The blog is back, and ready to rock your socks off with the fury of Ronnie James Dio.
Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. I had a pretty relaxing few days, got in a lot of chill-out time, movie-watching, sleeping, etc., which was exactly what the doctor ordered after a few nonstop weeks of work and running around. But oh, the wonders of sitting around, takin' it easy ... that is truly what I deem to be a key ingredient of the Finer Things in Life.
My Thanksgiving dinner was interesting, but good. It was spent here in LA with my great-uncle Josh and his wife, at the home of one of their family friends. While there was the awkwardness factor of meeting most of the people at the dinner for the first time, overall it was a nice way to spend Turkey Day, and there is something to be said for sitting around a table eating homecooked food in the comfort of someone's home.
Now it's back to work as the countdown to '07 begins. It's looking like I will put off taking some time off for the holidays until the beginning of January, so it will be a bit of a long stretch from now until then. Oh well, no use in dwelling on that - time to put my head down Clyde Drexler style and drive.
TV STUFF:
- Who honestly didn't see The Nine's cancellation coming a mile a way? And who, seriously, are these TV critics who have so consistently been praising the show? You can't have a show premise predicated on one ongoing mystery that is not actively being investigated by the lead characters. You just can't, it's bad storytelling. If a show's central conceit is the mystery, then the mystery had better be front and center. It'd be like if Lost's format was 90% the pre-crash lives of the survivors, and 10% flashes to their lives on the mysterious island that they are now on. Why deprive the viewer of the most interesting part of your story? Since The Nine had such a talented cast, I hope to see its actors pop up elsewhere, and I'm sure they will.
- Well, my expectations for last night's SIMPSONS were probably artificially high, as my brother IM'd me from Boston claiming that for some reason he really enjoyed the episode. Since my brother hardly ever watches the show anymore and when he does is generally uninterested, I was both shocked and amazed by this bold endorsement. Turns out, it was yet more evidence of my brother's questionable taste in comedy, as this was for all intents and purposes a clunker of an episode. Nope, even the clever and superbly animated Ali G parody could not save this almost entirely unfunny and unoriginal ep, which shamelessly recycled two of the most overused and played-out premises in recent Simpsons history: a.) Homer gets fired / quits his job and takes on some silly new profession (in this case ice-cream man), and, b.) Homer's bumbling causes a rift between he and Marge, and only some grand display of his love and dependency on her eventually wins her back. I mean, come on! We've seen this like 5 thousand times in the last few seasons alone. Also, as if that wasn't bad enough, this ep featured cringe-worthy crude humor that The Simpsons has NEVER been able to pull of well. I mean there is something that just isn't funny about Homer making erection jokes, leave that for Family Guy. Man, the sad thing is that there was a time when episodes that featured Homer and Marge having marital problems were legitimately moving and emotional at times - now it's just one more retread of the same tired tune.
My Grade: C -
- FAMILY GUY was pretty decent, though still operating on a somewhat lower quality tier than it did back in the early days, when no show made me laugh harder. This ep had a few good gags (Chester Cheetah listening to Rush and snorting orange-colored coke was classic, as was the infomercial for 80's sitcom sounds), but overall still felt a little bit flat. The plot was nothing too special, and I think that as funny as he is, Stewie is in danger of becoming way too played-out.
My Grade: B -
- Looking foward to tonight's "fall finale" of PRISON BREAK --- very curious to see where the show goes from here ...
MOVIE REVIEWS:
TENACIOUS D AND THE PICK OF DESTINY Review:
- You've got to love it whenever a movie comes out that is, well, legit. You know, a movie that wasn't created by commitee, that wasn't written by 15 different writers - a movie that features guys bringing that one great, big idea they've had brewing in their brains for years to big and glorious celluloid life. TENACIOUS D is just such a movie - a movie that is "legit" Jack Black - and even though this is far from a perfect comedy, there is a certain joy in seeing two guys in JB and Kyle Gas simply being on screen, doing what they love, putting their own unique sensibilities out there, bringing an idea to life that is their baby. So while it does drag at times, and falls flat at times, there are those moments of cinematic magic where Tenacious D, the band and the movie, rock ... and rock hard.
First off, the opening of the flick kicks seven kinds of ass. Some kid who may as well be Jack Black's 11-year old clone, seranading hsi whitebread family with expletive-laden rock lyrics, and only to be scolded by his dad, played by MEATLOAF, exiled to his room, and then given a rock n' roll quest by a poster of Ronnie James Dio come to devilish life. I mean, does it get any better than that? Not really, no. Which is a slight problem for the movie, as nothing else until the final act reaches that same glorious high achieved by JB, Meatloaf, and Dio coming together to form some kind of unholy trinity of bombastic rock-opera. Still, there are plenty of laughs yet to be had. From Jack Black's Clockwork Orange-style encounter, to his first meeting with Kyle Gas, the JB's zen-like rock training, I was laughing through most of the movie, with only a few spots where things slowed down.
Also, the cameos throughout the film are great. Ben Stiller puts in a memorable turn as a Guitar Center employee with special knowledge about the fabled Pick of Destiny. Tim Robbins is almost unrecognizable as a strange villain. And man, Dave Grohl KICKS ASS as Satan himself ... the Foo Fighters frontman may have a big movie career ahead of him. But the sight of him, in full Tim Curry-in-Legends style red devil makeup, having a climactic rock n' roll showdown with The D, is truly a sight to behold. Whatever slight feeling of boredem was creeping in as the movie approached its big finale was totally eviscerated by the Tenacious Ones going mano e mano with the Devil. Awesome.
So yeah, this isn't the perfect comedy, but it is a pretty perfect vehicle for the force of Rock that is The D. As for the songs, well, they are a little bit of a mixed bag, but the tunes come through for the most part. As mentioned, the opening and closing numbers are suitably badass and hilarious, while a few others are almost too out-there for their own good, including JB's extremely weird 'shroom-trip sequence that involves a Strawberry River and a giant Sasquatch. Other songs, like the weird techno-ish tune that played while JB and KG go all Mission Impossible, was hilariously random ("Lazer!" "Tetris!" "Marble Madness!"). Some songs were less memorable, but there was plenty of rocking to be had.
Overall, an enjoyable if not somewhat all over the place, slightly hit and miss, but oftentimes hilarious movie (with one of the funniest riffs on "use the force" since Mallrats, by the way) that reaffirmed my faith in the power of rock, and stands proudly in the cannon of movie history as possibly the funniest movie ever featuring two such fat and odd-looking men. ROCK.
My Grade: B+
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION Review:
- For those of us who have been fans of Christopher Guest's movies over the last several years, there is a certain sense of hipster pride in being privy to the very un-mainstream comedy stylings of Mr. Guest and his cast of comedy players. To be aware and knowlegable about the comedic wonders of Waiting For Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind carries with it a certain level of comedy street cred, and so it was with great knowing anticipation that people like me made sure to remind people to forget about Borat for a minute, forget about CGI-animated penguins, and put aside thoughts about the next Will Ferell frat-pack vehicle, because the real comedy that should be on everyone's radar was For Your Consideration. And on paper ... how could you go wrong? You had acclaimed writer/director Christopher Guest again at the helm, all the hilarious members of his ensemble, from Catherine O'Hara to Eugene Levy to Michael McKean et all, back for another round, and you even had a few bonuses to boot - Ricky Gervais making an appearance in a work of the director who helped inspire The Office, for one. So again ... how could you go wrong?
Well, it is with great disappointment and reluctance that I tell you ... something here did go slightly wrong. Not to say this is a bad movie - it has its little moments of brilliance, no doubt. But it is, easily, the weakest of Christopher Guest's movies to date, certainly below par for him and never reaching the comedic heights of Guffman, Show, or Wind. Now sure, those movies are so good that they will be hard to ever top, but For Your Consideration is just missing that extra level of depth that made the others such great movies.
With Guest's previous movies, the director chose obscure and very niche subjects to satirize. Dog shows, community theatre, and folk music are not areas with which the average person has much familiarity, but Guest so lovingly and meticulously spoofed his subjects that even if I knew nothing about folk music going into A Mighty Wind, there was no doubt in my mind that Guest had captured that world and its idiosyncracies with an affectionate sense of mocking self-seriousness. Here, I am somewhat familiar with the world of show-business, as are many of us, via a constant barrage of entertainment news shows, magazines, and scripted TV shows, all dealing with the behind-the-scenes goings-on of Hollywood. For Your Consideration never feels like it really captures that same level of authenticity. The characters are less well-rounded, the fly-on-the wall point of view of Guest's previous films often lacking as we are presented with a satire that never quite rings true.
It doesn't help that the movie-within-a-movie here is just totally absurd. Sure, the very idea of a movie called Home For Purim garnering Oscar buzz makes me laugh. But when we see the movie itself, it's clear that there is NO WAY it would ever receive critical praise. Contrast this to the folk songs in A Mighty Wind - they're brilliantly satirical, but also, legitimately GREAT songs. The genious of Guest in that movie was that he created a totally believable world of folk music, with iconoclastic figures, catchy songs, and a real sense of history behind it, but subverted things just enough to produce great comedy and satire. Same goes for Guffman and Best in Show - you totally bought into the worlds and characters that Guest created, because the deadpan delivery and mockumentary style really reinforced the idea that the characters were oblivious to the fact that they were part of a comedy. When we see glimpses of Home For Purim in this movie, there are some funny moments, sure, but it serves to remove us from reality - there's no way the actors could see this suposed melodrama, movie-within-a-movie as anything other than a farce. For Your Consideration just doesn't work on the same level (or, multiple levels) as Guest's previous films.
All that would be okay if the movie were hilarious, but it just doesn't have as many memorable lines or exchanges as I'd have liked to have seen. Part of this might be due to the lack of the mockumentary style, which really seemed to allow the actors to have a lot of fun and throw in little moments that really made the dialogue exchanges stand out. I don't want to sound entirely negative -- there are plenty of moments of laugh-out loud hilarity scattered throughout the movie. The great Fred Willard, as always, is a scene-stealer and has a few classic lines. Just the sight of him as a Entertainment Tonight-style TV host, complete with bleached-blonde fro-hawk, is ridiculously funny. He along with his cohost, played by the frequently hilarious Jane Lynch, are great throughout the movie. Ricky Gervais is funny in his brief appearance, but isn't given much to do except to awkwardly hit on Jennifer Coolidge (which is actually pretty funny). Eugene Levy is characteristically brilliant as a Hollywood agent, and gets off a few classic lines. Some of the players seem under-utilized however. Michael McKean and Bob Balaban, so hilarious in A Mighty Wind, aren't given much to do here as the two screenwriters behind Home For Purim. Ed Begley Jr. gets a few laughs as a gay makeup artist, but nothing that tops his turn as Lars Olfen in A Mighty Wind. Also, John Michael Higgins, hilarious in Best in Show, plays an odd and somewhat grating character here who is probably given way more screentime than the character warrants.
As for the main players - that's where the movie really begins to falter. Catherine O'Hara is a huge favorite of mine, and is probably the best of all of Guest's troupe at mixing comedy with real, heartfelt pathos. I feel she was Oscar-worthy in Mighty Wind. Here, she gives it her all as a fading actress, but just has no one to really play off of, and her character just seems aimless and one-note. Harry Shearer is another reliably great comedic actor, but again, his turn as a central character here doesn't quite work. Guest takes a risk here in relegating his usual lead players like Eugene Levy and Bob Balaban to small, supporting roles, and the movie loses something for it, as neither Shearer or O'Hara's characters are particularly believable or fun, though of course, they do have their moments. This isn't as much the fault of the actors - it's just that they don't have as much to work with as in previous films - there's not really one compelling narrative that holds the film together as in Guffman or Wind.
The real star of the show here is Parker Posey, who is so good in this that she thankfully erased whatever bad aftertaste I still had lingering from her terribly-conceived role in Superman Returns. Posey has always surprised me with how great she is in all of Guest's movies, and here she really steps up and steals the movie, capping the film with a closing scene that is also its funniest and most memorable - a bitter, disenfranchised Posey doing a one-woman stand-up show that is both hilarious and disturbing.
So again, this movie has a number of funny moments that remind you why Guest is typically so good at what he does, but, overall, it never quite comes together in the brilliant way that his previous films did so effortlessly. As a satire of Hollywood, it never really rings true, and most of the characters just don't feel as real as we have come to expect from this supremely talented group of actors. I'd still recommend that fans of Guest check this out - this is still smarter and funnier than many comedies out there. Hoever, For Your Consideration is frustrating in its obvious amount of talent that is never fully utilized, and in its potential for hilarity that never quite materializes. That potential on occasion translates to flashes of brilliance - just don't expect another start-to-finish classic on the level of Guest's previous comedies. Keep in mind that, unavoidably, my grade reflects that level of high expectations and high standards that Christopher Guest and company have set for themselves, never quite lived up to here.
My Grade: B -
So there's two comedies that come from very distinct voices ... and here's a movie from a similarly singular vision - the latest from Darren Aronofsky ...
THE FOUNTAIN Review:
- Wow. I say that because The Fountain is definitely a "wow" kind of movie. It's one of those movies that leaves you scratching your head in a stumped daze, simultaneously awed and frustrated with what you have just seen. The Fountain is a movie that you really have to buy into to appreciate, and whether or not you buy into it may just be a matter of mood and timing. But while I wasn't sure what I thought about the movie at first, as it went on I felt myself becoming more and more absorbed into its surreal world, until by the end I was totally lost in its time-spanning trippiness, to the point where by its climactic finale, director Darren Aronofsy had me right in the palm of his hand. I was hanging on every note of the pulsing score, glued to every movement and shift of the camera, fixated on the hallucinatory visuals. By the end of the movie, I had cast aside most of my doubts and was firmly in "whoah, this is pretty friggin' awesome" territory. My friends and I talked about our various theories on the twisting narrative for a good while afterwards, always a good sign. And then I thought about the movie even more. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. Because while The Fountain is a very flawed work of art, it really felt, more than any other movie I've seen in recent memory, like, well, a work of art.
To that end, aesthetically, the film is just mesmerizing to behold. The movie spans three different eras - medieval Spain, the present day, and the far future. It is the latter setting that holds the movie's most memorable visuals, with a pale, bald, alien-looking Hugh Jackman floating through deep space in a transluscent bubble. At first, the imagery here is so out-there, so strange, that the first reaction is almost to giggle at its initial absurdity. But slowly it wins you over, and you just become entranced with how striking it all is. The artistry here is really amazing - in so many movies we see elaborate CGI f/x - but how many movies make you stop and just gaze at what's on screen as you would a painting in a gallery? The Fountain, amazingly, achieves this kind of effect. And it's not just in the new-agey future setting that Aronofsky achieves visual splendor. The historical scenes have a cold, icy beauty to them, and the action here is as good and exciting as most full-on action movies. Even the present-day scenes are shot in an amazing-to-look-at, painterly style, and all kinds of recurring visual motifs - shapes, faces, repeated actions - tie things together visually in a way that most movies don't take the time or care to worry about. If nothing else, The Fountain is a treat to look at - with some of the most memorable visuals this side of 2001.
Speaking of 2001, Kubrick's classic is one of the few movies that I can really think of to draw comparisons to with regards to The Fountain. Like A Space Odyssey, The Fountain is a fairly epic, multi-tiered tale that spans multiple eras, featuring extended scenes of trippy, cosmic abstraction, with each narrative having strong thematic ties but only vaguely connected in the strictest sense of plot and story. With The Fountain, Aranofsky leaves things open for multiple interpretations. The story in each era deals with similarly named, star-crossed lovers, played by Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, searching desperately for the secret of immortality so that they may remain united for all eternity. I've heard some say that only the narrative in the present is real, while the past is merely part of a story written by Rachel Weisz's character and the future is merely an imagined one born out of Jackman's characters' desperation to find a way to keep his dying love alive. On the other hand, half the fun, to me, of the movie, was going back over the very ambiguous narrative structure and trying to wrap my head around how it all fit together. Again, the means to describe this movie are tough to come by - think 2001: A Space Odyssey meets Romeo And Juliet and other Shakespearian tragedies, by way of a Pink Floyd laser light show and The Twilight Zone, with a bit of the craziest Japanese anime you've ever seen thrown in for good measure.
This movie is really all about the two leads, and both do a remarkable job with some very complex material that could have been totally butchered if placed in the wrong hands. Hugh Jackman is really, really impressing me lately. From the X-Men movies, I thought he was a decent actor who seemed a little too clean-cut to be a believable Wolverine. Lackluster genre flicks like Van Helsing didn't do much to enhance his rep as an actor. But with his outstanding recent work in The Prestige and now here, I am sold on Jackman's talent - this guy is the real deal. Interestingly, this role was originally to be played by Bradd Pitt, but at this point it's hard to imagine anyone else pulling off what Jackman does here - playing three inter-linked but separate characters in three different time periods, filling each one with a haunting sense of loss and desperation and intensity. Rachel Weisz is also outstanding, wide-eyed and zen-like as the modern-day Izzy, condemned to die of a worsening tumor, and regal and otherworldly as Isabella - queen of Spain, in the historical sequences. As Aronofsky has said in interviews, each character is painted in broad strokes, each a cipher, a fairy-tale character ... and somehow, it works.
Not to say that this movie doesn't have flaws. It is so ambitious (just read up on its years-in-the-making production, in which the movie was started, stopped, and scrapped many times over) that it often threatens to topple under its own weight. Aronofsky seems to be grasping to figure out how to take his high-concept, big-budget epic and condense it into a smaller, artier character drama, and some of his resulting choices are a little confusing. At some points, things really start to drag, despite a relatively quick running time, as the same points are driven home over and over again. While Aronofsky's slow, deliberate style works wonders in the visually engaging future sequences for example, the present-day scenes at times tend to really drag and feel labored rather than arresting. Like I said above, this is a movie that really takes a while to buy into. Its constant jumping between time periods, and non-linear narrative, are a lot to grasp at first, and for much of the movie there is just no way to understand what it is that's going on. Only towards the end do things finally come together enough so that the bigger picture takes shape, but again, when things come together, they REALLY come together. As it geras up for its finale, the movie churns out one jaw-dropping "wow" moment after another, as it builds to a somewhat jarring but (in retrospect) appropriate conclusion.
Even with its flaws - its sometimes frustratingly messy narrative and unabashedly melodramatic, fairy-tale-like tone, this is a movie that I couldn't help but admire. It really is unlike almost anything else I've ever seen, and its hugely, almost absurdly epic, cosmic ponderings about life, death, and love reached a level of artistic grandeur rarely seen in conventional movies. For all it's love-story / sci-fi trappings, this was, really, an art film - visually unique and thematically thought-provoking. After all, how many movies do you see that feature, a bald-headed, wide-eyed, heavily-tattooed Hugh Jackman, doing Tai-Chi inside the confines of a space-drifting bubble, within which may or may not be the mythical Tree of Life, seeking immortality while headed on a crash course for the end of the universe?
My Grade: A -
Alright - I'm about out. I see that none of the three movies I just reviewed did particularly well at the box office, which is too bad as all three deserve a wider audience. None were particularly well marketed either. I mean, Tenacious D had some of the worst-cut trailers I've ever seen, previews that made it look like a third-rate Bill and Ted knockoff and barely gave any idea what The D is all about for the uninitiated. It's too bad it bombed because I'd love to see more adventures of JB and KG on the big screen, Cheech and Chong style. Oh well, if that one dude from Van Wilder can get a spinoff sequel, anything is possible, I guess. Christopher Guest's movies have almsot never been marketed well, and For Your Consideration was no exception. In any case, it's probably not the best primer as to the genius of Guest and co, anyways, but still ... And come on - The Fountain - years in the making, one of the most up and coming directors in the biz, one big star and one on the rise actress? Where was the hype? If anything, I'd urge people to check out The Fountain just for something different - certainly, at the least, it's a movie that will get you talking and thinking even if it's not quite on your wavelength. For me, it's up there with my favorites of the year thus far. Anyways, that's all for now ... may Dio be with you.
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