Baby Mama (review)
By admin | April 25, 2008
Baby Mama? Really? That’s where we’re going with this? We’re turning supposedly grown women into juvenile idiots like we’ve been doing with supposedly grown men of late? Why don’t we just call it Knocked Up and be done with it?
Look: Babies are great. Sex is great. Messy and ridiculous and laughable — babies and sex — but great. So why don’t we get movies like that, that acknowledge the deeply weird wonderfulness of all this chaotic and confusing and hilarious life stuff? Why do we get movies, these days, about ostensible grownups dealing with ostensibly grownup things — like sex and babies and stuff — that treat their characters like they deserved to be snickered at and their audiences like they’re children whose only possible reaction to matters of sex and babies and stuff is to snicker? Are there any adults anywhere today?
I expected more from Tina Fey, who at least seems like a grownup, yet here lets herself be treated like she’s not worthy of respect we’d accord a dog. Her Kate Holbrook is a successful professional who, at the age of 37, decides she’s going to stop waiting for the right man to come along so that she can have a baby and just go it alone. Which would be fine, if the movie made any pretense at all, even in a farcical way, to understanding how complicated women’s lives can be today, how tough it is for those of us who decide we want to juggle a career and a family, how ridiculous it is to be a woman trying to have it all. How you might even just want to laugh at the absurd nonsense that passes for feminism (like this movie) these days.
Why bother to do that when you can hire a man — here, writer-director Michael McCullers, a Saturday Night Live writer who’s never directed anything before — to crack gynecological jokes and reduce that apparently smart, competent woman to the level of a simpering child? Oh, and she’s a child who is, conversely, too weirdly, twistedly old to seriously believe she could carry a child in her weird, twisted old womb. (“I just don’t like your uterus,” John Hodgeman’s OB-GYN tells her, and he’s funny about it. I want to see a movie where a woman says something to a man like, “I just don’t like your dick,” and she’s seen as humorous, and not a witchy, bitchy villain.) Kate defends her decision to go with a surrogate mother to her own mother thusly: “Being single is not an alternative lifestyle.” “It is when you’re 37,” her mother (Holland Taylor: The Wedding Date, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over) replies, which is, on the surface, supposed to be a joke, something that shows off the mom as old-fashioned and out of touch with the modern world… except the rest of the movie appears to be on the mom’s side. Who is this freaky strange old woman who wants to have a baby, anyway?
But hey, what do I know? I’m only a 38-year-old childless dried-up old prune of a hag myself. I’m probably just bitter. And also a lesbian. And most likely some kind of communist.
And it’s not like Kate hires Juno to carry her baby: she hires white-trashy Angie Ostrowiski… who’s played by Amy Poehler (Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!, Shrek the Third)… who is all of 16 months younger than Tina Fey. And let’s not even get started on the exploitation of poor women that is the for-pay surrogacy industry. Or, okay, let’s, at least as it concerns would-be pregnancy farces: If you were a smart woman paying $100,000 to another woman to carry your child, wouldn’t you ensure there was something in the contract about, oh, not smoking and not eating junk food?
Oh, but it wouldn’t be “funny” if the white-trash surrogate wasn’t sneaking smokes and Dr. Pepper on the side. Cuz god knows there’s nothing else funny that could be mined from such a scenario… at least, nothing funny that doesn’t require an IQ over 75 to come up with…
Even on its own sorry terms, Baby Mama is ludicrous, falling back on toilet humor because it has nothing else to offer. (“I’m sorry I called you stupid,” Kate tells Angie. “I’m sorry I farted into your purse,” Angie relies. Really? Are you kidding me?) And falling back on making fun of what it is itself supposedly celebrating: Why does Siobhan Fallon Hogan’s (Charlotte’s Web, Fever Pitch) new-agey birthing coach come complete with lisp (which supposedly somehow connotes emotional sensitivity as absurd)? If Baby Mama wants to pretend it’s all about the human experience of nurturing a baby in the womb and giving it a good start in life — which is what Fey’s character is, allegedly, all about — then why is it making fun of getting in touch with that?
Baby Mama is bizarre — “I knew I was supposed to have a baby” Angie tells Kate at the faux sentimental ending, “but you taught me how to be a mother,” for which there is no evidence whatsoever. It is atrociously written: the first act (that is, the setup after which there needs to be some twist) is 50 minutes long (30 is about as long as a 95-minute film can tolerate). It absolutely wastes Greg Kinnear (Invincible, Little Miss Sunshine) as Fey’s new love interest… and if you can’t follow where that subplot is going, you deserve this movie as it is.
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Untraceable
By admin | April 22, 2008
Cast: Diane Lane, Billie Burke, Colin Hanks
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Running time: 100 mins
Hoblit loves directing thrillers that are as twisted as a corkscrew.
His previous films, Primal Fear and Fracture, attest to that. In his latest project he is on top form once again.
It’s about a hunt for a serial killer, with a difference. The psycho performs his murders in public, for a live Internet audience.
The victims are all placed in a lethal trap. For example, one person is stripped naked with his legs encased in concrete. He is surrounded by sun lamps, and a live-streaming image is posted on the website “Kill With Me.”
The killer then tells the viewers that the number of hits the site gets will accelerate, or slow down, the heat to which the man is exposed. The more people log on, the faster he fries.
The killer coerces the thrill-hungry public to participate in an act of public murder. Inevitably, the site is jammed with viewers and everyone who watches is a murderer.
It’s a fiendish scheme that an FBI cybercrime agent, Jennifer Marsh (Lane), and her partner, Griffin Dowd (Hanks), must unravel.
Local cop Eric Box (Burke) joins them, but the cunning villain has made his website untraceable. Indeed, any attempt to crack it gives the killer the name and location of the investigators, who instantly find themselves on the killing list.
There are echoes of David Fincher’s Seven and a touch of The Silence of the Lambs with its cryptic clues, but the ingenious and sinister use of the Web puts this film on a different level. It’s only in the last 10 minutes that the film resorts to the traditional car chases and kicking in of doors, but even those have a twist or two in them.
The grey setting of Portland, the skilled cast and the frightening look at the dark side of the online community will keep you glued to your seat in horrified fascination.
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What Makes A Movie A Blockbuster
By admin | April 1, 2008
Blockbuster movies are extremely expensive to make, involving big named stars and costly special effects. Literally millions of dollars are spent on them with the hopes that the returns will more than make up for their cost. It’s these movies that studios depend upon to keep the money flowing and a bad movie can cost the company dearly.
The success or failure of a movie is often determined by the sales of tickets during the first weekend it’s premiered. In an effort to pump up these sales, many studios do, “advanced screenings”, to get positive feedback that they can use for advertisements. These screenings also let the studios know what to anticipate in public reviews.
With the rising cost of movie tickets, a lot of people hesitate to go see them, so the studios employ high profile, expensive actors to lure the public in. They also use special visual effects to dazzle the audience and suspenseful plots that will hopefully keep them riveted to their seats.
Most movie studios know what the public wants to see when they go to the movies. Some studios have been pleasantly surprised by movies that cost little to make in comparison to the blockbusters, but have developed a “cult” following, such as the black and white movie, “Night of the Living Dead” or the still popular, “Rocky Horror Picture Show”. In an effort to continue to profit from old popular movies, they often try to make remakes of them but usually without the same result. One such movie was “King Kong”, which was done several times. People go to see these movies with the hope that they will be as good as the original one, or to let their children experience them the way they did when they were children.
Another tactic that the studios are using is to make sequels of popular movies. The Matrix trilogy brought in a lot of profit, as did the, “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Harry Potter movies are anticipated long before they come out and the movie studios know that they will be able to count on making huge profits from them.
Another way that studios profit from these movies is by selling merchandise that represents the characters in them, which can range from dolls to videogames. They also make money on the DVD sales and rentals and employ popular music artists to record soundtracks, so they can sell the CDs and increase their profits even more.
Blockbuster movies will always be a form of entertainment that the multitudes will walk away from their televisions to go see. There is nothing like getting a box of popcorn and losing yourself in a great movie that’s shown on the silver screen.
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10 Hollywood Classics and what really made them good
By admin | March 28, 2008
1. Raiders of the Lost Ark 
Good, bloody action combined with a sense of humor and fairly credible plot twists. This is a formula that Hollywood has forgotten makes for great entertainment. Sure, they keep throwing the poor man’s version at you (The Mummy, Live Free or Die Hard), and you keep paying for it, so that probably won’t ever change. Sitcom-jokes and CG-action satisfies your average American movie audience-member so they will likely just keep getting lamer.
Casting:
Raiders also had a charismatic leading man, who looked like a man, not a boy. They didn’t cast him because he was pretty enough to keep girls entertainined while all the guy-action was going on, and he wasn’t in the role because of his box-office clout either, the guys who made the movie cast somebody they thought would be best for the role, after Tom Selleck backed out, that is.
Pacing:
It had rapid-fire, globe-hopping, location-shifting pace that no other movie franchise has been able to duplicate, though many have tried. Spielberg is good at creating detailed, fast action sequences, where there is so much visual information being thrown at you that it feels like a news-clip.
2. Memento
Gimmicky plot:
It was an OK movie, with a premise that kept you hooked, waiting for the punchline. Gimmicky little plot ideas get made into movies because they make morons feel smart because they were able to figure it out. It’s the art of coming up with something that looks clever and different but isn’t really all that hard to figure out.
Felt gritty:
It had the kind of atmosphere that felt like a Tarantino or Scorsese movie, where you know bad shit was about to happen, edgy and harsh, which made it seem better than it really was.
3. Fight Club
Original, Edgy:
It was original in the sense of it being a bloody, violent movie that wasn’t predictable and wasn’t like anything a Hollywood writer would have come with on his own. You had Palahniuk’s homo-erotic social critique/satire acted out by 2 decent actors and directed by a genius who can make any scene feel dark and and grungy. It had the feel of being a movie unlike anything you had seen before, and was going some place that Hollywood would likely never go again.
Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden:
This is the only movie I have ever really liked him in aside, perhaps, from Kalifornia, where he played a similar character. Tyler Durden is the epitome of sociopathic cool, and Pitt thinks he is the shit, so it’s perfect casting.
4. American History X
Excellent Bullshit:
It felt like it was dealing with American racism honestly and from both sides. It was an anti-racist diatribe that felt real, like it was dealing with an immensely complicated issue that matters to everybody in a way that Hollywood had not before. It had that indie credibility that appears to dispense with Hollywood bullshit entertainment and seems to be telling you a real story about people. All of that was bullshit, but it was smart, expert bullshit and you have to give it credit for that. If you can’t tackle a hard subject honestly, tackle it so that you look like you are being honest.
Casting:
Give them credit for casting the most nebbishly sincere-seeming actor since James Stewart. Edward Norton, while not exactly convincing as a skinhead badass, did the contrition part quite well. I guess the solution to America’s racial issues involves them being raped by other skinheads.
5. The First 2 Godfather Movies
Pretend Realism:
Years before The Sopranos took you into the heart of the most public criminal organization on earth and pretended to tell you what it was really like, The Godfather did the same thing, proving that you don’t need to be realistic to get an audience to believe you are, you just have to be able to replicate what your average audience member will think is realistic. The Godfather movies were really just a set of guys’ soap operas with a little gun-play that didn’t seem like your regular Hollywood gun-play. The idea was to get the story-lines to mesh with the common American perception of the Mafia not to introduce them to the real thing.
Casting:
Young Al Pacino was the epitome of silk-suited cool. He radiated confidence and the certainty that he deserved what he had and knew exactly how to rule an empire. Robert DeNiro’s Vito Corleone was similarly perfect, depicting a man the with the unusual traits of cunning viciousness and class.
6. Alien 
Sincerity:
The sweet sweet combination of sci-fi and horror, only this time done really well, by a director who took the shit seriously. Take something fantastic, perhaps even ridiculous, and make the audience see how it would play out in real life. The oldest and most sincere kind of film-making, and the sensibility present-day Hollywood has left behind. Now movies aren’t even trying to get you to see the shit as something that could really happen, people aren’t interested in realism any more, just soap-operatic twists and video-game theatrics.
Sigourney:
Alien gave us Sigourney Weaver in panties, not your fake, surgically-enhanced current hot-starlet, but a real chick. In her underwear.
7. Sin City
Rodriguez didn’t fuck it up:
I don’t like Robert Rodriguez movies, the seem tacky and overdone to me, like they are aimed totally at inner-city high-school drop-out of the 80s. I was prepared to dislike Sin City, but I did. Violent, melodramatic, and with no real message whatsoever this movie was good because it felt serious, it was anything but half-hearted. The bloodshed was depicted seriously, the arch Hammett-style monologues weren’t tongue-in-cheek, nothing about it felt like a typical Hollywood paycheck movie.
Mickey Rourke:
I have no idea why this wasn’t his comeback role except that he looks like a freak and is, apparently, quite a dick to work with. It should have been, though. He was way better than Travolta was in Pulp Fiction.
8. Goodfellas
Joe Pesci:
The core of this movie was Joe Pesci’s performance as a sadistic thug. At the time it was shocking, and resonated with everybody. You could forget everything about the movie but you remembered two things: a) Lorraine Bracco putting that gun in her panties, and b) Joe Pesci stabbing that guy in the trunk. If you have ever met anybody like him, the kind of short guy who flips out at the slightest perceived slight, then it stays with you even longer. It was a character whose violence felt genuine, heartfelt, you kind of knew why he was that way, you know people who are almost like that, and because of that he was scary.
Scorsese:
It always seemed to me that his priority as a film-maker was to make his movies feel edgier and desperate than anything else on the screen, his characters live in a brutal world with no mercy and no joy, just like most of us. I love the fact that he flinches from nothing, and expects that of his audience.
9. The Princess Bride 
Pleasant Surprise:
If you saw it early on, before it got its “hip” Internet cult-following, as I did, you probably thought, like me, that you were going to have to sit through and entirely different kind of movie. This is the kind of movie that gets you to love it even when you are a reluctant 14 year-old boy whose mother rented it because she thought it was a different kind of movie too. It’s the last movie that I can remember being clever-funny without being dirty, meaning that unless your kids are dumbasses you can watch it with them.
Shamelessly sentimental without ever getting cute or corny
A brilliant trick which Rob Reiner has never quite managed to pull off again. Hell, the closest ever Hollywood came again was Almost Famous which while a great movie was not quite as charming as this one.
10. Snatch/Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Shallow Entertainment:
If you took Tarantino or Scorsese’s bloodiest, most overblown moment and combined it with a Chuck Jones Wile E. Coyote cartoon sensibility you have Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch. Both are somewhat overrated but still quite entertaining. There is nothing original here but there is quite a bit to make it all seem less-hackneyed, which I appreciate. They are the kind of movies where you know it’s all going to work out fine in the end for everybody, but you still stick around to see how it gets there, in other words, no suspense, but you get hooked any way.
Built Short Attention-spans:
Play a lot of video games, do you? Well here’s a movie to suit your inability to concentrate on any one thing for very long. The locale shifts every few minutes to get you into the goings on in some other part of the story.
British Exotica:
Cockney sounds impossibly exotic to your average Americans, and yet it’s a variety of English, so it doesn’t have the gibberish taste of a foreign language.
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Sleepwalking (review)
By admin | March 19, 2008
A well-meaning but hopelessly inept mother (Charlize Theron: Monster, who also produced the film) abandons her 11-year-old daughter (AnnaSophia Robb: Jumper) with her even more incapable brother (Nick Stahl: Sin City) while Mom goes off to do, well, we don’t know what. That kind of untidy loose end — which is meant, I suspect, to represent the messiness of real life — is part of what lends this visually impressive but naratively underpowered film its sense of not enough there being there. The performances are uniformly finely drawn: although Theron is barely onscreen for much of the film, the strange little triptych of a disfunctional family is instantly authentic, and Robb — who is an astonishingly mature actor for age — and Stahl develop an absorbing onscreen relationship both as their characters and as performers working against each other. But the story is lacking both a historical context — we don’t know enough about the childhood of Stahl’s James to really appreciate the surprising act the film culminates in — and a compelling reason for being told at all in the present moment. (The script is the second feature by Zac Stanford, who wrote the equally intriguing but equally deeply flawed The Chumscrubber a couple of years ago.) This is particularly a problem for a tale that’s meant to be about a dark past lighting a way — or not — to a dark future. First-time director William Maher, who’s mostly been a visual FX specialist prior to this, tries to make up for that with a muddy gray palette meant to infuse a grim emotional shabbiness, but all it leaves us with is a film that is ugly in a futile way instead of a consequential one.
Please be sure to visit: Coupon Whale
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Movie review: ‘10,000 BC’ a pre-hysterical riot
By admin | March 10, 2008
Not since Snakes on a Plane has a movie had a trailer that more perfectly captured its essence. The previews of 10,000 BC show lots of good-looking primitive people (with great teeth—they must have had great dental plans in 10,000 BC) fighting other primitive people and hunting/dodging mammoths.
And that’s the film. Loopy eye candy that you can enjoy in a non-demanding way and which will never cross your mind again. It’s the latest film from writer-director Roland Emmerich and it makes his Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow look like cinematic masterpieces. They were fun films that are worth revisiting from time to time, but Emmerich’s latest is nothing but forgettable fun.
The filmmaker evidently had visions of a pre-historic Braveheart, but 10,000 BC is hardly an epic. It involves D’Leh (Steven Strait), the son of a mammoth hunter, and his blue-eyed lady love Evolet (Camilla Belle). After a mammoth hunt in which he’s deemed a great hunter, he ends up leading some of his clansman on a quest to free his girlfriend (and other clansfolk) from the hostile Rock people, who are a cross between Egyptians and punk rockers. Along the way D’Leh and his gang fight what are best described as giant chickens and run across a sabre-tooth tiger. They also make allies and attach the Rock people’s metropolis, where slaves and mammoths are used to erect pyramids. It’s all as silly as it sounds. Some of the dialog is equally as goofy (“Don’t eat me when I free you,” D’Leh says to a tiger as he frees it from a trap) and the special effects range from very good (a mammoth stampeded) to sub-par (the phony looking sabre-tooth).
Still, all those involved with 10,000 BC serve up their giddily goofy tale with such gusto that even the dumb (even compared to what’s come before) ending can’t quite make the film the cinematic trainwreck it should be. There’s no really good reason to see 10,000 BC, but if you do, you’ll be reasonably entertained for a couple of hours.
10,000 BC is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence. Running time: 109 minutes. Macsimum rating: 5 out of 10. You can check out the film’s trailer on the QuickTime movie trailer site.
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No Country big country at Oscars
By admin | February 24, 2008
No Country for Old Men got off to a killer start at the 80th annual Academy Awards.
Javier Bardem, who portrayed a particularly brutal serial killer in No Country, won the first of the “big six” Oscars, in the supporting-actor category.
During his acceptance speech, the Spaniard — directing his comments toward his mother in the audience — told her in Spanish that this Oscar will help “to recover the dignity of actors… and it’s for our pride.”
Soon afterward, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen won the Oscar for adapted screenplay for No Country — based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. Canadian writer/director/actress Sarah Polley, 29, was nominated in that category for her celebrated feature-film directorial debut, Away From Her. She had adapted her screenplay from Alice Munro’s short story.
In a huge early upset, French actress Marion Cotillard beat huge favourite Away From Her’s Julie Christie for the best-actress Oscar. In her broken Engish, a clearly rattled Cotillard thanked “life” and “love” for her victory. Ellen Page of Halifax, who just turned 21, was up for best actress for her turn as the pregnant teen in Juno.
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Whether Oscar was going to heap its lion’s share of praises by night’s end on Old Men, oil men, war men, corporate men or a lovable pregnant teen was unknown at press time for this edition.
No Country for Old Men, the dark tale of a serial killer on the trail of a looted fortune, was thought to be the likely winner of the best-picture Oscar, over the oil epic There Will Be Blood, the World War II drama Atonement, the corporate drama Michael Clayton and the popular comedy Juno, starring Page.
The Coen brothers went into the evening hoping to make Academy Awards history by winning all four categories in which they were nominated: best picture, director, adapted screenplay and — under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes — in film editing. But when The Bourne Ultimatum won for film editing, that dream died. Only legendary animator Walt Disney has ever won four Oscars in the same year, albeit not for the same movie.
No Country lost in three other technical categories, one to There Will Be Blood in cinematography, and two to The Bourne Ultimatum, in sound editing and sound mixing. The latter meant that Kevin O’Connell’s incredible Oscar losing streak was extended to 0-for-20.
In a big surprise, Tilda Swinton won the supporting-actress Oscar for Michael Clayton. Cate Blanchett’s turn as folk-era Bob Dylan in I’m Not There and 83-year-old Ruby Dee, for American Gangster, were seen to be the favourites in that category.
Swinton said she was completely shocked.
“I thought Ruby Dee would win and then, frankly, anybody but me,” Swinton told reporters backstage.”
She did not react to her name being announced as winner, she admitted.
“I had a reverse Zoolander moment when I thought I heard someone else’s name. Then I slowwwwly heard my own.”
Other Canadians were up for Oscars at the Kodak Theater.
Two Canadian filmmakers lost in the animated-shorts category. Josh Rankin’s I Met the Walrus and Chris Lavis and Maciek Szcerbowski’s Madame Tutli-Putli failed to gain more academy votes than Peter & the Wolf.
Also for Juno, Montreal-born Jason Reitman, himself only 30, was up for best director. He is the son of Canadian director Ivan Reitman.
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, hosting for the second time, opened last night’s awards show by referencing the bitter writers strike that ended earlier this month, saying, “Welcome to makeup sex.”
The first award of the night, presented by Jennifer Garner, went to Elizabeth: The Golden Age. George Clooney, in a traditional tuxedo with a big ’70s-style bow tie, introduced a montage of highlights from Oscar shows past.
In the early going, even though it was clear No Country had begun to pick up steam, the awards were spread far and wide — with seven other films getting at least one Oscar.
Brad Bird, director of Ratatouille, which won as best animated feature, made an impassioned plea backstage for animated films to get back in the running for best picture. But he still said that he’s happy with his own category.
“It’s all good. Come on, it’s the Oscars!” Bird told reporters.
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Movie review: ‘Be Kind Rewind’
By admin | February 23, 2008
Be Kind Rewind
Directed by Michel Gondry
Partizan
Rating: 4
Michel Gondry’s newest work, Be Kind Rewind, is a shamelessly feel-good film encased within the witty dialogue and whimsical camera work that defines Gondry’s style.
The movie’s heart and soul is the Be Kind Rewind video store, owned by Mr. Fletcher (Morgan Freeman). When the store starts to lose money to the corporate DVD rental place down the block, Freeman decides to research other video stores and leaves Mike (Mos Def) in charge of the video store. When Mike’s best friend Jerry (Jack Black) attempts to sabotage a nearby power plant (he thinks it’s controlling his brain) all the store’s VHS videotapes are erased. In a panic, Mike and Jerry decide to remake the erased movies themselves, half-heartedly hoping customers won’t notice. It’s a brilliant concept for a movie and allows Gondry to cleverly (and hilariously) reinterpret classics like Ghostbusters and Robocop through his characters’ handheld video cameras.
As with Gondry’s previous efforts (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep) the movie requires us to suspend our disbelief in quite a few ways. When customers start returning Mike and Jerry’s 
homemade remakes with rave reviews, it’s hard to believe. I wanted to think that the movie’s characters actually liked seeing Jack Black attack an old lady in a Ghostbusters remake - but, in truth, it’s probably wishful thinking. Moreover, Mike and Jerry are best friends. Viewers are never quite sure why they like each other - Jerry is racist and narcissistic, while Mike is adorably innocent and sincere.
Fans of Gondry’s previous efforts may be disappointed by the films strict adherence to standard Hollywood structure, as the plot is predictable and weak. Be Kind Rewind employs every Disney-movie cliché I’ve seen - from cheesy conflict resolutions to feel-good montages and one-dimensional antagonists. Fortunately, Jack Black and Mos Def engage one another well enough that viewers will find themselves caught up in Mike and Jerry’s amusing antics rather than the film’s predictable story.
There’s an amazing amount of precision employed in Be Kind Rewind. All of the movie remakes are witty and entertaining while still managing to appear improvised and spontaneous. Gondry’s cinematography is spot-on yet again, as the movie-making sequences jump skillfully between documenting Mike and Jerry creating their homemade movies and the movies themselves.
As a testament to the film’s finer details, careful viewers will notice that Jerry’s character is modeled after the Shakespearean fool - someone who consistently trips over their words and misuses vocabulary in an entertaining way. Gondry even throws in a Shakespeare allusion as Jerry subsequently argues that The Lion King is based upon a Shakespearean sense of tragedy. Traditionally, a literary fool functions as a subtle teacher, discretely hinting at a work’s crucial features. Be Kind Rewind, however, is no tragedy. It’s a comedy - and clearly a good one. You’d be a fool to think otherwise.
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Al Pacino to Take On James Bond
By admin | February 15, 2008
You read that right. Apparently there is a new rumor that was floated to the guys over at AICN that Al Scent of a Woman Pacino would play the head honcho of the new, evil terrorist organization in the upcoming Bond film Quantum of Solace.
This is certainly a crazy rumor which may turn out to be 100% completely face. It almost seems out of character to me, for the Bond films, which have often shied away from such huge names, unless that star is Bond. Though arguably most Bond actors rose to their highest after being Bond, so even then, big celebrities are not often top choices. The few Bond movies that did recruit bigger names were terrible. Halle Berry, Terri Hatcher, etc.
I’m not entirely sure I’d want Pacino in this, but the rumor does state, at least in Quantum that it would be more of a cameo type appearance as the top dog of top dogs, rather than a main villain to match wits and bullets with. Stay tuned for more.
Sound Off: Is Pacino in a Bond movie a good thing?
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Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (review)
By admin | February 15, 2008
I should have walked out at the “comical” dog-sex scene. Instead I endured until Martin Lawrence got skunked in the face — that should have made me happy, and yet I felt dirty all over, and had to escape. Still, I feel confident in saying, though I saw only two-thirds of the film, that this is one of the absolute worst movies ever produced by the hands of humans. Oh, sure, who wouldn’t be charmed by the “sentimental” spectacle of Lawrence’s hotshot L.A. talk-show host heading home to Bumfuck, The South, for his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary celebration, with his gorgon of a girlfriend — she won Survivor; that’s the kind of aggressive bitch she is — in tow, so that all and sundry of his redneck, blackface family can taunt him about how “white” he’s become? Theaters will have to take out special insurance for all the audience member suffering whiplash from trying to keep up with the changes in tone of this monstrosity, which veers from “sappy claptrap” to “minstrel show” with nary a warning: the only consistency to the film comes via the fact that just about every single character here is uniformly and unrelenting a horrible excuse for a human being. The only cinematic salvation possible in those last few minutes that I couldn’t bear to watch would have been if poor James Earl Jones, as Lawrence’s father, were actually raptured up into heaven by Jesus Christ himself, the Almighty Himself having taken pity upon him.
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