film babble blog: 2001

Showing posts with label 2001. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Cinematic Running Gag: See You Next Wednesday

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

SCHLOCK (Dir. John Landis, 1973)

KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE (Dir. John Landis, 1977)

THE BLUES BROTHERS (Dir. John Landis, 1980)

AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (Dir. John Landis, 1981)

TRADING PLACES (Dir. John Landis, 1983)

INTO THE NIGHT (Dir. John Landis, 1985)

SPIES LIKE US (Dir. John Landis, 1985)

AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON (Co-Dir. John Landis, 1987)

COMING TO AMERICA (Dir. John Landis, 1988)

INNOCENT BLOOD (Dir. John Landis, 1992)

THE STUPIDS (Dir. John Landis, 1996)

More later...

Thursday, November 06, 2014

INTERSTELLAR: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening Friday, November 7th, at multiplexes from here to beyond the stars...

INTERSTELLAR (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2014)

Despite some spectacular set-pieces, Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated outer space epic INTERSTELLAR is a massive misfire.

It so wants to be for our times the profound experience that 2001: A SPACE ODDYSEY was to the late ‘60s, but with its problematic plotting, pretentious dialogue, and cringe-worthy convolutions of the cosmic variety, it’s more M. Night Shyamalan than Stanley Kubrick.

Set in the near future on a dying, dust stormed-out Earth, an intense Matthew McConaughey, acting like he rehearsed his lofty line readings while being filmed driving his Lincoln to the set every day, stars as a former NASA test pilot, a widowed farmer raising two kids (Mackenzie Foy and Timothée Chalamet).

With some cajoling by a ghost who apparently lives in the bookcase in Foy’s bedroom, McConaughey leaves his kids behind to travel on a spacecraft with a small crew (including a short-haired Anne Hathaway as a head strong scientist) to another galaxy to find a new habitable planet for the human race.

Michael Caine, who must really get along with the filmmaker as it’s his sixth role in a Nolan film, again brings his fading yet still stirring gravitas to his part as Professor Brand, the physicist who’s in charge of the secret mission, and is also Hathaway’s father.

By way of a wormhole near Saturn, which is pretty cool if you can rid your mind of the extremely similar scene in STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, McConaughey, Hathaway, and fellow explorers David Gyasi and Wes Bentley (and a robot named TARS voiced by Bill Irwin) find a possible candidate planet but there’s a mighty catch in order to check it out. You see, because of it’s a proximity to a black hole, every hour on the planet’s surface will equate to seven years back on Earth.

So while McConaughey and crew battle the ginormous tidal waves of that inhospitable world, his daughter and grow up to be Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck, both bitter at their departed dad in different albeit not very impactful ways.

To go any farther plot-wise would be Spoiler City, and the exposition-filled (and fueled) turns of Nolan’s screenplay (co-written with brother, Jonathan, a frequent collaborator) are too messy and strained to describe. This is especially true pertaining to what I guess is a surprise cameo that McConaughey and Hathaway encounter on a bleak, ice planet in the film’s second half (Nolan really must liked shooting in the snow, see INCEPTION).

Dutch-Swedish cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema captures Nolan’s imagery sweepingly - a large portion of the film was shot with IMAX cameras - and there are moments in which the movie’s ambitious vision comes close to exhilaration, but what should’ve been a spiritual successor to CONTACT unfortunately brings to mind the title of another McConaughey movie: FAILURE TO LAUNCH.

Movie fans can expect to be reminded of many, many other movies while watching INTERSTELLAR, from the aforementioned 2001 to Phillip Kaufman’s THE RIGHT STUFF (a 1983 historical drama about pioneering astronauts, for you young folks) to such sci-fi staples as ALIEN, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, FORBIDDEN PLANET, and everything that’s ever had the word “Star” in its name. However, Nolan’s overwrought opus amore often recalls scores of sci-fi failures such as THE BLACK HOLE, MISSION TO MARS, SIGNS, and, uh, lots of movies that have had “Star” in their titles.

Also, GRAVITY did the ‘let’s see A-list actors struggling for survival in outer space’ scenario way better. On top of that, its colossal lack of emotional pull really hinders its climax which never comes close to making anything near satisfying sense.

I take no pleasure in saying that while INTERSTELLAR is Nolan’s most audacious and certainly his most personal film, it’s easily his worst work, and the biggest cinematic letdown of 2014. Because it’s not without visual power, and some invested acting, many critics will praise it, and it will definitely get some award season action, but me, I’ll be over there, on the side, standing behind BIRDMAN.

More later...

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

ENTER THE VOID Now Streaming On Netflix Instant

Now available on Blu ray, DVD, and Netflix Instant:

ENTER THE VOID (Dir. Gaspar Noé, 2009)

After beautifully bombastic credits, which Quentin Tarantino called "Maybe best credit scene of the decade...one of the greatest in cinema history", we see Toyko through the eyes of Nathaniel Brown, a young American drug dealer.

The camera acts as his vision, we only see Brown's face when he looks in the mirror.

Brown smokes a few hits of dimethyltryptamine, aka DMT, and his mind goes on a surreal CGI journey resembling the "Beyond the Infinite" climax of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY or the wormhole from STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE.

A friend (Cyril Roy) comes by Brown's apartment and accompanies him through the neon drenched streets to a club called "The Void" in order to do a drug deal.

Roy speaks of "The Tibetan Book Of The Dead", a book he lent to Brown, explaining how one's spirit sticks around for a while after death before it is re-incarnated.

When the drug deal at the club goes horribly wrong, Brown is shot by police in the restroom and his spirit does just that - it hovers above watching the people he knew and flashes back to the major events of his life.

He watches his erotic dancer sister (Paz de la Huerta) as she reacts to news of her brother, and we learn of their shared childhood past - most traumatically the violent automobile death of their parents they witnessed from the back seat of the car.

We follow Brown, point of view-wise, through these tangents over and over and it's an engrossing yet at times highly disturbing experience.

It can be frustrating too - I loved it at first, feeling like I was inside something instead of just the normal sensation of watching a movie, then I hated it for a bit wishing Brown's spirit didn't linger so long when watching his sister have sex with her seedy nightclub owner boss (Masato Tanno).

But, hey, in the afterlife what else are you going to do?

I ended up loving it again as it wound its strands into a jarring conclusion.

There's a WAKING LIFE-like philosophical nature to its flow of imagery, and a raw energy to the aftermath our decased protagonist watches that took me in and, well, kind of freaked me out.

With it's 2 hour and 23 minute running time, ENTER THE VOID is too long (there's an extended "Director's Cut" on Blu ray and DVD if one doesn't agree with that), but it's a vivid, overwhelming, and incredibly crafted work.

Director Noé, whose stunning yet also disturbing IRREVERSIBLE blindsided critics back in 2002, is developing a visionary style that can take film goers on an unforgettable ride - though one that may test their patience.

Curious movie lovers looking to venture away from the mainstream into uncertain waters should take him up on this particular challenge.

More later...

Monday, July 13, 2009

Son Of Space Oddity

Now playing at the Colony Theater in Raleigh:

MOON (Dir. Duncan Jones, 2009)

The directorial debut of the British born Duncan Jones takes place almost entirely on the surface of the moon with the sparest of casts and the eeriest of vibes.

It makes a certain sci-fi sense for Jones since he's the son (originally named "Zowie Bowie") of pop superstar David Bowie and grew up with heavy up close and personal exposure to his father's otherworldly output such as the classic albums "Space Oddity" and "Ziggy Stardust", along with his films THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and LABYRINTH.

So, with that unique upbringing in mind, we are given Sam Rockwell as a Lunar Industries employee, alone and very lonely, on a 3 year assignment to extract Helium-3. His only companion at the lunar base Sarang is a robot named Gerty - voiced by Kevin Spacey. Except for a few blurry video messages on the monitors of his wife back home (Dominique McElligott) and a couple of corporate guys calling the shots, it's the Sam Rockwell show. He's burnt out as Hell; schlepping around the base in a daze donning shades to shield from the blinding glare around him as he counts down the days to when he can go home. He sees odd flickers of images of himself on the monitors and the fleeting vision of a woman in a yellow dress, but brushes these off as weary hallucinations until crashing his rover. When he awakes he finds there is another man on the base - another Sam Rockwell to be exact.

Because there are only so many pieces that make up MOON, it would be wrong to give any more away than that - from just that simple description I bet one could imagine story threads involving clones and delusion; dammit I'm still giving things away. It must be noted that while the Bowie background can't be ignored, this is more spiritually rooted to the seminal sci fi of the '70s and '80s - Jones cites SILENT RUNNING, ALIEN, OUTLAND, and, of course, the obvious connection: 2001 as major influences.

These were the antithesis of the commercial appeal of STAR WARS and its ilk; films that were about probing the depths of character's alienation instead of space laser fights and cute robots.

MOON can be a slow dry ride, but it's one that lingers darkly though thoughtfully. Rockwell's performance never falters especially in scenes when he's interacting with himself; he's as on as any time in his career. Rockwell's no stranger to sci fi either from his roles in GALAXY QUEST and HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY so he is at home here.

It was nice to see models and matte paintings instead of CGI, though I bet that choice was budgetary rather than artistic. There's a low key yet absorbingly spooky mood to MOON that is still with me the next day, while the parts that didn't quite add up (like the unsatisfying ending) are fading. As it still processes, right now I can only concede that it's a fine film debut as well as a promising chip off the Bowie block.

More later...

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

A Nominee For Weirdest DVD Of 2008 - THE FLAMING LIPS: CHRISTMAS ON MARS

THE FLAMING LIPS: CHRISTMAS ON MARS
(Dir. Wayne Coyne, 2008)

Okay, so it didn’t take as long as Guns ‘N Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” but Flaming Lips front man Wayne Coyne has been plugging the release of CHRISTMAS ON MARS since the dawn of this decade. After some festival screenings here and there, the film finally just dropped on DVD and it proves to be every bit the space oddity the Oklahoman art rockers have been promising.

What wasn’t expected though was that the film has no vocal pop songs on its soundtrack, just reams of ambient embellishments that mostly serve as incidental music. So don’t expect a Beatles-eque romp unless the idea of watching MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR with the songs edited out appeals to you.

In a scenario reminiscent of sci-fi staples like ALIEN, 2001, and the lesser known John Carpenter cult curio DARK STAR, a team of astronauts work to colonize Mars in the near future (2052?) while a baby is being birthed by extremely unconvent

ional means which inspire qrotesque fetus hallucinations (think ERASERHEAD). This is mostly presented in grainy black and white shot on 16 MM film on makeshift sets making it resemble an art school project. Bright color sometimes blurry, sometimes jarringly vivid, does come into it in pointed places making it also resemble home movies of an acid test.

The birth is timed for Christmas eve so the colonists which include Lips members Stephen Drozd (pictured left - presumably the protagonist), Michael Ivins, and Kliph Scurlock plan an impromptu pageant to mark the event. A Martian played by Coyne painted green with antennas (described by one character as looking like something “that crawled out of Godzilla’s ass”) appears and is recruited to don a Santa Clause suit. Dialogue consists of ponderings such as:

“Humans aren’t meant to live in outer space; it destroys your internal beliefs…makes you think about ‘where is Heaven when you’re in outer space?'”

“I’ve got such a bad feeling that it should make you have a bad feeling.”

(shout-out to STAR WARS?)

“Space is cold, unfeeling, and mean. It crushes all the little things like a moth on a window sill.”

The rising conflict through all this psycho-babble occurs with a capacitor malfunction that threatens their oxygen supply. But with Coyne’s E.T.-esque chest light you can expect a Martian Christmas miracle! None of the Flaming Lips members are good actors (Coyne conquers this by not speaking at all) but there are a few talented thespian folks who ostensibly as fan favors lend a hand.

Adam Goldberg (DAZED AND CONFUSED, 2 DAYS IN PARIS) as “Mars psychologist” has a great scene describing a Lynchian dream about a marching band that all had heads of human genitals, and SNL’s Fred Armison has a nice casual cameo credited as “Philosophical and Hymn-Singing Astronaut”.

Emulating the Russian sci-fi of the 60’s (the likes of which Francis Ford Coppola was enlisted by Roger Corman to rework for American audeinces - NEBO ZOVYOT which became BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN), and distilling dystopian elements down to lazy shoe-gazing isn’t quite the space pop opera cinema that I anticipated.

Artists though should constantly thwart expectations and dive into different mediums with different ideas not caring about consequences so it’s hard, or downright impossible, for me to dismiss or dislike this effort. CHRISTMAS ON MARS may gain cool credit as a ironic holiday late night movie to put on after feasts of food and other altering substances are consumed in seasons to come but for now I can’t get past that it’s just weird for weirdness-sake.

More later…

Monday, September 15, 2008

A Film Babble Blog Pop Quiz Reprise

To celebrate this being my 200th post (which I know in the bloggosphere is no biggie - my prolific pals at The Playlist have had 1471 posts this year alone!) I decided to re-post a quiz from my 80th post (May 6th, 2007) that didn’t get a very satisfactory response first time out. I’ve had a lot more hits since then and I’ve added a new EXTRA EXTRA CREDIT question so I hope film freak folks will roll up their sleeves, get their #2 pencils, and tackle: Film Babble Blog's Movie & TV Mind Teasers! The major unanswered questions in the realm of modern pop-culture in a quick ’n easy pop-quiz format. 1. What was in the briefcase in PULP FICTION?

2. What was in the package that Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) leaves in the care of Barton (John Turturro) in BARTON FINK? 3. What state is Springfield in on The Simpsons? 4. Why (or how) is Chance the Gardener (Peter Sellers) able to walk on water at the end of BEING THERE?

5. How (or why) did Groundhog Day keep repeating to Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in GROUNDHOG DAY? 6. What is the one thing that 13 CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING is about?

7. Did Mookie (Spike Lee) do the right thing in DO THE RIGHT THING? 8. When the Fonz (Henry Winkler) moved in over the Cunningham's garage on Happy Days - did he actually pay rent? 9. How on bloody Earth did those images get on that damn videotape in any version of THE RING?

10. Who killed chauffeur Owen Taylor (Dan Wallace) in THE BIG SLEEP? (Man, if you can answer this...) EXTRA CREDIT : Who put the monolith on earth during the opening apes BC segment and on the moon in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY? God or Aliens? Discuss.

EXTRA EXTRA CREDIT:

What does Bill Murray whisper in Scarlett Johansson' s ear at the end of LOST IN TRANSLATION?

Okay film folks! Don’t let me down - take the quiz and send your answers to me as comments below or to my email: boopbloop7@gmail.com More later...

Friday, July 04, 2008

THE ONION MOVIE And 5 Other Comedy Sketch Films That Actually Don't Suck (For The Most Part)

Ah, the sketch comedy film - not really a genre, more like a sub section of cinema that barely exists. Wikipedia doesn’t have a category listing for them, only listing them under anthology films.

A recent hard copy movie guide I browsed through recently - the VideoHound’s Golden Movie Retriever - had a listing for “comedy anthology” films but only had about 20 or so - very few of which came anywhere near essential. What brings this whole shebang to mind is the direct to DVD release of a film adaptation of a popular print and online satire rag:

THE ONION MOVIE (Dirs. Tom Kuntz & Mike Maguire, 2008) After years in development Hell with shelvings and re-shootings this troubled film finally gets dumped onto DVD with little fanfare. I usually stay away from reviews of movies until I can see them for myself but the critical stink surrounding the THE ONION MOVIE still wafted in my direction so I had some idea before inserting the disc that this may be hard going.

What I didn't anticipate was how painful it was going to be to get through. I have been a fan of the Onion since the mid 90’s with its great hysterical headlines like “Desperate Vegetarians Declare Cows Plants” and “Cop Kills Own Partner, Vows To Track Self Down” but the idea of making a movie of vignettes based on their silly satirical style seemed sketchy (sorry, couldn’t resist) at best.

Unfortunately it’s even worse than expected with horribly unfunny stabs at race, sexism, politics, and corporate commercialism that at times turned my stomach. A segment involving surburbanites gathering to play a “Who Done It” type board game involving rape particularly made me wince. It’s no wonder that Onion Inc.

President Sean Mills has stressed that they are no longer associated with the movie, much like Mad Magazine disowned their own ill-fated foray into film - the originally titled raunchy ANIMAL HOUSE rip-off MAD MAGAZINE PRESENTS UP THE ACADEMY. Following in National Lampoon’s footsteps, even in the era of the sexual revolution, was a lot harder than it looked I suppose.

THE ONION MOVIE oddly even tries to have something of a plot between the terrible skits - Onion News Anchor Norm Archer, played by solid character actor Len Cariou (who had a short but sweet part as an old friend to Jack Nicholson in ABOUT SCHMIDT), rebels against the plugging of their parent company during the newscast and thr

eatens a walk-out if his forum is used to advertise their big budget movie release “Cock Puncher" starring Steven Seagal.

Seagal himself appears as one of the only actual celebrities that appear, otherwise its filled with bit players from Seinfeld and OFFICE SPACE (like the “oh face” guy - Greg Pitts). Cariou is obviously headed for a Howard Beale-breakdown (you know, “I’m mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!” from NETWORK) and despite lines like “Georgia officials announced plans to add a swastika and middle finger to the Georgia State Flag” he acts as if he’s in a straight drama.

That's probably the only way he could stomach such dire material. Not only is THE ONION MOVIE one of the worst comedies I’ve ever seen, it’s an excruciating experience that I’d pay to forget. That it is only an hour and 20 minutes long is the only good thing I can say about it.

Okay! Since that sketch comedy film royally sucked let’s look at some examples of the form that are more worthwhile. Like I said above there aren't many so it comes down to:

5 Sketch Comedy Movies That Don't Suck (For The Most Part)

1. Tie: AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT(Dir. Ian MacNaughton, 1971) / MONTY PYTHON'S THE MEANING OF LIFE (Dir. Terry Jones, 1983) Book ending the Python filmography are these 2 anthology films filled with a high ratio of quality material. AND NOW... was made to introduce American audiences to their material (mostly from the first and second seasons of Monty Python's Flying Circus). It didn’t do the trick - they’d have to wait for Public Television reruns and MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL to get U.S. acclaim).

Weirdly the films was more successful in Britain where the material was already well known and the title was completely redundant. Despite that John Cleese remarked “However we edited the film, people got bored half way through because there was no story” and Michael Palin lamented that there were too many scenes with "men behind desks” it is still nice to see such classics as “Nudge Nudge”, “The Upper Class Twit Of The Year", “The Dead Parrot”, and “The Lumberjack Song” get the big screen treatment.

As Monty Python’s last movie THE MEANING OF LIFE is a sketch film with an obvious theme. Its sketches are presented with titles: “PART I - THE MIRACLE OF BIRTH” through to “PART VII - DEATH” representing the 7 stages of man. Cleese (definitely the most critical Python) said the film was “very patchy, though it had wonderful stuff in it.”

He's right but the wonderful stuff like the “Every Sperm Is Sacred” musical number, the obese Mr. Creosote (Terry Jones in a massive fat suit) sequence, and the Grim Reaper/Heaven as Vegas finale is up there with Python’s best. “Perhaps we're just one of God's little jokes” Eric Idle’s opening theme song ponders and while we never get an answer to that we do get a lot of existential laughs along the way.

2. THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE (Dir. John Landis, 1977) Though it was directed by Landis this is the first film project by the comedy team of ZAZ (Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker). It typifies crude 70’s humour and foreshadows the rising tide of gross-out lowbrow fare that would soon flood the market.

Still, it has a lot of material that works including an extended Bruce Lee parody “A Fistful Of Yen” (which runs for over half an hour), a trailer for the ultimate disaster movie “That’s Armageddon!”, and a commercial for a board game based on the Kennedy assassination called “Scot Free”. There's also lots of nudity if the comedy isn’t working for you. I

f you want to see where the AIRPLANE!-style joke-a-minute genre that begat the awful recent SCARY/EPIC/DATE/etc. MOVIE series began check out this dated but still decent sketch comedy platter. Incidentally the title on the marquee in picture above - “See You Next Wednesday” which comes from a line in 2001, appears in nearly every John Landis movie.

3. EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX * BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK (Dir. Woody Allen, 1972) Allen’s loose adaptation of the best selling book by David Reuben is one of my least favorite of his films but as a sketch comedy collection goes it has more than its share of funny moments.

Featuring actors who never worked with Allen in any other film (including Tony Randall, Burt Reynolds, Regis Philbin, and Gene Wilder) in surreal sexual settings such as a game show called “What’s My Perversion?” and a sci-fi satire taking place inside a man's brain during intercourse, this film is by far Woody Allen’s most outrageous and weirdest work.

Wilder has some oddly touching moments as a man having an affair with a sheep but the craziest and most memorable scene has to be the countryside terrorized by a gigantic breast created by a mad scientist. After subduing the runaway mammary a policeman warns that they should still be cautious because “they usually travel in pairs.”

4. THE GROOVE TUBE (Dir. Ken Shapiro, 1974) The quality is starting to drop way off on this short list of skit films with this extremely raunchy television send-up which misses a lot more than it hits. A sleazy scatological bent overwhelms the humour (or lack of it) here with scenes involving a talking penis puppet, a TV clown who reads pornographic literature to his children viewers after telling the adults to leave the room, and the linking thread of promotional films for the fictional Uranus Corporation.

Most notable for sure is that was the film debut of Chevy Chase who had better luck with counterculture based sketch comedy the next year with Saturday Night Live. Doubt he holds this film in very high regard.

5. AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON (Dirs. Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, 1987)

A sequel of sorts to KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE in that it involves Landis and has a likewise extended film parody -the 50’s sci-fi satire of the title. It’s, of course, another uneven collection of TV commercial parodies, educational films, and late night showings of B movies with a lot of dicey material (including Andrew “Dice” Clay himself!) but a few laughs emerge and the fast pace makes it breeze by.

Lots of familliar folk to look out for too - Phil Hartman, Arsenio Hall, Carrie Fisher, Steve Guttenberg, Steve Allen, and Michelle Pfeiffer poke their heads in and out of this long forgotten fitfully funny sketch comedy jamboree.

So there you go - 5 comic anthology movies that don’t completely suck. Let me stress though that I’d only really recommend the last 2 as alternatives to the THE ONION MOVIE. Looks like with that awful entry this slight genre can now truly be put to rest.

R.I.P. Sketch Comedy Movie Genre (1972-2008)

More later...

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Just As Everybody Says - WALL-E Is Wonderful

WALL-E (Dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008)

Everybody (well, just about everybody - the film is at 96% at Rotten Tomatoes) is raving about WALL-E and it is well deserving of the acclaim. As the latest in the line of popular sophisticated animated Pixar films it is set in 2700 and involves a lonely rusty robot left behind to clean up the Earth after pollution has deemed it unlivable many centuries previous.

As the humans have retreated to what Buy’ N Large (think Wal-Mart) CEO (played by a non-animated Fred Willard) calls “the final fun-tiere!” on a large corporate cruise-ship space station, WALL-E (stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth) compacts old trash into cubicles and builds skyscrapers out of them.

He collects what strikes his fancy - a Rubik’s cube, silver lighters, a dingy old hub cab that he tips like a hat while watching an ancient videotape of HELLO, DOLLY. It’s apparent up front that this machine, as well as this movie, has a big heart as he befriends a cockroach and looks longingly to the sky while replaying love song sound-bites from his before mentioned favorite movie.

When a probe named EVE (stands for Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) from the ginormous spaceship comes to Earth looking for plant-life, WALL-E is intrigued. She’s a shiny new model with a noble directive and after one of the mightiest movie meet-cutes I’ve ever seen, WALL-E is soon smitten. I really don’t want to spoil any more of the nice narrative surprises or the tons of ingenious ideas here so that’s as far as I’ll go with the plot.

A friend mentioned IDIOCRACY (Mike Judge’s failed futuristic dumbing-down of society satire) right as WALL-E began so it was hard to shake the similarities of a trashed-out Earth with remnants of non-perishable plastic products covering every square inch.

There is no big spelled out environmental preachiness here though, the narrative is too clever for such moralizing - more fun to be had in spectacularly imagining a future where cute robots sift through the debris and help mankind get back on track.

There are many echoes of past sci-fi classics which also involved cute and not so cute robots - the warp speed, musical queues, and sound effects of the STAR WARS movies (thanks to Academy award winning sound designer Ben Burtt who also does the voice of WALL-E) and 2001 in both the character of the evil ship’s Computer (voiced by Sigourney Weaver!) and the use of the grand “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” Jeff Garlin (Curb Your Enthusiasm, I WANT SOMEBODY TO EAT CHEESE WITH) does a enthused performance as the Ship’s Captain who despite his hard to move girth may find a spark of inspiration from the passionate power-activated robots who suddenly appear before him.

In the matinee crowd full mostly of families with many little kids I sat in watching this mind bogglingly beautiful and funny movie I heard a lot of laughter of course, but there was also much crying, awe-ing and the very vivid sensation of an audience being profoundly moved.

Score hit #9 for Pixar - in my book, or on blog, every one of their films has been better than the last and WALL-E is not only the best yet but one of the best films of the year.

More later...

Friday, February 22, 2008

BE KIND REWIND - Viewed, Reviewed, And Returned To The Dropbox *

* It's a film new to theaters but I couldn't resist the old school videotape lingo. When STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH - was the first in the series to not be made available on videocassette, many reported it as the death of the VHS format.

Well, BE KIND REWIND is here to capture one last gasp of the magnetic medium as the final nails are hammered into the coffin. As a former video store employee who has worked for various chains over the years (most are out of business now and the remaining ones will be soon) I was really looking forward to this movie and excited that it was coming to my hometown theatre. So let's pop it in and push play:

BE KIND REWIND (Dir. Michel Gondry, 2008)

The premise is simple - after all the rental videotapes at a neighborhood store in Passaic, New Jersey get erased, the employees who are strapped for cash and in danger of being evicted remake the films in the inventory with themselves as actors.

Sounds good so far, right? I mean we get Jack Black and Mos Def playing out scenes from GHOSTBUSTERS, RUSH HOUR 2, BOYZ N THE HOOD, 2001, and many others in homemade costumes with half remembered mostly improvised dialogue.

For some reason they call these 20 minute D.I.Y. versions "Sweded" and they become so popular that their store soon has a line around the block. Danny Glover is the owner of the business and the building it resides in, which he claims jazz legend Fats Waller was born in.

Glover soon sees the value of the "Sweded" videos and takes part in them as do most of the customers oddly including Mia Farrow (appearing a bit frail and out of it) whose character is far from defined. Melonie Diaz is recruited to be the love interest in the remakes and she sparks some feelings in Mos Def - but that's not fleshed out either.

Also it's cool to see Marcus Carl Franklin (the young black kid who was one of the Bobs in I'M NOT THERE) in a small part as one of the local loyal customers. "Far from defined" and "not fleshed out" pretty much state my problems with this film.

Early on the magnetizing accident which causes the blunder to set the plot in motion is a foreteller of many clunky contrived plotpoints ahead and much of the film feels extremely disjointed. Jack Black's shtick wears out its welcome within the first 10 minutes (or sooner) and Mos Def is likable but too lackadaisical to give this material the needed zing it requires.

As I suspected with his previous film THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP, Michael Gondry doesn't appear to be the greatest writer - he really should have only directed here and let somebody more experienced with film comedy take a pass at the screenplay.

The best parts are obviously the remakes - it's great to see Glover and Farrow redo DRIVING MISS DAISY (albeit briefly - Black and Mos Def do their own version earlier on), Black's ROBOCOP outfitted with kitchen pots and pans has its moments, and the cardboard cut-outs when they attempt THE LION KING get some laughs too. It's amusing as well to see Black remake KING KONG because, you know, he was in a real KING KONG remake!

This time however he plays the ape which might have been the direction Peter Jackson should've taken but I digress. The second half with its jazz soundtrack and the neighborhood communal sentiment (which I could never completely buy into) seems stolen from Spike Lee.

Not quite the ode to the soon to be extinct VHS format, nor the definitive videostore movie (not that there is such a thing) BE KIND REWIND is not without its charms but it's a tad undercooked.

Definitely not a must see on the big screen - I would recommend waiting for video. Digital video that is, that way you can go right to the good parts (the film recreations - duh!) and you can Fast Forward, I mean chapter-skip through the forgettable rest of it. Okay, now hit Eject!

More later...