Tag: Cinema

The Grapes of Wretchedness.

Lost in a wine-dark sea, Miles (Paul Giamatti) is withering on the vine. His wife left him two years ago and he’s still in the drunk-dialing throes of despair. His novelist aspirations are dying an ugly death in ever-smaller publishing houses. Both oenophile and alcoholic, he drinks too much, eats too much, surveys the world in furtive glances, and cringes with self-loathing every time he looks in the mirror. He’s lugubrious, pedantic, bristling with negativity to the core. In sum, Miles is almost completely beaten down by life…so of course he attracts the attention of a smart, beautiful woman (Virginia Madsen) who shares all his important interests and remains fond of him, even and despite his awful behavior.

If you can get past this one critical and wholly improbable plot point (and I did, eventually), Alexander Payne’s Sideways is a trip to California wine country well worth taking. The movie basically plays like an approaching-middle-age version of About Schmidt (right down to the unfortunate nude scene), but this seemed a more well-rounded and generous film than its predecessor. (I thought Schmidt derived too many laughs from turning Dylan McDermott’s character into a buffoon. That being said, I also think Sideways flinches from reality in the closing moments in a way About Schmidt didn’t.) And, while I’m about as far from a wine connoisseur as you can get (whites with chicken and fish, right?), Sideways also succeeds in making the subculture of oenophilia both accessible and reasonably engaging, a few ham-handed “wine-is-life” soliloquies notwithstanding.

Special nods go to all the actors involved here, and particularly Paul Giamatti for making it so easy to empathize with the easily unlikable Miles…I can’t think of many other folks who could have pulled it off so well (In fact, looking back I’d say Nicholas Cage pulled it off less well in Adaptation.) I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Thomas Haden Church, as Miles’ low-key, horny doofus of a best friend, and Virginia Madsen, as the previously noted underwritten muse of second chances, get some action come award time (which may end up meaning sour grapes for the Closer crowd.)

Samurai Bat.

The holiday trailer season continues today, with the first look at Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and, if you’re fast, this early copy of the spiffy new Batman Begins trailer. (If that doesn’t work, there are a number of screencaps here.)

Don’t Eat the Chocolate.

Would you let your kids near this man? The all-new, all-creepy trailer for Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory just popped up on the grid, and it seems Johnny Depp is playing it more Ed Wood and Hunter Thompson than he is Gene Wilder. I like it.

Once Bitten, Thrice Shy.


While it was pretty clear going in that the Blade trilogy had already peaked in the first five minutes of the first film, when Wesley Snipes busts up Traci Lords’ vampire rave to New Order’s infectious Pump Panel remix of “Confusion,” I still had high hopes that Blade: Trinity would live up to the “quality popcorn flick” standard of the first two. Alas, the Daywalker’s third installment is a bit of a mess. It’s got a few reasonably numbing wire-fu action sequences, sure, but it’s missing that certain je-ne-sais-quoi that made the first two outings such fun. The result is…well, kinda flat.

Surprisingly, given that this is the third Blade written by first-time director David Goyer (who’s also scribed next summer’s Batman Begins), the biggest problem here is the writing. For one, there’s holes in the plot you could drive a Batmobile through. (If the vampires can capture Blade so easily, what’d they need Dracula for? How did Drake know when the good guys would hit the psychiatrists’ office?) Moreover, entire setpieces are lifted straight out of other, better films. (For example, the aforementioned psychiatrist, stolen right out of The Terminator, or the bloodbank and (ugh) baby scenes, both jacked from the original Blade.) And worst of all is the dialogue. Ryan Reynold’s character, Hannibal King, not only has to spit out a slew of stale-on-arrival wisecracks in every scene, he also appears to have learned English from reading AICN talkbacks.

In fact, that may be the most annoying thing about Blade: Trinity — Like no movie since Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, it appears conceived, written, and marketed to appeal solely to Harry Knowles’ disgruntled army of foul-mouthed, oversexed, ADD-afflicted teenagers, right down to the Patton Oswalt cameo and the gratuitous Jessica Biel shower scene. For what it’s worth, though, Biel and Reynolds are troopers about it all, while Blade himself just seems bored at this point. (By the way, I’m a happy member of iPod Nation, but Biel’s iPodatry here was, frankly, embarrassing.) Casting Parker Posey as evil vamp Danica Talos probably seemed like a good idea (and a nod to the NYC uberyuppie milieu of Stephen “Deacon Frost” Dorff in the first film)…but she’s got nothing to work with, except some terrible repartee with Reynolds. And I don’t know what it is about Vampire Big Bads, but the guy who plays Eurotrash Dracula has got to be the worst actor I’ve seen in a major movie since Shane Brolly in Underworld. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer put it (birddogged by my bro), he had “all the dark charisma and burning threat of a baked potato.” In sum, Blades 1 & 2 are both surprisingly enjoyable, but this time they miffed it.

Heaven & Hell.

In today’s trailer bin, Colin Farrell moves from Alexander the Great to John Smith in Terrence Malick’s very Malickian The New World, while Keanu Reeves Neos up Hellblazer in the full trailer for Constantine.

Shadow of the Bat.

A good deal of movie and fanboy news came down the pike this weekend. First and most importantly, the new Batman Begins poster is out (and a new trailer is rumored in front of Ocean’s 12 this Friday.) As one AICN wag put it, it’s very Passion of the Bat. In other news, Harrison Ford says Indy IV is moving again, Chris Columbus is directing Sub-Mariner (uh, oh), and Kevin Spacey is seriously considering Lex Luthor. Finally, the teaser posters for Mr. & Mrs. Smith (a.k.a. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in War of the Roses meets True Lies) are now also floating around the ether, along with the new trailer. Update: The international poster for Batman Begins is now also online.

The End of All Things.

(But, wait, there’s room for a little more.) I could say that I haven’t posted here in two days because of the increased end-of-year work burden or the recent cable Internet outage at home base, and yes, those both played their part. But, to be honest, I’ve been spending most of my hours since Wednesday afternoon perusing the long-awaited Return of the King: Extended Edition. (Thank you, NYC fanboy underground…strangely enough, I ended up being one of the first to procure the precious, and have thus been answering spoiler-filled queries over at Tolkien Online the past two days.)

So, how is it? As with the FotR:EE and the TTT:EE, the Extended Edition is clearly a better film than the theatrical cut, with richer, denser characterizations, more Tolkien lore, and an improved sense of flow. Whatsmore, to my mind the two biggest problems with the RotK:TE have been rectified: 1) Denethor’s screen time has been doubled, and — while he still doesn’t get his palantir — the Steward is now much more multifaceted and grief-stricken than before. 2) Both Frodo & Sam’s journey through Mordor and the time between Pelennor Fields and the Black Gates have been extended, giving the Land of Shadow much more heft and menace. As you’d expect, there’s lots of great stuff here for fans of the book…Voice of Saruman stands out in particular as a scene laden to the brim with Tolkien’s prose, and such iconic moments as the Crossroads and Sam seeing the star in Mordor now get their rightful due.

That being said, some fans are going to be disappointed by the short shrift given to certain chapters (and by King Elessar’s blatant disregard for the rules of parley.) The Houses of Healing and the Eowyn-Faramir romance are touched on very lightly, and there is NO new footage included after the Crack of Doom. (I’d guess this is probably PJ’s payback to all the “multiple ending” critics, but still, I was very much looking forward to more Grey Havens…particularly more of Frodo’s final words. (“It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”)

In fact, the extended RotK is the first time I’ve felt that PJ & New Line may be deliberately holding back on some of the choice footage. On the writer-director commentary, PJ admits to not including certain very memorable scenes (the Watchers of Cirith Ungol, the various weddings and epilogues) in this cut for “pacing reasons” (?), and that perhaps they’ll show up on the “25th anniversary” version. I don’t want to ascribe nefarious motives to the guy after all he’s done to create these amazing films, but this sounds to me suspiciously like a ploy to sell some HD-DVD box sets in a few years.

But, still, that’s the ring talking. All in all, RotK:EE, like its predecessors, is a wonderful gift to the fans of Tolkien and Middle Earth. And, although we have come now to the end, these three DVD sets (which look great on the shelf together) will now live on forever as a beacon of hope to fandom.