Archive for December, 2009

Dec 31 2009

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Omar Khayyam (1957)

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Unchanging cumbersomeness of some sets of the fabulous enjoyment from duets between Cornel Wilde and Debra Paget flaw this spectacular; but in good shape staged fight and court intrigue sequences speed up the pace and cling interest.

Barre Lyndon script sets forth Omar (Wilde) as an oriental equivalent of the later Renaissance man - poet, lover, scholar, scientist and court counsellor - all in one. Lyndon weaves romance between Omar and wife (Paget) of the ruling Shah (Raymond Massey), against intrigue in court and the machinations of the murderous and mysterious Eastern cult of Assassins, not to mention 11th-century warfare between Persian and Byzantine empires. Spinkled throughout are recitations from the Rubaiyat.

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Dec 28 2009

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Ah! My Goddess!: The Movie (2000)

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It's been 3 years since Belldandy came to live with Keiichi. Now, Celestin, a man from Belldandy's defunct, threatens Keiichi and Belldandy's bond as well as the unexceptional Goddess Practice. Celestin, Belldandy's mentor, has returned from imprisonment with a plan to infect the Goddess System with a virus. Key to that delineate is Belldandy. But to function her in his arrange, Celestin necessity commit mayhem the ties that tie Belldandy and Keiichi together.

Rethinking:

Synopsis:

Ah! My Goddess: The Movie DVD
It's been 3 years since Belldandy came to live with Keiichi. Now, Celestin, a check from Belldandy's quondam, threatens Keiichi and Belldandy's bond as well as the thorough Goddess Set. Celestin, Belldandy's mentor, has returned from imprisonment with a plan to infect the Goddess System with a virus. Tonality to that plan is Belldandy. But to use her in his pattern, Celestin requisite terminate the ties that bind Belldandy and Keiichi together.

Review:

Based on the manga of the same name,


Ah! My Goddess: The Movie

brings the adventures of Belldandy and Keiichi to the big screen. Having previously animated in a 5 part

OVA

series, the events of the movie take place 3 years after Belldandy and Keiichi meet. Pioneer does justice to the widescreen nature of the movie with a smooth


anamorphic

transfer that is accompanied with both a Japanese and English Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby surround sound tracks.

Ah! My Goddess: The Movie

is a tremendous complement to the Manga series it is based on.

Extras are pretty minimal, but are very complementary to the release. Featured is an art gallery with production stills and a preview of


The Adventures of Mini-Goddess

series. Also, the first series of releases featured a limited edition pencil pad featuring Belldandy on one side and Urd, Skuld and Peorth on the other. The DVD insert features character profiles for the 6 main characters as well as chapter stops for the DVD. The case is a clear case, with an image of Belldandy on the reverse of the cover. Some releases also feature a vibrant foil slip cover for the outer case with a different back image.


AIC

, no slouch when it comes to great animation, creates a vibrant world of animation for the characters to play in.

AIC

mixes the traditional arts of cel animation with the more robust CGI graphics for smooth


panning

shots and a variety of detailed backgrounds.


Hidenori Matsuhara

handled both the character design and animation direction staying true to


Kosuke Fujishima

's original designs.

Both soundtracks come in 2 flavors, Dolby surround and Dolby digital 5.1. Each track shares the same music and sound effects with no noticeable volume differences between them. Each cast is well suited to the roles and does a good job of bringing out each character's personality. The English


dub

cast is different from the cast used for the


OAV

releases. Both dubs do justice to the characters, so there is no real feeling of difference between the English casts. The script for the movie is very dramatic; with a lot of heart felt emotion driving the storyline. The English

dub

does a great job of maintaining the emotion set by the Japanese storyline, with only minor wording changes made for timing reasons. Music and singing are an essential part of the Belldandy character, and the actresses for both the Japanese and English soundtrack do a good job of bringing this characteristic out. The songs are simple in nature, but come out strong.

The peaceful life that makes up Belldandy and Keiichi's world is shattered with the reappearance of Belldandy's old mentor, Celestin. The plot takes on the initial appearance of a jealous lover come to seek revenge, but quickly grows to encompass something truly bigger. For new viewers, the movie may seem a bit overwhelming, thanks to an inclusion of number of characters seen only in the manga, but the dialogue and pacing helps answer most background questions. The basic relationships and interactions of all the characters are laid out fairly quickly giving viewers plenty of time to follow the plot. The entire movie moves quickly, despite its length and viewers are entangled from the beginning.

Ah! My Goddess: The Movie

is a crowning achievement for the


Ah! My Goddess


franchise

. It's original story stays faithful to the manga series, exploring the relationships established. Pioneer has done a great job with DVD release, giving fans a true treat. Hopefully the success of this great movie will lead to the creation of more animation based on the original manga.

Grade:

Production Info:
+
Beautiful allusion and strong story

Non-manga fans may be left behind with myriad of the side characters

Gaffer:

Makoto Bessho
Hiroaki Gohda

Write:

Yoshihiko Tomizawa
Michiko Yokote

Storyboard:

Hiroaki Gohda
Hidenori Matsubara

Music:

Shiroh Hamaguchi
Nobuo Uematsu

Original Manga:

Kosuke Fujishima

Character Frame:

Hidenori Matsubara

Manoeuvres director:

Shunichiro Yoshihara

Chief Animation Director:

Hidenori Matsubara

Animation director:

Akihiro Izumi

Uninspired design:

Toshiharu Murata

Art plan:

Akihiro Hirasawa
Hiroshi Kato

Leader of Photography:

Hisao Shirai

Key Animation Director:

Nobuyuki Kitajima
Yoshitaka Kohno
Yasushi Muraki
Toshiharu Murata
Atsushi Okuda
Naoyuki Onda
Shinya Takahashi
Nobuteru Yuki

Executive producer:

Nobuyuki Enya
Hiroaki Inoue
Masaki Inoue
Tetsuro Kato
Yasuo Katsuki
Shuji Miyajima
Takao Noma
Hirohisa Sato
Ken Tsunoda

Producer:

Seiichi Horiguchi
Kinya Watanabe
Tsuyoshi Yoshida

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Full encyclopedia details about


Ah! My Goddess: The Movie (movie)

Release information about


Ah! My Goddess: The Movie (DVD)

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Dec 27 2009

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Light of Day review

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Paul Schrader’s “Light of Day” is damaged by its disorderly intentions, a feeble-minded quilt of the nice, the bad and the ugly. Schrader remains one of the few filmmakers from the American New Comber of the primitive ’70s who continue to metier in his typical style — ever of consequence, each time idiosyncratic, always identifiably Schrader. But somewhere in the process he seems to receive gotten lost. You sense him groping for, well, the light of day.

At its heart, “Light of Day” concerns the emotional tugs of war within a Calvinist family in the Midwest, the Rasnicks. Patti (Joan Jett) is an unwed mother, a rebel in constant conflict with her deeply religious mom (Gena Rowlands). Dad (Jason Miller) is such a weak presence, he might as well phone in. So it’s up to Patti’s younger brother Joe (Michael J. Fox) to try to keep the family together.

When she’s not merely squabbling with her mother, Patti channels her hostility into rock ‘n’ roll, which is where the missteps begin. “Light of Day” would appear to be a personal statement for Schrader, reflecting the role of his own Calvinist upbringing in his formation as an artist. While musicians have a more obvious audience appeal than filmmakers — nobody would show up for “The Paul Schrader Story” — it might have occurred to Schrader that rock ‘n’ roll can’t carry the dramatic weight that the story requires of it. Certainly, Jett can’t bring to life the kind of intellectual justifications that Schrader puts in her mouth.

And what are Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett doing in a movie about a garage band? You can quibble with the performances — Fox is good natured but negligible, Jett has the undeniable presence and force of a natural performer, but no nuance — but such a discussion misses the central point. Which is that by casting a TV phenomenon and a rock star, Schrader has taken a Paul Schrader film and made it into a Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett movie.

As a result, the scenes where the two make music, or where Jett brays “Music is all that matters|” seem less like the desperation of blue-collar kids than those old movies where Mickey Rooney says, “Hey kids, let’s put on a show|”; it doesn’t help that Fox, even at his best, is no more than a shaggy update of Rooney. Worse, with those names on the marquee, the documentary-style effects — the use of hand-held camera, the careless framing, the flat, unadorned lighting — simply make no sense. The texture of real life violates the expectations of a star vehicle, so that all of the daring of Schrader and his cinematographer, John Bailey, comes across as mere sloppiness.

It’s tempting to suggest that Schrader the writer has been sabotaged by Schrader the director, but the script is schizzy, too. Schrader embraces teen jargon with the verve of a John Hughes, although we haven’t reached the point where comparisons to Hughes are high praise — not yet, anyway. More to the point, what the heck is Schrader doing writing a John Hughes movie?

And yet there are moments in “Light of Day” in which Schrader has done some of his best writing ever; in a career that includes “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” that’s saying a lot. The chill that Schrader gives you when the mother tells Joe, “I just thank God He gave me two children,” or when a griever at a wake winds the watch on a cadaver’s wrist, are beyond the reach of most other screen writers. And in these moments, Schrader achieves a depth of feeling that has, till now, been beyond him, too.

But the gold in “Light of Day” only makes the movie’s dross all the more aggravating. With the film’s big-star glamor, its teen heroics and its silly whodunit structure (you’re finally told who put Patti in the family way), Schrader seems to have done everything he could to cheapen his own art. And sadly, most of the wrong decisions in “Light of Day” seem to have been made for reasons of money. The movie stands as an admonition that making great movies isn’t merely a matter of talent, but a matter of will.

“Light of Day” contains profanity and sexual themes.

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Dec 26 2009

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Gomorra (2008)

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Five storylines fragment the pounding force of Matteo Garrone’s hotly anticipated adaptation of Roberto Saviano’s “Gomorrah,” his bestselling expose of Neapolitan violation. Utilizing a mesmerizing documentary style that studiously avoids glamorizing the horrors, Garrone cherrypicks episodes from Saviano’s muckraking tract, building to a chillingly matter-of-factually crescendo of violence, though interwoven tales tend to dissipate the full arm-twisting of the criminal Camorra families’ insidious handle. Released on 430 Italian screens amid predictions of boffo biz, “Gomorrah” will certainly make the international arthouse rounds, but auds in with the book liking be beat equipped to follow the multiple narratives.

While the Sicilian Mafia has drawn the lion’s share of media attention over the years, it’s the Camorra families of Naples who have really created an oligarchy of power and violence, controlling lives and entire economies not just in Italy but worldwide — their profits are estimated at over $233 billion per year. This money comes not just from expected areas like drugs and waste disposal but high-end fashion and pirated knockoffs, whose raw materials arrive from China and are channelled exclusively through Camorra businesses.

Garrone and his five co-scripters (including Saviano) fictionalize these elements and show how the Camorra’s vice-like grip on the region infects everyone, creating a permanent miasma of fear that terrorizes some while proving impossibly seductive to others. Chief among the latter are children like Toto (Salvatore Abruzzese), just 13 but eager to start on the ladder that commences with drug pushing and ends in regional control or death.

Slightly older teens Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro, nicknamed Piselli (Ciro Petrone) are obsessed with Brian De Palma’s “Scarface” — the kind of brutal but alluring gangster pic Garrone studiously avoids emulating. Keen to form their own two-man operation independent of the Camorra families, they’re like a couple of kids playing cowboys, blindly unaware of the dangers.

Nondescript, accountant-like Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato) is the mob’s money-runner, assigned to deliver Camorra funds to loyal households whose members are either dead or doing time. As rival factions start a brutal war, Don Ciro can no longer hide anonymously behind his routine, and fidelity becomes ever more uncertain, and dangerous.

Bigshot Franco (Toni Servillo), a cocky businessman in rumpled suits, hires Roberto (Carmine Paternoster) as an assistant to help fulfill toxic waste disposal contracts with rich enterprises in the north, dumping the poisonous goods in the districts around Campania. The last of the storylines features master tailor Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo), an expert at the fine detailing required for the Camorra’s valuable fashion sidelines.

Adapting Saviano’s book to the screen was no small task, and keeping track of all the strands can be challenging for those unfamiliar with the multiple levels explicated with mindboggling detail in the expose. Disconnected scenes picking up on details in the book are told in a form of shorthand that don’t always succeed in conveying their full significance. In particular, the internecine struggles for power within the different families, which led to a bloody civil war, are kept at a grass-roots level, leaving viewers uncertain as to who’s affiliated with whom, or why there’s a secessionist split in the first place.

But Garrone is clearly more interested in how the average inhabitant becomes drawn into the cycle of corruption and violence. Wads of cash regularly turn up in “Gomorrah,” but the trappings of wealth are nowhere to be seen: no fancy villas, no flashy jewels or expensive meals, since the Camorra’s dough never really trickles down to the foot soldiers.

Garrone makes expert use of the dingy cement housing projects of the Neapolitan suburb of Scampia, full of crumbling causeways that feel like prison interiors and offer as much hope as the inside of death row.

Pic’s most striking element is the way it merges fiction with a dispassionate docu style far removed from the fetid and putrefying analogies Saviano used to convey his disgust. Garrone worked with this sort of slice-of-life realism to some degree in earlier works such as “Guests” and even “The Embalmer,” but here he’s found a way of expressing outrage while maintaining a cold gaze. Perfs are unanimously in keeping with this lack of grandstanding, not just from superb thespers like Servillo and Imparato but the youngsters as well.

Lensing is bleak, expertly using the spaces of the housing projects with their deadening, almost inhuman angles and dark interiors incapable of protecting the residents from the overall feeling of helplessness. Whereas Garrone’s earlier films used incidental music by Banda Osiris, here he maintains the docu feel by including contempo pop songs played by the characters themselves, all employing a disco beat that highlights the incongruity of teens hanging out one minute and shot at the next.

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Dec 25 2009

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The Movie According to Tim: W…

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The Film According to Tim:
With a slew of look-alikes movies over the biography four or five decades, it’s a wonder it took fifty-four years to remake H.G. Wells classic “War of the Worlds.” Some might say it was expert with the haze “Independence Day” less than ten years previous, but, sadly, the Emmerich flicks is considerably too campy when compared to the expertise of Steven Spielberg. Spielberg gives us a version of lay out raid that feels darker, chillier, and make a name for oneself more realistic than the multitude of other films about attempted alien dominations. Of course, there is Tim Burton’s comedy construct of “War of the Worlds” called “Mars Attacks,” which is not a smokescreen that is even in the same ballpark as Spielberg’s recent adaptation of the fiction.

Nevertheless, this does not make known Spielberg on the top of the heap of filmmakers who challenge this genre; rather, Spielberg just manages to give us a good piece of work to dismay into the combination of alien invasion films. His film is occasionally marred with technical flaws, but he does manage, loosely, to follow the H.G. Wells classic, and, as expected, manages to take a few liberties in the storytelling. As far as comparing the untrodden “War of the Worlds” to the shabby 1953 classic, Spielberg does tell it how it was when it comes to the alien’s contribute to of the story. Where he differs is how the aliens planned their attack; and in this film, we follow a father and two kids through a thrill ride of terror and mass annihilation of the human race.

Tom Journey plays the capacity of a deadbeat father named Flash Ferrier. Unalike most roles to Cruise, in this one Spielberg decided to tone down the actor’s macho guise and give him a character to agree that is a rarely more down to the average Joe. His part typically works for the story, but he didn’t seem to shine or stand out as I’m used to seeing Cruise do so over again. Total, it was a fair performance but nothing of the caliber I was in a family way. However, his ten-year-old costar, Dakota Fanning, gives an amazing performance and very nearly steals the thunder from Cruise. Fanning plays the bright, headstrong scanty daughter, Rachel. Her reactions, expressions, and notional emotions are dead on throughout the complete mistiness. Either this kid is that criticize fitting or she has one hell of an acting coach. And if she is a flat-loophole natural, I conceive of even Mr. Journey could take a few tips from her.

The dim wastes no time getting into the invasion and leaves little time championing us to focus on the characters’ deeper relationships. All we discern is that Ray is a somewhat selfish, divorced father of two kids. Rachel is an sweet, highly-adjusted daughter, and her brother, Robbie (Justin Chatwin), is your typical teenager with an attitude that would make James Dean cringe. As soon as we know this up the characters in the first ten minutes of the film, we are then promptly thrown into a whirly of terror and destruction that accelerates the film’s pacing into overdrive. Putting, we are talking about a Spielberg talking picture, so he does watch over to create certain dilemmas in the maturity of his characters as we learn ensure this humiliated family implode, as incredibly as bond, through the terrifying circumstances they undergo. It’s the one thing I longing give Spielberg acknowledgement destined for; he does undertake to keep a strong concentrate on the characters through their emotions and expressions sort of then banking all his dollars on intoxicated-tech special effects and sonic bliss. Granted, I corresponding to all that study sweets in a film, yet Spielberg crafts his skill well and manages not to bring us too close to our nemesis.

However, not getting too compact did be gone me with much in consideration b questionable around the invaders, but perhaps it was in the service of the better. When you think about it, if we really were invaded by space aliens, do you assume they would really communicate a clear take to us as to why they were doing it? I technique, who would really positive what they were up to, and it isn’t as if we should expect them to speak our language. Of by all means, there is my usual question: If you’re here to invade, then why annihilate? Why not surrender us into slaves? I upright can’t allow the purpose of stroke of luck by a enormousness categorize of beings evidently with a higher knowledge than our own. However, it’s really not Spielberg’s fault as the film is based on the H.G. Wells story. Nevertheless, it shouldn’t give the steersman a clear case of expiry the buck when he is perfectly capable of engaging a few liberties of his own in the story, as he did. Perhaps he should be enduring considered stretching those liberties a sparse forwards.

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For the most part, “War of the Worlds” is a good mistiness and should hold up strongly in this genre, but I’m not giving it my time-honoured approval. Dialect mayhap time drive epoch this picture well, but for nowadays, it upstanding holds up as a decent Spielberg film, gentle enough to fatten that summer movie appetite. Had the pre-eminent half of the covering been a tad more character driven, it may require tipped the scale into chef-d’oeuvre territory. In any case, it is the inferior merchandise half of the cover that holds the verifiable meat and gives us a classic scare in the basement of an old farmhouse as Tim Robbins helps Boat and Fanning keep quiet out. In my opinion, this was the best divide of the overlay because it was compelling in keeping the audience on the edge of their seat. Again, this worked so comfortably because we manage to curb focused on the characters’ fears sooner than being hammered by overproduced special effects.

Granted, the special effects are top-rung, but I have to convey I actually enjoyed the look of the 1953 alien spacecraft much sick than Spielberg’s three-legged, octopus style. I also didn’t care much for the aliens’ weapons because they basically shot a encyclopedic laser that turned people into dust. I would have much rather seen the weapon Tim Burton used in “Mars Attacks” as people were starkly disintegrated down to their skeletons. Not to mention, Spielberg needs to pay closer attention to various technical details, outstandingly when it comes to the use of EMP.

Complete, “War of the Worlds” delivers a rational repast pro the unexceptional film buff, but it does total with a small dose of decarbonated soda. Much of it is filled with thrills, frights, anticipatory moments, and a good sagacity of drama. Its drawbacks are set up severely in the Spielberg rules of storytelling, and not that it’s a bad thingummy; it is just that I’m so getting used to it. Perhaps the an individual element I have noticed in this film is that the director needs to start channeling his remove scan in other directions. He tends to fool a predestined MO that has worked unequivocally well for him over the years, and that procedure has worked well notwithstanding me as a viewer in previous films, too, such as in “Saving Top secret Ryan,” “A.I.,” and “Minority Reveal.” However, “War of the Worlds” no more than didn’t occupied c proceeding me as some of Spielberg’s previous films did. I found “War of the Worlds” to be very luckily made, but I prepare to admit I had the feeling of redundancy in Spielberg’s secret formula, and sadly, the feeling is onset to get humdrum. In some ways, you could call this take “Close Encounters of the Evil Amicable.”

The Movie and the Rest of the Impedimenta According to John:
Steven Spielberg’s fashionable “War of the Worlds” engenders the feather of contradictory response you might conjecture from a somewhat lesser director. Spielberg’s footmarks record has been anything but consistent ended the years, and his treatment of the H.G. Wells classic is no object to, perchance showing the results of hurrying the project to shroud too soon or perhaps of Spielberg’s own on odd priorities. In any case, I still enjoyed the blear plenty to play a joke on seen it twice on the big screen and now again on DVD. It’s not the film version of the book I was hoping for, but in its own rectify it works source enough most of the time again to pass an entertaining couple of hours.

Let me eat on a handful of the concerns I have. First, there’s the time period. Wells published his novel in 1898 and set it in the England of his day. Yet the major movie adaptations of his dispose livelihood it in the context of more modern times. Orson Welles (no relation) raise it in 1938 because his notorious radio broadcast; the 1953 silver screen with Gene Barry nullify it in 1953; and Spielberg sets his 2005 version in 2005, all three versions in America. In each case, I would rather have seen the report show off in Wells’s own London. Why? Through, it would deceive been more particular to the earmark for one; I don’t much care for contemporary updates of Shakespeare, either. And what does it suffice to modernize things? When we look at the ‘53 production, it appears dated. In fifty more years, Spielberg’s production will look dated. If the various adaptations had been making points down their concomitant society (as Wells’s novel did, being a vaguely disguised attack on British colonialism), peradventure the updating would demand made sentiment. But so far, we play a joke on gotten ab initio fighting adventures. A period look would be subjected to been right-minded as exciting, more factual, and longer everlasting.


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Dec 22 2009

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College (2008)

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College
By
Jim Lane

This article was published on

09.04.08

.

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1
College

Three stereotypical high-school buddies—the handsome hero (Drake Bell), the corpulent horn-dog (Andrew Caldwell) and the timorous science dweeb (Kevin Covais)—spend a college-visit weekend partying, trying to get laid, pretending they’re older than they really are and being victimized by a scumball fraternity. Oh joy, another

Animal House

knockoff, and one that makes

The House Bunny

look like

The Importance of Being Earnest

. The actors, an array of generally harmless nobodies, go through their paces without visible embarrassment—denoting either cluelessness or iron concentration. Writers Dan Callahan and Adam Ellison and director Deb Hagan, all making their feature-film debuts, can face the future with hopeful hearts—after all, when you start out at rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.

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Dec 19 2009

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The Verdict (1982)

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Newman as a washed-up lawyer, given one last unintentionally to affirm himself with a choose squalid medical malpractice habit. David Mamet has delivered a dissipated-paced, smooth, and suspenseful screenplay which, get a kick out of all the best genre movies, plunges its hero so go beyond a thus far into the abyss that it seems impossible for him to climb non-functioning. And for once Lumet makes statement rather than engagement his first priority, with the inconsistent result - so familiar in American movies - that the acting on reaches a near-invisible achievement. Admittedly this is a legal Rocky, convincing rather than realistic, witty rather than analytical, but it amounts to a far more effective indictment of the US juridical system than …and justice for all, and is the first courtroom histrionics in years to recapture the acuteness of the ritual.

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Dec 18 2009

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Tropic Thunder review

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Ben Stiller's blistering satire 'Tropic Thunder' shoots and scores

By Lori Hoffman
|
|
Posted Aug. 21, 2008

Tropic Thunder

Phillies fans remember when Mike Schmidt went on the road and trashed his hometown fans in a Montreal newspaper, calling them "uncontrollable." When he returned home he begged for forgiveness by going out on the field wearing a long blonde wig.

Tom Cruise has seen his popularity take a nosedive with his antics on

Oprah

and other incidents that earned him the title of "uncontrollable." In a similar fashion to Schmidt's wig joke, Cruise — made to look 20 years older with a balding head and padding — plays a Hollywood producer in

Tropic Thunder

so callous and vicious, he makes his own transgressions seem minor and forgivable in comparison. That probably wasn't going through Cruise's mind at the time, but it went through my mind as I watched director Ben Stiller gleefully sever the hand that feeds him in his vicious, funny Hollywood satire.

Stiller, who stars in, co-wrote (with Etan Cohen and Justin Theroux) and directs

Tropic Thunder

, targets such obvious Hollywood's obsessions as money before art, and, in turn, actors so obsessed with art, they take themselves way too seriously.

Using hilarious coming attractions ala

Grindhouse

to introduce the characters, Stiller stars as Tugg Speedman, an action movie superstar hoping to reboot his career after a disastrous attempt to earn Oscar consideration playing a mentally challenged man. Now he is on location making in a Vietnam-era war picture,

Tropic Thunder,

with a man whose career he envies, five time Oscar-winning Australian actor Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.), who decided to have his skin darkened to play an African-American in the movie. Also in the cast is drug-addled comic actor Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) who's a big star thanks to a series of movies about a flatulent family, The Fatties. There is a real black man in the cast, hip-hop star Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), who challenges Lazarus' absurd obsession with acting black, and a young, inexperienced co-star, Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel), who actually went to boot camp and read the script. Also on location is the overwhelmed British director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan), the special effects guy Cody (Danny McBride), and the author of the book being adapted to the screen, Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte).

Producer Les Grossman (Cruise) back is Hollywood wants to kill the director when a major snafu has the movie way over budget. In the course of trying to control the raging egos of the cast — and at the urging of war hero Four Leaf — Damien dumps the actors in the middle of the jungle in order to make the film guerilla-style with hidden cameras. This idea literally blows up in the director's face, and the actors are suddenly lost in the jungle with real guns being fired in their direction when the local drug cartel thinks the actors are D.E.A. agents.

Stiller uses this premise to put the excesses of Hollywood on parade and proceeds to mow them down with a Gatling gun of potshots at the worst Hollywood has to offer, Cruise's Grossman being his favorite target. Grossman is giddy at the thought of being able to exploit Speedman's bad luck (he is kidnapped by the drug dealers), and make a pile of money.

As with most satires, there are moments in

Tropic Thunder

that careen wildly out of control with no payoff, but when Stiller hits his intended targets, the rewards make up for the wild misses.


Woody's European Phase

Woody Allen has been earning acclaim again for his films since he started making them in Europe, first in England and now Spain with

Vicky Christina Barcelona

. Unfortunately, I don't get what people see in his current European phase. To me, his career continues to fade away from its masterful height of both hilarity and heartbreak in the 1970s and '80s. With his latest film, he brings the angst of his Manhattan characters to Spain, and tries to blend them into a story that has Almodvar overtones, but Spain's national treasure, Pedro Almodvar, does them much better than Allen. I will continue to treasure Allen's past work and wish I liked his current fare as much.


Tropic Thunder


***

Directed by Ben Stiller; rated R


Vicky Christina Barcelona


**

Written & Directed by Woody Allen; rated PG-13


To read more about movies and other topics covered by movie critic Lori Hoffman under her blog alias Moviejunkie, visit

http://blogs.atlanticcityweekly.com/


OPENING THIS WEEK


Bottle Shock

Looking to recapture the Sideways vibe, this California wine country-set comedy stars Alan Rickman, Chris Pine and Bill Pullman

Enhance your internet experience by watching high-quality streaming movies on your PC and skip the hassles of renting from your local video store and paying the fees charged for returning a DVD late. Through watching movies online sites, you can watch your favorite movies when it is convenient for you with no rental agreements to sign or late charges to pay ever. Watch movie Robin Williams: Weapons of Self Destruction .


Death Race

Convicts race cars hoping to earn freedom rather than a fiery death behind the wheel. Stars Jason Statham, Joan Allen, Ian Mcshane and Tyrese Gibson. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.

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Dec 13 2009

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My Wife is an Actress review

Filed under Hot Pics

That’s until you consider the insecurity of living in their shadows, a
concept French actor Yvan Attal addresses provocatively in “My Wife Is an
Actress,” his writing and directing debut. Attal mixes comedy with a serious
exploration of ego and jealousy within a seemingly serene marriage. He stars
opposite real-life wife Charlotte Gainsbourg, who plays a French movie star
named Charlotte.

Attal obviously has drawn on his life, veiling himself partially by playing
a sportswriter — movie shorthand for “regular guy.” His character’s outlook
on fame, therefore, is from the outside, like the audience’s.

He views the perks of his new wife’s status with ambivalence: great tables
at restaurants are no big deal, but he likes that women find him hot because
he’s married to a sex symbol. He’ll even stomach a traffic cop slobbering over
Charlotte if it means he can get out of a ticket. It all turns sour, however,
when his wife’s steamy love scene makes him wonder whether she’s really
playacting.

Attal plants a cloud of suspicion on his face, one that darkens when
Charlotte goes on location with a sexy leading man, played with a scampish
wink by Terence Stamp. In a funny but unsettling scene, Attal’s character
struggles to be civil to the actor but can’t resist mocking his French
pronunciation, alienating his wife in the process.

Gainsbourg’s character seems too sweet to be true until she tangles with
her onscreen director over nudity. The fire Gainsbourg brings to the scene
suggests she’s had similar battles.

That Attal is really an actor, and less famous than his wife, brings up
some fascinating questions. Had he played an actor, the picture could have
touched on professional jealousy, along with the simpatico of being in the
same game as his wife. It’s a moot point, however, because Attal establishes a
new career as a filmmaker with “My Wife Is an Actress.”

.

This film contains nudity, sexual scenes.

– Carla Meyer



POLITE APPLAUSE

‘BARAN’

Drama. Starring Hossein Abedini, Mohammad Reza Naji and Zahra Bahrami.
Directed by Majid Majidi. (PG. 98 minutes. In Farsi with English subtitles. At
Bay Area theaters.)

.

An enormous strain of compassion runs through the films of Majid Majidi.
His work has a depth of feeling that can’t be faked and that makes exploring
his artistic personality an enriching experience. That was the case with the
Iranian director’s earlier works, “The Color of Heaven” and “Children of
Heaven,” and it’s true with his latest, “Baran.”

Unlike the earlier films, however, the new movie requires the viewer to
adjust to Majidi’s rhythms, which are slow and meditative. “Baran” is not a
movie to see after a big lunch — it induces a hypnotic state that could, at
the wrong time, easily develop into flat-out slumber. But at the right time of
day, in the right frame of mind, “Baran” can and should be appreciated as a
work of delicate and unmistakable beauty.

Made with a cast of amateurs, the picture deals with life in an Iranian
city near the Afghanistan border, where Afghan refugees — who have lived in
poverty since the Soviet invasion of 1979 — eke out an existence as laborers.
Hossein Abedini plays Latif, a mean-spirited Iranian teenager who works in
construction and develops an instant dislike for Rahmat (Zahra Bahrami), an
Afghan refugee hired to work on the same crew.

When something happens to alter the young man’s perception of Rahmat, it
sets in motion a chain of events that transforms Latif from a callow hothead
into a tactful, spiritually conscious young man, one capable of empathy and
sacrifice. In the process of showing us this transformation, Majidi takes us
into a world that most of us will never see except on film — an Iranian
industrial city, its white skyscrapers dwarfed by mountains in the background.

Everyone knows the Afghanis have not had it easy for the past 20 years, but
there’s a difference between knowing it and seeing it. Majidi shows us teenage
girls doing heavy labor. He shows us men in their 40s who look 65, and men in
their 50s who look 100. The images of “Baran” are stark and not easily
forgotten.

– Mick LaSalle



SNOOZING VIEWER

‘NEVER AGAIN’

Romantic comedy. Starring Jill Clayburgh and Jeffrey Tambor. Directed by
Eric Schaeffer. (R. 100 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

.

Jill Clayburgh is a fine screen actress with important movies on her resume,

so it’s especially dispiriting to see her strapping on sex toys and making a
fool of herself in “Never Again,” a wretched comedy about middle-aged romance
from writer-director Eric Schaeffer.

Supposedly an anti-ageist film, the movie is in fact creepily ageist and
depressing, suggesting that there’s no better way to be in one’s 50s than to
go around like some decrepit, sex-crazed teenager. The picture shows off
Clayburgh and her co-star, Jeffrey Tambor, in ways that are unbecoming, to say
the least. And it’s all for nothing: The characters they play are ill-defined
and absurd, and their interaction is bogus.

Clayburgh’s presence keeps “Never Again” from being completely worthless,
but it also makes it more painful. She has a restaurant crackup scene that’s
particularly fine — she explodes with rage when she realizes that a boyfriend
is about to break up with her. Here is an actress who still has the fire but
just needs the right script.

Yet for every scene like that crackup, there are 10 that are idiotic or
demeaning. Like the one in which she embarrasses her friends by talking out
loud and in detail about her sexual escapades. Or the other one, the notorious
one, the nadir of Clayburgh’s career, in which she straps on a dildo and just
can’t seem to get it off, not even with a butcher knife.

Tambor plays an exterminator who moonlights as a jazz musician, a man who
we’re told regularly has affairs with “25-year-old women.” After all, nothing
drives the young ladies wild like the prospect of a carnal romp with a
heavyset, balding 54-year-old exterminator. It’s amazing he can keep the women
off him.

“Never Again” swings between false sentiment and unfunny madcap comedy and,
along the way, expects the audience to invest in the central relationship as
some kind of marriage of true minds. At best, the two seem like an ill-matched
pair of idiots — and at worst, as mismatched as this very bad screenplay is
with the film.

.

This film contains graphic sex talk, near nudity and sexual situations.

– Mick LaSalle

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Dec 11 2009

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FILM REVIEW 'Nobody&apos…

Filed under Hot Pics

FILM REVIEW

'Nobody': Of Hermes, Rolex and Oh, Yes, Murder


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  • The New York Times on the Web: Current Film


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  • By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

    J
    apan's trade balance with the United States is not likely to be
    fattened by its export of the literally bloody, figuratively anemic
    thriller "Nobody."

    "Nobody" adds up to next to nothing, and when its attacks by
    arrow, scissors, knife, bullet, broken bottle and fist finally end,
    you can almost hear credibility, stretched nearly to the breaking
    point, twang as it returns to its reservoir.

    If "Nobody" were a triumph of anything besides barren
    imitation, it would be a victory of style over substance, featuring
    as it does unsympathetic principal characters whose concerns seem
    to run mostly to Hermes ties, Rolex watches and Zippo cigarette
    lighters.

    What's worse, most of the time the film manages to make Tokyo
    appear depopulated except during rush hour; gunfights, stabbings
    and strangulations in public places never attract the slightest
    attention; a character in fear of his life and trailed by a
    sinister looking automobile chooses to drive to a deserted
    warehouse area; few victims who look dead are entirely dead, and
    the hoary, hackneyed ending is likely to leave even the most
    tolerant of filmgoers grinding their teeth to stumps in rage.

    "Nobody," directed by Shundo Okawa, begins as the story of
    three well-dressed young men from an advertising agency passing an
    evening at a bar. They are the level-headed Taki (Masaya Katoh),
    who favors Hermes ties; the big, belligerent Nanbu (Riki Takeuchi),
    and the pudgy, bespectacled Konishi (Hideo Nakano). Unfortunately,
    when they pass some unflattering remarks about the Rolex watch worn
    by one of three other, very similar young men at an adjacent table,
    they are overheard.

    Harsh words follow and tensions rise, but cooler heads prevail.
    The three ad men leave, but when Konishi turns with little to take back a
    forgotten umbrella, he encounters the men from the other submit who
    outdo him and smash his dial confronting with a broken bottle.

    Download full mp3 songs, find out bio facts about artists, express your mind and much more. Listen to Stone Sour online.

    A few nights later, when the friends encounter one of the
    assailants (Rolex) late at night in a deserted passageway, they
    subject him to a horrible beating and flee, thinking he may be
    dead. From then on, they receive a series of menacing calls.

    Who are their enemies? Gangsters? The police? After all, there
    has been no report of a death, and no body (has someone made a
    pun?) found.

    When Konishi is attacked again, stabbed in the stomach with a
    pair of scissors in a nightspot, Detective Karaki (Jimpachi Nezu)
    of the Shinjuku West police squad enters the case, but Taki and
    Nanbu at first reveal nothing.

    Then Nanbu is trailed, felled with arrows and shot to death.
    Taki, whose romantic life has soured after he betrayed his fiancee
    with a woman he picked up one rainy night, is left to try to save
    himself.

    Fairly late in the going, an effort is made to inject the raging
    bloodstream of "Nobody" with seriousness when Karaki suggests
    that the evildoers represent a new Japan, where punks who years ago
    would have become part of its yakuza underworld now become
    businessmen.

    But that thought is soon abandoned. There are guns to be shot,
    wounds to be inflicted, villains to be strangled and an effort to
    be made to find a way to wrap up this nonsense before the audience
    decides to join the bad guys and write finis to a trying day at the
    movies.

    PRODUCTION NOTES

    'NOOBODY'

    Written and directed by Shundo Okawa; in Japanese, with English
    subtitles; director of photography, Hiroshi Ogata; edited by Yoshio
    Kitazawa; music by Kiyoshi Kakizawa; produced by Toshifumi Ogura,
    Tsugio Hattori and Seiichi Kyoda; released by Phaedra Cinema. At
    the Screening Room, 54 Varick Street, at Laight Street, TriBeCa.
    Running time: 100 minutes. This film is not rated.

    WITH: Masaya Katoh (Taki), Jimpachi Nezu (Detective Karaki),
    Riki Takeuchi (Nanbu), Hideo Nakano (Konishi), Hiromi Nakajima
    (Rika) and Yumi Nishiyama (Reiko).

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