Spike Lee’s well-choreographed record of the last performance of the musical Passing Strange may have a (very) familiar narrative arc–young alienated man, seeking true expression and self and art, misses the reality of relationships and love. Yet it has this rock-(and-r&b-and-soul-not-to-mention-cabaret-and-a-little-Kraftwerk-and-a-thousand-other-eclectic-musical-allusions-)operatic vigor that made me forget I’d ever seen a musical before. Narrated by singer/writer Stew and his greek-chorus band, this movie is as funny, moving, and deliriously melodically gorgeous as any I’ve seen in some time. The cast is sweaty and superb; Stew is a fucking wonder; the songs are as lyrically twisty as Sondheim, and there are moments of thumping keyboard and percussive soaring guitar and choral chant that almost had me, alone in my living room, on my feet.
Month: January 2010
Big Fan
I wasn’t. Robert Siegel’s film, a relentlessly-focused study of an obsessive Giants fan, has gotten a lot of love, for its nods to ‘seventies character studies (or at least its writer/director’s and star’s respective desire to emulate those studies) and for its central performance. Patton Oswalt is properly pouty and arrogant and vulnerable. The film follows Paul from Staten Island through some of his pitiful daily rituals (he doesn’t even go in to the games, but sits in the parking lot and watches on tv with his even more pitiful buddy Kevin Corrigan); when Paul and mate spy their hero QB in their neighborhood, they follow him into Manhattan, and into a strip club, and then eventually wheedle up the courage and go see him. And he figures out they’ve been following him, freaks, and beats the crap out of Paul. Cue the next hour’s sluggish commitment to Paul’s commitment.
Continue reading Big Fan
Book of Eli
I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic films so I went to see The Book of Eli . (spoilers) About twenty minutes into this, maybe sooner, you begin to think “This can’t really be the premise for this movie. No, no, no. There’s got to be something more.” But there ain’t! and it doesn’t get any more nuanced, interesting or intelligent. It’s ridiculous and unconvincing and comes off like Fahrenheit 451 for the Fox News crowd. Mila Kunis, bless her, is more much convincing in That 70s Show where her valley intonations work. At least Susan George would have had a nude scene. Gary Oldman is a pock-marked dictator of a tiny town, which thrives in its own way because it has a reliable water source. At least he’s recovered from The Unborn . In case you don’t get it, the Hughes Brothers introduce him reading a copy of a biography of Mussolini. And there’s a twist, which I won’t ruin, but I will say that it is again unearned and ridiculous. Unfortunately, as post-apocalyptic fantasies go, this one lacks the zing of any of the Road Warrior movies or even any of the juicy pulpiness of those Charlton Heston 70s B-movies The Omega Man and Soylent Green . There is a single witty moment involving Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell.” Amen.
Daybreakers
In its first 10 minutes (after a brief, somewhat pointless prologue), the Spierig brothers’ Daybreakers revels in a dizzying, dialogue-free rush of world-building — here we are maybe 10 years from now in a night-time late-capitalist gloom, all bluish lighting and rainy reflective streets, shadows and fedoras. A plague of vampirism turned things on their heads, humans are hunted, and the world is on the brink of fiscal and social collapse as the blood supply (ahem) thins out. I thought this was gonna be brilliant.
Recent Disappointments
A Serious Man: My new least favorite Coen Brothers movie. I didn’t make it anywhere close to the great ending. Deciding to hit stop at about 45 minutes in was my favorite thing about it.
Up in the Air: Other than some love for Lambert Field, and Clooney not playing a retard for the first time in a while, I stopped caring the moment the (obviously perceptive) guy ditched the annoying chicky by text message.
Avatar: Once the high wears off from being stoned, I frequently wonder why I took the drugs in the first place. Same thing. Yeah, it’s fun to look at, and Cameron ripping off his own movies so blatantly that he could sue is amusing… I walked out of it thinking it was worth the $13 and sitting through the IMAX ads for the National Guard that still make it look like you couldn’t possibly come home missing a limb or your sanity, but driving a tank will be a real hoot.
The Road: Just a gray joyless turd floating in the toilet at Graumann’s Chinese Theater that I desperately wanted to walk out of, but I had a guest. I kept wondering if Viggo was going to pull a tooth out of his mouth at some point, and then toss it away nonchalantly. Take me with you Charlize! I’ll go walk into the snowy forest with you to escape this! I only take solace in the hope that the family who rescued the child cooked and ate him moments after the closing credits rolled.
Here I am at the Road:
Continue reading Recent Disappointments
Region-Free
I am curious how most of you view DVDs that come from other countries–do most of you have region-free players? If so, what?
I just purchased the comprehensive Laurel and Hardy collection from Amazon UK. It had been marked down from 100 pounds to 30. Of course, the USA doesn’t have such a thing available–it’s all the same two or three mediocre films in crappy editions. However, I can’t play these discs on any of my machines.
First I learned that one might “trick” the laptop software so that it plays all DVDs. I downloaded “AnyDVD” without success and then “Region-Free” software without success. Then I learned that my drive is notoriously resistant to this kind of software.
So what to do? The options are to purchase an external DVD drive for about $100, but I don’t know if there are any complications with the laptop software and hardware. Or to purchase a portable DVD player—10″ inch screens run about 100-150. Or to purchase a full-blown player…but from where? apparently not a single electronics store in my area sells “region-free” players. What’s the deal with that? My options are to go to JR in New York city or order online from Amazon, Overstock or 220 Electronics.
Recommendations? I have to start in on the 21 DVDs of Laurel and Hardy soon! Unfortunately the collection is not complete, though it includes most of their major films–however, it pointlessly includes colorized versions of these films? Who buys a set like this but demands that the originals are colorized?
The Chaser
Insert interesting post here. Damn good–often nerve-wracking, strangely silly at times, blackly sarcastic, then horrifying, then a gut-punch emotional wallop. This is a serial killer flick, of sorts, out of South Korea — a corrupt ex-cop (a sweaty,sleazy, superb Kim Yun-seok) now a pimp, finds that some of his “girls” are going missing. He’s pissed — they’re running away, or some asshole’s selling them, after all the money he paid himself. . . and the film opens with him sending another escort out, only to realize that it’s to the same john who was the last customer for the long-gone women. . . And the film bites down hard on your nerves, razor-blade editing slicing us back and forth from potential victim and killer to angry seeking pimp, but it is (really) very familiar, and then: boom. It shifts. Suddenly the film hangs an abrupt left and it’s going in directions you hadn’t expected, and it begins to slowly ratchet up the tension again.
The performances are strong, the editing superb, director Na Hong-jin shoots with plenty of unobtrusive style… it’s like a great Sam Fuller film, pulpy and histrionic yet smart and then smart-ass and then sincerely melodramatic.
I got a region-2 disc, and I don’t think it’s out here yet–but keep an eye on Netflix. Pretty damn good.
Die Weisse Band (The White Ribbon)
Michael Haneke’s latest, subtitled “a German childrens’ story,†is an austere, black-and-white, period film set in a small, northern village a dozen or so months before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Beautifully photographed, rigorously self-disciplined, and meticulously crafted, The White Ribbon plays like mid-career Ingmar Bergman without the joie de vivre . . . and that’s not such a bad thing. Narrated by the village schoolmaster—who openly acknowledges he is an unreliable witness—some thirty or so years after the events depicted on the screen, the film opaquely yet convincingly illustrates Foucault’s dictum that power functions as a locus of struggle. In the film this struggle appears to be between an ambiguously malevolent group of children, their soft targets, and the authority figures (baron, doctor, pastor, the steward of the baron’s estate, fathers, husbands, etc.) who exercise discipline and control over said youth, who will, presumably, freely participate in the atrocities of Nazi Germany fifteen to twenty years down the road. Continue reading Die Weisse Band (The White Ribbon)
Avatar
There’s been a bit of talk, here and there, on this blog about Cameron’s digi-romance 3D thrillride, but I thought it deserved its own thread. First of all, I’ve seen quite a few films made with the latest 3D technology, but this surely is the finest yet. I don’t want to go into the story too much. It is, as Chris pointed out, Ferngully (I’m taking his word, as I have not seen it). But it is also Aliens (Ribisi doesn’t quite manage to outdo Paul Reiser, but he comes close). Bad corporate interests, good-intentioned scientists, an ambivalence about technology Continue reading Avatar