Scooby-Doo and The Phantom Too

With an eye towards the 2010 Oscar season, this past weekend my lovely wife and I met up with Matthew in Las Vegas. As with all trips to Sin City, this trip was purely for business purposes and I plan to flamboyantly display all expenses on my 1040 come February. I went to Vegas to personally put a charge into Matthew to get him to watch and review more movies for the eye-gasm pleasure of all of this blog’s readers. I think the meetings went well and I came away with a solid (non-committal) promise that Matthew would watch and dictate his thoughts to many movies in 2010. Stay tuned!

While in Las Vegas, Matthew, my wife and I went to see The Phantom of the Opera at the Venetian. Since Matthew and I have already broken so many barriers with this blog, I am going to keep breaking barriers by posting the first review of a musical (or was it an Opera?).

My best guess is that when Gaston Leroux was writing The Phantom of the Opera (later set to music by Ken Hill and then stolen by Andy Webber) he probably had Scooby-Doo and the Gang in mind. Here are the characters:

Raoul – Fred Jones
Christine Daae – Daphne Jones
Meg Giry – Velma Dinkley
Richard (Opera Owner) – Scooby-Doo
Moncharmin (Opera Owner) – Shaggy Rogers
Phantom – Each episodes bad guy

At one point during the production, the Phantom was paddling down a river with Christine Daae (Daphne) and I honestly was hoping that they were paddling to the island where Scooby got stranded with the Globetrotters. How cool would that have been? How could the Phantom have kept that menacing look on his half face if he had seen the hilarious antics and ball handling expertise of the ‘Trotters? Personally, when I am thinking about kidnapping someone so that I can give them singing lessons and show them some Doug Henning style magic tricks I always remind myself about the Globetrotters. It really does work nine out of ten times…

Needless to say, the Phantom did not paddle Daphne to that island. Instead he took her to his Phantom-pad with stunning 360 degree views of the sewer and a metal fence that resembled the steel cage from Wrestle Mania 2. Don’t act like you are too cool to remember Wrestle Mania 2...That steel-cage match between King Kong Bundy and Hulk Hogan was a classic.

But once the Phantom got Daphne to his pad I am not exactly clear as to what his plans were. He went to all the trouble to send her notes and sing her songs but he couldn’t even fix up his apartment? Once he showed Daphne that weird magic trick where another gal fell out of the mirror, he put her in bed in the same boat they paddled over in. And, to make matters worse, it was a twin bed. Even if this plan really swept Daphne off her feet did he really plan to have them enjoy their sewer-coast apartment and share a twin bed in a row boat?

At the beginning of the production when Richard (Scooby) and Moncharmin (Shaggy) took over as owners of the Opera House they were told that the Phantom was paid a monthly salary of 20K. I don’t care what the currency is, that is a lot of cheese and the Phantom should have used the money to rent a nice apartment away from the Opera House with room for a queen sized bed and indoor plumbing. When Daphne comes home from a long day of singing her thoughts and wearing corsets she doesn’t want to walk down ten flights of dark stairs and then take a row boat across the sewer to a home that is furnished with a trick mirror, twin bed/row boat and an organ (how was the Phantom powering that thing?). And wouldn’t the Phantom prefer to not to live where he haunts? At some point he is going to be walking around in his underwear and half-mask and someone is going to stumble across him and it will just be embarrassing for everyone. You only get one chance to be a Phantom. Once Fred pulls that mask off the villain he is just “old man Riley” who “would have gotten away with it” if it weren’t for those meddling kids!

The one character that was not very well developed was Meg Giry (Velma). Traditionally, Velma is the smart one who follows the clues and solves the mystery. I am guessing that Gaston Leroux didn’t want to face any lawsuits from Hanna-Barbera so he made this character just different enough to cloud the waters. Half way through the show, Velma started to figure things out and ask a few questions but in the end most of the glory went to Raoul (Fred).

Fred has always had a thing for Daphne so that outcome was not surprising. What was surprising was that he did not have an Ascot on at any point in the show. Plus, for what ever reason towards the end of the show he got locked in a cage and decided that he would feel more comfortable in the cage if he unbuttoned the top six buttons of his shirt. Seeing Fred locked in that cage with his luscious V of gleaming chest pubes made the ladies swoon and I think I heard Tom Jones say “damn it, that was my idea!”

Not to give away all of the details of the show, but in the end things worked out (to a degree). The direction of the mystery turns eerily at the end when Daphne, faced with the choices of (a) marry the Phantom and live in the aforementioned apartment or (b) not marry the Phantom and let Fred die with his chest hanging out in the cage, chose to instead make out with the Phantom. The eerie part was not the making out, it was the pulling away, thinking about what she had done and then diving back in for some more making out (It should be noted that if we were not seated in the second row with the other high rollers I would have shouted out “touch her boob”).

Despite all of the odds, the double make out session did work and Daphne was able to escape with Fred and ride off into the sunset in the Mystery Machine with the rest of the Gang. My lasting impression of the end of the show was that Fred will always look at Daphne and think not about the first make out session, but about that second helping. At some point, Daphne’s looks will go (along with her waist line) and Fred will be stuck as Assistant Manager at the Haberdashery and he will take out all of his frustrations on that Phantom kiss.

Maybe that could be the plot for Phantom of the Opera 2. Here are a few lines from the theme song:

Christine Daae where are you
I’ve got some Phantom questions for you now
Christine Daae we need some help from you now
Come on Christine I see you
Pretending you didn’t go in for seconds
You’re not fooling me because I can see
Your love for the Phantom still beckons

Warren

Wall-E, have you seen Matthew?

Matthew, Matthew, where art thou Matthew? I remember the days when Matthew was a regular contributor to this blog. I think the world was still in black and white back then!

I know there have been a lot of rumors flying around with regard to Matthew’s current whereabouts but I cannot confirm that he will (or will not) be a part of Matthew and Kate + 8.

So, those four sentences are my excuse for not posting anything on this blog in four months. Frankly, you deserve better.

Instead, you are getting Wall-E.

Why would a grown man with an inordinate amount of free time watch an animated Disney film sans dialogue? Excellent question. My answer; I was asleep about twenty minutes into the movie and woke up feeling refreshed just slightly before the credits. So, for the first time in the history of movie reviews I am going to review a movie I watched very little of. I have a lot of questions and comments with regard to the movie and I fully expect that most of these were answered during the roughly eighty minutes of the film that I did not see. Lucky you, you have chosen a great time to return to the Movies and Pop Culture blog!

As I previously mentioned, Wall-E is a Disney film and I think it was created in association with Al Gore pictures. What Disney has done here is pure genius. They have created a children’s film and inserted adult social commentary while also completely clearing themselves of any responsibility. The basic premise of Wall-E is that mankind polluted the Earth and had to take refuge in space until the planet could be cleaned up by small self-aware robots that look suspiciously like Number 5 from Short Circuit.

Let’s discuss that point, shall we? The future as seen through the eyes of Hollywood seems to fall into two categories. Either we will live in a wildly technological society filled with cute helpful robots that cater to our every need or we will live in a dark time and be hunted by scary, ugly, mean, well armed aliens. Frankly, it appears our future rests in the hands of a battle between B9 (Lost in Space, for those of you who forgot) and Zan-Do-Zan (The Last Starfighter, for those of you who forgot). I for one hope that ALF is the special guest referee in that match-up because we all know that he is firm but fair!

So, Wall-E looks suspiciously like Number 5. Why? Why would movies separated by twenty-two years use the same premise for a robot? What exactly are those things that Wall-E and Number 5 use as viewing devices (I don’t want to mistakenly call them eyes)? I think they might be golf course distance finders that have been converted to robot viewing devices but I am not sure that technology existed in 1986. I mean if we can’t come up with any original ideas when dreaming up the look of a futuristic robot we may be doomed to have every space ship called the Millennium Falcon and all time travel boosted by 1.21 Gigawatts of power.

Wall-E is a member of the clean up crew on Earth while mankind cruises around space waiting to safely return when the pollution problem has been solved. Wall-E seems to enjoy his work and is suspiciously curious and romantic considering his position as a robot. This is another part of Hollywood lore that lives on in pretty much every movie about the future. Apparently, our society is enamored with the idea of robots being self-aware.

The problem with Wall-E’s cleaning is that he appears to be the only one working. There are several early scenes in the film that show Wall-E driving around and doing his clean-up duty. In those scenes there are several similar model robots shown broken down, turned-off or abandoned amongst the accumulated trash. What happened to those robots? If (as the film led me to believe) there are no other robots still working, how has Wall-E continued to persevere? Are we to believe that his apparent self-awareness has also given him the ability to overcome physical obstacles (outliving his battery or the reliability of his solar panels)? In the future will robots be able to give 110%? Think about the philosophical ramifications of that question…could a machine programmed by a human achieve something beyond its programmed ability?

The other interesting thing that I noticed about Wall-E’s clean up is that he did work diligently and seemed to make a great amount of progress in trash compacting (it appears that the clean-up process consists of the robot putting rubbish into its belly and turning it into a rubbish square which is then stacked Lego style). What made this interesting to me was that while the film depicted Wall-E making tremendous progress it also depicted the planet as having made virtually no progress (most of the overview scenes were in and around the area Wall-E was stationed). So, if Wall-E can make a great amount of progress in a couple of days why hasn’t any real progress been made in the entirety of the clean-up process (taking into account all of the other robots that would have been doing the same work as Wall-E over an unknown period until their unexplained end)?

Skipping to the end of the film (because, as I previously mentioned, I spent about an hour of this movie presumably dreaming about Catherine Bach), what is left of the human race comes back to Earth from their refuge in space. It appeared to me that humans returned to Earth in order to get some much needed exercise and to stick a single bean stalk into the ground in the hopes of eventually trading the beans for a cow (what is a Movies and Pop Culture blog without a Joseph Jacobs reference). But why would the humans return to Earth? Is life on an abandoned, overgrown, polluted, dangerous planet better than life in space? What exactly is the message Disney is trying to convey here?

Did anyone else notice that on a planet overrun with trash and pollution there was apparently not one Disney related item depicted as being either trash or discarded? Just as an exercise, spend the day tomorrow looking around as you eat your meals, drive around town and work at your office and see how many Disney related items you notice (don’t forget those spin-offs and affiliated companies). I am willing to wager that you personally could fill up a garbage can with those items. Remember now, there are approximately 6.5 billion people currently living on Earth.

So there you have it. Disney has started an environmental sustainability dialogue amongst part-time movie bloggers while assuring children that their products share none of the responsibility. Genius I say, Genius!

Warren

Night at the Museum: Battle to Not Pay

I had a co-worker recently confess to me that he and his wife knowingly attended Hannah Montana: The Movie. This gentleman is well past his prime (Matthew knows him very well) and I wonder if he and his wife should be attending these types of movies alone in a public theater. I have to admit that I posed the same question to myself before deciding to attend Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. There were several reasons I could justify attending the film in a public theater, the first reason being that my wife and I snuck into the movie after attending an earlier movie for which we paid a reduced rate (Thanks, Entertainment Book!) and ate free popcorn (Thanks, Dominoes coupon!). Another good reason to attend this movie is because it is written by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon of Reno 911 fame.

As you may remember, the first film in the Museum series was a big hit and probably increased museum attendance among willing children by around one percent. Although the original film was a children’s movie, filled with a lot of childhood imagination, it played better to an adult audience since I doubt most children would get overly excited about a Q&A session with Teddy Roosevelt or a slide show presentation from Lewis and Clark (and Sacajawea).

You probably also remember that the first film starred Ben Stiller as himself under a different character name. As you know from this blog I have seen a lot of Ben Stiller movies and my opinion of his acting chops has not changed. He is always the exact same character with the same mannerisms and reactions to similar situations. Well, Ben Stiller was also in the second Museum film and he will not be winning an Oscar for his performance. I have a sneaky feeling that Ben Stiller learned his acting skills from a seminar at the airport where the two chapters in the take home binder were “know your lines” and “arrive on time.”

The good news about this Museum installment is that it is pleasantly funny, it moves along quickly and the actors cast around Ben Stiller give good performances. Despite low expectations I really enjoyed this film.

I thought the best part of this film was the performance by Hank Azaria. I am a huge fan of The Simpsons so I already like Hank Azaria and he did not let me down with his funny portrayals of Kahmunrah (evil brother of Ahkmenrah from the first Museum film), Abe Lincoln (voice only) and Rodin’s The Thinker (voice only). The only problem I had with the evil Kahmunrah character was that he seemed to be aware of the other characters. How is that possible?

To further explain that question I should probably reveal some of the plot. The exhibits at the Museum of Natural History are being shipped to the Smithsonian for storage and one of the exhibits steals the tablet of Ahkmenrah which brings everything to life. When the exhibits arrive at the Smithsonian the tablet brings everything to life and mayhem, friendship, and sight gags ensue. So, what that means to me is that the exhibits at the Smithsonian had not previously come to life.

When Kahmunrah comes to life he seems to know about all of the exhibits in the museum and even knows details of the exploits of his fellow bad guys Al Capone, Ivan the Terrible, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Since Kahmunrah is 2000 years old I am fairly certain he would not know anything about Capone, Muhammad Ali or General Custer.

Hank Azaria has most of the funny moments in the film; the bit with Darth Vader (as splashed across all of the previews) is good, there is a funny moment with Oscar the Grouch and the line by The Thinker…”I’m thinking, I’m thinking, I’m thinking” is smartly written.

One other oddity that occurs with the Kahmunrah character is that when he calls up his army from the underworld (the underworld is just behind a door to nowhere exhibit apparently) he gets a small battalion of white guys with bird heads. At first I was OK with this, maybe the food in the underworld is not that prevalent so white guys had to evolve in order to properly enjoy and digest small pebbles and grains. But then I started wondering why would they only evolve in the area of the head? About the time I let that thought go the underworld-bird head-white guys got scared in the climatic final battle sequence by giant concrete Abe Lincoln and retreated back into the underworld.

Now, this posed a problem for me. The bird headed white guy soldiers came from the underworld, basically they came from the land of the un-dead. So, after thousands of years of eating chat and marching in endless formation drills they made it to the land of the living and they got so scared of fighting Abe Lincoln that they decided to go back to the underworld…what? How do you think the conversation went when they got back?

“Hey Parakeet Perry, how did it go up there?”
“Well, we were really excited and we blasted through the door and everything was so bright and the air was so fresh and I could smell apple pie - it was wonderful.”
“So, what happened?”
“Well, we were in formation and we had our swords ready but then this tall guy surprised us and we ran back through the door.”
“Why did you run back through the door? Why didn’t you just hide or wait until he left?”
“Honestly, everything just happened so fast and I saw Blue Jay Bill and Cardinal Chris run through the door and I just followed them.”
“Oh well, we’re glad to have you back safely. You did miss two floggings which will need to be made up and I need you to carry that boulder for the next 500 years.”
“There is no place like home.”

Finally, I have to mention that in my continuing quest to have all of this summer’s movies cross into each other, I was really hoping that Napoleon would make a side trip to a water park in San Dimas or ask Ben Stiller if he knew Bill S. Preston, Esquire or Theodore Logan (“Put them in the Iron Maiden.” “Iron Maiden? Excellent!”).

So, to wrap this one up, let it be told throughout history that even the armies of the underworld don’t want to mess with Honest Abe.

Warren

Transformers: I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

I don’t really feel the need to review the plot lines or story development of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. When the second credit of a movie is “In Association with Hasbro” I think it is fair to assume that you aren’t at a screening of Schindler’s List. While there are a few points I would like to make with regard to the film, in general it was fairly entertaining although way too long.

I don’t think any movie critics have written anything even remotely nice about the second Transformers film. From what I have seen, the reviews have been critical of the human character development, the realism of the story, the confusion of the action sequences and the racial undertones of two of the robots. While these are fair critiques, I think it is also important to remember that this is a fantasy story about robots from outer space based on the look and packaging of toys from the 80’s. I mean, can a paid movie critic really say with a straight face “the plot was unrealistic and over-the-top.”

This Transformers film picks up shortly after the previous film ended. Sam is going to college, Sam’s hot girlfriend is the paint girl at her dad’s chopper store (I too like to paint in Daisy Duke’s while posing seductively), Danny from Las Vegas has been promoted to Major, and the good-guy Transformers (Autobots) are fighting top secret missions against the bad-guy Transformers (Decepticons).

As you can probably guess, the Transformers fight, Sam runs, Danny yells Transformer names exactly as they are printed on the toy packages and pretty much everything is blown up in a spectacular manner. As I mentioned previously, you don’t go to this movie to gain insight into orbital mechanics or military strategy.

I thought one of the most interesting plot aspects of this movie was the character of Alice who is a classmate of Sam’s at college. Alice is a hot chick who comes on to Sam and eventually reveals herself to be a Decepticon with a tail that has a tongue on the end. The only reason I mention this part of the movie is because it has a decidedly Terminator feel to it. On the one hand the Decepticons needed the information from Sam’s mind; on the other hand he simply got the information off the shard on his jacket. Why wouldn’t Alice just kill Sam? And as she had him wrapped up in that metal tail with a tongue on the end, what was her plan to take him somewhere if she was not planning to kill him? Wouldn’t a hot chick with a metal tail carrying around another student raise some suspicions?

Of course, the character of Alice was never seen again in the movie and although it caused relationship friction between Sam and his hot girlfriend, the idea that Transformers can also replicate human cells was never re-visited. In my quest to have every movie this summer cross over, I would have made the character of Alice be an Arnold Schwarzenegger look-a-like and then maybe Sam could have had a class with John Connor. Of course, if Alice was Schwarzenegger than the sexual tension would have been really awkward and the metal tail sneaking out of the underpants scene would have been a head-scratcher.

A good portion of this Transformer movie was set in the Middle East. I am mentioning this because a good portion of the first Transformer movie was also set in the Middle East. In fact, if you look closely the village in this movie looks a lot like the village in the first movie. Both times it was blown to smithereens. Both times there did not appear to be any villagers around. While the battle scenes were exciting and loud and fun, I did notice that for some reason all of our (The United States of America) artillery seems to come with a firecracker attached. If you look at the explosions in this movie, every time a bomb is dropped, a missile is fired or a tank fires off a shell the resulting explosion is topped off with a sparkler. Are we buying all of our artillery from the Koreans now? I can’t imagine that there is a Joint Chiefs memo floating around that states “war getting tired, explosions need more showmanship.”

One advantage of setting a movie in the Middle East is the unnecessary filming of Petra. This is a really cool site in Jordan and always worthy of the big screen but what was the purpose of that scene? I personally think it is just bad business to have secrets of the Universe be hidden behind what is portrayed as dry-wall. With all of the technology of Robots from outer space, they hid the key to the sun-sucking machine behind a layer of drywall in the desert? And if the Autobots are supposed to be wise and smart then why would they secretly hide the key to the machine a mere two miles away?

At any rate, this scene would have been a good time to have Indiana Jones in the background doing the three challenges (Penitent, penitent, only a penitent man shall pass).

Skipping to the end of the film, the Decepticons have this sun-sucking machine that they built but was hidden underneath the Pyramids of Giza. Long story short, the Decepticons get the key to the machine and when they turn it on it starts right up and Megatron (Leader of the Decepticons) announces “we will suck the power from your sun with this machine…as soon as it is ready to fire in about five minutes.” Amazing! Even with extra-terrestrial technology that was created to suck the power of the sun there is still a long period of warming up.

So, as you probably guessed, five minutes is more than enough down time for the Autobots to blow up the machine and save Earth. For me, this immediately begged the question why didn’t they just build this thing on another planet? If the Transformers were on Mercury (which is currently vacant) they could turn on the sun-sucker, let it warm up, have a couple cocktails and harness the power of the sun at their leisure.

Don't worry, the film is fun. Stuff blows up, Megan Fox runs in slow motion, John Turturro is good comic relief and Optimus Prime is still the second coolest baby name I can think of (Money Jackson is still number one).

Warren

The Curious Case of Benjamin Boredom

I really enjoyed the first time I saw the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Of course, the first time I saw it the film was called Big Fish.

It took me (and my lovely wife) two days to finish watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Although we did not stop at any particular point in the movie, I can say without hesitation that both halves of the film were painfully boring. It is amazing to me that this film was nominated for several Academy Awards and that critics and fans have said with a straight face that the special effects and/or storytelling was groundbreaking and emotional. I will venture to say that this film was not only poorly conceived (it is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald), it was poorly written, poorly acted, poorly edited and once again there was no quality control from the Studio when it comes to verifying that the story was consistent and that no loose ends were left untied. I guess the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences just can’t get enough of films with half completed stories and self-aggrandizing special effects (That goes for you too James Cameron).

I thought this film was so poorly made and the story was so fuzzy that I did some additional research. I have a ground breaking surprise for the loyal readers of this blog. I am going to give you something you can find nowhere else.

First though I am going to quickly summarize the story of Benjamin Button. At the beginning of this film a blind clock maker lost his son in WWI. That blind clockmaker secured the contract to build a clock in a train station. The clockmaker built the clock so that the second hand would tick backwards but the hour and minute hands would tick forwards (thus reminding everyone of the time they had lost watching this movie). Now, for what ever reason (this information is never tied to anything or explained any further) Benjamin Button is born an old man whose mother dies in childbirth and whose father abandons him at an old folks home. And, as you have probably heard, Benjamin Button gets physically younger as he ages and eventually turns into Brad Pitt.

So, other than the fact that he is aging backwards, pretty much nothing of interest happens in the life of Benjamin Button. He travels, he loves, he loses and he wonders in and out of a poor Cajun accent. Without getting too far off topic, can anyone name me an accent that Hollywood can pull off other than a standard Midwestern American accent? When you watch this movie I think you will find that Brad Pitt’s attempt at a Cajun accent makes Adam Sandler’s Israeli accent in You Don’t Mess with the Zohan sound like Yitzhak Rabin. Maybe I should write a letter to President Obama to tell him that we can find literally hundreds of stimulus jobs by having any American with an accent go to Hollywood to teach their accent to actors and actresses. The President promised us 600,000 new stimulus jobs this summer…by my count this would leave us with only 599,800 more to be created!

As I said earlier, I have seen this movie before. I liked it when it was called Big Fish, my wife liked it when it was call The Notebook, and my sister like it when it was called Stand By Me. Unfortunately, unlike the three movies mentioned, Benjamin Button really had nothing exciting happen in his life. If Jack Nicholson had been in this movie they would have just called it About Schmidt 2.

As I was saying, Benjamin Button was born old and to the amazement or questioning of not one single person he got physically younger as he aged. Benjamin was born with the ability to walk, talk, think and make time with the ladies. Benjamin died without the ability to walk, talk, or think.

One of the other quirks about this film is that (as a flashback picture) it is half narrated by Daisy - the female lead (Cate Blanchett) and her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond of First Knight fame). The quirk is that the film’s Director (David Fincher) decided that Daisy’s narration should be done in a nearly inaudible old-lady voice. Daisy probably has fifty individual lines of dialogue to set up various flashbacks and banter and I think I might have put the pieces together on two of those lines. For all I know she could have been explaining the holes in the story or telling dirty jokes – although I assume it was neither.

This particular flashback picture was flowing out of a diary written by Benjamin Button. The diary is pretty self explanatory and helps the story boringly move along except for in one crucial place. At one point Caroline is reading the diary and she announces that there are several pages missing. She also indicates that the next available page is stained and it is hard to make out all of the words. No further information was presented in the film with regard to the missing (Watergate) pages. I could not let this go.

Where did the missing pages go? What secrets lie in those missing pages? After extensive research I have located the missing diary pages and I am going to print them for you below. What you are about to read has never been publicly disclosed. This may be the most insignificant find in a generation!

“I was painting the backyard fence of my home this morning. The man at the paint store put a can of ivory white into the paint stirring machine and flipped the switch. The man turned to pick up a dime on the ground and the poorly secured can shot out of the stirring machine and broke through the paint store window.

Meanwhile, an aging insurance salesman was walking down the street near the paint store on his way to a sales meeting with the owner of the book store at the corner of 7th and Bayou. The route the insurance salesman was taking was not a normal route from his office. The more efficient route of 6th Street had been blocked a morning earlier when a newly installed water main broke and flooded the sidewalk.

Next door to the paint store the maintenance man of the Hotel was changing the light bulb in the letter O (the sign had read HTEL for several weeks). The maintenance man was clinging to his ladder with his left hand while trying to put the light bulb into the O with his right hand. He could not quite reach the screw-thread base of the letter O so he removed his left hand from the ladder to try to pull himself ever so slightly closer to the base. Unfortunately, the maintenance man’s balance was lost and he slipped from the ladder and towards the ground below.

The insurance salesman was walking on his way to the book store when the poorly secured can of ivory white paint came out of the paint store window and struck him in the chest.

At that moment a school bus drove by carrying the visiting students from East Central State College in Ada, Oklahoma. On the bus was an unknown student named Mae Boren Axton who was sitting in the back of the bus observing the bustling city street.

If just one thing had been different. If the Public Works Director had not hammered the new water main with such vigor to have caused a crack, the insurance salesman would not have to change the route to his appointment and would not have walked by the paint store. If the man at the paint store had secured the can of ivory white into the paint stirring machine it would not have come lose and broke through the store window. If the hotel maintenance man had climbed down his ladder and moved it over a half inch he would never have had to stretch to reach the base of the letter O. If the school bus from East Central State College would have not run a stop light two blocks earlier.

If just one thing had been different then Mae Boren Axton would not have heard the insurance salesman lying in front of the paint store yelling “I am having a heart attack" and heard the maintenance man lying below the HOTEL sign yelling “I broke my leg.”

If just one thing had been different Mae Boren Axton would not have gotten the idea for a song called Heartbreak Hotel.”

Wow, can you believe the information that was in the three lost pages of Benjamin Button’s diary. It really makes me think about all of the things that had to go wrong in order for me to have ended up watching this film.

Oh, and a guy got struck by lightning seven times. I liked this plot development the first time I saw it - when it was in The Great Outdoors.

Warren

Wolverine: Hair Club for Men President

I think I may be running low on testosterone. I am just having trouble getting excited about any of this summer’s special effects laden, ass-kicking, girls in short shorts, bleak looks into the future, extra terrestrial based, mindless remakes/toy commercials. I think it is time for all of the starving writers who tag along with their slutty cousin to the Sky Bar so they can catch a peek of McG or Brett Rattner and hand them their screenplay to stand up and say, “I think we can do better than this.” Of course, I don’t really know if they can, but wouldn’t it be cool if the people who aren’t involved and have no say try to take back the Hollywood they did not previously have? I truly believe that Hollywood is now being run by toy manufacturers and the aliens behind the human-like exoskeleton of Miley Cyrus.

So, my lovely wife and I attended our first “Summer Blockbuster” last night in the form of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The film featured Hugh Jackman reprising his role as the protruding blade fingered Wolverine of Marvel Comic fame. Also in the movie were Wolverine’s brother Benvereen, a fat guy, a guy with the worst case of pink-eye I have ever seen, a guy who plays poker “to the death,” a woman who touches you and gets her way (is this really a superpower?), an Asian Ned Nederlander, one of the Hobbits from Lord of the Rings, and a black guy.

The basis of this movie is much the same as the Star Wars prequels. The Vice President of the posable action figure division decided that the market was saturated with toys based on the grown up star of a popular movie so he ordered a new movie to be quickly written, directed and distributed to showcase the younger days of the movie star so that new action figures could be created and sold showcasing the stars various stages of physical development.

So it turns out that Wolverine was a sickly Canadian child who just prior to being stabbed by his brother witnessed the murder of his father by his mother’s lover, got mad and killed his mother’s lover with his protruding finger bones (the protrusions were not yet made of metal) but then finds out that his mother’s lover was really his father. At this point, Wolverine does what anyone would do when faced with the aforementioned scenario; he runs away and joins the US Army. While in the Army, Wolverine and his brother fight in pretty much every major war (I did not see him in the Six Day War or WCW’s War Games) until they go nuts in Vietnam and get executed by a firing squad (which of course did not hurt). Since the Army couldn’t kill Wolverine or his brother, they decided to assign him to a special unit in charge of collecting moon rocks and killing diamond smugglers.

After a few missions in the Army’s special unit Wolverine decided to call it quits and retire to the great Northwest in order to dawn the rich fabrics of a plaid shirt and do some lumberjacking. At this point, you may be asking yourself, “Warren, is this the story of Wolverine or your Uncle Leon?” Their stories are actually very similar. The main difference being that there used to be a statue of my Uncle Leon standing in front of a truck stop gas station west of Booneville, Missouri.

In an ironic twist of story telling, it turns out that the moon rocks that Wolverine was gathering while assigned to the Army’s special unit contain an indestructible metal that is injected into Wolverine thus giving him his infamous protruding blade fingers. Of course, it is a movie fantasy land so there doesn’t need to be any tough questions asked with regard to having one’s entire body filled with moon metal. I guess it should be mentioned that Wolverine volunteered to have moon metal injected into his body so that he could get enough strength to kill his brother who was supposedly killing the other characters in the movie (Fat Guy, Pink Eye, Deuce Dropper, Touchy-Feely, Asian Nederlander, Hobbit, and Black guy).

There were two things that really rubbed me wrong about this movie. The first thing is, if you are going to make a prequel, you have to have watched the movie it is prequelling (Trademark). If you watch X-Men Origins and then watch the first X-Men movie you will notice that when Wolverine meets his brother they don’t seem to know each other. Now, granted Wolverine loses his memory at the end of the Origins movie, but did his brother? And Pink Eye is in the first X-Men movie too but in that movie he doesn’t seem to recognize either Wolverine or his brother (neither does Halle Barry). Additionally, in this Origins movie Wolverine’s brother is an articulate, nearly indestructible force but in the X-Men movie he is just a grunting meat-head with limited power and Andy Rooney's eyebrows that is unceremoniously killed off.

The second thing that I did not like in this movie was the creation and deletion of the super villain Weapon XI. Supposedly, Weapon XI is a combination of all of the powers of all of the movie’s characters (except Fat Guy). So this guy has almost unlimited power and healing ability and yet he gets killed in about 30 seconds by Wolverine and his brother. My best guess is that the movie was humming right along and then the credit crunch occurred and the movie’s producers could not afford any more CGI so they told the film’s director to just wrap it up. Let’s think about this one for just a second, Weapon XI has pink eye, is filled with moon rocks, has a Terminator 2 style sword in his arm and can float like Muhammad Ali. So, Wolverine and his brother punch him a couple of times and about twenty-five seconds later Weapon XI is dead of decapitation.

The real irony in this death is that earlier in the film Asian Nederlander is told by the creator of Weapon XI (William Stryker) that he can only kill Wolverine by taking off his head. This would lead you to believe that Stryker knew that the cabeza was an area of concern…so let’s secure that thing to the shoulders! Why not put a layer of moon rocks around the neck area? Oh well, at least nobody attempted the jump-punch.

So, to wrap this one up, Wolverine is Canadian. And let’s not forget, if you ever get into a superhero fight protect your neck at all costs (I recommend a layer of moon rocks in the traditional African Ndebele arrangement).

Warren

Rupee Millionaire

Let me apologize in advance for the long delay in posting a fresh movie review to our blog. I will not, however, apologize for Matthew not posting a fresh movie review because he has a new job, new apartment and new lease on life! Look out California, Matthew is back to managing people. Although I do not know how many people Matthew is managing, or what he is asking them to do on a daily basis…I am hoping that this nugget will inspire him to set aside a few minutes from his newly busy schedule to wax poetically about his new job, house and maybe even the ladies. Congratulations Matthew and welcome back to the world of 8 to 5 (When Dolly Parton was working 9 to 5 did she get a lunch hour).

I have actually rented and/or attended several movies within the past month. I have seen I Love You Man, Watchmen, Miracle at St. Anna, Semi-Pro (again), Role Models and an unfortunate glance at Cynthia Nixon’s naked body while flipping past the Sex in the City movie. I am actually going back and forth on whether to keep in the “unfortunate glance” remark with regard to seeing that body because two of the other movies on my list have glaring (and in one case glowing) male nudity without proper warning. Since I have already discussed this topic in a previous review I won’t harp on it again, but we really need to stop this ball (no pun intended) from rolling any further down the mountain. On the other hand, I really do appreciate the fact that Malin Akerman is not embarrassed by her body and is willing to provide tasteful, artistic nudity in almost all of her films (Watchmen, The Heartbreak Kid, Harold & Kumar).

All of that aside, I would like to type a few paragraphs with regard to the movie I saw most recently called Slumdog Millionaire. I am sure all of you have heard of this movie as it was the winner of multiple awards this past year including the Oscars for Achievement in Screenplay, Original Song, Director and Best Motion Picture. I knew quite a bit about this film just based on all of the Oscar buzz and water cooler talk. I knew that the main character of the film was a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and all of the questions on this quiz show related to an experience he had in his life. I also knew that the film was based in India and was quite the social statement with regard to poverty and the reality of the 2nd World.

What I don’t know is whether or not there is a 2nd World. I know there is a 1st World and I know there is a 3rd World but have you ever heard anyone talk about the 2nd World? Wouldn’t you have to put a country like India in the 2nd World? I think they could be considered a 1st World country based on their GDP but it is also one of the poorest and most illiterate countries on Earth. I will save this debate for another forum but right before you go to sleep tonight, turn to your bed-mate and ask he or she “where would you rank India from a socio-economic global prospective?”

So the film moved along OK, it was definitely eye opening to see the scale of poverty in India and the challenges the Indian people face everyday. It will remind you how lucky we are to have clean running water, indoor plumbing and reliable electricity here in the good-ole US of A. It will also make you think just how fortunate we were as a young Nation to grow up in the 18th and 19th Century when so many of the ugly faces of Capitalism (this is really a comment on economies of scale) were not pressing to keep us from realizing our economic independence. That is not to say that I am in any way anti-Capitalism, but Capitalism as an economic system that can be painfully exploited.

OK, so we have talked about Cynthia Nixon’s naked body, India’s place in the world’s pecking order and a popular quiz show. Where could we possibly go from here? How about this one; when you watch Slumdog Millionaire keep a close eye on the three main characters (Jamal, Salim and Latika). Since I know very little about children this may be how it actually works but it sure looked like the ages of the children fluctuated from very young, to young, to getting older, back to young and then straight to older. Who knows, maybe the Benjamin Button disease originated in India.

That makes me wonder, if you had that problem would you tell anyone? Other than the confusion in wardrobe and medicine cabinet contents…would you seek treatment for a disease where you would randomly go from young to old and back to young? I guess it would be like being stuck in the movie 18 Again except that sometimes you would be George Burns and sometimes you would be Charlie Schlatter (what ever happened to that guy? My sister used to love him).

Why wasn’t Regis hosting Who Wants to be a Millionaire? I mean, the guy they had hosting the show in the movie was about as Indian as Regis is human. I think the accent the host used must have come from the same prop closet as the accent Jon Voight used in Anaconda. Wouldn’t the whole movie have been more fun if Regis had portrayed himself? Can’t you just see Regis trying to pronounce the name Jamal Malik and reading Indian trivia questions? And how great would it have been if Regis was the one beating up Jamal while accusing him of cheating! Regis could have been to India what Jerry Lewis is to France.

So, to wrap this one up Slumdog Millionaire won a lot of awards, opened up a lot of eyes to the Indian sub-continent and overtook The Love Guru for best ending dance sequence.

Warren

An Exclusive Ride on the Midnight Meat Train

I consider myself one of the luckiest men on the face of the earth for having seen the theatrical trailer for Midnight Meat Train. I am quite sure Matthew remembers as well because we saw it together prior to There Will Be Blood. As I recall, the trailer flowed in the normal candy-cutter manner of most stalker-based horror flicks. It foretold the danger, running, chasing, slashing and screaming that would face minor Hollywood stars Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb and Brooke Shields. Nothing could have prepared me for the final scene of the preview, as the subway hurls down the dimly lit tunnel, the movie title is displayed for the first time and the voice of the preview slowly and calmly says “Midnight Meat Train.”

Matthew and I both immediately broke into laughter and I vowed to myself that I would cherish the viewing of the preview in the same way I cherish my first born child (of which I do not have one). I am still surprised that I cannot buy a T-shirt in Vegas with that movie title written across the chest. If I can buy a shirt that says “I ♥ To Fart” then why can’t I buy a shirt with “Midnight Meat Train” on there? I really believe that the shirt could outsell the yellow smiley face shirt. If you put “Midnight Meat Train” on the front and “Catch It Tonight” on the back…you would have capitalistic gold.

Of course, Midnight Meat Train never came to any theaters that I am aware of. Come to think of it, I don’t recall even seeing the movie at Blockbuster or the magic $1 video box at Fry’s either. It is possible I missed its quick run through theaters and on the New Release shelf at the movie store, but more than likely it just slipped into obscurity. Nothing makes me happier than to think that it slipped into obscurity. Lots of people can tell the story of attending a Super Bowl or watching a Presidential Inauguration or seeing Elvis in concert. How many people can say they saw the original trailer for Midnight Meat Train in the theater?

But, just when I thought I had struck trailer gold, I spotted another shiny nugget last Sunday. This particular trailer portrayed young sexy co-eds dancing, drinking and experimenting with pre-marital relations on the high seas. But when the drunken relations go awry someone ends up dead. In this case (according to the trailer), one of three girls on the boat dies from the relations and her body is disposed of by the three boys on the boat. Somehow this leads to tension between the remaining two girls and the original three boys. This tension leads to the boys tying up the girls, the tying up leads to the girls trying to escape, and the trying to escape leads to a dramatic conclusion.

The dramatic conclusion to this trailer was the title of the movie itself: Donkey Punch.

You have read that title correctly; the movie is called Donkey Punch. I double dare any of you (if you don't already know) to look this term up to see what it means. I would have never thought in my lifetime that I would see this often misunderstood, misquoted, potentially lethal sexual term as the title of a mainstream film.

So now, not only have I had the great fortune to see the trailer to Midnight Meat Train, I have also seen the trailer to a movie called Donkey Punch. Think about that, it is basically the equivalent of seeing Elvis sing Jailhouse Rock live in Atlantis with a pet Dodo on his shoulder.

It is never too early to start filling out your Christmas list. Tell Santa, tell your spouse, tell your co-workers and tell your AA sponsor that you want to take a ride on the Midnight Meat Train and put a Donkey Punch under your tree. Oh, and if anyone that reads this blog creates a “Midnight Meat Train – Catch It Tonight” T-shirt, I want some residuals!

Warren

A Penny for My Thoughts on The Wrestler

This past weekend I finally got the opportunity to attend a movie I have been looking forward to seeing for quite some time. The Wrestler is still in limited release (it is only showing at 1 theater in all of Arizona) but it has generated a lot of Oscar buzz and Mickey Rourke has already won several awards for his leading actor performance. I was looking forward to this movie for three main reasons; I really liked Mickey Rourke in his pre-boxing and pre-motorcycle and pre-cosmetic surgery days, I used to work as a regulator/tax collector for professional wrestling in the Great State of Missouri, and Marisa Tomei is hot! Plus, it is actually nice to see a movie about a topic relevant to people under the age of 65 getting some Oscar buzz.

As I previously stated, The Wrestler is only being shown at one theater in Arizona. The theater at which it is being shown is an Independent/Artsy type theater near a ritzy mall in Scottsdale. Since I had never been to this theater I had it in my mind that they would be serving red wine and the patrons would either be in top hats or peace sign T-shirts. I was hoping that this theoretical cast of characters would somehow clash with the legions of wrestling fans I used to see at High School Gymnasiums in rural Missouri. No movie is complete without some type of rumble when the credits roll (I prefer a rumble with snapping and high-kicks myself).

Unfortunately, when I got to the theater I realized that the only rumble I was going to get after the movie was going to have to come from the bowels of fifty seats full of senior citizens. I got behind several “age-experienced” folks in the line to purchase a ticket and as usual, this took way longer than should be necessary. For those of you that frequent movie theaters, maybe you can help me out on this question: Why do senior citizens always have so much change? Do senior citizens control the coins in this country? Everywhere I go, including movie theaters, they are getting out their coin-purses and unloading nothing but silver coins and crumpled dollar bills. I realize that this may be a generational issue but where do they get all of this change and why is their stock not depleting? I am really only half-joking, I realize that coins are money too, but I just don’t understand how senior citizens accumulated so many coins. And just to follow-up on my previous question, how is it that they never have any idea how much change they have? When they pull up to the register they just start sifting through that coin purse with seemingly no idea if they have enough change to pay for their purchases. I mean, is there one huge coin jar at every senior citizens house and before they go out they just reach in a take a scoop of coins? Then again, Scrooge McDuck had a whole room full of coins that he just dove into and swam around in. Maybe that is why senior citizens do so many exercises that involve holding empty milk jugs.

Anyway, Mickey Rourke stars in The Wrestler as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a washed up professional wrestler still holding onto the dream well past his prime. As a former professional wrestling regulator, I saw way too much professional wrestling at high school gyms, church basements, county fairs, American Legion halls, smoke-filled banquet rooms and occasionally, eighteen thousand seat arenas. I spent five years of my life traveling all over Missouri to represent the State and collect the ticket tax. I am providing that little walk down memory lane to make the point that I have seen a lot of independent, small time professional wrestling, and The Wrestler captured everything that I saw. The story that was told and the action that was presented, from the wrestlers all pulling the same rolling luggage with their tights and exercise bands, to the camaraderie in the locker room and the highs and lows of the pre-match and post-match experience, was very real and very well done.

I personally thought that both the story and the portrayal of a washed-up wrestler by Mickey Rourke closely followed the true story of Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka. I saw Jimmy Snuka work for an independent wrestling organization in Poplar Bluff, Missouri while working for the State. I remember watching Snuka during his run in the WWF during the height of wrestling’s popularity. He was a dynamic performer and one of the first wrestlers to use a lot of high-flying maneuvers (including his Superfly Splash finishing move). The man I saw sitting on a bucket in the kitchen of the Armory in Poplar Bluff was just a ghost of what I remembered seeing on television. He still wore the shoulder length “soul glow” hair but he also had thick glasses, a well worn forehead and the demeanor of a tired, beaten man. I don’t mean any of this to be disrespectful, Snuka was nothing but polite and friendly to me and we chatted for several minutes about his travels and experiences. In fact, when we were chatting the promoter came in to pay Snuka his fee and it was almost exactly like the scene in the Wrestler where the promoter hands Randy Robinson a disappointing amount of money and says “I thought the gate would be better.”

That scene captured the real essence of minor league wrestling. The men and women wrestlers that I saw worked hard at their day jobs, pushed show tickets to their friends and family at night and then wrestled once or twice a month in the hopes of extending or elevating their wrestling dreams and making $25 to $50 a show. Often times, the hope of making $25 to $50 turned into promoters asking the wrestlers for money to cover the building rental in the hopes that the next show would have a “better gate.” Sometimes, a wrestler would earn his or her $50 only to have to give it directly to me to fund their Missouri State Constitution mandated professional wrestlers license fee. It was not a glorious life by any means, and after they had put on a grueling and painful show, signed autographs for children and adults alike, pushed their homemade t-shirts and VHS highlight reels, they generally folded and stacked chairs and took the ring apart to be loaded into a pickup parked out back.

As much as I liked both the story and the style of the film, I do have to offer a few words of warning. My wife got sick watching the film from a lethal combination of hand-held camera sequences and bloody wrestling action. Parts of the film, including quite a bit of footage early in the movie, are shot with what appears to be a hand-held camera and are very shaky (think Blair Witch Project, the first movie – no one should ever think about the second movie). I did not have any problems watching the movie but the shakiness of the camera is definitely noticeable.

The bloody wrestling action is another story. Unfortunately, the presentation of both how these matches are choreographed and how they turn out looking to the wrestling audience is very real. During the period in recent professional wrestling history when interest in the mega organizations weaned (WWF, WCW, ECW), independent wrestling organizations turned to gimmick matches to lure paying customers to live events. These were not the gimmick matches of the old wrestling days – loser leaves town matches, strap matches, blindfold matches, girls mud wrestling matches, over the top rope matches, handicap matches, etc. The new style of gimmick matches included no holds barred matches, barbed wire rope matches, fire matches, ladder and chair matches, thumb tack matches, staple gun matches, first blood matches and sometimes a combination of all of the above.

The toll that these types of gimmick matches take on wrestlers can be very extreme (both physically and professionally). Unfortunately, once you start down the path of gigging (intentionally causing oneself to bleed) both the show promoters and the fans begin to not only expect it in every match, they also expect to see something new and bigger at every match. In The Wrestler there is a full sequence of an anything goes match in which Randy Robinson wrestles a poor-mans Mick Foley in a High School gymnasium. The match is brutal and includes everything from barbed wire ropes, to ladders and tables, to trash cans and staple guns. If you are at all squeamish about blood and violence you may want to make a run to the snack bar for a refill on your Orange Crush during this scene. If you want to see the scene, you will be rewarded with an accurate depiction of what wrestling has become to some promoters and wrestlers determined to have a crowd leave their professional wrestling show saying “that is the sickest thing I have ever seen.”

Finally, I just want to say that Marisa Tomei is incredibly hot in this movie. It goes without saying that we all saw My Cousin Vinny and we were all immediately taken with Marisa Tomei. In The Wrestler, Marisa plays a stripper named Cassidy and she not only provides a well rounded dramatic performance, she is also in great shape and looks unbelievable in her stripper gear (also known as underwear the size of my wallet). Even if you have no interest in going to this movie, at least go to the Internet and watch Marisa’s performance (remember now, she is 44 years old)!

So, to wrap this one up, I give my full endorsement to The Wrestler. Also, while I think that Mickey Rourke could win an Oscar for his performance as Randy Robinson, I also think that Carré Otis should have won an Oscar in 1989 for her performance with Mickey Rourke in Wild Orchid.

Warren

Quantum of Silence

The other night I took my lovely wife out to a movie that I was personally not all that thrilled about seeing. She was very excited about seeing the movie and had asked several of her friends and co-workers about the movie in anticipation of seeing the movie. The movie was not Bride Wars, Doubt or Seven Pounds. The movie was Quantum of Solace.

As much as I love going to the movies, I just could not get excited about another James Bond film. I saw Casino Royale in Hawaii and was OK with where the story was going until they displayed forty-five minutes of poker playing. I think there was actually less card playing in that Eric Bana/Drew Barrymore movie Lucky You (which I have flipped past on HBO but never watched for more than a few minutes). I thought Daniel Craig’s portrayal of Bond in Casino Royale was different than anything I had previously seen (I am partial to Roger Moore) and the action was certainly spectacular but I washed my hands of that film once the card playing started. Plus, you know there can’t be a high roller card game without a 120 pound white guy in a DC straight billed hat with the size sticker predominantly displayed, sporting a black hoody, oversized sunglasses and listening to gangster rap on an Ipod.

The movie started out fairly promising. There is a cool car chase to start the movie that involves tunnels, hairpin turns and lots of shooting. The action was so fast and furious I could not even tell who was shooting at whom. Of course, I have to admit I am something of a skeptic when it comes to car scenes. As a member of the Nichols family I was born with something of a curse. That curse is the inability to purchase a reliable car and/or have any chance of maintaining it at a reasonable cost (I encourage you to contact your Legislator and ask that we mandate more federal funding for early detection of this terrible curse). So, when I was watching this spectacular chase scene I kept thinking about how these cars were crashing into each other and into walls and being shot with hundreds of bullets and speeding around hairpin turns and stopping on dimes…and I can’t get my car to drive without sputtering on a wide open freeway at fifty-five miles an hour. The Bond car can take fifty rounds to the engine and tires without switching out of cruise control and my car can’t go a mile if my gas cap is loose.

After the initial chase scene, the movie progressed into a sequel to a movie I could not remember. Other than the aforementioned forty-five minutes of card playing I have no recollection of the plot points of Casino Royale. If I would have known that it was necessary to remember the story line and characters from that movie I might have brushed up prior to Quantum of Solace (emphasis on might). For most of the movie I had no idea who had done what to whom and why everyone was mad at each other. Some movies kind of fill you in as you go along as a refresher (The Jason Bourne movies do this well), but not this movie. This movie didn’t have a chance to fill you in on important plot building points because there was absolutely no dialogue. This movie had less dialogue than any Jason Statham movie you can name. In fact, this movie may have had the least amount of dialogue in history of talking pictures. About half way through this movie I was looking around the theater hoping that someone had brought their Mighty Wurlitzer along and could mix in some 20’s era dramatic escape tunes.

One of the more interesting scenes in this movie involves James Bond’s attendance at a giant outdoor play that sort of looked like the joining of the Shepard of the Hills and a Yanni Concert. I have no idea what this play was supposed to be about but I am fairly sure that at the end some caged prisoners got killed to the delight of the crowd. As I sit here contemplating the meaning of this scene my best guess is that the bad guys who were attending this play to discuss their plans to take over the world had their enemies killed as part of the show. However, wouldn’t this fuel at least some questions from the cast of the show? At least in theory, the killing of the prisoners scene must have been in the script (actors don’t like last minute re-writes). So, there must have been a set of prisoners that were casted initially, probably for their ability to act desperate and scared while being caged and preparing for death. But then on this particular show night the regulars were scrubbed for these actual prisoners (I wonder if the Evil Playbill listed all of the understudy names of the prisoners). Wouldn’t at least one cast member say, “how come we are replacing the original cast of the prisoners?” Do you think the Assistant Director of the show went to the principal actors that night and said “let’s really make it look real tonight. No matter how much the prisoners complain or resist really ruff them up good and shoot them in the head!”

One other thought about this scene is that James Bond identifies the bad guys attending the show by using what can only be described as the best digital camera ever made. I know that James Bond movies are known for introducing and displaying cool current and future technology but the camera he had was just unbelievable. It was hard to tell exactly how far away James Bond was when he was taking photos with this fancy camera (it looked like your run-of-the-mill Nikon) but I am guessing he was perched about 10 stories up and looking down at the audience about 100-150 yards away (as the crow flies). This camera was taking clear head shots without the use of a flash (the show was being performed outside at night) that were being sent back to 007 Headquarters in London, England for the facial recognition software to read. I don’t know about you, but I can’t get a photo of me next to the Christmas tree to come out correctly and I have every lamp in my house pointed at the tree and the camera flash engaged!

Anyway, the rest of the movie hums along with various running, jumping, driving, flying, crashing, shooting, punching, kicking, sleeping at the nicest hotel in Haiti (who knew the Haitians were so opulent), visiting a sweet one hundred room hotel in the middle of the desert (where there were no maids on staff yet spotless rooms…think about that one), and revenge (best served cold). All the while, James Bond said pretty much nothing.

So to wrap this one up, let me just say that this movie was action packed (I think the Director at some point said, “we need to come in under two hours, we just don’t have time for all of this plot development and talking”) but if I have to remember characters and story lines from both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace for the next installment (my sources say the working title is Conundrum of Uranus), I may sit it out.

Warren

I see your Kim Richards and I raise you a Bud Cort

So Warren's sister is travelling around the country and she stopped off in San Francisco to visit friends. Warren had given her my phone number and she called me and invited me out to see a movie with her and her friend, Jesus. Figuring that everyone needs a little Jesus in their life, I agreed to meet up with them. We went to see an old movie "Harold and Maude." Ashley, that is Warren's sister's name, told me that she enjoyed reading Warren and my post but she wanted us to review older movies. She figured that by enticing me out to see a movie, it would provide fodder for the blog. And it has obviously, because I am writing about the movie in the blog. So maybe Warren and I will begin reviewing older movies. Now "Harold and Maude" isn't really that old a movie. It was made in 1971. Not exactly the days just after "talkies" were beginning to be shown. But I see her point.

She has a blog also and has already written her entry about that night. You can read it at: http://ashontheroad.blogspot.com/. Ashley has already taken the best line from the movie and used it in her blog, so I won't reprint it here.

As she indicates in her blog she and her friend were walking down the street and noticed that "Harold and Maude" would be playing at the Castro Theater as part of the SF Sketchfest. And Bud Cort, one of the two stars of the movie, would be talking afterwards. In all my years of coming to SF to visit friends or family or just in the last year while living here, I have never been to the infamous Castro Theater. There is a reason. The Castro is in the Castro district of San Francisco. The gay district. Now there are gay people all over San Francisco, we don't herd them into one area and cordon it off. But the Castro is where gays know that they can be their most flamboyant. Think of all the gay stereotypical behavior and it is in the Castro; shops selling ass-less chaps, public displays of affection, etc. And it is home to a great old theater. I am sorry that I never saw a show there before this past Thursday.

"Harold and Maude" is about death. Not the old tired cliches about death, but seeing it as the integral part of life. The necessary and inevitable end. Harold, played by Bud Cort, is obsessed with death. He is a rich, privileged late-teen/early twenties kid who keeps faking his own suicide to shock his mother, Vivian Pickles (who gives a tremendous performance, only to be outdone [but just barely] by Ruth Gordon). His mother, having seen his fake attempts so many times, merely ignores his theatrics with a disgusted toss of her well coiffed head or shrilly castigates Harold for ruining a perfectly good evening. Hilarious stuff. Oh yeah, this is a comedy.

Anyway, Harold is so obsessed with death that he attends funerals. It is at a funeral where Harold meets Maude. She is an old lady just weeks away from her eightieth birthday. In contrast to Harold, Maude loves life. She is goofy and irreverent. She steals cars, saves trees, cackles as she tweaks the sensibilities of the established order, and just in general lives as her own person. The effect on Harold is intoxicating and he slowly begins to appreciate his own life as he engages in adventures with her.

The movie is life affirming. Essentially the message is don't obsess over the bad things in life, but embrace each day as if it were your last. That is a worthwhile message. But it is not as revelatory as the critics make it out to be and this movie is not, as some have stated, "The Best of All Time." It was a nice movie with incredible performances by Cort, Gordon, and Pickles. I laughed. I cried. I left the movie theater.

Bud Cort today looks just like he did in the movie. Not! He is forty years older. In the Q & A his fans asked many questions about his career. I didn't know that he had a career. They say that he was in "Mash" with Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould. I'll have to go back and take a look at that movie. Maybe I missed him in it.

Matthew

Samuel L. Jackson = Snakes?

So we have to sign our blogs now? Our regular readers couldn't tell who was writing what. I think that Warren and I have established our individual voices through our writing pretty well. And if the guy who is writing is referring to Warren and not stating that he is Warren than the guy who is writing isn't Warren and is in fact the other guy, Matthew. Again, pretty easy to figure out, but whatever. We'll do this the remedial way for the short bus people.

I like Samuel L. Jackson. I think that he is a great actor. I could watch his performance in "Pulp Fiction," all day. And I have been taking notice of him ever since he first appeared in "Goodfellas." Don't remember him in "Goodfellas?" Watch it again. He's in there. But lately, he, like other actors I have mentioned in this blog, has been resting on his laurels. And the past two movies he has been in have to do with snakes. Now that is just typecasting. I'm not going to review "Snakes on a Plane." I saw it. I thought that it was kind of dumb. Not much dumber than any other movies in the genre, but dumber than the movies I feel like writing about.

I just watched "Black Snake Moan." Mostly because I heard that it had a naked Christina Ricci in it, as well as Sam Jackson. The previews of the movie made the movie seem like it would be an old south, funky voodoo vibe kind of movie. And it was. A lot of blues music in the soundtrack and all the main characters had devils and demons in their minds. It was sensual and dark. The movie was written and directed by the same guy who wrote and directed "Hustle and Flow." So it came with pedigree.

The plot revolves around Christina Ricci playing Rae, a small-southern-town slut. Sorry for that bad word there, but really there is no other way to describe her. When she is drunk or high, she writhes on the ground, 'gets the fever', and has sex with whatever man is around. Easy to see what her demon is. A pretty, trashy, southern, young girl who has sex indiscriminately = child abuse. The movie reveals that truth as the plot develops. She keeps her demon at bay as long as her man, Justin Timberlake, is in town. Wait. How did he get in here? Yeah, Mr. Timberlake is playing a young man who intends to join the army, who is currently shacking up permanent-like with Ricci.

Anyway, Timberlake goes off to Memphis or somewhere to undergo basic training. Leaving Rae alone by herself. Well, you know no good will come of that. Rae parties with friends, drinks, takes drugs, loses her clothes and has sex. Later a friend of Justin Timberlake is driving a still addled Ricci home and he starts to get stirrings in his loins. Naturally he forgets what a good friend he is to Timberlake and makes a move on Ricci. Ricci is aware enough to reject him (this guy should have started his moves sooner) and he beats her up and throws her out of his truck on the side of the road.

Samuel L. Jackson (remember him, this blog entry started with a discussion of him) plays Lazarus, an old black man. Quite a stretch for Jackson to play. Lazarus lives by himself way out of town and grows vegetables to sell in town. Now I didn't think that in the 21st century people could still grow produce to sell in town and still hardscrabble out a real living, but apparently in rural Tennessee, you can. Lazarus finds Rae, cleans her up and is about to let her go on her way, when she does what she does whenever she is in the presence of a man and she catches 'the fever.' She strips down, makes googly-eyes at the old man and offers to pay back his kindness with a roll in the sack. Lazarus is astonished and appalled. And that is when he realizes that he must cure her sickness. So he chains her to his radiator in his house.

Thus we get to the controversial element of this movie. I seem to be seeing movies lately that have caused a stir. People protested at some showing of this movie because it depicts an old black man chaining up a pretty young white woman. This image is offensive on so many levels. But as preposterous as all of this sounds, the movie made it all seem plausible. Anyway, eventually Rae stops acting so crazy. Lazarus takes the chain off, buys her some real clothes, they go out for a night on the town and in the process both soften a little and they connect on some level wherein they now have an understanding of each other's internal pain.

Timberlake flames out at boot camp, something about his personal demons won't allow him to shoot a gun. He comes home, and misunderstanding the relationship Rae and Lazarus have developed, he threatens violence. Rae and Lazarus' relationship is purely platonic, but you can see why Timberlake would jump to the wrong conclusions given her previous behavior. The movie ends with no solid conclusion. There is no sappy - everyone's demons are exorcised - ending. I guess the message is, we all have to find someone to love and who loves us regardless of our demons.

It was a good movie. Catch it now that it is on DVD. But it didn't exactly live up to my expectations. I think this director, Carl Brewer is his name incidentally, just scraped the surface of the emotions and drama necessary to correctly portray the story he was trying to tell. Christina Ricci does get naked quite a bit, so it does have that going for it.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Rae's mother is played by Kim Richards. Don't know the name? She was the little girl in the old Disney flick, "Escape from Witch Mountain." Carl Brewer had lusted after the actress since that movie was made and he was determined to have her in his movie. I just think that is cool. And creepy.

Matthew

Speaking of Cox

A seminal line from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," from Sarah after she has been informed that her TV show has been cancelled.


"Seemingly, the only actresses that can survive are the ones that show their cooter and I refuse to that. Excuse me, but I have a little dignity."


She is speaking out against doing nudity in a film. And she is equating being nude with being a slut. The time has come to set the record straight about nudity in film. First off you don't "do nudity," you just get naked. We have all been naked throughout our lives. There is no loss of dignity in being naked. And nakedness doesn't have to be about sex. I am naked everyday and I'm not having sex. I bathe daily. Being naked is a daily normal occurrance. So nakedness isn't always about sex and it isn't undignified. I recognize that we are in a society with prudish values. I understand that we shouldn't go walking around buck naked. Clothing serves quite well in our quest to protect ourselves from the elements. But being naked is a part of life. Films show all aspects of our lives. But somehow filmmakers have decided that nudity is the one thing they can't show. Or when it is shown it must be so limited or in such a distant shot, or filmed in such a way as to make it difficult to discern particulars. Nudity is labeled bad. There is plenty of bad in films. Certainly there are bad films; judgement of some films may be subjective, but there are objectively bad films. "Dan in Real Life," comes to mind. There are bad things in films: dismembered bodies, scenes of incest, racist depictions of ethnic groups, etc. But is nudity really the worst thing that they can display?

It is the recent incarnation of the ratings board that brought all this on. I remember in my youth seeing a PG rated movie called, "Hair." Argue the merits of that particular movie, if you will, but even back then a PG rated movie could display Beverly D'Angelo boobs. Even R rated movies have fallen under the ax of the resurgent prudishness. R rated movies made today aren't allowed to show nearly the amount or the extent of the nudity offered in such classics as, "Porky's." As I referenced before, shots with any actor being even partially naked are shot in such a manner that the camera shot distracts from the fluidity of the film. The camera pans through the bedroom at shoulder height level, displaying the full extent of the room - ceiling to floor - and then either zooms in to an actress's face only or suddenly drops its height to floor level and dips behind a chair back or side table leg or in some way obstructs the vision of the camera. Or, and this is not realistic in any sense, the actress gets out of bed at right angles - feet hit floor, and the sheet falls away to reveal a perfectly perpendicular flat space of the back. Who the hell gets out of bed in such a manner? The effect is jarring. The whole film is shot in realistic settings and angles, until it is time to show actors in situations where certain body parts may be seen. These actors are all self-conscious. The society has made them so.

Again, nudity = bad. I get it. The sickness extends beyond the actors themselves. The internet is ablaze with websites which exist for no other reason than to catch stars, or even non-stars (Paris Hilton/any Kardashian), naked. Gonzo photographers go to great lengths to shoot pictures of sideboob, internet sites exclaim that they have the shots, advertisers support the internet sites and encourage the photographer's behavior. And the stars feel stalked and violated and cheap. Nudity, in any form, becomes nasty. So actors refuse to ever be filmed naked. They don't want to be considered undignified.

Let's examine this. One bedroom scene where the actress didn't freak out about being naked and where the camera pan didn't have a jarring effect was in the movie "The English Patient," a movie made in 1996, starring actors all well respected for their craft. It won a total of nine academy awards, including Best Picture. Hardly a smutty, disreputable film. The scene is Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas lying around in bed, making cute, post-coital small talk. Ralph Fiennes absent-mindedly draws circles with his finger on Kristin Scott Thomas's belly. Kristin Scott Thomas unselfconsciously displays her upper torso. She languidly revels in her lover's presence. She is comfortable, even blissful. It is as if the film is being shot with the unacknowledged fourth wall. The actors are acting as if the cameras aren't there. Which is how films are supposed to be shot. Thus no jarring, self-aware, discordant body movements to avoid exposure nor swooping camera pans to avoid "inappropriate" displays.

All actors, if they are serious about acting, must be just as comfortable with themselves. Martin Sheen in an episode of "Inside the Actor's Studio," explains the true exposure that an actor must be able to commit to. He relays the story of when his father died. He was away, New York I believe, and not nearby when his father died. His siblings took care of the particulars of planning the funeral and he said that he would arrive late, but still make it to the wake and the funeral. Well, complications ensued and planes were late, the result being that he could not attend the funeral of his own father. There was no animosity between he and his father. He loved his father very much and was sorry that he couldn't pay his last respects. Life continued at its usual hurried pace and he never really in his mind got a chance to say goodbye. Some time later he was in a movie and there was a scene where he had to display deep sorrow. The director shot and re-shot the scene, but just couldn't get the right feeling out of Martin. He approached Martin with his concerns and asked if Martin could reach a little deeper into himself and bring out true emotion. Martin reassessed what he was giving out and how better to really act. And he told the director "Okay, I'm going to do this one time, so you better get the shot." And Martin called out from within his own subconscious all the emotions he had sublimated about the death of his father. Sheen let out all the anguish and sorrow he felt. He finally mourned the loss of his dad. To expose that much, to have that private a moment shared and permanently captured on film, is far more intimate than having your naked body filmed.

The current standard is that if you want to be taken seriously, you would never allow yourself to be talked into "doing movie nudity." What self-respecting actress would allow herself to be filmed nude? Helen Mirren, Helen Hunt, Halle Barre, Diane Keaton, Charlize Theron, Jessica Lange, Barbra Hershey, Meryl Streep, Anne Hatheway, Sally Fields, Kathy Bates. Oscar winners and respected actresses. You will be taken seriously if you do serious, good work, if you have respect for your craft. You add to your range of expression by not discounting nudity. Your job as an actor or actress is to expose yourself. All of yourself. Your humiliation in third grade. Your joy at the birth of your child. The loss of loved ones. The craft calls on actors to express all their privacy. All of it. Every aspect, including the body. There can be self-consciousness in acting. There can be no restraint.

In another part of his interview on "Inside the Actor's Studio," Martin Sheen reflects on his most infamous nude scene. The one in "Apocalypse Now." He had not been feeling well during the scene. He had wrestled these demons before and he thought "Maybe I should go here again. It is the search for a transcendent experience." He started doing some karate moves and he misjudged the distance to the mirror. He cracked the mirror and cut his thumb pretty deep. Francis Ford Coppala tried to stop the scene, but Martin Sheen was into something deeply personal. He had the demon by the throat and he was not going to let it go. For his own sake. And he said, "No. Let me have this." As the scene went on and on, Martin got more into his personal pain, into the guilt that he had been carrying. That should be the only concern of a true actor. How best to express the nature and feel of the scene. There should be no awareness of the camera, no awareness of the fourth wall.

Another actor, Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame, famously did a nude scene. On stage this time instead of on film. This kid obviously has a profitable franchise. Financially there is no impetus to extend beyond his comfort zone. There is no call for exposing himself. But a true actor desires to act. To take on a challenge. To explore his psyche. He relates that it was far more emotionally daunting to play his part in 'Equus,' in the clothed scenes versus the nude scene. "Doing it naked, you take on a vulnerability" He dismisses having qualms about the nude scene. "If you take the job, you take everything that comes with it."

Refusing to expose every part of yourself on screen is infantile and a repudiation of the nobility of the craft of acting. If the audience only shows up out of prurient interest, that is their issue. This is a call for actors to just do their job. Well. Completely. Unabashedly.

So tying this tirade to the title of the blog. Jason Segal, John C. Reilly (or whoever that was in "Dewey Cox"), and yes, even Will Farrell (see Old School), stay true to their craft, even if it is just comedy. They have all committed to doing what is necessary to perfectly convey the needs of the scene and the movies they are in. Can Hollywood start producing movies that are unashamed of the actors' bodies? Can the ratings board mature in their definition of what is appropriate viewing for adults? Can actors let go of their inhibitions and their stilted misconception of the indignity of nudity in film? Can nudity become as accepted in film as blood and dismemberment and other true indignities?

Matthew

I'm running hard towards the end of this week's reviews.

The movie "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," and I have an interesting history. I was all set to see this movie for free during my Phoenix days of weasling my way into free movie previews. But with free movie previews, there are always choices to be made. I also had tickets for "Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street," playing on the same night. And Sweeney Todd had Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp is a great actor of renown. And all the important reviewers said that his performance was spectacular. And the movie was lauded as a wonderful movie. So I decided to see the great movie, Sweeney Todd. Yeah, bad move. You would think after all this time I would have figured out that official movie reviewers don't know squat. They don't speak for the common man. Sweeney Todd sucked balls.

Part of the reason it sucked is because it is a musical. Unless it is a Dracula rock opera with puppets, a musical sucks. The better way to incorporate music more fully into a movie other than having a great soundtrack is to have a comedic fake documentary on a rock icon. And that is what "Walk Hard," is. This is another movie that I had low expectations for. I saw the preview. Thought that it looked stupid. Saw the opening scene on the movie website. Thought that looked predicatable. Figured the whole movie would be like a recent Will Farrell movie; insipid, predictable, forced laughs. Yeah, I am still ragging on Will Farrell. He had such promise!

But again, I was pleasantly surprised. Walk Hard is a pretty funny movie. It stars John C. Reilly as the title character. It is co-wrote by Judd Apatow. Where have I seen his name before? I didn't set out to review Apatow movies. I don't think Warren did either. Judd, and his cohorts, are just talented, funny guys. Reilly lately has been playing the same hapless shnook for a few movies in a row. The latest being his movie with Will Farrell, The Stepbrothers, which Warren reviewed earlier. But I will give a pass to John C. for the moment. First, he hasn't done as many movies as Farrell reprising essentially the same role. Second, he is extremely funny in this role. Bluntly, I think that Reilly is a better actor and can probably pull off doing the same character over and over again longer than Farrell because Reilly adds enough subtle nuances to his performances and his movies have better scripts than Farrell's.

This script follows a fairly predictable arc. But that is the point. Rock biopics are fairly predictable. Rock star has humble beginnings. Tradgedy befalls the protaganist who resolves to overcome the initial setback. In this case, he slices his brother in half while playing around with machettes in the barn. He learns to play the blues from an old black man down at the county store. He plays a school talent competition where the demon music he and his band play incite a riot. He marries his 14 year-old high school sweetheart and immediately has three kids. He works as a janitor at a nightclub where he gets his big break. He records his seminal song, Walk Hard, which becomes a hit and rockets him to stardom. He tries marijuana. He ditches his high school sweetheart for a cute backup singer, Jenna Fischer from The Office. He does cocaine. Somewhere in there he does other drugs. His backup singer ditches him in disgust of the pathetic mess he has become. Decades later he cleans up his act, reconnects with his kids, reconnects with Jenna Fischer, and in the final scene he plays a new song which sums up his entire career at a benefit concert that he is being honored at. Immediately after which he dies. Rock Legend.

Like I said, fairly predicatble. And a perfect parody of all the rock documentaries that have come out lately. Instead of going blind like Ray Charles, he loses his sense of smell after cutting his brother in half. In many other scenes, cliches are played out. Funny stuff. On just the script alone it would be a good movie. I have to say, though, that it has one other thing going for it. I liked the songs. They were well written. Kind of catchy. I have found myself humming them on occasion. Yes, they are written for humorous effect and there are plenty of double entendres, but that adds to their appeal.

I end this review on a disturbing note. There is one scene in the movie, towards the middle. Dewey Cox has achieved success. He is usually away from his family, travelling on the road to give as many concerts as he can. We all know that the road can be a hard place. In the scene, it is after the concert (or maybe before, you can't really tell). Dewey and his band and various hangers on are in a hotel room partying. His wife calls him on the phone. At this point it is still his high school sweetheart. As he is talking to her, the camera pans back and we can see that there are naked people all over the place. And then off to the right of the screen, the bottom portion of a naked male torso appears. At face height is a dangling johnson. Dewey says something like "Wait a minute man. I'm talking to my wife." And then to his wife on the phone, "Oh, that was just so and so, one of the roadies." My point being, why must we have graphic nudity in films? Warren brought this up in an earlier post. I will need to address this issue.

Matthew

Kristin Bell is Hot (and talented)

I saw "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" for the first time back in Phoenix when it first came out. I actually saw it with Warren, Jenny, and our good friend Tim. We all laughed so much during the movie that afterward when we compared notes of what were the funniest lines, we couldn't agree because 1) there were so many good lines, and 2) at various times one of us was laughing so hard we missed the particular line that another one of us was quoting. Needless to say, this movie is great. Or so I thought. After seeing it again, which I committed to do after seeing it in the theater because I wanted to catch all the good lines again, I have to say that this comedy is truly funny, but not as great as I remember. Still, if I were in the DVD buying mood, I would pick this one up. And I still highly recommend it.

View some of the great quotes at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0800039/quotes. My favorite, the one I will be using the most is: "You don't need to put your P in a V right now." "No, I need to B my L all over somone's T's."

A quick summary of the plot is: hot Kristin Bell as Sarah Marshall of the title is a TV actress, star of the hit show, "Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime," is dating Peter Bretter, the soundtrack composer of the show. He is morose and self-loathing. She gets sick of his ass and dumps him. While he is naked. In another post, I will discuss my whole attitude about the nudity, but Warren has prefaced it in his post on "Eastern Promises, Southern Exposure." Oh yeah, Peter Bretter is played by the screenwriter of this movie, Jason Segal. Jason Segal is part of the Judd Apatow stable of compatriots. Judd seems to be getting quite the exposure on this blog. He is the producer of "Sarah Marshall." Warren references him in the Pineapple Express post. And a number of his acting stable make appearances here as well. Jonah Hill (part of the SuperBad twosome) is a waiter at the Hawaiian resort and a loser wannabe rock star. Well, he always plays a loser, I guess. He is really funny here. Paul Rudd, who was memorable in "The Forty-Year-Old Virgin" plays a goofy, loopy, surf instructor. Rudd is always good in anything he does.

Anyway, Peter goes to Hawaii to 'forget Sarah Marshall'. Sarah is at the same resort with a parody-perfect, English, post-rehab, rock star, Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). Peter is encouraged to forget Sarah by pursuing a cute, hotel desk clerk, Rachel Jensen (Mila Kunis). His chief wooing move is to go drinking with her at a local bar where he reveals that he has been working on a rock musical with puppets based on the Dracula story. {Little known fact: Screenwriter Jason Segal actually was working on an irony-free, Dracula, puppet, rock musical and incorporated it into the "Sarah Marshall," script.} Also in the bar, above the Mensroom urinal, is a wall of topless photos of various females who have frequented the bar. Rachel Jensen's photo is there as well. But research after the fact has confirmed that it is not in fact a real photo of Mila Kunis.

Through many hilarious scenes, Peter forgets Sarah, falls in love with Rachel, does something stupid and pisses off Rachel, Aldous Snow is stupid and pisses off Sarah, Sarah's show is cancelled, everyone goes home, Peter puts on his Dracula puppet musical, Rachel sees it and goes backstage, where we see Peter naked again. As they say, what a unique framing device. The movie starts with Jason Segal naked and ends with Jason Segal naked. Bookends. So to speak.

The plot is fairly predictable, but the particular scenes are unexpected and hilarious. The lines, as I said before, are hilarious. This movie, no doubt, will become one where whenever it is on TV I will watch it. Even if it is on network TV and they censor all the language. It just is a really funny movie.

Matthew

Let's Go with a Comedy

Well I finally went and saw a bunch of movies. I actually saw movies over a three or four week period. So if I don't remember some of the details, it is because it has been a while since I saw the particular movie that I am talking about. I am tired of reviewing all these serious movies that play on Encore or HBO, So I rented a few. Actually I rented one and borrowed two from the public library. Yeah, that is what it has come down to. I borrow movies from the library. But this being San Francisco, a big City with rich people who endow the public institutions with decent arrrays of money, some of the more recent movies are acquired on DVD for the lending library. Anyway, I borrowed, "Walk Hard." And then rented, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." And finally I borrowed, "Tropic Thunder." Until I read the review given by my cohort, I had intended to rent, "Pineapple Express." I still may. After all isn't the point of all this to compare notes and discuss movies in common.

Because my memory and impression of the most recently seen movie is freshest, I will begin with that movie. I never intended to see, "Tropic Thunder.' When I saw the previews in theaters, it looked stupid. The premise was retarded. More on the use of that descriptive word later. I do not like Ben Stiller. He has done one redeemable movie, "There's Something About Mary." That movie was genius. Other than that, all other comedies he has done are crap! Horrible crap! Various people that I respect have told me that, "Zoolander," is great stuff, but they are mistaken. That movie is crap. Not as horrendous crap as most of what Stiller has done, but still. Ben Stiller, much like Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Will Farrell, had a promising start in films and then pissed it all away mailing in insipid performances in staid, unfunny comedies. Will Farrell and Ben Stiller especially have simply fallen into the rut of doing the same movie over and over again. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn may not do the same movie, but they haven't portrayed anything but the same character over and over again. "Tropic Thunder," also stars Jack Black, yet another star who had potential and then pissed away his promise by portraying nothing but the same insipid character repeatedly.

So on story and stars alone this looked like a lame excuse for spending studio money. But then the movie also stars Robert Downey Jr. in blackface. Hello. Okay, Robert Downey, showed promise early in his career, pissed it away (he separates himself from the beforementioned crowd by pissing it away on drugs [but doesn't piss it away in a manner that is different from how so many hollywood stars piss away their careers]), and then resurrects his career by pulling himself together and scoring a summer blockbuster hit. I have always liked Downey, Jr. I followed his career in my (and his) youth. Just before he reappeared on everyone's radar by doing, "Ironman" (great movie, I may review it later), he appeared with Val Kilmar in "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang." It was in that movie that you could tell that he had impecable comedic timing and the ability to bond with a fellow actor to create chemistry on the screen.

The story of "Tropic Thunder," is that these three star actors, played by Stiller, Black, and Downey Jr., begin shooting a Vietnam War movie with an inexperienced director. Each of these actors are a parody archtype of a typical hollywood star. Stiller is a parody of the aging action star, Shwartznegger, Stallone, Willis. His latest movie is a post-apocalyptic shoot-em-up version VI or so. Just before putting out the 6th version of that franchise he had tried to get serious and acted as a retarded farmboy who saves the day and wins the hearts of his entire community.

Stiller acting as an actor who portrayed a retard is what caused all the protests against "Tropic Thunder," this summer. Mentally handicapped people and their proponents were incensed at the insensitivity of the portrayal and the cheap laughs it engendered. For my part I think that 'retard' has been an epithet that has been used for comedic purposes long before "Tropic Thunder." Protesting this movie alone seems to be a disengenious publicity stunt.

Back to the movie. Black is the portly dumb-comedy comedian. I guess that he is a parody of himself. Downey Jr. is Russell Crow. Serious, Oscar-winning, Australian. There are two more, no name, actors who round out the primary cast. Brandon Jackson who portrays Alpa Chino, a rapper who is breaking into acting after already being a successful rapper and entrepeneur, (Booty Sweat energy drink and Bust-a-Nut candy bar). And Jay Baruchel as Kevin Sandusky, the requisite bland good white guy who through his naivite resolves all of this movies conflicts.

A few other important actors in the film are Nick Nolte as the ex-Vietnam vet who wrote the book that the movie screenplay is based on, Tom Cruise as the a-hole hollywood producer producing the film, Matthew McConaughey as Stiller's agent and Danny McBride as a pyrotechnics advisor for the film. Warren in this blog's previous post spoke of his disappointment with McBride. The disappointing career of Danny McBride continues. Mr. McBride is just mailing it in here. He isn't given much to do and he just barely does it. Now I really will have to see "Pinapple Express," just to compare notes.

Okay so the plot is the three prima donna actors screw around and screw up the movie. The hapless director can't control them. The grizzled Vietnam vet, Nolte, suggests taking the prima donnas into the wild Vietnam jungle to scare them into being more serious about their craft and to bond with one another. The director, pyrotechnics guy and Vet have planted cameras around the jungle to capture the true emotions of the prima donna actors as they complete the script. The helicopter drops the actors and director in the jungle. The director steps on a land mine and is blown to hell. The retarded (yeah, I'm using that term, bitches) Stiller thinks that it is all part of the plan and he continues to follow the script. Danny McBride and Nolte land elsewhere to watch the drama enfold and are captured by Vietnamese druglords in the area. Stiller, Black, Downey Jr., Jackson, and Baruchel slog through the jungle, get on each other's nerves, display attitudes with one another, and eventually the conflict of the film emerges. The band of actors encounter the druglord's compound with McBride and Nolte in it. And they eventually free the two captured guys. The movie gets made. The actors all realize how petty they have been. Tom Cruise, the producer, cashes in on a successful movie and does a memorable dance through the closing credits.

I couldn't hope to capture the brilliance of this movie. I started this review expressing my trepidation at seeing this film, but I must say this. It is hillarious. Parody has found its apex for the 2008 movie-going season. Downey Jr. was very impressive. Stiller played a parody of himself to some degree, but with conviction and very funny. Black pulled off his limited role with his limited skills. The writing was good and the pacing was good. As you would expect, there are some crude, cheap laughs, (aforementioned retard jokes and the like). But I was pleasantly surprised. It made me laugh and I needed to laugh.

Matthew