Filmmakers try to justify He-Man movie to themselves, the world

LOL. I just have no words for this:

“There are no invented new characters plopped into it-and if we and Mattel have our way there will never be. We’re talking about the He-Man mythology. So what we’re talking about doing, in the same way as Batman Begins, we’re going back to the original thing, let’s build it from the ground up again. How can we find our way in? How can we jump into Adam’s life at an interesting point where new audiences will respect him? It’s an Adam origin story, and it’s a Skeletor origin story. We want to see where both of them come from and how they got that way. If we don’t see the humanity and the truth in what Skeletor’s trying to do, then the story’s not compelling.”

Shape up, people. We're talking about the He-Man mythology here! This is important!

Link

Spielberg

A couple of amusing tidbits from TCM's Spielberg documentary last night:

- George Lucas visited the set of "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind" and was convinced it would be far more successful than his own "Star Wars". He offered to trade points with Spielberg, so Spielberg has a 2.5 percent share of "Star Wars" and Lucas has 2.5 percent of "CE3K". Obviously both these people are so rich they probably can't tell the difference, but that's still a pretty good swap for Spielberg!

- On the failure of 1941, Spielberg thinks it might have been due to the high level of violence and noise in the battle sequences. He describes seeing the audiences watching the film, holding their ears because of all the gunfire and explosions. Spielberg said that it wasn't to do with the sound editing or effects, he just "blew too much stuff up". This from the producer of "Transformers".

HOT FUZZ

is the incredibly awesome new film from Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright, the brilliant team behind Shaun of the Dead. In Hot Fuzz they do for action movies what Shaun of the Dead did for horror films.

In a way, a more appropriate comparison would be Wes Craven's Scream, because part of the fun of Hot Fuzz is that the characters call out every single action movie cliche you can think of, giving special honors to "Point Break" and "Bad Boys 2". Both movies work pretty effectively as both a film IN the genre they're parodying, and a parody of that genre. Hot Fuzz is hilarious, but when it gets down to the action, it's as exciting, enjoyable and over-the-top as any badass action film.

Simon Pegg plays Nick Angel, the best London cop there is, who is so good that he's transferred to the safest village in England to avoid making the rest of the team look bad. Once there he brings his hard-boiled cop style to the sleepy village and gets mixed-up in a bizarre undercurrent of mysterious deaths. Nick Frost plays his partner Danny, who has an immense DVD library and encylopedic knowledge of action movie cliches, but despairs of ever seeing any action in real life.

The razor-sharp visual style Edgar Wright developed in Shaun of the Dead is pushed even farther in Hot Fuzz, and the dialogue is even wittier and more off-the-wall. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are again excellent and show an incredible rapport with one another that the movie, like a lot of action films, can be read on one level as a love story between these two partners. It's just that in Hot Fuzz, the people making the movie are aware of these subtexts and not afraid of them. It's funny, but it's sincere and heartfelt as well. Timothy Dalton and Jim Broadbent give great comedic performances and the whole cast of oddball villagers is terrific.

Hot Fuzz is probably the most hands-down enjoyable movie I've seen so far this year, excepting possible Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. As a comedy it's hilarious, as an action movie it kicks serious ass. Definitely recommended in the highest possible terms.

GRINDHOUSE

Robert Rodriguez' "Planet Terror" was absolutely great, worth the price of admission by itself. Gory as hell, gruesome and funny, with great action and a surprisingly tight script. Rose McGowan and the whole cast gave great performances, really throwing themselves into this admittedly goofy material. Doesn't take itself too seriously, just good solid exploitation fun. The thing I admire about Planet Terror is that it's so DENSE--every frame, every scene seems packed to the brim with material that both references the classic exploitation and horror movies of the past, but is also just funny and intense in the present. The dialogue bristles with repeated motifs and phrases, the technical gimmicks are used to rich effect (the "missing reel" which happens just as the steaming hot sex scene is getting started) and everything about the movie was pushed just as far as it could possibly go.

I have to admit I was disappointed in Tarantino's "Death Proof". I'm as big a Tarantino fan as you could find, but something just wasn't clicking with me. I don't mind that the first half of the movie is basically long, fetishy shots of girls' feet, legs and asses (anyone else notice QT's slight case of foot fetishism? :) ), but the dialogue didn't sparkle the way his scripts usually do. There was a LOT of character and a lot of dialogue in the first half of the movie, but very little in the way of memorable lines or moments. Kurt Russell was pretty good, and the case did decent jobs, especially real life stuntwoman Zoe Bell as herself. It was pretty cool, but left me a bit underwhelmed.

Showdown at the House of Blue Mushrooms

Kill Bill with Super Mario Bros sound effects:



Jeff

Movies and TV this week

A Wii catastrophe averted!

Hung out with Reed on Friday, as usual, and had a blast. One of regular entertainments is multiplayer gaming on the Wii. Wii Sports is, of course, a favorite--mainly Tennis, Bowling and Boxing. I've got Street Fighter 2 on the Virtual Console and that is a blast as well, but our absolute favorite multiplayer game is Excite Truck. It's just the right mix of challenging and accessible and has become a mainstay of our gaming.

A few weeks ago we tried to play Wii Sports Boxing and the motion sensor on my second Wii Remote seemed to be busted! I kept putting off calling Nintendo about it but I finally did that on Thursday and ... the support rep told me to whap the remote against my hand a couple of times, and it started working. So it's back to Wii as usual again!

Pan's Labyrinth and Little Miss Sunshine

Saw two movies this week, and they were both excellent in different ways. Pan's Labyrinth was dark and mysterious, simultaneously a beautiful fable of fairies and magic and an intense depiction of fascist brutality and its drive to crush the life out of everything. The star, Ivana Baquero, is definitely going to be an actress to watch, she has the kind of natural depth of emotion that Natalie Portman had in The Professional, and with some luck she'll go on to do great things.


Also watched Little Miss Sunshine, another terrific movie with an excellent young actress at the center. Little Miss Sunshine is about the best example of an indie movie I can think of: it's quirky and unusual, with rich, interesting characters who each seem to have so much depth you could make an entire movie about any of them. Great performances from the stars, especially Steve Carell and Alan Arkin. Abigail Breslin, the central character, actually says relatively little in the movie, but she's such a captivating character who drives the whole story that you just have to adore her. Absolutely one of my favorite movies this year.

Veronica Mars

After having it recommended by both close friends and the likes of Joss Whedon, I've finally picked up the first season of Veronica Mars and started watching it. It's strange, television keeps finding ways of making us care about what happens to rich, pretty white girls in southern California!

I'm a few episodes into it, and I'm digging it so far, although I am having a hell of a time telling the guys apart. Except for her best friend, who's black, they all seem to look roughly the same, from the cute boy she's starting to date to the brooding ex-boyfriend with the mysterious past to the cocky smartass who gives her trouble all the time. It always takes me a minute once they come on screen to tell which one is which.

I have to give props again to Joss Whedon, because somehow on his shows, NONE of the characters look alike. On "Buffy" there were a big variety of teenage girls on the show over the years, but they always looked distinct in shape, wardrobe, hair color and style*, so they never seemed to blend together the way the boys on Veronica Mars do. And on Buffy, there were even fewer guy characters so they all stood apart from each other: Xander, Angel, Oz, Spike... It would be impossible to mix those characters up. Anyway, yet another in a three million part series on why Joss Whedon is great.

Jeff

* except in the last few seasons when Emma Caulfield (Anya) kept changing her hair color and style, in some cases duplicating Sarah-Michelle Gellar's style exactly. A number of the episode commentaries mentioned how this caused some problems in setting up shots with the two of them occasionally.

Synchronicity

I recently went to see the movie "Black Christmas". I knew it would be lousy when I went, but I've got a high tolerance for crappy horror movies. One possible bright side is that the cast includes the lovely Michelle Trachtenberg, and the movie's content advisory included "brief nudity". Would that the twain should meet! So, I headed off to see the film, hoping that the failed promise from Eurotrip of a topless Michelle Trachtenberg fleeing in horror from a sadistic killer could possibly come true.

Alas, it was not to be. The movie was abysmal, as expected, and save for a brief shower scene there was no gratuitous nudity, much less of the Michelle variety. That's how it goes.

A week or so went by and I was watching some old Law & Order episodes, including a second-season episode called "God Bless the Child". The story involved a couple with religious beliefs that forbid them from taking their child to a doctor. In the opening scene, the child is taken to the hospital and dies on the table while her parents plead with the doctors not to treat her.

Before this happens, we see the doctors trying to bring the kid back to life, and who should be playing the child but...




Voila, Michelle Trachtenberg. And topless, no less. Too bad she happens to be FIVE YEARS OLD in the scene. For believers in synchronicity, this just goes to show that you should be extremely specific with what you wish for! The fates can be mischievious.

Jeff

UPDATE: Apparently she was four years old, not five:

Speaking of Law and Order, Michelle recently did a guest stint on the show, appearing opposite Chris Noth (a.k.a. Mr. Big of Sex and the City fame). “I told him that he had seen me topless before,” she said. “He looked kind of embarrassed, like he was trying to figure out how. And then I explained that I had done an episode of the original Law and Order with him when I was four years old!” (Ouch-way to make the guy feel old.)

"The Black Dahlia"

Saw the new Brian DePalma movie "The Black Dahlia" last night.

DePalma has such talent as a director that even when he makes a terrible movie, he can make it memorable and striking--as with "Raising Cain", which is almost grotesque in its awfulness, but deals palpably with DePalma's favorite themes of identity and sexuality and violence.

Unforunately that's not the case here. "The Black Dahlia" never seemed to draw me in as an actual story--I never began to care about the characters enough to want to follow the convoluted murder mystery plot. The actors seemed like they were saying lines, the locations felt like sets, the clothes like costumes. Something about it just never seemed to work.

On top of that the film was premised on some ridiculous assumptions. Mia Kirshner plays Elizabeth Short, the "Black Dahlia" who was murdered and dismembered in 1947 in postwar Los Angeles. Hillary Swank plays a bored socialite who becomes involved in the case after some friends remark that she bears a strong resemblance to Betty Short.

I'm not sure how they came to that conclusion, because even dressed identically, Hillary Swank is tall, broad-shouldered and mannish. She looks nothing like the gorgeous, petite, and very feminine Mia Kirshner.

Based on the novel by James Ellroy, the story has more than a few points in common with his "LA Confidential": seedy postwar Los Angeles, the world of low-budget stag and porno, two cops, one who's political and ambitious, and the girl who comes between them. LA Confidential even featured the "lookalike" theme in Kim Basinger's character. There, the tall, handsome Basinger didn't look much like tiny waif Veronica Lake, but the story and characters were so compelling that it didn't matter.

In "Black Dahlia", once the characters start digging into the mystery of who killed Elizabeth Short the entire movie begins to unravel, and the layers of truth and untruth become more complex and ridiculous each time they're revealed. Many of the characters involved are introduced far too late in the game or are introduced only in flashbacks or exposition, leaving the resolution with a hollow feeling that doesn't satisfy.

Aaron Eckhart is the only actor who really shines, with his charisma and appeal he is a terrific personality on screen. Josh Hartnett is his usual wooden self. The usually-good Scarlett Johannson fills out her sweater nicely but in this film seems strangely distant from the material, like she doesn't believe any of the words she's saying. A number of set pieces in the film feature some bizarre performances, including the Hillary Swank character's mother, who I would swear was channeling SNL's Molly Shannon at her most extreme and grotesque.

Visually DePalm has a couple of his trademark virtuoso moments but sense of artifice exposes the story as hollow and flat rather than drawing the viewer in. This is disappointing, becase I'm a big fan of DePalma. I quite liked his last film, the ambitious and sexy "Femme Fatale", and in general even his lesser films are stylistically interesting. "The Black Dahlia" may benefit from a reappraisal sometime in the future, but for now I can't recommend it at all.

Why I recommend "Casablanca"

Casablanca

by Michael Curtiz

Best movie ever, as far as I’m concerned. Sharp, witty dialogue, intense situations, colorful characteres and an inspiring transformation for Bogart’s character. Add in the amazing musical treatments of “La Marseillaise” and “As Time Goes By” and you can’t miss with Casablanca.

See more about Casablanca

Brokeback to the Future

Brokeback to the Future

Jeff

Chronic of Narnia redux!

Chronic-WHAT-cles of Narnia video from SNL. The best whiteboy rap since MC Hawking.

Jeff

Top Ten Most Revolutionary Action Movies of All Time

I'm in a list-making mood lately...

10. The General (1927)

Buster Keaton's "The General" may seem like an odd choice, but it IS in fact, an action movie, far more than it is a comedy or slapstick. It's a incredibly suspenseful action thriller, and one of Keaton's best films.

9. Seven Samurai (1954)

Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" raised the bar for action epics, creating a standard that would hardly be dented until Sergio Leone's Westerns of the late 60's.

8. Die Hard

"Die Hard" is the quintessential American action movie: a single tough guy against a legion of dangerous bad guys. "Die Hard" rises above the crop by making the tough guy so human and real, as played by Bruce Willis, and by making the bad guy so clever and resourceful, and well-played by Alan Rickman. It's sharp, solid action filmmaking at its best.

7. Hard-Boiled

Chow Yun-Fat stars in John Woo's "Hard-Boiled", which features more violence and a higher body count in its opening ten or fifteen minutes than most American action movies do in their full running time--and still manages to up the ante throughout, until its mind-blowing hospital shootout finale. It is absolutely the most beautifully-crafted gunplay film ever made.

6. Come Drink With Me

Cheng Pei-Pei in King Hu's "Come Drink With Me" stands as an icon of 1960's Hong Kong warrior women. She's tough and cool and the movie itself is a beautiful adaptation of many of the concepts of Chinese martial arts novels and legends into rich, vibrant color. Setting a new standard for quality in martial arts and action films, "Come Drink With Me" changed Hong Kong moviemaking forever, and that influence would be felt for decades to come around the world.

5. Drunken Master

Yuen Wo-Ping directed Jackie Chan in "Drunken Master", his second big success, which solidified his reputation as the successor for Bruce Lee and as one of Asia and the world's biggest stars. It's a perfect showcase for Jackie's slapstick comedy martial arts style, influenced by Buster Keaton as much as by the Peking Opera training he had as a child.

4. Project A Part II

Jackie directed "Project A Part II", his most sophisticated and well-crafted action picture yet, which again raised the standards of what could be done in Hong Kong moviemaking. By the time of "Project A Part II", Jackie had moved from pure comedy martial arts to lush and beautiful period pieces featuring a manic combination of stunts and action. It's one of his best movies and a landmark in action cinema.

3. Once Upon A Time in China

Tsui Hark's "Once Upon A Time in China" is a more serious successor to the lush period style of "Project A Part II". Jet Li plays traditional Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-Hung with gravitas and focus, without losing sight of the comedic elements of the story. The action direction, by the master Yuen Wo-Ping, features some of the most spectacular aerial fight scenes that had ever been done, and the movie's production values and musical score underline it all to create a truly epic action film of national pride and heroism.

2. Enter the 36th Chamber

"Enter the 36th Chamber", directed by Liu Chia-Liang and starring his adopted brother Gordon Liu, is one of the most sparse and focused kung fu films ever made. The bulk of the story features the main character training at the Shaolin temple, showing the hardships he endures, and the rigors of the martial arts life he chooses when his family and town are brutalized by the Manchurian oppressors. It is the prototype for dozens (possibly hundreds) of copycat films and it stands as one of the all-time classics of the genre.

1. Fist of Fury

If you're doing a list of action movies, Bruce Lee is gonna be at the top. Opinions vary as to which is the best of his few films, but "Fist of Fury" combines the high production values and cinematography of early Golden Harvest studios with a compelling story of Chinese nationalism (this time against Japanese oppressors in Shanghai during the 1930's). It's the most intense and tragic of Bruce's films, the one where everything works together to create a beautiful, sublime vision of physical poetry.

Honorable mentions:

James Cameron's "Aliens". It was on the list until I realized I hadn't name-checked John Woo. I couldn't really list "Aliens" AND "Die Hard", since they both cover similar territory as the best American action movies. But "Aliens" has such a great, catchy script and fun performances I just think of it as one of the most perfectly-made movies ever.

"The Matrix". Again it was hard to leave off, but there's only so much space on the list and I wanted to include movies from past and present AND from around the world.

Peter Jackon's "King Kong". I really do think it will stand up there with the best of them, as it features absolutely the most intense action sequences put on film in years--but since it's only been out a few days it might be a bit premature to list it with the Top Ten "Of All Time".

Chang Cheh's body of work, especially "Five Venoms". A kung fu classic, but I just didn't have room on the list.

Liu Chia-Liang's "Mad Monkey Kung Fu". It's my favorite movie ever, but with such limited space, "Enter the 36th Chamber" was a more representative film, and far more revolutionary.

Top Ten Revolutionary Effects Movies of All Time

Some ABC affiliate did a little article about "Top Ten Revolutionary Effects Movies Of All Time", but they got it about half wrong, so I did my own version:

10. Citizen Kane (1941)

"Citizen Kane" was one of the best examples of insinuating special effects into a serious film and making it appear seamless. From forced-perspective shots to compositing of multiple images, to breakaway miniatures to matte paintings, Orson Welles used special effects to expand the world of what he could show on screen and how he could show it, all the while hiding its presence from the audience.

9. The Wizard Of Oz (1939)

"The Wizard Of Oz" remains one of the most effective and influential fantasy movies ever made. Its Kansas twister is an incredible effect even today, its sepia-to-color effect is magical, and all its characters are convincingly created through the work of the actors, the costumers and the special effects department.

8. The Invisible Man (1933)

In 1933, Universal had shown audiences some incredible sights through its wildly-successful horror movie releases, "Dracula" and "Frankenstein", but "The Invisible Man" was the most ground-breaking in its special effects--clothes dancing around on their own, bicycles riding by themselves, footprints appearing in the snow--all of it beautifully done by John P. Fulton working for director James Whale.

7. Godzilla (1954)

Considering that Godzilla films are an industry of their own and a cultural pastime in Japan, I think an argument can be made that 1954's "Godzilla" (aka "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" in the US) is one of the most influential effects pictures ever made. Tokyo miniatures, rubber suits--it's not always technically realistic, but it's almost always compelling entertainment that became a phenomenon.

6. Jurassic Park

Here's where I start agreeing with the original list. "Jurassic Park" was watermark of computer animation, finally showing that CGI could create convincing, realistic animal characters. And in spite of almost fifteen years of advancement in computer graphics, its dinosaurs still look convincing.

5. Toy Story

Another ground-breaking film, showing that when complete computer animation is used in service of a good story (written by "Buffy" creator Joss Whedon, who won an Oscar for his screenplay), the results are infectious and compelling.

4. Terminator 2

"Terminator 2" was the first movie to really make use of computer effects on such a scale, and proved how effectively they could be done. Plus it gave the world "morphing".

3. The Matrix

"The Matrix" has had a huge impact in just a few years, virtually single-handedly creating a bullet-time, wire-fu craze in the US. Many of its techniques had been used to great effect in Hong Kong and elsewhere, but John Gaeta's "bullet-time" was the real standout that no one had seen before.

2. Star Wars

What can you say? "Star Wars" virtually created the modern blockbuster action effects movie (with a little help from "Jaws"). Still as convincing as it needed to be to tell a strong, solid story and deliver the audience into a science-fiction universe that looked unique in movies at the time.

1. King Kong (1933)

If Star Wars created the modern blockbuster action effects movie, 1933's "King Kong" was the ORIGINAL blockbuster action effects movie. The first film whose lead character was a special effect, the first movie to create such emotion and pathos with an animated character. Willis H. O'Brien and his team were pretty much inventing the concept of special effects on a new scale with this film, developing stop-motion, camera and film printing techniques that would be used for the next hundred years and beyond. It is impossible to overstate the influence of the original "Kong" on moviemakers and audiences, even today.

There were a couple of movies I had a hard time leaving out:

I felt like "Tron" should be listed for being so far ahead of its time in computer effects and animation, but had a hard time justifying it against this list.

I was also wondering--if "Toy Story", a completely animated film, is on the list, then shouldn't "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" be there, too? "Snow White" was as groundbreaking as "Kong" in 1937, and to make it (and "Fantasia" a few years later) Disney's animators and technicians created some amazing ways of filming animation.

But if you bring actual animation into the list, there's plenty of other films that would need to get considered.

Jeff

The Chronic of Narnia

I was checking the iTunes Music Store just now and noticed something interesting:



Here's an enlargement of the listing for "The Chronicles of Narnia":



Perhaps Dr. Dre produced the movie's soundtrack!

Jeff

"King Kong"

Peter Jackson's "King Kong" is incredible. It's one of the most intense spectacles that has been made in the movies. It does the remarkable job of updating the 1933 original for a more "sophisticated" time, while increasing its scope, majesty and running time. Everything is heightened--the violence, the emotion and the romance.

Where the original 1933 film was a fairly short, light film suitable for virtually any age, Peter Jackson's version is definitely designed for adults. The violence is far more intense and brutal than anything he's made since the gruesome zombie pic "Brain-Dead" (aka "Dead/Alive"), featuring giant dinosaurs, multiple T-rexes and an insect pit that must have been designed in a nightmare.

The stakes are raised on the emotion, too. Where the original featured filmmaker Carl Denham as a noble adventurer, Jack Black plays the character as an opportunistic hustler who cares about little except himself and his fame and fortune. The original featured Ann Denham falling in love with Jack Driscoll on board the tramp steamer Venture, with Jack saving the helpless, terrified Ann from the giant ape's lair. In Jackson's version Ann and Jack's relationship pales next to her bond with Kong. The lyrical, operatic quality of the story was more an implication in the original--here it IS the story.

Kong himself is a masterpiece, as created by actor Andy Serkis (who also created the movements and voice of Gollum) and WETA Workshop's computer animators. He's absolutely the most sophisticated animated character who's existed yet, with a personality and a realism that makes it easy to forget he's a computer creation.

I spotted only a couple of places where I felt the animation or the computer effects were "obvious", or could have been done a bit better, and I can't think of any complaints about the story or the acting. Jack Black is ideal for this part, with his bluster and bombast, and Naomi Watts is terrific as Ann Darrow.

If you haven't seen the 1933 original, it is still the father of all special-effects blockbusters, with nonstop action from start to finish. Peter Jackson's remake is the movie of someone who loved the original film with a passion, and seeing it will only help you appreciate the remake that much more. But Jackson has definitely done it justice in updating the story and the effects. It's truly a masterpiece.

Jeff

"cry for anarchy?"

About the new "V for Vendetta" movie, Harry Knowles wrote:

This is the most intense cinematic cry for Anarchy since A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. They made the comic. Alan Moore is a bitch for even thinking of bitching about this.

Okay, two things:

First--"A Clockwork Orange" is not a "cry for anarchy". "A Clockwork Orange" is about violence and fascism and the ethics of punishment. It makes a case that oppression is a terrible thing by taking the most unredeemable character conceivable and showing that, even in the case of a sadistic, violent thug, oppression is a terrible thing.

I honestly can't even figure WHY Knowles would think "A Clockwork Orange" was a "cry for anarchy". Where's the part that makes a case for anarchy? When it shows the anarchic behavior of Alex and his droogs as they rape, rob, brutalize and murder? Wow, what a compelling case! "If we have anarchy, we can also rape, rob, brutalize and murder!" I really don't follow. It seems that Knowles is just another one of those kids who thought Alex was a cool, awesome sympathetic hero because he's so charismatic and colorful. He probably wishes there was an ongoing "Rorschach" spinoff from WATCHMEN because "Rorschach is cool, man".

And second--I'll reserve judgment about my own opinion on the "V for Vendetta" movie til I see it, but I think Alan Moore is a little more qualified to judge whether he thinks it's worth bitching about. He only CREATED the fricking thing.

Everything that'd been adapted of Moore's for the movies has been turned into complete crap, and the advance word on this movie certainly didn't sound faithful to the original story--apparently it is set in a world where Germany has conquered Britain and THAT'S why it's a fascist country? The entire point of the original "V for Vendetta" story was that England was becoming more fascistic in the REAL world and that this was a natural progression of its policies.

I like the Wachowski Brothers, but I'm withholding judgment until I see it.

Jeff

"Domino"

"Domino" is a mess, but it's a wild, ambitious, aggressive, silly and entertaining mess. Which is a lot more than I can say for most movies, so I recommend it to viewers who don't take things too seriously.

Based roughly on the real life of Domino Harvey, model, bounty hunter and daughter of actor Laurence Harvey, it stars Keira Knightley as the most blisteringly gorgeous bounty hunter who ever lived. She's constantly smoking, sneering and basically trying her cute little darndest to convince us that she's a hardcore chick with contempt for the world who will break your nose just as soon as look at you. Most of the time she succeeds.

After growing up wealthy and pampered, Domino tries her hand at Beverly Hills high school, college and sororities and supermodeling, but she can't avoid her deep-seated need to be tattooed and yell at people. So she joins up with veteran soldier Ed Moseby and loco Latino Choco, and they become an inseparable trio of hunters. They get involved in a reality TV series presented by celebrity hosts, while simultaneously carrying out an ill-conceived and confusing armored car heist that gets them in trouble with the mob and a rich old guy played by Dabney Coleman.

The story is drenched in visual style, which won't appeal to everyone, but I dig it the most. I'd much rather a movie LOOK interesting than have the same old lighting and camerawork as every other film. Unusual color treatments, different film stocks, inset frames, titles and dialogue written on the screen, are all part of the toolbox of filmmakers and I personally would rather see them used more. Director Tony Scott here throws them all at the screen to see what sticks, and I found it pretty effective.

If you've got a sense of humor and can see the appeal of watching Keira Knightley trade lap dances for bounty locations, get naked on mescalin, sneer, blow smoke and break the nose of Brian Austin Green from Beverly Hills 90210, then check out "Domino". :)

Jeff

"Serenity"

"Serenity" is a rare thing--a science fiction adventure movie for adults, or at least for teens and up. It's got a sophisticated plot, a cynical-but-noble worldview and emotional issues that show a certain level of maturity that most big-budget science fiction movies aren't allowed.

Writer/director Joss Whedon has a strength for dark, emotional storylines, and he brings a depth to the story of Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the ship Serenity, and his struggle between doing the right thing and just getting by in a galaxy that doesn't seem to have a place for him any longer. It's more ambitious in scope than "Firefly", the TV series on which it's based, but as a movie it doesn't have the space to give the rest of Reynolds' crew the kind of meaty storylines they might have received on the show. They're around as backup and color, but they don't really get to shine until the end of the film. The real stars are Mal Reynolds and River Tam, the telepathic teen who is on the run from the imperious Alliance government for something hidden deep in her brain they can't afford to get out.

The episodes of his TV shows directed by Whedon have always had a strong visual flair, usually with one or two film techniques that rise them above the normal look of television. He achieves basically the same effect with his feature film debut. "Serenity" opens with an impressive long tracking shot following Nathan Fillion's Captain Reynolds through the entirety of the ship that gives the movie its name, meeting and interacting with each member of his crew and setting the tone for what everyone's like and where this is going. The rest of the directing isn't quite as flashy and in places feels like it could be opened up more, as if Whedon is still so used to television that he has a challenge bringing the sensibility of film to the camerawork.

The story is terrific. It gets to be ambitious in places where "Firefly" couldn't, gets to resolve some questions that "Firefly" left unresolved, and gets to shake up the status quo of the ship in unexpected ways. It's important not to reveal too much about the plot itself because there are some great surprises that fans of the show may not see coming. We finally get to meet the "Reavers", interplanetary savages who are rumored to eat their victims alive, and we get a suavely impressive villain in the form of an Alliance operative without a name, who is driven by the belief that Malcolm Reynolds and River Tam must be destroyed for the sake of creating a better world.

"Serenity" isn't perfect and in places it betrays its TV series origins, but it's an exciting adventure movie that's a welcome change from the candy-colored toy tie-ins that are most sci-fi pictures. Go see it again and again.

Jeff

"Shining', the romantic comedy for the whole family

"Sometimes, what we need the most...

...is just around the corner."

"Shining", starring Jack Nicholson. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. See it with someone you love.

Jeff

ROLL BOUNCE

ROLL BOUNCE makes me feel like dancing. It's a terrific movie with good performances, great music and some fantastic roller-skating. After I got out of the theater I put the Jackson 5 on my iPod and shuffled and grooved down the street til I got home.

It's a summer comedy about a group of friends in the late 1970's who rule the roller rink in their part of town, til it shuts down and they're forced to skate uptown at the bigger, swankier Sweetwater rink where the competition suddenly gets a lot fiercer. They enter the Skate-Off against local roller-staking god Sweetness and his crew, who makes an entrance so dramatic even James Brown would be envious.

Bow Wow plays X, a teenager whose mother recently passed away. Chi McBride does a great job as his father who wears a suit, packs a briefcase and goes to the city every morning to look for work--not having told his family that he was laid off months earlier. There's a great feeling of hanging-out in the summer, relaxing during the day and having to run home when the street lights come on. There's also a pretty touching story about the family and how they cope with the loss of their mother.

It's got drama and comedy but the star of the movie is the roller-skating, set to a nonstop soundtrack of 70's funk and disco. Its structure is pretty solid formula but the performances are a lot of fun, the humor is light-hearted and entertaining, and combined with the groovy sounds and roller-skating dance moves it makes one of the best times I've had at the movies in weeks.

Jeff

THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE

I'm not sure what the inspiration was behind doing another movie about the exorcism of a young girl. Sure, it was 'based on a true story' and so on, but THE EXORCIST already did pretty much everything you could want from that kind of tale.

The main reason I went to see it was a few scenes from the trailer which looked nice and spooky: the girl walking down the street and seeing people's faces seem to "bleed" black and become misshapen ghostly figures. I liked that, it was something that would scare me and I couldn't remember seeing anything like that in movies before.

Unfortunately, aside from a few viscerally creepy images, the movie was pretty forgettable to me. They made some odd choices with the story--it's based on a trial of the priest who performed the failed exorcism of this 19-year-old girl, who died soon after. As a result the actual title character of Emily Rose has no personality at all, you basically never see her when she's not frothing at the mouth, contorting into painful-looking shapes, or shouting obscenities in various archaic languages. There's no sense of empathy with her because you never get to know her at all.

The actual main character is the lawyer who takes the priest's case, a hotshot attorney who has just gotten a murderer off the hook with her amazing lawyering skills. The prosecution makes the case for the girl's medical condition, and the defense attempts to make the case for possession. The courtroom antics aren't very interesting and the ending makes absolutely no sense to me--I don't know much about courtroom procedure but they should have explained what happened a bit more.

I'd recommend even dedicated horror fans to give this a miss, it's a lackluster courtroom drama pretending to be supernatural horror, and not really succeeding at either.

Jeff

TRANSPORTER 2

TRANSPORTER 2 is almost sublimely ridiculous. It's pretty much 100% schlock, poorly-directed and with hands-down the worst sense of continuity in any movie I can remember seeing. The plot makes very little sense, and every five minutes or so there is SOMETHING that will make you say "What the hell?"

That's part of what little charm the movie has. As a fan of martial arts movies, and a veteran viewer of some pretty rotten but watchable movies, I enjoyed TRANSPORTER 2 a hell of a lot more than, for example, THE ISLAND. Jason Statham is believable to me as a quiet tough guy who never makes a promise he can't keep.

The laws of physics in this film are more consistently ignored than in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's kinda cool, most of the time it just brought me out of the movie because of how over-the-top it was. I'm all for wild and crazy mind-blowing stunts in an action film, but one of the things that makes action exciting is when it's grounded in a believable physical world.

The first TRANSPORTER was directed by Corey Yuen aka Yuen Kwai, a Hong Kong stuntman-turned-director who went to the same Peking Opera school as Jackie Chan when they were young kids. I like Corey Yuen as a director, because he's made some of my favorite Hong Kong movies, including YES MADAM starring Michelle Yeoh and FONG SAI-YUK starring Jet Li. Corey Yuen does the action choreography in TRANSPORTER 2, so the martial arts is the most entertaining part, and there's always some clever little bits in each fight that are fun to watch. It's ironic that in a movie about a guy who drives really well, the driving is pretty lame.

I wouldn't recommend seeing TRANSPORTER 2 unless you have a serious jones for a martial arts action movie and can stomach a lot of crap in between the fights :)

KILL is LOVE

Browsing around blogs I stumbled upon NOVA FORMULA which contained this:



I like it.

Jeff