29 Haziran 2010 Salı

Team America: World Police film izle


Yapım: 2004 ~ ABD
Türü: Animasyon
Yönetmen: Trey Parker
Senaryo: Matt Stone
Yapımcı: John Prince
Görüntü Yönetmeni: Anthony C. Metchie
Film Hakkında: South Park filminin yapımcılarının eseri olan güzel bir film daha sizlerle birlikte.Sert eleştiriler ile ABD politikası ile dalga geçiliyor.
İyi seyirler...







28 Haziran 2010 Pazartesi

Kisses (Monday, June 28, 2010) (60)

Kisses is a small Irish movie about a super poor boy and girl who live in the outskirts of Dublin. They both have terrible abusive families with drunk, uncaring parents. One day, the son gets in a fight with his father and the girl and he run away. They end up in downtown Dublin at night and have a wild time of it enjoying their freedom and spending the bit of cash the girl was able to steal from her brother's stash. Eventually, the darkness and depravity of the city catches up with them and they have to return to their miserable homes.

The film is shot is a very cute way, where it opens as black and white, and then as they escape, it moves into a washed-out color, then full color and then moves back to washed out and then black and white again as they return to their homes. This is a bit overdone, I think, but I appreciate that director Lance Daly is trying for something. It has the overall look of Medicine for Melancholy, but none of the elegance.

It is a very sad film about the desperation of these two kids' lives, but I think it's not immediately apparent how sad it is. I think we are generally moved to feel that anything about kids is sweet and nice, and the real pain they feel is hidden here, not only beneath the treatment of the color ratio, but also because the kids seem happy (because they don't know any better).

The kid actors are good, but I don't think that means much - I think kids are generally cheap cyphers in whom we put anything we want. If we like them and we want them to do well, we can say they're great actors; if we don't like them, we can say they're bad. It's a bit unfair, I think, to have them around.

This is an OK film, but nothing brilliant. I am not too wild about it, and I don't think I like how much of a downer it is. Warning: there is some unexpected sexual violence in this that sort of comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere. This is pretty ugly, I think, and a bit manipulative, or even exploitive.

Stars: 2 of 4

MICMACS: The Film Babble Blog Review

MICMACS (Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2009)



It's been way too long since French twisted fantasy-centric film maker Jean-Pierre Jeunet (DELICATESSEN, THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN, AMELIE) has graced the screen with his uber colorful thrusting imagery.




His stunning style is instantly recognizable in the first few frames of MICMACS, his first film since A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT (2004). In the swift motions of a great storyteller we see a soldier being killed in the desert by a landmine, his devastated wife institutionalized, and son (Noé Boon) sent off to Catholic School before growing up to be a video store clerk (Dany Boon) who can lip-synch every line of THE BIG SLEEP (the dubbed into French version BTW). One night a stray bullet from a drive-by shootout ends up embedded in his skull.





After Boon gets out of the hospital he finds that he has lost his job and apartment so he has to turns to street performance for the pittance of passerby's. Luckily he's a skilled Chaplin-esque showman so he's about to float through a few months until he meets Jean-Pierre Marielle as an ex con vendor. Marielle introduces Boon to his "family" - a rag tag ensemble of scrap heap dwellers who all make magic out of scrap metal. The trash troop includes Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon who claims to hold the world record as a human cannonball, Julie Ferrier as a contortionist (and love interest for Boon) who can make room in the fridge for, well, herself, Yolande Moreau as the slightly dizzy den mother, and Omar Sy as a crafty ethnographer as well as an accomplished mimic.





Boon has found a home and shortly after happens upon the opulent headquarters of the arms dealers responsible for the death of his father and the bullet in his head. His impossibly elaborate revenge schemes are enacted by his new cohorts in trickery. André Dussolier and Nicolas Marie as the offending snooty villains of the piece are besotted and baffled at every turn with a smorgasbord of well timed and often hilarious obstacles aimed at the butt of their weapons manufacturing empires.



MICMACS is a bit overdone and cutesy at times but has so many ideas and so much going on in nearly every shot that one can let that slide. So much so that I can also let slide the cringe-worthy anti-war bent to the climax. Its ginormous sense of wonder is overwhelming - it's easily the most visually pleasing live action film this year.





Jeunet's whimsical approach which was so exhilarating in AMELIE and his work with Marc Caro, is at once both modern and classical. The film is wrapped in the traditional packaging of many TCM staples (the opening elegant credits after the cold opening, the silent film steals, the playful piano plinking, etc.) yet the film utilizes CGI and gives us Jeunet embracing the age of YouTube. I'd highly recommend seeing MICMACS on the big screen if you can. You really need a large canvas for such a pulsating painting like this.



More later...

27 Haziran 2010 Pazar

Restrepo (Sunday, June 27, 2010) (59)

Restrepo is a documentary by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington where the two filmmakers spent a year with an Army platoon in a dangerous outpost in Afghanistan. Just before the filming began, the Korengal Valley was one of the most dangerous places in the war as the Taliban had close connections to the local people and were fighting back the U.S. military with extreme force. The Second Platoon set up a mountain-top outpost, named Restrepo after a fallen comrade, and dug in for a long fight. They helped to win the Korengal and turn a corner in the war (at least for a moment).

The film is presented as a series of interviews with the solders who were there as well as the footage was shot. The soldiers describe what was going on and what they felt at different times. They are very frank about their emotions and the importance of their mission. Getting control of the Korengal was (and still is) a key part of the greater effort in Afghanistan.

A lot has been made about the intimacy of the film and how it puts us into the role of a solder in a mountain camp. I guess this is true, to some degree, but what we see onscreen never really feels all that scary. It is clear that they are being shot at now and again, and the solders tell us about how dangerous it is there, but we never really see it or experience it. For most of the soldiers, the most important part of the their tours was the death of Restrepo and another platoon-mate who was shot on the same day. These deaths occurred before the filming, so we can't see what happened in that situation (the stories probably work better in print than onscreen - a formal issue with the film medium).

There is one fire-fight that we do experience, but it is done in such a way that it doesn't seem all that worrisome. Maybe it's just hard to translate the terror one feels when there are bullets and things flying at you, possibly killing you - but it never really came through to me.

Beyond the absence of fear that I had, I also didn't like that it relied so heavily on the thoughts of the soldiers. I'm sorry to be rude, but these are guys who are not really good at talking about their emotions or explaining their actions. They are do-ers not thinkers. I know the point of this is that they *do* have feelings too - but they are simply not articulated well or in any way that I can understand them.

Still, there are a few very interesting moments that are shown onscreen. One is a time when there was a blood fight on another mountain and several American soldiers were killed. The commanding officer of our platoon says something to the effect of "I want to you to mourn and then get back to work". He then goes on to say that they will fight to kill the people who killed their friends. This sober matter-of-factness is very interesting and I'm sure rather common on the battlefield. I was interesting to see it. Beyond this, it is never totally clear what the hell the mission is that these guys are fighting (and dying for), and it's interesting that they basically make up their own mission - kill the guys who killed our buddies. In the absence of direction, go with the personal.

I appreciate the irony that these guys name this camp after a beloved buddy of theirs, but they also hate this place because it's dangerous and just not that comfortable. It is still a mark of respect to name a shithole after their friend. But this is about as deep as the film gets. It never really moves beyond the cliche of brutish solders talking dirty and being stuck in a really bad place who are heroic because of their sacrifice and devotion. I get that, but I guess I would like more. It is impressive that Junger and Heatherington did what they did (there are not many journalists who risked as much as they did), but that doesn't make a great movie.

Stars: 2 of 4

Cyrus (Sunday, June 27, 2010) (58)

Cyrus is the latest film from Jay and Mark Duplass, two directors who first made a name for themselves with mumblecore films. Their two major works to this point, The Puffy Chair and Baghead, are both interesting pieces and both fit much more squarely into the mumblecore world than this one does. I think both films have good stuff in them, but they both rather fall apart in the would-be third act as the story goes slightly off the rails.

Cyrus, despite being a much bigger production with bigger stars and a more conventional script suffers a similar fate. It starts out well, if a bit weird, and then turns a corner in the third act that makes the whole thing a bit less than wonderful.

John (John C. Reilly) is a 40-something loser living in LA, still friendly with his ex-wife Jamie (Catherine Keener). One night she gets him to join her and her new fiance at a party. He joins them expecting to have a terrible time, but at the party meets Molly (Marisa Tomei) a 40-something hottie. They hit it off and end up back at his place. After their second date, he follows her home and meets her 20-year-old son, Cyrus (Jonah Hill) who lives with her. Cyrus and Molly have an unusually close relationship that John has to get used to. Cyrus and John begin to resent each other for taking their time away from Molly.

True to their mumble roots, the Duplasses present the film in a very low-budget-looking style. Most of the camera work is hand-held and the score is minimal with basically no fancy cutting or tricks. This adds a nice level or matter-of-factness to the story. The problem I had is that it feels so natural, but the story is pretty inane. There is no way this woman would have a son as weird as Cyrus and would interact with him the way she does. Their characters are a bit exaggerated, I think, beyond the naturalistic skeleton of the film.

John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei are both great and play the more dramatic, more serious parts of the film well. Jonah Hill is a bit too silly for the film, I think. He is very funny at some points (like when he's playing his own techno music for John), but it's too ridiculous at other times (like when he tries to sabotage a wedding). I feel like he doesn't meld well inside the film, but is more of a hat on top of it. It's sorta like Cyrus, featuring Jonah Hill - which is rather annoying.

Again, the film begins well and has some good stuff in it, but I think the last third are a bit of a throw-away. There is not enough time given to several key ploy points, which results in a disorienting series of scenes. This is a shame, because just like with Baghead that was 70% good and 30% dumb, this never reaches that top level it comes so close to.

I really do think the Duplasses have some good stuff going for them. They seem to be able to direct actors well and have a good sense of technical stuff, but they need to work a bit harder on their scripts. It might be OK in mumbleworld to have a sorta scruffy or less-than-perfect script, but in big budget world, this sort of thing stands out in a bad way.

Stars: 2 of 4

HİNT FİLMLERİ İZLE BOLLYWOOD İZLE

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi




26 Haziran 2010 Cumartesi

Dogtooth (Saturday, June 26, 2010) (57)

More than a movie *about* anything, Dogtooth is really an artistic exercise, as much about the medium and about art itself than anything else.

The film focuses on a middle-class Greek family who live in the remote suburbs outside of town. The film opens with the three kids, all in their late teens listening to a tape recording of new vocabulary words. The "sea" is an armchair; a "motor way" is a really strong wind (later we see that a "telephone" is a salt shaker). Then the kids then devise a game where they hold a finger under the hot water and the last person to remove it will win. "What will we call this game?," asks one of them. The sister who has invented the game looks blankly at the floor. She has no idea what the game would be called.

This play with definitions, naming things and people and control of language is the central point of this film. The parents have set out a world where their kids are kept in the house and the small yard of the estate and told that on the outside of the wall are horrible, violent "cats" that will kill and eat them. They have no access to anything other than exactly what their parents give to them. No access to language, ideas or dreams. The parents have told them that they can leave the house when one of their dogteeth (canines) comes out. Of course, being the age they are, this is unlikely to happen ever. The kids seem to have been socialized to be dogs, rather than humans.

The father brings a woman over to have sex with the son. It seems this is part of his training as a man (to be a sexually dominant being) and also, possibly, a way to keep him in line (it might otherwise be tough to control a hormonal 19-year-old young man). This woman doesn't ask questions and plays along with some of the kids weird games. When she starts trading things from the outside world, uncontrolled things, with the older sister, the strict rules of the house start to go out of whack.

This is a totally fascinating post-modern experiment. The interplay between what the kids know from their parents and what they can make up themselves is wonderful. The idea that they can remain at the developmental level of young children without the influences of culture or society is shocking and pretty convincing.

The parents are cruel in their ways, and there are several suggestions that the father is prone to acts of violence. As a result, the children interact with one another frequently in violent ways. Just as sex is disassociated from it's cultural mores, violence has no position on a scale of right and wrong. Everything is OK as long as it's done inside the house - a world built up and protected by the parents.

This split between a thing and the meaning of a word that describes it (the sign and the symbol, as semiologists would say) is fascinating, not only because it tells an interesting story in the film, but also because of how we react to it as viewers. Is cutting someone with a knife across the arm necessarily a bad thing if the people involved in the act don't know it's bad? If a person doesn't have a name, is their existence different from those with names? Is incest bad if there is no concept of brother/sisterhood and social convention?

Director (and co-writer) Giorgos Lanthimos does a brilliant job of separating film convention from the core of the presentation format. There is no score, there are almost no moving shots. Scenes play out in full, generally with one static camera before being cut away, rendering editing almost totally unnecessary.

The result is a beautiful, tight piece that has almost nothing more than pure story-advancing material. Much of what we see is pretty funny, though we are basically laughing at the people onscreen, rather than laughing with them (the parents are certainly not funny people and the children don't seen to know what humor is).

I think this is another important part of the experiment: we laugh at things that make us uncomfortable (in this case, weird, disassociated violence or weird misunderstandings of people who can't comprehend most of what they experience). We do this because we understand the whole context of things and where an outlier fits in (or doesn't fit in) to that situation. These kids, for instance, only see a very small view of things that have been specifically explained to them. Part of why they don't laugh more is because they don't know enough to know when something is not totally right.

I have enjoyed thinking about this film and breaking down the meaning of parts. There is a lot of fun and interesting material to work with. I will say, though, that there is somewhat of a limit to the depth of meaning I can find. It might be fun to examine the mother's role, say, in the development of the kids, or to look at why the parents might do this in the first place. Unfortunately there are not a lot of answers to these questions, because the material presented is so limited, the film is just so tight.

This is a difficult piece to be sure - but I really enjoyed it. It's weirdness is what's great about it. It constantly surprising us and shocking us with unexpected things. It's really a brilliant work of art.

Stars: 3.5 of 4

ATEŞLİ PİLİÇ - Hot Chicken ONLİNE İZLE






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25 Haziran 2010 Cuma

Movie Reviews: HARRY BROWN & SOLITARY MAN

Despite the amazing anomaly that is TOY STORY 3 the summer keeps on suckin'. But if you bypass the multiplex and head to the indie/art theater you may a few interesting diversions. 




Okay, at least one: 



HARRY BROWN (Dir. Daniel Barber, 2010)








Tiny white titles on the side of the screen tell us "Michael Caine is Harry Brown." The lettering is dwarfed by the darkness of the rest of the frame. The title character fares at bit better against the darkness - at least at first. We see Caine waking up in his South London flat to face the grim day. He has his head held high as he walks through his neighborhood on his way to the hospital to visit his dying wife (Liz Daniels). There is a particular noisy graffiti covered underground passageway he hesitantly passes.





After his visit Caine plays chess at a shady pub with a long-time friend (David Bradley) who is also afraid of the gang activity, but to a greater extreme. Bradley has armed himself with a old army bayonet and fully intends to use it against the harassing hoods. In the night Caine's wife dies; he is unable to be with her because of the additional distance he must travel by avoiding the tunnel. 





The next morning Caine is visited by police detectives (Emily Mortimer and Joseph Gilgun) who inform him that Bradley was murdered - the killing happens off-screen but we do see some of the offending incident leading up to it.

Caine, of course, takes the law into his own hands to avenge his friend's death. He gets in a shoot-out in a drug den; he offs a few of the punked-up thugs, and hunts down the king-pin while the police close in. My wife called it "Gran Torino UK" and, yeah, there is quite a bit of that in play - a pushed to the edge war veteran, who after his wife dies, takes on the gangs that are threatening the well-being of his neighborhood. 





It's much darker and grittier than Eastwood's film - in fact the stark white faces of the actors and the washed out look made me think that it could've been just as effectively shot in black and white.

While some sections like a way-too-long montage of police interrogation may be muddled, Caine alone gives the film a hearty gravitas. 





It's maybe a minor movie but Caine owns the screen in a major way. He's utterly believable in every moment - from his grieving over his wife to his calm intensity when facing down his enemies. HARRY BROWN has a predictable vigilante premise yet it's still satisfying - take away the cell phone camera footage and it's the same kind of claustrophobic thriller that could've been made in any era. 





SOLITARY MAN
(Dirs. Brian Koppelman & David Levien, 2009)







Once again Michael Douglas plays a crassly ambitious businessman who alienates everybody around him. No wait; this isn't WALL STREET 2: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS - that's not in theaters until September. 




Here Douglas plays Ben Kalmon - a divorced defrauded former car dealership tycoon who cheats on his girlfriend (Mary Louise-Parker), borrows money from his daughter (Jenna Fischer from The Office), and spouts out existential advice about every topic to whoever will listen to him.

Louise-Parker wants Douglas to accompany her daughter (Imogen Poots) to a college interview at his alma mater. Y





ou're right to think that is a bad idea - he's a womanizing sleaze and despite her youth, Poots is and cynical and promiscuous to match . Jesse Eisenberg (ADVENTURELAND, ZOMBIELAND) shows up as a campus guide who Douglas gives some unheeded romantic guidance to. 




Where this goes to from here was unpleasant enough to watch; I'd rather not have to describe.

It's hard to decipher what we're supposed to take away from Douglas's character. At first he's a fast talking comic figure who we're supposed to laugh at in a "that old dirty codger" way but as the pitiful dimensions of his unlikability widen each scene adds up to little more than a series of collected cringes. 





It benefits sporadically from a good cast - Susan Sarandon as Douglas's ex wife appears to delight in her character's confidence, Fisher has some strong moments standing up to her untrustworthy father, and Poots savvily strides through her cutting scenes. Eisenberg just does his patented nervous kid shtick but it's not his fault - he's not given enough here to do anything else with. 




 Danny DeVito lightly steals the film as a deli owner who knew Douglas back in his college days. DeVito dispenses the only real wisdom (and some of its only humor) the film has to offer and it's nice to see him on-screen again with Douglas - they were co-stars in ROMANCING THE STONE, THE JEWEL OF THE NILE, and, my favorite, THE WAR OF THE ROSES. Otherwise the film doesn't have enough of an emotional arc to it. It's well made with convincing dialogue but its tone is too reserved and its narrative lacks drive. 






Seeing Douglas interact with college students made me nostalgic for a his much better film that tackled some of the same themes - THE WONDER BOYS. There Douglas's Grady Tripp was a thoughtful yet jaded man truly at a crossroads, here his pathetic character is just a jerk in a large hole he dug himself and I found myself not caring if he ever gets out of it. 







More later...

23 Haziran 2010 Çarşamba

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22 Haziran 2010 Salı

Hey I Finally Saw...TRUE GRIT!






It seemed like a good time to catch up with the 1969 John Wayne western classic for a few crucial reasons.




The recent death of Dennis Hopper who has a small, yet memorable role was one, but overwhelmingly it's because the Coen Brothers next project is a remake with Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin set to be released later this year. Although the Coens reportedly are aiming for their film to be a more faithful adaptation of Charles Portis's 1968 novel than a strict remake, the original was a milestone movie that won an Oscar for Wayne's performance as Marshall Rooster Cogburn, therefore a must see.



In the late '60s the genre was undoubtedly winding down, but you wouldn't know it from the opening landscape shots of TRUE GRIT in which the wide-screen western still looks alive and kicking. Henry Hathaway had the formula down as he had directed dozens of cowboy pictures, and of course "the Duke" was a hardcore veteran, but this project had a different element to it in the form of a young tomboyish girl named Kim Darby. Darby plays the fiercely determined 14 year old Mattie Ross who recruits the ornery drunken Wayne to help her hunt down her father's murderer (Jeff Corey).





Accompanied by Glen Campbell as a Texas Ranger they ride out through dangerous Indian Territory. They encounter horse thieves, rattlesnakes, and an extremely shady Robert Duvall as Corey's partner in crime "Lucky" Ned Pepper. Wayne says of Duvall: "Short, feisty fella. He's got a messed-up lower lip. I shot him in it."






That's just one of many great line readings the Duke gives in the best performance of his that I've ever seen. Rooster Cogburn is an iconic role and very comic at the same time. In one scene he sees a rat in the corner of the cabin he resides in. Inebriated though still fairly articulate he declares:





"Mr. Rat, I have a writ here that says you are to stop eating Chen Lee's cornmeal forthwith. Now, It's a rat writ, writ for a rat, and this is lawful service of same! See? He doesn't pay any attention to me."



Then he swiftly shoots the rat. Later the trio came across a couple of outlaw buddies of the men they're pursuing - Jeremy Slate and Dennis Hopper. Hopper, as a character named Moon that wasn't in the book, took 5 days off from editing EASY RIDER to do the film and appears to have been added as a concession to the kids of the hippie era. Or maybe it's the unsettling "tweaking" manner he's acting in that makes me think that.








Darby is very much the heart of the movie bringing a feminist factor in to re-ignite a timeworn formula. Her poise and "never back down" spirit clashes then mashes with Wayne's rugged demeanor in many amusing blustery exchanges. Sadly as an actor Campbell is not up to par with Darby or "The Duke". He was perhaps the real concession to the times as he had just had a hit single - "Wichita Lineman."





It wasn't the last western that Wayne made - he even returned to the role of Cogburn in a sequel simply entitled ROOSTER COGBURN (1975) - but TRUE GRIT was perhaps the most notable of his films in his last decade. It's just a notch below the supreme quality of the movies he made with John Ford, yet it's still a towering achievement and an absolutely essential work. Rooster Cogburn deserves further recognition as one of the greatest characters in the history of motion pictures.





Can't wait to see what "The Dude" will do with it.





More later...

20 Haziran 2010 Pazar

Toy Story 3 (Sunday, June 20, 2010) (56)

I am a fan of the Toy Story movies. I liked the first one and loved the second one. For me they are fantastic buddy movies that smartly pull from film history to make wonderful, contemporary stories. There is a ton of John Wayne and Dean Martin from Rio Bravo in them (they are basically Westerns) and I love that.

Toy Story 3 fits in beautifully with tho previous two. This film is funny, sad, poignant, scary and exciting. I was surprised by how frank and adult some of the characters are and how death and loss was dealt with.

Since the last time we saw Woody and Buzz, Andy, their kid owner has grown up and stopped playing with them as much. He is now about to go off to college, but his mother makes him clean his room before he goes. Most of his toys are put in a box to be donated to the local preschool and once they get there, they think they're in toy heaven with tons of kids looking for hours of playtime all day long. There are hundreds of toys there, all happy to have this second-life as toys for new youngsters.

It turns out the preschool is run by a mad purple bear, Lotso, who is bitter because his owner abandoned him. He takes out his rage on the toys he doesn't like, forcing them to work the room with the very young kids who play rough. Lotso has a posse of enforcers, including Ken (Barbie's boyfriend), Big Baby (a big baby doll), Twitch (a big Alien insect) and Chunk (a rocky tough). They reset Buzz's memory so he becomes one of them and forgets his friends from Andy's house. It then becomes clear that the group has to escape, but to where? Andy has given them away and they have no other home.

Like the ones before, this is a very funny and fresh film with some great jokes that work for adults as well as kids. There's a whole love story between Ken and Barbie, suggesting that Ken is a clothes horse and rather vein. There are several great action/escape sequences that keep you on the edge of your seat.

One thing that was a big surprising to me was how Lotso is a very dark, angry character with almost nothing good going for him. He comes off as gregarious and bright at the beginning, opening his school to the new arrivals. But this is an act - and he is really an unfriendly, unloving character. I think this would be hard for kids to understand or deal with, especially because he comes off as a friend to begin with and then turns bad. Beyond this, his meanness seems to come from deep down inside him and he is unable to grow or change - even when it means the imminent deaths of the gang of friends. I guess he gets his just desserts in the end, but I'm not sure his punishment (which is basically a life of torture... also sorta dark, by the way) fits his crimes.

There are a few moments that seem more like a kids movie than an adult movie (like how Andy drives himself to college, which I don't buy considering his mother is so over-protective), but overall this is a sweet and fun movie, good for basically all ages.

I liked it a bit more than the first one and a bit less than the second one, but it was great overall. I did not see it in 3D, because I don't like the format very much and didn't want my feelings about that hurt my enjoyment of the film. Regardless, it worked well in a "2D" version, nonetheless. I guess there's a chance for a 4th one in the franchise... and I'm sure that one will be wonderful too.

Stars: 3 of 4

American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein (Sunday, June 20, 2010) (55)

This is a small documentary about American academic Norman Finkelstein who has made a career out of being a Jew who does not supported much of the recent Israeli policy toward Palestinians. He has been an outspoken critic of U.S. policy in the Middle East and has worked tirelessly to get the world community to see the conflict from the Palestinian point of view. As the son of Holocaust survivors, he has been an interesting voice in the debate, comparing Israeli treatment of Palestinians to his parents' treatment in the Warsaw ghetto by the Nazis.

The film briefly shows Finkelstein's roots in Brooklyn and how he made a name for himself in the early 1980s writing a piece that criticized a popular book that only took the Israeli side of the conflict. Most of the film takes place in the past few years as he went on a college campus debate tour over his latest book. In the middle of the tour, he got into a fight on the radio with Alan Dershowitz and then made it his mission to condemn Dersh and prove him to be a plagiarist. This got him into hot water with his employers, Hunter College and then DePaul University.

Finkelstein is certainly a weird guy and basically doesn't know when to shut the hell up. He is not wrong about Dersh copying footnotes from an earlier book into his recent one (I have read about this and it seems pretty clear that he plagiarized), but so what?! This is not a battle worth fighting.

At a point, Finkelstein goes even further off the rails by claiming that Hezbollah is a force for good. Certainly they are doing some money-giving work on the ground in Beirut, but it's hard to argue that they are an absolute force for good (their policy of wiping Israel off the map isn't "good", no matter how you slice it).

He seems to enjoy being a firebrand, more than being a serious public intellectual. It is interesting to see before our eyes him move from the latter to the former.

This is an interesting film, though rather wonky. You have to be interested in the Middle East and the "peace process" to even remotely enjoy or understand this. Still, it's an interesting work.

Stars: 2 of 4

Waiting for Armageddon (Sunday, June 20, 2010) (54)

Waiting for Armageddon is an interesting documentary about how right-wing American Christians support very rigid Israeli right wing efforts to get Palestinians out of Jerusalem, figuring that Jesus will only return when the city is controlled by Jews and the Temple is rebuilt. It is a bit of a cautionary tale for American Jews (or really any Jews) who support a one-dimensional approach to Israeli policy. It is about how these people are not looking to be friends with Jews, but are looking to use Jews for their own devices. Jews to them are place-holders with a false religion who represent a possible deliverance from their terrestrial lives. This cynical view is particularly sickening to me (not only the people who think it, but also the Jews who allow themselves and their people to be used in such a way).

The film is done very nicely with interesting interviews from both sides (from the Christians and from skeptical Israelis) and interesting perspective from academics and historians. It has a nice, tight look and seems well put-together overall.

The best and freshest thing (and really an amazingly lucky documentary moment) is a sequence at a gathering of Christians where a speaker talks about how "post-modernism" is the worst thing in the world, because it allows you to split the meanings of words and actions. Calling post-modernism horrible because of its fluid definitions! How amazing! How post-modern!

Still, there's nothing much very original about this film. It's not bad at all, but it's not really anything that I haven't seen or read before in the (left-wing) press. Yes, the Christian-Right generally hates Jews and only cares about Jesus' second coming... it's not all that interesting.

Stars: 2 of 4

19 Haziran 2010 Cumartesi

The Killer Inside Me (Saturday, June 19, 2010) (53)

The Killer Inside Me, directed by Michael Winterbottom and based on the novel by Jim Thompson, is the story of Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), a tightly wound small-town deputy sheriff who gets into a relationship with a local whore Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba). It seems that several men in town are also having affairs with her, including rich oilman Chester Conway (Ned Beatty). Ford also has a beautiful fiance Amy Stanton (Kate Hudson) who seems to need more love and attention than he is willing to give her. When Lou strikes out in a violent, misogynistic, cruel streak, killing several people, his life beings to collapse and his options close in on him.

Strange misogynistic violence and weird sex has never really done it for me. From a pure story-telling view, this film goes from pretty normal and quiet to pretty loud and wild in a split second with basically no warning (aside from knowing that any story that comes from Jim Thompson's brain should devolve into blood and gore). In the first half-hour, Lou is a pretty normal guy who does like kinky sex (asphyxiation, spanking, etc.), but seems like a pretty nice guy. I don't like how Winterbottom turns the story to violence so quickly.

I think this format celebrates Lou's horribleness by making it more shocking than it would be if we were better prepared for it, possibly by planting a few more seeds early on. He seems to fetishize Lou's sickness. There is no context or background given for why Lou would do the things he does - it's just that he's a bad seed or something. This isn't really very artistic even - it's just pure unassociated violence.

Casey Affleck, who I normally love, seems a bit dead behind his eyes here. I don't really see much motivation for his actions and he seems to coast along strangely quietly with moments of action. Clearly this is a choice between Winterbottom and Affleck, but it seems a bit shallow to me - a bit harder to decipher.

Perhaps the director's biggest achievement is that he gets two pretty solid performances out of both actresses, both of whom I think are terrible at their so-called craft. Both Hudson and Alba are very good as two confused women who try to do what they can for their mad lover, but can never communicate effectively with him. I don't know where either of them got this performance (neither one has been anywhere close to this level of execution in the past), but they deserve credit for jobs well done.

The overall look of the film is typically yellow and brown and mostly burnt out - as one would expect from a story taking place in West Texas. The cinematographer, and past Winterbottom collaborator Marcel Zyskind, does a nice job, but it's a bit tired. Yes - everything looks properly faded and old, but it's all a bit trite. Yes - it's in West Texas; yes, it's brown and faded. Bah!

The film feels like a limp story hanging on the skeleton of unexplainable ultra-violence and cruelty. There's no way of approaching this story and understanding it. Lou is sick and acts without boundaries. I don't think there's much of a deeper level to his actions other than just that he's nuts. The rest of the characters around him either are there as foils for his rage. There is too much detail in the story outside of him, and basically none of it is interesting at all.

Stars: 1.5 of 4

18 Haziran 2010 Cuma

As Predicted Pixar Saves The Sucky Summer Day

TOY STORY 3
(Dir. Lee Unkrich. 2010)









Like many film folks, in the days before a long awaited sequel in a beloved franchise appears I like to revisit the earlier movies - especially if I haven't seen them in a long time. It's to remind me of the flavor of said films, yet it can also feel like doing homework sometimes. Re-watching the first TOY STORY (1995) and its follow-up TOY STORY 2 (1999) though, wasn't like doing homework at all. 




The films hold up as immensely enjoyable endlessly inventive masterworks.

The TOY STORY films established Pixar Studios as the leading creators of CGI-animated features that built a beautiful track record of critically acclaimed hits including some of the best films of the last decade - FINDING NEMO, UP, WALL-E, and RATATOUILLE to name a handful. It's easy to be cynical about sequels, but Pixar is a name to be trusted, and you won't go wrong trusting them here. 





The return of Sheriff Woody (Tom Hanks), Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), and their fellow toy friends is happily up to the high standards of their canon and even more happily its one of the few cinematic saviors of this summer of suck.

It's been over a decade since we've last seen the disparate troop of talking toys and we catch up with them as their now teenage owner Andy (voiced by John Morris) is packing for college. The toys fret over their fate - will they be stored in the attic, sold in a yard sale, or thrown away? 





To their surprise, Andy picks Woody to take with him to school and puts the others in a garbage bag. Luckily he's just taking them to the attic, but in a moving mix-up they are taken to the curb by Andy's mother (voiced by Laurie Metcalf).

Woody tries to save them, but nearly gets thrown away himself. 





After freeing themselves from the garbage bag, the toy troop (including the returning voices of John Ratzenburger, Don Rickles, Joan Cusack, Estelle Harris, and Wallace Shawn) realize that their life with Andy is over and that they should collectively climb into a box set to be donated to Sunnyside Daycare. Woody wants them to return home, but his friends immediately take to the lushly lit facility and the warm friendly welcome by the leader of the left behind toys: a pink strawberry teddy bear named "Lotso" - short for Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear (wonderfully voiced by Ned Beatty). 




 While Woody tries to get back home, the toys find that things aren't what they seem at Sunnyside. I'll hold off on further major story Spoilers!, but I'll just report that there's a romantic subplot sponsored by Mattel in which Barbie (Jodie Benson) meets Ken (Michael Keaton), Buzz Lightyear gets his settings stuck in a Spanish mode, and there's a young girl (Emily Hahn) who Woody is briefly in the custody of that owns a few other new toy characters (voices of Timothy Dalton, Beatrice Miller, Javier Fernandez Pena, and Bud Luckey). 




 A superlative sequel in which all of the elements of the wealth of close scrapes, captivating chases, and absorbing attention to the exorbitant detail of the TOY STORY world are attended to excellently. It's funny, exciting, and sometimes even scary, yet it will most likely be remembered for its strong emotional pull. 




The previous films were well rooted in sentimentality about the innocence and imagination of childhood balanced by the sad acknowledgment that these joys are fleeting, and play-time has to end someday. TOY STORY 3 doesn't shy away from these themes; it enriches them further making it the most thoughtful and touching film of the series.

Pixar (and Disney) did it again. 





They made a wonderful movie that will take everyone from children to grown adults on a ride from doubling over with laughter to being reduced to tears. They also made so a 40 year old man can admit that, without shame, he can get worked up about a cast of animated plastic playthings accessing their worth. See? It felt good admitting that. Really good. 




More later...

17 Haziran 2010 Perşembe

Cropsey (Thursday, June 17, 2010) (52)

Cropsey is the name that kids on Staten Island gave to a boogie man who allegedly kidnapped kids, cut them up and dumped their bodies in the woods. We are told at the beginning of the film that this was always an urban legend there until the late-1970s when a few kids actually did start going missing and at least one of their bodies was discovered in the woods. This documentary shows the police chase to find the murder and the media and legal trials that followed for the man they caught.

Soon after the massive man-hunt began on Staten Island, loner and homeless man Andre Rand was caught. He had been an orderly on the island's child mental hospital which was notorious for its inhumane living conditions for the kids. When the hospital was shut down, he stayed in the woods near the hospital ling in tents and scavenging.

At the time of his arrest, an unfortunate picture was snapped of him, looking insane and with drool coming out of his mouth. The local newspaper ran this photo under a headline suggesting that the "drifter" was arrested for the murder. This sealed his fate in the minds of his would-be jurors. Now in the present day, he is being tried for the murder of a second girl that same summer and the filmmakers go out looking for more information on Rand's past and the crimes themselves.

At it's core, this film feels like a poor-man's Paradise Lost, the brilliant documentary by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky about two unfortunate teens who were charged and convicted with murder because they dressed weird in their rural school. Here, directors Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zeman suggest that part of Rand's problem is that everyone was looking for a killer and he fit the bill, so he was convicted. They do suggest that he was probably guilty - and certainly was weird - but there is certainly an understanding that he didn't get a totally fair trial (and there is a suggestion that the trial in the present day is also not totally fair either).

My least favorite part of the film is that Brancaccio and Zeman become characters in the story as they hunt around for information. I don't really care about their story - I care about Rand and the story of the murders. To bring the story back around to them, I think is a sloppy byproduct of a badly conceived script (the movie is not called "Cropsey, Brancaccio and Zeman" after all).

This is a good movie, but not a great movie. It's interesting and shows some interesting stuff that I didn't know about mental health in New York up through the '70s. Still, I think overall this is a bit of a good story base that never really pans out. I'm not sure what their idea was with this doc (to make a movie about Rand, about the search for hard-to-find information), but the end result is not totally satisfying and rather choppy.

Stars: 2 of 4

15 Haziran 2010 Salı

UPTOWN: The Film Babble Blog Review

The summer keeps sucking along, but there are a few indie gems out there worth seeking out. Like this one: UPTOWN (Dir. Brian Ackley, 2009) A young couple (Chris Riquinha and Meissa Hampton) sits in a New York restaurant nervously asking each other questions. They are obviously on their first date. 





As they shuffle through the usual "getting to know you" small talk, we learn that Riquinha is an aspiring film maker and thinks Hampton could be a good actress in a new project he's working on. He describes the premise: "It's about this guy who hasn't had a lot of luck with relationships. He's had some relationships and they never work out, he never seems to say the right things, do the right things, and he's just very awkward and that kind of thing. 





So you get a little bit of that first and then he meets this girl...and that would be you...it follows the 2 of them, you know their relationship, of course it doesn't work out 'cause that's what the movie is - it doesn't work out." Is that this movie? Sure looks like it. After dinner Hampton reveals that she is married. Riquinha is a little taken aback, but they continue their date - walking and talking though the noisy streets of the city. 




It's fairly certain that at the end of their evening our male lead is smitten. Can't quite put a finger on the female lead yet though. She calls him to meet again. She tells him that her husband read the emails between them and got upset. She says they're going to try and work on their marriage. They part. Then she calls Riquinha wanting to meet again.





Not much else happens in this extremely low budget film which was shot on digital video in 9 days. It ambles with these characters so realistically that it often feels like we're voyeurs secretly peeping in on real people. Riquinha and Hampton have an uneasy yet powerfully palpable chemistry together; both should have a great acting futures. 




In the hands of lesser talents such mundane yet tension fueled dialogue would come off stiff and un-involving, but they give it a touching authenticity. UPTOWN is grainy, shaky, and often the dialogue is obscured by street noise - many of the minuses that make up the "mumblecore" movement - but it has a quietly pleasing quality regardless. 





It's the rare film where people actually seem like they are thinking of what they are going to say next instead of just blurting out scripted text. It's a treatise on awkward restrained passion and a very thoughtful work that shows a lot of promise for a first time director. UPTOWN has been making the festival circuit so look out for it if it comes to your area. It also releases on DVD on July 11th. 




More later...

13 Haziran 2010 Pazar

The Father of My Children (Saturday, June 12, 2010) (51)

The fact that this film is called The Father of My Children is a bit mysterious to me. Such a title would suggest the film is about a woman looking at her husband from her point of view. What this film is, really, is two separate films awkwardly joined together, with only one half sorta from the perspective of the woman. The misleading title is only part of this film's problems.

Gregoire is a Parisian independent film producer who is working on several projects at once. His business is running on fumes as he is having trouble finding money to make all the projects he wants to make. A few of the films that have already started are running well over budget and he has to make it all work and keep his directors and investors happy. He has a close-knit family, a loving wife and clever teenage daughter, along with a few younger kids as well. When the money gets too difficult, he suddenly commits suicide, leaving his wife to settle his debts, finish as many projects as possible and close up his company.

The script here is quite a mess, I think. There are basically two halves of the story, the part before Gregoire kills himself and the part after. There is basically no connection between one and the other aside from the fact that they both have something to do with movies and share several characters. The first part of the story is actually pretty smooth and interesting, seeing how he gets movies made. I guess the intrigue in the second half is that the wife realizes her husband kept bad accounts and was more of a loser than she thought (despite a very successful run of strong movies he made). It isn't really all that interesting, the way it's presented. That Gregoire is the father of his wife's children is utterly irrelevant to the second part (maybe I'm being too literal).

I guess the acting is good throughout, especially Gregoire's daughter, played by Alice de Lencquesaing, who is a clever young woman who knows what she wants and knows how to get it. Her role is a bit dumb, I think, and more central in the narrative of the second-half than is necessary. Still, it's nice to see a talented new young star (she was also in the French family drama Summer Hours last year, playing a 13-year-old girl who smokes... hey - it's France!).

Writer/director Mia Hansen-Love took this story from the true events of a Parisian producer who recently committed suicide and left many questions about why he did it. I think she lost the thread, though, or at least didn't come about it in the right way. I think a more even plot, where the characters and story were more balanced between acts would have done a lot to help this film. Instead we get two movies that don't really have anything to do with one another and don't really tell a full story by themselves.

Stars: 1.5 of 4

Winter's Bone (Saturday, June 12, 2010) (50)

There is a recent trend in independent American cinema, a neo-Southern Gothic movement that seems to have come about rather organically over the past few years. Starting with the films of David Gordon Green (especially George Washington and Undertow) and then the brilliant films Ballast, by Lance Hammer, and Shotgun Stories, by Jeff Nichols and also the (TV and film) comedies of Jody Hill, these filmmakers have brought us into our backyard and showed us how ugly and burned out the grass really is on the other side of the fence. Debra Granik's brilliant Winter's Bone continues in this proud tradition of small movies with a big impact showing stuff that we might not know about and probably would prefer to keep that way.

The story is rather simple. Ree Dolly (played brilliantly by Jennifer Lawrence), the eldest child of the Dolly clan is told one day that her father, who had been locked up for cooking meth, signed their house over for the bail bond and is now missing. Unless he shows up at court soon, the house will be taken from them. The Dollys are dirt poor and have to beg for scraps of meat from their slightly-less-poor neighbors. Ree has to go out into the wilderness of Southern Missouri to track down her father, running into his crooked associates along the way.

For me, part of the beauty of the story is the simplicity of the story and how the film is much more about the atmosphere inside the settings that than the plot itself. It takes place in winter, and everything is cold, worn out and dead. There is a beautiful blue-gray tone to everything and basically no bright colors throughout. Granik (who adapted the screenplay from a book by Daniel Woodrell) and cinematographer Michael McDonough do a beautiful job making this place of icy hibernation seem familiar and intimate.

The beautiful look of the film helps to convey a heavy sadness and desperateness. Though Ree is a determined young woman, she has a lot of stuff weighing her down (not only that she is the main caretaker of her younger siblings, but they they are so poor they would not survive being homeless... and her good-for-nothing father's associates seem to want to kill her more than help her). Still, she moves forward, knowing that if she stops to consider her next move or feel sorry for herself she might freeze in place.

Lawrence's performance is breathtaking. She doesn't speak much, but her strength and smarts come through in every shot. She knows that her father is a bad man and she knows there's a good chance he is dead, but she goes out looking for him as seriously and dead-set on her target as John Wayne in the Searchers. She won't be pushed around and won't be told "no".

The supporting cast is also fabulous. John Hawkes (who previously played Sol Star from Deadwood) is wonderful as Ree's loser, criminal uncle who might be the only adult who sorta gives a crap about Ree and her siblings, but doesn't really give that much of a crap. Garret Dillahunt (who was Wolcott in Deadwood) is great as the sheriff who doesn't want to see any harm done to the Dolly kids, but doesn't have much power to stop anything. Dale Dickey plays the wife of one of the big criminals in the area who is one of the nastiest, stone-cold women I've ever seen on screen. Her performance is unflinching and brilliant.

It's interesting that two of the actors come from Deadwood, because that show (at its best in the first two seasons, at least) is very similar to this film. There is a griminess and matter-of-fact darkness that pervades both. The world is a cold, terrible place where horrible people do unthinkable things. It's a ballet of sin and depravity that is beautiful and fantastic.

Stars: 4 of 4

YENİLMEZ FİLMİ 3 İZLE İNDİR

Undisputed 3 (Altyazılı)


videoweed izlemek için tıklayın

11 Haziran 2010 Cuma

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Friday, June 11, 2010) (49)

I grew up knowing Joan Rivers as a comedian, but knowing her best as a woman with bad plastic surgery who sold crappy jewelry on QVC and did a shrill red carpet show on cable with her daughter. This documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, tries to show that she is much more than just those things. She is a much more complicated person who lives the life of a queen, is desperately paranoid of not being able to work tomorrow and has lost most of her friends over the years. This is not entirely a bio-doc, per se, but rather an examination of the comedian: who she is today and why.

Joan is a workaholic who takes basically any job that is offered to her, from the Donald Trump Celebrity Apprentice show (which she won), to stand-up gigs in remote Wisconsin casinos (in the winter!). She lives in a gigantic apartment in Manhattan with 20-some-foot ceilings, gilded pillars and a staff of housekeepers. She has an agent, a manager and an assistant, not to mention her daughter Melissa who is frequently around. Her life seems like somewhat of a Mobius strip, where her fancy lifestyle forces her to work all the time and her working all the time gives her money to afford the fabulous lifestyle.

We see her history and how she got her start as a favorite of Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. When she was offered her own show on Fox that would compete directly with him, she left him (having been a frequent fill-in host for several years) and he dropped her forever. To make matters more tragic, her show never happened and she was left with no show, a lost friend and an unwritten ban from NBC late night TV. Clearly in retrospect this was a bad decision, however it is sad that Johnny dropped her the way he did - and did so in such a permanent way.

The sadness pervades her life and career, from her husband's suicide to the loss of a dear friend who serves as her manager and then vanishes during the filming (it's unclear what happens to him at all). She has outlived many of her contemporaries and her material is basically unknown to the younger generation of comedians. In one uncomfortable scene, she is driving to her own Comedy Central Roast and talking to her assistant about how all the jokes will be about the plastic surgery. Then there is a montage of bits by comedian after comedian making fun of her face and her surgeries. These jokes are cheap and clearly don't really spend the time to get to know her hilarious routine, which is about sex, gender roles and families (to name a few topics).

Overall this is a good and very funny movie and is interesting in its treatment of Rivers. You have to imagine she had some say in what went into it, but it still feels frank and unflinching (if slightly on her side). She is a generally sad person, I think, who keeps herself busy as way to deal with her shit. She has an interesting life - and is funny as hell.

Stars: 3 of 4

Blu Ray Review: NOT THE MESSIAH (HE'S A VERY NAUGHTY BOY)

NOT THE MESSIAH (HE'S A VERY NAUGHTY BOY) (Dir. Aubrey Powell, 2010) 





Way before I was a hardcore movie fanatic I was a hardcore Monty Python fanatic - I'm talking when I was a kid in the early '80s here. 




I went to late shows of their movies, I had all their records and books, I saved up money to buy a VCR solely to record episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus - I had it bad. I still love 'em and go to see revival screenings of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL and LIFE OF BRIAN whenever they're in my area despite owning the DVDs, so, of course, whenever there's new product such as last year's excellent documentary mini-series "Monty Python: Almost The Truth - The Lawyer's Cut" I'm all over it. 





However there is a huge threat to all my nostalgic affection: Eric Idle. The former Python has spent the last decade, in the words of another former Python Terry Jones, "regurgitating Python." Idle has toured playing the songs in a show entitled "Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python", mounted a wildly successful Broadway production based on HOLY GRAIL - "Spamalot", and now has turned to LIFE OF BRIAN for the new musical oratorio NOT THE MESSIAH (HE'S A VERY NAUGHTY BOY)




Because I'm a long time fan I just had to see it the second it dropped on Blu ray.

With the help of long-time collaborator/conductor John Du Prez, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and a bunch of trained operatic singers, Idle reduces the savage satire of the classic film into only slightly racy almost family friendly fodder. Appropriating Handel's "Messiah" in misguided attempts to flesh out character threads that were best left as comic asides, we get songs about the Roman Centurion that raped Brian's mother and Idle's beloved bit about an anachronistic wish for a sex change, is now recast as a lame unfunny ballad.

NOT THE MESSIAH basically is "Spamalot 2" though there are a few differences. 




It's not an in costume performance - though a few performers are outfitted like their characters - it's a filmed live performance for a radio broadcast. There's also that giant orchestra and chorus involved too. But infinitely more important, because it was the 40th anniversary of the group (October of last year) Python members Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, and Terry Jones were on hand to reprise their roles or just appear for the sake of good will (like Gilliam appears to). 




The only other surviving Python, John Cleese, was not present presumably because he was off rolling his eyes somewhere.

It doesn't improve matters that the singers
(William Ferguson and Shannon Mercer) recruited to play the pivotal parts of Brian and Judith, , wonderfully previously portrayed by the late great Python leading man Graham Chapman and Sue Jones-Davies (now Mayor of Aberystwyth, Wales), look and sound more like they should be in a Prince Charles and Lady Diana musical. I was also surprised that Brian's mother Mandy is played by a woman! One of the most hilarious factors of LIFE OF BRIAN was Terry Jones amped-up Pepperpot performance as the protagonist's disapproving ball-busting Mama. Here renowned soprano Rosalind Plowright takes the part, and more than a little of the narrative's point-of-view, and though she's a fine vocalist it's a slap in the face of the brilliant bite of BRIAN. Especially since Jones was there and could have done it. Missed opportunity city.






The music is immaculate in its presentation, but the new songs are repetitive, obvious, and supremely forgettable. The only highlights are the Python cameos - it's funny to see Palin in full Margaret Thatcher-ish drag introduce the show. Palin by contrast is definitely the only Python who has maintained his figure. 




It's also nice to see Palin in his old Pontius Pilate garb proving he can still pull off the lisp. Jones and Gilliam are just there for glorified cameos neither of which really registers and Idle's hammy line readings seriously grated on me, though the packed Royal Albert Hall audience ate it all up, cheering at every familiar phrase. 




The crowd did appear to love it, and maybe I would've too had I been there, but watching it at home, even on a spiffy new Blu ray, was a sad trying experience. Looks like Idle will be singing "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" (which was also in "Spamalot") and "The Lumberjack Song" (here acting as the encore) for the rest of his life. I once considered Idle the greediest Python, now I think of him as the Python who can't move on. 




In a few years from now when he unveils his inevitable THE MEANING OF LIFE musical I hope that I've moved on enough to skip it. I'd like to think by then that I would have had enough of these warmed over retreads, but then I am a glutton for punishment... 




More later...