haven't seen anything that I'd call a great action movie for a while, not since 2001 and Christophe Gans' Brotherhood of the Wolf, or perhaps Man on Fire, although I don’t really see that as an action movie. Anyway, following my teens, I drifted away from the genre, both expanding my horizons with other kinds of film but also after a failure to find anything mind-blowingly great as something like Predator, Die Hard, or the still-king of action movies, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Every year, dozens and dozens of action flicks came my way, and all failed to arouse anything.
Thank fuck for Crank.
Crank tells the story of probably the most most awesome-monikered protagonist since, well, Indiana Jones. Chev Chelios is an L.A. hitman, and has just made a hit on a Korean crime boss, a hit which - whilst being authorised by his employer - has just taken his life. You see, Chev has been poisoned with a "beijing cocktail" and while he knows he's done for, he's looking to stay alive just long enough to seek his revenge against his murderer. And the only way to do that is to keep up his adrenaline, which slows the poison down. And the only way to do that is to punch everything in his way, steal as many cars as possible, achieve at least one act of public copulation, and generally do a lot of insane things with a refreshing lack of any moral consequence.
As you can tell from the above description Crank is awesome. But it's not only the best action movie in a while, it's also the greatest video game adaptation ever made. To clarify, no, there is no actual specific game that Crank was based on. But it matters not. For all intents and purposes, this is Grand Theft Auto: The Motion Picture. This is not a "it's so thin and goes to set-piece to set-piece" type criticism. This is the filmmakers (debutants Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine) intentionally structuring the film like a game, and providing all the trimmings that would you expect from that. The only thing that differs is that the only task we have as the audience is to sit back and enjoy. And to try not to vomit from laughing too hard.
That's one brilliant thing about Crank that endears it to me so much. It's absolutely fucking hilarious, and the comment about vomiting comes from personal experience, as after viewing the picture for the first time, I was gagging and retching by the end because I could just not stop laughing. You know the cliche "I laughed so hard it hurt"? Well that happened with Crank.
I'm all for seriousness in films, and the lack of seriousness in cinema is something I can often be found lamenting, usually referencing modern horror. But seriousness would be completely out of place in Crank as much as a twenty-minute graphic rape scene would be in Citizen Kane. This flick is as popcorn as you can get, a blisteringly fast - and short at 80 minutes - ride intent only on ensuring you have as much fun as possible. While I've heard quotes say this is a great "turn your brain off" action flick, turning your brain off during Crank would take away half of the fun of the film. This flick is meta for the Playstation generation.
And as I mentioned earlier, the directors know it, and this is directly communicated by the opening credits and the title, which as you can see at the top, is rendered like a video game screen from the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System for the young'uns here). I've always looked at the opening credits as a sort of ante-chamber for the film, if that makes sense, an effective way to convey the atmosphere of the film and prepare the audience for what's ahead. Some times that's true, other times it's just an excuse to play the movie's theme song over some pretty images. Crank's titles fit into the first example, the game-esque screens juxtaposed with a blast of heavy metal on the soundtrack. I'm glad they didn't use "Ace of Spades," that would have just been too much.
As such, Chev runs through the game/film, well, stealing vehicles and punching and shooting people. Which is great fun, and leads to so many hilarious scenes of ultra-violence, most of which revolve around Chev’s adrenaline problem, which leads into another great way Neveldine and Taylor have integrated the movie with the world of the video game: power-ups. So much of the film is obsessed with Chev getting the energy he needs, whether by beating people up (levelling up!) or by injecting, snorting, and electric shocking. It’s really no different than Mario and his mushrooms (snigger) or Mike Haggar picking up a turkey.
Crank juxtaposes all this mayhem with a subplot involving his girlfriend that sounds clichéd (girl doesn’t know that boy is hitman) but which works absolutely beautifully in a multitude of ways, including one scene in Chinatown that includes one of the funniest shots I’ve ever seen. Amy Smart doesn’t honestly have that much to do except panic and be hot, and she does both of those exceptionally well. The supporting cast are all pretty great, with the standout being country star Dwight Yoakam as Chev’s doctor, who spends 90% of the film on the phone with him dispensing advice on how to stop the poison, to the amusement of the airport patrons around him.
Statham himself is amazing, and very, very funny. He takes the average action hero – or in this case anti-hero – and creates this scared, vulnerable, manic and likeable character and infuses him with, well, a lot of violent slapstick humour. A lot of the comedy is purely visual, and Statham takes to it like a duck to water, kind of like Buster Keaton crossed with Sonic the Hedgehog. But when the film – and his character – needs to be brutal, he performs it unflinchingly. For those who are faint of heart and/or pregnant, be warned: this is a very violent movie that has absolutely no morals whatsoever. There are no doubt some people who saw the film and took offence to a lot of it, and I’ll be honest, there was one moment which stands out to me as incredibly brave for a Hollywood flick, but that also made me flinch for a split second, which I think is certainly the point. Like some video games which have become famous in the media for inspiring real-life violence, Crank is a huge over-exuberant examination of not only what filmmakers can get away with, but also how the audience reacts when we place a person that is one of the main causes of this behaviour as our “hero.”
Technically, the film is excellent. Shot on digital video, the film in many ways has the feeling of Tony Scott’s recent experimental pictures, the aforementioned Man On Fire and Domino, especially in the editing. There’s a lot of freeze framing, and some interesting work with subtitles and words in general, especially that one term that hates women (no, not “jumpsuit”). The direction is incredibly confident, as is the writing, and they squeeze every last drop out of the concept, but never overrun it. According to IMDB, there was an original music score, but I’ll be honest, I can’t remember anything but loud heavy metal.
As for the DVD itself, well, I can’t say exactly. You see, being that I live in the UK, I managed to pick it up a week early compared to the States, but as a trade-off, there is very little on the disc. Being that we’re tea fiends with bad teeth constantly shouting “You... made me miss!” at each other, we always seem to get the shaft when it comes to DVDs, and Crank is no exception. However, let’s get through the technical stuff first.
The picture is amazing, and the sound is great. It could’ve done with a DTS track, but at the end of the day, the Dolby Digital 5.1 performs exceptionally. And then there are the extras. Sorry, extra. Yes, all we get is the trailer. I don’t mind that too much, because I love trailers and see too many discs without them, but there’s very little else, apart from two trailers at the start of the disc advertising Hot Fuzz and Smokin’ Aces, both of which look great by the way. However, if you live in Bush Country, I believe you get a commentary and behind the scenes stuff. Bastards.
The art is terrible. I remember the teaser poster that had a picture of Statham’s (well, perhaps a hand double’s) arm with the title raised on the inside of the arm like veins. That was awesome. This is generic DTV shit, with a picture of vengeful Statham on the cover with the obligatory two pistols. It also has the terrible DTV tagling, “Poison in his veins, Vengeance in his heart.” Give me a fucking break.
But that doesn’t really matter. Espousing Hollywood’s OTT mantra while ridiculing it at the same time, Crank is, to put it bluntly, fucking amazing. Buy it. Now.
9 and a half Haitians out of 10
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Labels: DVD Reviews
Continue reading DVD Review: CrankGrown Man Watches Kiki's Delivery Service, Cries Like Girl
Did you know that the rights holders of The Wizard of Earthsea novels by Ursula LeGuin sold them to Studio Ghibli and The Sci Fi Channel at the same time? The deal was that the Studio Ghibli (the Japanese animation house that godlike god Hayao 'Spirited Away' Miyazaki helped create) version would not be released in western markets before the Sci-Fi Channel's mini-series was screened, DVD'd and otherwise exhausted of revenue. Which means we won't get the good version (that's the Ghibli version) until the end of 2008, the bastards. While Miyazaki did not personally make Ghibli's Earthsea (it was his son, in fact, and therein lies a story for another time), everything Ghibli does is really lovely, like Ponpoko, the film about badgers with inflatable testicles. Nonetheless, it's the Miyazaki directed films that are the true prize, but the big tease constantly insists that his latest film is his last. Well, there's a rumour going round that he's already lining up another film after the one he's working on now. Yay!
Here's the story about his latest film, or as much as we now of it anyway. The rumour about the next one goes that it is an adaptation of a Chinese children's book called I Lost My Little Boy which is all about a little boy who is dying of heart disease. LOL.
Extra fun is added to the mix because the story makes reference to Miyazaki character 'Totoro' (a giant squirrel thing that is the spirit of the forest or something and is on the Ghibli studio logo) on the first page. The story is set in Miyazaki's fictional universe. Wacky. Meta. Woo.
Even if it is full of cute furry monsters and fun adventures, it's still about a boy dying of heart disease, which means I will be a puddle of peaceful tears by the end of it. Over Christmas, I had one of those moments where I couldn't decide which of my far too many DVDs to watch. In these situations I have made a rule where, if I can't decide in within five minutes, I just pick the closest Miyazaki. I picked Kiki's Delivery Service and cried for most of the running time, even though it is a film where nothing bad actually happens.
Miyazaki makes films of incredible beauty, films after which you can, even if only for a few minutes, imagine living a better life. If this rumour is true, then we have at least two more of his films to look forwards to. Happy.
Source: Film Ick Discuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading Grown Man Watches Kiki's Delivery Service, Cries Like Girl
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Trailer Park Handjob: 1/7/07
There's not much happening in terms of new films at the moment. January is a traditional dumping ground for the crap studios are contractually obliged to give at least some sort of release to, and a traditional cooling-off period while all the good films rush-released before the end of the previous year in order to be eligible for the Oscars start trickling out into the horrifying black hole that lies inbetween New York and Los Angeles. In recent years, horror films have found a lucrative home in these winter months, so perhaps we can have a second Halloween at cinemas? Let's find out.
The Breed: Just released, apparently, this is a cheapo horror film about young people going to an isolated cabin and then getting attacked by terrifying and evil...Alsatians. It's worth watching the trailer just to see almost-was Michelle Rodriguez try and act scared of a dog. These are smart dogs, though, leading to dialogue like 'They chewed right through (the rope) on purpose... it's like they know we want to leave!'. Watch it here and feel the last grams of your idealism drop from you as you realise that having a good script and original ideas are only likely to make your dream project more difficult to get made.
White Noise: The Light: Sequel to 2005's White Noise, this trailer starts with a good 30 seconds of deep-voiced explanation of what it is about. What it is about is someone having a near-death experience, seeing 'the light' (stay with me, I know it's complicated), then bringing some spirits back when he gets alived again. I can only assume the voice over needs to be so long because they are marketing this PG-13 horror movie to retards and brain-amputees, otherwise known as teenage girls. Cynical horror fans may wish to notice outright thefts from The Grudge, Poltergeist, and Don't Look Now. A review from the The Guardian says the last half hour is entertainingly batty though, so if you are also a fan of dull and ugly Nathan Fillion, who is the star of this film, maybe you should watch it here.
American Cannibal: Apparently a genuine documentary about the abortive attempt to make a none-more-extreme reality TV show (the PR fluff plays it absolutely deadpan), this is most likely a semi-dramatised documentary, exploring and possibly mocking reality TV, where the central idea for the eponymous TV programme is fake, but they interview real people in the industry about it - think Borat or Borat's genius TV ancestors The Day Today and Brasseye. I would suggest, however, that they should have hired actors who don't suck so much at acting. The very first 'fake' interview, about 'there being lots of blood', is done so badly you'd have to be the sort of person who watches reality TV not to see the deception a mile off. Not nearly as clever as it thinks it is. Watch it here.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie: Moving even further away from horror now, but still fairly scary, the movie of the TV cartoon I have never seen gets a teaser trailer with big budget 3-D animation that looks like it was made on a Playstation 1. But of course it is all deliberate and ironic. The computer game cut-scene level of direction is presumably the same. I am old and ignorant of pop culture, but I do know these shows are 15 minutes long and rely on fast paced non-sequiturs and general nonsensicality for their fun, and turning that into 80 odd minutes of film without compromising the whole point of it with a coherent plot or being so fucking random even pot-smokers get bored will prove a mighty challenge. I wish them the best of luck from very far away any cinema that shows this. Watch it here.
Into Great Silence: being a documentary about an order of monks who don't say anything. Also being a really pretentious title, but never mind. I know our horror movies tell us these monks are actually demons sent to earth to rape and kill large breasted women, but this is actually a respectful and possibly beautiful account of their day to day lives. The trailer plays out mostly to silence and, to compensate, relies on way too many words to explain things. This could be lovely seen in a cinema, as film in a dark room can also be hypnotically calming as well as seizure inducingly exciting. Would make a great double feature with Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Watch it here.
Redline: And finally some comedy. Daniel Sadek is a real estate developer who used his own garage of penis-substitute cars to make this exciting action thriller film. Go to his rockin' MySpace page to join the film's 111 friends in watching the trailer. Fans of Torque, and you know who you are, may wish to hold out hope of a potential double feature. Otherwise you can have a giggle at exactly what real estate money and a massive preening ego will get you.
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DVD Review: Roseanne Barr: Blonde and Bitchin'
Roseanne is back and so is her last name. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not only a Roseanne Barr fan, but I think it’s safe to say that she is the reason I got into standup comedy to begin with. Growing up a chubby, little trailer trash girl, I never really saw myself in the comedians of my youth until Roseanne’s first appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Sure, I LOVED standup comedy, but didn’t really believe I could do it until that night. That being said, that is not a guarantee that I would like the Blonde and Bitchin’ DVD, since I also worship George Carlin and haven’t liked a damn thing he’s done in over ten years. But, I’m happy to say that Yes, I liked it.
Blonde and Bitchin’ was filmed in the Comedy Store Main Room in Hollywood, where Roseanne got her first big break. This room holds about 300 people, and I like the intimate feeling of a comedy DVD being filmed in a club versus a stadium. It’s the way comedy is supposed to be. I’ve performed in this room myself, which is irrelevant, but you have no idea how hard it is for me to write an entire review that is not all about ME.
I like Roseanne’s conversational style and the fact that she doesn’t take herself too seriously. Her first words are, “Does my fat ass make my ass look too fat?” And then she calls herself a "has been". Let’s face it; Roseanne is so rich and famous that she could take herself very seriously if she chose to. It’s been a long time since she’s lived in a trailer or been poor or unknown. And yet, she comes across with humility and vulnerability, which if you have read any of my previous writings, you know I feel is very important in standup comedy.
However, you can tell that Roseanne is used to people coming to see HER, and not just going out for comedy in general. If she were not the main attraction, she could easily lose the crowd with her lazy timing and long way around the jokes. In most comedy shows (less in comedy clubs than bars and other venues), it’s a lot like work just to get the audience to shut up, face forward, and pay attention. If you don’t grab the shit out of them with snappy timing and quick punches, they will simply go back to their conversations, pool game, or pinball machine. Especially since the picture on the pinball machine is always some big- breasted hot chick in skimpy clothing. That’s hard to compete with, believe me.
I think that the best comics not only disclose intimate parts of themselves, which Roseanne does (she tells us her weight for God’s sake which I wouldn’t tell you under sodium pentothal), but that they also use the art of standup comedy to process their lives and the world around them, as any artist would do. Roseanne covers a wide range of subjects in this hour of comedy. “This whole century blows,” she says.
She reminisces about her daughter finding her pot stash. She says, “Mommy is old enough and successful enough to have earned the right to be drunk and on drugs and a raving fucking maniac if she chooses,” and I agree! She says she is sick of her kids complaining that she was never around when they were growing up. “Can you imagine how fucked up your lives would be if I had taken an interest in them?” Regarding getting older she complains, “I’m wet where I’m supposed to be dry and dry where I’m supposed to be wet.”
She also looks at the world. “I hate the president. I hate the president. I hate the president. Is it still legal to say that? Who cares if our kids can read if our military is number one?” she asks sarcastically. “The world is our bitch and we are going to bust a cap in her ass!” Roseanne is political without necessarily talking politics, and then she comes at politics straight on. “How did they get working people to vote Republican? That’s like getting chickens to vote for Colonel Sanders.” She also addresses religion, saying that she once called Pat Robertson the anti-Christ, but then she was sued by the anti-Christ anti-defamation league.
There are a few things on Blonde and Bitchin’ that I wasn’t crazy about. At one point, she reads cards that have written on them questions that may or may not have actually been asked by the audience. Although her answers are very funny, as a standup purist I hate the use of any props and I feel that this disrupts the flow of the jokes. I would have rather seen just 45 minutes of pure standup, than an hour that contained props.
At the end, she dances around in nothing but a leotard and then sings. The first time I saw this, I flat-out hated it. But, after watching the DVD again, I understand it a little better. She says that her two biggest fears are being seen in her underwear and singing in public. I believe that a comic’s job is to face fears and personal tragedy before a crowd. In fact, I tell my comedy students to go home and write a joke about the most painful embarrassing thing that they would die if anyone in the world ever found out and then to go on stage and tell 200 people. If we can make fun of it, we can transcend it, and maybe we can help the audience face something that has been owning them, as well.
All and all, I would definitely recommend that you check out Blonde and Bitchin’. I think it is a very funny, earnest piece of quality workmanship that will remind you why we all love standup comedy to begin with. And why we all loved the Roseanne show. Roseanne is us; she is Everyman. Sure, now she’s a famous multi-millionaire that lives in a big mansion in Brentwood. But, even if it’s not true, you can somehow believe that she still cleans her own toilet. And that is comforting.
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Labels: DVD Reviews
Continue reading DVD Review: Roseanne Barr: Blonde and Bitchin'
