Month: August 2004

Bring in Da’ Noise, Bring in Da’ Funk.

Two fanboy icons get the Remix treatment…First, Tyler Durden gets all Tekken up in here with Fight Club: The Game. (Hmm, sadly, it looks Ikea-Nesting-Instinct-lame.) Meanwhile, Kirk & co. get their funk on in this strange ad for the Star Trek Original Series DVD. Well, it’s definitely more fun than an Odd-numbered Trek.

Vice City.


Although the swing is nowhere near as severe, Michael Mann’s Collateral also had a bit of a Code 46 problem: Highly promising at first, it ultimately backslides into a much less appealing and much more ham-handed film. Now, Collateral still ends up being a decently enjoyable night at the movies, but the flaws of the final third definitely hurt the overall experience.

All’s well that starts well…the film has a great sense of place, and both Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx are very good throughout. (Despite what many of the reviews say, by the way, Cruise has played a villain before…he was Lestat, and he actually turned out to be pretty good.) And there’s some nice supporting work by Before Night Falls‘s Javier Bardem and The Ladykillers‘ Irma Hall. (Mark Ruffalo seemed slightly miscast as the cop, and he may well be approaching the Stiller Threshold for overexposure in 2004, but he was solid enough.) For the first ninety minutes or so, as Max and Vincent discuss their respective philosophies while making their bloody rounds across the City of Angels, the film (much like Heat) feels like a strangely moody and contemplative Grand Theft Auto mission.

But, when Max’s cab stops for two Very Highly Symbolic Coyotes crossing the street, trouble bells started ringing. And sure enough, soon thereafter, Collateral lapses into over-the-top, nonsensical cheese. The eject moment came for me when Tom Cruise, previously unwilling to venture into one nightspot to retain his anonymity, starts firing away haphazardly in a Chinatown disco. (I guess this is the only club in America without video cameras.) And from then on, the movie takes too long to do too little…the last few set pieces unroll sluggishly, and could all have been cut down by several minutes. By the overblown final moments, I’m sorry to say, I had pretty much checked out. All in all, Collateral is definitely worth two hours of air conditioning, but as for its larger pretensions…Mission Failed.

Lost in Translation.


Well, for the first twenty-five minutes or so, when Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton were wandering around a picturesque, slightly-futuristic Shanghai, I thought Michael Winterbottom’s Code 46 might turn out to be quite good, perhaps a slightly better version of Wim Wender’s Until the End of the World. After all, some of the cinematography in the early going (Shanghai hotels, Morton under a strobelight) was very impressive, and I liked the way the movie just went for it…immersing you in this world of the future without taking the time to explain all that much.

But, right about the time this very unlikely couple consummate their evening, the film starts slipping off the rails, and it’s a long way down. For one, the more you hear about this particular future dystopia — the Sphinx corporation, critical travel “papelles”, empathy viruses, Code 46, etc. — the less sense it makes. If people could read minds just by, um, becoming infected with a virus (as Tim Robbins has and does), then why wouldn’t everyone do it? And why would the rest of the characters be so consistently amazed by his ability, if it’s simply off-the-shelf? Similarly, while at first the global NewSpeak, incorporating elements of French, Spanish, Chinese, and other languages into English, seems like a neat idea, it eventually just sounds ridiculous. Si, it’s true…ultimately, every hombre and femme ends up sounding a bit like a dinner-party Hercule Poirot, until you start wondering if it’s possible to get your dinero back.

But, however weak the premises of this sci-fi vision, the real problem here is in the “love” story. Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton can both be appealing actors elsewhere, but here they seem all wrong for each other. He’s too lanky and she’s too fetal, and together they exude zero chemistry. More problematically [Spoilers to Follow], once the “Code 46” genetic aspect of the story kicks in and the two implausibly venture off to Neo-Dubai, their romance degenerates into some twisted sci-fi rumination on Oedipal complexes that’s at turns head-scratching and rather dull, despite featuring one of the most ghastly and unerotic sex scenes in recent memory. (Trust me, if you thought Meryl Streep pawing Liev Schreiber’s chest hair in The Manchurian Candidate was creepy, you ain’t seen nothing yet.) At any rate, as the last few moments hammered the subtext into the ground and Coldplay started crooning over yet another excessively fond shot of Morton, I had to concede that Code 46, however visually promising at first, turned out to be a bad, bad film. And, given how much fun Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People was, that’s disappointing, n’est-ce-pas?

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.

With visions of the 2000 primary perhaps dancing in his head, John McCain asks the White House to repudiate the recent Swift Boat Veterans garbage. (Naturally, they didn’t.) The real ugliness begins.

Born in the USA.

A few days out of date now, but still worth reading: Bruce Springsteen on the need for regime change. “It is through the truthful exercising of the best of human qualities – respect for others, honesty about ourselves, faith in our ideals – that we come to life in God’s eyes. It is how our soul, as a nation and as individuals, is revealed. Our American government has strayed too far from American values. It is time to move forward.”

MSG Moves.

After a relatively quiet offseason, the Knicks finally get in the game, giving up Mutombo, Harrington, Frank Williams, and Cezary Trybanski to acquire shooter Jamal Crawford and rebounder Jerome Williams from Chicago. A cap-killer, sure, but I don’t think it’s a bad trade at all…New York needed more scoring in the worst way.