July Movie Releases

Um, why are there so few movies slated for release in the middle month of the summer? Look at July 16, for example. I mean, I know no one wants to go up against a movie made by the "Dark Knight" guy, but damn. One movie (plus another that's going to try for a two-day jump on the weekend)? I suppose if nothing else, this is a sign that Hollywood is hurting as much as the rest of the world right now.




JUNE 30
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse - Apparently the least sucktastic (no pun intended) of the series so far but that's certainly not saying much. There is probably nothing that will convince you to either see this or not see it, so I'll leave it there.

The Love Ranch - Taylor Hackford (Ray) directs his wife, Helen Mirren, in what looks like a fantastic B-movie about the couple that owned the first legal brothel in Reno, NV.


JULY 1

The Last Airbender - I have heard - literally - nothing positive about this movie. This makes me sad, but perhaps it's not surprising. Anyway, in case you hadn't heard already, this film is apparently not even worth seeing to spite the sparkle.


JULY 8

Grease Sing-Along - If this doesn't make you excited, you are dead inside. That is all.


JULY 9

Despicable Me - I don't care what anyone thinks, I want to see this. The marketing has been all over the place, from the excruciating teaser trailer (dumb American crackers in Egypt, yo!) to the enigmatic ads that feature nothing but those adorable yellow minions. This looks like fun, and the voice talent is intriguing on its own (Julie Andrews, FTW!), but after over a year of seeing ads for it, I still don't know what it's about. I *think* it's about an evil mastermind who's put in charge of a couple of cute kids, but after all the marketing whiplash, I'm not entirely sure.

Predators - Am I a bad geek for having never seen the original Predator? This is supposed to be a reboot, directed by Nimród Antal and produced by Robert Rodriguez. It's got a pretty kick-ass cast, so that's worth something right there. I feel like I need to see the original first, though.

MUST SEE: The Kids Are All Right - (limited) One of the darlings of Sundance, this may actually have legs as an early award bait movie. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore play lesbian parents whose kids seek out their sperm donor dad. The trailer, at least, is very warm and funny, and I get some You Can Count On Me vibes from it, which is no bad thing.


JULY 14

MUST SEE: The Sorcerer's Apprentice - There is some good word of mouth on this, and I have to say it looks like something worth checking out. Jay Baruchel's star may finally be on the rise, after watching the enormous successes of his friends and sometime co-stars Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and Jason Segel. And man, it's good to see Nicholas Cage back in the game.


JULY 16

MUST SEE: Inception - Yep, this is the one most of us have been waiting for most of the year. Christopher Nolan follows up the jaw-dropping success of The Dark Knight with something more like the films he used to make (like Memento and The Prestige - the latter being probably my fave of his), but with way more cool toys at his disposal. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a thief who takes ideas from people's dreams. There's been positive early feedback, though some people seem to be disappointed that it's not the BEST MOVIE EVER OMG. Anyway, for once, I can't wait to go into a theater not knowing a thing about what to expect.


JULY 23

Salt - I don't know why, but this just doesn't interest me. I love that this character was originally a man, but the comment from someone involved with the film about changing the script to avoid having Evelyn save (and therefore metaphorically castrate) her husband? Seriously sold me a ticket to another movie this weekend.

Ramona and Beezus - I might dig the trailer for this more if it didn't have Selena Gomez's inspiration-y theme song all over it and just let it be quirky, like Cleary's stuff should be. This isn't top priority, but it's still ahead of Salt if those are my only choices for that weekend.

Countdown to Zero - (NYC, Wash. DC) From some of the folks who brought us An Inconvenient Truth comes a documentary about the escalating nuclear arms race, from the Cold War to the present.


JULY 30

MUST SEE: Dinner For Schmucks - Saw the original French version, called The Dinner Game, when I was in college, and it's a pretty great character comedy. I'm wary about what looks like a ratcheting up of the goofball quotient, but I hope they at least do justice to the friendship between the two guys.

MUST SEE: Get Low (limited) - This one has been around since last summer's festival circuit, and there was strong buzz about Robert Duvall in last year's Best Actor race until they pushed the film to this year. The story is basically about a man in 1930s Tennessee who wants to hold his own funeral while he's still alive. Also stars Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek, and Gerald McRaney. Cannot wait to see this.

Charlie St. Cloud - Looks like Zac Efron is starting to break out of the teen idol mold and take on some more challenging roles. This movie seems an awful lot like a three-hankie weeper, and as such I will probably skip it for now and wait until it shows up on cable.

Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore - I confess, I saw the first Cats and Dogs and it was mildly funny (Sean Hayes as Mr. Tinkles = WIN). But every time I see the trailer for this new movie I want to slash my wrists. I'm sure kids will eat this up, but they will forget about it five minutes after they leave the theater. I also hate the deliberate attempts to crack "grown up" jokes (Kitty Galore, "hopped up on catnip," etc.). Just no.

Twelve (limited) - This kind of movie is right in director Joel Schumacher's wheelhouse. He does so much better with more intimate, relationship-driven movies than with big studio fare. This movie, which made its debut at Sundance, has been savaged by critics - except for Roger Ebert. I'm interested in it, if for no other reason than the narration by Schumacher alumnus Keifer Sutherland.

Scenes Made of Awesome - Me and You and Everyone We Know

Miranda July's wonderfully bizarre Me and You and Everyone We Know came up on one of the blogs I read as an example of great use of scatological humor in movies, and I almost did a post about the "poop back and forth" scene instead (Brandon Ratcliff is seriously one of the cutest kid actors in the History of Cute). But then I watched the Tyrone Street scene again. This is one of my favorite movies ever, and there are so many great, poetic scenes in it, but the Tyrone Street scene is perhaps the most special of all.

Christine (director and star July), is an elder-cab driver by day and video artist by night, and she takes one of her elder-cab clients to shop for shoes. Working at the store is a guy named Richard (John Hawkes, who Lost fans might recognize as Lennon from Season 6), and Richard is bummed because he's just separated from his wife, who doesn't seem to have loved him in quite the same way he loved her. He and Christine have a -- I don't want to call it meet-cute, but it's definitely a connection. Christine impulsively catches up to Richard as they both walk to their cars, and what follows is just plain magic. An entire lifetime together, lived in one block. The whole film is kind of about this moment, about the characters finding other people who speak their unique "language."

The A-Team

The A-Team

This plot isn't nearly as convoluted as in his previous film, Smokin' Aces, but director Joe Carnahan brings the same unabashed sense of gleeful mayhem to his take on the 1980s action-comedy series The A-Team. The movie is an origin story - a two hour expansion on essentially the opening credits of the show. How did these guys meet? What crime were they accused of that they didn't commit? Why is B.A. afraid to fly, and what's with the mohawk? All these questions and more are answered.

I really couldn't tell you with any certainty what the plot of the film is, so I am cribb. Hannibal (Liam Neeson) and Face (Bradley Cooper) already know each other when the movie begins, and very soon after the opening scene Hannibal meets B.A. (Quinton Jackson) and they rescue Face from some Mexican badasses. The threesome, in desperate need of a pilot, recruit "Howling Mad" Murdock (District 9's Sharlto Copley). And by recruit, I mean break him out of a mental hospital, because his insanity is all too real.

There is a ridiculously over-the-top opening action sequence, culminating in Hannibal uttering his famous line from the show - "I love it when a plan comes together!" And "eight years and eighty successful missions later", the Alpha Team is stationed in Iraq. They take on a mission, against fairly sound advice, and though the mission is a success, the only person who could have testified that they were acting on the U.S.'s behalf ends up being killed, and the four of them are dishonorably discharged and sent to separate maximum security prisons. Pretty darn close to the background of the show.

The rest of the film is about them breaking out and attempting to clear their names and be reinstated. This doesn't quite happen, but it effectively serves as background for the canon of the show, where we were told each week:

"...a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team."

Something I used to love about the show back in the day was that the good guys always won and nobody got hurt (or at least killed). There have been complaints (from Mr. T, for one) that the movie doesn't follow this formula (he also complains about the sex in the movie, which makes me think he went to see something else, because there is nothing sexual except some innuendo and one kiss in the film). But I submit that both the nature of the times and the nature of the medium of film make the violence necessary. And something I appreciated is that the movie, as empty as it is in most respects, manages to deal with the violence in a surprisingly thoughtful way, giving Quinton Jackson a lot more to do with B.A. than Mr. T got to do on the show - and even giving the mohawk a backstory!

One thing critics complained about that I kind of loved - the flashbacks to things that we saw half an hour or so before. The biggest example of this is in the climax. We've already seen Face lay out the plan, but when we see the plan executed, we flash back to that "plan" scene again, and the lines have a little more meaning. Tons of movies have used this effect, and I think - at least in the climax (perhaps using it more than once was overkill) - it was crucial to understanding what was going on and the knowledge that everything that happened was part of the plan.

It might be silly, but I loved this movie to pieces. There are some weak spots, sure (most notably Biel's character, who is pretty badly written), but the good stuff far outweighs any of that. Neeson is surprisingly good in such an uncharacteristic role. Bradley Cooper is hilarious, and gorgeous. Quinton Jackson, as I said above, gives B.A. a lot more meat than just the fool-pitying. Sharlto Copley is the best thing about the "Team." And Patrick Wilson as the CIA heavy is possibly the best thing about the entire movie.

The Karate Kid (2010)

The Karate Kid (2010)


In a time of far too many remakes, this is a surprisingly good one. John Avildsen, who directed the original, had a great "underdog movie" mold and he used it to great effect with his 1984 film, just as he did 8 years before with the Best Picture winner Rocky. So when you've got a good formula, it's tricky to mess with it.

Which is why the remake is nearly a beat-for-beat copy of the original, only put into the new setting of China so that the sights are different, more dramatic, more majestic. And, despite what the title says (I will never understand why that essential change was not made), it's a different martial art, so the moves are different. Seriously, it's like all those posts about Avatar this winter, where someone just took a copy of the already existing story and, as they say, filed the serial numbers off (and not even all of them). Dre instantly makes a friend when he gets to his new home, but the guy disappears after the first few minutes of the movie. Dre is targeted by the bullies because he flirts with a girl one of them knows (or is "promised" to?). He gets beaten up and hides from the bullies at school. He gets just a little revenge and gets a group ass-kicking for his trouble, which is interrupted by the maintenance man who is actually rather good at ass-kicking himself. Dre and the maintenance man go to the - I'm sure the word is not dojo - class where his bullies are learning kung fu, and the similarities to the original have to be seen to be believed. Even the tournament hits almost exactly every note the original does. Dre is given a special garment - in this case a white tunic "like Bruce Lee's" before his first fight. There is then a tournament montage accompanied by some peppy music - sadly, not Joe Esposito's awesome "You're the Best." Dre makes it to the semi-finals and his opponent is told by his master to break a rule and disqualify himself in order to put Dre out of commission. Dre is injured and pleads with his teacher to do that magic healing thing we saw earlier in the film so that he can fight in the final. Dre goes to fight, on an injured leg, and his final opponent is instructed to sweep break his leg. And while it's not the Crane, Dre still witnesses ancient technique that somehow masters and uses in the very end to defeat his opponent.

This is not to say that these similarities are a flaw in the film. Far from it. For people who haven't seen the original, this simply pushes all the same buttons that the original did for us fans. As I said, it's a very effective formula, so why mess with it. For us fans, though, it does something just as cool. Since we know how the story goes, it becomes a game of how much of the original can they fit into this new setting, and how will they transpose our favorite elements of the original.

I thought this was a very satisfying film. Jaden Smith, it must be said, is a little annoying at times. Jackie Chan gets to demonstrate that he can act AND fight (his character's Obligatory Family Tragedy scene is actually very well played). And Taraji P. Henson is possibly the strongest link in the cast.

(Brendan and) The Secret of Kells

I was fortunate enough to catch this before the Oscars this past weekend, and while I don't think it was the strongest film of the Animation nominees, it's nonetheless a staggeringly beautiful myth of a movie. Click on all the images below to see them bigger; there's a lot of detail that rewards a closer look.


The Secret of Kells

The story revolves around Brendan, who lives in a little village called Kells with his guardian uncle, Abbot Cellach (voiced by Mad-Eye himself, Brendan Gleeson). The Abbot is consumed with a project of building a wall around Kells, in order to protect it from attack by the approaching barbarians. He forbids Brendan from straying on the other side of the wall, but Brendan is as restless as any other boy his age. He spends a lot of time with the scribes and becomes obsessed with illumination - an intricate process of drawing which was used to create the wondrous Book of Iona, a book prophecies were made about which was largely made by the work of Father Aidan. Father Aidan seeks refuge in Kells from the barbarians, who are moving ever closer, and Brendan befriends him and becomes his apprentice.



On a mission to find special berries to make ink for the Book, Brendan ventures outside the wall into the forest and is nearly killed by wolves. He is saved, however, by a faerie named Aisling (which may sound to an American ear more like "Ashley"), who can also transform into a white wolf (zomg stolen from twilight!). Aisling befriends Brendan and guides him through the forest (which she calls *her* forest), and she helps him find the berries he needs to bring back to Father Aidan. Over the course of the film, Brendan must face many fears, from fear of his uncle's disapproval and punishment to more mythical fears such as monsters.



This is very much a hero's tale, with a real sense of fear - Brendan must face his fears in order to accomplish his fated task and finish the Book. There is even a quite striking "belly of the beast" sequence that features some of the most spellbinding animation and drawing that you've ever seen. Seriously, just wow.



My favorite sequence, though, is the one embedded below. Brendan has been locked in his room for disobedience, but he desperately needs to make another trip into the forest to get an essential item for illuminating. The key hangs above where Brendan's uncle is sleeping, and Aisling goes with the cat Pangur to get it.



This is a real gem of a movie, and if you get a chance (I'm not sure how widely it will be released in theaters, but it should be at least on DVD soon), I highly recommend it. It's a storybook come to life, and it tells its tale in a way no other medium but animation can.

I am woman, hear me roar

[Side note: Was there anything tackier than the orchestra playing that Helen Reddy anthem as Bigelow walked off the stage with her Oscar?]

I've seen a lot of comments about this, and I'm a bit weary of everyone's obsession with Kathryn Bigelow's gender, too. But it's a significant milestone nonetheless.


Bigelow, on the set of The Hurt Locker
The directors branch of the Academy is notorious for being a boys club. Not just because it only awarded men up until last night, but because it's members are this small, exclusive, tight group made up entirely of men. The directing Oscar is Hollywood's thickest glass ceiling, and to see it shatter last night was a HUGE deal. To illustrate, lemme tell you a little story about the woman who handed Bigelow that Oscar last night (and hilariously asked if she could keep it), Barbra Streisand.


Streisand, on the set of Yentl
Say what you want about Babs, an honest look at her career as a director (even the amazingly self-obsessed The Mirror Has Two Faces) shows that she has a true gift in that arena, regardless of her sex. When she made her first film, Yentl, she showed it to Steven Spielberg. The media would later distort this exchange into Spielberg giving her "advice" (a distortion that led to her refusal to give interviews for a decade), but the only advice he gave her was, and I quote, "Don't change a frame." Streisand would go on to WIN the Golden Globe for Best Director for this film, but when Oscar nominations were announced, her name was noticably absent in the directing category. In 1991, she directed The Prince of Tides, which went on be nominated for 7 Oscars, including Best Picture. Streisand was also nominated for the Directors Guild award for that film. Yet she was shut out again for the Directing Oscar (Billy Crystal ribbed the Academy for this in his opening number - "Did this film direct itself?!").


L to R - Lina Wertmueller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola
There has been a decided gender bias in Hollywood, and not just at the Oscars. Women filmmakers are consistently ignored, not just for awards, but by the studios and media as well. Where once upon a time 25% of screenwriters were women (writing ultimately half of the films that were actually produced), now it's more like 6-7%. It is the fondest hope of mine - and I mean this seriously, as a woman who hopes to break into the movie business - that Bigelow's win will draw more attention to female filmmakers. I'm not saying give them awards and movie deals just because - quality should always trump gender politics - but don't keep ignoring them, because they're not going to go away.

Oscar Post-Mortem

That may be the last time I try to liveblog an award show, or at least the Oscars. I was trying to do way too much last night and it was a bit stressful.

Thoughts on the ceremony...

- It may have been my overexcited state, but I thought Martin and Baldwin did just fine. Some of the jokes fell flat, but since when is that something new? I thought the opening number with Neil Patrick Harris was very fun (I guess he was the surprise that got translated as "secret third host" in the rumor mill).

- I was excited that they were doing a tribute to John Hughes (who never won an Oscar), and it was great to see Molly and Matthew and the other Hughes "kids" on stage, but I thought this was a bit out of place. And since the BFCA Critics Choice Awards did basically the same thing, it felt a little superfluous.

- Did anyone notice the little Kanye moment with the man and the woman accepting for Documentary Short? I wasn't paying close enough attention to what was said, though I did notice that the woman seemed to be interrupting the man. There was apparently some legal drama with their film, and these two had not spoken to each other for a while (not even to work out who was going to speak if they won). And the man's mother held her cane out to keep the woman from getting to the stage too quick, to give the man more time (or perhaps all the allotted time) to speak. Wow.

- I thought the dance number to the nominated scores was HORRENDOUS and a very, VERY poor exchange for what might have been some great musical performances of the song nominees. Odd that the reason given for nixing the performances was that they wanted to treat that like all the other categories. And yet the musical scores got their own dance number. Shenanigans!

- I liked the montages of clips for the acting categories (as opposed to single scenes) - you get a better idea about the overall performance - but I don't understand why they did supporting different from lead (lead nominees being the only people to get the "eulogy" treatment). Nor why they trotted the lead acting nominees out on stage, like those are the two most important categories of the night.

- While I really loved the five previous winners presenting each category last year, I did NOT like the way they did it this year, where five people connected to the nominees came out and gushed about them and THEN the previous Oscar-winner in the other-gendered category opened the envelope. Very disjointed, and the producers clearly did not get what worked or what was so special about what was done last year.

- I made a joke about the Ghost reference being kind of tacky to start the Memoriam segment with, but I'd forgotten that Demi and Swayze were in Ghost together (probably Swayze's greatest performance), and he was the first person to show up in that clip. That was sweet. And I'm very glad that everyone learned from last year's fiasco that what we want to see in this segment is the SCREEN, with the IMAGES and the NAMES. Not someone performing a song on the stage.

- I loved that they did a segment on horror, and I could not care less if it was pandering. I was giddy as a schoolgirl throughout. EXCEPT for the films that were not even remotely horror, notably Twilight (the other one people mentioned was Edward Scissorhands, but that's much closer to being horror than Twilight). Also, fail for the drivel writer who said the Academy hadn't honored horror since The Exorcist in 1973. I don't personally define Silence of the Lambs as horror, but most people do - and, yanno, they used several clips from it in the horror montage. As well as Misery, which the Academy honored the year before that. And The Omen, which won Best Original Score three years after The Exorcist. A little research never killed anyone.


Thoughts on the winners...

- No surprises in the acting categories, of course. I think it's kind of brilliant that Sandra Bullock collected a Razzie for Worst Actress and an Oscar for Best Actress in the same weekend. I'm glad Mo'Nique used part of her speech to address all the hoopla over her non-campaign. Christoph Waltz was charming, as usual. And the Dude abides, man.

- Biggest surprise was Geoffrey Fletcher winning the screenplay award for Precious, making him the first African-American to win a writing Oscar. I'm not sure it's terribly deserved, as the actors are what really make that movie work, but I can understand people going down their ballot and wanting to support the film in another category. I think In the Loop was robbed, though.

- There will be countless debates as to whether Avatar should have won Art Direction and Cinematography, but I suspect in ten or twenty years, the Academy will seem strangely prescient here.

- Very glad that Up took another prize besides animation, a well-deserved win for Michael Giacchino and his loving musical score.

- I still wonder if the seeming incongruity of a woman directing a gritty war film made people see The Hurt Locker (NOT the direction, which is a separate thing) as better than it is. Nevertheless, I do feel that Kathryn Bigelow's directing win was richly deserved. That movie is an absolute director's showcase, and the main reason it works is because it's so skillfully shot.

- While The Hurt Locker is a fine film, I don't think it was the Best. A lot of prognosticators and critics are patting themselves on the back for shepherding this thing to a win, despite its miniscule box office returns. I have to ask one thing, though. Why were these same people whining about predictability, "echo chamber"s, and "safe" choices this year when this outcome that they're so happy about is all three of those things? I would have loved to see a surprise for Best Picture, but I guess those just don't happen anymore. And can't, with the press analyzing every detail and event of the season.

In the final analysis, I have to wonder how meaningful it is to follow all this so closely, as I have this year. Part of me loves having the inside info and knowing pretty much what to expect, but in a way I kind of prefer getting attached to what I want, without that filter of "never gonna happen."

As regards the show, I have to say that Adam Shankman's and Bill Mechanic's efforts were not really a success. The entire evening felt disjointed and there was more stuff that didn't work than did. I liked Steve and Alec more than most people liveblogging, it seems, but I agree that their schtick would have worked just as well, perhaps better, with one host. The best moments last night were the unscripted ones, and maybe there would have been more of those if the orchestra hadn't been so ruthless about playing people off.

Oh, and Best Dressed - definitely Sandra Bullock.