Not on your life (May – September edition)

Raise your hand if you were in a crappy summer movie.

Summer’s over, so time to update this feature. As you may recall, these are movies which I’ll be passing for the present and hopefully, forevermore.

• The Ugly Truth (released July 24)  – We’ve established Gerard Butler looks good sans shirt, but I’m doubting he can pull off a convincing romantic lead. Casting him in Gamer (Sept. 4), as a video-game character a.k.a. virtual puppet is inspired, but ultimatelynot terribly appealing.
• Year One (pictured above) (June 19)/ Land of the Lost (June 5) – Prehistoric B.S. “comedies” that arrived fossilized.
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (June 24) /GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra (Aug. 7) – Please, people. Stop with the toy nostalgia. Explosions and effects are cool, but where’s the story. I beg you.
• Paper Heart (Aug. 7) – Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy indie twee. What I don’t enjoy is thinking this movie is being marketed to me as indie twee. Especially girly indie twee.
• X-Games 3D: The Movie (Aug. 21) – I’m really happy for it, but this extreme sports video may not be in 3D, but this extreme sports video is the greatest of all time. Thus endeth the Kanye crap.
• I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (Sept. 25) – And for Tucker Max’s sake, I hope it’s warm Meister Brau.
• I Hate Valentine’s Day (not Valentine’s Day, but July 3) / My Life in Ruins (June 5) – Dear Nia Vardalos, we get it. Please move on.
• Love Happens (Sept. 18) – A movie featuring a sad Jennifer Aniston? Why don’t I save myself 90 minutes and briefly scan US Weekly?
• And finally the travesty that is All About Steve (Sept. 4).  Sandra Bullock proceeds to play quirk into stalkerish psychosis. Shelved for over a year, and only dusted off due the success of co-star Bradley Cooper’s The Hangover. And according to the poster, it’s brought to you by the producer of Miss Congenialty, which of course, is Sandra Bullock. Damn, it could be so-bad-it’s-good bad, but I don’t think I want to find out.

CD 10 – X – Track Listing

The Roman 10.

Thanks again to Stennie for inviting me to lose sleep for weeks while trying to complete her latest CD Mix Challenge, which apparently is — gasp — the final mix exchange she will ever run. It’s like a final encore, and true to its name, a challenge to be sure.

UPDATED: Full track listing below with occasional video links!

Coraline

IMDB

(Henry Selick, 2009)

A confession: I’ve never seen Selick’s previous work The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach or Monkeybone. Two of these I have no excuse for, and the third has to do with an aversion to most things Brendan Fraser.

So, I approached Coraline as a newborn babe would, through the looking glass, and I have to say I’m somewhat sold on the hype.

Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning), new in town and ignored by her parents, travels through a tunnel to an alternate universe with an Other Mother and Father (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) that at first appears much nicer than her own. Soon enough, her Other World turns more sinister and frightening, and Coraline must struggle to return to her real parents or lose them forever.

The film was stylishly conceived and appears to be painstakingly executed. It also adheres to elements of some classic creepy children’s stories. Some of the simple terrifying elements — like the sewn-on buttons over characters’ eyes — are original and effective. But there’s so much else thrown in that it comes off as sensory overload. Maybe I’m not schooled in Selick-lore, but are all his films this chock-full of visual stimuli? My head was spinning, and I think it detracts from the story. The voice-acting was inconsistent, particularly when it came to the main character.

Older children who are interested in darker and certainly weirder material, as well as fans of Selick’s earlier work, might find this more memorable than me. As an adult, I found it perfectly watchable, and worthy of Selick’s cult stature.  It may require repeated viewings, but there is much there to chew on. And of course, there’s no Brendan Fraser to work around.

3.0/5.0

Zardoz

IMDB

(John Boorman, 1974)

Oh hell yes. A camp classic, and one that was universally misunderstood upon first release and for decades after.

Zardoz was the pet project Boorman did post-Deliverance, a sci-fi trope about the class system set up by humans once they achieve immortality. It features a ponytailed Sean Connery wearing not much more than a red Speedo and thigh-high boots throughout much of the picture. (Just Google “Zardoz + diaper” and you’ll get to see what I mean.) It sounds ridiculous, but  Connery actually has the build to pull it off.

Zardoz features some strange effects — including an angry-looking flying stone head that spits rifles — and enough random acts of nakedness to keep an interest, but this odd vision of a warped future is hampered by a lack of budget throughout. Plus its confusing new-age script — let’s just say that crystals make an appearance –  seems rather silly, but perhaps it’s simply dated, since it tends to fall in line with other 70’s science fiction.

Despite its flaws, it’s surprisingly watchable, and thanks to the commitment of the actors to Boorman’s vision, the campiness actually wears off. Overall, better than I thought it would be, but points docked for overuse of crystals, sheer kerchiefs and after the first 30 minutes, the utter absence of angry-looking flying stone heads.

2.5/5.0

Around the Bay / Canary

Around the Bay

IMDB

(Alejandro Adams, 2008)

3.0/5.0

Canary

IMDB

(Alejandro Adams, 2009)

2.5/5.0

These two films are the work of director Alejandro Adams, which I’ve been turning over and over in my mind since I watched them. Both exhibit intelligence, experimentation and artistry, but they are each from such different genres and points on the spectrum that I am having difficulty joining them thematically, if such a thing should even be done. But still I feel there is a connection, and not just in that they were directed by the same man.

Around the Bay is the more traditional story of the pair, which isn’t to say that it’s told that way. It’s the story of a perpetually broken family, with an emotionally distant man (Steve Voldseth) asking his estranged daughter (Katharine Celio) to help care for his 5 year old son, Noah, from a newly-ended second relationship. The daughter accepts, perhaps in an effort to reconnect with her father, but quickly finds herself overwhelmed, since young Noah can appear sweet and silly one moment, and bratty and violent the next, as children sometimes do. Meanwhile, instead of solving the rising chaos in his home, Dad is off courting a former girlfriend (Katharine Darling), and recruiting her as well, more for aid than companionship.

The cold aura and deliberate pacing of Around the Bay define the contemplative nature of the adult characters’ household. While the child is often seen as active, he is also painfully lonely and desirous of love, or at least attention. The heartbreaking detachment these family members all exude comes to a head when they clash, mostly over the raising of Noah. It’s a disturbing reflection of the 21st century family core, of raising and resenting of children, of the impact of autonomy over warmth.

Distance is also inherent in Adams’ Canary, primarily in its main character, a figurative angel of death (Carla Pauli) employed by a creepy corporation involved in the repossession of human organs for profit. Pauli mutely drifts through a dystopian near-future in which healthcare can be either be provided or retracted.

Canary strives to be low-budget science fiction in the vein of Shane Carruth’s Primer, in which the audience gets entranced by the mechanisms of the twisting plot, and forgives the lack of special effects. Unfortunately, Canary’s budget is not truly a problem;  it’s the nature of the filmmaking, which is purposefully cryptic, almost to the point of hostility. Several scenes feel loosely improvised and are left open to interpretation, and sometimes require actual interpretation, since there are no subtitles for prolonged exchanges in Russian, Vietnamese and German. Is the physical removal of organs a further reflection on the detachment from humanity? I’m not certain, but until the  final third of the film, I felt frustrated by not being able to fight my way into this Chinese box of a film, which relies upon its audience to fill in meaning so often that one might well quit caring.

In that crucial finale, we are introduced to a single mother, challenged with the responsibility of  her young daughter, when suddenly the ghostly angel of death/repo girl begins lurking nearby. While certainly uncommitted to a solitary message, the outcome of their encounter remains haunting and memorable. I only wish I hadn’t felt nearly numb when it arrived.

Canary will screen at Rooftop Films in Brooklyn, NY on August 7th, 2009. See canarymovie.com for details.

Tokyo!

IMDB

(Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, Joon-ho Bong, 2008)

Do ANY of these projects featuring multiple directors’ take on a single subject, especially a location, hang together as a full film?

The collaboration seems mushy and not much about its subject. That is, unless you consider that life in Tokyo includes the impossibility of finding an apartment, deranged lunatics and loneliness. But isn’t that prevalent in many modern cities?

Best of the bunch is “Shaking Tokyo”, directed by Bong, featuring a reclusive man who is pulled out of his self-imposed prison by deux ex machina/love. It’s not great, but it’s at least more even and intriguing than the rest.

2.0/5.0

#strangelove Live Tweet – Tonight

1. Tune in to TCM tonight at 10:30 ET for Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

2. Follow/join in/ridicule the live-tweeting of Dr. Strangelove at #strangelove.

3. ????

4. Profit!

Red River

IMDB

(Howard Hawks, 1948)

Comments to come.

4.5/5.0

The President’s Analyst

IMDB

(Theodore J. Flicker, 1967)

Blackly comic Coburn taking potshots of a changing 1960s America. Clever concept delivered with varying results, which got more and more dated as they were presented.

3.0/5.0

Earth

IMDB

(Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield, 2007)

Yep, it’s a retread of the BBC’s Planet Earth. But it’s the first movie my son watched with me all the way through in a movie theater, so I’ll give it bonus points.

3.5/5.0