Islands in the Stream.

So, after a paltry $12 million its opening weekend, it’s looking like Michael Bay’s The Island has turned out to be an outright box-office flop. Which is too bad, really, ’cause I caught it on Saturday and thought it was a solid summer movie actioner, with a soupcon of dystopian sci-fi gravitas. In fact, I’d say it’s probably Bay’s best film (which isn’t saying much, of course, but I’ll take it over The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and the Bad Boys.)

As you’ve probably seen in the previews by now, The Island is a bit schizophrenic — The first half plays like THX-1138 by way of an Estee Lauder or Claritin commercial, the second half is Logan’s Run meets Grand Theft Auto. Unfortunately, the ad campaign — which clearly failed to sell the movie to America — did manage to ruin the building tension of the first forty-five minutes. Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan MacGregor, having more trouble with clones), a skeptical resident of a utopian-quarantine unit of sorts, starts to question the underlying premises of his intensely monitored, Puma-clad existence, such as why his proximity to his friend Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johannson. who doesn’t do much but look pretty and run) is so rigorously monitored. The presiding doctor (Sean Bean, who must be sick of getting sent the same part over and over again) is little help in resolving Lincoln’s existential dilemma, but visits to a kindly mechanic schlub in the sub-sectors (Steve Buscemi) points Six-Echo on the path to self-knowledge.

At which point, the chase begins and, well, you can guess the rest. Lincoln and Jordan spend the second half of the movie rushing frantically from the minions of a resolute and unstoppable bounty hunter (Djimon Hounsou — We know he’s a badass because Bay always shoots him from about knee level.) Higher order brain functions are no longer necessary for the remainder of the film, although there’s a nice stopover at the abode of Lincoln’s “sponsor” (and a rather impressive highway chase involving car-crushing dumbbells.) Still, in the end, The Island is redeemed from normal Bay-dom by a better-than-average script and several solid performances, with special nods to Ewan and Michael Clarke Duncan in an extended cameo. (Voyager‘s Neelix and the guy from the Manhattan Mini-Storage moose ad also live in the complex, which I found a bit distracting.) It’s not a great film by any means – In fact, it’s almost instantly forgettable. But The Island is a nice place to wile away two hours on a hot summer afternoon (and in a perfect world it’d do twice the business of FF.)

Islands in the Stream.

A late online arrival to the slew of trailers swimming in Sith‘s wake: Clones Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson evade Sean Bean (and look to Steve Buscemi for answers) in the new trailer for Michael Bay’s The Island. Bay-flicks tend to annoy me, but I could see this being useful as two hours of air conditioning at some point this summer.

Eternal Crossing of the Spotless Fink.

In between film projects, the Coen Brothers and Charlie Kaufman have teamed up for Carter Burwell’s Theater of the New Ear, a pair of radio plays recently performed at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The cast includes Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Marcia Gay Harden, and Philip Seymour Hoffman for the Coen’s “Sawbones,” and Meryl Streep, Hope Davis, and Peter Dinklage (taking time off from Lassie, I presume) in Kaufman’s “Hope Leaves the Theater.” (These apparently were also performed in Brooklyn two weeks ago, but tickets were hard to come by.)

Fanboy Cornucopia.

Thanks to ShoWest and otherwise, there’s been quite a bit of fanboy news to come down the pike in the past few days…

  • In the casting department, Parker Posey joined the legion of Superman as “Kitty Koslowski,” one of Lex Luthor’s minions. Hopefully, it’s a better villainess turn than in Blade: Trinity.
  • Not to be outdone by the son of Krypton, a spiffy new Batman Begins poster premieres online.
  • Rounding out the DC trifecta, Buffy mastermind Joss Whedon is signed to write and direct Wonder Woman.
  • On the Marvel end, AICN uncovers the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters’ new additions for X3…this time around will include Beast, Gambit, and a female Angel.
  • In the midst of the press junket for Woody Allen’s Melinda & Melinda, Chloe Sevigny inadvertently lets on that the Black Cat will likely complicate Peter Parker’s life in the next Spiderman.
  • Looking for direction (and cash flow) in the upcoming post-prequel era, George Lucas announces he’ll be re-releasing the OT in Cameron-style 3-D.
  • Ang Lee prepares to go back to the well with a prequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (I’ll take it over another Hulk.)
  • Among the recent new trailers is our first look at Michael Bay’s The Island, with Ewan MacGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, and Michael Clarke Duncan. I generally can’t stand Michael Bay films, but it is sci-fi and the cast isn’t bad.
  • The new Hitchhiker’s Guide site goes live, which includes this splendid shot of Arthur and Marvin enjoying (as much possible, given the terrible pain in all his diodes down his left side) an intergalactic sunset.
  • Finally, the very Independence Day-ish full trailer for War of the Worlds is out-and-about, which involves a lot of Tom Cruise running, Dakota Fanning crying, and random things detonating. Is Spielberg trying to out-Bay Bay?
  • Death, Revenge, Love, and Slyders.

    Some short thoughts on recent DVDs witnessed…

    Dead Man: Many cinephiles whose opinions I trust have told me to check out Jim Jarmusch’s stuff, so I figured a good place to start would be this black-and-white western featuring Johnny Depp and a slew of my favorite character actors. Alas, I found Dead Man to be slow, scattershot, and for the most part uninvolving. Depp is William Blake, a fellow who is forced to flee the frontier town run by an industrialist strongman (the late, great Robert Mitchum) after an unfortunate love-triangle mix-up, and who, despite being unrelated to the English poet and mystic of the same name, nevertheless encounters enough shamanist mysticism in the wilderness to make even Oliver Stone blush. Blake’s tour guide on his increasingly bizarre escapades outside “civilization” is an Indian named Nobody (Gary Fisher), who speaks in riddle-like profundities (and, occasionally, passages from Blake) in the manner of filmed Native Americans since time immemorial.

    Basically, I thought Dead Man was kinda goofy. It never established much of a rhythm or a narrative, and as an episodic travelogue, it’s hit and miss. Billy Bob Thornton as a lonely trapper and Alfred Molina as a priest peddling smallpox blankets probably make the most indelible impressions, but other quality actors (particularly John Hurt and Gabriel Byrne) needed more to do. Frankly, I just don’t think I got it. Why does long-winded, cold-blooded killer Michael Wincott sleep with a teddy bear? Why is frontiersman Iggy Pop dressed like a Willa Cather heroine? (Presumably, the answer for Jarmusch fans is “Why Not?” I suppose I could just as easily question David Lynch’s dwarves or the Coens’ similar non-sequiturs.) Perhaps I went in with abnormal expectations, but I found Dead Man‘s “funny” parts stiff and the “profound” parts stilted. I’ll definitely get around to the rest of Jarmusch’s oeuvre, but, sadly, this counts as a strike against him.

    I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: Mike Hodges’ reinvention of Get Carter was also a disappointment. It strives mightily to be a somber, Unforgiven-like tale of unfulfilling revenge and redemption denied, but turns out instead as a slow, plodding affair that feels a bit like Eyes Wide Shut, in that a great director’s once-pioneering vision now sadly comes off as somewhat stale and antiquated.

    The movie throws you in in media res, with pretty-boy n’er-do-well Davy Graham (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) dealing to and scamming the London glitterati while his brother Will (Owen) seems to have taken a page from Matt Foley and is now, literally, living in a van down by the river. Very shortly, horrible, droogie-like things are done to Davy by none other than Malcolm McDowell, resulting in the former’s suicide, and lean, mean wildman Will blows back into town to settle the score. The rest of the film consists of Owen slowly seething (to impressive effect) while his former mates and enemies cringe, cower, and — like us — await the inevitable denouement. It eventually happens, but lordy does it take awhile to get there. Jamie Foreman (soon to be Bill Sykes in Polanski’s Oliver Twist) deserves marks as the Graham boys’ flawed and frantic lieutenant, but otherwise there’s not much to go on here. If you want to see Hodges direct Owen, rent Croupier instead.

    Love Actually: Oof, where do I start? Ok, I knew going in that this probably wasn’t going to be my cup of tea. But a good friend of mine had it sitting on his TV, he recommended it as “like Sliding Doors” (which, much like Next Stop Wonderland, was a romantic comedy that I really enjoyed), and it had a bunch of actors I like (Liam Neeson, Keira Knightley, Emma Thompson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and much of Team Hitchhikers: Martin Freeman, Alan Rickman, and Bill Nighy.) But, as many of you probably already know, Love Actually is, actually, godawful dreck, a schmaltzfest of grotesque proportions. I was complaining about the occasionally saccharine taste of In Good Company only yesterday, but Love Actually makes that film look like Requiem for a Dream.

    The film follows multiple couples in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and is set in an alternate universe where no love goes unrequited (among the beautiful, of course), at least without a wink and a kiss. In fact, in this Fairie-England, where Hugh Grant (doing his pre-About a Boy faux-self-effacing schtick) is the new Prime Minister, it’s even considered somehow romantic to make an unabashed play at your best friend’s wife. Look, I know I’m a cynical sort, but my heart warms to certain well-made fare. But this…um, not so much. From a wholly implausible joint press conference (Billy Bob Thornton cameos as a prez who combines the worst of Clinton and Dubya), to Grant cavorting around 10 Downing Street a la Risky Business, to Liam Neeson constantly interacting-cute with his Padawan stepson, to Colin Firth venturing to 19th century Portugal, to the, um, musical numbers, this film all too often made me want to claw my eyes out. Most of the time, I was hoping I’d see more of Bill Nighy, the movie’s saving grace, as an aging rocker trying to make one, last improbable comeback with a sellout remix of The Troggs’ “Love is All Around.” But, by the end, even that storyline gets smothered in sugary sweetness. For the love, actually, of Pete, stay away from this lousy film.

    Harold & Kumar go to White Castle: White Castle…hmmm, those are some fine little burgers, particularly in quantity. I haven’t had a 12-pack of Slyders in a dog’s age. In fact, I think there’s a Castle a couple of blocks over at 125th and 7th. Man, how awesome would that be right now? I…I, uh…oh yeah, Harold & Kumar, right. Yeah, that was pretty a funny movie.

    Admittedly, Harold & Kumar is for the most part a check-your-brain-at-the-door kinda film. For all of its clever 21st century savvy about 80’s-movies racial tropes, H & K is still ultimately a lowest-common-denominator college comedy. Yet, while some of the vignettes definitely fall flat, I found Harold & Kumar just enough of a variation on the age-old After Hours road-trip formula to be really amusing. John Cho and Kal Penn are both charismatic and engaging as our wayward, famished, and thoroughly stoned protagonists, and Neil Patrick Harris earns special plaudits for showing up as himself (albeit more-than-slightly tweaked) and just going for it. All in all, I highly doubt H & K is everybody’s bag, but — despite the gross-out gags and retro thinking — it is at times a rather intelligent dumb movie.

    Some Pig.

    Paramount and Nickelodeon announce the voice talent for the forthcoming live-action Charlotte’s Web (a la Babe), and it’s an all-star cast, including Julia Roberts (Charlotte), Steve Buscemi (Templeton/Rat), John Cleese (Samuel/Sheep), Oprah Winfrey and Cedric the Entertainer (Gussy and Golly/Geese), Reba McEntire and Kathy Bates (Betsy and Bitsy/Cows), and Thomas Haden Church and Andre 3000 (Brooks and Benjamin/Crows). No word on who’s Wilbur yet, although the ubiquitous Dakota Fanning is Fern. I’ve always had a soft spot for Charlotte’s Web — it’s the first book I ever remember reading — so I expect I’ll probably check this out (even if Julia is the spider.)

    It’s the Kissoff.


    If I’d known we were gonna cast our feelings into words, I’d’ve memorized the Song of Solomon. After far too long a wait, Miller’s Crossing finally arrived on DVD this morning. Lebowski might be funnier, and Fargo might get all the best press, but Miller’s Crossing is still far and away my favorite Coen movie. Nothing more foolish than a man chasin’ his hat…