Floyd Pepper (Jerry Nelson): Well, if this were the movies...
Dr. Teeth (Jim Henson): Which it is.
Floyd: ...we'd think of a clever plot device.
Scooter (Richard Hunt): Like disguising their car so they won't be recognized!
- THE MUPPET MOVIE (1979)
Whatta busy season and it's gonna get busier. We here at film babble have seen lots of movies lately both on the big and small screens and we can't wait to blather 'bout them. So let's go :
NOW SHOWING :
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (Dir. Jared Hess) Funny or just funny looking? Hard to decide about a movie made by Mormons about a high school geek (Jon Herder) in Idaho and his quirky misadventures. Quirky humour seems to be the rage in recent independent comedies so much so that one critic (Sean Burns from the Philadelphia Weekly) said that it felt like the work of "a lousy Wes Anderson cover band". I'm not sure I'd quite say that but it's a good line. A good hearted flick that a lot of kids will like NAPOLEON DYNAMITE goes by like a smirking breeze.
SHAUN OF THE DEAD (Dir. Edgar Wright) A British romantic comedy/killer zombie thriller this is a spirited merging of High Fidelity (the book) and 28 DAYS LATER especially in the scene where slacker Shaun (Simon Pegg) and his deadbeat flatmate Ed (Nick Frost) throw old vinyl records at the blood thirsty undead - Ed : "Stone Roses?" Shaun : "Definitely not." Ed : "The Batman soundtrack?" Shaun : "Throw it." Funny but not hilarious, scary but not blood curdling the amount of energy and wit here makes this a good time. Some critics are predicting this may become a cult classic in years to come. They might be onto something. It's nice to see Lucy Davis and Martin Freeman from the brilliant BBC program THE OFFICE make appearances too.
SKYCAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW (Dir. Kerry Conran) More like the "World That Yesterday Thought Tomorrow Would Look Like" this is the ultimate in retro. Or maybe what Harry Shearer called "nowtro" in A MIGHTY WIND. Old school sci-fi ideals mingle with new school computer generated imagery to make a 2004 movie look like it could have come from the 30's. Jude Law and Gwyneth Patrow star as the hero and heroine who go through a narrative as cribbed from old Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy as it is from James Bond and Star Wars. For the most part SKYCAPTAIN works and it is fascinating looking but unfortunately it drags horribly in places and the sense of innocence it tries to evoke is so long gone that it may leave viewers puzzled. Still though such an ernest while overblown concept movie is hard to dismiss. Long live Nowtro!
BADASSSSS! (Dir. Mario Van Peeples) Movies that are about making movies hold a certain interest but the claim that some critics have made that finally blaxploitation has it's DAY FOR NIGHT seems to miss the point. This is about the making of a real movie - SWEET SWEETBACKS BAADASSSSS SONG and the 'movie within a movie' cliche doesn't really ring true. This is about the struggle and satisfaction of the film making process told by the son of the original film maker who had an inside ear. Funny, intense, and emotionally endearing in its last half hour this is exactly what it what it claims to be - BAADASSSSS and without a doubt the best project that Mario Van Peeples has ever been involved in.
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (Dir. Michael Gondry) Nearly flawless existential comedy with a Philip K. Dickensian kick! I don't need to recount the plot - just about every film babbler has seen this flick but maybe the best movie of the year gets a great DVD treatment. Commentaries, deleted scenes, and featurettes augment this disc but the movie alone works just fine. Charlie Kaufman while working with well trodden egghead memory erase concepts wrings an imaginative free form story out of every day truths. Romantic at its core ETERNAL SUNSHINE is a delight in every way. Jim Carrey puts in the restrained everyguy performance that comes off as more impressive than his 'in-your-face' persona of past while Kate Winslet gives a greatly confident spin to her impulsive artsy book store slave gal with the everchanging hair colors. With a crack cast that includes Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson, David Cross and Elijah Wood just watch and enjoy and consider giving your own existence a jump start, why doncha?!!?
More later...
is the Green Art Nail
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Thursday, September 2, 2004
Random Babble
"All we are is dust in the wind, dude." Ted Logan (Keanu Reeves) to Socrates (Tony Steedman) BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (1989)
Well the summer is coming to a close and what have we learned? I guess that the documentary genre is now a viable film product (FAHRENHEIT 911, THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT, SUPERSIZE ME, OUTFOXED, and FESTIVAL EXPRESS), that comic book heroes are still needed (SPIDERMAN 2 & HELL BOY) and that horror franchises are still kicking (ALIEN vs. PREDATOR, EXORCIST : THE BEGINNING)
We've been babbling 'bout whether Zach Braff's GARDEN STATE is a worthwhile watch. Some film babblers have likened it to the classic cult flick HAROLD AND MAUDE like Braff has in interviews but to film babblers like me I think it's more on the ORDINARY PEOPLE side of the spectrum. More on that debate later.
* HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO KEANU REEVES - (40) There's more Ted Logan in all of us than there is Neo (MATRIX)
More later...
Well the summer is coming to a close and what have we learned? I guess that the documentary genre is now a viable film product (FAHRENHEIT 911, THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT, SUPERSIZE ME, OUTFOXED, and FESTIVAL EXPRESS), that comic book heroes are still needed (SPIDERMAN 2 & HELL BOY) and that horror franchises are still kicking (ALIEN vs. PREDATOR, EXORCIST : THE BEGINNING)
We've been babbling 'bout whether Zach Braff's GARDEN STATE is a worthwhile watch. Some film babblers have likened it to the classic cult flick HAROLD AND MAUDE like Braff has in interviews but to film babblers like me I think it's more on the ORDINARY PEOPLE side of the spectrum. More on that debate later.
* HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO KEANU REEVES - (40) There's more Ted Logan in all of us than there is Neo (MATRIX)
More later...
Sunday, August 8, 2004
DVDs: THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT & INDEPENDENT'S DAY
Griffin Mill
(Tim Robbins)
It lacked certain elements that we need to market a film successfully.
June
(Greta Scacchi)
What elements?
Griffin Mill
Suspense, laughter, violence. Hope, heart, nudity, sex. Happy endings.
Mainly happy endings.
June
What about reality?
From THE PLAYER (1992)
Us film babblers have avoided the big summer sequels except for SPIDERMAN 2 which I believe the consensus is - it's the same quality as the first and that's a good thing. A small summer sequel that at least I'm itching to see (not all film babblers have the same itch) is Richard Linklater's BEFORE SUNSET - I'll get back to you when I see it. Meanwhile we've been watching election coverage, devouring DVD releases, and mourning the deaths of Marlon Brando, Robert Quine, and Rick James.
Until we get out to the theaters again here's some DVD Reviews :
INDEPENDENT'S DAY - THE ULTIMATE INSIDER'S LOOK AT THE CRAZY WORLD OF SUNDANCE. Dir. Marina Zenovich. (1997) (DVD-2004)
"It's like taking the worst part of LA and the worst part of New York and just jamming it into Park City."
- Tressa Von Bargen (Park City Resident)
This fascinating albeit brief (54 min.) look at the booming indendent film world in 1997 gives you a glimpse of the fun of film and the stress of competition that goes on in the most notable of American film festivals - Sundance. Indeed filmmaker Jay Chandrasekhar laments "everyone I talked to said Sundance is a blast unless you have a film in it." Unfortunately the lack of background info and absence of Robert Redford (Sundance founder) make it not as intensely deep a documentary as I wanted but still an interesting walk through. Worth watching alone for an amusing set-up sequence involving Parker Posey this film is begging for a sequel - so much has happened in the years since 1997 in independent film and in digital video so I hope Zenovich returns to Park City some day with camera in tow.
- Anderson Moran
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT (2004) Dir. Eric Bress & J. Mackye Gruber. First let me get this out of the way - it's not just that I find Ashton Kutcher to be untalented - he strikes me as obnoxiously untalented! But that's the least of our worries with this contrived derivative nonsense. The plot is to ridiculous to go into at any length so simply - it's a story about a guy who travels back and forth through time to try and fix the circumstances surrounding a traumatic childhood incident so that the present day outcome is A-okay. He does this somehow by concentration on reading old journals (I guess like Christopher Reeve used his mind to go back in time in SOMEWHERE IN TIME) and that's just one of the hundreds of elements that don't really work here. What really makes this so laughingly bad is how drastically this flick overshoots - it wants to be a cool cerebral movie like DONNIE DARKO, it wants to be a 'love conquers all' movie like WHEN DREAMS MAY COME, Hell it even wants to be an episode of OZ at one point too! The title quotes the standard chaos theory - with the example of a butterfly who gently flaps its wings in one part of the world, creating the potential for a monsoon somewhere else in the world but that really has nothing to do with this story. I mean nothing in the world changes after the time warps except the lives of the microcosm of the handful of Kutcher's friends. If he returned to the present to find that America had been taken over by some vast skinhead regime after a coldwar attack in the 80's or some other world changing effect we might have something here. As such we've got nothing but yet another exercise in sci-fi stupidity. Wish I could use my journal to go back in time and not watch it.
- D C J
More later...
(Tim Robbins)
It lacked certain elements that we need to market a film successfully.
June
(Greta Scacchi)
What elements?
Griffin Mill
Suspense, laughter, violence. Hope, heart, nudity, sex. Happy endings.
Mainly happy endings.
June
What about reality?
From THE PLAYER (1992)
Us film babblers have avoided the big summer sequels except for SPIDERMAN 2 which I believe the consensus is - it's the same quality as the first and that's a good thing. A small summer sequel that at least I'm itching to see (not all film babblers have the same itch) is Richard Linklater's BEFORE SUNSET - I'll get back to you when I see it. Meanwhile we've been watching election coverage, devouring DVD releases, and mourning the deaths of Marlon Brando, Robert Quine, and Rick James.
Until we get out to the theaters again here's some DVD Reviews :
INDEPENDENT'S DAY - THE ULTIMATE INSIDER'S LOOK AT THE CRAZY WORLD OF SUNDANCE. Dir. Marina Zenovich. (1997) (DVD-2004)
"It's like taking the worst part of LA and the worst part of New York and just jamming it into Park City."
- Tressa Von Bargen (Park City Resident)
This fascinating albeit brief (54 min.) look at the booming indendent film world in 1997 gives you a glimpse of the fun of film and the stress of competition that goes on in the most notable of American film festivals - Sundance. Indeed filmmaker Jay Chandrasekhar laments "everyone I talked to said Sundance is a blast unless you have a film in it." Unfortunately the lack of background info and absence of Robert Redford (Sundance founder) make it not as intensely deep a documentary as I wanted but still an interesting walk through. Worth watching alone for an amusing set-up sequence involving Parker Posey this film is begging for a sequel - so much has happened in the years since 1997 in independent film and in digital video so I hope Zenovich returns to Park City some day with camera in tow.
- Anderson Moran
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT (2004) Dir. Eric Bress & J. Mackye Gruber. First let me get this out of the way - it's not just that I find Ashton Kutcher to be untalented - he strikes me as obnoxiously untalented! But that's the least of our worries with this contrived derivative nonsense. The plot is to ridiculous to go into at any length so simply - it's a story about a guy who travels back and forth through time to try and fix the circumstances surrounding a traumatic childhood incident so that the present day outcome is A-okay. He does this somehow by concentration on reading old journals (I guess like Christopher Reeve used his mind to go back in time in SOMEWHERE IN TIME) and that's just one of the hundreds of elements that don't really work here. What really makes this so laughingly bad is how drastically this flick overshoots - it wants to be a cool cerebral movie like DONNIE DARKO, it wants to be a 'love conquers all' movie like WHEN DREAMS MAY COME, Hell it even wants to be an episode of OZ at one point too! The title quotes the standard chaos theory - with the example of a butterfly who gently flaps its wings in one part of the world, creating the potential for a monsoon somewhere else in the world but that really has nothing to do with this story. I mean nothing in the world changes after the time warps except the lives of the microcosm of the handful of Kutcher's friends. If he returned to the present to find that America had been taken over by some vast skinhead regime after a coldwar attack in the 80's or some other world changing effect we might have something here. As such we've got nothing but yet another exercise in sci-fi stupidity. Wish I could use my journal to go back in time and not watch it.
- D C J
More later...
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