I'm in the Big Leagues Now!

Okay, so I'm not going to be posting anything today or tomorrow other than this post to tell you that I won't be posting anything today or tomorrow. With me so far?

I'm off to see Crazy Heart tonight and will hopefully get a review up of that sooner than later. I've also got some good stuff planned for the upcoming weeks. I've got a big analysis of black comedy to correlate with my glee over the news that Todd Solondz's Love During Wartime has been picked up by IFC, a friend from school wanted to know just what in the heck is so darn special about Adaptation that I would name it my favourite movie of the decade so I feel I have to humour him, and I have a plan for a new regular feature called: Movies That Are Just Like Other Movies. I can hear your love for it already.

Anyway, on a final note, I wrote a guest blog over at Kid In the Front Row and I think it might be worth your time, even if just to give Kid more props than he already gets. Click here for that.

Only in Italy

It is my firm belief that the Italians do just about everything better than everyone else. They make the best movies, the best cars, the best furniture, the best fashion, the best food and, in a story from Hollywood Reporter too strange to pass up, apparently soon, the best porn too.

Yes, director Tinto Brass plans on making not only the first 3D Italian movie, but the first 3D porn flick as well. The ambitious 76 year old filmmaker is most famous for helming one of Hollywood's biggest disasters in Caligula in 1979. The film was criticised as being big, dumb and violent. It is also the most expensive porn movie ever made. Brass himself, in an act that doesn't make much sense to me considering Brass' career trajectory, has often criticised the film after hardcore sex scenes were edited in during post production without his consent at the request of Penthouse Magazine, the film's producer.

The story of the new film is apparently a reference to Caligula, but really, will anyone be seeing this for the story? Come on, you can be honest.

One Step Closer to a New James Bond Director?

Right now, with the future financial uncertainty that is going on over at MGM and Daniel Craig's confirmation that he will indeed be starring in John Favreau's next project Cowboys and Aliens, what will happen with upcoming 23rd James Bond movie is kind of up in the air right now.

However, Nikki Finke over at Deadline Hollywood is saying that Sam Mendes has been hired on as a consultant on the project at the request of Craig who apparently didn't like the criticism that Quantum of Solace got. The question now remains, will Mendes be offered the director's seat for the project?

Strangely enough, this news doesn't excite me the way I would expect it to. Mendes is a gifted filmmaker whose credits include American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road and Away We Go, but if Quantum of Solace proved anything, it was that Bond doesn't work best under the hand of great directors. Bond needs a gifted action director who also knows how to let the story breathe just enough to to be engaging, as was the case with Casino Royale.

The fact that the new film will also reportedly pick up where Quantum left off doesn't offer much in the way of promise either. File this one under the mild interest for now section.

Lil Zac Efron is All Grown Up

I don't hate Zac Efron. Honestly. I have no reason to considering how hating Zac Efron is, unbeknownst to those totally hip, with it, holier-than-thou haters, just as much a trend as loving him. So there you go.

In fact, more often than not, I've rather liked Efron. It's not that he's a great actor and I predict one day he will win an Oscar or revolutionize acting or anything like that, but really, he constantly brings everything that has been needed to the roles he has thus far chosen and even a little more in some cases. To put it bluntly, the kid is just plain charming. He's an adequate actor, a decent singer and a talented dancer. He's basically Patrick Swayze of John Travolta for today's generation.

In fact, I rather enjoyed high School Musical 3 in a certain guilty pleasure kind of way, loved Hairspray in a not guilty pleasure sort of way, laughed out loud more times than should be reasonably expected from a generic body switching comedy like 17 Again, and although I haven't seen Me and Orsen Wells because well, apparently no one else did either, the reviews were good and knowing Richard Linklater's track record, coupled with the interesting subject matter, it's probably really good.

So I was glad to come across the news on Deadline Hollywood, that Efron has chosen two new projects in which, now that he has done a small art film, he intends to shed his teen cred and become a bonafide movie star. All the power to him.

Here's the scoop. The first movie is called Fire and is adapted from a graphic novel. Efron plays a college student who is recruited by the CIA, only to discover his program is designed to create disposable agents. I smell potential.

Less interesting is, as Deadline calls it, a Back To the Future-like project that, although the plot details are scarce, is a melding together or two concepts that were already being developed. At the very least, this one could still be as amusing as 17 Again.

Of course, this desire to maturation comes after Efron bailed on the proposed Footloose remake, which was to be helmed by choreographer and High School Musical director Kenny Ortega in order to work again with his 17 Again director Burr Steers called The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud which is described as being about a man who is plagued with guilt over the death of his younger brother. Sounds interesting.

Furry Vengeance

I'm posting the trailer for the new Bredan Fraser kids eco-comedy Furry Vengeance.

Why, you may ask? Well the simple answer is this: just in case that trailer doesn't make the movie look horrible enough, I want you to know that I have read the script to this movie and beg you, please, please, please don't go see this. It is truly horrible. I feel grateful that hopefully, by my having read this script and reported back to my boss on it, that some poor suckers in some European country won't be subjected to this utter stupidity.

The best way I can describe this film is as a cross between Home Alone and Hoot, that silly save-the-owls movie with Jimmy Buffet and some kids who I obviously don't care about or I would be able to remember who they were, that no one went to see anyway.

So, moral of the story: watch the trailer just so you can know, come April when the thing hits theaters, exactly what to avoid.

Your welcome.

On a more positive side note, I've also had the privilege to read Creation, the bio pic about Charles Darwin starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly which is out in theaters now and rather enjoyed it. It's in very limited release but, based on the script, worth the effort to track it down.

Movie Quiz

Alright so, slow day for me on the blog front. I had a meeting with some group members for a school project and need to read some business case in order to be prepped for another project meeting tomorrow (the wonders of going back to school).

Regardless, in my desire to not let too many days go by without me posting at least something, be it profound of silly, I've stolen a movie quiz from Dennis Cozzalio who sometimes posts these things over at his great blog Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, which I would recommend to anyone who wants more intelligent, lengthy and scholarly film pieces. Anyway, I've done the quiz myself, albeit maybe a tad half-heartedly. Regardless, here it is:


1) Second-favorite Coen Brothers movie: That would be No Country for Old Men. I'm cliche, my favourite is Fargo.

2) Movie seen only on home format that you would pay to see on the biggest movie screen possible? It's a tie between La Dolche Vita and Fanny and Alexander

3) Japan or France? As much as I love classic Japanese movies, I've got to go with France, which has produced more brilliant filmmakers than I can count on two hands: Renoir, Melville, Cocteau, Godard, Rohmer, Truffaut, Rivette, Chabrol, Malle, Resnais, and there's probably many more that I am missing.

4) Favorite moment/line from a western: John Wayne in The Undefeated:

Bad Guy about to get punched- "But I didn't do anything."

Wayne- "You should have." Bad guy gets punched

5) Of all the arts the movies draw upon to become what they are, which is the most important, or the one you value most? Literature, which I feel is the most important art form to begin with. Plus I'm a sucker for great dialogue.

6) Most misunderstood movie of the 2000s: Neil Labute's remake of The Wicker Man with Nicolas Cage, Knowing and The Happening are the ones that jump off the top of my head right now.

7) Name a filmmaker/actor/actress/film you once unashamedly loved who has fallen furthest in your esteem- This is a tough one as no one jumps instantly to mind. I wish Vince Vaughn would stop phoning it in it stupid sitcom comedies and actually act again like he did before he got famous and fat with the Wedding Crashers.

8) Herbert Lom or Patrick Magee? No idea.

9) Which is your least favorite David Lynch film: Fire Walk with Me or Dune. Really though, I used to worship the ground Lynch walked on in high school, but now that I have broadened my film intake and seen some of the truly great avant-garde films of the world, it's hard for me to look at any Lynch film without seeing their underlying pretension. Mulholland Drive and The Straight Story are exceptions.

10) Gordon Willis or Conrad Hall? No idea.

11) Second favorite Don Siegel movie? Well I haven't seen many but I'd say Coogan's Bluff or Escape from Alcatraz are pretty decent ones behind the original Dirty Harry

12) Last movie you saw on DVD/Blu-ray? In theaters? DVD- After Dark, My Sweet and theater was Up in the Air

13) Which DVD in your private collection screams hardest to be replaced by a Blu-ray? None of them. I'll buy DVDs until you can buy them no more

14) Eddie Deezen or Christopher Mintz-Plasse- Neither really tickles my fancy

15) Actor/actress who you feel automatically elevates whatever project they are in, or whom you would watch in virtually anything? Easy one: Christopher Walken. Come on, his scene in Gigli was brilliant (I say this completely devoid of sarcasm)

16) Fight Club -- yes or no? A huge Hell No!

17) Teresa Wright or Olivia De Havilland? No idea

18) Favorite moment/line from a film noir. Lee Marvin with the coffee pot in The Big Heat.

19) Best (or worst) death scene involving an obvious dummy substituting for a human or any other unsuccessful special effect(s)- Probably Bela Lugosi and the octopus in Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster.

20) What's the least you've spent on a film and still regretted it? All the Tyler Perry movies I wasted a blank DVD burning.

21) Van Johnson or Van Heflin? No idea.

22) Favorite Alan Rudolph film. None of them really. I guess I'll go with Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle.

23) Name a documentary that you believe more people should see- Hoop Dreams, Stevie, 4 Little Girls, When the Levee's Break. There are plenty of docs more people should see.

24) In deference to this quiz’s professor, name a favorite film which revolves around someone becoming stranded. I really don't have a favourite stranded movie.

25) Is there a moment when your knowledge of film, or lack thereof, caused you an unusual degree of embarrassment and/or humiliation? If so, please share. Not really, I try to adapt to each person, not talking over or under them depending on the circumstances.

26) Ann Sheridan or Geraldine Fitzgerald? These questions suck.

27) Do you or any of your family members physically resemble movie actors or other notable figures in the film world? If so, who? My girlfriend's mom once told me I look like Leo Dicaprio. I donno, I don't see it.

28) Is there a movie you have purposely avoided seeing? If so, why? Not really, I'm up for anything once.

29) Movie with the most palpable or otherwise effective wintry atmosphere or ambiance. Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light

30) Gerrit Graham or Jeffrey Jones- Enough!

31) The best cinematic antidote to a cultural stereotype (sexual, political, regional, whatever). Every character in ever movie Tyler Perry has ever made, Madea especially. God I hate Tyler Perry

32) Second favorite John Wayne movie- Please don't make me pick. The Searchers behind Rio Bravo.

33) Favorite movie car chase. I've give two answers. The cliche- The French Connection, and the not cliche- The hilarious Bullit parody in Clint Eastwood's The Dead Pool (my favourite Dirty Harry film by the way).

34) In the spirit of His Girl Friday, propose a gender-switched remake of a classic or not-so-classic film. I find almost all talk of gender in film to be completely meaningless so this question strikes me as shallow and stupid.

35) Barbara Rhoades or Barbara Feldon? No idea.

36) Favorite Andre De Toth movie. Haven't seen one to my knowledge.

37) If you could take one filmmaker's entire body of work and erase it from all time and memory, as if it had never happened, whose oeuvre would it be? Tyler Perry, Eli Roth or those dudes who keep making those insipid "Movie" movies like Epic Movie and Disaster Movie and so on, whose actual names I'm not even going to make the effort to look up.

38) Name a film you actively hated when you first encountered it, only to see it again later in life and fall in love with it. Took me a couple tries to realize what exactly the big deal was about Goodfellas.

39) Max Ophuls or Marcel Ophuls? Max

40) In which club would you most want an active membership, the Delta Tau Chi fraternity, the Cutters or the Warriors? And which member would you most resemble, either physically or in personality? To quote Woody Allen, Groucho Marx, whoever, in jest: I never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member

41) Your favorite movie cliché. The "Big Game" at the climax of sports movies.

42) Vincente Minnelli or Stanley Donen? Vinvente Minelli (I love the original Father of the Bride)

43) Favorite Christmas-themed horror movie or sequence. The original Black Christmas

44) Favorite moment of self- or selfless sacrifice in a movie. The death of John Coffee in The Green Mile (sorry if I ruined it for anyone)

45) If you were the cinematic Spanish Inquisition, which movie cult (or cult movie) would you decimate? What a strange question. I would get rid of the people who think Donnie Darko, Fight Club or The Boondock Saints are good movies.

46) Caroline Munro or Veronica Carlson? No idea.

47) Favorite eye-patch wearing director. John Ford

48) Favorite ambiguous movie ending. Antoinioni's Blow-Up

49) In giving thanks for the movies this year, what are you most thankful for? As cliche as this is going to be, and you may hate me for it but the return of James Cameron.

50) George Kennedy or Alan North? Alan North simply because I think all six episodes of Police Squad! was just about the funniest thing that has ever been on TV.

The Forbidden Question

There's a question that people always ask me that I hate: Seen any good movies lately? Whenever I hear this I feel like saying, "Why yes I have. I've also seen some great ones, some passable ones, some mediocre ones, some bad ones and one or two that are about one step above a war crime," and walk away.

What is this questions really asking? For a recommendation? For some sort of insight into my life? To know what I've been up to in my spare time? No, I fear that what people are looking for when they ask this question is whether or not I'm going to say something good about a movie they want to see or just have. That's why I hate answering that question, because it`s total slight of hand: it doesn`t ask what it really wants to know.

What's you favourite movie, I was asked the other day. My response was honest and true and not sad with irony or snobbery, "You've never heard of it." The answer to the question is La Dolche Vita and my assumption was right, which meant, this person gained nothing from asking it and I gained nothing from answering it. His follow-up, "What's your favourite movie that I may have seen?" Sigh.

And there it is. Now the pressure is on me to rack my brain in order to think of something that both I love and this person may have heard of. Why should I have to filter my brain like that when neither of us has anything to gain from my answer. The pressure was intense. Why do people do this to people who say they love movies? It is infuriating.

Instead, what I tell people to do is just ask me if I've seen a specific movie and cut out the pussy-footing altogether. At least in this scenario my answer can spark a meaningful or, at the very least, enjoyable conversation that is focused and direct and saves from that awkward silence as both parties comb their brains as quickly as possible for a segue into a new topic of conversation.

That way, I also know exactly what people want from me. If someone asks me "what's playing that's good right now," I need to not only scramble to remember what is playing at the moment, but I now also don't have the responsibility of sending someone to see A Serious Man when what they really wanted to see was Couples Retreat.

When someones asks, "Hey, have you seen Up in the Air yet?" I can respond simply, "Ya, it's great. You should definitely see it." The ball is thus in the opponents court and what they now decide to do with it is totally up to them. And I'm fine with that. I could talk all day about movies, why would I want to put that burden on someone who doesn't care for it?

So if one day, you are visiting North York or are walking the halls of Seneca College and you stumble upon me and want to know what is good, don`t ask me, because I honestly don`t know. I can only be responsible for what I like. If on the other hand, you want to know why I like it well, give me a call, we`ll talk.

Let Me Entertain You

This post has nothing to do with movies but it's content entertains me to no end and since I run the blog, well, deal with it. Here are two videos that I found on YouTube. I have no idea how old they are so sorry if you've already seen them but even if you have, they are certainly worth a repeat viewing. Being a metal fan in my youth and still a little bit of one today, I especially appreciate the first video. So without further ado:

Why the Japanese Should Never Sing Death Metal

and

Mini Daddy

A Feud's a Brewin'

I love feuds. They are fun to talk about and pick sides and point fingers and everything else. So I was happy to discover today that Mike Fleming over at Deadline Hollywood is reporting that it turns out something is brewing between Lionsgate and Paramount over movies scheduled for release during Halloween 2010.

So here's the story. As i wrote last week, Paramount is setting up to make a sequel to Paranormal Activity with plans for a Halloween release. The director on the project was to be none other than Saw 6 director Kevin Greutert. Saw 6 just so happened to be the major film that the first Paranormal Activity buried at the box office in 2009.

Turns out Lionsgate was also prepping the seventh Saw picture, Saw 3D (yawn!) for a Halloween release on the same day as Paranormal 2 (October 22). The project was supposed to be helmed by David Hackl who made the fifth Saw film, which was the one with that New Kid on the Block/brother of Marky Mark Whalberg standing on a melting chunk of ice with his neck bound in a noose, or was that the fourth one?

Anyway, upon learning that Greutert was going to be helming their biggest competition, the Saw Twisted Pictures, who make the Saw films in conjunction with Lionsgate, bumped Hackl off the project and stole Greutrert back since they still have an option on him after the last Saw flick.

This seems like a strange play on Lionsgate/Twisted Pictures part since, although they have left Paranormal Activity 2 directorless, if Greutert's Saw entry couldn't beat Paranormal Activity in 2009, who is to say that his next Saw film will be able to do any better against the next Paranormal Activity film? And really, the Saw franchise has become so monotonous that any young director could make an entry with their hands tied behind their back and audiences wouldn't really know the difference or care. Saw, after all, has never been synonymous with great filmmakers.

Anne Hathaway to Read Oscar Noms

It was announced today that it would be Anne Hathaway who will be announcing the major Oscar nominations this year beside Tom Sherak the president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The nominations will be read next Tuesday February 2. This isn't really news because I couldn't care less who reads the nominations since I won't be up at 7:30 am to watch them but it does give me an excuse to post a picture of Anne Hathaway so, in the end, everyone wins.

The Magic of the Movies

I saw something yesterday that kind of disgusted me and then made me think of a post that I read on one of my favourite movie blogs Kid In the Front Row. The item in question was on the cover of the current issue of US Weekly that I saw at the grocery store. It had a picture of Kate Gosselin from Jon and Kate Plus 8 fame and the headline was about how she doesn't like her new hair and I got to thinking: who the hell really cares if someone who has done absolutely nothing to deserve her celebrity except for squeeze eight kids out of her likes her hair or not? Are we supposed to feel bad for a non-celebrity's haircut? Back in the day celebrities were looked up to because they allowed us to escape our reality and join them in theirs which was admittedly a whole heck of a lot better. Today, Kate and her hair are a constant reminder of how shallow and pathetic it has become.

And then I read Kid's small, humble article in which he looked back over the history of his blog with disbelief over it's success and found hope in that. Kid is the kind of guy who spends a lot of time keeping the memories of great men and woman in the film world alive like Charlie Chaplin, Billy Wilder and Jimmy Stewart by revisiting their work with intelligence and passion. He remembers a time when film was made by great artists who told great stories that were performed by great actors. A time when art and even entertainment meant more than who which celebrity was shacking up with. He doesn't care, he lays out in his site's subheading, about the grosses of the latest superhero movie, etc because they mean nothing to him. Although I do care a little about such matters because I care about all things film related, even the superfluous ones, I know exactly what he means. Film is as magical a medium today as it ever was, but the true magicians are getting harder and harder to find as their work becomes buried under a mountain of superficial items like box office, celebrity personal lives, big budget cash-grabs like sequels, remakes and reboots, etc.

And then, when Kid admits that what he is really looking for is the return of Jimmy Stewart (if anyone, it's John Wayne for me) I got to thinking: what should be cherished most about Kid In the Front Row is right there in the name of the blog. At the end of the day, when all of us out there who love to watch film put pen to page (or finger to keyboard for the literalists) we essentially revert back into that infantile state of infatuation: we're those kids in the front row, loving every image, cherishing every adventure, embracing every punchline and so on. The heart speaking above all other voices in our body. There's a lot of pretension and elitism that is inherent in artistic circles of all varieties, but that's not criticism.

The true critics; the ones whose opinion we value day in and day out; the one's whose opinion we respect; the one's who we love because of the personality of their writing and not their ability to gauge the worth of a work are not the scholars or degree holders or most technically experienced indviduals but the ones who have sat there in the front row with us. They understand love and aren't afraid to put their mind at rest for a moment to let their heart sing. Robert Warshow once said something to the tune of how a man goes to the movies and the critic must be honest enough to admit that he is that man.

That's not to say we should not exclude intelligence or technical knowledge from the party. In fact, some of my favourite films are ones that move my mind more than my heart or are stunning just from a stylistic point of view, and writing intelligent, in-depth editorials or reviews around these things is not something to be frowned upon.

However, for the purpose of this post at least, and I can't speak for everyone, but that Warshow explanation is the single most important reason why I do this kooky blog. I know how to spot and describe different shots, kinds of lighting, different types of lenses and all the artistic implications of these things; I love reading books about how films are made and how the business side of film works and I love thinking about psychology and philosophy as much as the next guy. But at the end of the day, whether or not I'm watching cars speed down streets at high speeds in The Fast and the Furious, seeing Spider-Man swing from building to building or seeing Marcello on that lonely beach at the end of La Dolche Vita, not being able to comprehend the what his virginal savior is saying to him, although my knowledge of film exceeds that of the average viewer, I'm basically that kid in the front row with you, in the dark, having his heart stolen and his imagination expanded, watching as magical images seem to appear out of thin air.

To me, conveying that feeling is the heart of criticism. It's what I like to read and what I want to write about be it in reviews, editorials or simply commenting on the news stories that interest me. Some writers have become so smart, their vocabulary so vast, their oratory skills so finely tuned that they forget themselves as being those kids in the front row and that's when criticism stops and self-indulgence starts.

That's why I disagree with the majority of film theory and have almost totally shied away from it since graduation: because film theory doesn't even begin to take into account those butterflies in the stomach when Sam plays it again, the jolts of terror as Michael Meyers jumps out of the dark, those tears of joy as the Polar Express nears it's destination, that ping of tragedy as Rosebud burns before our eyes, the unquenchable laughter that erupts as Bluto sets that ladder up outside the female frat house or the breathlessness from the unspeakable beauty of the landscapes of Pandorum. Just to name a few.

Those are the reasons we go to the movies in the first place. They are the reasons we write these blogs with little or no money in return and slave over trying to get them noticed by as many people as possible: because we're all just kids in the front row, in love with a toy of never ending possibilities that we can't wait to discover and continue to rediscover until we have lost the facility to do so.

Peace Out

I'm off to Hamilton today to visit my girlfriend's best friend so posts will be limited until Monday. However, yesterdays take on Todd Solondz inspired me so I will be developing that post further when I get back.

So until then, I'll leave you with something to entertain you during the down time.

Peace

Life During Wartime

Today it was announced that there is a God. The other day when I was ranting about the Golden Globes I linked to a blog post by Roger Ebert where he sadly reported that a large number of quality independent films left the Toronto International film Festival without distribution deals and feared for the future of independent films. Read that here.

Among one of those films to leave empty handed was Todd Solondz's fifth feature (if you don't count his forgotten about debut, which he himself doesn't either) Life During Wartime. The news that Life During Wartime left the festival without a deal was truly a disheartening one for no better reason than that Todd Solondz is one of, if not the greatest, of all American independent filmmakers. His resume is comprised of four films, all of them great, all of them original, all of them daring and controversial, and all of them made under the care of a filmmaker who dances only to the beat of his own drum. One of them, Palindromes, made my list of the best films of the decade.

I haven't seen Life During Wartime and I'm not overly familiar with the details of the plot other than that some have said it is a lose sequel to 1998's masterpiece Happiness. However, Solondz is the kind of guy who only makes a film every once in a while because he hates the process of filmmaking so much and therefore only takes on projects that mean something to him, ensuring his work is only of the highest quality.

That's essentially Solondz's approach to art: his films deal with outsiders converging outside the fringes of a society that doesn't accept them. They are essentially a variation of Solondz himself, a small, irritable, impersonal man who has sometimes been labeled as "The Geek Director." He once told an interviewer that it bugged him when a waitress at a diner called him "hun" because it was too personal and invaded his personal space.

This is the worldview that shapes Solondz's films, which are both devastating black comedies (a term he himself, not surprisingly, hates) and intimate character studies. I understand why Solondz hates the term black comedy. Although all of his films are brutally funny in the way they use humour to expose social taboos, to delegate them to one generic function would be to miss the point. Solondz is a terribly impersonal filmmaker. His approach is to lead the audience by the hand into situations we feel uncomfortable being involved in and leave us there unaccompanied to make our own judgements. Solondz's films offer no point of view, which forces the audience to decide on their own what they should be feeling. You laugh during a Solondz film and then turn around and question whether or not you should feel bad about it. There are thus no half measures in a Solondz film: either you love the brilliance of their daring or are disgusted by the depths of their shallowness.

Solondz also has a way of giving his characters exactly what they deserve. Look at Allen, the sex addict played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Happiness. This is not a likable man. He combs the phonebook looking for random women to make lewd phone calls to, masturbates on his wall afterwards and uses the prize to hang postcards from. Yet there is something sweet in the way he finally comes to find a kindred soul who accepts him. She's another resident of his apartment building who killed the doorman and has him bagged in her freezer. There's something truly special grotesque about this whole set up but also something endearing about the way, when they go to bed for the first time, lay down, facing away from each other.

You can apply this logic to each of Solondz's films and it holds be it Welcome to the Dollhouse, Storytelling or Palindromes, which uses many different actors of shapes, sizes, ages, races and genders to play the main character who is struggling with the issues surrounding abortion. Here Solondz is showing all the effects and counter-effects that abortion has on society while, through a truly unique storytelling device, subtly questioning the essence of life and whether or not everyone is the same from front to back no matter the circumstances or whether we can grow and change and become different people who are moulded based on their social experiences.

There is no news yet on a North American release date for Life During Wartime, but make sure to keep an eye out for it. You probably won't regret it.

If They Don't Know, You Can't Tell 'Em

So there is going to be a sequel to Paranormal Activity. Why? Because studios are apparently deaf, dumb, blind and don't know a valuable lesson when it drops in their lap. I'm not going to report anything about the filmmakers or the plot details. You can read that here. What I want to say is: when will studios ever learn?

I just finished reading Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart's book Boffa (which I don't recommend) and the moral of the entire book is basically that, throughout history, time and time again, a work will come along that no one believes in, will be made under the most dire of circumstances and become a huge cultural phenomenon. Bart refers to the likes of Cats, The Sound of Music, Baywatch, etc.

Although Bart's examples represent works that fly way beyond the confines of their medium and out into the realm of popular culture, we still see this kind of thing happen almost every year, just on a smaller scale.

Want proof? How about Paranormal Activity, Gran Torino, Juno, Slumdog Millionaire or even Avatar? I won't run through each in detail, but take Gran Torino as an example. The film opened in limited release for two weeks, gaining good reviews from the critics and positive word-of-mouth amongst viewers. It then opened on it's third week and plowed through the big studio phone-in job Bride Wars. Not only that but the film managed to stick around on the charts for weeks on end and ended up with a final gross of a little more than $148 million. Final gross for Bride Wars, which basically disappeared after it's first week: $59 million.

I like this example for two reasons. It shows that no matter how much money studios sink into stupid scripts tailored for big name stars like Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson to collected a nice paycheck, and no matter how many millions they sink into big advertising campaigns to make sure their desired teenage audience hit the theater on opening weekend, the best advertising is still positive word-of-mouth. They also prove that people value quality over quantity. That Clint Eastwood can still steal the box office in his 70s is all the proof one needs in seeing that classical filmmaking trends (i.e. quite, meaningful, entertaining character dramas) can still equate to big business

That also means that the best distribution method is still to open a film gradually, testing the markets for a response before opening wide. Nowadays studios throw all their efforts into the opening weekend, take the top spot and disappear almost completely the next week, when they start the same old routine over again. That's not the way it used to be. Jaws presents the ultimate example of how to distribute a blockbuster. Here's a film that opened gradually, built a reputation and stayed at the top all summer.

Avatar is doing that now too. It opened in the $70 millions on its first week (poor if you take the budget into consideration). Do you want to know why? Because studios stupidly advertised it as a high adrenaline sci-fi action flick, ultimately limiting its audience to fan boys. Todd Phillips once told the Toronto Sun that the reason The Hangover did so good is because the ads pulled no punches. They let the potential viewer see exactly what they were in for: a raunchy comedy.

So many film trailers these days try to mould the actual film itself into looking like something it is not; to dull the drama or the intelligence in favour of thrills and spectacles. How many times, after all, have you walked out of the multiplex either pleasantly surprised or disgusted by how little the film you saw was the one you expected to see?

Avatar was the same way. Not until the following weeks when word got around that it also involved a touching love story, a meaningful plot and strong characters did it gain it's momentum, as both males and females of all ages flocked to see it again and again as they did with Titanic 12 years ago.

Word-of-mouth saved the day for Avatar as it also did for Juno and Slumdog Millionaire, which it's director Danny Boyle feared would be released straight to video before winning the top award at the Toronto International Film Festival, breaking art house cinema attendance records, sneaking into mainstream theaters and ultimately taking the Academy Award for best picture.

Paranormal Activity is the same story. It was made for less than a million dollars, became a midnight movie sensation at festivals, opened in limited release for several weeks until opening wide and blowing the big studio players out of the water. It opened against the expected money maker Saw 6, which ended up with a total gross of just under $26 million. Final Paranormal Activity gross: just shy of $109 million. You do the math.

Why then are studios scared to invest money into properly marketing independent films that have the potential to be huge breakout hits like Juno or Slumdog, especially when history has proven time and again that it is possible for little films to generate big results? Who knows? Instead, year after year, the studios comb the vaults of popular culture to see what series they can get another installment out of or reboot or remake or whatever the buzz word is these days.

What the studios need to do is analyze all of these above mentioned films and see what they all have in common. Each film is an original work, based on an original concept. They don't rely on big stars (except Gran Torino) or the best special effects (except Avatar), but rather they focus on building a unique story that involves strong characters that are developed enough for an audience to care enough about to want to share in their journey. They are also about universal human needs, emotions and problems and therefore put drama at the forefront above all else (except for Paranormal Activity).

Above all, and maybe most important, they deliver a quality product. It doesn't matter how much Paranormal Activity grossed in comparison to it's budget, because it wasn't a fluke that people ran to see it. The reason people loved it was because it was something that so few contemporary horror films are anymore: genuinely scary. That's what it's ads promised, that's exactly what it delivered and that's exactly what people told their friends about it. Nothing more and nothing less. The Blair Witch Project was the same story.

It's unfortunate then that the studios, instead of searching for other original works of both quality and integrity, decide to go the lazy route and plan a sequel to a film that doesn't even begin to warrant one; not understanding that the very reason that film was such a smash is because it offered something, if not totally new, than at least rare these days. To try to duplicate that seems like a fruitless task in my opinion. Lightening, after all, rarely strikes the same spot twice.

The final question to ask is will it sell? Personally I'd like to think not. I'd like to believe that people can see when they are simply being exploited and will reject such efforts as they did with the Blair Witch sequel, which was almost unwatchable and also a disaster at the box office. Maybe that's the biggest shame in this whole story. Not only does Hollywood not learn from its successes, it doesn't learn from it's failures either.

More Spider-Man News

Here's a left hook for ya. Marc Webb, the dude who directed the totally awesome, knows-more-about-love-than-any-other-romantic-film-but-is-not-a-love-story 500 Days of Summer has been announced by Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios as the man to reboot Spider-Man.

Commenting on the choice, a couple of studio brass told of how they believe Spider-Man to be a small, intimate tale of a boy who must come to grips with juggling the life of a teenager with the responsibility of being a superhero and wanted to find a director who could bring that element into sharp focus. In other words...they wanted someone who can remake Spider-Man 2, which was all of those things and more done to perfection. Honestly, sure, Spider-Man 3 kind of sucked, but no one will ever understand Spider-Man better than Sam Raimi.

Although I know Raimi can't pigeon-hole himself with the franchise for the rest of his career, he was already a veteran director when he took up the task of the first Spider-Man film and was, by then, known as a man who was always ahead of his time and knew how to push boundaries. Raimi in essence developed the contemporary comic book film look and feel to which all subsequent adaptations owe credit to.

So how do I feel about Webb? Well, he did the right thing in announcing that he respects what Raimi has created and doesn't just want to continue with that, but wants to take the franchise in his own new direction. Time will only tell what direction that may be. Webb has proven himself a gifted filmmaker with his debut film, but will he be able to handle a big budget, special-effects driven action franchise without being bullied by the big bad studio bosses? There is no doubt he will bring a unique spin to the human elements of Peter Parker and his relationships, but the whole idea of Spider-Man needing a reboot in the furst place still doesn't sit just quite right with me.

The Spider-Man reboot is planned for a 2012 release.

Death At A Funeral (2010)

When I was at the theater on Saturday night to see Up In the Air, I couldn't help but see a large cut-out advertising a remake of Death at a Funeral. The original film of the same name was a minor British comedy back in 2007 and was directed by Frank Oz who is maybe most famous for being the voice of Miss Piggy

I can understand why someone would want to remake respectable foreign language films like say Brothers or Funny Games to open them up to a wider international audience, but Death at a Funeral was in English, came out a mere three years ago and wasn't special enough in my opinion to warrant remaking.

What now baffles me even more is that today I find out it was directed by Neil Labute. Let me write that again. The remake of Death at Funeral was directed by Neil Labute! The same Neil Labute who wrote and directed some of the best movies of the 90s including In the Company of Men, Shape of Things and my favourite Your Friends and Neighbours, with that heartlessly sadistic yet brilliant performance from Jason Patric.

Needless to say Labute has been one of my favourite writer/directors for some time now. I praise the above mentioned films every chance I get, I could get behind Possession, enjoyed the complexity of Nurse Betty and Lakeview Terrace even though he didn't write them and was even one of the sole defenders of his remake of The Wicker Man with Nicholas Cage, but what the hell is this all about?

The film was written by Dean Craig who also wrote the original film and, as a side note, is also writing a script based on Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures, a non-fiction examination of the Sundance Film Festival and Mirimax Films. That film will be directed by Kenneth Bowser who also made the informative documentary Easy Riders, Raging Bulls based on the Biskind book of the same name. Both books are very much worth reading, but if the forgettable Darwin Awards and What Just Happened? (based on producer Art Linson's non-fiction book of the same name) taught the world anything, it's that non-fiction books lose their appeal when an arbitrary story is laid atop them.

Back on topic. The new Death at a Funeral stars a predominately black cast which includes Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence doing his typical of mugging for the camera, Tracy Morgan doing his typical thing of not being funny, and others including James Marsden, Luke Wilson and Peter Dinklage (who reprises the role he played in the original).

I won't get into what the story is about because if you've seen the original this new one looks like almost an exact remake and if you haven't, the trailer (which you can see here) gives away just about everything anyway.

But what is really the heart of the matter here is my complete bafflement over the trajectory that Neil Labute's career has taken with this entry. I know in my heart that he will one day make great films again, but why would a man of such gifts who specializes in such penetrating and unapologetic dark comedies and social commentaries, be interested in turning what was essentially a British sitcom into what looks like a routine, uninspired African American comedy?

Once upon a time Neil Labute would be ripping films like this to shreds. Now he's making them? I think it's time he stopped whatever it is he is doing and get back to directing his own scripts. Then again, who knows, maybe the thing will be good after all.

Transformers 3 News

Quite frankly, after the giant mess that was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I have next to no expectations for Transformers 3, nor do I look forward to it in the least.

However, according to shaky source Perez Hilton, Michael Bay, although vague, has gone on record and said that the third film will feature less robots and less explosions. This is strange news coming from the man who didn't even want to do the third film for fear that his talents were being marginalized by the franchise and because the studio was pushing him too quickly into production when all he wanted was a break.

This could be construed as good news seeing as that second film was nothing more than a hollow, brain-dead, incomprehensible cartoon with live faces popping up every once in a while. Although really, the franchise, at this point, has become so stupid that I don't even know how Bay or anyone else could condense the material into a meaningful story, especially considering what an arbitrary role the human characters play in the films.

Of course, at this point the franchise has made so much money that the studio doesn't even care if Bay turns in a good film or not. Just look at how many glaring, lazy mistakes were visible in the second film.

So, I don't know, is this good news? Will it renew interest in the series after Revenge of the Fallen alienated as many people as it amused? Has the studio finally heard the outcry that more is not more? Will Bay renege on his word and make another, loud, obnoxious hunk of crap? I know Bay has made good action movies in the past and know he will make good ones again in the future, but I'm not so sure he can control himself on this project unless his budget is significantly slashed.

I'm indifferent.

Up In The Air (5 out of 5)

One of the things they teach you when studying human resources is that if firing someone ever gets easy, you should maybe consider re-evaluating your career path. Like almost everything learned in the classroom setting, I took this advice at face value and logged it in the proper annals of my brain without ever considering the elegiac implications of such a statement: the very thing that Up In the Air, as subtle and biting an overturning of contemporary North American corporate culture as there has ever been, is all about.

The hero of the story is Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) who acts as the guy who is called in when big companies outsource work to downsize their staff because they don’t want to deal with the mess themselves. It’s his job to fly into town, inform the recipient of his company of the bad news, console them, alert them to their options and bid them adieu, never to see them again.

This is Bingham’s life for all but a handful of days of the year: always flying, never stagnant enough to ever become attached to anything of worth or value to him except his job. He essentially has no home, no past, no future and no definition: a man adrift in a world whose only loyal inhabitant is himself. Consider him a merge between William Hurt’s Macon Leary from the Accidental Tourist and, maybe more accurately, Marcello from Fellini’s masterpiece La Dolche Vita. He's always drifting from one encounter to the next, never staying put, never feeling anything, never being anything to anyone. Life is essentially getting from one necessary banality to the next on the way to either retirement or death, which, to men like Bingham, may be about the same thing.

Bingham is the typical archetype for the North American corporate success story. He’s married to nothing but his work, which his does with cold, unaffected precision. In between he hosts informational seminars in which he tries to convince people that life is essentially carrying a backpack: you must fill it only with the most necessary items in order to travel lightly and without strain. Pictures are only for those with bad memories, Bingham advises, so throw them out and make room for something you need.

The heaviest object that can be carried in the backpack is personal relationships. Not only do they weigh you down and slow you up, but they require extra baggage costs. And sure enough, when Bingham meets a similar minded girl Alex (Vera Farmiga) in a hotel lounge their flirtation involves debating which rental car service is superior, their attraction revolves around their collections of VIP cards and their eventual sex seems more out of a need to pass the time between firings than any sort of lustful desire.

There is, however, one thing of meaning that propels Bingham. Because of his constant travelling he wants to be the seventh man in history to accumulate over 10 million Frequent Flier Miles. Such an achievement would provide the only kind of elite status he has to prove he is anything more than nothing.

Then something happens. After the young, aptly named, Natalie Keener (Twlight’s Anna Kendrick) is hired, she brings with her plans to save the company money by setting up Internet connections with clients in order to do their work without the constantly high travel expenses. Bingham is quick to reject this proposition and for good reason. Not only is the sole human connection he ever makes going to be taken away from him and automated, but the chance to achieve his goal would be ripped out from under him.

Bingham is soon assigned to take Natalie out on the road with him to teach her the ropes of the business. The two initially clash. He can’t understand her naivety and optimism: looking for perfect love, thinking she can change the world, etc, and she can’t understand how his life has become so simple and meaningless, and all the while we are reminded of that virginal young girl in the café across from Marcello in La Dolche Vita.

Along the way Bingham subverts his course in order to take pictures of a cardboard cut-out of his sister and her fiancé (ala the dwarf in Amelie) against famous American backdrops for their wedding. Bingham is estranged from his family, has never met his brother-in-law to be, and can’t understand why anyone would want pictures of themselves in places they have never been before.

The answer to Bingham’s ignorance comes during the wedding (the film's center and best section) in which it is revealed that the reason for the gimmick was because the couple could not afford a honeymoon, but still wanted something symbolic in it’s place, and the power of the symbol is both salient and enlightening: the pictures are fake but meaningful, while Bingham’s life is real but empty. It’s the turning point of the film.

Up In the Air thus becomes a gentle meditation of the importance upon which North American culture places on career-mindedness and high salary living. The film is only the third from Canadian director Jason (son of Ivan) Reitman after Thank You For Smoking and Juno, who by now should be considered within the upper pantheons of great contemporary directors and here strikes an even balance between what was most rewarding about those two films. It both satirises corporate culture to great humorous effect but also delves deep into the personal psyche in order to examine the toll that such a life takes on the very fundamentals of living. The American Dream, it is shown, has failed us again.

Thus, Bingham, through his relationship with the two woman and his life and from his time at home with family, he slowly grows to realize that life is nothing without, not only things to be proud of, but people to share the pride along with. Like Marcello, he’s seen too many things and been around too long to even break out of the mould he’s set for himself, yet his story is not one of tragedy but one of hope. It’s too late for him, but there’s still life beyond the flight schedule board for the rest of us.

Slow Monday

Critics hated the Globes, Avatar took it's fifth week atop of the Box Office (the only film to grab number one for five weeks straight since The Sixth Sense) and blah, blah, blah. Slow news day in the entertainment world.

One thing of note is that Deadline Hollywood is saying that Gerard Butler is eyeing up the main role in Marc Fosters next film Machine Gun Preacher. The plot revolves around "the story of Sam Childers, a former drug-dealing biker tough guy who found God and became a crusader for hundreds of Sudanese children who've been kidnapped and pressed into duty as soldiers."

This isn't really news but I put it here because 1) it allows me to promote the German-born director Forster who I think is one of America's most valuable filmmakers working today and, until Quantum of Solace, didn't make a single bad film (save for his debut Everything Put Together, which is sitting on my DVD shelf but I have yet to see it).

Look at a list of Forster's work and you'll see a natural born filmmaker: Monster's Ball, Stranger Than Fiction, Finding Neverland, Stay and The Kite Runner. Hopefully this film will take Forster away from the pyrotechnics of the Bond films, which he apparently wasn't at all comfortable with, and bring him back into the realm of the searing human drama the plot description of this new film promises.

And 2) I can promote a Gerard Butler film that flew under the radar a couple years ago (his only good one really). It is called Dear Frankie and is about a mom who tells her mute son that his father is away working on a ship. The boy writes constantly to his father but the letters are intercepted by the mother, who secretly responds to them herself.

Problem is, when the ship dear ol' dad is supposed to be on is going to be docking in their town mom needs to hire an actor (Butler) to fill the role of the boys father. The film is both tough and heartwarming and one of the only where Butler created a full fledged character with personality, edge and charm. Do yourself a favour and hunt it down.

Golden Globes 2010

So I just finished watching the Golden Globes. It was the first time I've ever watched the entire show because, quite frankly, I don't care much about television and the Golden Globes always seemed to me to be the poor man's Oscars. They aren't as funny, as shamelessly glamours, and their comedy categories (which sometimes do good work by honouring worthy films that otherwise wouldn't garner serious awards consideration as was the case this year with The Hangover) give a certain credibility to films that would otherwise be thrown on the scrap heap to be forgotten about as history moves on without them. I'm talking about stuff like The Proposal, It's Complicated, Sherlock Holmes, Julie and Julia, and Nine.

I'm not going to talk about the winners and whether or not they were truly the best in their category (okay I'll do it once: 500 Days of Summer was clearly a better film than The Hangover, and really, Robert Downey Jr.? But no hard feelings) because, unlike other years, I haven't seen all the nominees and therefore don't have the adequate information to pass informed judgements.

What I want to do is make an observation. The other day I was reading Matt Singer's brief review of An Education over at Termite Art and he made the comment that TV is getting so good that it is beginning to overshadow the cinema. This comes as absolute horror to me as someone who has lived and breathed cinema and kept TV at even greater than an arms length away.

But as I was watching the Golden Globes and seeing all the TV nominees for shows I've never seen like Big Love, Dexter, True Blood, Glee, and so on, I realized that Singer was maybe on to something, especially when compared to those above listed nominated films like Julie and Julia and It's Complicated.

Then I got to thinking back over what were the most popular films of 2009: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, New Moon, Night at the Museum 2, Terminator: Salvation, and the absolute stinkiest of them all, Transformers: Rise of the Fallen. It was a depressing realization: Hollywood really was in the crapper this year. It's 2009 and instead of producing our own contemporary classics the best we can do is honour a hack musical remake of one of Fellini's most invaluable masterpieces?

Then Martin Scrosese took the stage to accept the Cecil B. Demille Award and things got worse for me. Sitting through a montage of one of America's most value directors to ever stand behind a camera's work, I was left thinking: There were more essential, classic, absolutely unforgettable moments in those few minutes of montage then there have been in all of 2009. I considered myself definitely depressed.

And then, with the TV awards behind and the major awards just over the horizon, I was reminded that, even if 2009 looked and felt like a total wash, amid all the meaningless wreckage, were films made out of the very stuff that make us fall in love again and again with the cinema every day of our lives. Film's like Inglourious Basterds, 500 Days of Summer, Up in the Air, The Hurt Locker and Avatar.

Then Jeff Bridges, one of America's true acting treasures, won best actor for Crazy Heart (a film I haven't seen but am planning on and hope you are too) and was given a standing ovation. "Yes," I thought, "these moments are the reason why we film lovers stick it out even through the worst of years." It was a reminder of what is still, after over 100 years of history, the most unchanged fundamental necessities of film: good actors, playing strong characters, immersed in good stories.

Then, as Avatar began winning all the big awards, I was indeed satisfied in my realization that the most popular film of the year was also the best. It wasn't the one about mutant super heroes, vampire lovers, living museum displays, intergalactic robots or any other such gimmick. It wasn't based on a theme part ride, a video game or a toy chain. It wasn't a sequel, a remake, a reboot, or any other such quick money making scheme. It was a bold, beautiful, original piece of art and a glorious entertainment to boot. And it is a film that I hope Hollywood has learned a valuable lesson from: that people essentially crave and are drawn to new concepts and new ideas that are presented in classical film conventions (stories told with pictures). In 20, 10, even 5 years Twilight and Transformers will simply be the bad aftertaste of an era in filmmaking in which big studios thought they could get away with phoning it in.

At the end of the day, there will never be a shortage of kids who buy into fads and trends because it is the "it" thing to do at the time, and even more people like my girlfriend's friend (who I alluded to not so lovely the other day) who have no concept of transgression or originality or passion or emotion or even intelligence and whose narrow tastes, day in and day out, are making it harder and harder for me and people like me to see the films that matter the most to us.

Regardless, in spite of everything, I must hold my head up high and look forward to tomorrow because, no matter how bleak it may look right now, as history has proven and as Brandon Lee so truthfully said in The Crow: "It can't rain all the time."

A complete list of Golden Globe winners can be found here, and probably just about everywhere else too.

Sundays

Sundays generally suck. I usually sleep in until 1 in the afternoon, am too lazy to work out, have to go to bed super early for an 8:00 am class on Labour Relations the next day and there is never any good entertainment news unless someone dies. Maybe I'll watch the Golden Globes tonight or something, even though I've never really taken them very seriously (Nine is nomination worthy? Come on), and, as a side note, I ended up seeing Up In the Air last night instead of Youth in Revolt (a good decision I think) so I'm editing that review and should have it posted tomorrow afternoon.

I do have one thing that I want to do today though. Back in my film studies days at Wilfred Laurier University I used to have too many classes with a fellow student who I will not name (because he probably Googles himself on a regular basis), but who I disliked so thoroughly that, well, I'm still compelled to slander him in print three years later. Anyway, just to give you an idea of this fellow: he more or less thought he was the be-all end-all of film studies knowledge. He would sit in silence for most classes, every once in a while raising his hand to answer a question as though we should all be thankful to be in the presence of his brilliance (although he mostly talked himself into corners whenever questioned), when he gave out personal tidbits about himself he made them sound like statements of his credentials: he didn't just see a movie, he saw it in front of a sold out audience at Roy Thompson Hall during the Toronto International Film Festival with the entire cast and crew present, and so on and so forth.

Now let me get to my point. He had both a film blog and a film discussion board, both of which I followed and commented on. He soon disabled the ability to comment anonymously on his blog though because people were leaving negative comments, arguing with him and he soon disabled the Karma function on his board because his started going into the negatives. So you see, competition was not part of his vocabulary.

There was one thing that he would post on his blog every year that baffled me. He would vainly post a list of all the movies he watched that year, as if people should really care. I wouldn't even read a list of movies Roger Ebert watched throughout a year. However, in another act of vanity, he posted his DVD collection list, which interested me thoroughly. Why? Well because I wanted to compare it to my own, feel jealously over some things he had and I didn't and feel pride over some things that were absent from his collection but were prominent members of mine, and really, you can tell a lot about a person by seeing what kinds of movies they own.

Maybe it's a film geek thing. I know it's pure vanity but, since I enjoyed it so much those many years ago, I am posting the link to my DVD collection as well. Check it out if you want. Is there anything there you thought didn't exist and want to know where you can get your hands on it? Is there anything you think that my list is completely missing and my collection would be all the much better for having? Let me know in the comments and also link me to your own collections if you have them.

Find the list here. Enjoy.

Note- the picture at the top is not my DVD collection, it's actually a picture I stole from someone else's blog, which means I feel obliged to link you to him. Check it out here.

Steven Segal: Law Man

I think it is both strange and funny that Steven Segal has his own reality show in which he works for a Sheriff's office in Louisiana. It's not surprising though seeing as Segal hasn't had a movie released to theaters since 2002's Half Past Dead and it's kind of shocking that that one even made the cut, although, credit must be given: Half Past Dead features the best scene rapper Ja Rule has ever acted in.

What's funny is that, can you imagine calling in a domestic disturbance and have Steven Segal showing up at your door? Really, this man. However, I can see why a small town Sheriff's department would want Segal on the payroll. How can there be any crime left in Louisiana with a man on the force who can't even be phased by a high power helicopter attack. Want proof? Here you go. What Segal can do with a single pistol flies way beyond simple violence and into the realm of poetry doesn't it?

Catch Steven Segal: Law Man on A&E.

Avatar Backlash Continued...

After just posting about how I didn't feel like editorializing today I'm going to anyway. Yesterday I posted about how Italian parent groups were speaking out against Avatar opening in Italy today with a G rating, meaning any kid off the street could get in to see it. My reaction: so what?

Then today A story popped up on Scanners: Blog written by Jim Emerson, who quotes attacks on Avatar from both Vatican newspapers and radio stations. The criticism states that the church is worried that Avatar preaches that nature is something to be worshipped, making it into a new sort of religion separate from God.

This bugs me for several reasons. The first is the most obvious: when will the Vatican learn that their public outrages usually do nothing but promote the very works they cry out against (The Da Vinci Code anyone)? And really, having taking the top Box Office spot for 4 weeks in a row in North America, and slowly inching it's way to breaking the worldwide Box Office record set by Titanic in 1997, does the Vatican really think they are going to stop this lumbering beast? And why should they? At the very least, Avatar is glorious entertainment and is a masterpiece on that plane of existence alone.

Now to get to the theoretical problems with this criticism. Not surprisingly, none of the church criticism makes it explicitly clear why nature is not something to be worshipped. Taken from the Catholic perspective, Genises outlines the six days in which God slaved to create nature and everything that it is comprised of: trees, water, animals, etc. He then took the seventh day to rest and admire his work. Why then, if nature is one of God's most precious creations, should it not be worshipped? In a sense, if nature is a creation of God, then nature is in some way a form of God and therefore to worship nature is to worship God, no? If ever there was a symbolic representation of God in the movies, the Na'vi Tree of Voices, which knows all and contains all of the history of the Na'vi race, is it.

If you believe this (and I personally don't. I'm all for Darwin), then is Avatar not a fable about a war in which to protect God's creation (or, on a more fundamental level, religion) from being destroyed under the greed and injustice of contemporary capitalism? If anything, Avatar instructs us away from the all consuming influence of the man-made city and back into the woods where he can once again become one with nature and thus one with God. To see the destruction of nature would mean the destruction of religion. If anything, Pandorum stands in as a surrogate Garden of Eden.

To take it another way, the Na'vi are presented as Natives of the land. Anyone who knows anything about Native American religion, knows that it revolves around nature. The scene in which Sully asks an indigenous creature to its permission to kill it is right out of Native belief. The soul is that of the animal and it must offer it to you for you have no right to just take it.

Taken this way the film has nothing to do with Catholicism and the Vatican should just butt out completely. To disown a film that mimics the practices and ideologies of Native spiritually is simply a way for the Vatican to put itself at the center of attention and, as it always does so well, hold Catholicism above all other religions. Maybe the Vatican could rest easier it night were it to realize that for a work to present one form of spiritual belief is does not signal attack against all others. The Vatican is like the big bully on the playground who won't let anyone else but his friends play on the jungle gym.

For me, as I stated in my Avatar review, the meaning of the film exists not on the level of the physical, but on both a symbolic and a poetic level. Religion doesn't even factor into the equation. The message is not to replace God with nature because belief in one if better than the other, but that it is easy to be corrupted by the greed of civilization and that, to find oneself, we need to be reacquainted with the tranquillity and simplicity of nature (i.e. out own personal history) where time slips away and one is truly free to be oneself in what is essentially a society-less society. It's a lesson that's been at the heart of Western literature since the dawn of Manifest Destiny where the West invaded the South, tamed the savages and built a society from which capitalism and consumerism could prevail.

To be one with nature is thus not about shunning God, but about reorganizing your life and your personal priorities in order to find the essence of what is most meaningful to you. If anything, such a life would bring one closer to God, whatever a person's belief or conception of Him may be. Is this not exactly what happens to Sully once assimilated into Na'vi life? The Vatican doesn't acknowledge this though because, in reality, none of their one-sided protesters probably haven't bothered to even see the movie anyway.

New Farrelly Bros. Comedy Coming Together

It's a slow news day in the entertainment world and I have a cold so I don't feel like doing much editorializing or reviewing for fear that it would simply come out as an incoherent blob with no purpose or direction. I am going to see Youth in Revolt tomorrow though, so look for that review sometime before Monday.

The one thing that I did find that might be of note from Hollywood Reporter though, is that Jenna Fischer from The Office is in talks to star in the new Farrelly Brothers comedy Hall Pass, which is in pre-production according to IMDB.com. IMDB also has Owen Wilson as being involved along with and Jason Sudeikis, that sometimes funny, mostly annoying guy from Saturday Night Live.

There are two reasons why I think this tidbit to be worth writing about: 1) I have a secret crush on Jenna Fischer. She is so cute in a such a modest and unassuming way, as if she doesn't even need to try, unlike most stars who go miles out of there way to make sure you see how beautiful they are.

And 2), I've read the script for Hall Pass and, although it's not quite as classic as There's Something About Mary or Kingpin (it kind of loses control in the third act and is a little too long), it is not without many big laughs (especially one involving a golf cart and a bag of pot brownies) and is certainly better than the last Farrelly flick The Heartbreak Kid. In brief summation, the movie is about two sex crazed middle-aged guys who wives let them have a "hall pass" for the weekend. That means that the girls leave town for the weekend and the guys are free to have sex with anyone they want if they so choose to do. That's all I'll say about it.

On a side note: two other recent scripts I have read are going to be debuting at Sundance this year include Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me with Casey Affleck about a small town sheriff with murderous impulses (quite good) and the Joan Jett Biopic The Runaways with Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning (quite benign).

Leap Year Review (3.5 out of 5)

Leap Year, the new romantic comedy with Amy Adams and Matthew Goode provided many many things that I expected it to: silly comedy, an improbable plot, a contrived story, an all around forgettable experience and so on. But then it did one thing I never expected: It involved, as mainstream romantic comedies so rarely do, real people with real dimensions and not just broad generalizations of comic caricatures. Not the leads, not the support, and not even the old Irish bed and breakfast owners and their Italian borders. The film may go for silly laughs, but it avoids all the potential for cheap, lazy ones.

That’s a quality both refreshing and unexpected in this kind of film. The story itself may be pure fairytale, but it still somehow manages to exist in a real world. These characters are not just the creation of some scriptwriter who needs a laugh or a way to connect plot points as romantic comedy characters so often are. This lends an air of authenticity to the whole project up to the point where, against all reasonable and logical odds, you actually care what will happen to these people as they travel the Irish countryside because they seem to grow together on their own terms. What more could one ask for?

The story involves Anna (Adams) who has etched out a career in decorating houses with furniture and other such nick-knacks so that they look nice to potential buyers, until the deal is made at which point she packs up her stuff and moves on to the next project. She’s essentially a highly paid con artist.

After being given a pair of earrings over dinner by her surgeon boyfriend of four years Jeremy when she was expecting a ring and a proposal, Anna is crushed. Jeremy then flies off to Dublin for a medical convention leaving Anna back home to be reminded of an old Irish tradition that states, on the eve of a leap year, a woman can propose to a man. I don’t know. It seems to me that if you need to chase a man around the globe for his love, maybe he isn’t worth the effort in the first place. Regardless, as Anna’s luck would have it, the leap year just so happens to be coming up in a few days.

However, as these things must, bad weather forces Anna’s plane to land in a small Irish town situated hours from Dublin. She seeks out a taxi driver named Declan (Goode) who also doubles as the pub and hotel owner. It’s the kind of place where the same two or three customers haunt the stools every day like the ghosts of lives gone by. Declan initially rejects Anna’s need for a ride, until the possibility of losing the pub leaves him needing cash and without options.

Predictably, the journey is not a nice one as Anna and Declan have a clash of personalities. She’s prim and proper and used to be in complete control of herself and he’s rough, unshaven, thinks the whole leap year legend is a bunch of bollocks and decides she must be crazy for naming her bag Louis (apparently Louis Vuitton isn’t big amongst the Irish countryside).

This is a plot almost as old as the cinema itself, or at least since Spender Tracy and Katherine Hepburn made it popular so many decades ago. The story of a man and a woman of completely different backgrounds being forced together under unlikely circumstances, hating each other and then slowly growing to love each other as they talk like civilized people and begin to accept the others’ company.

The film then must rely heavily on the presence of its stars, as half the fun of films like this is in seeing how new actors drop themselves into familiar material and transform it to suit their own personality. It’s also the ultimate testament to great acting in seeing a star being able to turn virtually nothing into something that even mildly shows signs of life.

It’s no surprise that Amy Adams can pull a feat like that. She’s so unapologetically lovely, so chipper and yet so classy that she’s always a pleasure to be in the company of. Here is a woman who makes even the worst of films seem better than they have any right to be.

Then there is Matthew Goode who is a real discovery. He’s starred in dramatic and intelligent fare in the past such as Brideshead Revisited and Watchmen but here he proves to have a real comic presence. He is as rugged and handsome as fellow U.K. star Gerard Butler, but has a lot more charm, depth and a better ear for comedy as he steals most of the films funniest lines.

And then there’s the inevitable ending, which is as contrived as it is unlikely, and raises many logical questions that it has no intention of address, but by that point Adams and Goode have worked their charm and we can buy them as a legitimate couple, which we actually hope they will become.

In my review for last year’s The Proposal I gave a positive rating but made sure to imply that it was simply out of desperation: the world has been subjected to so many horrible mainstream romantic comedies that sometimes feel strained to even fly by on autopilot that it was inspiring to see one with even the faintest sings of life, as if to imply, on top of slightly enjoying the film I also needed to, in a way, apologize for my recommendation. Maybe I did.

But now here is Leap Year, which follows the same kind of story headfirst into the same kinds of directions and I recommend it open-heartedly for all the same reasons but also because it is nicer, sweeter and more human. No apology necessary.