Tag: Cinema

The Shame of Kazakhstan.

Now, in our country there is problem. Despite being British, Sasha Baron Cohen, a.k.a. Borat, sparks a mild diplomatic situation between the US and Kazakhstan, one that the administration will try to alleviate with White House talks. To be honest, I think I’d prefer Borat representing my country over Dubya.

Walking on Sunshine.

This’ll probably be a brief one, as, to be honest, the film didn’t make much of an impression. Nevertheless, I caught Little Miss Sunshine earlier this week at the Ward Cinema in downtown Honolulu. Several people I know really dig this movie, so perhaps I went in with unreasonable expectations. Nevertheless, Little Miss Sunshine, while generally warm-hearted and fitfully amusing, showed signs of strain and felt just a bit too self-consciously quirky throughout, as if Todd Solondz cheered up considerably and started writing for television. (In fact, Solondz-lite is a good description of this film — in a way, this feels like Welcome to the Dollhouse, leavened with dollops of artificial good cheer. I prefer my misanthropy neat.) As a result, and through no fault of the consistently excellent cast, I basically ended up just sitting there dutifully throughout Sunshine, neither enjoying myself nor not enjoying myself, until it was over.

As Sunshine begins, we’re introduced to the various members of the Hoover clan, each of which is as uniquely and identifiably bizarre as, say, the Munsters or the Addams family: Dad (Greg Kinnear) is a relentlessly go-getter (albeit failed) self-improvement guru. Grandpa (Alan Arkin) is a foul-mouthed heroin junkie. Uncle Frank (Steve Carell) is a suicidal Proust scholar. Son Dwayne (Paul Dano) is a disaffected Nietzsche fanatic living out a vow of silence. Like Marge Simpson, Mom (Toni Collette) is the still, calm, and long-suffering center of their world, the only character who doesn’t get her own quirk. And daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin, cute as a button) harbors only one wish: to be crowned a child beauty pageant queen, namely Little Miss Sunshine. When Olive unexpectedly gets the chance to fulfill her desire, the entire family packs into a VW bus with a bothersome clutch and, in the manner of these types of films, embarks on a hijinx-filled road trip, during which much hilarity theoretically ensues.

I don’t want to give away every twist and turn, because that’s pretty much the sum of the film’s entertainment value (although I will note that, by the end, noone will doubt this family’s commitment to Sparkle Motion.) But a number of vignettes do seem to rely on sitcom-like coincidences (for example, the world’s two foremost Proust scholars at the same truck-stop at the same time) that increase the feeling that this film is set in a remote corner of television-land. Like I said, Little Miss Sunshine isn’t a bad film by any means, and I suspect most people will enjoy it more than I did. But, to my mind, there just wasn’t much there there.

A Long-Expected Party?

Is something stirring in Middle Earth? While Peter Jackson announces he’s producing a remake of The Dam Busters (to be directed by Christian Rivers, WETA’s head animatic guy from LotR and Kong), very vague rumors emerge from the head office at New Line of a July 2007 start date for filming of The Hobbit. Let’s hope they at least give PJ the right of first refusal…Giving this property to somebody like Ratner would be absolutely criminal. Update: Another intriguing LotR link (albeit from the Mises Institute), via Dangerous Meta: Tolkien v. Power.

Rocky Road.

So the second half of the aforementioned weekend double-feature was Woody Allen’s Scoop. (As far as choices go, we were somewhat limited — other members of our party had already seen Little Miss Sunshine and Talladega Nights, and while I may still catch Snakes on a Plane at some point, I’d like to see it with a bigger, rowdier audience than would fill an afternoon matinee on the islands.) At any rate, cringeworthy at first, Scoop is a passable little flick, I suppose — Once it settles into its rhythm, it’s a decent ninety minutes of air-conditioning. When I say it feels like an old-fashioned throwback, I don’t mean in the sense of vintage Allen comedies like Bananas, Love and Death, Take the Money and Run, or Sleeper. It’s nowhere near as funny as those films, even if Allen is once again doing his usual nebbishy schtick here. (It is, however, better than recent Allen bombs like Manhattan Murder Mystery or Small Time Crooks, albeit not by much.) Rather, with its thin characters and gossamer plot line, Scoop is so breezy as to seem weightless — there’s barely a movie here at all, just an opportunity for Woody and new favorite sidekick Scarlett Johannson to play Woody for an hour and a half. This will likely seem either endearing and nostalgic or deeply painful to you, depending on your threshold for Allenisms.

The set-up is this: Sondra Pransky (Johansson) is a verbose, vaguely neurotic, and bespectacled (you do the math) college journalist staying with upper-class friends in London and aiming to break into the journalistic big-time. While serving as an audience volunteer for a third-rate Borscht Belt magic show one evening by the Great Splendini, a.k.a. Sid Waterman (Allen), Pransky is visited by a ghost in the machine: namely, that of former Fleet Street legend Joe Strombel (Ian McShane, carrying Al Swearingen with him whereever he goes right now). Apparently unable to file his story from the grave, Strombel’s spectre offers Pransky the scoop of a lifetime: upper-crust son of privilege Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman) is in fact the Tarot Card Killer, a lowlife murderer currently haunting the streets of London. Armed with this unearthly knowledge, Pransky and Waterman set out to get enough dirt on the young Lord Lyman to make the story, a plan which is complicated, naturally, by Pransky falling in love with her target.

What this all amounts to is Johansson flirting with Jackman and/or playing Nancy Drew while Allen bumbles his way through various upper-class social gatherings. (Allen’s portrayal of the British class system is as cartoonish here as it was in Match Point, but, hey, that’s ok — for all intent and purposes, Scoop is a cartoon.) When Allen delivers seemingly decade-old groaners or fumbles with a goofy mnemonic for entirely too long, Scoop can be hard to watch without gritting your teeth and just grimacing through it. But, occasionally, Allen falls into a comfort zone or delivers a choice line which suggests there’s still some life in Alvy Singer yet. The former moments outweighs the latter, sure, and perhaps I’m being too lenient on Woody here. But, at the very least, Scoop isn’t flat-out terrible like so many other recent Allen comedies, although I can’t recommend anyone actually rush out and spend money on it. (Although, if you do, Buffy fans, keep a sharp eye out for Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) in a very brief supporting role, as well as — more exciting for my purposes — fanboy stalwarts Julian Glover (Empire, Indy 3) and Charles Dance (Alien 3, The Golden Child).)

Trailer Convoy.

Several items for the trailer bin:

* Diane Lane and Thomas Jane go on the lam to escape hitmen Mickey Rourke and Joseph Gordon-Leavitt in this glimpse at John Madden’s Tarantino’ed-up version of Elmore Leonard’s Killshot. (Johnny Knoxville and Rosario Dawson are involved in some fashion as well.)

* Chow Yun-Fat and Gong Li gear up for some trademark Zhang Yimou wire-fu (a la Hero and House of Flying Daggers) in the new teaser for Curse of the Golden Flower.

* Nicole Kidman ventures through the photographic looking-glass as Diane Arbus in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, the new film by Secretary‘s Steven Shainberg, also with Robert Downey Jr. (Mirrored here.)

* Helen Mirren jumps from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II in this look at Stephen Frears’ The Queen, concerning Buckingham Palace’s reaction to the death of Princess Diana. (I have zero interest in the subject matter, frankly, but I do like Mirren, Frears, and James Cromwell, and there’s an iffy Tony Blair impression here by Michael Sheen, to say nothing of the guy playing Prince Charles.)

* Finally, Guillermo del Toro returns to the faerie Spain of The Devil’s Backbone in this rapid-edit teaser for Pan’s Labyrinth. (Being on a lousy hotel connection, I couldn’t get this link to work, but I believe the same teaser is mirrored here.)