I saw two pretty crappy movies this weekend: Babel, and Blood Diamonds

 

Babel might the one movie of all movies ever concieved the was the least deserving of all its High Praise.  That was seriously one of the biggest piece-of-shit movies i ever had the displeasure of watching.  and to think i was missing on parts of the Georgetown-Pittsburgh game because of it.  The most interesting storyline was the Japanese one, and even then I had the misfortune of looking at some girl’s hairy bush (at least that was kind of funny).  I wonder what if they made that part as its own movie;  i’d imagine it would only work as a short film with just the parts that were shown.

What was Cate Blanchett thinking when she decided she would take part in this?  did she owe someone a very large favor, or was she just doing it to get a more desirable role in the future?  this is how you under-utilize an otherwise great actor.  Brad will do anything, but this is below his standard, the dumbest movie he’s done since Meet Joe Black.  The Mexican border scene was just trite.  I almost hoped the little girl would die just to see if the lady gets the death sentence for whatever Homeland Security law she may have broken, and how that’s totally not fair and oh how those kids were so cute and blonde! and whatever other ideas and images were thrown at the audience. 

Blood Diamonds wasn’t all that either.  Leo was cool, but was embarrassing in that “accent.”  Jennifer Connoly was attractive as always, and at least she wasn’t as annoying as her part in that movie with the dude from Gladiator where he was super-smart but a total sociopath.  the only redeeming performance was that of the guy who played Solomon Vandy.  The movie felt like an after school special with the applause for our hero in the end of the movie.

avoid Babel at all costs; and I guess you can watch Blood Diamonds if you want to assure yourselves that contributing to the economy of the diamond industry is always a bad idea, but i’m sure if you have that idea floating in your head, you probably don’t need Leonardo DiCaprio to convey that for you.

Spike Jones, Still a “Wild” Visionary

Spike Jonze, the man who brought you this:

and this (i love Bjork):

and this:

and this:

will be bringing us the big picture version the uber-famous Where The Wild Things Are, a book that I read-but-not-really-read because, after all, so how could 10-year-old immigrant learn how to read English that quickly?  it’s a fully illustrated book;  all you really needed to know was that the kid went to sleep and he saw some crazy stuff, man!

As if news of Jonze in charge of the flick wasn’t enough, two stills were released to the public some time ago, and they are truly impressive.  I’m pretty sure this comes out in 2009, and all I foresee (and hope) is that I could watch this with my niece Valentina, who might be too young for such imagery (i hope not, she just turned one year young), but i would hope she would enjoy anyhow.  Looks excellent.

why the hell are the Wachowski’s involved in the Speed Racer movie?

i normally ride with whatever the Wachowski brothers/sisters do, but this just looks odd to me.  maybe they will help develop some cool special effects, but this reeks of campyness, an not in a good way. 

Here’s a pic of Trixie, played by Wednesday Adams

I loved the Idea of a Speed Racer movie, so we shall see how the final product turns out.  there will probably be a backlash right around premiere time, i suspect.  here are some more pics.

i have to admit, i like this pic.  Emile Hirsch plays Speed Racer.  you may recognize him from the movie “Alpha Dog” where he plays a yuppie douchebag drug dealer.

the dialogue in “Superbad” is everything but raunchy

 

for those of you who have experienced the awesomeness that is Superbad, you already know the movie was a few notches above excellent.  Only the experience of seeing the 40 year old virgin in theater comes close, not coincidently another Judd Apatow project.  Michael Cera’s delivery was on-point, and you felt a connection with all the characters’ worries (albeit petty concerns on a superficial level)

The easiest label to annoint a movie like this is “gross out comedy.”  We’ve see this before with the American Pie series and Scary Movie series.  The simple premise for movies like these is to hire a cast of young good looking thespians and put them in comedic sexual situations that hopefully will get cannonized in our short term memories, a not-so-hard- feat seeing as all we really do is think about sex.  All of these roundabout scenes should connote a coming of age story to put a more nostalgic notion to an otherwise disposable product.  Few have worked in this sense, like the first American Pie movie, and now Superbad.

How those involved in the moviemaking process develop the idea of “gross” is purely on them.  In AP, they went as far as making a protagonist drink some man-milk right before he was gonna get laid.  Pretty funny stuff.  Scary Movie used tactics like tucking in your junk.  In Superbad, most what could be considered gross-out is done through dialogue.

This is where I can’t justfiably consider this movie a gross out comedy, but instead a collection of vignettes and anecdotes set to an above-average Friday night.  To say the movie has a plot is comical at best; three boys try to score some alcohol in order to show up to a party and maybe experience some sort of sexual satisfaction.  That’s it if you want to look at it that way.  A more satisfying (if not complex) way to look at it would be a group of friends and associates discussing embarassing moments from their adolescent phase, probably making some up and augmenting others, and putting it together in a concise package for mass distribution.  That the package was deemed worthy enough for consumption  proves many execs saw a lot of promise in any and all marketing plans for the movie.

Their seemed to be a lot of artistic honesty in the dialogue.  Often I found myself relating to what was being discussed, like hiding an erection with the elastic part of your undies.  Or debating your respective preferences in porn you like.  I remember a lot of my friends made fun of one friend of ours because he liked man vs woman porn rather than a lesbian sex romp.  By our thinly defined standards, we viewed his preference in watching “normal” hetero porn as him wanting to see dick.  In superbad, one of the characters needs to see it because it just doesnt seem right for dick to be missing in the porn equation.  I’m sure this topic has been debated in many forms,  but i’ve never included/intruded myself in another clique’s discussion of the subject.  So (to me at least) there’s a voyeiristic thrill to this movie.

There’s way more to discuss about this movie from a pure entertainment viewpoint (MacLovin, I’m sorry I blocked your cock).  But i just rather not.  it’s much more fun to quote the movie or discuss sexual experiences with someone in front of you.  Our country’s population is a pretty prude, reserved bunch.  That’s whay we laugh like little bitches watching a movie like this one.  Hopefully this kind of open dialogue can help us all just a little bit.

“suddenly i see”by kt tunstall

For those of you who have absolutely no lives (like myself) you may have seen The Devil Wears Prada more than many times in the last few weeks.  My general understanding of other guys’ reaction towards the movie has been positive; although i’m making a blanket statement here, i would say without hesitation that a lot of dudes liked the movie.  Personally, i thought it was great.  I liked the story well enough, (even though it had its flaws.  for example, are we suppose to sympathize with Vinny Chase because his girlfriend is trying to get ahead in her career?  I hated his character) and the ensemble Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and especially Merryl Streep gave pretty awesome performances.  

But the movie is not at all the focus of my rambling here.  The film opens with the pre-work day rituals of numerous NYC women, one of them the messy, casual Hathaway.  We are taken through the motions of doing one’s hair, picking the right outfit, and sorting nutritional choices to get the day started.  They walk out of their homes, their geography used a device to signify cultural and economic stature.  One is to believe everyone who works in the big bad city is either a model-chic type or totally unprepared for the challenge that is New York Living.  The scene is backed by KT Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See.”

The song in question is perfect for the opening.  It has an upbeat feel that many listeners of lite radio stations (something of a standard in offices throughout New Jersey, sadly) would normally wake up to.   The song is in fact a hit in such stations;  not often is a (relatively) new song allowed to enter their already narrow playlists that span the last few decades.  The lyrics also foretell the premise of the movie, if vaguely.   We see the Anne Hathaway character, Andy,  preparing herself for a job interview, and we hear Tustall wail with optimistic tenacity, “suddently I see, this is where I want to be!”  That we don’t know exactly where this place is, specifically, is appropriate; many of us who are familiar with the job hunting landscape are well aware it is not a conquered science, no matter what some writers of interview and resume books tell you, (they write books about jobsearching for a reason; otherwise thay would just be working like the rest of us) but the benefits are exotic in the fact that you might be moving up in the world, so to speak.  It is indeed all of this that Andy finds;  she is excited and nervous, knowing its either working for a fashion mag or an auto rag if nothing else falls in place.

The song’s effect on American popular culture did not end there.  According to all-knowing-and never-deceitful wikipedia:

It was also the farewell music for female contestants eliminated from the television show So You Think You Can Dance, featured on the season finale of the MTV show The Hills, at the end of a Ghost Whisperer season two episode, for promotional clips of The Amazing Race: All Stars, and the series premiere of Ugly Betty. KT also performed the song live on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The song was one of the candidates for Hillary Clinton’s campaign song.

That’s quite the list of appearances.  That such a ubiquitous song has escaped me until a few weeks back is astounding.  I think the only song of Tunstall’s i’ve heard is one where she coos “whoo hoo” at the end of almost every stanza (more than that crappy Gwen Stefani song).  A song not impressive at all, which i also found interesting considering every time i went to a major retailer like Best Buy I would tons of her CDs.  Little did I know it was the other song that was the main attraction.

What i’m trying to say if you couldn’t figure it out is that I like the song.  Worst of all, i would consider it as that often-abused classification of a guilty pleasure.  I HATE THAT TERM!!!  Normally I feel when someone calls a song “a guilty pleasure,” they are not totally honest to themselves.  When people say that a Britney song is their guilty pleasure, I normally feel a slight disgust towards them.  I would think to myself, “but Britney is GOOD; her songs are supposed to be hits; how can you NOT like Toxic?”  But to me “Suddenly I see” brings up feelings of embarrassment whenever I enjoy it.  All of those programs the song was included in are things I tend to ignore for snobby reasons.  They are not part of my pass-times.

I want to sing the song whenever I hear it.  I don’t know the lyrics, but if I hear it enough times, I’ll probably pick it up.

I’m too emabarrassed to even download it.   I have Rod Stewart, Baby AKA Birdman, some early Madonna, and a lot of Incubus on my I-Tunes.  THE BRAVERY ARE ON MY TOP 25 MOST PLAYED FOR FUCKS SAKE!  But i’m afraid that one day in front of a lot of people “Suddenly I see” might pop up on Shuffle.

It’s not often I feel that way about a song.  I feel like a loser frankly.  The kind of loser who’ll catch Devil Wears Prada anytime it’s time.

The Joker, by way of Heath Ledger

As if the new Batman movie Dark Knight wasn’t going to kick ass already, here’s the first official picture of the Joker.

Some people put Jack Nicholson’s interpretation of the Joker in high regard, but given Ledger’s past performances (not to mention Chris Nolan’s direction), this character is definitely right up his alley and WILL exceed old Jack’s performance.

This movie will be out in the summer of 2008.

a few thoughts on Grindhouse

• great to see Rose McGowan back doing work.  She was born to do camp like this.
• Freddy Rodriguez is a star.  He already showed us his skills on Six Feet Under and Havoc (haha), but here he gave us his most lovable character yet.  He and McGowan as a couple is convincing.
• Quentin Tarantini is such a feminist.  He should be deconstructing supossively trashy films and writing papers on feminist film theory for the rest of his life.
• Robert Rodriguez has a very romantic view of Mexico and I look forward to any project to see how he uses the country as a character.
• The trio of Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell, and Tracie Thoms stole this movie, with Thoms clearly with the breakout performance.  I didnt even know R. Dawson was in this movie, and they all benefited from Kurt Russell playing to his scumbag potential.
• Sidney Tamiia Poitier = hotter than July.
• this movie exceeded all my astronomically high expectations.  A great moviegoing experience.