Saturday, March 8, 2008
The British Beauty Paradox
If Englishwomen have a longstanding reputation for relative homeliness, then why is it that the rough list of the world's most beautiful women always contains several of them? To wit as of this moment - Kate Beckinsale, Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Saffron Burrows, Emily Blunt, Kate Winslet, Rachel Weisz, presumably still Liz Hurley. I mean, if it were Australia, we'd expect it. But it's England. How does that work?
Friday, March 7, 2008
Pre-historic tastes (10,000 B.C.)
10,000 B.C. [PG-13]
Grade: D
10,000 B. C. confirms something I’ve always suspected – ludicrous Hollywood plots in fact pre-date civilization.
There’s little question left after watching two hours of this pre-historic action-adventure, as its pelt-clad heroes wile their way through jungles of sabre-tooth tigers and musty plot development. As long as the story sticks to the rescue-the-girl basics, it can at least deliver passable CGI action sequences. But the film’s dialogue taught me something new and valuable about pre-historic life. I didn’t know cheese had been invented.
The adventure sets off as horse-mounted warriors raid a glacier-age village, leading off its people for slave labor far away. An escaped Mammoth hunter named D’Leh (Steven Strait) pursues, out to free the love of his life (Camilla Belle). He makes common cause with a group of foreign tribesmen, who believe he is the fulfillment of their prophecy. They tell him of a giant city beyond the dunes. There he leads an army of men hoping to free their people from slavery.
For being pre-historic, the tribe has admirably mastered the English language, although they can’t quite further indulge the audience by shaking off their Barbarian accents. As they don’t know how to write, they have not yet performed the courtesy of mapping their whereabouts. We do know it’s in lands where you can move quickly from icy gorges to thick jungle to rocky desert to sand dunes. Snow-capped mountains turn into predator-infested jungles in the space of about a football field. Apparently the sun behaved differently in those days, too.
Their odorous appearance and exaggerated customs asks an important question – can you offend an ethnicity that never actually existed? I can’t tell you what the answer is. Even if this pre-historic action-adventure holds an answer, then it deserves to be buried in the sands of time.
Master of Disaster Roland Emmerich might be decreasing his scale. After destroying most of the world in Independence Day and most of the world in The Day After Tomorrow, here he resigns himself to wiping out only a single ancient civilization. Perhaps this is his idea of making a more intimate picture. The early action sequences, such as a mastodon hunt and a rumble through the jungle with giant nipping and gnawing buzzards, are fairly exciting. But the final battle, on what appears to be an ancient Egyptian pyramid construction site, is a mess of masses running mindlessly. Not very enthralling, unless you’re into watching marathons.
The film lifts the plot from Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto. But while Gibson’s film is a strange mixture of B-movie and actual interest in Mayan culture, 10,000 B.C. is a low-end cousin aimed squarely for the brutal sensibilities of those modern Barbarians, the mall-grazing teen-agers. But even they will likely come away from this hunt disappointed.
Grade: D
10,000 B. C. confirms something I’ve always suspected – ludicrous Hollywood plots in fact pre-date civilization.
There’s little question left after watching two hours of this pre-historic action-adventure, as its pelt-clad heroes wile their way through jungles of sabre-tooth tigers and musty plot development. As long as the story sticks to the rescue-the-girl basics, it can at least deliver passable CGI action sequences. But the film’s dialogue taught me something new and valuable about pre-historic life. I didn’t know cheese had been invented.
The adventure sets off as horse-mounted warriors raid a glacier-age village, leading off its people for slave labor far away. An escaped Mammoth hunter named D’Leh (Steven Strait) pursues, out to free the love of his life (Camilla Belle). He makes common cause with a group of foreign tribesmen, who believe he is the fulfillment of their prophecy. They tell him of a giant city beyond the dunes. There he leads an army of men hoping to free their people from slavery.
For being pre-historic, the tribe has admirably mastered the English language, although they can’t quite further indulge the audience by shaking off their Barbarian accents. As they don’t know how to write, they have not yet performed the courtesy of mapping their whereabouts. We do know it’s in lands where you can move quickly from icy gorges to thick jungle to rocky desert to sand dunes. Snow-capped mountains turn into predator-infested jungles in the space of about a football field. Apparently the sun behaved differently in those days, too.
Their odorous appearance and exaggerated customs asks an important question – can you offend an ethnicity that never actually existed? I can’t tell you what the answer is. Even if this pre-historic action-adventure holds an answer, then it deserves to be buried in the sands of time.
Master of Disaster Roland Emmerich might be decreasing his scale. After destroying most of the world in Independence Day and most of the world in The Day After Tomorrow, here he resigns himself to wiping out only a single ancient civilization. Perhaps this is his idea of making a more intimate picture. The early action sequences, such as a mastodon hunt and a rumble through the jungle with giant nipping and gnawing buzzards, are fairly exciting. But the final battle, on what appears to be an ancient Egyptian pyramid construction site, is a mess of masses running mindlessly. Not very enthralling, unless you’re into watching marathons.
The film lifts the plot from Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto. But while Gibson’s film is a strange mixture of B-movie and actual interest in Mayan culture, 10,000 B.C. is a low-end cousin aimed squarely for the brutal sensibilities of those modern Barbarians, the mall-grazing teen-agers. But even they will likely come away from this hunt disappointed.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
It's 3 a.m. and I'm a wimp
I finally gave in and checked out Hilary Clinton's "It's 3 a.m." ad on YouTube. I have to say, I'm completely disappointed. I was thinking horror film. Instead, it's all warm and fuzzy pictures of children rolling around in their beds with their little teddy bears. Never mind that it's too talky. Leave it to the Democrats to make things saccharine and sappy. The ad almost seems polite. It's like, let's scare the people, but let's be very reassuring while we do it.
I miss the Cold War, when campaigns could scare the heck out of the American public with television commercials. Lyndon Johnson's Daisy commercial, the one that starts with the girl picking flowers and ends in a nuclear explosion, that's a classic campaign commercial. You think that didn't get voters to the polls? Or Ronald Reagan's The Bear ad, which was a bit spooky and mysterious.
The 3 a.m. commercial I want? Less family film and more The Shining. You start in a drably-colored austere looking room or hallway. In the distance sits a table with a red phone on top. The phone starts to ring. And not that wimpy little modern pulse tone. I want it to be an old-fashioned phone. Heck, I want it to be an ancient rotary dial number, like some artifact from the fifties or sixties. And when that thing gives that old-school earth-rattling jolt, I want it to seem like the room is moving. The voice intones "It's 3 a.m. at the White House ... " and the script continues, slowly, ominously, as the camera moves slowly down the hallway or across the room and closes in on the phone. At the end, it stops in freeze-frame and mid-ring. "Who do you want to pick up the line?" Fade to black.
Now that's a commercial.
I miss the Cold War, when campaigns could scare the heck out of the American public with television commercials. Lyndon Johnson's Daisy commercial, the one that starts with the girl picking flowers and ends in a nuclear explosion, that's a classic campaign commercial. You think that didn't get voters to the polls? Or Ronald Reagan's The Bear ad, which was a bit spooky and mysterious.
The 3 a.m. commercial I want? Less family film and more The Shining. You start in a drably-colored austere looking room or hallway. In the distance sits a table with a red phone on top. The phone starts to ring. And not that wimpy little modern pulse tone. I want it to be an old-fashioned phone. Heck, I want it to be an ancient rotary dial number, like some artifact from the fifties or sixties. And when that thing gives that old-school earth-rattling jolt, I want it to seem like the room is moving. The voice intones "It's 3 a.m. at the White House ... " and the script continues, slowly, ominously, as the camera moves slowly down the hallway or across the room and closes in on the phone. At the end, it stops in freeze-frame and mid-ring. "Who do you want to pick up the line?" Fade to black.
Now that's a commercial.
The Corner on The Invasion
You'll need to move fast, but there's an interesting discussion going on in The Corner blog at National Review Online about The Invasion. Jonah Goldberg initiated it, and I think his understanding of the film is pretty accurate, if a bit imperfect. Goldberg seems like a bit of a film nut; he once wrote a cover story on the metaphysical genius of Groundhog Day. Mark Steyn is in on the discussion, so something amusing is bound to be said.
As you might know, The Invasion was close to my top 10 list for last year, probably somewhere in the 11-12 range alongside Into the Wild and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
As you might know, The Invasion was close to my top 10 list for last year, probably somewhere in the 11-12 range alongside Into the Wild and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Barbarian English
Why do movie Barbarians who speak English do so with accents? I mean, I understand why they would have accents if they were speaking their own Barbarian language. But why would they indulge the audience by speaking its language, yet enunciate in their own gruff manner?
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Read-through urinals
I was in a mall today and needed to visit the restroom. I went in, and, as I looked down into the urinal, I noticed they had implemented some new device in the urinal. It says something like "Eco-friendly" with some other phrases. Now I'm happy that American technology is developing ways to make our toilet-flushing friendly for the trees and the forest animals. Yay, American ingenuity! But I don't want to be standing there trying to read something at the bottom of my urinal as I'm trying to pee.
Please refrain from further writing. Thank you.
Please refrain from further writing. Thank you.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Once
The Oscar ceremony is over, now a week clear. For serial filmgoers like yours truly, it’s a sorrowful moment, the final vapors of a filmgoing year. Once the curtain goes down on Jon Stewart, it’s time to let go of those films that for 14 months you have lived, loved, rallied to, and cherished. It’s as though February begins with a Groundhog Day and ends with another, one with the groundhog always seeing his shadow, allowing the season to pass gracefully.
This means the seasoned filmgoer finally realizes what movie he most hates to see drift into the past. For me this year, that film might be the Irish musical and cinematic brief encounter Once. The Assassination of Jesse James might be the most brilliant. No Country for Old Men might be the most respected. Zodiac, the most meticulously crafted, There Will Be Blood, the most ambitious, Michael Clayton the most solid. But Once is the most loved.
That became clear with the wave of good feeling launched by its win in the category of Best Original Song, for the heavenly “Falling Slowly.” The victory set off a wave of celebration in film lovers unequaled by any other choice. Its low-budget, no-star origins – it was made using a pair of musician non-actors for $150,000 in 17 days – played into deep truths that every film lover wishes to believe – that imagination and humanity are the First Things of Music and Filmmaking. In a deeply cynical, dangerous age, here is a film that rewards believing.
The genius of director John Carney’s guerilla creation is that it saves the musical from its burden of gluttony. The production values and razzmatazz disappear in favor of the elegant simplicity of the music. Once doesn’t even bother with the adornment of names. Guy strums a guitar on a Dublin street corner. Girl hears him play and falls in love with his music. Girl plays music, as well. Guy is lovesick. Girl is lonely in a new land. Guy and Girl make music to temper and transcend their sorrows. Girl gives Guy the encouragement to fulfill his musical dreams. Guy and Girl sing. And sing. And sing beautifully.
The level of biographical verisimilitude between the film’s busker and star Glen Hansard, lead singer of the Irish band The Frames, is palpable. In some ways, it’s a condensed biography. Like his character, Hansard really did, at a time, play music on the streets of Dublin. He did assemble his band from a group of street performers. Most importantly, he really does make music with a precocious Czech female musician, played here and in real life by the teen-ager Marketa Irglova. And while Hansard and Irglova apparently were not a couple until after the shoot, one senses that was a temporary inconvenience of age. We suspect that much like their characters, they simply had not acted yet on their rising affections. And because of that reserve in both movie and life, those affections find their only expressible form in the music that they, and their characters, create.
None of this would matter if the songs weren’t extraordinary. But low-budget films run on blessings. “Falling Slowly” is an anthem of lost love seeking to relocate its bearings. “If You Want Me” (aka The Bunny Slipper Song) finds transcendent joys from a tough situation. The soundtrack album reveals that the best of the lot may be “The Hill,” an emotionally haunting story from Irglova.
Yet for all the appreciation wrung from the music, it’s still a film, and an excellent vessel. Like a great punk tune, Carney has freed the modern musical from its Broadway theatricality and staid professionalism and restored it to its roots of spontaneity and emotion. It was Carney’s dogged determinism that shuffled the project through to the end. That sense of purpose pervades the film, and makes it one built to last, well past the Oscars, and well past this age.
This means the seasoned filmgoer finally realizes what movie he most hates to see drift into the past. For me this year, that film might be the Irish musical and cinematic brief encounter Once. The Assassination of Jesse James might be the most brilliant. No Country for Old Men might be the most respected. Zodiac, the most meticulously crafted, There Will Be Blood, the most ambitious, Michael Clayton the most solid. But Once is the most loved.
That became clear with the wave of good feeling launched by its win in the category of Best Original Song, for the heavenly “Falling Slowly.” The victory set off a wave of celebration in film lovers unequaled by any other choice. Its low-budget, no-star origins – it was made using a pair of musician non-actors for $150,000 in 17 days – played into deep truths that every film lover wishes to believe – that imagination and humanity are the First Things of Music and Filmmaking. In a deeply cynical, dangerous age, here is a film that rewards believing.
The genius of director John Carney’s guerilla creation is that it saves the musical from its burden of gluttony. The production values and razzmatazz disappear in favor of the elegant simplicity of the music. Once doesn’t even bother with the adornment of names. Guy strums a guitar on a Dublin street corner. Girl hears him play and falls in love with his music. Girl plays music, as well. Guy is lovesick. Girl is lonely in a new land. Guy and Girl make music to temper and transcend their sorrows. Girl gives Guy the encouragement to fulfill his musical dreams. Guy and Girl sing. And sing. And sing beautifully.
The level of biographical verisimilitude between the film’s busker and star Glen Hansard, lead singer of the Irish band The Frames, is palpable. In some ways, it’s a condensed biography. Like his character, Hansard really did, at a time, play music on the streets of Dublin. He did assemble his band from a group of street performers. Most importantly, he really does make music with a precocious Czech female musician, played here and in real life by the teen-ager Marketa Irglova. And while Hansard and Irglova apparently were not a couple until after the shoot, one senses that was a temporary inconvenience of age. We suspect that much like their characters, they simply had not acted yet on their rising affections. And because of that reserve in both movie and life, those affections find their only expressible form in the music that they, and their characters, create.
None of this would matter if the songs weren’t extraordinary. But low-budget films run on blessings. “Falling Slowly” is an anthem of lost love seeking to relocate its bearings. “If You Want Me” (aka The Bunny Slipper Song) finds transcendent joys from a tough situation. The soundtrack album reveals that the best of the lot may be “The Hill,” an emotionally haunting story from Irglova.
Yet for all the appreciation wrung from the music, it’s still a film, and an excellent vessel. Like a great punk tune, Carney has freed the modern musical from its Broadway theatricality and staid professionalism and restored it to its roots of spontaneity and emotion. It was Carney’s dogged determinism that shuffled the project through to the end. That sense of purpose pervades the film, and makes it one built to last, well past the Oscars, and well past this age.
AFI Dallas
With virtually nothing going on movie-wise at the moment (really, I'm scraping for articles, as it appears to be for many sites), I thought I would take a minute and write a bit about the AFI Dallas film festival, which is approaching. It will be held March 27 thorugh April 6. THis is its second year. Perusing the list of films, there's a couple that spark my interest. In particular is Mongol, the story of the young struggles of Genghis Khan. It was nominated at the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Picture. The directorial debut of Helen Hunt is also on the list. Last year, AFI Dallas featured the debut of actress Sarah Polley, Away from Her, so a pattern is forming.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Will Ferrell overexposed
So, Semi-Pro only earns about $15 million, and everyone is wondering if the bloom is off the Will Ferrell rose. My guess is seeing the Jackie Moon character every time you turn on the television ended up in a backlash. Add that to the fact that Ferrell makes the same movie every time, and that probably accounts for the disinterest. Which is a shame, because it's probably his most consistently funny film, with a few precious gems.
Wales and movies
The top 8 Welsh actors and actresses could include:
Christian Bale
Timothy Dalton
Ray Milland
Richard Burton
Julie Christie
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Peggy Cummins
Roger Livesay
Christian Bale
Timothy Dalton
Ray Milland
Richard Burton
Julie Christie
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Peggy Cummins
Roger Livesay
Happy Saint David's Day!
March 1, St. David's Day, or St. Dafyd's Day (or some spelling like that) is the national holiday of Wales, the Bowen family ancestral homeland. I'm assuming all Anti-D readers dressed in corduroy, ate leek soup, tended sheep, and worked in a coal mine. Surprisingly, that regimen hasn't caught on in America as well as St. Patrick's Day, which features the delicacy of green beer. Remember, always remember the little things!
A good night's viewing
I watched Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop. I think there might have been a tracking shot in there somewhere, but I'm not betting on it. Great, great film. Almost unique. I also watched Gun Crazy. I'm always struck when watching late 1940s noir how far ahead of their time the films were. Gun Crazy has a lot of the benefits of being made in the studio system, but with the free-spiritedness needed for a small budget. You see why it was a favorite of New Wave types.
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