30 Mart 2012 Cuma

The Hunger Games (Friday, March 30, 2012) (33)

Reviewing Gary Ross' The Hunger Games is a rather unenviable task. It's an incompetent mess of movie, where clarity of story is suffocated by lavish scenery and forced melodramatic pathos. Add to this the book by Suzanne Collins, on which the film is based, is a massive hit (mostly with girls and their moms) and those readers seem to love the movie (one of the biggest box office opening weekends in history). Nothing I can say here will mean anything to the people who deeply connect to the book and the movie, and it's just gonna come off as me "not getting it" or "being too serious". Whatever. The Hunger Games is a terrible movie and one of the best examples of how a bad script and a hack director can ruin an otherwise decent story.

The banal story in a nutshell finds the world in some sort of dystopian future (I think -- though it could be some alternate universe time -- it's not really clear) where after a civil war, the country is divided into districts with a central capitol city, called Capitol City (because iron-fisted dictators know no poetry). For reasons that are unclear (outside of the intro title cards) each year the districts have to give up two teenagers to fight to the death in a reality TV show competition called "The Hunger Games". After some period of time, and with no rules explicitly spelled out, there will be a single winner left standing who will get rich for their success.

Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) is an older sister and hard working hero from District 12, which is in coal country (somewhere in the Appalachians, it seems) and is squalid and poor. She volunteers for the competition, when her sister's name is drawn out of a hat in the lottery. She's whisked away to Capitol City where she's trained by some former champions and taught a bit about how the games work. Apparently rich viewers can sponsor competitors and give them gifts in the middle of the game; there is gambling involved at some level as well, though how the players would benefit from beating the odds is totally unclear.

Midway through the film, the actual games themselves begin, pitting Katniss against 23 mostly anonymous competitors. She has to survive and outwit her rivals -- and remain a symbol of moral purity along the way.

Perhaps it's unfair of me to criticize Ross' direction, when many of the problems lie in the script (co-adapted by Collins, Ross and Billy Ray -- who has written some great stuff up to this point), which leaves out so many details, the only way to understand the movie is to cram with Wikipedia (or a female friend who has read to books) beforehand. There is so much suggested and not shown that the film really becomes a mere skeleton of what much be a richer tale. What we see on screen is an elliptical shorthand based on what one can only imagine as a rich trilogy of books. Ross doesn't really develop any characters -- not even Katniss -- but relies on one's love or hatred of them from the novels.

What is hinted at, but never really shown, is that Katniss is a perfect older sis and mother-figure constantly sacrificing herself for the greater good of her family. All we see is her performing a single selfless act (taking the place of her illfated sis) and scowling for the next 136 minutes. Lawrence's Katniss is almost totally unlovable and disconnected from any sense of naturalism. Why should I root for the nasty girl who seems to have a bad attitude and a bitter personality?

There's also a strange suggestion of a phantom love triangle that is presented, though not really shown either (I'm guessing it will play a bigger role in the remaining two movies), between Katniss, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who is the other kid from District 12 to be selected for the Games, and Gale (Liam Hemsworth), some boy who Katniss has a thing with back home... though that relationship is particularly abstract. Imagine Ingrid Berman (in Casablanca) trying to figure out if she wants to be with Bogey or Paul Henreid -- but then take Bogey off the screen, so it's only some weird, distant Rick who we really never know or see much of. It all falls apart.

The art of directing is much more than simply getting actors to speak their lines in a particular way (and in the case of this movie, that way is a bad, lifeless, emotionless way), but really comes in every camera angle and every cut. Taken for granted too frequently are the million decisions that go into every shot. This is not a film directed by Suzanne Collins (though she probably gave some help as to her vision) -- this is a film brought from the flat page to the visual screen by Gary Ross.

What we get is a pastiche of three styles of design, mostly art-deco (which is really 1920s futurism), with some '60s futurism (reminiscent of Truffaut's Farenheit 451) and then some '90s futurism (reminiscent of Besson's The Fifth Element). It's a lot of hodge-podge that doesn't seem to have any thematic correlations. It would be interesting if Ross could connect, say, the provinces being stuck in the '60s, while the capitol was in the '90s, but the style seems to change from moment to moment within any given location.

But then, when he gets a handful of opportunities to make a strong visual punctuation, Ross blows his chances. In the lead-in to the start of the Games, we see the district teams being interviewed by the emcee (played by Stanley Tucci with a lot of colorful hair, who is clearly a futuristic Ryan Seacrest), and Katniss blandly says that she can make her dress look like it's on fire (I guess she's known in the book as "the girl on fire," or something). So we see a close up of JenLaw's face, then a close up of the hem of her gown, then some fire on the hem, then she spins in a circle - but we can't really see much of anything because we're locked in a close up.

Ross is all too interested in close ups and, during the Games, handheld shots, making the movie almost impossible to understand. Everything bounces and shakes, faces are in the frame and then out, in focus and then out. It all feels very much like a bad home movie, more than a gigantic Hollywood blockbuster. Boxing in movies works in close up because there are only two men, they're standing and the topography of the ring is simple; wrestling on the ground in the woods is impossible to figure out in close up.

Back to the narrative, this is essentially a fun story, if mostly recycled. This is basically an update of Stephen King's (well, Richard Bachman's) "The Running Man" -- but girl-centric. But just because the girl is the lead, does not make it a feminist slanted story either (and no, I don't see Collins or Ross as suggesting a genre-twisting high camp feminist dialectic here). Katniss falls into the same dumb male-centric traps and tropes of heroines for generations. She's actively forced into a mother role (both in the glimpse of life before the Games and during the games), which she passively accepts, she's a femme fatale (at least she only agrees to not kill Peeta after castrating him metaphyically), she's unpredictable and sometimes irrational (in the context of her universe).

In this political area, the one thing that I was surprised by is the stark rightwing appeal of the story, the near-Randian, Objectivist qualities of it. You have a singular figure (she's so singular you really only get to know one or two other competitors to a much lesser degree, while the others are just bodies without subjectivity), who is put into a game where she can't rely on help from others, but has to do everything herself, rewriting her own metrics of self-interest as she goes along. Sounds like Howard Roark to me. This is the High Noon version of a survival story (a man alone), rather than the Rio Bravo version (man as part of a community). This is a conservative's wet dream, down to the embarrassment Katniss heaps on the central totalitarian government.

Again, not looking critically at the film as a document, but as mindless entertainment, this is a fun experience. The good guy (girl) wins and the bad guys lose. Yay! But as a film that has a specific point of view or exists as an artistic expression or presentation, it's ham-handed and laughable. Going into the film as a total rube, I can say I got almost nothing from it, aside from 'good triumphs over evil.' I don't think the burden of exploration and illumination should lay with me, but that it rests with the director and screenwriters. Here those people did a sub-mediocre job of basic storytelling and cinematic presentation.

Stars: .5 of 4

29 Mart 2012 Perşembe

MIRROR MIRROR: Painful Pap Through And Through

MIRROR MIRROR (Dir. Tarsem Singh, 2012)








































After a gorgeous animated opening, this new fangled take on Snow White goes downhill faster than a wheelbarrow full of bricks.



I was won over by director Singh’s 2006 fantasy film THE FALL, but he lost me with the grueling action epic IMMORTALS (2011). Now Singh takes aim at the fairy tale rom com genre, and misfires miserably.



The first and biggest mistake was the huge commercial concession of casting Julia Roberts in the role of the evil Queen. Roberts is unbearably smug and she never truly embodies the part; she never even comes close to nibbling on the scenery.



Mellissa Wallack and Jason Keller’s sitcom-ish screenplay doesn’t help Roberts out either. Every one of her one-liners falls flat – take for instance her lame wise-crack that Snow White’s parents named her that “probably because that was the most pretentious name they could think of.” And that’s one of the better lines.



The twist on the premise is that the classic story is told from the Queen’s point of view, but they really don’t follow through with that as much of the movie concentrates on Snow White (Lily Collins) befriending 7 dwarves (lots of little people humor here, none of which will make anyone forget “Time Bandits”), and falling in love with a visiting Prince (Arnie Hammer)



There’s still a fair amount of Singh’s visual mastery, including swooping shots of the cliff-side castle and the striking landscape surrounding it, but the screen is mostly filled with synthetic looking sets as background to the hammy cringe-inducing acting of the cast.



Nathan Lane and Michael Lerner play the Queen’s sniveling stooges and, yep, they’re just as clunky as everything else here - though Lane has a few moments that almost amuse.



The first of 2 Snow White movies coming out this year (the darker SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN comes out in June), the slick unfunny MIRROR MIRROR is a painful pap through and through. A scene involving Roberts’ beauty regimen that involves bird feces being applied to her face is probably the most painful part, but a scenario in which a spell is put on Hammer which makes him act like a dog is up there.



I was so happy when it was over, especially as the end credits contains a tacky dance number set to a re-working of a Nina Hart song (“Love”) featuring a vocoded vocal by Snow White star Lily Collins (she’s Phil Collins daughter, you see).



At least the movie was consistent in one respect - it kept me cringing right up until the very end.



More later...


26 Mart 2012 Pazartesi

Turn Me On, Dammit! (Monday, March 26, 2012) (32)

It seems like most teen-angst-high-school-sucks movies come in two tones: one is a rather silly comedic one where adults look back on their time as teens and amplify silly traits of kids and adults; the other way is a bit darker and presents the story from the kids' point of view, resulting in kids talking, feeling and thinking like grown-ups. Jannicke Systad Jacobsen's Turn Me On, Dammit! is different from both of these styles as it seems to present the story from a teen girl's point of view, but in a frank, non-condescending way. Lead characater, Alma (Helene Bergsholm), is not biterly sarcastic like a Juno or a Mean Girl (because no girls talk or think like 30-year-old screenwriters), but is filled with self-doubt, fear and lots and lots of libido.

Set in a a tiny village in rural Norway, the story deals with a small event in Alma's life that turns into a major high school drama, as frequently happens with 15-year-olds. Alma is always incredibly horny and when she's not masturbating in her bedroom at night (loudly) she calls phone sex hot lines and masturbates on the kitchen floor (while the dog watches). One day at a party her crush, Artur (Matias Myren) pulls out his dick out of his pants in front of her and rubs it on her skirt. Not knowing how to react, she goes to the bathroom and masturbates again (of course!).

When she gets out she tells her two best friends, Sara and Ingrid (Malin Bjorhovde and Beate Stofring). Ingrid, a classic mean girl, is jealous of Alma because she's also in love with Artur (it's a really small village, so he's one of only a handful of boys) so she tells everyone that Alma said this and is lying. Immediately Alma becomes a social pariah and is desperate to regain her friends and her mid-level status... but kids are shits and irrationally mean.

There's a wonderful joy to the film that one rarely sees in movies (almost never in American fare). Alma is clearly awesome and her advanced sexuality feels natural (and deeply erotic). The film opens with a clever montage showing static shots of the village's highlights with voice-over by Alma listing what we see: mail boxes, a bus stop, a mountain, stupid sheep. This bitterness doesn't take over the story, like it does in Juno, but just gives a realistic frame for the story. Alma herself is upbeat and hopeful. Yes she's sarcastic and has an active fantasy life (sometimes shown in action, sometimes wonderfully presented in black and white stills), but she's totally normal and not smarter or more beautiful than anyone else there.

In this debut narrative feature, Jacobsen beautifully shows the world from Alma's point of view. Her emotions are frequently underlined by soundtrack cues -- it wouldn't be a melancholy though oddly optimistic Norwegian moment without a Kings of Convenience song or two. At other times we see Alma's fantasy life jump into her story momentarily confusing us (and her) as to what is real and what is a dream. It's totally fun, interesting and compassionate to Alma, who is a totally awesome but normal teenage girl with a very active imagination.

There's something so refreshing about seeing naturalism on screen that's happy and unembellished. This is a movie that does exactly that. Life goes from normal to chaos to normal, much like any one of a hundred days in a teen's life, or in anyone's life, really. Despite the fact that this setback hurts Alma deeply for a period of time, even she can see that it's a small thing in the long run.

Stars: 3 of 4

Turn Me On, Dammit! opens in New York City on March 30 and in Los Angeles on April13.

22 Mart 2012 Perşembe

Scamming On THIN ICE


Now playing in Raleigh at the Colony Theater:



THIN ICE
(Dir. Jill Sprecher, 2011) 



 

This film starts out in an insurance salesman convention world much like that of CEDAR RAPIDS, then travels through the icy murderous terrain of FARGO, winding up in an elaborate con-job scenario reminiscent of MATCHSTICK MEN.



A money-grubbing Wisconsin insurance agent (Greg Kinnear), on the outs from his wife (Lea Thompson), plots to steal a extremely valuable vintage violin from an old senile client (Kinnear’s LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE co-star Alan Arkin).



As you probably guessed, the scheme doesn’t go smoothly, especially since a burglar-alarm technician/ex-con (Billy Crudup) gets involved, and somebody gets killed.



Crudup takes a Polaroid of Kinnear with the body so he can blackmail him into disposing of it through a fishing hole in a frozen lake. Then it turns out the violin is worth more than the $30,000 Kinnear initially thought - it’s appraised by an antique musical instrument dealer (a perfectly cast Bob Balaban) at 1.2 million. This can only make these greedy unlikable people greedier and more unlikable.



Kinnear has got the desperate slime-ball shtick down, and Crudup fills out the ticks of his, also morally challenged, character nicely, but the all too familiar thriller mechanics keep the film from really taking hold.



It also doesn’t help that composer Jeff Danna cribs from Carter Burwell’s FARGO soundtrack; the comparisons to that Coen Brothers classic can only call out the faults of THIN ICE.



The film was originally titled “The Convincer,” but it was re-cut and re-titled to director and co-writer Sprecher’s chagrin. I’d love to see the original version, because there’s a considerable amount of promise in this material. 




I seriously suspect that the short choppy scenes that make up much of the movie are the result of studio interference and that Sprecher’s cut handled the narrative much better, and possibly achieved more of a connection to the characters. Of course, that’s just speculation, or wishful thinking.




As it stands now, THIN ICE goes by briskly but with little impact. It’s a competent scam movie, but it’ll only con you into thinking you’re having a good time.



In the moment you may feel entertained, but afterwards you’re left with only memories of other movies.



More later...


Free Men (Thursday, March 22, 2012) (31)

Free Men, co-written by Ismael Ferroukhi and Alain-Michel Blanc and directed by Ferroukhi, deals with a hidden-in-recent-history moment of World War II-era Paris when North African Muslims helped and fought along with the Resistance. Most interestingly, the story is presented in a very human and naturalistic style -- similar to preWWII-era French cinema (think something like Renoir's The Crime of M. Lange or Carné's Port of Shadows).

As the film opens, Paris has already fallen to the Nazis and we see the familiar tapestry of policemen, with SS and Vichy officers elbowing to get power. In a mosque in Paris, the imam, Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit (Michel Lonsdale), has a mini empire where he leads his faithful, but also protects several Jews, many of whom also come from Algeria and Morocco. Into this garden comes Younes (the fabulous Tahar Rahim), a petty criminal and black marketeer who is looking to get away from the heat of police after a few sloppy jobs. He falls in love with the people in this corner of Paris, particularly a singer of Arabic ballads (who happens to be Jewish) and a woman, Leila (Lubna Azabal), who happens to be a communist agitator.

This is not a fancy movie with elaborate formal qualities or complicated plot twists. It is a nice and straightforward film about a moment in time, where the history of Nazis and Vichy bureaucrats, Germans and French, Muslims and Jews, Arabs and Whites, French and North Africans came into direct contact. It has the loving, humanist tenor of a Renoir work, deeply believing in the goodness of people to fix bad situations through working together. This is a clever decision. It's not a flashy action flick, which it could have been, but is a more gentle, elegant story.

Rahim, who formally lead A Prophet, Audiard's masterpiece from 2010, is fantastic here again. He's confident without being arrogant, young but not immature. He's such a joy to see on screen, brightening up any shot with his movie-star magnetism. Lonsdale is, of course, great -- just as he's been for the past 40-some years. Azabel, who has a few more pictures coming up soon, is intelligent and beautiful -- an interesting Arab answer to Betty Bacall or Ingrid Bergman (though she's more like Bacall in To Have and Have Not here than Bergman in Casablanca).

I'm surprised we're not taught more about the role of North Africans in the Resistance movement in history class. This film is illuminating, but also warm and well made.

Stars: 3 of 4

21 Mart 2012 Çarşamba

JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing in Raleigh at the Colony Theater:



JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME (Dirs. Jay Duplass & Mark Duplass, 2011) 





This is a day in the life of 2 brothers: one’s a slacker, the other a jerk. Jason Segel, in the title role, is the slacker - a jobless 30-year-old pot-smoking lug whose life philosophy is based on the movie SIGNS. That’s right, M. Night Shyamalan’s SIGNS.



The jerk is a goateed Ed Helms as the older brother, a paint-store salesman whose marriage to Judy Greer (last seen in “The Descendants”) may be in trouble.



Susan Sarandon plays their widowed mother who gets Segel’s day going when she calls home from her cubicle in an unspecified office to ask him to get some wood glue.



Actually it’s a phone call Segel got earlier that really sets the day in motion - a wrong number asking for somebody named Kevin. “What if there is no wrong numbers?” Segel speculates, “What if it’s always the right number?”



So Segel leaves his Baton Rouge, Louisiana (the filmmakers' home town) basement dwelling to go get wood glue, but he gets caught up in a seemingly random series of events, most of which are triggered by the name Kevin coincidentally popping up at odd times. “There are no coincidences” I’m sure Segel’s Jeff would say.



While at a business meeting (or so he says) at Hooters, Helms happens to see Segel walking by. Sarandon had phoned Helms earlier asking him to help get his brother moving so, of course, Segel sees this as another sign. Their destinies take a turn when the brothers happen upon seeing Helm’s wife Greer out with another man (Steve Zissus).



They follow and spy on Greer and Zissus (Helms is either too scared or stupid to confront them), ending up at a hotel (after Segel gets diverted by another Kevin sign). This is where the film most successfully balances humor with heartfelt drama. We can see why Greer would cheat on the thickheaded Helms, and we feel Segel’s compassion for his brother’s predicament, as airheaded as it is.



The characters are better drawn and play off each other more believably than in the Duplass brother’s previous films (THE PUFFY CHAIR, BAGHEAD, CYRUS), and the film certainly feels sincere without any cynical snarkiness. Just like Jeff.



I was less annoyed by the brothers
shaki-cam framing too.



A subplot involving Sarandon and co-worker Rae Dawn Chong trying to figure out who a secret admirer at work is gets a bit cutesy, but it doesn’t detract from the overall charm and likability of this simple story.



Segel’s Jeff loves the film SIGNS because “everything comes together in one perfect moment.”



The Duplass brothers haven’t pulled off perfection here, but this sure is a terrifically unpretentious attempt.



And it’s way better than SIGNS.






More later...

18 Mart 2012 Pazar

Gerhard Richter - Painting (Sunday, March 18, 2012) (30)

It's possible that Gerhard Richter's color-field abstract painting are the best example of the physical work that goes into the creation of art, the formalism of a canvas. In her new documentary, Gerhard Richter - Painting, Corinna Belz, shoots the German post-modernist in his studios and in museums and galleries where he fights with the paint and the canvases to create his work.

As a process documentary, this is absolutely amazing. We see how Richter takes a blank white canvas and adds big swaths of color, seemingly at random, then takes Plexiglas trowels of different lengths to smudge the paint. He then covers over one layer with another, then scrapes again to reveal the hidden and random color fields beneath. Finally he applies paint directly to the edges of these massive knives and goes over the surfaces another time, removing and adding color at the same time.

It is never clear to us when he is done with a work or at what state he is in. At one point an assistant jokes that it's better to not comment on anything because he'll take a positive remark as a sign that the picture is bad and will start over from the begging, thus wasting everyone's time.

We get small glimpses of his mindset and his approach to his pictures, but he remains particularly sphinx-like about what he does and how he knows when pictures are done (I guess he has to keep some secrets).

There is a wonderful small moment as he looks at old family snapshots and comments that he has no memory of the scenes or the people in them (his parents) and can't actually account for the surrounding areas, beyond the borders of the image. It's such a wonderful overintelectualized and particularly East German view of the world. A fetishization of the banal and bleak. Still, it offers an interesting prism through which to see his work. He makes pictures that we can see, concentrating on composition and relationships of shapes and color. Any other content for him is noise and irrelevant.

The best moments in the film come when the canvases he works on fill up the entire screen and we see him moving across it scraping with his Plexi-ledge. Frustratingly, Belz includes moments of his representational pictures that seem to confuse the story and become noise for us. Still, this is an excellent example of some of the best moments in the recent trend in artistic process docs (there have been dozens, including recent ones on Louise Bourgeois and Richard Serra).

Stars: 3 of 4

17 Mart 2012 Cumartesi

Natural Selection (Saturday, March 17, 2012) (29)

There is a single brilliant shot in Robbie Pickering's Natural Selection and it comes in the first minute of the film. We see the grass collection bag for industrial lawn mower slowly open and a man emerge gradually, fall on the ground and then raise up to his feet. There is some suggestion that this is some sort of birth, or a rebirth, but that's the end of the symbolic or thematic interest in the movie. Sadly, this one shot is the last interesting element of the film, and it devolves into stupid and recycled, unbelievable garbage after.

Writing a punchy short movie is a much harder skill than one might think, and Pickering does a terrible job with his script. It's packed with tons of excess shit that leads nowhere and comes off mostly as cloyingly cutesy or strangely judgmental (that is, LA people judging the middle part of the country).

Linda (Rachel Harris) is a middle-aged woman married to a bible thumping middle aged man. She is unable to have a baby, so they decide that, following the story of Onan in the Book of Genesis, they won't have sex -- because sex not for the purpose of reproduction is sinful. Regardless of this, Linda wakes up and tried to have sex with her husband... even though the answer has been 'no' for twenty-some years no. Dumb.

But then he has a sudden heart attack in the office of his sperm bank (the definition of "spilling his seed") and Linda has to deal with the reality of their marriage being based on lies of celibacy and his seemingly imminent death after his emergency.

To help her get in contact with her feelings, she searches out one of the children he fathered through the bank. She tracks him down in a terrible drug-addled state and convinces him to go back to visit his father in the hospital by his deathbed. He's all too willing to go along as he's trying to get out of town before he's arrested for escaping jail (see: the man escaping jail by hiding inside a lawnmower bag in the first scene).

This story is the definition of "convoluted". The plot weaves around and back on itself more times that we can count and every decision each character makes has no basis in natural life, but is forced by a clumsy writer (deus-ex-lawnmower-bag).

Harris is pretty good in the role, but I can't help but feel that she's cynically laughing at her character rather than playing her with any sort of respect. (She might say she's respectful of the character, but she seems to overdo it frequently enough that it comes off as a bit mean.) When the story goes from exaggerated to ridiculous (in the last 20 minutes), she all but vanishes, as the silliness of the narrative distracts from any sympathetic moments she might act.

This movie represents to me all that is wrong with the non-studio Hollywood. It's absolutely respectable that this movie was made for almost no money and was written and directed by a newcomer with only one semi-star attached to it. But it's ridiculous that it was even made in the first place. It's an absurd story that has a rather condescending tone (I think Pickering is from the South where the story is set) that shows foolish religious people to be foolish because of their religion. Hollywood liberals indeed. This is a dull and stupid movie that should be mocked rather than appreciated.

Stars: .5 of 4

16 Mart 2012 Cuma

Jeff, Who Lives at Home (Friday, March 16, 2012) (28)

I have a very strange relationship with the films of the Jay and Mark Duplass. I find their movies really interesting and impressively made, especially considering their low budgets, but I find myself always a bit disappointed with the final products.

Their films are almost entirely made from their own original scripts and I think that is where the problems are. They write very weird scripts with strange forced moments and uncomfortable changes from slow to face pacing. They also have no idea how to end their movies, frequently going with an idea that doesn't totally work.

Their latest film, Jeff, Who Lives at Home is another example of a movie that is interesting because it almost works, but ultimately falls apart when the pieces don't connected well.

The eponymous Jeff (Jason Segal) lives at home with his mother Sharon (Susan Sarandon) in Baton Rouge. One day he gets a wrong-number phone call that convinces him to believe that there is a meaning to his otherwise ordinary, empty day. When Sharon (who is dealing with a secret admirer at work) sends him on an errand he gets sidetracked following up on the trail of the wrong-number.

He then bumps into his brother Pat (Ed Helms) who is dealing with a midlife crisis and the dissolution of his marriage to his wife Linda (Judy Greer). The two brothers go on an odyssey through south-eastern Louisiana looking for meaning in their boring, shity lives.

The biggest problem with the film is that it has way too much plot packed into a tiny shell. There is barely any room to breathe and almost no space to develop any emotions, as audience members, aside from what is clearly presented to us. It is clear who is good and who is bad, what forces are working with and against the characters -- but there is no ability to have any deeper connections to characters or their actions. What's that old chestnut about "comedy is tragedy plus time"? Well, here's it's really "comedy is tragedy plus no distance." Considering the central story is about Jeff and his weird Bloom-like day, strangely proving a fatalism in the midst of gonzo neorealism, we don't really need the side stories about Pat and Linda or Sharon.

I still have a sweet spot in my heart for the Duplasses, but desperately wish they could work on a film with another writer's script. I feel their intimacy with their process gets in their way and they can't see the shortcomings of their stories. This is probably a generally average example of their work (a far cry from The Puffy Chair or Baghead -- their two mumblecore features), but not entirely bad.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

15 Mart 2012 Perşembe

Mostly funny 21 JUMP STREET riffs on cop movie conventions

21 JUMP STREET (Dirs. Phil Lord & Chris Miller, 2012)
 



At one point in this reboot/re-imagining/re-whatever of the ‘80s show 21 Jump Street (the Fox TV show that made Johnny Depp a household name), undercover cop heroes (Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum) are in the middle of a high speed ‘don’t let the bad guy get away!’ chase, and they commandeer a Student Driver car from their high school parking lot.


A driving instructor tries to stop them from taking the vehicle, but instead of running after them yelling expletives, and/or shaking his fist at them like in so many other movies, the hapless guy just shrugs and says “Aw, who cares?” then walks out of the shot.


In that, and many other amusing moments, 21 JUMP STREET shows its hand - it’s not here to viciously satirize cop movie conventions, it just wants to riff on them playfully.


Take the chase that follows - in all chaos of gas truck collisions they side-swipe, Hill and Tatum keep expecting huge explosions, because, you know, there are always explosions in these sequences – but the film toys with that scenario with a ‘wait for it’ type teasing.


As a couple of young immature policemen named Schmidt and Jenko who think they can party while fighting crime, Hill and Tatum are assigned to Jump Street under the lead of Captain Dickson (a hilariously harsh Ice Cube perfectly parodying the clichéd angry black police chief role) who complains of the program: “All they can do is recycle old ideas from the ‘80s” Get it?


So the doofus duo gets a do over of their unhappy high school years while trying to take down a synthetic drug ring and proving themselves as law enforcers, but nobody is going to see this for its plot – it’s all about the silly scatalogical shenanigans these guys get into. However, Hill and Tatum get more laughs from their frantic one-liner exchanges than the gross-out stuff.


The supporting cast doesn’t really stand out around their schtick – Brie Larson as Hill’s unlikely love interest is just a popular yet insecure high school blonde archetype, James Franco’s younger brother Dave doesn’t register either – only Rob Riggle, who seems to be having a lot of fun with his beefy high school coach character, makes an impression.


Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (the guys who made CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS), and written by Hill and Michael Bacall (co-writer of SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD) 21 JUMP STREET falls into the tradition of making a movie out of a beloved TV show (See: Dragnet, The Brady Bunch, Starsky and Hutch, etc.) that’s as much a satire of its subject series as it is an self-consciously hip update.


It also falls into the category of movies that are just funny enough to get by (See: PAUL, HOT TUB TIME MACHINE, HORRIBLE BOSSES).


Obviously, It’s not shooting to be a comedy classic (or even an action comedy classic), it seems alright with being a lowbrow lark for teenagers or for folks that want to recall their teenage memories of old campy TV shows, in a comical light.


I want to say I wish it were just a tad funnier and a little less in-jokey, but…aw, who cares?



More later...

14 Mart 2012 Çarşamba

FRIENDS WITH KIDS: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing in Raleigh at the Rialto Theater:



FRIENDS WITH KIDS (Dir. Jennifer Westfeldt, 2011)





With its generic title (not to be confused with FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS or FRIENDS WITH MONEY), its recognizable cast, rom com premise and New York City setting, this looks from the outside like yet another commercial chick flick, but it’s better than that. Much better.



Jennifer Westfeldt, who starred in and co-wrote KISSING JESSICA STEIN, makes her directorial debut (she also wrote, produced, and stars), in this comedy drama centering around a couple of long time friends (Westfeldt and Adam Scott), who decide to have a baby, but not a relationship.



Westfeldt and Scott’s friends, 2 couples consisting of Maya Rudolph married to Chris O’Dowd, and Kristen Wiig married to Jon Hamm (Westfeldt’s boyfriend since 1997), are doubtful that this will work, and so are we. I mean when you walk into this movie, you know that Scott and Westefeldt will realize that they love each other and become a real couple in the end, but it’s the way it plays out the chemistry of the leads that got to me.





So what that it hits all the standard rom com story beats when it has as sharp and witty a screenplay as this, and this particular group of extremely likable and funny folks (including most of the cast of BRIDESMAIDS) making it pop?



A soundtrack with songs by The 88, and Wilco (no escaping the label “Dad rock” here) helps the flow of the film, which often feels like we’re hanging out, dining, and drinking along with along with the ensemble.



Scott and Westfeldt have difficulty dating other people, of course, but Scott gives it the old college try when he meets Megan Fox, as a Broadway dancer, who every male in the film remarks about how hot she is. On Westfeldt’s side, she’s seeing Edward Burns, who everybody (more the men than the women actually) comments about how hot he is.



Despite dating Burns, Westfeldt finds herself falling in love with Scott, of course, but he’s getting serious about Fox – for the time being we all well know.



This is all predictable rom com fodder, but the sharp dialogue and energy of the acting often made me forget that.



Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm have less screen time than the rest, but they stand out at a dinner table scene at a cabin the couples are vacationing at (See? Another rom com story beat).



It’s obvious to the others that Wiig and Hamm are miserable and on the verge of divorce. Wiig, who certainly isn’t comic relief in this film, mainly drinks copious amounts of wine, but Hamm lashes out at Westfeldt and Scott in a menacing manner that even Don Draper would be intimidated by. It’s a effectively edgy scene – Hamm is trying to cut through the crap to reality, and as heated as he is, we all know that his criticisms are true.



There’s a bunch of humorous moments and a lot of honesty in FRIENDS WITH KIDS, even though some stuff about such an arangement are glossed over.



For example, we cut from Scott and Westfeldt’s wonderfully awkward sex scene to Westfeldt giving birth. Surely, something notable between these 2 happened during the 9 months she was pregnant, right? I guess not.



But that, and a few short scenes that fall short of hitting their mark, don’t keep FRIENDS WITH KIDS from being an enjoyable, tasteful film. Now I’m not saying that Jennifer Westfeldt is the new Woody Allen, but she just entered the ballpark.



More later...

13 Mart 2012 Salı

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (Tuesday, March 14, 2012) (27)

David Gelb's film Jiro Dreams of Sushi has one of the move evocative names in recent memory. The documentary opens with the eponymous sushi chef talking about his dreams and then we see some of his creations, in a dreamlike slow motion, in wide angle. This film is a dreamscape of rice and fish.

It's a documentary about an 85-year-old three-star Michelin sushi chef in Tokyo who practices his craft in a way that has largely disappeared in our contemporary world, particularly the celebrity chef culture, where fame pushes some to change menus, make concessions on quality or rarely work as one manages one's empire of restaurants, books and TV shows. Jiro is not that chef.

The film looks at lots of different aspects of his restaurant and his view of the world, inasmuch as it relates to his 10-seat sushi restaurant. His main deputy is is eldest son Yoshikazu, who has worked by his side for a few decades now. He is clearly another great sushi chef, but the bar his father has set is so high, he might never be properly respected for his talent. We see how the son goes to the fish market to buy the best product, how they have special relationships with all the vendors, how they have a special kind of rice they serve that has to be prepared a special way. We see how they have a long line of apprentices who work for 10 years under Jiro's (and, to a lesser degree, Yoshikazu's) tutelage, learning the perfect way to slice fish, or massage octopus (40-50 minutes rather than 30 minutes, you naifs!).

Gelb embraced the minimalist beauty of the sushi gestalt by using several Philip Glass works for the score. The only problem with this is that it then begs a lopsided comparison with Morris' The Thin Blue Line and Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi, both of which used original Glass music. Gelb really can't hold a candle to those masters. And here is where the film stops being a revelation and starts being a regurgitation of styles that the director picked up in film class.

Yes, sushi-making is beautiful and Japan has this amazing culture that appreciates craft and slowness and beauty in the midst of urban chaos, but do we really need every shot to be some camera trick or gimmick? Every set-up is at a funny diagonal, there's a ton of slow motion, a lot of wide angles, a lot of double-exposed images bleeding from one thing to another. It's all a bit too complex for such a simple work.

I get that Jiro probably has more in common with a dancer than with a typical chef, but I wish things were just a bit simpler and less stylized.

One interesting moment, when Yoshikazu goes to the fish market and to an auction for tuna (which, by now, has been shown on American TV dozens of times already) we see that the auctioneers in this market have an amazing sing-songy, playful cadence to their calling, less rednecked than American-style livestock auctions and more ethnic music. Sadly, Gelb buries these songs in a pit of recycled symphonic music, so we can't even appreciate what we're seeing and hearing. It would be like he's cooking fatty tuna. Totally unnecessary and borderline reckless.

The film generally loses it's way by trying to turn what should be a tight little short (35 minutes would suffice) into a feature. At one point we follow Jiro to his home town where he visits with some elementary school classmates. This is totally off-topic, especially because Jiro has been, heretofore, very reticent about his family history. This is just a bit too much.

Gelb makes a nice movie, but I would recommend he take some advice from great sushi masters like Jiro and concentrate more on the taste and quality of his dish and less on the volume and quantity of it. Using mostly borrowed, complex style doesn't help the film, and a lot less here would have been much more.

Stars: 3 of 4

MELANCHOLIA: The Film Babble Blog Review

I missed this movie when it played in Raleigh at the Colony Theater, and in nearby Cary at the Galaxy Cinema a few months back, but I just caught up with it, as it releases on DVD and Blu ray today:



MELANCHOLIA
(Dir. Lars von Trier, 2011)







It would be an understatement to say that I’ve had issues with the films of Lars von Trier. DANCER IN THE DARK depressed the Hell out of me, DOGVILLE supremely weirded me out, and I felt like I had been assaulted by his last film, ANTICHRIST.



But I actually found myself enjoying good sized chunks of Trier’s latest: MELANCHOLIA. It’s a much gentler film than he’s done before, even as it depicts the destruction of all mankind, and it contains beautiful sequences of visually poetic shots, so it’s got that going for it too.



Don’t get me wrong – this is not a complete rave. I still have issues, like the meandering narrative, the abundance of questionable cuts, the discarded story threads and characters, and it’s way too long at 135 min.



Still, it’s a Helluva half a good film – Trier’s most watchable, and least abrasive yet.



In a performance that starts off flighty but grows into her finest yet, Kirsten Dunst as a woman on her wedding day at her sister’s (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and brother-in-law’s (Kiefer Sutherland) opulent estate.



Dunst’s new husband is played by Alexander Skarsgård, son of Stellan Skarsgård, who is also in the film as Dunst’s arrogant asshole employer. An icy Charlotte Rampling and a charmingly daft John Hurt appear as the bride’s divorced parents, mostly seen in the wedding reception party that Dunst can’t seem to stay 2 minutes at.



This is fairly typical dysfunctional family drama stuff, but it’s lifted by the palpable tension especially between the sisters, Dunst and Gainsbourg.



It’s not until over an hour into the film that we learn about the approaching planet named Melancholia that Sutherland, whose hobby happens to be astronomy, keeps assuring his worried wife is going to closely pass (a “fly-by” he calls it) but not collide with Earth.



We know he’s wrong from opening visual overture of sorts, that mostly shows slow motion shots of imagery from throughout the film, set to Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” prelude, in which we see the small planet of Melancholia smashing into Earth.



I can see why some folks were disappointed Dunst didn’t get nominated for an Academy Award for her part in this film (MELANCHOLIA didn’t get any Oscar noms btw). She’s more invested and believable than I’ve witnessed before, and she does the artsy nude scenes fearlessly – it’s Lars von Trier, so we’ve got to have a shots of somebody naked laying in a forest.



Whether one will appreciate MELANCHOLIA depends on one’s interest in (or tolerance of) long weird art films. I liked it more than I thought I would, and its impression has lingered with me (not in a bad way) since I’ve seen it, so color me mildly impressed - which is so much better than being depressed, weirded out, or assaulted.



Special Features: Featurettes -“About MELANCHOLIA,” “The Universe,” “The Visual Style,” “Visual Effects,” HDNet: A Look at MELANCHOLIA,” and Theatrical Trailers.



More later...

12 Mart 2012 Pazartesi

TV Obscurities #1: The New Twilight Zone: "Dealer's Choice"

Although this is a blog primarily about movies, from time to time I post about particular television programs. In this new series, called TV Obscurities, I’m going to revisit shows from yesteryear that I think are noteworthy, or just plain amusing. This one is a bit of both:



TV Obscurities #1: The New Twilight Zone (Broadcast on 10/15/85): “Dealer’s Choice”






When CBS resurrected Rod Serling’s classic creation The Twilight Zone in 1985, it really didn’t catch on. Sure, it wasn’t given much of a chance to build an audience with its Friday night timeslot, but I remember watching it well into its second season (after it was cancelled it was revived for syndication for a third season which I didn’t see), because, well, as a 15 year old loser I didn’t have anything better to do on my Friday evenings.



As the critics at the time said, the ‘80s re-boot of Serling's immensely influential show that originally ran from 1959-1962 was extremely uneven, but there were some real gems. The Wes Craven-directed “Dealer’s Choice,” revolving around a game of poker in which one of the players is Satan himself, is one such episode.



To begin with, there’s the incredible cast: Morgan Freeman, M. Emmet Walsh, Barney Martin (Jerry’s Dad on Seinfeld), Garrett Morris (original Saturday Night Live cast member from 1975-1980), and Dan Hedeya (named Nick here - the same name he had as Rhea Perlman's ex-husband on Cheers).



It’s awesome to see Walsh and Hedeya just a year after they both appeared in the cult classic (and one of my favorite films ever) Coen Brothers’ debut BLOOD SIMPLE.


This group of great character actors is gathered together for a night of poker at Walsh's shabby abode, but things get a little dicey when the fellows suspect the new guy (Hedeya) is the Devil because he always has three sixes (get it?) in his hand when he wins. 


Of course it turns out that Hedeya is the Devil, and the guys are caught up in a game with severe consequences.



“Dealer’s Choice” is one of the comical episodes of The Twilight Zone; it doesn’t have a creepy vibe, and a crazy twist ending, it consists of five working class guys in a 2 room set, with wall paper out of BARTON FINK, reminiscent of the poker guy’s nights that John Goodman would host on the sitcom Roseanne during the same era.


I’m sure a modern update of this script, concerning playing poker onlinecould be effective, but I bet it'd be nowhere as good.


Written by Donald Todd, who would go on to be involved in shows like Caroline in the City and Ugly Betty, this segment has a number of funny lines like:



Peter (M. Emmet Walsh): “You know, a guy wants to settle in and play poker with some guys, he should come up and say, you know, ‘Hello...Hi, I’m the Prince of Darkness - can I sit in for a few hands?’”



And this priceless exchange:



Tony (Morgan Freeman): “What's the devil doin’ here in New Jersey?”



Jake (Garrett Morris): “What’re you talkin’ about, Tony? I think he lives here!”






The actual game, that comes down to Walsh Vs. Hedeya has the expected up-the-stakes suspense, but it's not really why this episode stands out to me. It's the back and forth banter between this bunch that gets me.



And you gotta love a show that ends with the protagonists finding free beer and food in the kitchen - courtesy of the Devil, who turns out to be a gracious loser.


That's another beauty of this story - the Devil is just another schmuck not unlike the guys he's gaming with, and one that will actually honor the game.


I was always a fan of these kind of episodes of The Twilight Zone, in which regular Joes dryly deal with deadly demons, and win out in the end. Sure, these may be the most trivial of the series, but they’re the ones that stick with me longer than the scary ones.


Narrator Charles Aidman sums it up sweet and simply in the outro: “Just a friendly game of cards among a friendly group of guys, who have just come back...from the Twilight Zone.”


This episode is available on DVD, and in 3 parts on YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.



More later…

10 Mart 2012 Cumartesi

Friends with Kids (Saturday, March 10, 2012) (26)

The fundamental flaw with Jennifer Westfeldt's Friends with Kids is that it serves no audience, or, rather, it serves an audience who doesn't totally get the jokes its making. In her directoral debut (after writing the 2001 indie comedy Kissing Jessica Stein), Westfeldt presents a film that is really meant for an audience of single, middle-30s, cosmopolitan white people who don't have kids and hate people who do -- those people are known as New Yorkers (everywhere else people get married by 28).

The problem is that the film gets New York so incredibly wrong and is so banal in its judgments that it would only appeal to people who don't live here... or who pay rent here and think 59th Street is waaaaay too far south for them. Westfeldt (who also wrote the script) adds to this a lot of foul-mouthed dialogue to show that this is a young-hearted movie that might upset your parents, about which you can talk with your girlfriends (Carrie, Miranda, Samantha) at brunch... because all young people talk about how they like "tight pussies" (how scandalous!).

Julie (Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott) are best friends who are both serial daters. They love playing around with the hot people they meet and like the freedom of being able to live in the same Riverside Drive rental building (on different floors). They're close with two couples, Ben (Jon Hamm, Westfeldt's own life partner) and Missy (Kristen Wiig, who is barely in the movie) and Leslie (Maya Rudolph, who's working way too much these days) and Alex (Chris O'Dowd, thankfully playing an American). Both couples have babies (or will be having them soon) and are totally boring and square and live in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn (which is a $77 cab ride away from somewhere in Manhattan... which is impossible and stupid).

Julie and Jason decide to have a baby together as friends and raise the kid together, but not get married and continue to date other people... because, well, it's never really clear. They have a baby and all is great. Jason meets a Broadway chorus girl (played by Megan Fox, one of our greatest actresses) and Julie meets a contractor and divorced dad (played by Edward Burns, who will always just be a contractor in our eyes). Things get a bit dicey, however, when Julie starts to fall for Jason (didn't see that coming!) and he doesn't see her in the same way.

It's all so boring and stupid, so banal and recycled. There's never any chance that they'll do something unexpected. They break up, they get back together... big whoop! I've seen it all before (in When Harry Met Sally, if not in It Happened One Night or any number of screwball comedies from the pre-war era). Westfeldt trades originality and surprise for style... but that style is predicated on the false idea that just saying "fuck" makes something edgy and "realistic". It doesn't -- it makes it garbage that I could have read about on dozens of mommy blogs and Glamour Magazine ("Hello, Vagina, Are You Alive Down There?").

This is a weird pastiche of romantic comedy, screwball comedy and gross-out comedy, but is not really all that romantic, screwball or gross. It's so incredibly safe that it's totally uninteresting. ("Oh! There's that scene when they're all at a ski lodge and Scott and Fox are fucking really loudly -- that's just like when I went skiing with all my friends and there was that couple who fucked so loudly! It's funny because it's true!" Vomit.)

To be unfairly picky, I have to also say that Westfeldt's characterization of New York City living (Manhattan and South Brooklyn) is so completely off it's embarrassing. One unfunny set-up requires Julie to buzz a date into her building... but she lives in a doorman building that wouldn't have a buzzer... because it has doormen. In another scene, Fox talks about how she does eight performances a week in her Broadway show, "and has to be ready to go out of town for other work at a moment's notice." But why? You're on Broadway! Might you have to go out of town to perform in a road company in St. Louis? I'm not sure when the last time Westfeldt lived in New York was, but all the detail feels very stupid, fake and forced.

This desperate movie has the gauzy characteristics of an old-timey comedy, but made in this very contemporary, cynical voice that relies mostly on dirty words to convey naturalism. That style doesn't really change the fact that it's a dull movie with a bunch of painful jokes that are only funny if don't really know why you're laughing. This has a terrible script and is directed equally hamhandedly. There is no subtlety to this film. That wouldn't sell well on the check-out aisle and you might miss the joke or not know exactly when to laugh. How dumb.

Stars: .5 of 4

8 Mil - 8 Mile film izle

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtzM-6ZRyX6gdWUmEMhM_9shQlGLdSAfiz0L7BtS5Y3VKdE6aFmTAoKY8JPkORFFUI41o-rOsugluY0d7d4qeWIrf7zs1wpO47_t66pX5zIufFr92e56_6d7EnuxDeo4mP518zg-HBM3FB/s1600/8-Mile.jpg
8 Mil - 8 Mile (Türkçe Dublajdır.)
Filmin Yapım Yeri: ABD
Filmin Türü: Dram - Gençlik - Müzikal - Biyografi
Filmin Süresi: 110 dk.
Filmin Yönetmeni: Curtis Hanson
Filmin Oyuncuları: Eminem,  Brittany Murphy,  Kim Basinger,  Taryn Manning,  Brandon T. Jackson,  Xzibit ,  Mekhi Phifer,  Michael Shannon,  Eugene Byrd,  Proof,  Omar Benson Miller,  Evan Jones,  De\'angelo Wilson,  Larry Hudson,  Dj Head,  Jason Jarchow,  Nashawn \'ox\' Breedlove,  Sara Stokes,  Karin Dicker,  Mike Bell,  Abdul Salaam El Razzac,  Dave Daniels,  Malik Barnhardt,  Chloe Greenfield
Filmin Senaristi: Scott Silver
Filmin Yapımcıları: Brian Grazer,  Curtis Hanson,  Jimmy ıovine
Filmin Konusu: 8 Mil (8 Mile) filminde; genç bir insanın yaşam biçimini ve hayat şartlarını hiçe sayıp bu sınırları parçalayıp yok etme cesareti ve gücünü kendisinde bulma konusu anlatılmaktadır.
İyi seyirler dileriz...
Vkontakte

9 Mart 2012 Cuma

The Muppets film izle

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The Muppets (Türkçe Dublajdır.)
Filmin Yapım Yılı: 2011
Filmin Yapım Yeri: ABD
Filmin Türü: Aile - Komedi - Müzikal - Animasyon
Filmin Süresi: 86 dk.
Filmin Yönetmeni: James Bobin
Filmin Oyuncuları: Selena Gomez,  Neil Patrick Harris,  Amy Adams,  Jim Parsons,  Alan Arkin,  Rashida Jones,  ,  Chris Cooper,  Ken Jeong,  ,  Bill Cobbs
Filmin Senaristleri: Jason Segel,  Nick Stoller,  Jim Henson,  Nicholas Stoller
Filmin Yapımcıları: Jason Segel,  John G. Scotti,  David Hoberman,  Martin G. Baker,  David Furnish,  Todd Lieberman
Filmin Konusu: The Muppets filminde: Üç hayranın da yardımıyla Muppet'lar kötü işadamından tiyatrolarını korumaya çalışırlar...
İyi seyirler dileriz.
Vkontakte

Footnote (Friday, March 9, 2012) (25)

Joseph Cedar's Footnote was Israel's entry into the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race this year - and it is a very good film, well worth watching. It has a very dark and cerebral tone that generally has the comic feeling of Jonze's Being John Malkovich -- a bit of a latter-day screw-ball with lots of bleakness.

Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi) and Eliezer (Shlomo Bar-Aba) Shkolnik, are two leading Talmudic professors in Jerusalem. Father, Eliezer, a broken man filled with almost no love left inside, has spent his entire life researching variations in versions of the Talmud, only to blocked by his main academic rival. His greatest accomplishment is being referenced in a footnote by his mentor. Uriel, his son, a joyful husband and father himself, has become a leading expert on Talmudic traditions, softer subject matter that the father resents. He seems to be a pushover in life and in his family, but a very good man.

One day Eliezer is surprised to get a phone call that he won the most prestigious national prize for scientific research, after he tried for dozens of years, but always came up blank. He seems like a changed man all of a sudden, finding some joy in his accomplishment. The next day, however, Uriel is called to the prize committee's office where they tell him that he was supposed to win rather than his father and that his father got the phone call by mistake (they're both Professor Shkolnik, after all). He now has to figure out a way of convincing the committee to give his father the prize despite internal academic political issues.

The film explores the intersections of truth and fiction, hard scientific research and fluffy social scientific observation. Both men would argue their work is hard research, but Cedar certainly suggests that there's some chest puffing involved in all academic work. There is also a very glib idea that all academic work really doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the real world -- that internal politics of any organization have as much to do with what gets out and its impact as the significance of the work has.

Cedar uses a very sarcastic style throughout, both in his script and in the formal presentation. When Uriel visits the committee in their offices to discuss the problem, there are seven people (he makes eight) in a tiny closet of a room. Whenever anyone wants to get in or leave, they have to rearrange the chairs in a funny bit of physical comedy. Cedar cleverly mixes wonderfully rich long takes (the first shot lasts for about 8 minutes) with elegant dutch angles and interesting lenses. At times there's a jokey score, at other times there is pure silence, as different characters struggle with internal hopes and fears.

There are also, sadly a handful of untied up elements that seem to lead nowhere, but also don't really act as MacGuffins (the big prize itself is a true MacGuffin). There's a bizarre suggestion that Eliezer has a former girlfriend who comes back (actually it's really not clear who this woman is... I'm just guessing that she's an ex) and Uriel struggles with his ne'er-do-well son who is happy to sit and watch TV rather than studying. These things really should have been cleaned up and cut out -- the film would have been a lot tighter without them.

This is a very funny and smart movie and a lot of fun to watch, with great acting throughout (because everyone really plays it straight and not over-the-top, which it really is). I'm happy it doesn't dwell on the rather tired trope of father-son relationships and deals more with the means of academia and the reality of "Truth" and acknowledgment as these are much more interesting ideas with more room for fresh comedy.

Stars: 3 of 4

8 Mart 2012 Perşembe

JOHN CARTER: The Film Babble Blog Review



JOHN CARTER (Dir. Andrew Stanton, 2012)



None of the history of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars matters to me. I’ve never read the novels or comics, and only just learned the century old background of the character, so I only see this film as another big 3D CGI’ed sci-fi/fantasy spectacle – just another CLASH OF THE TITANS or THOR, this time with a even less appealing hero.



Taylor Kitsch (aptly named), who I’m also new to since I’ve never watched Friday Night Lights, plays that hero - a Confederate Army captain in the Civil War who is transported to Mars (called Barsoom by its inhabitants), where he joins in the planet’s ongoing battles against invading aliens.



Kitsch is imprisoned by tall lanky green creatures with 2 sets of arms called Tharks, who are presented through the motion-capture performances of Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, and Thomas Haden Church - though I could hardly differentiate between these creatures that all look the same (sorry if that's racist to Martians).




There are 2 humanoid factions which are at war with each other over Barsoom’s resources – one is from the kingdom of Helium in which its Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) is being pressured by her father Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium (Ciarán Hinds) to marry the leader of the other faction from the kingdom of Zodanga led by the evil Sab Than (Dominic West from The Wire) in hopes for a truce.



Despite that all of this is covered in lots of lengthy exposition, I couldn’t tell you how another race - the shape shifting Therns - are caught up in this. I got lost in all the talky-ness, finding myself just waiting for more action sequences that involved flying barges reminiscent of Jabba the Hut’s from RETURN OF THE JEDI.


There’s lots of sci-fi similarities to everything that’s ever had “Star” in its title, but even with its legendary pedigree, JOHN CARTER never makes any element its own – I feel like in a few years I’ll be changing the channels and come across it and be like ‘is this Farscape? Battlestar Gallactica? Fringe?’



The $250 million budget is certainly up on the screen in the overblown chaotic displays of swords and sorcery on the red planet (which resembles the desert planet Tatooine in “Star Wars” more that it does Mars), but I was often disoriented by how cluttered and uninvolving it was, especially through my 3D glasses.



It’s far less impressive a live action debut, than director Stanton’s Pixar partner Brad Bird’s MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL last year, and that’s a shame since Stanton has done such excellent work in the animated classics FINDING NEMO and WALL-E.



It’s also off putting that the screenplay by Stanton, Mark Andrews, and Michael Chabon (!) is so dense and impenetrable - I’m sure it’s less so to folks who are previously familiar with this material, but again I can’t speak to that.



As for the romance between Kitsch and Collins, there are no sparks – something that would’ve surely helped up the stakes in the last third – so yet again, no resonance.



I will give credit to the film not being without humor. The Martians (Barsoomians?) calling Kitsch ‘Virginia’ because they misunderstood his intro is amusing, as is a bit with Bryan Cranston as a Civil War colonel back on Earth.



Otherwise, Disney's JOHN CARTER is a film mainly for geeky sci-fi minded kids, and hardcore fantasy fans, but I bet even they will only find it intermittently entertaining.


More later...

Machine Gun Preacher film izle

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Machine Gun Preacher (Türkçe Altyazılıdır.)
Filmin Yapım Yılı: 2011
Filmin Yapım Yeri: ABD
Filmin Türü: Biyografi - Aksiyon
Filmin Süresi: 123 dk.
Filmin Yönetmeni: Marc Forster
Filmin Oyuncuları: Gerard Butler,  Michelle Monaghan,  Madeline Carroll,  Michael Shannon,  Kathy Baker,  Barbara Coven,  Mandalynn Carlson,  Joseph Smith,  Tim Holmes,  Judy Stepanian,  Justin Michael Brandt,  Daryl M. Simpson,  Inga R. Wilson,  Joshua Drew,  Paul Lang,  Kristen Jarzembowski,  Eric Tuchelske,  Corey Large,  Peter Carey,  Richard Goteri,  Misty Mills,  Souleymane Sy Savane,  Morris Lee Sullivan,  Brett Wagner
Filmin Senaristi: Jason Keller
Filmin Yapımcıları: Gerard Butler,  Marc Forster,  Adi Shankar,  Gary Safady,  Jillian Kugler,  Douglas Saylor Jr.,  Michael Corso,  Myles Nestel,  Kyle Dean Jackson,  Bradford Simpson, Machine Gun Preacher filminde; Louise Rosner,  Alan Siegel,  Deborah Giarratana,  Craig Chapman,  Spencer Silna,  Robbie Brenner
Filmin Konusu:  Hells Angel üyesi bir uyuşturucu satıcısıyken birden içi Tanrı sevgisiyle dolan ve Sudan'a bir iyi niyet elçisiymiş gibi gidip elinde bazukayla yetimleri koruyan Sam Childers karakteriyle Butler, Sudan'ın ve bugün neredeyse tüm Afrika'nın neden bu halde olduğunu bile araştırma gereği duymayan emperyalist beyaz adamın vicdanını rahatlattığı klişe bir rolle karşımıza çıkıyor.
İyi seyirler dileriz...
Vkontakte (Part-1)
Vkontakte (Part-2)
Vkontakte (Part-3)
Vkontakte (Part-4)
Vkontakte (Part-5)  

7 Mart 2012 Çarşamba

Bellflower (2011) (Wednesday, March 8, 2012) (160)

I'm always a bit suspicious of movies that are hailed by the press for being made on a shoestring budgets because that's way too inside-baseball for me and says nothing about how good the film is -- and most of them are terrible. Such was the case when I first heard about and saw trailers for Evan Glodell's Bellflower. It was made for almost no money over the course of a long time while writer/director/producer/editor Glodell and his co-stars Jessie Wiseman and Tyler Dawson helped to scrape money together to get it made. Big freaking deal, I thought.

Then I saw the trailer, which looked like a silly Mad Max, post-apocalyptic story of cars and motorcycles with lots of fire, explosions and blood. Hmm -- doesn't look promising. Then I read a few synopses of the film: Two friends spend all their free time building flame-throwers and weapons of mass destruction in hopes that a global apocalypse will occur and clear the runway for their imaginary gang "Mother Medusa". Every single article or interview said the same thing (so did Netflix). So when I finally watched the movie, I was shocked to find that this summary has almost nothing to do with the actual film (which makes me think that most people who write about movies don't actually watch them but just borrow from press releases ... written by publicists who also don't watch movies).

The only elements that are correct is that it's a movie about two friends, they build a flame thrower and twice mention an imaginary gang called "Mother Medusa". But that's sorta like saying Casablanca is about a drunk American who hates Nazis more than his ex-girlfriend's husband. It really misses the whole point of the film.

Bellflower is named for the street in LA where Woodrow (Glodell) lives. He's a pretty normal hipster with unclear direction, hanging out at bars and building machine stuff with his best friend Aiden (Dawson). They moved to LA for no particular reason, but are a bit obsessed with Mad Max and other motor-themed apocalypse movies. They are trying to build a flame thrower, though it's not clear why, and they love tinkering with cars and motorcycles.

One night they meet Milly (Wiseman) at a bar along with her best friend Courtney (Rebekah Brandes... who might not be able to act but is totally gorgeous). Woodrow and Milly fall madly in love and go on a first date... to Texas. Something about Milly makes Woodrow a tough guy and he starts making crazy decisions and getting in brawls. After a few weeks together they stats to fall apart, and he catches her in bed with another dude, leading him to start sleeping with Courtney. All this time, Woodrow has fantasies about fast cars, blowing shit up and violently getting revenge on Milly.

This is a bit of a post-mumblecore movie (considering the budget and the amount of young people fucking and talking about relationships), with a bit of a fantasy twist. It's a pretty clever pastiche -- the exact kind of movie Woodrow and Aiden would make if they were shooting movies instead of building a flamethrower. Glodell's clever script turns from romantic drama to post-apocalyptic story, but only in Woodrow's mind. This is not an end-of-days story, as the synopses would have you believe, this is a story of love and loss and a dark fantasy that comes out of the contemporary world.

Yes, it was made for almost no money, but it looks great and has a very nice and relatable lost-Generation-Y narrative. It should be seen -- but not for the explosions and flame throwers or Camaros painted matte black (cool), but because it's a pretty good movie and well made.

Stars: 3 of 4