The Screengrab : judd apatow

Screengrab Predicts Summer 2009: Dishonorable Mention (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:30:00 GMT

In Part Three of this list, we presented The Screengrab’s consensus picks for the Top 5 Bombs of Summer 2009.

Herewith, our individual picks and dishonorable mentions...

Andrew:

1. Wolverine
2. PUBLIC ENEMIES (July 1)

Aside from Bonnie and Clyde, The Untouchables and that Star Trek episode where they went to the gangster planet (“I don’t think you’re stupid, Mr. Krako”), I can’t think of many successful modern tommy-gun stories. Let’s see...Mobsters? The Cotton Club? Billy Bathgate? Sure, Michael Mann is a good director, but when Johnny Depp isn’t swinging for the fences with an Ed Wood, a Sweeney Todd or a Captain Jack Sparrow, he’s just dull as dishwater, and without some truly stellar reviews and/or word-of-mouth, this one's likely to disappear in the crowded summer shuffle.

3. Land of the Lost
4. Transformers...yeah, that’s right, I said it.
5. TAKING WOODSTOCK (August 14)

Ang Lee has certainly made some excellent, memorable films...but this may not be one of them. While a behind-the-scenes history of the 1969 Woodstock music festival sounds like an interesting (if someone redundant) subject, the trailer makes the whole thing look like a third-rate HBO Original Movie (or maybe a second-rate Showtime one). Chances are, Taking Woodstock will only really be remembered as the vehicle that killed off Demetri Martin’s career as a big screen leading man.

Scott:

1. GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA (August 7)

Perhaps not the end of civilization as we know it, but you can see it from here.

2. Land of the Lost
3. The Taking of Pelham 123
4. Imagine That
5. Year One

Nick:

1. Land of the Lost
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
3. Year One
4. The Taking of Pelham 123
5. BRÜNO (July 10)

Brüno may very well live up to its hype, but given its subject matter, a large swath of America won’t even consider seeing it. Consequently, its respectable but far-from-enormous box-office take will make it seem like a disappointment.

Paul:

1. Land of the Lost
2. G-FORCE (July 24)

Even if this didn’t look like total garbage -- which it does -- it would be foolish to open a family comedy about a team of guinea pig spies with sassy celebrity voices the week after the latest Harry Potter movie. With the Boy Who Lived facing off against Voldemort, will anyone but Jerry Bruckheimer care about G-Force? I sure hope not.

3. FUNNY PEOPLE (July 31)

Broad Adam Sandler comedies can still bring in the crowds. Adam Sandler dramedies? Not so much. While I applaud Sandler, Seth Rogen, and Judd Apatow for tackling more serious material than usual, I just can’t see this connecting with multiplex crowds, particularly not with a trailer that is light on laughs and heavy on sentiment. Perhaps Apatow would have been better off taking the film to Toronto and garnering some solid festival buzz before rolling it out in the fall.

4. Imagine That
5. THE HURT LOCKER (June 26)

Ever since it received rave reviews from Toronto last year, Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War drama has been sold more as a kickass combat action thriller than as a political statement. So why would Summit Entertainment open the film opposite Transformers, the one blockbuster of the summer that’s practically guaranteed to have loud, kinetic combat scenes and none of the audience baggage that comes with Iraq War movies? Way to piss that Twilight clout right down your legs, guys.

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

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Nick Schager, 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!

In Other Blogs: Knowing Me, Knowing You

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

At Scanners, Jim Emerson weighs in on Roger Ebert’s Knowing bafflement. “It's one thing to be the voice in the crowd pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes. It's very different to feel like you're the only one who's cheering an Emp you feel is magnificently attired…But critical opinion isn't an electoral contest where winners and losers are determined by some (largely illusory) consensus. Not many years ago, the general public would not have had any idea of what many critics outside their own town had said about a film -- nor would they have known how each and every movie performed at the box office weekend after weekend.”

David Frank of Rope of Silicon puts his trust in Ebert. “In trendy sushi bars across the country a quiet buzz hums among kids wearing black-rimmed glasses and Alamo Drafthouse T-shirts. They wonder if Mr. E ate some magical Freaky Friday fortune cookie with Ben Lyons — not than any of these curious folk would admit to seeing any version of Freaky Friday. Has the man given up? Is he losing it?...I haven’t seen Knowing. Which means I can’t say whether I agree with Ebert or not. Regardless of whether I think Knowing is junk or treasure, I do know the man has not lost it. He has not gone Earl Dittman on us. He really does believe Knowing is a great science-fiction film despite whatever you, your mom and your favorite hipper-than-thou Internet curmudgeon thinks. And that’s why I love Roger Ebert. He’s his own man.”

Beyond the Multiplex looks at “a completely miscellaneous grab bag of indie openings,” including the intriguing Severed Ways. “Impressive and also absolutely ludicrous, this is the movie you need to recommend to that suburban metalhead cousin in desperate need of having his mind blown. Purportedly based on an episode from the Vinland Sagas, in which two 11th-century Norsemen are left on their own to fend for themselves in unknown North America, writer-director-actor Tony Stone's Severed Ways is something like a DIY combination of black-metal video, Italian horror film, The Blair Witch Project and some really slow, nature-obsessed art movie like Old Joy.”

At The House Next Door, Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard converse about two “unfortunately overlooked and/or unfairly maligned” films, David Gordon Green’s Undertow and Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris. Says Harris: “I wanted to talk about Undertow largely because it's been forgotten: you're right that almost no one brings it up these days in talking about Green, who's mostly known for his first two films and now the Judd Apatow collaboration Pineapple Express. Ebert's rave aside, I believe Undertow got decidedly mixed reviews upon release, including its fair share of very negative ones, but on the whole I wouldn't say it's maligned so much as simply overlooked. That's unfortunate, because in my opinion it is Green's best film thus far, the film that comes closest to fulfilling the tremendous promise he's displayed in all his features. It's not a perfect film by any means, not a masterpiece, but in its own strange way it is ‘great,’ a baroque fable about the loss of childhood innocence and the totemic power of family.”

Let’s wrap it up with this week’s installment of List-o-Mania courtesy of Spoutblog: 10 Films That Saved Their Franchises. Like, uh…Attack of the Clones? “It made the least amount of money of the three Star Wars prequels, but Attack of the Clones was the trilogy’s saving grace, because after the ‘George Lucas ruined my childhood!’ disappointments of The Phantom Menace, this second (or fifth?) installment of the franchise got the old fans excited again by alluding to (and leading in the direction of) more characters and events of the original movies, while overall featuring a better plot and more satisfying action.” I’m fainting with damned praise.

"Adventureland": Greg Mottola and Yo La Tengo, in Search of the Sound of 1987

Phil Nugent — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:45:00 GMT

Back in 1996, Greg Mottola wrote and directed an excellent, low-key indie comedy called The Daytrippers, starring Hope Davis, Liev Schrieber, Campbell Scott, Parker Posey, Stanley Tucci--basically, your all-star indie cast, circa 1996. It got great reviews and did just well enough commercially to consign Motttola to the ranks of directors working in TV, where he gained a toehold on what would become the Judd Apatow Comedy Juggernaut by directing several episodes of the short-lived, Apatow-created series Undeclared. In a roundabout way, this would lead to his getting to direct Superbad, the monster hit written by Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, with Apatow on board as a producer. Next week sees the release of the third film he has directed and the second he has made from his own script, Adventureland, a coming-of-age comedy, set in 1987, about a fresh college graduate (played by Jesse Eisenberg) spending his summer working at a Pittsburgh amusement park and falling in love with a co-worker, played by Twilight's Kristen Stewart. Given the youthful characters, the noisy, hormonal atmosphere, and the presence in the cast of such SNL stalwarts as Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig--not to mention that bad banner on the ads reading "from the director of Superbad"--audiences who wouldn't know The Daytrippers from the Night Stalker might very well show up expecting Superbad II, a possible misunderstanding that the studio might have little interest in discouraging.

Writing in The New York Times, Larry Rohter notes that in Superbad, the director "telegraphed his intentions before even a single line of dialogue had been uttered. With a title taken from a James Brown song and a soundtrack that leaned heavily on funk hits from the 1970s, the contrast with the movie’s three main characters, suburban white boys as nerdy and insecure as they were randy, could hardly have been more pronounced." In Adventureland, "Once again he uses music to signal what is to come, but this time he kicks things off with the Replacements and the Velvet Underground." As Mottola explains, “I had to indicate to the audience this may not be what you are expecting." The new movie is autobiographical, its tone more bittersweet than brassy. Rauch writes that some of Mottola's "most enduring memories of that time stem from the exasperation he felt hearing the same songs played over and over on loudspeakers at the park, and the exhilaration he felt tuning in to college radio when he and his friends were off duty." This actually helped him to forge a useful bond with his music supervisor, Tracy McKnight, who also worked at an amusement park around the same time and can out of the experience with "Eddie Money embedded in my head." In the process of piecing together what McKnight calls "the soundtrack to our own life stories,” she had to obtain clearances for almost forty songs, and with comparatively limited resources: Superbad, for instance, used one Van Halen's "Panama", which, Mottola says, “cost nearly as much as all of the songs in Adventureland.”

Although the soundtrack did wind up featuring some '80s clurter as Poison, "Rock Me Amadeus", and some Rush (thanks to a character whose enthusiasm for the band may be seen as an accidental but timely homage to I Love You, Man), it does include such timeless alt-rock favorites as New York Dolls, Big Star, the Cure, and Husker Du, whose music plays a special role in the budding romance at the picture's center. (“It’s shorthand in the script,” says Mottola. “Kristen’s character is already interesting to Jesse, but he falls for her when she plays Hüsker Dü on the tape player in her car.” Just reading that, some of are relating so hard that our heads hurt.) The movie has an actual behind-the-scenes link to that world via its original score, which was produced by the band Yo La Tengo, whose members, led by co-founder Ira Kaplan, have a mutual admiration thing going on with Mottola. It's not Yo La Tengo's first time as film composers; their most recent record, They Shoot, we Score, consisted of music they originally wrote for the films Old Joy, Game 6, Junebug, and Shortbus, and last year they scored The Toe Tactic, which was directed by Emily Hubley, whose sister, Georgia, is in the band. (She's also married to Kaplan.) “I’m down on songs that literally describe the action on the screen, because that’s unimaginative,” Kaplan says, by way of explaining their approach to soundtrack work. Instead, “sometimes the music is ahead of the movie by a beat, or behind by a beat.”

SXSW Review: Beeswax

Andrew Osborne — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:10:00 GMT

(Click here for a review of Humpday, part one of my SXSW mumblecore double-feature coverage!)

Mumblecore, as defined by Wikipedia, is “an American independent film movement that arose in the early 2000s. It is primarily characterized by ultra-low budget production (often employing digital cameras), focus on personal relationships between twenty-somethings, improvised scripts, and non-professional actors.” The mumbly side of the equation stems from the genre’s fealty to vérité naturalism over manipulative plotting and the stammered rambling of speech as it’s spoken rather than the too-perfect rhythms of tightly-crafted screenplay dialogue.

To be fair, mumblecore’s loose, meandering style is something of an acquired taste...though at its best and most accessible, it can yield the sort of fresh, relatable characters and scenes that breathe fresh life into clichéd cinematic scenarios. The self-aware riffing of the Judd Apatow brand has reinvented Hollywood-style romantic and stoner comedies in recent years with a more polished, pop culture-heavy, testosterone-infused version of the mumblecore "bromance" makeover of Lynn Shelton’s Humpday or the gentler rhythms of Andrew Bujalski’s mumblecore “legal thriller” Beeswax.

Boston native Bujalski was one of the founding fathers of mumblecore with Funny Ha Ha, his 2002 tale of insecure, often inarticulate twentysomethings searching for love and job satisfaction in the post-collegiate ghetto of Allston, Massachusetts.

Beeswax, meanwhile, is about slightly older characters searching for...well, job satisfaction and love. This time around, though, Bujalski (who remains stubbornly committed to celluloid while most of the indie-verse has switched to digital video) has a slightly higher budget, a slightly tighter pace and an even more charismatic cast of talented “non-actors,” including fellow low-budget directors the Zellner Brothers (Plastic Utopia, Goliath) and Alex Karpovsky (whose documentary Trust Us, This Is All Made Up is likewise showing at the 2009 SXSW festival...which, not-very-coincidentally, one expects, is being produced this year by fellow castmate Janet Pierson, who together with husband John, has long been a member of the Indiewood Illuminati that helped thrust the film’s Austin, TX locale into the cinematic spotlight back in the early ‘90s).

But the heart and soul of Beeswax are the film’s charismatic co-stars Tilly and Maggie Hatcher, real-life twins who play fictional twins Jeannie and Lauren. Bujalski wrote the film with his two old friends in mind, and the plot (such as it is) revolves around a job offer that would take Jeannie to Africa while Lauren struggles with a potentially litigious business partner to maintain control of a funky vintage boutique.

Oh, and by the way: Lauren (and the actress playing her) are wheelchair-bound, though audiences expecting Lifetime Movie melodrama over the plight of the “otherly-abled” young woman (or, for that matter, suspenseful John Grisham-style legal showdowns) will be sorely disappointed.

Lauren’s condition is simply a given in the film, as is the same-sex relationship between the twins’ mother and Pierson’s character -- a quietly revolutionary approach to material that’s typically whitewashed or overdramatized in most mainstream media -- while the legal side of the story is treated as a real world pain in the ass the characters must contend with (rather than a twisty puzzle box that renders the characters irrelevant).

While a film like My Suicide uses visual overkill to hide the one-dimensional nature of its characters and themes, filmmakers like Bujalski and Shelton focus on the rich, simple pleasures of the real world.

Related Stories:

SXSW Review: Humpday
SXSW Review: Me and Orson Welles

Trailer Review: Funny People

Paul Clark — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Judd Apatow might have become one of Hollywood’s reigning kings of comedy by making hard-R, foul-mouthed laffers, but the films he’s directed so far have stuck to a reliable mix of laughs and lessons. More specifically, the trademark Apatow storyline involves a man who experiences a life-changing event (whether it’s getting a woman pregnant or being outed as an overaged celibate), and learns important lessons about living as a result. And while Funny People looks like he’s stuck to this same formula again, I find it interesting that he’s split his usual schlubby leading man into two this time around. While a movie star played by longtime Apatow pal Adam Sandler gets the terminal disease and the estranged wife he tries to win back, Seth Rogen is the young comic on the make who falls into Sandler’s orbit and is forced to grow up, despite a Greek chorus of sailor-tongued young dudes (another favorite Apatow meme). It’s hard to say whether this twist on the usual Apatow formula will work as well as The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up did, but this trailer has me curious to see if Apatow can handle the more serious undercurrents he’s set up for himself. Also, it’s nice to see Eric Bana in a role that doesn’t require him to be dour and tortured- as anyone who’s seen Chopper can tell you, Bana’s a funny dude, and I welcome the chance to see him cut loose again.

Reviews By Request: The Foot Fist Way (2006, Jody Hill)

Paul Clark — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

For the next three weeks, I’ll be reviewing three movies you requested in last week’s column. Polling for future Reviews By Request columns will begin again on January 30.

Over the past few decades, there has emerged in American popular culture something that can be called the “comedy of awkwardness.” In this style of comedy, which draws heavily from British humor, the comedy comes not merely from a character’s strange behavior, but also the discomfort their behavior causes. Often, in comedies of this sort, it’s the surrounding characters’ dumbfounded reactions that generate the most laughs. Comedy of awkwardness has become an integral part of some of the most popular and acclaimed sitcoms in this country like The Office and 30 Rock, and it’s begun making inroads into movies as well.

However, to successfully pull off the comedy of awkwardness, one must walk a thin line. To begin with, the character who generates the discomfort has to think he’s acting perfectly normally. If there’s any sense that this person is aware of how crazy he looks, the comedy is lost. In addition, the audience has to get a sense that the people who surround the crazy character acknowledge, if only to themselves, how strange his actions are. Jody Hill’s The Foot Fist Way gets only the first rule right, while ignoring the second altogether. So in spite of a fine and wholly committed performance by Danny McBride in the lead role, the film never takes off as comedy, coming off not so much funny as simply odd.

The Foot Fist Way focuses on the character of Fred Simmons (McBride), a boorish one-time tae kwon do champion-turned-small town instructor. Fred presides over his dojo with the authority of a drill sergeant, barking out orders and insisting that his students address him as “sir.” Meanwhile, Fred’s life begins to fall apart when he discovers that his wife cheated on him with the manager at her new job. Soon, Fred falls apart and becomes consumed with rage and grief, surely the last emotions one wants to see from a man who makes his living instructing people- children, even- how to fight. Fred discovers that his wife’s boss’ name is Mr. Fisher, and when he assumes that a student, also named Fisher, is the boss’ son, Fred decides to take out his rage on the boy, with predictable results.

But let’s look at that particular scene. A grown man beating the hell from a young boy is not inherently funny, but there are comic possibilities for such a scene if done right. Unfortunately, The Foot Fist Way doesn’t deliver. Hill shows McBride fighting the boy in long shot, but never takes the time to show us how the other characters in the scene feel about this. Just one well-timed reaction shot from a disbelieving onlooker could have salvaged some laughs, but that reaction shot never comes. The whole film is like that- plenty of promise, but very little end result. There are a few scenes that work, such as Fred’s misguided attempts to seduce a pretty female student or a weepy monologue in which he schools a young student in life’s harsh realities, but many more that don’t. By the time the story has become a mano a mano between Fred and karate movie superstar Chuck “The Truck” Wallace (played by the film’s co-writer, Ben Best), the movie’s comedic potential has long since been squandered.

It’s a shame, since McBride’s performance is really very good, in large part because he’s completely convincing in the role. I’ve never taken a martial arts class, but I can imagine that many of the instructors are more or less like Fred, attracted less to its traditions than to the power teaching gives them. Tae kwon do is rooted in self-discipline, but my guess is that most students sign up for martial arts so they can learn to fight, and when one is teaching people who are clearly weaker and less skilled, there can be a temptation to prove one’s superiority by cutting others down to size. In many ways, Fred is the flip side of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character in David Mamet’s Redbelt, who is more of an old-school purist. Fred, on the other hand, enjoys being in control and doesn’t know any better way to go about it than by intimidating others, and McBride effortlessly projects the arrogance of a man who harbors no doubts whatsoever that he can kick your ass, while also showing occasional deference to those who are more powerful than he is. It makes perfect sense that when Fred’s wife tries to patch up their marriage, Fred insists on telling her, “I’m the stronger man, and you’re the weaker woman.” Although considering what a ringer she's already put him through, is he trying to convince her of this, or himself?

If nothing else, The Foot Fist Way should be remembered as that movie that introduced Hollywood to the brilliance of Danny McBride. McBride had previously appeared as the scene-stealing Bust-Ass in David Gordon Green’s All the Real Girls, but with this film, he quickly made fans of Will Ferrell and Judd Apatow, and has since been cast in such high-profile films as Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, and the upcoming big-screen version of Land of the Lost. But while McBride’s comic skills are undeniable, there are also moments in The Foot Fist Way that hint at darker undercurrents, leading me to think that he might become a fine character actor if given the chance. The Foot Fist Way isn’t much of a movie, but it announces McBride as a talent to watch.

Trailer Review: I Love You, Man

Paul Clark — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

As a long-standing Paul Rudd fan, I’m more or less predisposed to see this one, especially since he’s playing the lead. Yet after the surprisingly hilarious Role Models, the material here feels relatively uninspired. Like a number of Apatow and faux-Apatow productions, I Love You, Man is a platonic love story about an awkward guy connecting with the other men in his life, and the presence of a number of the usual Apatow suspects doesn’t alleviate the feeling of déjà vu. Yet I continue to be taken aback by how versatile Rudd is turning out to be, not to mention the way his dude’s-dude good looks don’t hinder his ability to convincingly play a character who doesn’t make friends with other guys. So if nothing else, I’ll be able to enjoy this as the latest chapter in the ongoing adventures of Paul Rudd, and if manages to be as awesome as Role Models turned out to be, all the better.

Screengrab Review: "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:00:00 GMT

NOTA BENE: My esteemed colleage Scott Von Doviak already reviewed this bad boy when it played at Fantastic Fest, and did a fine job of it. But that was, like, totally a month and a half ago! He might as well have been reviewing that French train movie. So, in the name of second opinions, here we go!

With Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Kevin Smith seems to have set himself two goals: convince people that the raunchy, Seth-Rogen-starring sex comedy isn't by Judd Apatow, and re-establish himself as a scrappy, lovable filmmaker instead of the egomaniacal jerk that half of America loves to hate. The first part is easy -- despite Apatow's near-domination lately of the dudeflick, Smith got there first. The real question is, can he establish that he's a talent to watch out for again after having squandered so much goodwill?

The answer is...yes and no. He starts out with a pretty watertight premise: Rogen and Elizabeth Banks play the kind of platonic roommates that hardly ever exist in real life but are everywhere in movies and TV. They're struggling artist types -- though robbed of the insufferability of that archetype by engaging performances by both actors -- who strike upon the notion of filming a porno movie as a way to get rich quick. (Any resemblance between this plot and the actual economic reality of the porn industry is purely coincidental.) Along the way, this wacky duo discovers that their carnal cash cow may be just the thing to unleash some hidden feelings about each other.

There's a lot to like about Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It's certainly a lot more likable than most of his recent efforts; he's assembled a cast that makes his dialogue sound snappy again instead of contrived. He's hit upon an entertaining plot that lets him generate the usual shitstorm of controversy from the usual bluenoses without seeming too utterly calculating. And while it's certainly not going to win any acclaim as a feminist film, it's certainly the first movie I can recall from him where the lead female character has something more than one dimension. (Judd Apatow, take note.) But in a lot of ways, it's still a Kevin Smith movie: excessively bro-ish, gross when it should be clever and clever when it should be smart, and unable to resist dabbling in gay- and race-based humor while being utterly inept at doing so. Smith has proven that he can be a better filmmaker; now let's see him be a good one.

Related Posts:

Screengrab Review: Pineapple Express

Screengrab Review: Pride and Glory

DVD Digest for September 30, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a master’s final film shares the shelves with one of the summer’s biggest hits and a number of classic horror films coming out just in time for Halloween.

DVD of the Week: For years, the Criterion Collection has been committed to releasing superior DVD version of the films of the great director Yasujiro Ozu. Now, they’re continuing their commitment with this week’s release of Ozu’s final film, An Autumn Afternoon. In many ways, the film is a color analogue to Ozu’s classic (and my favorite film of his) Late Spring, this time telling the story of an aging man and his reluctant-to-marry daughter from the perspective of the father, played as ever by Ozu stalwart Chishu Ryu. With the switch in perspective away from youth to old age, it’s tempting to read An Autumn Afternoon as a kind of farewell piece by the filmmaker, a kind of passing of the torch to younger filmmakers. Yet it’s clear while watching the film that Ozu was as talented in his final years as he was in the prime of his career, and his seamless shift to color with his final films provide a hint that he might have been able to gracefully change with the times while keeping his one-of-a-kind style.

Other “classics” coming to DVD this week include the 123-minute cut of Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession (Ryko) and, uh, the “10th Anniversary Edition” of Can’t Hardly Wait (Sony) for which I know you were all clamoring.

The week’s biggest new release on DVD is Iron Man (Paramount, also Blu-Ray), the first and one of the biggest summer blockbusters, and much-anticipated arrival of Robert Downey Jr. on Hollywood’s A-list. Also of note is the Judd Apatow production Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Universal, also Blu-Ray), which is also included in Universal’s Ultimate Unrated Comedy Collection (also Blu-Ray) alongside fellow Apatow films The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. Other recent releases coming to DVD: Taxi to the Dark Side (Image), CSNY / Déjà vu (Lionsgate), and Jellyfish (Zeitgeist).

This week’s rather sparse TV on DVD selections include: My Name Is Earl Season 3 (Fox) and Numb3rs Season 4 (Paramount).

Finally, in Blu-Ray Only news, this week brings Universal’s “Halloween Starter Pack”, which includes Dawn of the Dead [2004], Land of the Dead, and The Thing, also sold separately, and the director’s cut of Daredevil (Fox).

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

Screengrab Movie Vacations #4: The Wheel Inn, Cabazon, CA

Andrew Osborne — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Back in the day, I used to spend a lot of time “commuting” the 20-hour back and forth haul from stinky ol’ Los Angeles to the Happiest Place On Earth, a.k.a. Austin, Texas, in an attempt to live somewhere I actually liked while attempting to maintain some semblance of a screenwriting career with all the necessary Hollywood schmoozing and whatnot.

Anyway, during one of those sleep-deprived, turkey-jerky-fueled jaunts along the good ol’ I-10 West, I happened to glance out the passenger window of my beloved hatchback Honda CRX and notice a very familiar pair of dinosaurs looming on the desert plains.

After slapping myself to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating from gas fumes and Diet Coke intoxication, I realized I was staring at the very spot where Pee-Wee Herman pitched woo to the Francophile truck stop waitress Simone (just before getting chased around the feet of a life-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex by Simone’s jealous, Bluto-esque boyfriend Andy in Tim Burton’s 1985 breakthrough classic, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.

According to Wikipedia, the dinosaurs (Mr. Rex, the aforementioned T-Rex, and Dinny, who used to be a brontosaurus until scientists changed the name to Apatosaurus in tribute to the hilarious films of Judd Apatow) were created by a Knott’s Berry Farm employee named Claude K. Bell to draw attention to the Wheel Inn Café (50900 Seminole Drive, Cabazon, CA), which opened in 1958.

Distressingly, Wikipedia also informs me Dinny’s interior “has been recently turned into a creationist museum promoting intelligent design theory,” so depending on your political beliefs, you might want to skip the $5.00 “dino burger” at the neighboring diner and save your money instead for the more liberal-friendly House of Waffles & Abortion further down the highway. But if you happen to find yourself on the Interstate 10, roughly 90 miles east of L.A., the Cabazon Dinosaurs will be waiting to offer an authentic slice of roadside Americana (and, uh, challenge your views on that whole elitist “scientific method” thing).

Related Stories:

Screengrab Movie Vacations #1: The Very Large Array

Screengrab Movie Vacations #2: Pagsanjan, Philippines

Screengrab Movie Vacations #3: Devil’s Tower, Wyoming

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: August 24-30, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

My fellow Americans, I am here to humbly accept your nomination of Recapper of the Week in Screengrab! I think we all know it is time for a change. No longer can we sit by, complacent, while the screenwriter of Showgirls turns to Jesus. No longer can we allow Robert Downey Jr. to badmouth The Dark Knight. No longer can we stand by while good men like Phil Nugent and Andrew Osborne face-off over Judd Apatow and Pineapple Express!

No, my friends, this is a time for unity. A time for us to gather together and marvel at the World’s Greatest Animated Shorts – Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five! We must respect the Screengrab Fall Preview Picks of Andrew Osborne and Leonard Pierce, as different as they may be, as equal planks in our broad platform.

Some will tell you Guy Ritchie is caught up in the zeitgeist of slaggery. Some will insist that Fascination and Meet the Spartans are actually watchable movies. Some will wonder when Robert Zemeckis went bad, or why Terrence Howard would record an album, or under what circumstances David Lynch met Devo.

We don’t have all the answers! But we do know that That Guy is Bob Hoskins! We do know that Sukiyaki Western Django is some fucked-up shit! We do know that An American Carol is coming out whether we like it or not! And if we all stick together we can survive anything, even RocknRolla or a sequel to The Strangers !

God bless the Screengrab, and let’s make it a Wet Hot American Summer!

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"

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Screengrab Review: Pineapple Express

Andrew Osborne — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:25:00 GMT

On my way to the Somerville Theater last night, my lovely Polish bride noticed my eyes were mysteriously bloodshot...the result, I’m guessing, of recent sleepless nights courtesy of freaky New England weather patterns and our passive-aggressive cat Zuzu's stubborn desire for round-the-clock feeding, and not (I’m hoping) an icky dose of Knocked Up-style pinkeye.

More to the point, however, my ocular vessels were NOT dilated as the result of any quasi-legal pre-screening cheeba inhalation. In fact, I’ve been more or less estranged from the kind bud for many years now (though, as with any number of past relationships gone south, I still have fond memories).

So, no, unlike the Cheech & Chong oeuvre, you don’t have to be stoned off your ass to appreciate the manic lunacy of Pineapple Express. Though I’m sure a little ganja couldn’t hurt, it’s hard to imagine squeezing even more enjoyment from a movie so fanatically determined to entertain its (admittedly self-selecting) demographic.

Given Hollywood’s penchant for lazy, paint-by-numbers filmmaking, this gleeful desire to have as much fun as possible with every frame of film has become the hallmark of the Apatow brand in recent years, even when comedy's reigning “It” Guy leaves the directing to someone else (in this case, David Gordon Green).

Admittedly, the arrested development "Frat Pack" sensibility of the Apatow imprimatur isn’t (and isn’t intended) for all audiences, and the latest Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg-scripted bromance about two potheads on the run from a vengeful drug dealer occasionally strains too hard, but for the most part, the screaming, gun-toting, nut-kicking neo-Stooge action stays just light enough on its feet to be funny (and surprisingly exciting) rather than shrill and exhausting throughout most of Pineapple's muscular running time, thanks in large part to the engaging smart-dumb (or is that dumb-smart?) chemistry of co-stars James Franco (as a big-hearted, low wattage pot dealer) and Rogen, reprising his trademark cynical bear routine as a shady process server who accidentally witnesses a drugland murder, then spends the rest of the story in a hemp-fueled panic, doing just about everything in his power to make the situation even worse for himself.

The film essentially flies or fails based on the viewer’s desire to chill with its addled protagonists (and, to a lesser extent, Danny McBride, the newest pledge in the Apatow frat house, who seems likeable enough given what the sports radio crowd would refer to as an inconclusive sample size). And even Freaks & Geeks-loving Francophiles and Rogen enthusiasts may balk at the Tarantino-esque levels of slapstick violence on display, though for what it’s worth, my wife (a Stooge-hater from way back who usually balks at such things) seemed to enjoy every gunshot, smash-up and kitty litter face plant...so much so, in fact, we may actually go back and see the movie again just to catch all the stuff we laughed over the first time.

(And maybe the second time around we’ll even try it baked.)

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Movie Review: "In Search of a Midnight Kiss"

Phil Nugent — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

It's August, a time when the summer movie season is running on fumes and new releases are traditionally thought to be at their suckiest. It's a time when an unexpected little pleasure can generate a great deal of audience good will and vacuum up a lot of business without much competition, as M. Night Shyamalan proved when The Sixth Sense opened with no fanfare in August 1999. Now the writer-director Alex Holdridge may be in a position to step into the void with In Search of a Midnight Kiss, which opened at New York's IFC Center this past week and opens wider on Friday. Holdrige's movie bills itself as coming from "the producer of Dazed Confused and Before Sunrise", and it's the latter title that tips you off to its ambitions: set during a period of about twenty-four hours in the life of the hero, Wilson (Scoot McNairy), a recent transplant to Los Angeles and aspiring screenwriter, it is a worthy addition to the "will-they-or-won't-they?" romantic genre. The girl in the equation is Vivian (Sara Simmonds), who answers Wilson's Craigslist ad "Misanthrope seeks misanthrope"), placed in a desperate attempt to not be alone on New Year's Eve.

Midnight Kiss is not a two-person movie, though it might be better if it were. The subplot involving Brian McGuire as Kathleen Luong as Wilson's supportive friends, whose own relationship is threatening to enter a potentially scary new stage of its own, sometimes feels like padding, even though Luong is a shot of lemonade as the faithful girlfriend who feels flattered to discovery that the pathetic Wilson thinks of her when he's masturbating. Having Wilson's private moments with his Johnson interrupted is typical of the kind of gag that Holdridge uses to prevent this love story from overdosing on its own sweetness. Mostly, though, he's indebted to his actors: unlike some of the leading men employed by Judd Apatow, Scott McNairy knows how to play loser hopelessness as a passing phase in the life of someone who might plausibly be a real catch when he snaps out of it. For her part, Sara Simmonds, who has the kind of face that can make a camera question its religious beliefs, and who's playing a character who comes on as an unreachable bitch because she's just been hurt and feels like taking her sweet damn time working up to the learning-to-trust-again level, is able to make the bitchiness funny and to let the character's vulnerability shine through without making an emotional mess of it. Midnight Kiss doesn't have the beautiful, unearthly flow of Before Sunrise or Once; a degree of contrivance remains visible. But the actors are so winning and play their characters' need to break through their loneliness with such touching restraint that when, towards the end, Simmonds worries that there'll be "no more nights like this," it sounds like a projection of a possible future more heartbreaking than anything in Wall-E. Slipping into theaters just as people start stumbling, in a daze, back to their college campuses, In Search of a Midnight Kiss is unquestionably the date movie of the year so far. Unless you've got tire treads for legs, in which case Wall-E still has the edge there.

In Other Blogs: Sex and Slavery Edition

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:30:00 GMT

The blogosphere takes on Sex and the City this week, wrestling with the big questions like: Am I Neanderthal knuckledragger if I refuse to see this movie? And if I am, do I care? At Some Came Running Glenn Kenny made an offhand comment, expressing glee at having no professional obligation to see the film. This remark was taken by some as sexist snobbery, a charge Kenny responds to thusly: “When one puts it that way, it’s tough to answer, as the sexism charge only creates a feedback loop, as reverse-sexism charges are leveled at the movie’s depiction of its male characters, and nobody goes home happy. (Incidentally, I should point out here that as of this writing, I still have yet to see the Sex and the City movie.) It’s the snobbism charge, or rather my own personal reaction to the snobbism charge, that I found interesting. My own personal reaction being, ‘So what?’ Not only ‘so what,’ but ‘fuck that noise,’ because, I’m entitled to pull out the snob card every now and again, am I not? Just because something is a putative pop culture phenomenon I’m automatically expected to give it some respect?”

At Scanners, Jim Emerson offers no apologies. “Summer's here and the time is right for fart, diarrhea and masturbation jokes in the theaters. Not just in raunchy male-oriented comedies, but in so-called ‘chick flicks’ -- the ones groups of women attend after a few cocktails. I'm speaking, of course, about Sex and the City. Could it, perhaps, be the long-awaited Judd Apatow(ish) movie for gals? You know, the one about a group of friends who hang out and get drunk or stoned, complain about their relationships (or lack thereof), make dirty scatalogical jokes, and generally prefer one another's company to that of the opposite sex? You tell me. Because, sadly, nobody has enough money to pay me to go see Sex and the City. I am not the target audience and I know that. I have no objection to it, either. As Roger Ebert succinctly stated at the top of his review ‘I am not the person to review this movie.’ Me, too. I am also not that person.”

Mandingo is just out on DVD, and Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule offers a reconsideration. “The reviews were so dismissive that by the time the movie resurfaced during the age of VHS it had developed a reputation as some sort of abomination, a camp classic, a shameful artistic disaster. I wasn’t even sure if I could rely on my own memories of the film to be accurate, shaded as they were by circumstances under which I first saw it (I was 15 years old and in the company of my paternal grandmother!) and my uncertainty as to whether those negative reviews might be right…I sincerely hope that with the release of Mandingo on DVD that some revisionism regarding its status as a “so-bad-it’s-good” camp classic will begin to take place. Those IMDb comments from viewers who have seen it recently certainly seem to suggest that there a movement in this direction already underway. When I saw the movie at the American Cinematheque early last year, it was easy to sense that the audience came primed to giggle at the antiquated, period-authentic dialogue, the impolitic slurs and the debased folk mythology that makes up the worldview of Mandingo’s white characters. But it was heartening to hear that nervous giggling die down after about 15 minutes when it became clear that the movie was no corny sex-and-slavery romp, was no easy candidate for Mystery Science Theater-type derision, but instead a serious and agonized attempt to grapple with a period in American history that it seemed was still too hot to handle.”

Adam Sandler: Republican Actor? That’s the contention of Eric Kohn at Cinematical. “Sandler's movies often embrace idealized notions of blue collar lifestyles. In Little Nicky, which Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman found ‘gross, but awash in family values,’ the devil's son is expected to replace his father, akin to the dilemma facing Billy Madison. The simplified correlation between family and work, a dated model of Norman Rockwell proportions, comes up in the blossoming fatherhood plot of Big Daddy and the stress of a demanding job in Click. The dynamic gets even more complicated with I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, a movie about two straight guys disgusted by homosexuality. You could say the film eventually approves of gay marriage, but it does so with notable reluctance.”

And finally this week in List-o-Mania, Cracked offers 8 Classic Movie Robots That Actually Suck at Their Job. We expect the inclusion of R2-D2 to spur great controversy. “Everyone loves good old R2. From the first time some witty scribe made a joke about him looking just like a garbage can back in the '70s, right up to today, he's one of cinema's favorite robots…On the other hand, we're not 100 percent sure what R2-D2 is good at.”

Adam Sandler Brings Peace to the Middle East (Not)

Phil Nugent — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

In his forthcoming comedy You Don't Mess with the Zohan, Adam Sandler plays an Israeli assassin and tough Jew who fakes his own death so that he can escape his violent life and pursue his dream of a becoming a hairdresser. As Dave Itzkoff puts it in The New York Times, "Trailers for the film promise plenty of broad farce, physical comedy and at least one lewd dance routine. What the ad campaign for Zohan does not emphasize is that the film also attempts to satirize the continuing tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and provide humorous commentary on one of the least funny topics of modern times with a comedian who is not exactly known for incisive political wit." Itzkoff adds that "If you’re already wondering what gives the Zohan crew the right to tackle such sensitive subject matter, well, so are they." The movie, which has been in the thinking for eight years, was conceived by Sandler, who invented the character (which sounds a little like a comic, Israeli variant on Mickey Rourke's runaway IRA terrorist in the beleaguered 1987 film A Prayer for the Dying) and commissioned Judd Apatow and Robert Smigel to build a script around it. It's a measure of how long ago this was that, at the time, Apatow had not yet begun to create successful movies and was instead cultishly revered for his failed TV series. As for Smigel, the creator of "TV Funhouse" and the voice of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, had not yet begun writing movies, though he had already started contributing cameo performances to Sandler's movies. (Maybe the high point of his acting career would come in 2003's Punch Drunk Love, in a scene where Sandler, playing his brother-in-law, asks him for his professional opinion about the bad feelings in his mind, only to have Smigel remind him that he's a dentist.) Because they're talented, funny guys who aren't afraid of a challenge, they took the job. Because they didn't want to be beaten to death by strangers on the street, they decided to set it aside after 9/11.

After awhile, though, they began to work at it again. There was a period when they made a half-hearted attempt to fudge their targets by assigning phony names to the Mideast nations involved; Itzhoff writes that "their ancient territorial feud became a dispute over orange groves. However, Mr. Sandler and his team ultimately returned to a draft that did not disguise the political subject matter, believing that some filmgoers would be upset by it no matter how subtle their approach." The filmgoers did go out of their way to cast actual Mideasterns, including both Israeli and Arab performers, in the movie. One of the bad guys is played by Sayed Badreya, fresh from his chores playing one of the bad guys in Iron Man. Badreya has a lot of experience playing various terrorists and representatives of sinister Mideastern regimes, yet he almost drew the line at playing one for Adam Sandler. "My prejudice was bigger than me,” he says, ading that his daughter helped talk him into it. The cast members inevitably wound up sometimes talking politics during breaks in filming, and Badreya told Itzkoff, “Don’t think it was always nicey-nicey.” But in the end, he feels that he was part of a comedy mocking both sides in the Mideast debate where, he says, “The jokes are not 50-50. It’s 70-30. Which is great. We haven’t had 30 for a long time.”

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Hits of Summer 2008

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Studio executives, like TV weathermen, can be wrong half the time and still make a pretty fine living. One major difference, of course, is “The Suits” in Hollywood spend zillions on publicity and advertising campaigns to attempt to make their forecasts come true...and even then, they’re only right about half the time when it comes to cinematic hits and misses.

We here at the Screengrab will take that action. With the 2008 Blockbuster Season bearing down on us LIKE A RADIOACTIVE SPACE BUS THAT TRANSFORMS INTO A GIANT ROBOT LOADED WITH EXPLOSIVES, we hereby offer our predictions for the summer’s Top 5 Hits and Misses, in hopes of scoring ourselves sweet development deals based on our uncanny pop culture pulse-fingering prognostication abilities.

For the purposes of this experiment, “HIT” and “MISS” will refer not to the critical reception or cinematic quality of the films in question (because, really, who cares about that stuff?). Instead, we’ll calculate the accuracy of our predictions based on each film’s domestic box office gross in relation to its marketing/production budget and the hype/expectation surrounding it.

Want to play along at home? Let us know your Top 5 picks for upcoming Summer Hits, and compare them to our collective and individual predictions. Whoever scores the most correct answers WINS A BRAND NEW IMAGINARY CAR!

And now, our picks for the Top 5 HITS of Summer 2008:

5. KUNG FU PANDA

This one's pretty easy to explain: (1) Kung fu. (2) Pandas. It's got something for everyone! (LP)

Plurality Opinion: Dreamworks' annual summer animated movie doesn't have the built-in audience of the Shrek franchise, but it should still do good family business for the three weeks before Wall*E hits screens. (PC)

Memorandum Opinion: I haven’t seen that Panda on any big plastic soda cups yet, but maybe I haven’t been hanging out in the right fast food restaurants or convenience stores. This movie just squeaked onto our list as a result of numerous split votes elsewhere...but who knows? Maybe panda is the new penguin! (AO)

4. IRON MAN

Another gamble here, but one worth betting on due to it being the first high-profile summer release. Iron Man isn't an icon like Batman or Spider-Man, but Paramount has done a bang-up job promoting the film, and the re-emergence of Robert Downey Jr. as a high-profile leading man is the kind of story that can do wonders for a movie's public awareness. (PC)

3. INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL

Come on, like it could possibly be anything else. Indiana Jones is one of the iconic characters in cinema. Who's not looking forward to this? Add to that the fact that the film's got next to no competition for the month or so after it's released and this is the one to beat. Here's hoping it's actually good. (PC)

Memorandum Opinion: I'm going to call this as a slight box office disappointment that nevertheless cracks the top five. Indy's heyday was a long time ago, and even Lucas and Spielberg seem to be trying to downplay expectations. (SV)

Dissenting Opinion: First of all, that title is just way too long. Titles more than 20 letters long are for artsy foreign movies. Second, is there really that big an audience for this outside of hardcore geek circles? The key demographic for summer action flicks wasn't even born when the LAST Indiana Jones movie came out. (LP)

2. THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN

Advance word is that the second in the Narnia series outdoes the first in terms of pacing, script, and special effects, but my guess is that it'll succeed because conservatives bitched so much about the previous movie not getting enough attention that America will guiltily drag themselves to see it just to shut them up. (LP)

Dissenting Opinion: The last installment in the Narnia franchise was a blockbuster, but that was released in December. In a more competitive summer season, it should have a solid opening weekend before getting trounced by Indiana Jones. (PC)

1. THE DARK KNIGHT

There's pretty much no way this thing will bomb. Even if it had a bad director, a crummy script, an unpopular main character, and a poorly-designed set, geeks would flock to it in droves. But it doesn't have any of those things, AND one of its stars died mysteriously during filming! That's money in the bank, people. (LP)

Let's see: blockbuster sequel, over a solid year's worth of hype, extensive viral marketing campaign, hugely popular hero and villain, and to top it off, a much-buzzed final complete performance by Heath Ledger. Even non-Batfans are going to want to get a load of his Joker, which should push The Dark Knight to the top of the heap. (SV)

Batman is back in the public's good graces after the awesomeness of Batman Begins, and this one's got the most popular of Bat-villains, The Joker. And sad to say, but the hype around the late Mr. Ledger's performance will only help the movie's chances at the box office. (PC)

HONORABLE MENTION:

HANCOCK:

Will Smith. July 4. Action, comedy, superheroes, you name it. It's got practically everything one could ask for from a midsummer release. (PC)

WALL*E

Here's where things get a little less certain. Sure, WALL-E is a Disney/Pixar release, with all the family cachet that implies. However, it may not be as cuddly as some of the family favorites Pixar has made in the past. Still, this is the highest-profile family-friendly release of the summer, so this is the one to beat. Besides, if Pixar can strike box-office gold with rats in a kitchen... (PC)

TROPIC THUNDER

Historically, August is the time when comedy re-emerges as box-office gold. After months of blockbuster bloat, audiences will want to laugh again, and this movie- starring Ben Stiller and newly-hot Robert Downey Jr.- looks to have the most potential for success. (PC)

AMERICAN TEEN

An instant America’s sweetheart cuddly “rebel” poster girl and a trailer that’s so John Hughes accessible that megaplex audiences may not realize it’s a documentary until it’s too late to get their money back may turn this Sundance fave into an indie hit (at the very least) and maybe even a real live mainstream smash. (AO)

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS

If the rabid anticipation of this flick by the teenage dudes at my last family gathering bears any relation to the feelings of teenage dudes across the nation, this could be a sleeper hit. Plus: Apatow. (AO)

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS

With a combination of everyone's favorite annoying jackass, Ashton Kutcher, and a title drawn from an ad campaign predicated on date rape, fatal drug overdoses, and dead hookers, how can it miss? (LP)

***

The above list reflects the combined, weighted picks of four of our resident Screengrab know-it-alls. Below, our original ballots:

Leonard Pierce

1. The Dark Knight

2. Kung Fu Panda

3. Speed Racer

4. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

5. What Happens In Vegas

Scott Von Doviak

1. The Dark Knight

2. Iron Man

3. Hancock

4. Prince Caspian

5. Indiana Jones

Paul Clark

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2. Hancock

3. The Dark Knight

4. Wall*E

5. Iron Man

Andrew Osborne

1. Indiana Jones

2. The Dark Knight

3. Prince Caspian

4. The Pineapple Express

5. American Teen

-- Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce

John Patterson On John Thomas

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:15:00 GMT

In this week's Guardian film section, blogger/critic John Patterson reminds us that, amongst the other debts we owe to Judd Apatow, we can also thank him for helping shred one of the last remaining bougeois taboos in cinema: the one that state that the human penis cannot be seen at any cost.

Patterson reports that it took a string of comedies, from Superbad to Forgetting Sarah Marshall to the upcoming Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, to shatter the ironclad reluctance of American bluenoses to the merest suggestion of the national generative organ. The penis is, after all, as Patterson notes, a comical thing -- "just ask any woman." Prior to the recent proliferation of the dick as joke (not to be confused with the dick joke), big-screen appearances of the little man were confined to pornography, well-meaning art films, and any movie starring Harvey Keitel.

Happily, the story isn't deadly earnest despite its very legitimate and welcome message, and Patterson does allow himself plenty of gag lines. Frustratingly, though, he fails to credit The Simpsons Movie for its role in the dingus drama; Bart's brief nude scene was the most talked-about moment of the film. Just because it's a cartoon penis doesn't mean that it doesn't count, Mr. Patterson!

In Other Blogs: Nazi Porn Edition

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:30:00 GMT

We consider ourselves worldly folks here at the Screengrab, with a wide array of interests and an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture minutiae. But every once in a while, we’re reminded that there’s an inexhaustible supply of weirdness in the world. Perhaps my colleagues were already aware of “Stalags,” but I’d never heard of them before reading Beyond the Multiplex this morning. “As many older Israelis apparently remember, the then-new nation was afflicted by a perverse pop-culture craze in the early '60s, at a time when nearly half the population consisted of Holocaust survivors, nationalist sentiment ran high and moral codes were extremely puritanical. Yet the newsstands in the Tel Aviv bus station sold racks of semi-pornographic pulp novels known as 'Stalags,' whose utterly implausible, Penthouse Forum-meets-Marquis de Sade plots ventured into the most forbidden terrain imaginable. Stalags all followed essentially the same formula: An American or British World War II pilot (generally not Jewish) is shot down behind enemy lines, where he is imprisoned, tortured and raped by an entire phalanx of sadistic, voluptuous female SS officers. His body violated but his spirit unbroken, the plucky Yank or Brit escapes in the end to rape and murder his captors.” Hey, good times! These Stalags are the subject of a new documentary by Ari Libsker, who “meets a couple of the dubious characters who collect them; one insists that his face be obscured on camera (like a corporate whistleblower or a child molester on 60 Minutes), and also appears to believe that the scenarios depicted actually occurred during World War II, or at least could have.”

Speaking of porn, Glenn Kenny is inspired by the release of Zombie Strippers to reminisce about his visit to the Adult Video News Awards, which he attended in his capacity as editor of a famed David Foster Wallace piece for Premiere magazine. “Cat with a C or K wanted to know whether it would be a good idea to go to acting school, as she thought that might be a useful place to make connections. She was stage and table dancing at the Cheetah, and wanted to step up, and was wondering about doing some loops, but not sure it would stigmatize her. I sympathized. But I advised her that going to acting school in order to make "connections" was kind of a fallacy. What you want to go to acting school for, I said, was to explore yourself and find your inner instrument...”

In a more wholesome corner of the blogosphere, Reverse Shot pays tribute to Teri Garr. “With her slightly askew beauty and her compelling but unorthodox mix of neuroses and earthy sexiness, Teri Garr was always destined for underappreciation. Usually relegated to small parts and cast more often as screechy second bananas than leading love interests, Garr nevertheless always manages to cast off tremendous light from whatever corner she's been put into, whether she's vacuously rolling in the hay (Young Frankenstein) or staving off the salacious come-ons of Martin Mull (Mr. Mom); and in more serious-minded supporting roles, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Michael Apted's unfairly forgotten Firstborn, she's played conflicted, angry wives and mothers without the slightest hint of trying to ingratiate herself to the audience.”

At Scanners, Jim Emerson is still writing about Judd Apatow’s taste in leading men. “Apatow makes movies about guys -- and heterosexual relationships with women, but mainly about what used to be known as ‘male bonding.’ (The fashionable term now is ‘bro-mance,’ which is cuter and invoked largely by what used to be called ‘metrosexuals.’) The Apatow guy tends to be underemployed, white, slobby, geeky, smelly, childish (not just ‘childlike) and more or less happy, unaware that he's desperate for a woman to complete him. Then, once he becomes aware, he's not entirely sure that's possible, or desirable. This, I submit, is a minor breakthrough in romantic comedy. OK, perhaps I am single and bitter, but I'm also right.”

And finally, this week in List-o-Mania brings the Cinematical Seven: Films with Hilarious Nudity. We started this post with Nazi porn, and we end it with “the horrifically transfixing moment when a naked man turns his back to the audience, bends over, and serenades us with his butt” in Pink Flamingos. We just give and give and give.

In Other Blogs: Blogwars!

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:30:00 GMT

There’s nothing we enjoy more than a good old-fashioned feud between movie bloggers (that is, if anything in the world of blogging can actually be called ‘old-fashioned’). This one begins at Hollywood Elsewhere, with Jeffrey Wells bemoaning the Eclipse of the Hunk. “A very significant revolutionary concept has been pushed repeatedly in films produced, written or directed by movie-comedy maestro Judd Apatow over the last three or four years, and I'm not sure it's been explained as thoroughly as it should be. The idea, admittedly old hat for anyone half-familiar with Apatow World, is that marginally unattractive guys -- witty stoners, clever fatties, doughy-bodied dorks, thoughtful-sensitive dweebs and bearish oversize guys in their 20s and 30s -- can be and in fact are the new ‘romantic leads’ (for lack of a better or more appropriate term) in today's comedies.” He cites Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall as Exhibit A, thanks to his “chunky, blemished ass and little white man-boobs.” Wells is deeply concerned about this trend. “Question is, what if this starts to manifest in realms outside Apatow World? Young teenage girls will always have a thing for the Zac Efrons and young Leonardo DiCaprios, but what if Hollywood, looking to follow Apatow's lead in reflecting the real-life shlumpiness of typical GenX and GenY guys, generally starts to divest itself of conventionally good-looking actors as far as the over-21 ranks are concerned?”

Yes, that’s our biggest fear exactly: that Hollywood will stop churning out good-looking stars. Clearly Jim Emerson of Scanners shares our concern. “Can you tell the person who wrote this lives in West Hollywood? All I can say is, my sympathies to Matt Damon and Adrien Brody and Brad Pitt for being 'totally out' where attractive women are concerned. At least they can console themselves with pedicures and higher thread-counts…Why is Wells so upset? He sounds like a Dixieland racist spouting off about miscegenation in the 1950s. It's an outrage, a threat to the species!” Emerson also notes one possible – and quite logical – reason that Apatow might be drawn to this scenario: as a shlump himself, he is married above his station to Leslie Mann. In any case, Wells has since responded to Emerson, but not in any interesting way.

Elsewhere in blogdom, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule talks up Dante’s Inferno, a Joe Dante film festival that kicked off last night at the New Beverly in Los Angeles. “Dante has long been one of my favorite directors, an unrepentant appreciator of the camp qualities and the genuine wit and scrappy creativity to be found among the many titles to have filled the B-movie bucket over the past 50 years or so. His encyclopedic knowledge of seemingly every movie ever released, his unimpeachable cinematic acumen, is never show-offy, either in his films or in the many interviews and DVD commentaries he has graced during his career. Nor is his command of film style and artistry. He is that rarity, a smart filmmaker with a degree of humility who allows his intelligence to shine through his work in ways that are often misinterpreted or devalued by the keepers of the cultural flame. For this reason, not nearly so many people as should tend to understand that movies like Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Explorers, The ‘burbs and his HBO film The Second Civil War are masterpieces of design, effect, satire and social commentary that far outstrip most of the movies that august bodies tend to crown with awards. Dante's movies are firecrackers, ones you shouldn't hold in your hands for long. They snap, crackle, pop and outright supernova with the kind of exuberance that most directors half his age can’t muster”

And finally, this week in List-o-Mania brings The Top 10 Places You Should Never Visit According to Hollywood, via Film School Rejects. We’re now forced to reconsider the Screengrab company retreat in Brazil. “Need a kidney? Or a spleen? Why not try the lucrative world of human organ trafficking? Whether or not you believe this concept to be an urban legend, would you blindly follow someone into the jungle of Brazil and not worry they might take your liver?” Hell, we need what’s left of our livers.

Trailer Review: Pineapple Express

John Constantine — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:52:00 GMT

2008: The year of the stoner comedy. Gregg Araki’s (Doom Generation) Smiley Face finally got wide distribution with a “DVD Premiere” at the beginning of January, Harold and Kumar 2 hits in the spring, and here’s Pineapple Express due in August. Of the lot, Express looks the most promising and, frankly, the most bizarre. Seth Rogen jumping from the second floor of a warehouse onto an armed goon? James Franco playing a cowardly pot dealer and hiding in a dumpster (he’s the Green Goblin, maaaaaaan.)? I don’t know what the hell is going on here but it certainly looks funny. This is another script from the Superbad team of Rogen and Evan Goldberg so it’ll be interesting to see how their collaborative skills have grown beyond their high school output. Note also the awesome usage of M.I.A.’s “Paper Airplanes” for the soundtrack.

Vanishing Act: John Hughes

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:00:00 GMT

You learn some funny things when researching a column dedicated to filmmakers who have mysteriously vacated the multiplex. As surprised as I was last week to find out that Michael Cimino was originally slated to direct Footloose, I am doubly stunned this week to discover that there are no less than five Beethoven movies. I’m not talking about the deaf composer idolized by Alex in A Clockwork Orange; I’m talking about the freakin’ St. Bernard of that name. And do you know what that fifth Beethoven movie is titled? That’s right, it’s Beethoven’s 5th! And why am I telling you this?

It’s because the first Beethoven movie was co-written by John Hughes, under the nom de garbage Edmond Dantès. Dantès, you may recall, was the Count of Monte Cristo, but it’s also the name Hughes has used on several occasions to disguise his involvement in films such as Maid in Manhattan. Looking over his body of work, you have to wonder if he wishes he’d started using the name earlier.

Hughes had a pretty good thing going for a while there, as almost anyone who was a teenager in the 1980s will tell you. Together, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off pretty much comprise the definitive portrait of teen angst in the Reagan era. But after a brief foray into the grown-up realm with She’s Having a Baby, Hughes regressed like Charlie in Flowers for Algernon, churning out increasingly lame kiddie fare, from the Home Alone series to Curly Sue to (shudder) Baby’s Day Out. At some point, perhaps he realized his name was becoming shorthand for “prolific purveyor of puerile pap,” and made an abrupt course correction. Now he’s almost reclusive enough to consider changing his name to Howard.

The most recent project Hughes graced with his own name was the barely-released Reach the Rock, an uncharacteristically downbeat small-town dramedy he scripted in 1998. Around that time he gave one of last known interviews, conducted by High Hat co-founder and Screengrab confidant William Ham. In it, he does sound like a man who’s ready for an extended sabbatical. “The only sequels I was involved in were under duress,” he says. “I didn't even know about Vegas Vacation until I read about it in the trades!... I tried to talk them out of doing Ferris Bueller as a series…That's why I've stayed in Chicago, 'cause I never quite fit into L.A. It's easier to maintain a degree of innocence here, you're not playing the herd so much.”

It’s a little hard to buy the notion of John Hughes as anti-Hollywood renegade, especially since his alter ego Edmond Dantès is back at work. Did you catch the Drillbit Taylor trailer earlier today on the Screengrab? Well, Dantès is credited with the story on this latest export from the Judd Apatow conglomerate. Indeed, the increasingly overexposed and overextended Apatow could do worse that to regard his latest collaborator as a cautionary tale…before he ends up making his own Curly Sue.

Trailer Review: Drillbit Taylor

Paul Clark — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Another month, another movie from the Apatow comedy factory. I can't help but think that between this and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the well is starting to run dry for these guys. This time around, Owen Wilson top-lines a cross between My Bodyguard and Kindergarten Cop, playing an ex-Secret Service agent hired by three high schoolers to protect them from school bullies. We can pretty much guess where the story will go based on the trailer, but after his troubles this past fall, I must admit that it's nice to see Wilson working again. I hope the future brings better movies than Drillbit Taylor, but considering what might have happened, I'm just glad he's doing better now.

Trailer Review: Snow Angels

Paul Clark — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:00:00 GMT

With this summer's Judd Apatow-produced comedy Pineapple Express, David Gordon Green appears to be turning his back on the modestly-budgeted dramas that made his reputation. However, fans of his old style can rejoice in the fact that he's still got one more indie waiting to be released: Snow Angels, which premiered at Sundance last year. In his coverage of the festival, Nerve's Mike D'Angelo called this "Green’s most conventional work to date", and one gets the same impression from the trailer, which plays up the dysfunctional relationship between ex-marrieds Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale while only giving a few glimpses of the quirky All the Real Girls-style courtship between teens Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby. Still, I'm eager to see this, partly to check out Rockwell- who in my eyes gave the performance of 2007 in Joshua- but also to give Green a proper send-off before he makes the journey into Apatow-land.

Trailer Review: Baby Mama

John Constantine — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:52:00 GMT

I realize that it’s been asked many times before in recent days but, seriously, what is going on with baby movies? It’s been a more obvious trend in the past twelve months with successes like Knocked Up and Juno, but this has been brewing for a few years now. I’m convinced it all started with Idiocracy in 2006. Yeah, it’s a broad satire but the movie’s base premise is that smart people aren’t breeding. Fill us in with your theories in the comments section, we’re all ears.

As for Baby Mama, it’s looking pretty funny. Fey’s playing her forlorn-lonely-aging-fastidious thing to perfection and Poehler’s as delightfully zany as ever. They are truly the Wayne and Garth of this decade and it’s nice to see them continue collaborating. It’s also nice to see two female leads in the male-dominated screwball comedy genre. Make Will Ferrell and Judd Apatow’s respective crews look like chumps, Tina. The Grab’s got your back.

Trailer Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Paul Clark — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

The good thing about being Judd Apatow right now is that you can get starring vehicles for practically your entire stock company. The bad news is that, in the words of one Willie T. Sokes, they can't all be winners, kid. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the first starring vehicle for Apatow pal Jason Segel, looks to be in the lower tier of Apatow-produced movies. But what's strange about the trailer is that, casting aside (hey, there's Jonah Hill! And there's Paul Rudd! And look, it's Bill Hader!) very little of the Apatow touch comes through. The film was directed by longtime Apatow writer (sensing a trend here?) Nicholas Stoller, but the trailer makes the movie feel like it could've been made by any nameless director with a yen for 80s-style slobs vs. snobs comedy. The presence of Kenny Loggins' "I'm Alright" (aka "Theme from Caddyshack") seals the deal. All the same, I'm kind of pulling for this movie to do well at the box office. After all, the better it does, the sooner we get a Martin Starr movie, which I think we can all agree would be a very good thing.

Fanboys on the March

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:00:00 GMT

The calendar says it’s January 18th, which means another Fanboys release date has arrived without the movie itself actually showing up in theaters. The comedy about a group of Star Wars geeks sneaking their terminally ill friend into Skywalker Ranch for an early screening of The Phantom Menace was originally slated to hit screens last summer, but has been pushed back several times amid rumors and reshoots. The latest unconfirmed reports have the project being absorbed by the Amalgamated Apatow Conglomerate for an infusion of market-tested laughs. (According to this scuttlebutt, two versions of the film will be screened for test audiences — one with the terminally ill cancer patient and one without. In the latter, the kids presumably break into the Lucas compound just for shits and grins.)

What you may not know is that Fanboys has been in the works for longer than it took Lucas and company to crank out all three of the Star Wars prequels. In this new interview with our good friends at Shuffleboil, screenwriter/slam poet/geek pride activist Ernie Cline recounts the origins of the story back in 1998. "My mother had died of cancer the year before," Cline says, "so I was somewhat fixated on human mortality at the time. One day the question occurred to me — what would I do if I knew I wasn’t going to live to see 'Episode One?' The answer seemed obvious. I’d have to drive out to California and break into Skywalker Ranch to try and find the work print. I knew right away that it was a great idea for a movie. So I sat down and wrote it, with the intention of trying to make it myself as a low budget Indie film."

Fanboys is now tentatively scheduled for release in March or April of this year. You can check out the Fanboys timeline for yourself through this press archive at Cline’s website, which also features a sampling of his geektastic spoken word material.

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.