The Screengrab : jack black

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Bombs of Summer 2009 (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

And now, the bombs...though, to be honest, with no Love Guru or Speed Racer in the running, this category (with one consensus exception) is a lot more of an open race for Summer 2009, with ties in the 4th and 5th place spots pretty much decided by coin-toss...well, it was a little more scientific than that, but not by much...

5. YEAR ONE (June 19)

Nick:
Barring The Flintstones suddenly becoming fashionable again, Harold Ramis’ caveman comedy starring Jack Black and Michael Cera will sink like a stone.

Scott:
Maybe this has one good weekend in it, but I’m not seeing a lot of staying power here. If you check your list of successful cavemen comedies, I think you’ll find it’s a bit shorter than you remember.

Andrew:
Oh, I dunno...I remember at least one really good gag in Ringo Starr’s Caveman, and I expect Year One to at least double that batting average...which might be just enough to get me into an air-conditioned theater on some muggy June afternoon. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, true...

4. IMAGINE THAT (June 12)

Scott:
Imagine what? Another toothless “family-friendly” Eddie Murphy comedy larded with sugary sweet life lessons? All too easy to imagine.

Paul:
Dear Eddie Murphy,

It’s been a decade since Bowfinger. Ever since then you’ve made lousy action comedies, lousy family comedies, and computer-animated comedies in which you provide the voice of a talking donkey. Pleasepleaseplease be funny again, both for your own sake and the sake of those who remember when you could still make people laugh. Thank you.

Sincerely,
The Screengrab

Andrew:
Okay, you guys convinced me...I kinda wish I’d put this on my own list of “bombs” now...but I put Transformers in its place on my list instead out of sheer malice.

3. X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE (May 1)

Nick:
Each X-Men film has made more than its predecessor, and this prequel cost more to make than any prior series entry. The Internet leak won’t affect its business, but Star Trek – opening one week after it – will, causing Wolverine to make less than X-Men: The Last Stand and thus be viewed as a modest failure.

Andrew:
For what it’s worth, I’ve seen and dug all the other X-Men flicks, and for some reason I could give a wet fart about this one, which looks to me like the bad Halle Berry Catwoman of the series. Now maybe if there were some musical numbers...

2. THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 (June 12)

Nick:
With little action-thriller opposition around its June 12th release date, Tony Scott’s remake may open reasonably well. Yet given how blah it looks and how little buzz it’s attracting, it should quickly disappear from the nation’s overcrowded multiplexes.

Scott:
Speaking of ruining the ’70s (see below)...a gritty, grimy little New Yawk thriller with Walter Matthau at his hangdog finest is given the Tony Scott treatment. It looks as though puffy John Travolta and his wacky facial hair have already chewed some of the scenery, but expect him to devour the rest of it when this one hits theaters in June.

1. LAND OF THE LOST (June 5)

Scott:
I have an idea. Let’s completely ruin the ’70s for those of us who spent our childhoods there! Oh wait, we’ve already done that, haven’t we? Then what the hell, we might as well turn a quirky, beloved Saturday morning staple into another crappy Will Ferrell comedy with plenty of dopey sight gags and gobs of CGI effects.

Nick:
Will Ferrell and Danny McBride are inspired comedians, but Brad Silberling’s update of the 1970s TV show seems like the latest action-comedy hybrid destined to be neither exciting nor amusing. Expect a big-time bomb.

Paul:
Who is this movie for, exactly? Will Ferrell isn’t the box-office juggernaut he once was, and the ticket buyers who yearn for him to deliver Ron Burgundy-style laughs probably won’t go for the second-rate Jurassic Park-style dinosaur storyline. Meanwhile, the kids will probably be too busy watching Up and Night at the Museum 2 to care about this one. Does the original series have that many fans clamoring for a big-budget version of the story? I highly doubt it.

Andrew:
I have to say I actually feel bad about Land of the Lost winding up as our runaway number one consensus pick for top bomb of the summer, since I’m a fan of the original TV series and I have every intention of going to see the Will Ferrell version...and yet, my colleagues all make excellent points, plus the promotional stuff has a distinctly low-rent, Brendan Fraseresque feel to it...on the other hand, I wouldn’t be completely surprised if this one bites us on the ass, prediction-wise, and turns into a surprise hit...oh, wait, the budget was $100 million? Uh...never mind.

Click Here For The Hits (Parts One & Two), The Toss-Ups (Part Four) and The Honorable Mentions (Parts Five & Six)

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark

Trailer Review: Year One

Paul Clark — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:00:00 GMT

In the history of comedy, few subgenres have been so consistently dire as the caveman laffer. Yet it must be said that, of all the actors in Hollywood, perhaps none is better suited to top-line a new stab at the caveman comedy than Jack Black- although it must be said that Michael Shannon bears a certain resemblance to Eegah! star Richard Kiel. Black’s outsize personality lends itself nicely to the prehistoric setting, but the actor who makes Year One look at least a little promising isn’t Black but costar Michael Cera, who doesn’t exactly look to be stretching himself here (that’ll have to wait, I guess), but whose boyish reluctance ought to provide a nice contrast to Black. Come to think, I sort of wish director Harold Ramis could have made the rest of his characters more boorishly Cro-Magnon, rather than casting the story with bearded veterans of Mr. Show and the Judd Apatow touring company. Still, if it’s at least as good as Caveman- a guilty pleasure of mine- this’ll be better than most movies of the kind. Zug zug!

Screengrab's Favorite Movies About Music: Fiction Edition (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

HEAD (1968)

I think just about anyone who’s familiar with the Monkees’ sweet, goofy Peter Tork was bummed by the actor/musician’s recent diagnosis with head and neck cancer (although, apparently, the prognosis is currently good). And I think no matter how silly or cynically conceived hippies found the Pre-Fab Four back in the sixties, the songs the TV band had written for them (“I’m a Believer,” “Daydream Believer,” “Steppin’ Stone,” etc.) are a helluva lot better than most of the songs being written for today’s prefabricated music industry shills, most of whom don’t even have the self-awareness to be self-deprecating and more than a little embarrassed by their place in the pop culture firmament. To their credit, Tork and his bandmates Mickey Dolenz (the funny one), Davy Jones (the cute one) and Michael Nesmith (the smart one) tried their best to rebel against their corporate overlords with Head, a big-screen attempt at image-smashing phantasmagoria that plays like an LSD-inspired episode of the group’s small-screen show, i.e. a brainy, mostly well-behaved mind-fuck that’s actually a lot more entertaining and thought-provoking than some of the more “authentic” freak-outs of the era, what with the underwater imagery accompanying the haunting “Porpoise Song,” the burlesque meditations on fame and the peculiar cameos by the likes of Victor Mature, Annette Funicello and Frank Zappa with a cow.

HIGH FIDELITY (2000)

That High Fidelity is playfully self-conscious and yet not overly precious is a testament to both director Stephen Frears, here smoothly segueing between goofy comedy and sobering drama, as well as star (and co-writer) John Cusack, whose turn as romantically challenged record store owner Rob stands as one of his finest performances. Retaining the ragamuffin spirit of Nick Hornby’s source novel, Frears’ funny and incisive adaptation boasts two superb supporting players in Jack Black and Todd Louiso as Rob’s employees, as well as a script that refuses to sentimentalize the stunted-maturity failings of its protagonist. Rob is a man-child whose compulsive habit of concocting lists – about favorite songs and past break-ups – speaks to the vital role music plays in his romantic life, while also serving as his means of engaging in self-analysis through a safe, detached filter. A bit too much of Cusack’s narration and dialogue (taken verbatim from Hornby’s novel) lands with a writerly thud on screen, but the actor’s warts-and-all performance – unafraid to posit his protagonist as a navel-gazing prick, and still capable of making him endearing – is so energized that it overshadows any occasional missteps.

LAST DAYS (2005)

The high point of Gus Van Sant’s Béla Tarr-inspired “death trilogy” (following 2002’s Gerry and 2003’s Elephant), Last Days charts the final, pedestrian events in the life of a Kurt Cobain surrogate (Michael Pitt) in and around his Pacific Northwest estate. A ruminative, melancholy work with little interest in traditional narrative, Van Sant’s evocative gem aims mainly to situate viewers in a particular physical environment and headspace. In this case, that’s the remote residence and fuzzy mind of a shuffling, head-downturned, shaggy-haired rock star who wanders about his property like a ghost burdened by some ill-defined psychological and emotional misery. Rife with ambiguous religious overtones that contribute to an atmosphere of spiritual malaise, obliquely addressing the relationship between image and reality, and depicting its protagonist – constricted by claustrophobic full-frame compositions – as beset by hangers-on and record studio execs who take but don’t give, Last Days operates as a richly textured, arrestingly evocative avant-garde hypothesis about the forces that might have contributed to Cobain’s suicidal demise.

SINGLES (1992)

No one will mistake Singles for a great rom-com, but viewed as a snapshot of a very particular musical era, Cameron Crowe’s 1992 film holds up surprisingly well. The story has to do with two on-again, off-again couples (Campbell Scott and Kyra Sedgwick, Matt Dillon and Bridget Fonda) attempting to navigate choppy romantic waters. However, despite Crowe’s reasonably sturdy dramatization of twentysomethings in search of love and their post-collegiate identities – as well as his inconsistent (but far-from-disastrous) decision to have characters break the fourth wall to deliver commentary – the film’s lasting appeal has as much to do with timing as with storytelling. By setting the action in a Seattle grunge scene on the brink of exploding, Crowe hopelessly dated his film. Yet that turns out to be a good thing, since Singles, bolstered by cameos and performances by various members of the bands (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains) that would temporarily make Seattle the epicenter of rock, while comfortably rooted in the damp, sleepy, basketball-loving atmosphere of his Pacific Northwest milieu, proves an engaging, enduring time capsule.

GRACE OF MY HEART (1996)

This movie is character actress Illeana Douglas's best role to date. As in Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine and I'm Not There, Grace of My Heart attempts to create a transcendent reality for the stories about Carole King, who some readers may need to be reminded was one of the Brill Building songwriters of the early '60s who later went on to have commercial success as a singer-songwriter with her album Tapestry. Perhaps you saw her on Stephen Colbert's show. In this movie, she is known as Denise Waverly. Denise comes to work in the Brill Building for a Phil Spector-alike played by John Turturro, writing songs for girl groups. She takes up with her co-songwriter, a Gerry Goffin-alike played by Eric Stolz (among the real-life Goffin-King compositions: "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," "The Loco-Motion," "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"), but their marraige falls apart. Later, she moves to California and takes up with a Brian Wilson-alike played by Matt Dillon. Even though it's not as smart as the Haynes rock fictions, it's quite a lovely little movie with lots of nice touches to people familiar with the characters portrayed. I especially enjoy the faux-Wilson's mental breakdown while working on the movie's version of Smile, the real-life album that broke Brian Wilson's spirit for a time.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Hayden Childs

Mike White's Amazing Race

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:00:00 GMT

I’ve been a fan of Mike White since his peculiar and memorable performance as a possibly sweet but potentially scary BFF stalker in the peculiar and memorable indie Chuck & Buck. In fact, I remember encountering him in an elevator at the Sunset 5/Virgin Megastore complex in West Hollywood around the time of the film’s release. I didn’t say anything about his awkwardly funny, fidgety performance at the time because I didn’t want to bother him...but Mike, if you’re reading this now, nice job! And good luck on The Amazing Race!

Yes, that’s right...for those of you outside the reality show loop, Mike White, whose acting and/or writing credits include Freaks & Geeks, Year of the Dog and School of Rock (in which he played Sarah Silverman’s pussy-whipped boyfriend, Ned Schneebly), kicked off the first leg of the fourteenth season of the globe-trotting, Emmy-hogging CBS game show last night, partnered with his father Mel.

Mel White is a pretty interesting cat in his own right, as it turns out. Like many Christians (especially of the evangelical variety), he spent years denying his homosexuality, attempting to “cure” it with everything from prayer and psychotherapy to exorcism and electroshock therapy. Unlike the Larry Craigs of the world, however, Mel eventually just admitted, “Yep, I’m gay,” and switched from ghostwriting books for Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson to authoring his own autobiography, Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay And Christian In America. Anyway, Mel and Mike have now joined eleven other teams in a race around the world, competing against familiar Race archetypes like the ditzy blondes determined to prove they’re not ditzy, the dating couple with rage issues and the muscular dwarf stuntman brothers (although, to be honest, the dwarves they’ve had on the show in the past weren’t technically stuntmen...they just fell down a lot).

Like the other racers, Mel & Mike set off from a military base in Los Alamedos, California and proceeded by plane, train and automobile to Switzerland, where they faced challenges like bungee-jumping off a dam and hauling gigantic wheels of Swiss cheese down slippery slopes whilst being relentlessly mocked by mustachioed men in leiderhosen before eventually arriving at the pit stop in the top half of the pack with a respectable fourth place finish.

The Screengrab will continue to provide periodic updates on Mel & Mike’s progress for the rest of the season...but our money’s on the dwarves.

Reviews By Request x2: Reprise (2006, Joachim Trier) and Son of Rambow (2007, Garth Jennings)

Paul Clark — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

When I asked you folks to vote on my next three Reviews By Request columns a few weeks ago, one thing I hadn’t anticipated was that there’d be a tie for third place. Under other circumstances, I might simply have chosen one film to write about over the other, but I’m more or less a man of my word. I briefly toyed with the idea of running a poll to determine which I’d write about, but when I realized that both of the films- Joachim Trier’s Reprise and Garth Jennings’ Son of Rambow- deal with creative sorts, I figured that the best way to solve my problem would simply be to write a tandem review of the films.

The act of creation can be tricky to portray cinematically. When someone is inspired to create a work of art, it can be the most exciting feeling in the world for that person. But it’s much more difficult to convey this excitement to others in the form of a film. Moreover, some media are better-suited to a cinematic treatment than others. While the making of a movie consists not only of a series of creative decisions but also the logistics and politics of collaboration with others, writing is essentially an inward, self-absorbed act. In this sense, Reprise begins at somewhat of a disadvantage compared to Son of Rambow. Does Trier’s film transcend this disadvantage to become a more memorable finished product than Jennings’? Not quite.

There’s an old writers’ joke that says that because young writers are told to “write what they know,” this explains why there are so many books and movies about writers. Reprise doubles up the usual beginning-writer-on-the-make storyline by focusing on two budding authors, a pair of friends who we first see mailing off their manuscripts at the same time. Of course, not all writers are created equal, and while Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) finds literary success almost overnight, Erik (Espen Klouman-Høiner) gets turned down by the publisher. From that point forward, the film cuts back and forth between the two, with Phillip suffering a nervous breakdown, Erik finding his own measure of success, and each of them trying to find their ways in life.

Unless they’re especially well-written, I find that educated twentysomethings can make for some of the least interesting and most insufferable characters in films, partly because their intelligence has yet to be tempered with maturity, humility, and the wisdom that gets born from actual real-world experience. The protagonists of Reprise harbor some lofty ideas both about life and literature (Erik’s first novel is entitled Prosopopeia, fer chrissakes), but when they give voice to them, they come out mostly in writerly clichés, like when Erik decides to dump his girlfriend in order to live the stereotypical writer’s life of booze and cheap sex. If the film had shown any real self-awareness about its characters in the manner of Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life…, this might have worked. But it doesn’t.

And that’s a shame, since Trier’s film has plenty of interesting ideas that would have been worth exploring. In one subplot, we see Phillip, recently released from a mental hospital, trying to re-connect with his ex-girlfriend Kari (Viktoria Winge). Phillip’s mother has gotten rid of his photographs of Kari, fearing they might trigger another mental collapse. So Phillip decides to take Kari to Paris, where they vacationed shortly after they met, in order to re-take the photos and, consequently, re-live the memories. There are a number of other compelling ideas in Reprise that mark Trier as a talent to watch. Even if this feels very much like a first film, there’s real potential here.

~~~

Compared to Reprise, Son of Rambow is a relatively modest work, one with little more than a desire to entertain. Yet it succeeds in this sense in a way that Trier’s film can’t quite manage to fulfill its loftier ambitions. I’m not a huge fan of the sorts of festival darlings that are routinely labeled “crowd-pleasers”- I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid™ on Slumdog Millionaire, for example- so I was a little surprised by how well Son of Rambow worked on me.

Like Reprise, Son of Rambow tells the story of two young friends, although the heroes of Jennings’ film are preteen boys, which tends to cut down quite a bit on the navel-gazing. The unlikely friends are Lee (Will Poulter), a troublemaker who spends his free time working on elaborate home movies, and Will (Bill Milner), a pint-sized boy from a staunchly religious family who Lee cons into working for him as a stunt man. Inspired by a bootleg of First Blood that he sees at Lee’s house, Will gets the inspiration to turn Lee’s movie into a kind of sequel to the Stallone opus- one that stars himself.

In its story of DIY movie-making against a small-community backdrop, Son of Rambow bears a casual resemblance to Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind. However, I think Son is the more successful film, in part because the story works better with kids in the lead roles instead of adults, even if one of those adults happens to a man-child like Jack Black. What’s more, the visual flights of fancy Jennings brings to the story- inventive production design, flashes of hand-drawn animation- are more effective than Gondry’s, since Jennings’ touch is lighter and the whimsy never wears out its welcome.

Son of Rambow flags a bit in its second half, after other characters (led by a Culture Club-ready French exchange student) are brought in to collaborate on Will and Lee’s movie. Thankfully, Jennings recognizes this, and acknowledges it when he has Lee confront Will to tell him as much. But for much of its duration, Son of Rambow is fun and occasionally even enchanting, as in the scene when Will’s drawings come to life. And it’s hard to resist a movie that manages to combine Lee’s anarchic spirit with Will’s wide-eyed innocence without making us decide on one over the other. Son of Rambow isn’t perfect, but it’s a real charmer.

Fantastic Fest Review: “Fanboys”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

I think I’ve mentioned this a time or twelve here, but unlike my colleague Andrew Osborne, I don’t have the Star Wars gene. Sure, I loved the movies as a kid – maybe not quite as much as the Planet of the Apes series or anything with Bigfoot in it – but they never became an inextricable part of my life essence and I definitely wasn’t waiting in some smelly tent for Episode I back in 1999. If we’re playing “Star Wars vs. Star Trek,” Kirk, Spock and the gang win out with me every time. So I wouldn’t appear to be part of the target audience for Fanboys, the long-awaited story of four geeks and a gal who take a road trip to Skywalker Ranch in order to be the first to see The Phantom Menace.

Having said that – and despite all the delays, reshoots and controversies over plot points that dogged the movie in recent months – Fanboys proves to be an enjoyable ride for the most part. If you’ve followed the behind-the-scenes machinations, you know the set-up: It is 1998, and lifelong Star Wars geek Linus (Chris Marquette) has terminal cancer. (This is the part the studio didn’t like, but after an outcry from fanboy nation, it is restored.) Along with fellow Force enthusiasts Hutch (Dan Fogler), Windows (Jay Baruchel) and estranged best friend Eric (Sam Huntington), Linus sets out in a van to accomplish the one thing he wants to do before he dies: see the long-awaited first prequel to the Star Wars trilogy. (As an aside, and without giving away whether or not he accomplishes his goal – imagine this is your dying wish and the movie in question turns out to be the freakin’ Phantom Menace. Ah well, at least it wasn’t The Clone Wars.) Road trip hijinx galore ensue, including a pit stop in Austin to pick up top secret intel on Lucas’s fortress from Ain’t It Cool News ubergeek Harry Knowles, a night in jail that will have you rethinking your whole approach to prison pooping, and a rumble at a Star Trek convention in Las Vegas. There are cameos galore, including actors from the original trilogy, Seth Rogan in multiple roles and even the Shat himself, William Shatner.

Stylistically, Fanboys is sort of a mesh between the Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow sensibilities (Smith has a cameo and Apatow oversaw the reshoots and enlisted many of his regulars), but its secret weapon is co-screenwriter Ernest Cline, who has absorbed every ounce of nerdy minutiae from the past 30 years and deploys his vast store of useless knowledge for both punchlines and poignancy. Although Fogler still strikes me as a poor man’s Jack Black, the core cast is engaging, particularly Kristen Bell as the one girl who’ll put up with the geeks.

My main problem with Fanboys is that I wish it had actually been made ten years ago (as per Cline’s original plan), before geek culture became so pervasive and satisfied with itself. After another decade's worth of prequels, merchandising and ubiquitous references, I don't care if I never hear about Yoda, Chewie or Ewoks ever again. In a way, though, that's beside the point. Star Wars is the secret language of these characters – the way they always communicated. In that respect, it's no different than if the movie had been about, say, terminally ill Cubs fans taking a trip to see their team win their first World Series in 100 years – they'd just talk about Ernie Banks and “Let’s play two” instead of Darth Vader and “May the Force be with you.” The story is really about the friendship, the journey and the laughs along the way, and on that level it works even if you don't give a shit whether or not Greedo shot first.

Related:
Fanboys on the March
Fanboys vs. Darth Weinstein

Video of the Day: Drunk History

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Here is what Derek Waters' friends do: they get really, really drunk and make confused attempts to explain major events in U.S. history. Here is what Derek Waters does: he films it. Luckily for him, he also happens to know a few well-known actors, like Michael Cera, and he gets them to re-enact these blotto history lessons. And lucky for us, too, because the results are paralyzingly funny:

That's just the first edition, with Cera as Alexander (not George) Hamilton. Subsequent, and equally funny, editions have starred Jack Black as Ben Franklin and Danny McBride as George Washington. Collect 'em all!

Video of the Day: When Woody Met Billy

Face/Off: Judd Apatow and "Pineapple Express"

Phil Nugent — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

["Face/Off" is an irregularly scheduled recurring segment in which two Screengrab regulars have an exchange of views on some recent fixture of the movie scene. In the exclusive behind-the-scenes photo below, taken at a typical Screengrab "pitch" session, Andrew Osborne [l.] and Phil Nugent [r.] persuade their delighted editor to allow them to revive this much-loved feature.]

PHIL NUGENT: Andrew, I might as well come right out with it. I grew up as one of the most socially maladjusted members of our society: the comedy geek. So I feel a certain kinship with Judd Apatow. In some ways that do not include material success and worldly achievement, we're even kind of alike. We share the same birthday and have both had dirty thoughts about Leslie Mann. He actually got to marry her, so he may have gotten to act on some of his by now. And as a fan, I go back quite a ways with him. And I'm not talking about no Freaks and Geeks, neither! I'm talking The Ben Stiller Show, baby! It was on that series and the longer-lived The Larry Sanders Show, both of which appeared at a time when I was about to be greeted at my door by a mob wielding flaming torches who had dropped by to suggest that my presence might no longer be welcome at grad school and so was sorely in need of a few chuckles, that Apatow developed his chops as a producer and screenwriter and started making the lasting connections that continue to appear in his work. And last year, when Knocked Up made him an official Hollywood player and Superbad made him a name brand, I was happy for him. After all, for a long time, this was a guy who was best known for creating TV shows (also including Undeclared) that inspired devoted cult followings but couldn't stay on the air for more than a year, or (as with the case of Sick in the Head and the other Apatow pilots that became staples of the "Brilliant but Cancelled" phenomenon) couldn't get on the air at all. Although the Internet has given us a great many wonderful things, I still think that the single best use of it that anyone has ever made came when it was used to publicly disseminate the notorious e-mail exchange between Apatow and Mark Brazill, the small crawling thing best known as creator of That '70s Show, and who thought that, by including a mash-up parody of The Monkees with a stereotypical '90s grunge band on an episode of The Ben Stiller Show, Apatow had ripped off his hackish notion of doing a similar show as a "real" sitcom. It's still a hilarious exchange between a clueless dolt with too much money and a genuine and humane wit (who, okay, probably also already had too much money). But I remember when part of the context of the whole thing was a world in which the dolt was seen as more successful. Not anymore.

Apatow has out his name on a lot of stuff since then, and some of it has been, well, a lot less successful than his best stuff. Pineapple Express was preceded into theaters by Step Brothers, which mostly serves as an announcement that it's time for John C. Reilly to, (A.) put some clothes on, (B.) get back to straight acting roles for a while, and (C.) put some clothes on! Last fall, Reilly was unable to hold together Walk Hard, which tried its damndest to sustain the parodic-skit nature of The Ben Stiller Show for the length of a feature film. One of the most discouraging things about Pineapple Express is that it reminded me of that e-mail exchange, but this time, it's Apatow playing the Mark Brazill role. The idea--and it's what we used to call real "high concept" back before someone decided that it would be the honorable thing to bury that phrase with Don Simpson--is a conventional action comedy with conventional L.A. locations and conventional gunplay and chases and explosive fireballs and shit, but with these stoned doofuses at the center. The movie works best when it suggests pure parody: when Seth Rogan and James Franco stay up late babbling about the plan they're going to implement the next morning, and wind up oversleeping by ten hours, and when they then walk off to begin the busy work of saving their asses, only to get distracted by playing leapfrog and trying to get a caterpillar high. (This lyrical interlude may be the only part of the movie that's as fully charming as the movie's trailer, which made phenomenal use of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes", and which was edited in a way that suggested more visual freshness than you get from the film itself. I am of course familiar with the standard criticisms that have been made of Apatow and the work he's been sponsoring as a producer: that he's running a boys' club, that it's politically tone dead and too insular by half, that John C. Reilly really fucking needs to put some clothes on!! But this is the first thing of his that I've seen that strikes me as struggling to meet the conventional halfway, to just take some of his and his performers' quirkier interests and skills--which here basically just comes down to stoner antics--and trying to shoehorn them into a tired action-comedy formula that neither he nor the hired-gun director, David Gordon Green, could care less about even executing with any degree of skill. Yet you, my man, have gone on record as liking this thing! In the name of Cheech and Chong--have you heard they're threatening a comeback movie, which may be something else I'll decide to blame on Judd when I catch my breath--why, sir, why!?

ANDREW OSBORNE: Since you started your critique with praise, I’ll start my defense of the Apatowniverse with my own critiques. For one thing, I thought Superbad was funny but wildly overpraised, and actually (more than Pineapple Express) a prime example of the strained, one-joke dangers of a too-limited thematic range. Jonah Hill’s Seth, Michael Cera’s Evan and, of course, Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s McLovin were all funny and charming, but sophomoric boys club humor without a corrective balance of mature XY and XX perspective eventually just feels like hanging out with sophomore boys (which got old pretty quick even when I was fifteen). A related criticism and possible symptom of Apatow’s more facile bent is his tendency to work with the same dudes over and over again while leaving his female actors (with the notable, understandable exception of Ms. Mann) out of the loop. Busy Phillips was just as funny and awesome as James Franco, Seth Rogen and Jason Segel on Freaks and Geeks, but she’s doing TV guest spots ever since while her former male co-stars are headlining one Apatow project after another. Ditto Sarah Hagan, Linda Cardellini (who’s got a steady gig on ER, but still...) not to mention poor Carla Gallo from Undeclared, who at least got cameos in later Apatow projects, although one of them (“Toe-Sucking Girl” in The 40-Year-Old Virgin) I don’t remember and the other (“Period Blood Girl” in Superbad) actually made me feel embarrassed for her. (And, really, would it have killed them to find a place for Knocked Up’s hilarious Charlyne Yi in Pineapple Express?)

I mean, there may be any number of perfectly good reasons why Apatow’s boys keep showing up in movie after movie while the girls fall by the wayside, but it does raise certain troubling questions (except maybe in the case of Katherine Heigl, who got a nice career boost with Knocked Up, only to later denounce the whole notion of a hot chick hooking up with an ugly guy as sexist before reaffirming her feminist street cred by starring opposite dreamy James Marsden in 27 Dresses as a strong, independent woman whose life revolves around fantasies of Prince Charming whisking her off to a perfect wedding).

Yet here’s why I defend the Apatowniverse in general: for one thing, it’s rare for anyone to be associated with even a single outstanding TV show or movie, let alone two of the greatest TV shows in the history of the medium (Larry Sanders, Freaks & Geeks) and a slew of smart, funny, eminently quotable and wildly popular comedies like The 40 Year Old Virgin that aren’t just funny but also have a distinctive personality and philosophy (as opposed to high-concept, anything-for-a-laugh joke factories like the Scary Movie franchise).

Even relative misfires like Walk Hard are fairly innocuous, with occasional classic moments (like Jack Black, Justin Long, Paul Rudd and Jason Schwartzman riffing as the Beatles, a scene I could have watched for hours). But it’s the egalitarian humanity of the Apatow brand I find most appealing (and most troubling when it’s missing): in his best work, there are no real villains or laughingstocks: everyone’s an asshole, everyone is foolish, everyone gets a moment of glory. The laughter is with, not at. Mintz-Plasse may be a pencil-neck geek, but he is McLovin, dammit. Mann may come across as shrewish in Knocked Up, but she’s also righteously, hilarious indignant and vulnerable by turns.

There’s much less empathetic character development in Pineapple Express, of course: Craig Robinson’s walk-on performance as a bouncer in Knocked Up was considerably more nuanced than his larger role as a drug dealer in Express, Gary Cole and Rosie Perez (both generally excellent) are essentially wasted as cardboard cartoon characters and the less said about the film’s regressive sub-Long Duk Dong Asian stereotypes the better.

But Apatow’s other strengths are on full display (and by Apatow, of course, I mean his influence on collaborators like director David Gordon Green and writer/star Rogen). Most importantly, the movie had me laughing the whole time, with nary a squirm of boredom or impatience. The action scenes may have been artless when compared to real action movies...but, first of all, Express is a parody and, to be honest, with all the CGI excesses of most 21st century action movies, it’s nice to reconnect with the simple old school pleasures of, say, a simple, straightforward car chase (especially one with distinctive but suspenseful just-this-side of realistic elements like James Franco’s panicky attempt to navigate a speeding vehicle with one foot stuck through a windshield he inadvisably attempted to kick out).

Another Apatow trademark is a certain respect for his audience: unlike any number of movies that cynically recycle tired clichés, situations and phrases (“You the man, dog!”) as if we’re too dumb or lazy to notice, Pineapple Express makes a concerted effort to be as entertaining as possible, surprising us and/or tweaking expectations whenever it can. Rogen’s character doesn’t just survive a near-miss gunshot: there’s also the ickily amusing aftermath. Conversations veer off in loopy, unpredictable directions. And did I also mention it’s just plain funny?

Sure, That ‘70s Show had funny moments despite its flaws, too, and Judd Apatow may be something of an asshole (like many if not all rich, successful people)...and indeed, I’m even willing to believe the humor and humanity of his projects may drop and his asshole quotient may rise the longer he swims with the sharks of Hollwood...but I think it’s still way too early to equate him with a genuine douch-nozzle like Mark Brazill (or at least Brazill’s evil e-mail alter ego)...so let the Apatow backlash backlash begin!

PHIL NUGENT: Your point about the way that Apatow has failed to demonstrate the same stubborn devotion to such female talent as Linda Cardellini and Carla Gallo that he's shown, say, Seth Rogen and James Franco, is well taken, so much so that I regret that I, in my role as the guy trying to start some shit here, didn't mention it myself. When it comes to some comedy writers, I don't feel like complaining about a boy's-club atmosphere because I sort of dread the results if they were to try to write about women, just because they felt they should. (I might think more highly of them as artists and as human beings if natural curiosity compelled them to experiment in that direction, but politically mandated inclusiveness is no friend of comedy.) In Apatow's case, though, there's plenty of evidence that there's a much broader side of himself that he hasn't been exploring. It happens to be the same side that didn't pay the bills for many years. There are many ways to fail in show business; with Freaks and Geeks, Apatow failed the My So-Called Life way, with Internet petitions and reruns on basic cable and reviewers decrying the stupidity of an industry that would just throw away this gem. That's got to be one of the nicer ways to go down, but at the end of the day, you're still someone who couldn't provide job security for all the people who'd turned down other offers to work with you. (Of course, many of the people who are now rich celebrities thanks to their association with Apatow will be quick to tell you that before they met him they couldn't get arrested, but still.)

Looking at the flurry of activity that Apatow has initiated in the last couple of years--including getting projects green-lighted that were based on scripts that had been waiting in the back drawer for some time--I get the impression that he's been trying to create work for his "family", paying them back for sticking with him through the rough times. (Superbad was written so long ago that Seth Rogan had orginally conceived the Jonah Hill role for himself.) In the process, he may be spreading himself, and not just himself, a little thin. You mention Craig Robinson, who in his scene with Leslie Mann outside the club in Knocked Up was able to create a surprisingly full character in one cussword-filled monologue. I expect that he was much happier when he got the script for Pineapple Express and saw that he had a lot more screen time in it, but it comes to so much less. Apatow still has moments of startling inspiration in deciding how best to use these performers; he reportedly made the call that Franco should play the role in Pineapple Express that Rogen had, again, written with himself in mind, and the result is easily the best work that Franco has done in movies, probably the best he's been since, yeah, Freaks and Geeks. And the movie makes terrific use of my man Danny McBride, who in less than three months--the period of time bracketed by the release of The Foot Fist Way and Tropic Thunder--has emerged as the new bad-hair king of Hollywood. (I have a hunch that if Ben Stiller had invited Apatow to the read-through of the Tropic Thunder screenplay, McBride would have walked out of the room with Jack Black's part.) But in his recent productions, there only seems to be two kinds of casting--the outrageously inspired and the by-the-book routine. The cast of Pineapple Express consists of a few people who are squarely in the zone and several talented performers who look as if they're in denial about this being the final draft of the script.

Almost everybody I know loved Knocked Up while confessing to having had "a problem" with it. My own biggest problem with it was a little different from the usual ones I've heard expressed, such as that it gave short shrift to abortion as an option, or that it was implausible that a woman who looked like Katherine Heigl could ever get drunk enough to fuck Seth Rogen. My problem was that, while I had no objection to Rogen's character growing up enough to take on his share of responsibility for raising the child, I didn't think they should have gotten married. I couldn't imagine that union turning out in any way that wouldn't be hellish. Not because Rogen wasn't conventionally attractive enough for Heigl, but because Heigl, unlike everyone else in Rogen's circle, and indeed unlike just about everyone else in the whole movie, her own sister and brother-in-law included, didn't seem to have a funny bone in her body. It says a lot about the cult of standardized beauty that a lot of people felt comfortable saying out loud that Rogen wasn't good-looking enough for her but that I heard very few people ask what the hell he was going to do to keep from dying of boredom after they'd been trapped together for awhile. The fact is, movie audiences have traditionally accepted romantic partners in comedies who looked physically mismatched, such as Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, if both of them were funny; that's the real soul partnership. Heigl herself must have belatedly realized this, since her offscreen complaining about the movie has largely come down to the fact that she didn't get any laughs in it, but based on how eagerly Apatow has jumped to the task to serve funny women when he had them to work with, I have to believe that he sized her up as nice, pretty packaging and choose not to tax her. (You want to see what it looks like when a gorgeous-looking performer who's also gifted and funny is wasted by filmmakers who just want to exploit those physical assets, look at James Franco in thr Spider-man movies.) Since Apatow isn't one of those jackasses (like Al Franken) who's on record as believing that women just aren't funny--he probably gets a reminder of just how funny they can be every time he pisses off his wife--the casting of the dull but handsomely assembled TV soap star as the "normal" one in Knocked Up must be his commercial side talking; it's the part of him that probably thinks that the mass audience won't accept a romantic comedy in which the woman can hold up her end in the quirky wise-cracking department. In Pineapple Express, the commercial side of him is the part that thinks that more people will turn out to watch two comedians doing a stoner routine if somebody is firing machine guns at them, and I think that this time, the commercial side clearly outbalances the quirky, personal side. Which is an ominous development, in my view. Because if Apatow doesn't get back in touch with the side of him that once cared less about audience share and more about making the best use possible of his talents, he's never going to get around to making the movie I really want to see from him: a romantic comedy in which the woman is every bit as funny, maybe as indifferent to conventional definitions of success, and maybe even as much a challenge to conventional standards of attractiveness as the man.

ANDREW OSBORNE: First of all, let me offer you a hearty cyber-handshake for providing the definitive closing argument in the case of Heigl vs. Rogen. It’s so absolutely dead-on, I’m sorry I didn’t think of it myself, but I intend to correct that mistake by taking credit for the idea in every single future argument I have with anyone, for the rest of my life, who bitches about the Rogen/Heigel pairing in Knocked Up. I myself refused to wed 'til I found myself a comical lass who could banter with the best of ‘em...and, frankly, I can’t imagine any better qualification for spousal consideration than a solid sense of humor (which Heigl's Alison Scott definitely lacked, though Rogen’s character, Ben Stone, at least wound up with some pretty cool in-laws)!

And, since you brought it up, I feel the April 2008 Vanity Fair article, “Who Says Women Aren't Funny?” more or less gave the definitive closing argument in the whole tiresome case of “Women Vs. Humor.” As Nora Ephron says in the piece, ““There is no question that there are a million more funny women than there used to be...but everything has more women. There are more women in a whole bunch of places, and this is one of them.” Sounds good to me, though I also agree with the sociological wisdom of a later quote from humorist and Harvard Lampoon alum Patricia Marx: ““Maybe pretty women weren't funny before because they had no reason to be funny. There was no point to it—people already liked you.”

So, there are funny women out there, and I’d like to see Apatow do a better job of utilizing them, because his best stuff isn’t the bad boy buzz of exploding cars and gunplay (however entertaining some of those moments may have been in Pineapple Express, though I thought the entire “crazy cops” subplot in Superbad was tedious)...no, Apatow’s gift is capturing modern day relationships with spot-on, up-to-the-minute clarity: Franco and Rogen hanging out in Express, Jonah Hill and Michael Cera hanging out in Superbad, Busy Phillips and Linda Cardellini hanging out in Freaks & Geeks, etc., etc.

And, while I agree I’d like to see Apatow do MORE comedies where the male and female relationships are evenly matched in terms of comedy chops, I wouldn’t say he’s NEVER delivered those particular goods. Steve Carell was a scream in The 40 Year Old Virgin, but Catherine Keener was certainly no slouch in the funny/unconventional department (and, in the supporting cast, Jane Lynch went toe-to-toe with Rogen, Paul Rudd and Romany Malco without breaking a sweat). And Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which Apatow produced for his boy Jason Segal, featured pretty funny turns from Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis (the dirtiest name in show biz).

Were Keener, Bell and Kunis as funny as their respective romantic comedy co-stars? Well, no, not quite: by way of comparison, my ultimate celebrity crush, Alyson Hannigan, was far more outrageous and funny playing off Jason Biggs in American Pie (a movie that would fit quite snugly into the Apatow-verse, come to think of it). And, yes, in the first American Pie, Hannigan wasn’t exactly a romantic lead, but rather a funny supporting player, like Lynch in Virgin, Leslie Mann and Charlyne Yi in Knocked Up and Amber Heard in Express.

So, okay, point taken: let’s get Apatow, Tina Fey and Paul Rudd together for a remake of Barefoot In The Park, stat!

But in the meantime, I’m not even close to giving up on Judd Apatow (yet), because, while some of his projects may fare better than others, he’s never really burned me as a viewer, meaning he’s built up quite a lot of credit in the ol' Bank of Osborne.

And I can’t really fault the man for trying a bunch of different genres (romantic comedy, action, parody, etc.) and using his newfound (and, given the nature of Hollywood , no doubt ephemeral) power to launch a bunch of projects (some good, some not as good, same as with any producer) that would never otherwise get made. Nor can I fault the man for possessing commercial self-preservation instincts...though it’s not like he’s Michael Bay, for God's sake, or even the aforementioned Nora Ephron, who gives good quote, yet also hacks up soulless Hollywood hairballs like Bewitched and Hanging Up with depressing regularity. (And, if you think about it, “stoner action comedy” isn’t exactly a sure thing/sell-out commercial genre anyway...even with all the blanks and explosions, Pineapple Express was still a personal movie, in that it directly reflected the distinct sensibility of Apatow and his collaborators.)

So, in conclusion, yes, I think Judd Apatow certainly has the capacity to go to the Dark Side – but aside from an executive producer credit on the odious Will Ferrell “comedy” Kicking and Screaming, I don't really see any evidence that he’ll be picking out a secret Sith name anytime soon. His upcoming projects (including a biblical comedy, a Sherlock Holmes comedy and a semi-dramatic film about stand-up comedians) seem to indicate a healthy willingness on his part to experiment. But, most importantly, Apatow's name on a movie poster usually means I’ll be entertained, either a little or a lot...and there are VERY few names in Hollywood that inspire that kind of brand loyalty these days.

As for Pineapple Express, which got this whole discussion rolling in the first place, my definitive closing argument is simple: "it brought the funny" (as the comedy geeks would say)...

...and for a fellow comedy geek like Apatow, that's pretty much the point.

--Contributors: Phil Nugent; Andrew Osborne

Related Stories: Screengrab Review: "Pineapple Express"

Face/Off: "Fargo"

Face/Off: "Children of Men"

Tom Cruise Still Creepy, Still Not Funny

Scott Von Doviak — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Aside from the controversies over Robert Downey, Jr. in blackface and the use of the word "retard," the big pre-release buzz about Tropic Thunder had Tom Cruise revitalizing both his career and his public image with his hilarious turn as foul-mouthed studio mogul Les Grossman. That said buzz originated with Team Cruise has never been doubted by me, but the entertainment media has been only too happy to nudge it along. It's good for business, after all; everyone loves a redemption story, particularly one that humanizes what has been a cold, calculating persona for some time. Tom Cruise with a paunch and bald wig? He has no vanity! He's ready to let loose and have some fun! He really doesn't take himself so seriously after all. That's the narrative we've had rammed down our throats, but is there any truth to it? Let's find out after the jump, but be warned, minor Tropic Thunder spoilers may ensue.

So here's the deal: Cruise has maybe ten minutes of screen time as bald, bearded, bespectacled blowhard Grossman. Despite the prosthetics, which include huge hairy forearms as well as the chrome dome and pronounced (but not too pronounced) belly, Cruise does not exactly disappear into the role - he's recognizably Cruise all the way. The nose knows, and besides, he doesn't even do a voice. Conveniently, for him as well as the movie's marketing team, he gets to have it both ways. He's having fun and doing an "outrageous" character, but there's never a moment we feel like we're watching an outrageous character - it's clearly Tom Cruise Industries up there on the screen.

In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd think director, co-writer and co-star Ben Stiller was having a little fun at Cruise's expense. After all, right here in the same movie we have Robert Downey, Jr. as a pompous, self-absorbed genius actor who undergoes an experimental process to appear African-American in the movie-within-the-movie. (Of course, since Downey actually is a talented actor, he disappears into both the role of Australian thespian Kirk Lazarus and that of platoon sergeant Osirus.) And we also have Jack Black as a desperate comic actor who dons a variety of fakey prosthetics for his multiple roles in The Fatties, Fart 2.

The joke is on somebody here, but I don't think it's Cruise, since he's buddies with Stiller, who actually thinks Cruise is funny - or at least that's what he told Entertainment Weekly. Unless I'm forgetting something, the last time Cruise made me laugh since Risky Business was his Scientology recruitment video leaked onto YouTube earlier this year - and that was the sort of nervous laughter I usually reserve for Charles Manson interviews. By my count, Cruise is the 12th funniest person in the movie, behind Downey, Stiller, Black, Danny McBride, Steve Coogan, Brandon T. Jackson, Bill Hader, Jay Baruchel, Matthew McConaughey, a kid playing a Vietnamese heroin mule, and even Nick Nolte, not generally regarded as one of our foremost humorists.

Cruise dances in character over the end credits, and we are reminded of Hollywood's second most famous Scientologist, John Travolta, and how his career revival in Pulp Fiction included a dance scene that echoed fond memories of Grease and Saturday Night Fever. Here I guess we're supposed to flash back to Cruise dancing in his underwear in Risky Business and remember why we used to love him. Honestly, I was more creeped out than amused. How hard would it have been for Stiller to find an actual bald, hairy fat fuck for this role? Jon Polito would have killed, or James Gandolfini. I mean, wasn't that the point of the Downey character - that it's probably a good idea to hire an actual black actor than an Australian in blackface? Instead it's just the latest chapter in the Tom Cruise psychodrama - the extended version of jumping on Oprah's couch.

Related:
Tom Cruise Parodies Someone Else for a Change
Citizen Cruise

The Top Ten Great Scenes From Not So Great Movies (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:00:00 GMT

A few weeks ago, we here at the Screengrab called on YOU, the good people of Blogtopia, to let us know what Top Ten Lists you’d like to see us forget to include your favorite movies on...and, lo, it came to pass that we did verily discuss the finest farewells and most ignominious exits in the annals of cinema o’er the previous fortnight at the behest of one “Other Matt.” (Sorry, I just got back from the free outdoor Boston Common production of All’s Well That Ends Well, and I'm still feeling a little iambic.)

Anyway, this week, we’ve taken the suggestion of just plain “Matt” (presumably the original Matt and possibly Other Matt’s Batman-esque nemesis): ten great scenes that really deserved to be in better movies!

"Kickapoo" from TENACIOUS D IN THE PICK OF DESTINY (2006)

It’s difficult to describe to the uninitiated what a colossal disappointment the Tenacious D movie turned out to be. If you’ve only seen the movie or heard a handful of songs, it would be easy to dismiss the portly duo (Jack Black and Kyle Gass) as a comic novelty act. But the fans knew better, getting hooked on the endlessly re-watchable HBO series and frequenting D concerts. And with Pick of Destiny, it felt like their dream had finally come true: a fitting vehicle for the self-proclaimed “World’s Greatest Band.” Then they actually saw the movie, at which point all hope came crashing down, leaving D fans no choice but to trudge home and forlornly listen to “Fuck Her Gently” over and over again. But before that could happen, the movie’s opening scene actually delivered everything the fans had always hoped for...namely, a kickass rockin’ D musical. The “Kickapoo” number (an all-sung origin story featuring Meat Loaf as the Bible-thumping father of young Jables and Ronnie James Dio as a diabolical mentor) promises so much more than even a good movie could possibly deliver. Which, of course, makes it all the more disappointing that the movie that follows barely even seems to try, even jettisoning Meat Loaf and Dio altogether and retreating to the relatively safe template of stoner comedy. But for five minutes, it’s pure Tenacious D bliss, the foul-mouthed, Jim Steinman-esque rock opera the fans deserved, rather than the sub-Cheech’n’Chong antics they ended up getting.

That long-ass alley brawl from THEY LIVE (1988)

John Carpenter's 1988 sci-fi allegory wasn't a terrible movie by any means; it was your basic, meat-and-potatoes B-movie, the ideal bottom half of a drive-in double bill back when such things existed. (There is dissent in the Screengrab bullpen about this evaluation, with at least one colleague proclaiming They Live to be "totally awesome," but in my book such praise is reserved for movies that don't star "Rowdy" Roddy Piper.) But Carpenter's movie does have its moment of greatness…well, actually it's a hell of a lot longer than a moment. Piper's Nada, a laborer who finds a special pair of sunglasses that allow him to see hidden messages in billboards and hidden aliens inside seemingly normal people, wishes to share his discovery with his co-worker Frank (Keith David). Frank declines. When a sensible discussion of the issue fails to bear fruit, fisticuffs ensue. And ensue. And ensue. For nearly six minutes, Piper and David beat the crap out of each other in an alley, and every time you think they're finished, reduced to nothing more than heaves and grunts, they start all over again. It's not that their fight is some brilliantly choreographed ballet of action – its brilliance (and hilarity) lies in its single-minded relentlessness.

Jack & Sam's hellacious squabble from HUSBANDS AND WIVES (1992)

It was a perfect storm for Woody Allen in 1992: his personal life was splattered all over the tabloids, and his new movie came packaged with provocative similarities to the headlines. Most critics were quick to slap a label reading "Woody's latest masterpiece" on Husbands and Wives, praising the shaky camera work, jump-cuts and foul language as well as the perceived highly personal subject matter. This was a breakthrough, a new raw, down-and-dirty Woody Allen – except for those of us who saw it as the same old Allen with a derivative, migraine-inducing stylistic tic wholly unsuited to his Upper East Side world. Sure enough, it didn't take long for Woody to revert to his tried-and-true long master shots and PG-13 dialogue, but there is one scene in Husbands and Wives that delivers a short, sharp shock of the rawness Allen was targeting. It doesn't involve his character or Mia Farrow at all – and you could speculate that Allen couldn't bring himself to completely abandon his audience's affections, though I've seen too many of his subsequent films (Deconstructing Harry, Anything Else) to make that mistake – but rather the late Sydney Pollack in the role that really turned the remainder of his career towards acting rather than directing. As Jack (the best friend role that had often gone to Tony Roberts or Michael Murphy in the past), Pollack is a married man romancing a younger woman, Sam (Lysette Anthony), described by Allen's character as a "fucking cocktail waitress." Pollack dismisses Allen's snobbery until Sam embarrasses him at an upscale party by voicing her New Age-y thoughts about tofu and astrology and whatnot. What follows is sort of the Woody Allen version of the They Live fight – a corrosive "let's get outta here" scene that escalates into a kind of mortifying slapstick.

Click here for Part Two & Part Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak

Morning Deal Report: “School of Rock” Rolls Again

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Hellboy II: The Golden Army raised hell at the box office over the weekend, taking in an estimated $35.9 million. The public’s appetite for digitally rendered Brendan Fraser proved larger than I would have guessed as Journey to the Center of the Earth garnered $20.6 million, good for third place behind Hancock in its second weekend. Eddie Murphy made Mike Myers feel better about things as Meet Dave crashed and burned with only $5.3 million, one of the worst opening weekends in the history of the Murphyverse.

Richard Linklater should really have better things to do than a sequel to School of Rock, shouldn’t he? (I won’t even suggest that screenwriter Mike White does.) Nevertheless, the director is attached to School of Rock 2: America Rocks, as is original star Jack Black as rockin’ substitute teacher Dewey Finn. Variety reports that White’s screenplay “picks up with Finn leading a group of summer school students on a cross-country field trip that delves into the history of rock 'n' roll and explores the roots of blues, rap, country and other genres.” Could be worse, I guess. Linklater could be remaking The Bad News Bears Go to Japan.

In even less surprising news, Jon Heder will play “a Napoleon Dynamite-like oddball who becomes contaminated with a substance that gives him what might arguably be considered superpowers” in Loudermilk, per the Hollywood Reporter. The comedy was pitched to Universal by Heder and his brother Doug, and will be rewritten and directed by Craig Zobel (Great World of Sound). In the funniest sentence I’ve read this morning, Doug Heder proclaims, “Loudermilk is definitely intended to set the tone for Greasy Entertainment.”

Related:
Hellboy: The Letting Go
Eddie Murphy Exhumes "Beverly Hills Cop"

Trailer Review: The Rocker

Paul Clark — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

This summer looks to bring the release of a number of high-quality comedies. But judging by the trailer, The Rocker probably won’t be one of them. Admittedly, Rainn Wilson’s snarky-doofus persona doesn’t lend itself easily to leading man roles in the same way as, say, Jack Black. But still, wouldn’t Wilson’s Office popularity lead one to expect better than a shabby mashup of School of Rock and Drillbit Taylor? Worst of all, it’s just not funny, which is pretty surprising considering how easy a target heavy metal makes itself (the flashback sequence here is especially dire). Looking up the movie on IMDb, I was a little surprised to find it was directed by Peter Cattaneo of Full Monty fame- admittedly not a wonderfully-made film, but nonetheless a very funny one. Cattaneo hasn’t done much of note in the past decade, and from the looks of this trailer, that streak won’t be ending this year.

Remake vs. Original: Kong vs. Kong vs. Kong

Andrew Osborne — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

After marveling at the remarkably rendered 1930s New York of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, I got a mad craving to go back and revisit my first Kong...not the 1933 classic, but the 1976 version I saw as part of a long-ago birthday field trip, sitting uncomfortably close to my grandmother while naked Skull Island native boobies bounced gloriously on one of the big, wide screens of the late, lamented Westgate Cinema in beautiful, balmy Brockton, Massachusetts.

Even more recently, my wife rented the original as part of her own private ongoing Netflix survey course of film history, allowing me to compare all three apes in a cinematic steel cage match. Which film is The King of Kong? Let’s check the scorecard!

THE BEAST:

It’s the eternal question: stop-motion, CGI or a guy in a monkey suit? The original Kong was groundbreaking and iconic. Peter Jackson’s ape was fearsome and expressive and goofed around on an icy pond. And, as Dino De Laurentiis promised vis-à-vis his bicentennial version: “When Jaws dies, nobody cries. When Kong dies, they all cry.” To be honest, this race is too close to call, so I’ll go with the chimp that started it all. Advantage: Original.

THE BEAUTY:

Jessica Lange, God bless her, is automatically disqualified for playing a character named “Dwan.” Naomi Watts delivered a charming, well-rounded performance as Ann Darrow, generating about a hundred times more chemistry with her simian co-star than she did with Sean Penn in 21 Grams. But as good as she was, Dr. Frank-N-Furter didn’t sing about Naomi Watts in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He sang about the one-and-only iconic Fay Wray. Advantage: Original.

THE HERO:

A little Adrian Brody goes a long way for me, and I don’t remember much about Bruce Cabot’s performance as Jack Driscoll in the original (other than it was perfectly fine). But, c’mon...Jeff Bridges on Skull Island in a crazy Amish beard? The Dude abides. Advantage: 1976.

THE SHOWMAN:

Jack Black gave a fine, relatively understated performance as Carl Denham in the 2005 version, and Robert Armstrong totally owns the classic line, “It was beauty killed the beast.” But I have to say I’m partial to Charles Grodin’s oilman turned showman for providing the classic Kong story with a truly hissable villain...plus he’s the only one who gets squashed by a giant ape foot. Advantage: 1976.

SKULL ISLAND:

The 1976 version featured the aforementioned naked breastices, and Kong’s battle with the dinosaurs in Peter Jackson’s remake was insanely exciting, but the original directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack achieved the same level of wonder and excitement with a quarter of the technology. Bonus points for Noble Johnson’s portrayal of the Skull Island chief, the only truly dignified, humane and memorable “native” character in any version of Kong. Advantage: Original.

THE SHOWDOWN:

Kong’s original battle with the biplanes atop the Empire State Building is classic movie magic, and Kong’s battle with helicopters on and around the Twin Towers now sadly packs an emotional wallop it didn’t originally possess, but I could have spent hours drinking in Peter Jackson’s obsessively detailed CGI New York, even without the breathtaking action in the foreground. Advantage: 2005.

And so, after tallying the votes, the winner is...ORIGINAL!

Stay tuned for next week’s exciting Original vs. Remake smackdown (in honor of the release of The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD box set): Sinatra's Eleven vs. Clooney's Eleven!

Caught in the Net: The Pitiful History of the Internet Thriller

Phil Nugent — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Steve Johnson contemplates the ongoing disappointment that is the Internet thriller. It's not as if Hollywood has ever trusted computers any farther than they could throw them. HAL 9000 tried to hog the spacecraft for himself in 2001: Space Odyssey; in Colossus: The Forbin Project, an electronic super-brain invented by the guy who plays Victor on my grandmother's beloved The Young and the Restless, was designed to serve as a perfect missile defense system but immediately started acting too big for its business; its descendant, the computer in WarGames almost started World War III in an excess of playfulness; and don't get me started on that weekend at Westworld. (Hell, I had more fun at Euro Disney.) But for the better part of a decade now, Hollywood has been specifically trying to tap into the supposedly vast, ominous potential of the Internet and hook into some of those cool cyberpunk dollars, with decidedly mixed results. "Like a virus shrugging off an outdated antibiotic," Johnson writes, "the Net has proved resistant to such attempts. You've seen evidence of the struggle. Over and over, Hollywood has shown us things happening on computer monitors in improbably large and cartoonish letters, as if all Web sites dealing with national security are designed by the folks at Webkinz. 'To eliminate Baltimore, click here,' that kind of thing."

You can see the thinking. Someone with mad hacking skills could spy on you, erase your identity, fill your Netflix queue with Ed Burns movies, make your life hell itself. That line of thinking helped produce such early cyberduds as The Net, in which hackers laid siege to Sandra Bullock while the audience just sat there wondering why she was so hard up for company that she was hanging out with Dennis Miller. Then there was Hackers starring Jonny Lee Miller and an alarmingly hot young Angelina Jolie (sporting an English accent and cobalt-blue nail polish) as the leaders of a team of master web surfers who run afoul of an evil computer genius called The Plague (Fisher Stevens), who single-handedly caused the cancellation of our plans to compose a list of the Ten Lamest Movie Super-Villains because the computer that writes our Top Ten lists kept insisting on assigning his name to all ten slots. (The most convincing hackers in movies are the team of government-run nerds in Enemy of the State--Jack Black is among them--who act like big swinging dicks when they're alone in a dark room with their computer screens in front of them and who fold faster than Superman on laundry day when pulled into the light and asked to account for what they've been doing--just following orders, natch.) More recently, as in Untraceable, movies have tried to go the Lee Siegel route of suggesting that there's just something about the 'Net that short circuits the frontal lobes and renders people incapable of fighting off their baser instincts. Here, the villain is a serial killer who yokes his victims to a webcam and urges people to check in at his site, "killwithme," having made it clear that "the more that watch, the faster he dies." Naturally, people watch in droves. (The set-up faintly recalls The Card Player, a 2002 Dario Argento horror in which the serial killer bets the victim's life on a video card game with the cops; if the killer wins, he executes his latest captive in front of a webcam while the police watch on helplessly.)

There are real anxieties and fears involving the Internet just waiting to be tapped for the movies, but there's a built-in problem identified by the writer Scott Rosenberg: "Movies are overwhelmingly a visual medium, and dealing with the Internet is the parallel problem to dealing with writing. In the old days it was a typewriter. There aren't a lot of great movies about someone sitting at a typewriter." The great Internet paranoia fantasy of the movies may still be the original The Matrix, which shot right past the realistic image of someone tapping away at a keyboard and conjured up an impressively imagined world of thrilling liberation and terrifying imprisonment. It understood that what's exciting, and scary, about the Internet is the sense it can give you that you're exploring strange new worlds at the same time that you are, in actual fact, sitting on your ass typing. The Matrix somehow found a way to show what that fantasy neverland located somewhere between the keyboard and the brain might look like, while other attempts to visualize the experience, such as Johnny Mnemonic, became too literal-minded and hit the earth with a splat. And having gotten it right that first time, the Wachowskis then spent a lot of time and money proving just how hard it is to do. As a wise man once said: "Whoa."

Confusing Indecency With Originality? Robert Downey Jr. in TROPIC THUNDER

Paul Clark — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:00:00 GMT

A few days ago, my colleague Scott Von Doviak weighed in on the recently-released photo from Tropic Thunder that's been making the rounds of late. More specifically, he sounded off on the casting of Robert Downey Jr., which has had the blogosphere all a-twitter this past weekend. Given the small but vehement protests among certain people both on and off the Web, I thought I ought to post my thoughts here as well.

First off, it's not as simple as Downey playing a black man. According to a "First Look" feature in this week's Entertainment Weekly, Downey "plays Kirk Lazarus, a very serious Oscar-winning actor cast in the most expensive Vietnam War film ever. Problem is, Lazarus's character, Sgt. Osiris, was originally written as black. So Lazarus decides to dye his skin and play Osiris, um, authentically." Stiller, who also wrote and directed, has gone on record stating that Downey's character (and the film itself) is skewering blinkered, insufferable actors rather than African-Americans.

Yet that hasn't stopped some folks from criticizing the film and Downey for "pulling a Danson" and invoking that dreaded "B" word: blackface. Frankly, I don't see it. The purpose of blackface was to get cheap laughs from white people by exaggerating the prevailing stereotypes of African-Americans for the purposes of comedy, and I don't see Downey wearing an enormous shit-eating grin or sneaking around a watermelon patch, Bamboozled-style. Also, the makeup is loads more realistic than any blackface ever was — be honest, if I hadn't told you the black guy in the photo was Downey, would you have guessed it? Me neither. If Stiller and Downey maintain that the film isn't trying to lampoon African-Americans — which would be a stupid, career-killing idea in this day and age — I see no reason why we shouldn't take them at their word.

In addition, the recent revelations about Tropic Thunder have made me pretty darn excited to see it. While part of me wishes Stiller could have convinced Daniel Day-Lewis, the most famously Method of contemporary actors, to play Lazarus, you'll certainly hear no complaints about Downey, a personal favorite and a genius-level comic actor. But what has me really pumped is the edginess of this particular storyline, an edge that's been mostly absent from Stiller's work since — well, whaddya know — his last directorial effort, 2001's Zoolander. After a decade of mostly wishy-washy roles, it's good to see Stiller taking chances again, both onscreen and behind the camera. I'll resist making further pre-judgments about the film until a substantial trailer is released, but for now I want to say that Tropic Thunder has become one of my most-anticipated big-budget releases of the 2008.

To tide you over until March 17, the pre-announced premiere date of the trailer, here's the online-only teaser, which gives us a glimpse of Downey "in character":

Robert Downey, Jr. Blacks Out

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Here’s one from the “Are You Sure That’s a Good Idea?” department. Entertainment Weekly has our first look at Tropic Thunder, an action-comedy co-written and directed by Ben Stiller, who also stars as an actor prepping for a role in a war movie. According to the report, “when the film's director (Steve Coogan) and writer (Nick Nolte) get fed up with their prima donna cast, they drop them into the jungle to fend for themselves. The actors think they're doing some sort of full-immersion filmmaking, but the danger they're in is very real.”

So far, so…well, not so tantalizing. But the rest of the casting news is worthy of a raised eyebrow, at least. It’s not co-star Jack Black that has folks all a-twitter; he plays “a comedian known for performing multiple roles in a single film — his latest is called The Fatties: Fart 2,” which sounds par for the course. Rather, it’s the actor playing “Kirk Lazarus, a very serious Oscar-winning actor cast in the most expensive Vietnam War film ever. Problem is, Lazarus's character, Sgt. Osiris, was originally written as black. So Lazarus decides to dye his skin and play Osiris, um, authentically.” It’s none other than Robert Downey, Jr.

Sounds dicey, but Downey doesn’t seem worried. ''At the end of the day, it's always about how well you commit to the character,'' he says. ''I dove in with both feet. If I didn't feel it was morally sound, or that it would be easily misinterpreted that I'm just C. Thomas Howell in [Soul Man], I would've stayed home.''

Poor C. Thomas Howell. He’ll just never hear the end of it, will he?

Take Five: Lennon

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:45:00 GMT

Hollywood loves John Lennon. It loved him when he was alive, and ever since he had the good taste to die and stop being such a crazy troublemaker, it's loved him even more. Playing Lennon in the movies is almost as profitable as playing Elvis in Las Vegas; as you'll see below, there seem to be no less than two professional actors who more or less make their living portraying the charismatic ex-Beatle. Still, the gig isn't without its problems; only a few years after his death, Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, helped produce a (mediocre) TV movie called John and Yoko: A Love Story. All seemed to be going well until it was discovered that Mark Lindsay, the near lookalike they'd cast to play Lennon, was actually named Mark Chapman -- which, er, just happened to be the name of John Lennon's assassin. Friday, New York and L.A. will see the premiere of The Killing of John Lennon, Andrew Piddington's big-screen directorial debut, which tells the story of that Mark Chapman, but which doesn't actually feature anyone playing John Lennon; here's a few worthwhile films that do.

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (1964)

Although many have tried, the fact remains that nobody does a better job of playing John Lennon than John Lennon. Moreso than any of the other Beatles, Lennon's combination of unassuming good looks (in contrast to the pretty-boy cuteness of Paul McCartney) and genuine charisma (as opposed to the merely amiable Ringo Starr) made him almost as compelling a figure in real life as he was on record. Richard Lester's irresistably fun day-in-the-life pseudodocumentary is a great showpiece for Lennon's natural likeability, even if Ringo tends to get the funniest lines, and it also serves as a virtual blueprint for rock star vehicles; it continued to be echoed on down through the years, with even movies like 1997's Spice World following its basic premise and format. Lennon would make a handful of other movies before his murder in 1980, but nowhere else is it as obvious why the public so took to the Beatles back in their heyday. No subsequent hagiography, conjuration or commentary could possibly do a better job than A Hard Day's Night of illustrating exactly what it was like to be there, and why John Lennon became so important to his generation.

THE HOURS AND TIMES (1991)

A little-seen but extremely accomplished independent film by Christopher Munch, The Hours and Times is only an hour long, but it manages to capture some of the most intriguing moments of John Lennon's career (albeit ones that may never have actually happened) in a distinctive and skillful visual style that apes the look of A Hard Day's Night, but to an entirely different purpose. One of the most-speculated-upon -- and enigmatic -- periods of Lennon's career was a youthful trip to Spain he took in 1963 with the Beatles' then-manager, Brian Epstein. Epstein, a well-known homosexual in what was not yet Swinging London, never made a secret of his attraction to the young Lennon, but neither did he explicitly spell it out, or tell anyone whether or not it was reciprocated in any way. In the absence of any evidence either way, Munch chooses to make the journey on film as part of his own personal fantasia, ably abetted by two outstanding performances by a vulnerable and nervous David Angus as Epstein and a cocky, charming Ian Hart as Lennon. Worth seeking out both on its own merits and as a curious bit of Beatles fantasy.

TWO OF US (2000)

As illustrated by The Hours and Times, a number of filmmakers -- whether because of personal obsession or the outright exhaustion of actual historical anecdotes -- have chosen to make movies about the Beatles not as they were, but as they might have been. (We wouldn't be surprised if there's a thriving underground trade in alternate Beatles history.) Two of Us is odder than most, if for no other reason than the pedigree of its makers: directed for television by British aristocrat and stage veteran Michael Lindsay-Hogg and written by playwright Mark Stansfield (his only filmed credit), it takes a more or less chance meeting in 1976 between John Lennon and Paul McCartney and uses it as a springboard for a speculative dive into what basically amounts to My Dinner with the Walrus. Not always successful and featuring a distinctive lack of Beatles music, it's nonetheless noteworthy because of the casting: Paul McCartney is played by a callow-sounding, jumpy Aidan Quinn, and Lennon is portrayed in a surly, almost growling manner by Rex Harrison's kid, Jared Harris, fresh off of portraying fellow '60s icon Andy Warhol. A curiosity.

CHAPTER 27 (2006)

In one of those bizarre coincidences that hit the movie business every few years or so, The Killing of John Lennon isn't the only film about the killing of John Lennon floating around at the moment. In fact, it's not even the first. That honor goes to J.P. Schaefer's Chapter 27, which made quite a splash when it debuted at Sundance last year (with Jared Leto's performance as assassin Mark David Chapman being singled out for praise), but had some difficulty finding a distributor before finally securing a March release date with tiny Peace Arch Entertainment. It might be the presence of actress/singer/train wreck Lindsay Lohan, but then again, maybe not: unlike The Killing of John Lennon, Chapter 27 does feature someone playing the ex-Beatle -- and it's none other than Mark Lindsay Chapman, the guy who was fired from John and Yoko: A Love Story over twenty years ago for failing to disclose his rather unfortunate coincidence of a name. It's not clear whether the release of Andrew Piddington's movie will increase or decrease Chapter 27's chances of netting a distributor, but we're hoping it's the former; the cast alone makes it sound pretty intriguing.

WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY (2007)

It's not that the Judd-Apatow-written, Jake-Kasdan-directed mockumentary about the rise and fall of rock non-legend Dewey Cox isn't enjoyable enough on its own. With a hilariously confident lead performance by John C. Reilly and a ton of goofy songs (which Reilly is now touring around the country with a hand-picked live band), it's well deserving of its current success. But the most fun thing about it is that since it gives us a lead character who lived through most of the formative years of rock 'n' roll, there's plenty of opportunities for ridiculous cameos, both by celebrities playing themselves and inspired impersonations. While Forrest Gump brought us the sight of John Lennon portrayed with dull precision by professional Beatles impersonator Joe Stefanelli, Walk Hard brings us perhaps the most hilariously perfect Beatles impersonators in movie history: Jack Black as Paul McCartney, Justin Long as George Harrison, Jason Schwartzman as Ringo Starr, and the indefatiguable Paul Rudd as John Lennon. Not since Yo La Tengo fulfilled their destiny of playing the Velvet Underground in I Shot Andy Warhol has there been such a groovy bit of casting.

Time Out's Time Travels

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:45:00 GMT

Just like everyone else on the face of the planet, Time Out magazine is favoring us with their best-of-2007 movie roundups. (You can find their local film writers' best-of lists online, including New York, Chicago, and Dubai, among many others.) But in London, home of the original Time Out guide, their film staffers go above and beyond, giving us a snotty, sometimes silly, sometimes crude, but sporadically amusing look at what we can expect in the world of cinema come 2008. Among the predictions: "Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn will start their own clothing line called 'Tiresome Retreads'"; "Francis Ford Coppola will announce that he will only be releasing films piecemeal, and via a Honduran website"; and "Jack Black will star in at least one film per month throughout the year, except for June, when he will star in a new film every week."

Trailer Roundup End of Year Special- Best Comedy Trailer, 2007

Paul Clark — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Be Kind Rewind

For a time, I was toying with the idea of simply calling this "Funniest Trailer" and giving the award to Superbad, but I've rewatched the Be Kind Rewind trailer so many times that I couldn't bear with the thought of not recognizing it here. The trailer has a distinct 80s-style wacky buddy comedy feel to it, with Jack Black and Mos Def teaming up to shoot low-budget remakes of some of their favorite movies. But I don't think the familiarity of the genre is necessarily a bad thing here, and it could provide a certain amount of grounding for the Michel Gondry flights of fancy, which was sorely lacking in last year's The Science of Sleep. But mostly, this just looks like a lot of fun. Also, ever since the trailer first emerged I've taken advantage of every chance I've gotten to quote Jack Black's priceless line, "I will shoot you, and I know robot karate." So that's something, right?

Take Five: Mockumentaries

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 20:45:00 GMT

It can't have been long after the first documentary film was made that some enterprising wise-ass with a cut-rate kinetoscope hit upon the idea of making a fake documentary. After all, since it's an age-old comedy trope that reality always outstrips satire, it only makes sense to create satire that apes reality as closely as possible. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story opens wide this weekend, and there's plenty of reasons to believe it'll be a fine entry into the mockumentary canon; it's directed by Jake Kasdan, co-written by the red-hot Judd Apatow, and stars the talented and eminently likable John C. Reilly (as well as a boatload of potentially amusing guest stars, including Jack White as Elvis, Frankie Muniz as Buddy Holly, and, as the Beatles, Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long, and Jason Schwartzman!). We figured it might be a good time to bring up some of our other favorite pseudo-documentaries, and, as an extra challenge, do it without mentioning any of the films of a certain Mr. Christopher Guest. (To top it all off, I'm not even going to discuss Albert Brooks' amazing Real Life. Well, except right then.)

THE RUTLES: ALL YOU NEED IS CASH (1978)

Yes, Screengrab readers, there actually was a time when goofing on the Beatles wasn't the most played-out thing a human being could do! That time was about thirty years ago, when Monty Python alum Eric Idle penned, starred in, and co-directed this made-for-TV movie about the rise and decline of the Prefab Four, the most famous band ever to come out of Rutland. George Harrison liked it enough to funnel some money into producing the film, even though he's savagely parodied as Stig O'Hara, the group's dullest member, who doesn't appear to speak any English, accidentally sues himself, and is eventually replaced by a wax dummy. It features a few other Python members as well as some Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time SNL alums — the only filmed collaboration between the two groups — and as such, contains more than its share of hilarious dialogue and situations. What really elevates it above the level of standard rock 'n' roll pseudo-documentary is the music, written entirely by co-star (and former Bonzo Dog Band front man) Neil Innes. The songs so closely resemble Beatles originals that it's easy to miss the absurdly funny lyrics.

BOB ROBERTS (1992)

Tim Robbins' mockumentary about the rise of a right-wing demagogue who rises to fame on the strength of a bunch of pseudo-populist folk hits directed at the underclass was a labor of love, growing out of his sincere liberal political beliefs and his fear of the then-growing power of conservative radio talk shows. Sincerity and deeply held beliefs, though, can be death to comedy, and the worst parts of Bob Roberts are the ones where he tips his hand too much or allows his characters to devolve into one-dimensional caricatures, whether on the left or the right. But it's still a very worthwhile film, with a smart script, some excellent and sure-handed direction, and a few terrific performances and cameos from the likes of Gore Vidal and John Cusack. Robbins wrote the Bob Roberts songs himself, and they're catchy enough to make you believe that they could actually catch the popular imagination, though they play like parody, and whoever heard of a right-wing folksinger, anyway? Also of interest, if for no other reason than its prescience, is Alan Rickman as a Karl-Rove-like figure.

FEAR OF A BLACK HAT (1994)

As the East Coast-West Coast wars heated up and gangsta rap swept the nation, fans were waiting for just the right man to come along and make the quinessential hip-hop mockumentary. As it happened, they got two — but while Chris Rock's CB4 was the bigger hit, Rusty Cundieff's Fear of a Black Hat was the better film. Universally broad in its targets, merciless in its self-parody (particularly biting are the scenes where Cundieff's Ice Cold attempts ham-handed political justifications for his bottom-drawer lyrics: "See, the butt is like society..."), and dead-on in its use of songs that cleverly mirror then-popular hip-hop trends, from g-funk to Native Tongues to Miami bass, it's the best satirical treatment of the rap world to come along so far. It's not perfect; it goes on about a half hour too long, and some of its targets are ridiculously dated (how much comic mileage can you get out of making fun of Kriss Kross?), but it's still worth seeing, and the three lead actors — Cundieff, Mark Christopher Lawrence as the goofy mystic Tone Def, and a coked-up, paranoid Larry B. Scott as Tasty Taste — are pitch-perfect in their roles.

DILL SCALLION (1999)

Every other musical genre seems to get its own fake documentary, so why shouldn't country? Well, possibly because country so often plays as self-parody. Or maybe because it would be almost impossible to top Henry Gibson as Haven Hamilton in Nashville. Still, Jordan Brady's Dill Scallion gives it the ol' dropped-out-of-grade-school try, and is carried for quite a while by a charismatic lead performance by Billy Burke. Some of the gags are real killers (Dill's producer, played by Henry Winkler, strives to create a "barn of sound", and his signature dance requires him to dislocate his own ankle); some are subtler jokes that require a fairly intimate knowledge of country history; and others are just flat-out failures. But the songs (by Sheryl Crow, of all people) work quite well, and there are a ton of winning cameos — everyone from Willie Nelson to Jason Priestley, who's truly funny as the amusingly named Jo Joe Hicks. At its best when it's smart and self-referential and at its worst when it takes easy laugh-at-the-hillbillies cheap shots, Dill Scallion is only half a good movie, but it's a pretty good half-a-movie.

IT'S ALL GONE PETE TONG (2004)

Attempting to do for the world of DJ culture what This is Spinal Tap did for metal, Michael Dowse's It's All Gone Pete Tong (the phrase is rhyming slang for "it's all gone wrong") scores largely on the strength of some blindingly funny dialogue and a handful of near-perfect performances. Paul Kaye is both ridiculous and hilarious as DJ Frankie Wilde, whose stellar career is derailed when he starts to go deaf, and Neil Maskell nearly steals the movie as a callous record company executive. The movie goes off the rails with a few obvious jokes and a detour, late in its run time, into taking itself a bit too seriously, but it's worth watching for the comedic moments that score, an outstanding score (including a few songs by the actual Pete Tong), and a refusal to tip its hand to the bitter end.

The Ten Greatest Prosthetics in Movie History, Part 2

Peter Smith — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:00:00 GMT

Nicole Kidman's Nose in THE HOURS (2002)

Can a fake nose win an Oscar? Some might say it already did, when Nicole Kidman's turn as Virginia Woolf in The Hours was awarded the golden statue for Best Actress. We've got nothing against Kidman's performance in that film, but judging by the reams of press that her lightly reoriented schnozz got at the time, you'd think that it was the nose that was wearing Kidman, instead of the other way around. Of course, this was yet another award in a long series of Best Actress Oscars that went to Beautiful Women Doing Unglamorous Things — whether it was playing a tarted-up legal secretary (Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich), having sex with Billy Bob Thornton (Halle Berry in Monster's Ball) or looking like a burn victim (Charlize Theron in Monster). Which is, really, the only way we can explain Kidman's decision to use such a subtle prosthetic in the first place; it's not like the American moviegoing public had any idea what Virginia Woolf looked like in the first place.

Jeff Goldblum's Jaw, Cheeks, Eyes, His Very Fucking Being, in THE FLY (1986)

Some of us were prohibited from watching more than two hours of TV a week as children. Luckily, some of us were also latch-key kids, so naturally, whenever no one was home, we gorged, often on both food and shlocky afternoon TV movies. And those of us who were unlucky enough to see The Fly at this time didn't quite grasp the extent of our mistake until it was too late. There you are, happily eating your delivery pizza, and in the middle of a big, meaty bite, you're confronted by the spectacle of one of Brundlefly's eyes falling off, like an egg yolk dripping into batter. You assume that's the most disgusting scene they're gonna throw at you. Again, big mistake. Jeff Goldblum's Brundlefly is possibly the single most hideous, repugnant creature ever seen on film — worse than the Alien mother, worse than any other close competitor. Every negative trait of Jeff Goldblum's physiognomy is brought into stark relief onto an insect face; when it decays, we dare you to keep eating. We certainly didn't.

Penelope Cruz's Ass, VOLVER (2006)

Since her Hollywood debut, Cruz has been the poster child for foreign-born performers who aren't half as compelling in English as they are in their native tongue. Which is why her reunion with Pedro Almodovar was a cause for celebration — not only would she be working in Spanish again, but she was collaborating with a filmmaker who always brought out the best in her. But strangely enough, much of the buzz around Penelope's role in 2006's Volver focused less on the performance than around the generous fake derrière she strapped on for the role. According to Almodovar, the padded rump was necessary for the character, an earthy, hard-working mother in the Anna Magnani tradition, and this makes sense, since Penelope Cruz is lovely, but talk about bun cakes — she ain't got 'em. But then a funny thing happened. Instead of drawing undue attention to Penelope's prodigious prosthetic posterior, the hype allowed moviegoers to grow accustomed to the sight of the suddenly callipygian Cruz, much in the same way Alejandro Amenabar leaked stills of a heavily made-up Javier Bardem to the Spanish press so the public would get used to his appearance in The Sea Inside. The gimmick paid off in the end, as Cruz's full-bodied (sorry) performance made the rockin' world go 'round, garnering her unprecedented critical praise and a rare (for a foreign-language performer) Best Actress Oscar nomination. In fact, after the success of Volver, the only question that remains for Penelope Cruz's career is: how can she leave this behind?

Vincent Gallo's Penis in THE BROWN BUNNY (2003)

When people actually got around to seeing Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny rather than just making fun of it (which isn't to say that they stopped making fun of it afterwards, or that many people actually got around to seeing it), the scene that generated the most buzz was what is delicately referred to as "the blowjob", where Gallo's lodge pole is climbed by Chloe Sevigny, for whom one has never felt more pity. The scene's verite qualities and (literally) naked emotional power are what most people talked about, although we think they were just grateful that something was actually happening in the movie after endless shots of Gallo driving aimlessly across country. Gallo, who tends to be pretty sensitive about things like this, has always claimed that the hog in question belongs to him; French director Claire Denis, on the contrary, claims that it is an artificial wang, and that, worse yet, it isn't even Vince's artificial wang — she says he stole it off the set of her 2001 film Trouble Every Day, in which he had a large part, but not that large part. In the absence of, er, concrete evidence from Gallo, we're going to go with Claire Denis' version of events; we figure that since she's not on record as hoping Roger Ebert gets cancer for giving one of her films a bad review, she's got the moral high ground.

Gwyneth Paltrow's Body in SHALLOW HAL (2001)

Hollywood's relationship with the overweight isn't exactly a history of sensitivity and kindness. Particularly where women are concerned, the mere suggestion of being a few pounds beyond anorexic means you're virtually unemployable; and in a city where people like Christina Ricci, Drew Barrymore and Britney Spears can be attacked in the press for being fat, roles for actual human women, let alone fat women, are few and far between. When the Farrelly brothers decided to make a movie about a shallow womanizer who falls in love with a 300-pound woman to prove that he can see 'inner beauty,' they had a casting decision to make: hire two people to play Rosemary Shanahan — one a beautiful, thin Hollywood blonde, to portray Hal's perception of her, and one a genuine 300-pound actress to portray the 'real' character — or just stick Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit? (It didn't help the whole unpleasant aftertaste of the movie that its male lead was Jack Black, an actor who gets romantic leads despite his own flabby physique; no actress with a body like Black's would ever nail down a leading-lady part.) Perhaps it's too much to expect anything like insight from filmmakers whose reputation is built on the gross-out comedy, but the fat suit is already a ethical minefield (representing, as it does, a sort of physical proof of Hollywood's allergy to hiring anyone genuinely overweight to appear in a prominent role) without filling it with an actress who probably weighed 110 pounds soaking wet when she was filming the role.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Willem Dafoe's Teeth in WILD AT HEART (1990)

The whole world seems to be rotting in David Lynch's nightmare road movie, and nowhere is this clearer than in the misbegotten mouth of white-trash villain Bobby Peru, played by Willem Dafoe in full-moon mode. Unholy, irredeemable, and defiantly unflossed, Bobby Peru is meant to be the ultimate dark void awaiting the young lovers at the end of their road to nowhere, and no Satanic movie character ever displayed a less welcoming smile. Perverse to the end, the still-smiling Bobby finally slides a shotgun beneath his chin and blows his own head off, after which the part of his body above the gum line must have felt a certain amount of relief.

Goldie Hawn's Fat in DEATH BECOMES HER (1992)

In this special-effects comedy, Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep play lifelong rivals who achieve "undead" immortality and spend the rest of the movie blowing holes in each other, twisting each other's necks into pretzels, knocking their heads into their chest cavities, and generally behaving as if Chuck Jones were their stunt coordinator. But the most effective physical mutation in the picture may come when Hawn slips into an old-fashioned fat suit and layers of latex makeup to depict her character's depressive obesity after Streep has waltzed off with her fiancee. Nothing in the movie is funnier than Hawn's expression of malicious satisfaction, with her features sunk deep in the mass of her cream puff head, as she imagines raining destruction down on her gal pal. At the time, Hawn was forty-six years old and had spent a quarter of a century doing her damndest to hang onto the body and mannerisms of a teenage girl. Maybe she felt wickedly giddy at even pretending to have let herself go.

Dennis Hopper's False Leg in RIVER'S EDGE (1987)

Dennis Hopper, fresh from his comeback in Blue Velvet, lays claim to the being the counterculture's answer to Walter Brennan in this generation-gap study of alienated youth. John Heard made a good grab for the position in Cutter's Way, where he staggered around pretending to be one-legged and wore an eye patch to boot, but that was nothing compared to what you get when you equip Hopper with an artificial leg, an inflatable sex doll, and the name "Feck", and sit back to watch him rock. When Hopper, who deals dope to the local teenagers, sits down to remove his false leg, it symbolizes the loss of his own youthful innocence and the disconnect between the older characters and the young people, which is fed by their use of his own product. Or something like that. And did we mention that his character's name is Feck!?

— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov

Trailer Roundup: Cassandra's Dream, Kung Fu Panda, Rambo

Peter Smith — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:00:00 GMT

Cassandra’s Dream

Like Match Point two years ago, Cassandra’s Dream is being sold as a standard-issue British-made thriller, with Woody Allen's name withheld until the very end of the trailer. And like Match Point, this is by all accounts a crime drama steeped in class envy (reports from Toronto were respectful but unenthusiastic). What intrigues me most about this isn’t the crime stuff but the familial issues in play, with working-class brothers Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell (notice the accents) coming to rich uncle Tom Wilkinson to borrow money. At this point, the movie could go either way, but I’d rather see Allen make movies like this than the mostly lame comedies he’s been churning out since Small Time Crooks.

Kung Fu Panda

Not that Dreamworks Animation has ever been especially committed to craft, but now that they’re banging out two movies a year all quality control has more or less been shot to hell. I imagine this pitch sounding like a pot-addled college student’s late-night ramblings: "Dude! You know how there are different kinds of kung fu named after, like, animals? Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could, y’know, see all the different animals doing the different kinds of kung fu! And there would be a panda, and he’s all fat and funny and he can’t do kung fu at all; now that would be a great movie. They could get Jack Black to be the panda. . . that would be sweet, right?" In fact, the more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to think that this isn’t even for real. It’s not, is it? Also, where’s Hamster Style?

Rambo

Years from now, there’s going to be a certain amount of confusion as to which Rambo is which. To wit — First Blood is the first Rambo movie, the second installment is Rambo: First Blood Part II, nobody will bother with Rambo III, and the upcoming fourth movie is simply called Rambo. Complicated enough for you? Anyway, when I first heard that Stallone was making another Rambo movie, my initial reaction was one of eye-rolling disbelief. But that changed when I saw last December’s Rocky Balboa, a movie that was cornball and far-fetched, but as endearing as Rocky’s old dog Butkus. So yes, the image of a sixty year old Stallone taking on guerrillas in the jungles of Myanmar is a little hard to take seriously, but I’m rooting for Rambo to be good, or at least fun. Yeah, I’ll take fun.

— Paul Clark

Morning Deal Report: Black Lantern

Peter Smith — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Warner Bros. signed a director for the Green Lantern movie, but everyone's dying to know: is Jack Black still on board? (Okay, maybe just me.)

Cheryl Hines — Larry David's wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm — will make her feature directing debut with Serious Moonlight, from a script by the late Adrienne Shelly.

Michelle Williams will star in Lukas Moodysson's first English-language film.

— Peter Smith