cinema and caffeine

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a work of sheer beauty

2011-05-04T14:50:00.000-04:00

Yes, I am aware I never blog anymore.
I want to. I should. There is plenty for me to write about. Yet I don't.
I feel unbelievably physically and mentally exhausted most of the time, and while that is for the most part a good thing (being busy, especially because one is working full-time, is quite nice), it means that I do not have the motivation to write anything unless it's my posts for JustPressPlay, because I am obligated to do those. Also, I know people actually read that site, which is an added incentive.

And while I can't force myself to string three words together about any films I've watched lately, my tendency towards obsessive-compulsive behavior has made me incapable of stopping thinking about a certain book that I have just finished. So incapable that even though I am at my desk at said new job, I couldn't resist running off at the mouth (fingers?) about said book on the Internet.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan just recently won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, along with numerous other literary awards. Trust me, the hype doesn't lie. The novel is put together in a way that resembles a Robert Altman film, or Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia: it is a series of separate stories from various points of view, cataloging the most important moments in the lives of a group of characters all somehow related to music producer Bennie Salazar and his loyal assistant, Sasha. The book begins when Sasha is in her mid-thirties, no longer working for Bennie and still unable to resist her lifelong compulsive urge to steal. Egan's descriptions of the rush, the desire, and also the panic that course through Sasha's veins as she lifts a wallet out of an unsuspecting woman's bag are vivid and made me nearly as anxious as Sasha herself while I was reading them. From there, the book leaps bakwards in time to when Sasha was still employed by Bennie at Sow's Ear Records, and after that the story splits apart through time, space, and perspective to visit both Bennie and Sasha's troubled teenage years; an African safari with Bennie's troubled mentor, Lou; the rise, fall, and then rise again of a risk-taking publicist known as La Doll; and many, many more. Each story opens up new lives and also reveals more details about the people the reader has already met. The moments that were the most heartbreaking for me to read chronicled Sasha's tumultuous coming-of-age, first in Europe, then at my alma mater, NYU. In fact, the chapter describing her time at that school, "Out of Body," from the perspective of her best friend, Rob, hit so close to home I was almost in tears. If you have ever spent time in the East Village, and are capable of human emotions, "Out of Body" will send shivers down your spine. Egan's characters have the hyper-realistic quality of another one of my favorite author's works, Nick Hornby, and yet while his prose is delightfully simple and straightforward, hers reads with elegance and a poetry that I have not seen in many other contemporary books, save Patti Smith's memoir, Just Kids.

I could not quote that entire chapter here; I do not have the stamina to type that much, nor do I think it would be wise, as you should all go out and read the book anyways. However, I will quote another of my favorite passages for you, from the chapter "Goodbye My Love," in which Sasha's uncle, Ted Hollander, takes off to Naples to track down his wayward niece. While there, he lingers on an old memory of when he and his wife Susan first began to fall in love:

As Ted sat, feeling the evolution of the afternoon, he found himself thinking of Susan. Not the slightly different version of Susan, but Susan herself--his wife--on a day many years ago, before Ted had begun folding up his desire into the tiny shape it had become. On a trip to New York, riding the Staten Island Ferry for fun, because neither one of them had ever done it, Susan turned to him suddenly and said, "Let's make sure it's always like this." And so entwined were their thoughts at that moment that Ted knew exactly why she'd said it: not because they'd made love that morning or drank an entire bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse at lunch--because she'd felt the passage of time. And then Ted felt it, too, in the leaping brown water, the scudding boats and wind--motion, chaos everywhere--and he'd held Susan's hand and said, "Always. It will always be like this."

The paperback is on Amazon here. DO IT.

March 25th is Tolkien Reading Day!!

2011-03-25T15:53:00.000-04:00

Today is also technically the anniversary of Gollum falling into the fires of Mount Doom and destroying the One Ring, along with the Dark Lord Sauron, and saving Middle-earth. Tolkien Reading Day isn't just about geeking out and rereading your favorite books, although that sure is fun if you're as dorky as me. It's also about encouraging younger generations to discover the power of reading and magical world of Middle-earth. For more, check out the Tolkien Society:

How Tolkien Reading Day Came To Be

Tolkien Reading Day 2011: This Year's Theme

And for some sample reading material, try the Professor's great essay on the importance of fantasy literature, "On Fairy Stories:"

Full Text of Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories"

Eye Candy of the Week: Leo Messi

2011-03-24T22:24:00.003-04:00

I feel rather guilty about this week’s choice.

You see, Leo Messi plays for FC Barcelona, and has thus gotten in the way of victories of the two European teams I support: Arsenal FC and Real Madrid CF. When Arsenal got knocked out of the UEFA Champions League, 4-3 aggregate, two of those Barcelona goals were scored by Messi. When Real Madrid last played Barcelona, their main rivals in La Liga, they lost 5-0, and a lot of that had to do with Messi’s quick feet. The man has a Ballon d’Or, two FIFA World Player of the Year Awards, two UEFA Champions League trophies, and an Olympic Gold Medal…and he’s only twenty-three. It’s not surprisingly that he’s generally considered to be the best footballer in the world, and respected the world over by his peers, the officials, and the fans. Messi elevates the beautiful game to an art form; he’s absurdly fast at zipping around the field and his passes are smooth, elegant, creative, and almost always make their mark. It really sucks to not have Leo Messi play for your team. It almost makes you really want to hate him.

But just look at him! That shaggy hair flopping sweetly into his round brown eyes, the pouty Latin mouth, the chin dimple…oh yes, the chin dimple. I know some people are not fond of these, and claim they make men’s chins look like asses, but personally, they make me weak in my knobby knees. As with the other footballers I have featured in this column, the (absurd amount of) talent only helps seal the hotness deal. The rare occasion that Messi aims and the ball DOESN’T go in, he gets a look of such innocent confusion on his face, as though he can’t understand how this possibly could have happened. He’s so adorable and so talented that it’s impossible to dislike him, even when he is the cause of your favorite team getting knocked out of a cup race. Well, actually, one could argue that Messi’s skills were not the cause, but that the referee Massimo Busacca handing out ridiculous cards played more of a role in the controversial Barcelona victory…but that’s another story that I don’t want to get into, or relive, right now. Let’s look at Messi smiling and hugging another dude instead.

Ahhh. That’s better. Anyways, Messi plays for the Argentinean national team. This week, all of the European teams are on a break so that international matches can take place, and Argentina is playing the good old U.S. of A. That’s right, the Greatest Footballer in the World™ is going head to head with Landon Donovan American Hero™. All of that football superstardom on one field is possibly going to make said field ignite into flames. I’m excited to see all my favorite American boys united on one field again; please refer back to my first-ever Eye Candy post circa this summer’s World Cup to hear (read?) me rhapsodize on how much I love them, both athletically and physically. I will be rooting for Team USA, but no matter the outcome of the match, I am looking forward to watching Messi on the field with them. Though seriously, let’s hope that for once he’s NOT at the top of his game. I could use a victory from a team I love. It’s been awhile…Arsenal…ahem.

Indie on Instant: TiMER

2011-03-24T21:18:00.003-04:00

Most of us know Tribeca primarily as a neighborhood within New York that also gives its name to a film festival every spring, founded by Robert DeNiro (tickets for this year’s fest go on sale in mid-April; I’ll probably highlight some of the films I’m most excited about at a later point). However, Tribeca Films is also an independent film company that distributes tiny features such as this one: TiMER. The poster oozes sunshine and affability: adorable blond lead actress Emma Caulfield is in white, with a wide-eyed and confused expression on her face; the words and border are a cheery red, and the tagline reads: “When will you find the one? The countdown begins this spring.” It’s actually rather misleading, as TiMER is by no means a stereotypical rom-com. Basically, to flood you with generic terms, it’s a romantic comedy-drama with a sci-fi twist. Set in the very near future (or perhaps even just an alternate version of our world, since nothing else besides the TiMERs seems very futuristic), the film’s title comes from a device that is all the rage due to it’s ability to countdown until the exact second you meet your soul mate. Once you do, your TiMER and theirs will both start beeping in unison. True love is no longer a question; it’s a guarantee. Can’t beat that.

The twist is that Caulfield’s character, Oona, is somewhat of an anomaly: she has a blank TiMER. It doesn’t count down; it merely flashes blank lines. This means that her soul mate does not yet have a TiMER. The question is, will he ever? Because otherwise, how will she find him? This is Oona’s quandary in life. She dates guys for a brief period, then immediately brings them to the TiMER store to get them fitted with the device. However, every single man’s TiMER immediately starts counting down, proving they aren’t her soul mate, so she throws them aside and begins anew. However, when she meets lackadaisically amiable supermarket cashier-cum-drummer Mikey (John Patrick Amedori), eight years her junior and totally against the idea of TiMERs in every way, she begins to wonder if it’s possible to fall in love with someone without the promise that he is her mysterious soul mate. But how will she know that Mikey is “The One?” And what happens to her relationship with Mikey if her TiMER does start to count down?

My biggest problem with the film was that the plot had too many loopholes. It was hard to suspend my disbelief when the rules of the world seemed so flimsy and easily broken. If TiMERs are not a mandatory part of the society, but something that people can pick and choose to have, then how can they be fully effective? If everyone is forced to have one, but your TiMER is still blank, then the stakes are much higher and weirder, for what if you have no soul mate? Or the TiMER just hasn’t calculated it yet? I would have preferred that option—that for some people, it just takes awhile even for the TiMER to figure out who they’re meant to be with out of the six billion-plus people on this earth. I think it’s much more interesting than the notion that someone’s soul mate might just not have bought one. For one thing, isn’t it a waste of money if you buy a TiMER but your soul mate never does and thus you never meet them, because your TiMER never starts to count down? I suppose if the person was your soul mate and they refused to get a TiMER, you could just assume that you were meant to be and get over it, the way people do in real life, or just get your TiMER removed. Nonetheless, I was throwing so many questions of this nature back and forth in my mind that it distracted from the story at hand. Films should make you ask questions, especially science fiction…but you shouldn’t spend the entire duration of the film finding holes in the plot.

That is what I did while watching TiMER. I did enjoy the film to some degree; it was warm and fuzzy and full of likable characters being played actors who I had never seen before; therefore I had no problem believing that they were truly these characters. It made the weird world of TiMER a lot more realistic than if these were big stars, and also less annoying, considering that Oona is the type of character who would normally be played by Katherine Heigl. You know the type: blond, pretty, high-strung, career-driven, needs to be taught to let loose and live a little less stringently. However, whereas Heigl would have accentuated these character flaws to the point of caricature and turned Oona into an obnoxious shrew, Caulfield plays Oona with naturalness and moderation. Her constant questioning of the relationships in her life and their importance can grow frustrating, but it’s understandable when one puts oneself in her shoes. Also a standout is Michelle Borth, who plays Oona’s best friend, roommate, and stepsister, Steph. Steph is the opposite of Oona—her TiMER is counting down, but for many, many years. Until she finally does run into that destined mate, Steph tracks down desperate guys who want to have some fun before their TiMERs run out and has a series of one-night stands. She’s unapologetic and funny, and her relationship with Oona shows how these two opposites attract and accentuate each other to optimum effect.

TiMER is the first and, so far, the only narrative feature by writer-director-producer Jac Schaeffer. While it is most definitely imperfect, it is a curious and creative enough of a little movie that I would be intrigued to see what else Schaeffer could do if only he creates a world with better defined rules. Now Inception is the opposite end of the science-fiction spectrum of TiMER as far as budget goes, and the world of Inception, as wild as it may seem, is very specific and clear. The world of TiMER is not, and that is unfortunately something that you cannot use a lack of a budget as an excuse for. However, I respect the imagination that was put on the screen, and for sheer charm and invention, it is worth checking out.

Cinema and Caffeine #26: Jane Eyre

2011-03-14T20:43:00.001-04:00

Film: Jane Eyre

Dir. Cary Fukunaga

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Judi Dench, Jamie Bell

Caffeine: copious amounts of coffee from the wonderful Sunset Park Diner (go there; their breakfast specials and homemade donuts are fantastic and cheap!)

One of the main appeals of the Bronte sisters’ works, in particular Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, is the dark and troubled passion bubbling just under the surface of every character’s skin. This is especially striking when compared to that other beloved author of 19^th-century chick lit (and one of my personal favorites) Jane Austen; Ms. Austen’s characters are remarkably blessed and lacking in serious issues in comparison with the heroines of the Bronte sisters’ works. I’m not saying this is an all-or-nothing deal; lord knows Fanny Price of Mansfield Park didn’t have it all peaches and cream, but in comparison with Catherine Earnshaw Linton, her life was a cakewalk with a much happier ending. I’m sure this has a lot to do with the drastically different circles these authors moved in: Ms. Austen’s middle-class ball-going frivolity in the country versus the Bronte sisters’ restrained and isolated parsonage life on the moors. It’s a simple case of style versus substance, and as much as I love Jane Austen, the Brontes win out when it comes to stories of sheer emotional tumult.

Jane Eyre is one such story. The titular heroine narrates the novel frankly and honestly, chronicling her life as an orphan abused by her adopted aunt, Mrs. Reed, before being sent to the even more oppressive Lowood School, where her only friend dies of typhus. Upon graduating she has grown up into a smart, eloquent, and confident young woman. She knows she is no great beauty, but she also knows she is worth more than the unsatisfying life she has led so far. She finds that worthy life at Thornfield Hall, working as a governess to a young French orphan. The girl's guardian, as well as master of Thornfield Hall, is Edward Fairfax Rochester, who spits every word from his mouth as though it causes him great pain to vocalize anything. His dialogue is sharp and biting and comes from a dark place inside, and Rochester considers no one around him worthy of trying to understand this mysterious bitterness in his heart…except, of course, for Jane. What follows is one of literature’s greatest-ever romances (despite the age difference), which is cut off midway through by a shocking revelation that takes Jane far from Thornfield as she tries once again to live for herself, not anyone else. Jane is a heroine ahead of her times, and Rochester is a flawed and enigmatic antihero; it’s no wonder that Jane Eyre is the most adapted novel in history. But what makes this latest version stand apart?

The casting is a key element. Now, Michael Fassbender is far too handsome to play the notoriously unattractive and initially unappealing Mr. Rochester; despite his harshness and rudeness, one is immediately attracted to him, not something that is supposed to happen. This is supposed to be a story of gradual love, not instant animal attraction. There is a similar issue with Mia Wasikowska’s casting; as Jane, she is scrubbed clean of makeup and her hair is parted severely down the middle, both factors designed to rob an actress of her vanity. Yet there is still an eerie beauty in her features, fitting considering Rochester’s repeated claims that she is an otherworldly nymph, but in sharp contrast to the original source material. Once she suits up in a lacy white gown for one of the most infamous wedding scenes in literature, this supposed plain Jane is undoubtedly lovely. Obviously in a film adaptation of a love story between two famously homely characters some liberties are going to be taken, and I sure as hell am not complaining about the inclusion of Mr. Fassbender (and his tight breeches) in the cast of the film. Both actors do an admirable job bringing these oft-represented to characters to life once again, and their sexual chemistry is so heated I thought the screen was going to spontaneously combust—a crucial factor in the success of any Jane Eyre adaptation, and one that many have failed to capture in the past. Yet one of the most appealing things about Jane Eyre as a story is how relatable the titular girl is, and one reason for this is because she doesn’t possess the startling beauty of Lizzie Bennet or Emma Woodhouse. Jane Eyre has had a horrific childhood and no family or friends or people who love her when she arrives at Thornfield Hall; yet she knows that she is worth love, worth something more despite being “poor and plain and small.” Jane has many girl-empowerment type speeches relaying such sentiment, which Wasikowska caries off with the same intelligence and power that she did with similar (albeit less poetic) material in last year’s Alice in Wonderland. The rest of the cast is excellent too, in particular Judi Dench as the sweet and bubbly housekeeper, Miss Fairfax (a charming and welcome turn from her usual ball-busting roles). I also enjoyed the underrated young actor Jamie Bell’s take on St. John Rivers, a character that I feel is often misunderstood by hardcore Rochester fangirls as he attempt to rival Rochester in Jane's heart. Bell made him seem likable even in his most confused and difficult moments; I felt intense pity for him that other portrayals have not been able to elicit in me.

The film is fantastically shot, the stark beauty and muted colors of the moors on full display. The stormy skies seemed to echo the torment of the characters onscreen, and despite the dangerous vibe they gave off, they made me yearn to return to England. I also thought screenwriter Moira Buffini did an admirable job working with material that readers are so protective of. By choosing to tell the story nonlinearly, beginning with Jane’s frantic departure from Thornfield and working backwards via flashback, she took a very big chance-- but one that definitely paid off. Her script is a fresh and lively take, eliminating the voiceover crutch that so many choose to rely on but still including many of the most classic and oft-quoted lines. Without the voiceover, and with the use of some nontraditional camera techniques and angles, Cary Fukunaga made this version of Jane Eyre not only his but also the definitive one. I look forward to seeing his dark and moodily beautiful stamp on other projects to come.

Much undue criticism is given to this genre of filmmaking, the "Masterpiece Theatre" sort of literary adaptation; haters are reluctant to believe that any film featuring British people in corsets speaking poetry to each other and falling into passionate embraces in the rain can be exciting and relatable. Those who hate on such films clearly have not seen many if they think they are all the same, and should see Jane Eyre is only to prove to them that a period film can be just as engaging as a contemporarily set one. The two hours in the cinema flew by as though it were only twenty minutes. Jane Eyre was a bright spot in a hard dark midwinter for me; the film is a perfect gateway into spring and the return of beautiful weather, as well as quality movies at the multiplex.

Eye Candy of the Week: Michael Fassbender

2011-03-13T17:38:00.002-04:00

Yes, it’s Michael Fassbender week on Cinema and Caffeine, though it’s important to note that most weeks of my life are Michael Fassbender weeks. He is one of my current favorite actors as well as one of the sexiest to grace movie screens in quite some time. I first saw him in 300; when my friend May and I witnessed him leaping through the air in naught but a leather Speedo to spear a Persian warrior in the chest, we spontaneously turned towards each other and said in unison, “I want him.” From there, an obsession was born.

Fassbender is a German-born Irishman, a strange but unbeatable combination when it comes to hotness, as I love both German and Irish people, especially their accents. This made him a natural choice to play Lt. Archie Hicox in Quentin Tarantino’s alternate-history opus Inglourious Basterds. His character is a British film critic who specializes in German cinema and is fluent in the language. To watch Fassbender switch seamlessly between the two dialects onscreen is sexy as is; to see him in a perfectly fitted World War II-era uniform just adds to the attraction (I’m a sucker for a man in uniform, especially the retro ones). When his character (SPOILER ALERT!) dies after only a couple pivotal scenes, one can’t help but be disappointed that one won’t get to look at him anymore in the rest of the film.

He’s not just a (very, very) pretty face; he’s also a great actor with a knack for picking projects that are all over the spectrum as far as variety and also allow him to exhibit his devotion to the craft. Watch Hunger and Fish Tank, two little seen British indies that I have raved about recently on this very blog, to see his Method talents at work. Yet with wavy auburn hair, piercing blue eyes, a chiseled jawline, and a devilish smile, Fassbender is obviously handsome, even when starving himself to disappear into a role. It’s borderline laughable when he delivers Mr. Rochester’s, infamous query in Jane Eyre, “Your gaze is very direct. Do you find me handsome?” and Jane bluntly replies, “No.” Um, Jane, darling, you’re either blind, crazy, or both. He has a face so sharply masculine it even looks good with 19^th-century muttonchops, and his lean body fills out those tight breeches in very…distracting ways. He looks destined to be famous, because after all, it would be a shame for such good looks to languish in obscurity. Thanks to his previously mentioned role in the newest iteration of Jane Eyre, as well as his portrayal of a young Magneto in the hotly anticipated X-Men: First Class, Fassbender will probably climb from the indie ranks to the a-list very, very soon. As long as it means I get to see more of him, that is totally fine by me.

Indie on Instant: Fish Tank

2011-03-12T16:46:00.002-05:00

Netflix’s main strength as a rental service has recently changed. When Netflix first became popular, it was all about the convenience of being able to get DVDs sent straight to your house, without questing to the nearest rental store (a longer and longer quest as more and more shops shut down. This is something that many people would blame on Netflix, but that’s beside the point). Now Netflix is focusing more on their Instant Viewing service, which one can subscribe to on its own or as a free supplement to one of the many regular mailing service options. I personally don’t even subscribe to Netflix; I just log on to my parents’ account and stream to my laptop for free. (Yay for being super broke!) The great thing about the Netflix streaming service, as opposed to similar video services such as Hulu or iTunes, is the sheer amount and the variety in their Instant library.

I fell in love with Netflix in the first place not because of the convenience, but because they have literally every DVD known to mankind available. Rarer commodities that could not be found at my local Blockbuster, Red Box, or public library were almost always available on Netflix. Where else could I find old-school Peter Jackson splatter titles, or classic French cinema by Godard and Truffaut? It’s also great for television, both old, new, and pay-per-view; who needs Starz when all their best series are Instant View on Netflix shortly after airing? It’s like having unlimited access to the entire Criterion and Kino libraries, plus your hipster best friend’s increasingly pointless VHS collection of “ironic” B-movies (the VCR is over, buddy, stop being a stuck-up tool and move on).

With the advent of the streaming service’s popularity, more and more titles have because available to watch instantly, and most of them are those more rare titles; the indie, foreign, and classic films that are harder to obtain elsewhere and probably aren’t very high on most people’s physical DVD queues, mainly because they haven’t heard of them. However, because these tiny, lesser-known films are featured as Instant View, people are more likely to watch them, choosing them as secondary options in between mailings and saving the spots on their physical queues for newer releases. The purpose of this column is to highlight some of the best titles currently available to stream instantly on Netflix, in the hopes that other people will dig deeper and discover some of these gems.

Fish Tank is a tiny British indie drama that was released in 2009 to much critical acclaim but little box office, especially on this side of the pond. Directed by Andrea Arnold, the biggest name in the credits is Michael Fassbender, and he has acquired most of his fame post-Fish Tank with films such as Inglourious Basterds, the newest version of Jane Eyre, and the upcoming X-Men: First Class. At the time this film was released in cinemas last fall, very few people knew him by name, partially due to the fact that Fassbender has an uncanny talent for disappearing into gritty roles despite his Hollywood-ready good looks. The year before he starved himself to play Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s magnificent film Hunger, showing that he is a no-holds-barred actor in the vein of fellow Irishman Daniel Day-Lewis. In Fish Tank he plays Connor, a security guard at a hardware store who embarks on a live-in affair with the chav-tastic Joanne (Kierston Wareing). However, he soon develops an interest in the well-being of Joanne’s eldest daughter, fifteen-year-old Mia (newcomer Katie Jarvis), a school dropout and seemingly doomed deadbeat whose only real interest in life is hip-hop dance. Joanne verbally abuses and neglects both Mia and her precocious younger sister, Tyler, but Connor encourages Mia to express herself via her dancing pursuits while simultaneously urging her to clean up her act. He sees a diamond in the rough where her own mother only sees useless trash. As Mia can't help but be intrigued by the handsome stranger who appears to actually care about her, the two have a fiery and immediate chemistry…but of course, things are bound to go awry from there.

Andrea Arnold’s work as a writer-director bears a remarkable resemblance to her fellow Brit Lynn Ramsey's films, especially Ratcatcher, in that it almost seems stream-of-consciousness or improvised but never drags, and sheds light on the people populating the wrong side of the tracks. In other words, it’s remarkably real. It’s also beautifully and starkly lit, with a color palette that appears very deliberate and effective at creating the insular world of her characters. Lead actress Katie Jarvis, who was discovered and cast after being spotted fighting loudly with her boyfriend at a train station, reminded me of Emma Stone with her sass and attitude…if Emma Stone was a trashy character on "Skins." She throws herself into the role with utter abandon, probably because it’s not much of a stretch for her. She’s essentially playing herself; yet it doesn’t take away from her magnetism when she is onscreen. Even in her worst moments as a character, she has charisma that makes you want to like her and want her to succeed.

And of course, there’s Michael Fassbender. Oh, Michael Fassbender. Never has he looked sexier, not even in 300 when he was all abs and flowing blonde hair and flirtation with Gerard Butler. Here he looks flat-out naturally handsome, and exudes masculinity and charm. One can’t blame Mia for being drawn to him, despite the doomed inappropriateness of their interactions. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot of Fish Tank, since while some events seemed predestined and predictable, others took me completely by surprise. Nonetheless, I couldn’t tear my eyes away for the entire two-hour running time, even when the scenes before me grew increasingly painful and upsetting to watch. I do think the film could have benefited from being edited down about ten to fifteen minutes; it would have lost some of it’s drifting and lyrical mood but it also would have dragged less in some spots, particularly in the last third of the film. Even in the moments that dragged, I was still engaged, but that was mostly because I was on edge, waiting for the next bit of heartbreak or euphoria. There were far more of the former than of the latter, but that’s life, isn’t it?

Fish Tank vividly represents a very particular and very British slice of life. I feel as though the British housing estate, such as the one where Fish Tank primarily takes place, has developed a fairy-tale kingdom quality to the American audience, despite being anything but. As viewers we can't tear our eyes away, even though we know we sure as hell couldn't hack it there ourselves. As seen on "Skins," "Misfits," and even "Doctor Who," the rules of this kingdom are different than that of the middle and upper class; familial roles are either reversed or completely absent, and age is literally nothing but a number when it comes to behavior that would be inappropriate off of the estate. Self-destruction runs in the family; after all, how could Mia strive to be better when the only role model she has is a woman who values a good drink and a good fuck over her own flesh and blood? It’s utterly bleak but also fascinating, and Arnold embraces both of these factors with artistic bravado. I definitely recommend giving both this director and her wonderful film a chance the next time you find yourself with nothing to watch but your Instant queue.

Excuses for a Month-Long Blog Hiatus

2011-03-06T11:28:00.001-05:00

Not that anyone honestly cares, considering I have a total of two official followers and scant few other readers, but I have been feeling the pangs of guilt in my own chest for neglecting the blog, like a mother who has forgotten that her beloved child has been sitting in a corner eating paste and sticking crayons up her nose for a hour, and is now crying because Razzle Dazzle Rose just won't get unjammed from her nostril. Therefore, I felt it necessary to provide reasons for my lack of writing lately. They are thus:

-I just plain haven't seen any movies lately. Post-Oscar season, there is usually a lack of quality films in cinemas, considering that all of the best were just rushed out in the past couple of months. I spent the past couple of months rushing from one nominated movie to another, and thus have ran out of things to see. There's also something else I have run out of...

-Money! Tickets in New York grow more and more absurdly expensive each year (sometimes it feels more like each month). When I first moved to the city over four years ago, I was astonished that movie tickets cost eleven bucks; now we're expected to pay over thirteen dollars for a standard adult ticket, and that's not including any 3D or Imax surcharges that seem to becoming more mandatory and less of a voluntary option as studios scramble for ways to make an extra buck. I work two part-time jobs and can barely live in the city I love as it is; it was irresponsible for me to spend so much money on movies this winter as a result, and I am punishing myself for it now by avoiding the cinema. Not that avoiding it is so hard when all that's showing is Drive Angry 3D and some Adam Sandler-Jennifer Aniston dreck.

-Work! Like I said, I work two-part time jobs in publishing, which means when I'm not actually in the office I spend all my time reading books and writing about said books. It's nice work to get if you can, but it forces you to reevaluate how you spend your time. Books lately have acquired more importance in my life than film. Not only that, my periods of free time after work are growing shorter and shorter, and so television just fits better into the gaps.

-Lately I have actually acquired something of a normal person's social life. As in, I actually get off of my exceedingly comfortable couch, go outside, and interact with other humans. It's pretty cool, though also exhausting. I spent my entire day yesterday running around the city having fun with various cool people, even making a quick stop in Hoboken, NJ for delicious food and getting caught in a weird St. Patrick's Day drunken parade (since when did it become the twelve days of St. Patrick's Day? It's not for another couple of weeks, people). I am starting to lose track of what stuff is coming out in theaters, let alone finding time to go see any of them. Not complaining on this front, though.

-ARSENE WENGER'S RED WHITE ARMY! Considering how complicated my life is, what with the lack of a nice reliable full-time job with benefits and proper pay, and that fact that I haven't been on a date in what seems like decades (only a moderate exaggeration), and other drama-riffic occurances in my daily life, Arsenal FC has become more and more of a constant for me to rely on (the team's quality of playing isn't always constant, but that's another story). Yes, I just said that a football team is one of my reasons for getting up each morning. I went there. I guess instead of having a real boyfriend, I have a whole football team of them. The relationship that takes up the most of my time is my relationship with Arsenal. Instead of going to matinee movies for cheap on weekend mornings, I spend mornings drinking beer with my fellow Gooners in The Blind Pig, and it's a grand time of bro-tastic bonding and ranting and chanting, usually about how much we hate Tottenham. We're in the peak of the season, with three possible trophies to collect and upcoming clashes against Barcelona and Manchester United. It's very easy to forget your own bullshit and get caught up in the drama of the sport.

-Just plain laziness. I am tired all the time, for many of the reasons given above. It's hard to find the motivation to sit down at my laptop and write something that is really only just an exercise for my own brain. I'm already feeling winded just listing all these excuses (just kidding...a little). Also, have gotten really into knitting lately, which occupies my hands just as much as typing does, but requires far fewer active brain waves. Currently working on my first scarf...an red and white striped Arsenal scarf, of course.

Anyways, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. However, expect me to finally return to the blogosphere this weekend as a film I have been anticipating for quite some time will finally be released--Jane Eyre, starring Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska. Expect a new Eye Candy post too...most likely related to Mr. Fassbender. Mmm, yes. Until then, I leave you with my latest favorite song:

Eye Candy of the Week Special Valentine’s Day Edition: My Top Movie Valentines

2011-02-13T17:37:00.000-05:00

I have never been fond of Valentine’s Day, mainly because I’ve never been in a relationship on Valentine’s Day, and to the perpetually single the holiday is just a glaring signpost that one is bitter and alone. I’d like to think that even if I did have a significant other that I wouldn’t be hung up on good old V-Day; romantic feelings are stressful, especially expressing them, and especially expressing them through gifts and gestures. What is the other person doesn’t feel the same way, or like the gesture, or appreciate it? How much money is acceptable to spend? Why would I want to put myself through that kind of turmoil? Maybe I get off easy after all, being single.

Nonetheless, one reason that has been thrown at me when I mention my single status is that I am “too picky.” This may be true; however, I would argue that at the age of 22 I am allowed to be choosy about the men I give my valuable time and attention to. It doesn’t help that I’m a film buff, and cinema is ripe with idealized boyfriends that real-life guys could never hope to live up to. For that, I apologize to the opposite sex, yet also urge them to use this as a guideline as how to really impress girls. I’ll give you a hint: invading her personal space while she’s dancing at a bar, or trying to get her drunk enough to have a one night stand with you, don’t make the cut.

And so, in no particular order, here are four (relatively recent) movie characters on my Valentine’s Day wish list:

-Lloyd Dobler, Say Anything (1989)

The scene where Lloyd Dobler holds a boom box aloft in order to serenade dream girl Diane Court with Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” is much copied and parodied; it is undeniably iconic, just as Dobler himself is undeniably adorable. Dobler is too good to be true; all of his platonic girlfriends muse on this repeatedly in the film. Hence why he only exists in a film, as a character embodied by John Cusack at the height of his Eighties superstardom. Tall and lanky and always in his giant trench coat, he’s good looking but not stunning. It’s his personality, and in particular, his devotion and unwillingness to give up, that make him such an attractive Valentine. Even when Diane stupidly doesn’t come to her window after the Gabriel serenade, he still strives on; even when people tell him she’s too pretty and smart for such an underachiever as him, he stays determined to achieve the own thing he has eyes for: her. I personally think Diane lacks charisma and unique enough charms to be worthy of such love, but nonetheless, she is a girl that anyone wouldn’t mind switching places with, if it meant one could be the apple of Lloyd Dobler’s eye.

-John Keats, Bright Star (2009)

He’s the king of the Romantic poets; how could he not be a great Valentine? He passionate and unconsummated love with dressmaker Fanny Brawne is cut short by his poor health, which first forces him to relocate from England to Italy before it kills him at the tragic age of twenty-seven. Whishaw plays Keats as someone who burned too bright with intelligence and creativity, who seemed silent and somewhat withdrawn and yet also could barely keep his feelings from bubbling up over the surface. He expressed himself writing some of the loveliest poetry of the age, often directed to Fanny, his muse. Whishaw as Keats is tall and lean with unkempt dark hair that screams, “I am a sensitive artist with more important things to care about than a comb, and besides, I’m hot enough to get away with this anyways.” Which is fine in my book. Normally I might see this as annoying and slightly pretentious, but Keats is the original—accept no hipster substitutes. He could serenade me with a sonnet any day.

-Josh Lucas, Clueless (1995)

My favorite Jane Austen novel is Emma, mainly because it features my favorite male lead that she has created. That’s right, not Mr. Darcy—I am a Knightley fangirl all the way. I love the relationship he and Emma have, the way it is almost familial in their love for each other, and the way that love evolves into something else. Knightley is wiser and more mature than Emma, and continuously tries to make her see the sensible side of things. Very rarely does he succeed, and yet he still loves her unconditionally, even when angered by her shenanigans. Amy Heckerling’s early Nineties update of the classic story relocates it to Beverly Hills and changes Knightley into Josh, the older stepbrother of Cher (Alicia Silverstone as Valley Girl Emma). Josh is portrayed by Paul Rudd, the ageless everyman with the charming smile and excellent comic timing, who makes Knightley slightly less snobbish and more…well, cool. Who wouldn’t fall for him, even as he was correcting your knowledge of Middle-East politics?

-Mark Darcy, Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

Mark Darcy is the modern version of yet another Jane Austen-created man: tall, dark, and handsome, with a healthy dose of mysterious brooding. However, like the original Darcy of Pride and Prejudice, he also comes off as a bit of a stuck-up prick at first. Yet the uptight attitude of Darcy soon melts away due to the goofy charms of our heroine, Bridget Jones. It turns out that shyness and social awkwardness are not the same as rudeness, and that sometimes the man who you think is judging you the most actually likes you just the way you are. The moment when Mark tells Bridget these exact words, after a torturous dinner party where Bridget is harassed by her smug married friends over her singleton status, is adorably awkward and not perfectly articulated in any way, shape, or form. Yet the sweetness of the main point comes across and is the first sign to Bridget that Darcy might actually be the one for her after all. It doesn’t hurt that the quintessential Darcy himself, the epitome of handsomeness and class, plays him: Colin Firth. He’s the full package.

My New Obsession: The Last Days of Disco

2011-02-10T22:57:00.002-05:00

Whit Stillman has only made three movies, his loosely connected "yuppie trilogy" that climaxes in 1998's The Last Days of Disco, starring Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale. Stillman's films have a love-em-or-hate-em vibe, probably because the characters are all so pretentious and douchey. He specializes in creating versions of the New York elite that are so realistic it's nearly painful to watch them live their ridiculous lives; however, more than painful, it's damn amusing. To enjoy Stillman's films, you have to either actually like these people, or at least like listening to them, out of sheer hilarity. I am currently obsessed with The Last Days of Disco, watching it twice one day after I lvoed it so much that I forced it upon my roommate immediately. For a taste of the kind of rambling and hyper-literate dialogue exchanges the film contains, see below:

Cinema and Caffeine #25: Beastly

2011-02-09T22:27:00.001-05:00

Film: Beastly

Dir. Daniel Barnz

Starring: Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Mary-Kate Olsen

There’s one thing I can definitely say for Beastly: it is the first film I have ever liked Vanessa Hudgens in. She’s clearly acquired some form of acting talent since her days in the High School Musical franchise, and thank God, because most of her screen time in that trilogy is painful to behold. The Beauty who falls in love with the Beast is one of the most beloved fairy-tale heroines, especially by young girls, so it would have been a shame to not like her latest incarnation; however, Hudgens succeeds in making Lindy Taylor funny, smart, and likeable. Magical, indeed.

Beastly is based on the young adult novel by Alex Flinn and takes the familiar tale of Beauty and the Beast and relocates it to modern day New York City. Our handsome and selfish prince in this version is named Kyle Kingston, son of a famous and equally handsome (and selfish) news anchor played by go-to screen dad Peter Krause. Kyle is played by Alex Pettyfer, the new hot actor for young adult adaptations (and hopefully soon to be playing Peeta Mellark in The Hunger Games trilogy--perfect casting). It’s easy to see why: Pettyfer is unfathomably gorgeous. Tall, blond, tan, perfect abs, perfect hair...he is a cartoon Disney prince brought to life, which makes his uglification all the more tragic. His father can’t bear to look at him and so exiles him from upper crust Manhattan to (alas!) Brooklyn, where he hides in a spacious brownstone with a kindly Jamaican housekeeper and a blind tutor, played with typical Barney Stinson-aplomb by Neil Patrick Harris. Harris is the only person onscreen who can spout some of writer-director Daniel Barnz’s stylized-hipster-speak and still sound believable, yet I must say that not for one moment did I buy him as a blind man. However, it didn’t prevent me from enjoying his onscreen presence as I always do.

Credit must also be given to the young cast where it’s due. Pettyfer and Hudgens have great chemistry; I was rooting for their relationship the entire time. They were adorable together even when Pettyfer was sporting his decidedly NOT adorable look. Also great is Mary-Kate Olsen as Kendra, the witch who grows sick of classmate Kyle’s meanness and so curses him with a tattooed and disfigured face and a deadline. I would have liked for her, her sass, and her hilarious wigs to have gotten more screen time. I also would have liked to see Pettyfer made even more “beastly” considering that his buff body and pretty features still somewhat shine through when covered with scars and tattoos. I understand that making him spout hair and fangs while still living in one of the five boroughs unnoticed might be a little far-fetched, but this is New York! Anything goes, and that includes the most monstrous individuals. The fact that Lindy doesn’t recognize him (or his voice) when he reveals himself to her as ugly alter ego “Hunter” was rather bogus to me, yet since this is, after all, a fairy tale, I allowed my disbelief to be a little extra suspended.

Overall, Beastly is an enjoyable update of a classic tale, well acted despite the cheesy dialogue and with a cool music selection that will please teens used to the stylish picks on the Twilight soundtrack. If you’re a fan of the original story, it’s worth holding off on crying “blasphemy!” and checking it out. I’m glad that it gave me a chance to stop thing Vanessa Hudgens, so that I might now not have to avoid the awesome Zack Snyder’s upcoming Sucker Punch (featuring her). I’m also glad it introduced me to Alex Pettyfer, who is the new object of my cougar affections—no offense, Taylor Lautner. His heartthrob status is inevitably going to explode this winter between the release of this and the upcoming I Am Number Four, and fortunately he has some chops and charisma to pair with the pretty face that will soon be everywhere.

(Note: Beastly opens March 4^th)

Cinema and Caffeine #24: The Mechanic

2011-02-06T17:14:00.002-05:00

Film: The Mechanic

Dir. Simon West

Starring: Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Donald Sutherland

Caffeine: my usual morning coffee, brought to you by Folger’s

The Mechanic is everything a Jason Statham fan could want out of a Jason Statham movie. That being said, if you are not fond of said sub-genre of action flicks, then you probably won’t care for it too much. The violence is brutal, the dialogue is merely passable, and the women are few, far between, and usually hookers. However, I enjoyed every minute of it, and considering that there were other females in the audience sans male companions, I think it’s safe to say that Jason Statham flicks are definitely capable of crossing gender lines. In other words, if I hear one more sexist joke about how “We saw Sex and the City so you have to see this,” I will go all Statham on said jokester’s ass.

I think the main reason why women like Jason Statham movies is the man himself. Statham oozes masculinity in a way that few Hollywood leading men do today; it is refreshing in a world of scrawny pretty boys and chubby slackers to see a man who looks, sounds, and acts like a man onscreen. He manages to make baldness sexy—not a small feat, but also not surprising when one takes in his abs, arms, smirk, and growling voice, all easily capable of counteracting this one flaw. The facts are deceptively simple: not all women want to see a bunch of annoying, spoiled, Botoxed bitches whining about their “problems,” or manic-pixie-dream girls whose only function is to remind the real-life girls in the audience that we’re not cartoonishly cute or quirky enough to get a nice boy, or Katherine Heigl taking dozens of steps backwards for feminism by making all career women look like uptight shrews until they’re saved by the Hunk of the Week. Some of us just want to watch entertaining movies starring good-looking men, and those who do can appreciate a fast-paced action movie without having testicles like the men they are watching onscreen.

The Mechanic is a remake of a 1970s Charles Bronson vehicle and stars Statham as Arthur Bishop, a hardened hit man (also called a mechanic, apparently) who takes on the job of killing his mentor, Harry McKenna, played by a wheelchair-bound Donald Sutherland. Arthur does the deed without a second thought-- that is, until he encounters McKenna’s troubled son Steve at the gravesite and takes him on as a mechanic-in-training out of guilt and obligation (conveniently omitting the fact he murdered his dad, of course). Steve is played by Ben Foster, an underrated and visibly committed young actor whose sketchy mustache and hollow features are a far cry from the pretty-boy face and physique he exhibited as Angel in X-Men: The Last Stand. This role is closer to his bat-shit crazy cowboy criminal in 3:10 to Yuma, a performance that in my opinion overshadowed his more established costars in that film, Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Foster inhabits this kind of angst-ridden loose cannon it to perfection. His performance and presence in the film as an “actor,” versus just an action star, elevates The Mechanic above lesser films of its ilk, and gives Statham a worthy partner to play off of. Statham has always been a tongue-in-cheek, entertaining presence, with a deserved cult following, but with Foster to act opposite of he shows that he’s still got the actual acting chops from his earlier Guy Ritchie days.

The villains are all rather grotesque and poorly acted by unmemorable people, but they aren’t the important people here. The audience is invested in Arthur and Steve and nobody else, and that’s fine, because the central chemistry between them is electric and sometimes scary. One moment they seem like loving brothers, who even share an eerie physical resemblance; the next they are rival killing machines. I never knew whether they were going to embrace or throttle each other, and this tension is the main strength of The Mechanic. The action scenes are great and gritty, helped by Statham’s willingness to do his own stunts; his physical chops give The Mechanic a realistic vibe that CGI-heavy blockbusters lack. One memorable fight sequence, which begins with a bizarre seduction by a gigantic fellow mechanic towards Steve, was dangerous and exciting and bloody in a way that only B-movies seem to be nowadays. Oh, and it also has explosions. I do appreciate a good explosion.

I vastly preferred The Mechanic to the last Statham-featuring movie I saw in theaters, this summer’s testosterone extravaganza known as The Expendables. It was much better written and acted than The Expendables, and the bromantic elements were definitely more engaging; Foster is a much better partner for Statham than Stallone, because unlike Stallone, he knows there’s more to being a great action hero than just showing up and firing a gun. The plot of the film actually made sense, even if it wasn’t anything terribly groundbreaking; however, the ending did catch me by surprise, which was nice. I also It made me extra hopeful that confirmed word of a possible Crank 3 will get out soon, because I really can’t have too much of Jason Statham doing what he does best—kicking ass in style. Super masculine style.

Eye Candy of the Week: Zachary Levi

2011-02-01T22:23:00.002-05:00

Few men have achieved the feat of being eye candy in both live action AND animation. With his roles on NBC’s "Chuck" and in the Disney animated movie Tangled, Zachary Levi has pulled it off. Both characters are adorable, albeit in very different ways, but they have one crucial thing common: Levi, a highly underrated comedy actor who deserves to be a much bigger star than he is, brings them to life.

I first discovered Zachary Levi when I saw a billboard for “Chuck” looming over me on my walk to campus in New York a few years back. I had no idea what the show was about, other than the fact that it starred a goofy-cute guy with curly dark hair and a lopsided smile—all things I am a sucker for (it also apparently costarred a sexy blond chick, but since I am a girl, I was paying more attention to the building-sized Levi than Yvonne Strahovski, as hot as she undeniably is). I proceeded to Google this apparently new show, only to discovered that it was about one of my favorite topics—spies and secret agents! I live vicariously through any form of entertainment involving these people. It also costarred the awesome Adam Baldwin, best known as the Hero of Canton himself, Jayne Cobb, on the cult space western “Firefly,” and aired in a very convenient time slot, before one of my then-favorite programs, “Heroes.” However, my love for “Chuck” very quickly eclipsed and has most definitely outlived my love for that short-lived superhero opus.

Zachary Levi has a natural comic timing and endless charm that he brings to the role of Chuck Bartowski, former computer-fixer turned super-powered spy, thanks to his ability to “flash” on certain people, objects, and topics. It’s a very weird premise and outrageously implausible, but everyone involved in the show appears to be having a great time. The writing is bonkers but witty, the villains are over-the-top and hilarious (special props to Timothy Dalton as Volkoff), and the action sequences are simultaneously epic and slapstick. I love action movies and comedies, and “Chuck” straddles the line between the two genres without being mere parody; the show has storylines of it’s own rather than poorly cribbed cliches. Yet my favorite part of the show is Levi’s portrayal of the titular hero as endearing and brave and occasionally foolish, but always with his heart in the right place. He’s a good looking guy, good looking enough for it to believable that he could win a chick as hot as Strahovski’s Sarah Walker, but still hilariously awkward enough for his geek status to be believable.

That geek status definitely doesn’t hurt his eye candy quotient in my book. I have a soft spot for geeks. Not all of them, but the clever ones with a little je ne sais quoi; you know, that diamond in the rough sparkle. Zachary Levi has that even when he’s voicing a cartoon thief named Flynn Rider (!) in Disney’s Rapunzel revamp, Tangled. I would love to see him on the big screen in a live-action romantic comedy; he would definitely liven up that genre and provide a welcome respite to the boring, beefed-up and tan pretty boys that form the usual lineup of suspects in those kinds of movies. Levi is a thinking-awkward-girl’s teenage dream, and as much as I don’t want to see “Chuck” canceled anytime soon, I’ll be excited to see what other characters Levi can bring to life.

The Decemberists' New Album is Pretty Rockin'

2011-01-22T18:53:00.001-05:00

I feel as though Colin Meloy and his merry band of musicians must have been listening to a lot of Mumford and Sons as of late—or at least a lot of their own old records. Their new album bears more of a resemblance to the newly popular British folk rockers than it does their own most recent record, but this signals less a copycat act than a return to the sound that made the Decemberists an indie favorite.

Said new album, titled The King is Dead, is a sharp left turn from the epic bombast of their last album, 2009’s fantastical (and fantastic in general) rock opera The Hazards of Love. I had the fortune to see them play through the entire opus live at Radio City Music Hall, which gave me an appreciation for the powers of the guest vocalists, as well as the sheer scope of the sound created by the band, that doesn’t quite come through on the record. Many critics panned The Hazards of Love; I don’t think it deserves those harsh critiques in any way, but it was definitely something unexpected from the Portland, Oregon natives, mostly known for their upbeat folksy sound paired with hyper-literate and narrative lyrics. The King is Dead returns to that old sound (think “July, July!”) and then some. Nearly every track is drenched in harmonica and howling harmonies. Whereas The Hazards of Love seemed as though it should have been listened to in a dark and ominous forest, and even referenced heavy metal with some of it's harsh electric riffs, The King is Dead seems fit for a cheerful campfire singalong at sunset, the acoustic music feeling as warm and crunchy like autumn leaves underfoot.

The opening track, “Don’t Carry It All,” opens with that aforementioned harmonica and pushes onward with a steady, comforting beat. Meloy’s plaintive cries, always distinctive and emotional, are a familiar and comforting sound as he sings, “Here we come to a turning of the season/Witness to the arc towards the sun/A neighbor's blessed burden within reason/Becomes a burden borne of all and one.” It’s probably my favorite track on the record, which boasts the luxury of no skippable tunes. The free early release single, “Down By The Water,” which the band has been performing live since 2009, has some darker overtones that echo Hazard’s of Love’s “The Rake’s Song,” but is still far less depressing and thus quite refreshing. Overall, it’s definitely the first great album of 2011, and one that I’ll be listening to, probably constantly, for months to come.

Cinema and Caffeine Presents: Best of 2010 Part Three – Miscellaneous

2011-01-19T21:24:00.003-05:00

Because sometimes you’ve just got to pay homage to the weird little enjoyable things.

Best Dressed: Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska), Alice in Wonderland

Best Hair: Quorra (Olivia Wilde), TRON: Legacy

Best Chest Hair: Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), The Kids Are All Right

Best Fake Rock Band: Sex Bob-Omb, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Honorable Mention: Swipe, Tamara Drewe

Funniest Exchange of Lines:

“I just got a text from Machete.”

“What does it say?”

“You just fucked with the wrong Mexican.”

Honorable Mention:

“Do I really have to be the asshole who says we got in this thing and went back in time?”

“It must be some kind of…hot tub time machine.”

Best Weapon: Machete’s gigantic machete in, well, Machete

Honorable Mentions: Rapunzel’s frying pan in Tangled, Ramona Flowers’s giant hammer in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Best Use of Vikings: How to Train Your Dragon

Best Use of Krakens: Clash of the Titans

Best Use of 3D: TRON: Legacy

Best Use of Clark Duke: Hot Tub Time Machine

Best Place to Live: the lovely little writer’s retreat in England in Tamara Drewe

Worst Place to Live: the creepy meth-cooking town in the Ozarks in Winter’s Bone

Worst Actor: Dolph Lundgren as Gunner Jensen, The Expendables

Worst Actress: Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Creepiest Villain: Peter Andersson as Nils Bjurman, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best Revenge on a Creepy Villain: Noomi Rapace acting out Lisbeth Salander’s revenge on her rapist, Nils Bjurman, in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best Chemistry – Straight: Natalie Portman and Vincent Cassel as Nina and Thomas, Black Swan

Best Chemistry – Slash: Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg as Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg, The Social Network

Best Chemistry – Illegal: Hailee Steinfeld and Matt Damon as Mattie Ross and LaBoeuf, True Grit

Best Onscreen Family: the Eklund-Ward clan, The Fighter

Best Bromance: Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush as King George VI and Lionel Logue, The King’s Speech

Best Abs: Taylor Lautner and his werewolf pack, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Honorable Mentions: Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Bradley Cooper in The A-Team

Eye Candy of the Year – New Crush: Andrew Garfield, The Social Network and Never Let Me Go

Eye Candy of the Year – Girl Crush: Olivia Wilde, TRON: Legacy

Eye Candy of the Year – Classic Crush: Cillian Murphy, Inception and TRON: Legacy (obviously)

Movie That Required the Most Alcohol Afterwards: 127 Hours

Honorable Mention: Never Let Me Go

Caffeinated Beverage Drunk Most By Lee During Movies: Diet Coke (Maybe simple, maybe predictable...but like Cillian Murphy, always reliable to deliver the goods).

Cinema and Caffeine Presents: Best of 2010 Part Two – The Films

2011-01-17T22:11:00.001-05:00

Looking at my list, you’ll notice that a lot of this year’s most high profile awards contenders are missing. I wanted to pay tribute to a host of movies that I absolutely loved that I don’t think have gotten their due this past year. Also, I honestly don’t think that two of the biggest critic’s darlings, The Social Network and Black Swan, nearly live up to the extreme amounts of hype both have received. They are both excellent movies, don’t get me wrong. I can appreciate Aaron Sorkin’s verbose screenplay for providing some of the year’s most intelligent and entertaining dialogue, as well as Natalie Portman’s disturbing descent into madness for scaring the living daylights out of me. However, there are other films that I simply enjoyed more, that felt like more complete packages, and that stood out more in my mind after leaving the theater. These are those films.

10. Exit Through the Gift Shop

I’ve never been a huge fan of documentaries; I do like the production process involved actually making them, but watching them often bores me or brings me down. Exit Through the Gift Shop, directed by and costarring the elusive street art genius Banksy, features characters as outrageous and interesting as any scripted feature’s ensemble. Thierry Guetta, the wacky and obsessive cameraman turned wannabe artist Mr. Brainwash, is so insane and deluded that he shouldn’t be real. And yet he is, and he’s messing with our perceptions of what art truly is, one misguided show at a time. A beautiful and hilarious portrait of a vibrant world that is largely unknown to most of us.

9. Tangled

In my opinion, Tangled is by far the best animated movie of the year, and one of the best movies to boot. A return to form for Disney and their beloved princess movies, it adds a modern spin (CG animation, a ballsy princess) to all of the great old qualities we’ve come to expect and love from the House of Mouse. Alan Menken’s music is adorable, as are lead voice actors Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi, who’s chemistry is more palpable than many live-action couplings (hi, K. Stew and R. Pattz). You can’t watch Tangled and not walk away feeling warm and fuzzy on the inside, which is quite refreshing.

8. Hot Tub Time Machine

Yes, you read those four words correctly. This was by far the year’s funniest movie, and that goes a long way in my book. Each time I’ve watched it (quite a few times), I laugh even more than before at the vulgarity and sheer imagination of the screenplay. John Cusack and company hold nothing back as four dorks transported back to the Eighties inside a magical hot tub, which in itself is basically all I could ever want out of a movie. If you don’t find Crispin Glover’s one-armed doorman absolutely hysterical…well, you need to not take life, or movies, so seriously.

7. Shutter Island

Scorsese’s most recent film was released all the way back in March and so has been forgotten by many moviegoers, especially in the wake of that other, more recent Leo DiCaprio mind-bender (see number four). Yet I though Shutter Island was dark and genuinely terrifying in some points, with a great central performance by DiCaprio and a host of great supporting characters too—none of whom are what they seem. It harkens back to some of Hitchcock’s great thrillers right down to the jarring soundtrack and the questionably retro blue-screen work in some scenes—but these old-school qualities were refreshing in a sea of mostly unintelligent mush at the cinema.

6. The Ghost Writer

I have said pretty much everything I could say about The Ghost Writer in many of my previous entries. Please watch it to take in career-high performances from Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, and even Kim Cattrall. Roman Polanski might have a very questionable private life, but he is unmistakably one of cinema’s greatest storytellers. A thriller that is fully grounded in reality, making it seem all the more dangerous to watch.

5. Never Let Me Go

I cried more during Never Let Me Go than I have for any other reason in my life this past year, movies or otherwise. To me (someone who embarrassedly sheds tears far more than necessary), that is the sign of a great achievement. Beautifully shot, emotionally restrained, cerebral science fiction with a British accent. The young actors are all on top of their game; Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield broke my heart into a million pieces with each scene, and Keira Knightley shows us, with a complex supporting turn, why she should be in far more movies than she has been as of late. In a word: lovely.

4. Inception

Christopher Nolan proved that smart movies can be summer blockbusters. I only wish more filmmaker’s would follow in his shoes and actually respect their audience enough to give them a movie that makes them think. Memorable from first shot to last, with what is by far the year’s best musical score (thank you, Hans Zimmer), Inception is a movie that should be watched again and again. The film is so good, you won’t mind that it needs additional viewings in order to fully understand…and even if you still don’t, do not feel alone. Extra props to Joseph Gordon-Levitt for his acrobatic, zero-gravity hallway shenanigans.

3. The King’s Speech

An Anglophile’s dream come true…and a movie lover’s, too. It’s a simple recipe of great acting, period elegance, and a story that inspires. Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter have perfect chemistry as the three leads; the way they handle the clever dialogue lends the whole affair, which some might mislabel as stuffy, a warm and witty tone. The film sheds light on an interesting but relatively untouched part of history, and illustrates the pain of having a speech impediment as well as the drama that ensues when one’s life is affected in such a way. On paper it might not sound engaging to many, but the fact that The King’s Speech makes all these topics so enthralling is why it’s such a great movie.

2. 127 Hours

Danny Boyle has a wild and vibrant visual spin on everything he touches, whether it be a bunch of Scottish heroin addicts, a pack of rage-infected monsters, or the slums of Mumbai. Bringing back most of the creative team from his Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle has made another amazing film that is also completely unlike that one, only sharing with it the distinct Boyle stamp that qualifies him as an auteur. The editing is frenetic but never overindulgent, and the use of montage and dream sequences lends Aron Ralston’s five days of entrapment more urgency than one could ever imagine. James Franco gives possibly the year's best performance as Ralston, and even though you know what's coming, you can't help but root for him to find a better way of escape through the entire picture. One of the most stressful movies of the year is still one of the best.

1. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Scott Pilgrim will not be Oscar-nominated for Best Picture, but honestly, I think it's the year's best film. Based on the phenomenal graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World features characters relatable to anyone who’s ever been in their twenties and confused about what to do next…but it’s neither depressing nor static. It takes this tired genre and adds a healthy dose of video game effects and kung-fu battling, giving a surreal quality to a world we all thought we knew. Scott goes on a hero’s journey from slacker to warrior, forced to defeat seven deadly exes in order to date the girl of his dreams. The film turns the coming-of-age tale on its head and then sucker punches it a few times for good measure. The original songs, penned by Beck, are fun, catchy, and provide a perfect aural backdrop to the flashy visuals. Michael Cera has never been more likeable or more badass and probably never will be ever again. The supporting ensemble is equally delightful, in particular newcomer Ellen Wong as spurned ex-girlfriend Knives Chau. Everyone in the cast has superb comic chops, a rare talent that is not given enough props in Hollywood. Director Edgar Wright was the perfect fit for such insane material, which with his pension for wild editing, cheeky sound effects, and pop culture riffing; Scott Pilgrim proves he can make great films without leaning on his longtime collaborators. It’s touching, it’s funny, it’s bizarre...it’s my favorite movie this year.

Cinema and Caffeine Presents: Best of 2010 Part One – Acting

2011-01-16T16:33:00.003-05:00

My personal Best-of Lists are usually equal parts predictable awards-season favorites and silly movies that just plain pleased me. To me, the best films of the year aren’t just the ones with the most artistic merit; they’re also the ones I just flat-out enjoyed the most. Film is first and foremost a mode of entertainment, and no matter how well put together a film is, if it doesn’t entertain me, then I don’t care. Maybe a film doesn’t have the most transformative acting of the year, or groundbreaking cinematography, or an innovative screenplay, but if it made me smile for hours afterward or laugh until soda came out my nose, then it’s worthy of a spot on my list.

My list is broken up into three parts this year: Acting, Picture, and Miscellaneous (both funny stuff and technical categories). My acting choices this year stick relatively close to what the critics have also been saying, with a few surprises thrown in, people who I feel have not been properly recognized despite giving great performances.

Best Actress: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Steinfeld has more charisma and natural talent than actress three times her age. She makes Mattie Ross an iconic character for girls to look up to. Hell, people of all ages and sexes should look up to Mattie Ross. Her bravery and smarts are both funny and touching, and she makes that quick Western dialogue sound natural and easy. That’s the mark of great acting—when you can’t even tell it’s there.

Honorable Mentions: Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone; Noomi Rapace, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best Actor: James Franco, 127 Hours

Few people could make five days of being stuck in a canyon exciting to watch. Few people could make a character whose egotistical loner qualities get him into such a hard place such a compelling character, worthy of our sympathy and respect. James Franco does this, showing he’s come a long way and finally proved he’s more than just a pretty face. He’s an actor that you can’t tear your eyes away from, even when it’s literally painful to watch (that arm cutting scene is still haunting me).

Honorable Mentions: Colin Firth, The King’s Speech; Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island

Best Supporting Actress: Olivia Williams, The Ghost Writer

The Ghost Writer has slipped people’s minds this awards season, just as I had feared when I reviewed it on DVD. Yet I cannot help but champion it as one of the year’s best movies. It was phenomenally well written and directed by Roman Polanski, and featured great performances from all involved especially Olivia Williams. Williams plays Ruth Lang, the wily wife of a former Prime Minister who clearly knows more than she lets on, and has many cards to play in her hand. Williams is the queen of supporting roles, having also been wonderful in films such as Rushmore, An Education, and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll—but The Ghost Writer is her best work yet.

Honorable Mentions: Melissa Leo, The Fighter; Amy Adams, The Fighter

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter

Any year that Christian Bale is in a film it’s pretty much a guarantee that he’ll give one of the year’s best performances. In The Fighter, he throws it all out there, full stop, and does his best work since American Psycho. No small feat, even for him. His character, Dicky Eklund, is strung out on crack and unwittingly ruining his brother’s career as well as his own life; every time he is onscreen you don’t know whether to giggle at him or cry. In some cases, it’s both. To be able to run such an emotional gamut is what all actors should strive to do; for Bale, it’s easy work.

Honorable Mentions: Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech; John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone

Best Ensemble: The King’s Speech

Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush separately give two of the year’s most enjoyable performances in The King’s Speech; together, they are an unstoppable duo of bromantic and epic proportions. Firth is uptight, royal, and angry whereas Rush is loose, common, and positive. Sparks fly with their every interaction. They play off of each other with wit and energy that should be in the dictionary under the word “chemistry.” Add Helena Bonham Carter showing that she can still do the elegant, period restraint that first made her famous, as well as strong supporting turns by Derek Jacobi, Jennifer Ehle, Timothy Spall, Michael Gambon, and especially Guy Pearce, and you have the best acting ensemble of the year, bar none.

Honorable Mention: The Ghost Writer, Shutter Island

Eye Candy of the Week: Matt Damon

2011-01-16T15:38:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I forget about Matt Damon.

He’s not a showy actor; his life is not full of tabloid drama. Yet he is a reliable presence in some spectacular films, such as The Departed and The Talented Mr. Ripley. He is capable of carrying off both goofy comedy and intense drama, and playing both lady-killers and shlubs. Case in point: immediately after being named People’s Sexiest Man Alive one year, he gained forty pounds to play The Informant!’s pudgy and neurotic protagonist—very unsexy indeed. In the Bourne franchise, he has made a name for himself playing an American James Bond for the twenty-first century, though we haven’t seen a new installment in a few years. Jason Bourne is one of the most badass men not be played by Jason Statham to grace screens in recent years, and the fact that he is played awesomely against type by Matt Damon makes him all the more intriguing. It’s also easy to forget that Matt Damon has an Oscar, for co-writing Good Will Hunting with Ben Affleck. Altogether, he’s not an easy guy to pin down, so sometimes one forgets he’s around.

Yet Matt Damon has recently remerged in my thoughts, not just as an actor but also as eye candy. He has recently turned forty and like many other actors in his generation, seems to be growing mysteriously sexier as he gets older. Perhaps it is just my taste in men adjusting to enjoy more distinguished and mature types…though it could just be that he’s started walking the red carpet wearing glasses (my hot guy kryptonite). Either way, Damon’s looking mighty fine lately. He’s quite traditionally handsome, in a way that some might even call boring, but I don’t mind. His smile is as bright and white and appealing as ever, even as his blonde hair grows darker and his face more lined. Very few actors today have the old-school Hollywood appeal of classic stars like Robert Redford and Paul Newman, but Damon definitely does, and is growing into that quality more each year.

This winter, Damon can be seen playing the character of LaBoeuf in probable Best Picture nominee True Grit. He essentially faces off with Jeff Bridges in an ego contest to see who’s the tougher man of the West while hunting a fugitive played by Josh Brolin. It’s a great performance and a funny one, with Damon carrying off LaBoeuf’s spurs and fringed jacket in a way that few men could pull off. He also has a weird chemistry with his teenage costar Hailee Steinfeld, playing heroine Mattie Ross. LaBoeuf mentions wanting to steal a kiss from her while she’s sleeping and threatens to spank her, a threat that he carries out with a little too much enjoyment later in the film. My guilt over enjoying their interactions was soothed by the notion that in the Old West, the age difference probably wasn’t as creepy (or as illegal). Yet I’m not going to lie: I really hoped that the film as going to end with them tying the knot as soon as she turned 18. I really did. Yeah, I’m going to the special hell.

Before the matinee of True Grit, I was also treated to the trailer for the upcoming sci-fi thriller The Adjustment Bureau, starring Damon alongside fellow pretty people Emily Blunt and John Slattery. Based on a Philip K. Dick story, I’m still not entirely sure what the film is about, but it looks stylish and intriguing, and seems to involved Damon trying to escape from the control of Slattery and the eponymous bureau so he can live life according to his own plans (or lack thereof). Damon plays a US Senate hopeful and so is at his clean-cut move star best, all nice suits and slicked-back hair. The film looks exciting and romantic and weird and I’m really looking forward to seeing it this March, a month usually lacking in interesting films at the multiplex.

So yeah, I guess you can say I‘ve remembered Matt Damon again. And I’m glad that I have.

Cinema and Caffeine #23: True Grit

2011-01-16T15:06:00.001-05:00

Film: True Grit

Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Hailee Steinfeld, Josh Brolin

Caffeine: Coke Zero (what now, Diet Coke?)

As great of a film as True Grit is, if you go in expecting a typical Coen Brothers extravaganza, you will be very confused. Not that the Coens lend themselves to be easily stereotyped; their idiosyncratic oeuvre ranges from goofy comedies like Raising Arizona to bizarro cult classics like The Big Lebowski to cold thrillers like Fargo and Miller's Crossing. Many movies of theirs are so strange they defy description, such as the hula-hoop-loving The Hudsucker Proxy and last year’s Midwestern Jew opus, A Serious Man. Like I said, the Coens do not lend themselves to being labeled, but if they do fit one label it is this: strange. The Coen Brothers make strange movies. That is where True Grit stands out—it is surprisingly not strange. The characters seem very real and, well, gritty, in contrast to the sometimes-outlandish and always-outsize characters that populate the rest of the Coenverse, and the plot is grounded and comprehensible.

Don’t get me wrong—I am a huge fan of the Coen brothers. I’ve never seen a film of theirs that I have not liked; even Burn After Reading wormed its way into my heart through its sheer manic energy. The Big Lebowski is one of my all-time favorite films because it is so weird, because it doesn’t really make any sense, because all the people within it seem like they could only exist within a movie, and that movie could only be made by people so confident in their weirdness as the Coens. Their films have intelligence and artistic merit but are never pretentious; they have lots of violence but never seem gratuitous. Most importantly, they are unique—and proud of it. True Grit is fabulous, but it does not fit into this lineup. It’s the Coen brothers’ auteurism gone Hollywood—and good for them! It’s brought them their biggest box office hit to date, with a current domestic haul of $127 million (in contrast, A Serious Man only brought in $9 million total at the domestic box office last year). They deserve it, just as they deserved their long-awaited passel of Oscars for No Country for Old Men in 2007. The word sell-out does not apply, for they have not sacrificed artistic merit for monetary reward; they’ve only sacrificed their weirdness, and knowing the Coens, I’m sure it’s only a temporary loss.

Now, back to the movie at hand: True Grit is the story of Mattie Ross, an impressively whip-smart and brave teenage girl who vows revenge on Tom Chaney, the man who killed her daddy. To do this, she enlists a grizzled and drunken US marshal named Rooster Cogburn, as well as a cocky Texas ranger by the name of LaBoeuf. Together, they make an unlikely trio, but they all need each other if they’re going to succeed in taking down the murderous Tom Chaney. Hailee Steinfeld takes on Mattie’s quick and sassy dialogue with great aplomb, holding her own opposite the great Jeff Bridges as Rooster and many times coming out on top. Her talent is marvelous to behold; like watching Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, you get the feeling that you are privy to the birth of a star. Despite her current lack of a household name (expect that to change soon), the story is hers to tell, and the film hers to carry on her shoulders. As for the adults, Jeff Bridges further cements his status as the Coolest Man Alive with a performance that is equal parts Dude and dangerous, and Matt Damon is charming as LaBoeuf. Props must also be given to the baddies, Josh Brolin as LaBoeuf and Barry Pepper as woolly-trouser-wearing gang leader Lucky Ned. The actors are all at the top of their game, full of spit and dirt and fury.

As with all the best Coen flicks, True Grit is magnificently shot by Roger Deakins, the most unbeatable DP in Hollywood today in my book. The man knows landscape and humanity, light and dark, and all of the lovely little intricacies in between. The musical score, also by Coen regular Carter Burwell, was actually a weak spot in the film for me; it was a little overwrought and stereotypical, making the entire production feel more like a chintzy Hallmark Hall of Fame production in some moments. Fortunately, those moments are few and far between, though also not aided by the family-friendly tone that the Coens don't quite have a manageable handle on yet. The story is compelling; I have not seen the John Wayne original nor read the Charles Portis novel, so I was on the edge of my seat in many moments of sheer terror and excitement. I genuinely liked all three protagonists, especially Mattie, which cannot be said for many of the Coen brothers’ other creations. It may not have felt much like one of their movies, but it carried all the visual style and great acting that one expects from such well-practiced directors.One thing is definitely for sure: after this and No Country for Old Men, one can safely say that they've reinvigorated the Western.

True Grit is the rare Coen film that is rated PG-13, though it still contains much of their trademark violent flare. It is a film that the whole family can enjoy, and Mattie Ross is yet another great role model figure for girls in what has been a great year for female empowerment at the cinema. Though she follows in the footsteps of Alice Kingsleigh in Alice and Wonderland and Rapunzel in Tangled, Mattie is the least Disney-fied of the group and so has the least amount of glamour, as well as the least desirable wardrobe. Yet I’d like to hope that the girls whose John Wayne-loving daddies take them to see True Grit see a bit of themselves in Mattie, and what they are capable of if they use their brains and their voices to get what they want. Her story may take place over a hundred years ago, but she has more gumption and intelligence than the majority of contemporary female protagonists, something I would like to see change in cinema in 2011.

Cinema and Caffeine #22: The Fighter

2011-01-10T22:31:00.001-05:00

Film: The Fighter

Dir. David O. Russell

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo

Caffeine: Snapple Diet Raspberry Tea

The Fighter follows in a very long tradition of boxing movies reaching all the way back to the beginning of cinema, a tradition that features landmark titles such as The Set-Up (1949), Rocky (1976), Million Dollar Baby (2004), and the one to trump them all, Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece, Raging Bull. I’m not sure what it is about the sport that as so captured Hollywood’s imagination, but I’d imagine it has a lot to do with the violence. There’s something about two men exerting brute force against each other in a ring, blood and sweat splattering (often in slow-motion) while the onlookers cheer like Romans watching gladiators battle lions, that is just chock full of natural drama. Not only that, it photographs pretty damn well, too. The Fighter fits into perfectly into the lineage, with it’s laundry list of boxing-movie tropes—hard-luck protagonist from blue collar roots, familial issues, the love of a good woman, a destructive addiction, and intense fight sequences that will have your head bobbing with the punches. Yet even though it has a plot seemingly cut and pasted from other classics (despite being based on a true story), I can see The Fighter becoming a classic sports movie, not just because it is so similar to many other classics that it blend in alongside them easily, but because it features career-high performances from a host of talented actors.

Christian Bale gave a performance worthy of an Oscar in 2000’s American Psycho, yet he was not nominated for it…or for any other film, for that matter. Which is a shame, considering his career stretches back to childhood and features highlights including the title role in Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise, The Prestige, and 3:10 to Yuma. He livens up many a dumb action flick with his intense Method acting, including Equilibrium and Reign of Fire (Bale fights dragons! With Matthew "Bongos" McConaughey! Watch it immediately if you haven’t). In The Fighter, Bale delivers another standout performance, though to be frank, it isn’t shocking that Bale is able to inhabit the skin of Dicky Eklund so thoroughly. Being impressive onscreen is what he does, so often and so well that it almost seems as though it must come easy to him. Yet Dicky Eklund is not an easy character to watch in any sense of the word. A former boxer who constantly brags about the time he knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard fourteen years in the past, he now coaches his more reserved younger brother, Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg). Dicky is convinced that he’s about to make a comeback, convince he’s still the "Pride of Lowell," but really, he’s more of a laughingstock. His actions onscreen elicit equal amounts laughs and tears, which is a great balancing act, even for Bale. Dicky’s legacy and his attitude and, worse of all, his crack addiction, are bringing not just himself down out of the spotlight and into the gutters, but they’re dragging Micky down, too. Micky’s fierce Irish loyalty forces him to acquiesce to the demands of his brother and his manager mother time and time again, often at his own expense. All he hears every time he enters the ring is Dicky’s name, Dicky’s voice, Dicky’s past as a fighter—nothing of his own.

Eventually, Micky learns to stand up for himself and take his career into more capable hands—his own—thanks to his tough-love bartender girlfriend, Charlene. It’s nice to see Amy Adams stretch herself to play a character that isn’t all sugary-sweet princess goodness; she goes toe-to-toe with a venomous Melissa Leo as brassy matriarch Alice Ward and her gaggle of bitchy, big-haired daughters and comes out impressively well. I’d like to see her play an all-out villain next, just to see her pull even more tricks out of her surprisingly deep bag. As for the leading man, Wahlberg has been championing the story of Dicky and Micky as a feature film for years, and stuck by the project as a revolving door of directors came and went. His tenacity in seeing it through as a producer and an actor comes through in his performance, possibly the best yet in a career that has been constantly evolving in recent years. His chemistry with Bale is so full of brotherly love (and a little bit of hate) that one’s eyes well up during many of their big scenes together. I can’t remember the last time I saw two brothers so believable as family onscreen. The world of Lowell and this family seems vivid and true, as though director David O. Russell just set up shop in their homes and started shooting guerrilla style. The accents are thick, the hair is big, and the desire to do better is overwhelming. The soundtrack relies mostly on rock tracks rather than an instrumental score, and the camera work roves about, capturing every moment of every brutal fight, whether it be in the ring or in someone’s living room. It’s interesting to see someone so predisposed to the bizarre as Russell (most recently: I Heart Huckabees) put his talents to use for such a real, gritty tale.

The Fighter mimics all the best elements of any boxing story while presenting them with such natural performances and camera work that one can almost be tricked into thinking they are watching a documentary, or even the Eklund-Ward family’s own super-dysfunctional home movies. During the end credits one gets a brief glimpse of the real Dicky and Micky, which drives home the achievements of the actors portraying them onscreen—they’re spot-on. Yet as I previously noted, even Christian Bale’s great performance didn’t shock me or really excite me in any way, because he is consistently great. The movie’s plot didn’t shock me, because I’ve seen it before. Should a movie be faulted for such predictability, even if that predictability is utilized to maximum potential? Is The Fighter the only movie where it’s predictability can even be cited as strength? Either way, it is a great story, told in a way that is satisfying visually and emotionally. It isn’t changing the future of cinema, or even sports movies, in any way, but in the case of this film, that’s perfectly okay.

Eye Candy of the Week: Cesc Fabregas

2011-01-03T21:41:00.001-05:00

My beloved Premier League boys, Arsenal Football Club, have gotten off to a fabulous start in 2011. Their 3-0 victory over Birmingham City on New Year’s Day was an exciting showcase of masterful football from the Gunners, and was their second victory of the week after a great 3-1 win over Chelsea that Monday (there was also a 2-2 draw with Wigan during the week, but we’ll ignore that one, shall we?) They’re currently ranked third in the League, two points behind leaders Man United and Man City, but hopefully with the New Year this will change. Arsenal has been experiencing a trophy drought since 2005, and I would love to see them close out the season with a trophy.

One of my favorite players on any soccer field is Arsenal captain and Spanish international Cesc Fabregas, whose red number four jersey I wear on match days to support the club. Twenty-three-years old and a native of Barcelona, he has been playing for the Gunners since age 16. At the start of this New Year, he also has a World Cup to his name, being responsible for the assist that led to Andres Iniesta’s goal in the 2010 World Cup Final and handed the victory to Spain for the first time ever. I like watching him play for a variety of reasons, some more superficial than others. He is a daring player, often the receiver of yellow cards for his aggressive tactics. He happens to be on the opposite end of aggression often too, often injured in the line of duty by players who are clearly just frustrated that Arsenal is such a better team and want to take it out on the young, sexy captain. At least, that’s what I assume. Or maybe they find his scruffy face, dark eyes, and fit body as appealing as I do and thus cannot resist the urge to jump on him. I know I would if they allowed me on the pitch! Just saying...

Unlike many womanizing footballers, that cheat on their wives with hookers and are issued paternity suits on a regular basis, Fabregas has been with the same woman since he was a teenager. Carla Dona Garcia is two years his senior, has a degree in psychology, and tries to stay relatively out of the spotlight; according to her, it’s his job to be famous and not hers. The fact that he has chosen such a classy and intelligent woman to be his WAG raises Fabregas above other footballers not just as an athlete, but also as a man. Cristiano Ronaldo may be inarguably one of the prettiest men in the world, and one of the best footballers, but he’s also a bit of a scumbag. Fabregas is the full package—hotness, athleticism, and class. That Carla chick is one lucky lady, indeed.

Fabregas recently came back to the starting lineup from a recent bout of hamstring trouble and scored one goal against Chelsea and also assisted in the own goal that Birmingham inflicted upon themselves on New Year’s Day. Yet recently FC Barcelona has shown interest in buying Fabregas away from the Gunners, apparently polishing up a deal worth some 45 million pounds and leaving their number four jersey empty in case he chooses to take it. I’m sure to return to his homeland to play for one of the world’s greatest clubs is very tempting, but as a fan of Arsenal (and of Barcelona rivals Real Madrid) I hope rumors stay rumors, and Fabregas stays put in Highbury for awhile. It would be a loss of eye candy to the Gunners, to London, and to the Premier League.

Cinema and Caffeine #21: Black Swan

2011-01-02T21:17:00.001-05:00

Film: Black Swan

Dir. Darren Aronofsky

Starring: Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey

Caffeine: Diet Coke (I feel like I should just rename the blog “Cinema and Diet Coke,” but it just doesn’t have the same alliterative ring, does it?)

Natalie Portman has been acting since she was a little girl, but she has never seemed so young, naïve and girlish onscreen as she does in the first half of Black Swan. Her ballerina character, Nina Sayers, speaks in a squeaky, nervous whisper that Mathilda, the wise-beyond-her-years teen gunslinger Portman played in 1994’s The Professional, would scoff at. With her small stature and undeniably beautiful features, Portman is a delicate presence in any film, yet always with a mature grit spread on top. One feels as though she could play a Jane Austen heroine just as well as she could kick a hundred ninja’s asses (which makes her a perfect fit for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a film she is producing but sadly not starring in).

Yet that toughness, which I think comes from over a decade in the acting business, is completely absent from Nina Sayers at the start of the film. She is a pristine and professional dancer, but she lacks a backbone as well as a sense of freedom, or even a sense of herself outside of the world of dance. She allows the older, stronger figures in her life, mainly the ballet director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel), and her perfectionist mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), to overwhelm and dominate her every action. They are bigger than her in personality, age, and stature, and they use it to maximum effect to pound Nina into the ground. Portman’s wide-eyed face has never conveyed such suffering before, even if at first that suffering is in great denial.

Nina lives to dance, and to get the lead in the new production of Swan Lake, but once she nabs that part she begins to self-destruct rather than to blossom. Thomas urges her to get in touch with her wild and sensual side in order to play the film’s titular evil twin of the good White Swan. Erica restrains her every action more than ever in order to keep her in good form, cutting her fingernails too sort to keep her from scratching (an old habit in stressful times) and even sleeping in her bedroom. Lily, a rival dancer played by Mila Kunis who naturally embodies every quality of the Black Swan that Nina so struggled to understand, tries to share her secrets to loosening up and enjoying life, but it mostly only adds further complications to Nina’s life. Nina is under so much pressure it’s no spoiler to imply she might explode—indeed, the process leading to that explosion is what constructs the twisty-turny haunted house that contains the plot of Black Swan.

Black Swan is all about Nina’s journey, and by extension Portman’s as an actress. She is in nearly every shot of the film and the entire plot is screened through her warped vision; she carries it on her literally bony back and is tortured by it through the entire film. It is the sort of performance that screams Oscar bait, and Portman follows the Good Actress Rulebook to a T, her thin body spinning like a real prima ballerina’s, living the life of a professional dancer onscreen down to the last, perfectly studied detail. I cannot imagine the training and starvation she must have had to go through in order to immerse herself into the role, and it is only because she does fully immerse herself and give her a career-best performance that it succeeds in being more than just an attention-getting stunt. For this is essentially a torture movie, for everyone and everything seems to be designed to put Nina through the most traumatic wringer possible, whether it be physically or mentally or even sexually. I do feel that the sexual aspects, in particular the already-infamous sex scene between Nina and Lily, were somewhat over the top, designed to draw in a male audience that normally would shy away from a ballet picture. I understand Nina’s sexual awakening is important to her embodying the Black Swan as well as growing up, but of the various scenes to that degree that occur throughout the film, that one felt the least integral to the plot.

Black Swan does not need the sexual hype in order to impress; it can succeed on other merits. Mainly the performances, especially those of Portman and Cassel, played out against Clint Mansell’s edgy take on Tchaikovsky’s original Swan Lake score that wills end shivers down your spine, and the trademark Darren Aronofsky bleakness that invades your mind and sticks there long after the credits end (see Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler). It is a step forward narrative-wise from some of his more nonsensical pieces like The Fountain, maintaining that film’s dramatic visuals and fantastical elements while pairing them with a story that is far more comprehensible than that one (in my opinion, one of the most overrated films of recent memory). Sometimes the plot grows a little too overwrought, and the line between real and imaginary a little too blurry, but overall Black Swan is by far the director’s best effort to date at blending art house with entertainment. Some of the symbolism is also too obvious, in particular the film's reliance on black and white to convey good and evil, innocent and adult, sweet and sexy, but such heavy-handedness is part of the plot of Swan Lake, and naturally must play a role in Black Swan as a result.

However, it all comes back to Natalie Portman. Her transformation will haunt you. Especially if you go into the film amped up on a gigantic movie-sized Diet Coke, jittering the entire time as both caffeine and nerves course through your veins. It lived up to the extensive hype, which is more than I can say of many similar films, including ones from Aronofsky previously. However, it is not easy to watch, and seems far longer than its barely two hour run time as a result. It’s a classy take on torture porn, and while I appreciate the classy and artistic take on the genre, I am glad that not every film that comes along is as stressful to watch, and I do not think it merits repeated viewings. It is an experience, but thank God it is not an extended one.

Cinema and Caffeine #20: Tangled

2010-12-29T12:52:00.001-05:00

Film: Tangled

Dir. Nathan Greno & Byron Howard

Starring: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy

Caffeine: Diet Coke

In the post-Pixar era Disney has been struggling to reinvent itself as an animation house. Last year's The Princess and the Frog, a return to the much-beloved princess genre as well as the hand-drawn animation that a generation of little girls (myself included) grew up on, didn’t do as well as hoped, despite being a sweet story with a great heroine, a hot prince, and a unique and sassy setting in 1920s New Orleans. The reason being that The Princess and the Frog was too old-fashioned; it had all the landmarks of a classic Disney picture, true, but that’s not enough to capture a modern audience anymore. Tangled has succeeded where that film did not, both at the box office and as a film, because it combines the old classic tropes with some delightfully modern features, the most obvious being the computer-animated style available in both regular and 3D versions.

Tangled is a newfangled take on the Rapunzel legend, starring the voices of Mandy Moore, as the long-haired captive princess, and Zachary Levi, most notable for his starring role on NBC’s Chuck, as the charming rogue Flynn Rider. Flynn is not a prince coming to sweep Rapunzel off her feet; he is an orphan turned money-hungry thief and adventurer who narrowly escapes pursuit by climbing into Rapunzel’s tower. When Rapunzel was a baby princess she was stolen from her family by a vain old crone named Gothel, voiced by Donna Murphy with sass and zeal. Rapunzel’s hair holds magical healing powers, and Gothel wants to raise her as her own solely to utilize that special hair for immortality and beauty. Once the hair is cut, it won’t grow back—it turns brown and loses all power, so Gothel instills Rapunzel with the fear that ruffians will kidnap her for her hair if she steps outside the tower.

Enter Flynn Rider. After a few well-placed hits to the head with a frying pan and a lot of banter, the pair strike a deal: If Flynn takes Rapunzel on her first journey outside the tower, Rapunzel will return the crown he has stolen from the palace to him, the ironic part being that the crown rightfully belongs to her. Along the way various plot points are cribbed from Disney classics such as Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and Snow White, but given plenty of twenty-first century spark. Rapunzel may be delicate and pretty and blond, like the most classic Disney heroines, but she also has attitude—she’s no bland goody-two-shoes like Cinderella or Snow White. She also can deal out a mean whack with that frying pan and rescues Flynn Rider time and time again—more times than he rescues her, come to think of it. Yet Flynn is also no cipher, no mere pretty male face just plopped into the story to represent an ideal rather than a full-formed character, but flawed and funny just like his female counterpart. He even narrates the story, putting him firmly on equal footing with his princess as a protagonist. The development of their relationship from distrust to friendship to (spoiler alert!) love is as realistic as any such fairy tale could portray it.

The animation is bright and colorful, the computer-rendered technology doing more for the look of the film than hand-drawn animation ever could (sorry, old-school animators). Cheap and lazy computer animation can be some of the most unappealing work imaginable, but Disney does not slack in that regard. The film’s token funny animals, Rapunzel’s pet chameleon Pascal and a grudge-holding horse named Max, don’t talk, but still ooze with character. A scene with Rapunzel and Flynn on a boat surrounded by floating lanterns is as gorgeous as any live-action scene, especially when viewed in 3D. As I previously mentioned, the voice talent is delightful; the two leads bubble with chemistry and Donna Murphy makes Mother Gothel into one of the most memorable and downright cool villains in recent memory, with the Tony-winning pipes to boot. Mandy Moore’s pop-star past is also put to good use on the many great musical numbers penned by the legendary Alan Menken, and even Levi manages a good showing on his and Moore’s central love ballad, “I See the Light.” My personal favorite track is “I’ve Got a Dream,” a powerhouse inspiration of a song sung by Moore, Levi, and a pub full of drunken warriors. It puts a raucous and fun spin on what could have been an overly corny tune. Grace Potter, an indie musician who has risen to moderate fame with her band the Nocturnals, also delivers a great end credits tune in “Something That I Want.” It’s definitely the most memorable Disney soundtrack I’ve heard in years, and deserves at least one Best Original Song Oscar nom.

Tangled is the best Disney animated feature in years, and represents a return to form after the Pixar era while also showcasing some of the innovative storytelling techniques gleaned from that partnership. I personally preferred it to this year’s Pixar outing, the much-vaunted Toy Story 3, which appears to have a lock on the Best Animated Film Oscar this year. However, I greatly suggest that audiences give Tangled a chance too. Every aspect of the production filled me with warmth and good cheer, and made me excited to see what Disney will tackle next.

The Greatest Film Ending of All Time

2010-12-20T10:39:00.003-05:00

Film: Manhattan (1979)

Dir. Woody Allen

Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep

A lot of younger people, it is unfortunate to say, primarily associate comedy legend Woody Allen with the scandalous affair he had with the adopted daughter of then-wife Mia Farrow in the 1980s. They are unaware that in the 1970s Allen was on the winning streak of his then-burgeoning (now winding down) career, releasing four classics consecutively in the years 1977 through 1980. These more ignorant audience members would probably find Manhattan to be the ickiest of these movies, but it is by far my favorite. It is a near-perfect film, and has one of the most satisfying conclusions I have ever seen onscreen.

Manhattan opens with what is also one of my favorite movie beginnings, a moody black-and-white montage of 1970s New York scored by Gershwin and narrated by Allen as a love letter to the city he loves and hates and can’t imagine being without. He seesaws between the good and the bad, ranting and raving in typical Allen style, before concluding, “New York was his town, and it always would be.” Allen’s character, Isaac Davis, is forty-two but dating a beautiful 17-year-old girl named Tracy, played by Mariel Hemingway with elegance and poise far beyond her years. Tracy seems to have her life far more figured out than Isaac or any of his similarly middle-aged, neurotic, intellectual and yet emotionally immature friends. Isaac’s heart is torn between her and Mary, played by Diane Keaton with her usual brand of irresistibly charming dysfunction. When Isaac initially leaves Tracy for Mary, it might seem more appropriate on some levels (and obviously more legal), but it also seems ominously doomed to failure.

In the end, Isaac realizes that Tracy is actually the girl he needs, a revelation that might seem strange to those unfamiliar with the film, but is an extraordinarily apt conclusion to the film’s story. In a classic long take, Isaac lies on his couch speaking into a video recorder, chronicling the things that make life worth living, before stopping on, “Tracy’s face.” He lies there, letting the microphone fall to his chest, and silently contemplates this realization. The scene is all the more touching when you realize how very rare it is for any Allen character to fall silent on film. What follows is an epic race through the streets of Manhattan, set to more iconic Gershwin music, as Isaac tries to track Tracy down before it’s too late. The final scene, where Isaac catches Tracy as she prepares to leave for London and attempts to convince her to stay, contains a lovely, reassuring speech by Tracy to Isaac as she’s about to walk out of his life for the time being. This little scene is what cements the ending of Manhattan as one of my all-time favorites.

Isaac worries that Tracy will fall in love with someone younger and better looking in London, or that she’ll never come back, or any number of tragic conclusions that are whirring around in his damaged psyche. He worries that she’ll change, and all the little things he loves about her now will die away. Tracy simply smiles serenely and says, “Not everyone gets corrupted. You’re got to have a little faith in people.” When the camera cuts to Isaac’s reaction, Allen musters the slightest, most enigmatic smile, and the audience can’t help but feel that everyone and everything will be all right. Not just for them, but for the rest of the damaged people inside that wild, beautiful city.

New York was, at that time, in the midst of its darkest hour, ravaged with crime and on the verge of economic failure. Yet the final shots of Manhattan, a bookend of a montage with the same luscious Gershwin music overtop, remind you that the city and the people living in it never gave up. Some things are worth fighting for and saving. The city of New York and Isaac and Tracy’s relationship are alike in that regard. Every time I hear Tracy say those lines, I too regain a little faith in people. To me, that is the definition of the power of cinema. So few modern films have affected me in the same way, and I doubt few will in the future either.

Eye Candy of the Week: Matt Smith

2010-12-17T20:37:00.001-05:00

Yes, believe it or not, the Eleventh Doctor’s biggest fangirl hasn’t yet singled him out for the Eye Candy honor. This week he has finally ascended to the top of the queue.

Why, might you ask?

To be quite frank, I blame Christmas. We Whovians have gone without a new episode since spring. It’s been about six months. We’re experiencing heavy-duty withdrawals. We’re taping all the reruns that air on BBC America, even if we’ve seen them numerous times before. We’re watching outtakes, interviews, and video clips from Doctor Who Confidential on YouTube. We’re reading as many spoilers for series six as we can get our hands on, drinking them up with a healthy dose of salt.

Actually, this could all be just me. Either way, none of this is enough. What we fans really need…is a Christmas miracle. Or at least a Christmas special.

Fortunately, this year, for the first time, BBC America will air the Doctor Who Christmas Special on actual Christmas Day, instead of delaying it for Stateside Whovians. This is already a cause for celebration; it only adds to my already ridiculous excitement that this year’s special looks TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME. (Pardon my language, but no PG-rated euphemism does my feelings justice). I keeps seeing promos on BBC America, and have to force myself to stop fast-forwarding through the commercials on all my taped Who reruns in order to bask in the gloriousness of the upcoming episode…every time. I’ve seen the commercial probably around two dozen times now, but every time I need to stop and watch it, eyes and mouth wide like a little girl who’s just caught Santa crash-landing in the fireplace. Doctor Who indeed possesses all of the same magic and joy as Santa Claus; only instead of a fat and bearded old man, we get a lean young man in a bow tie. Color me pleased as holiday punch.

This year’s special is based loosely on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and guest stars Dumbledore himself, Michael Gambon, as a very Scroogelike character. I love Dickens, Gambon, Who, and Christmas, not necessarily in that order, so I was basically on the edge of my couch in excitement by Halloween. The dark and intriguing promos, with the perfect balance of festive cheer and creepy phantasmagoria, look like the epitome of what makes a Steven Moffat episode of Doctor Who so brilliant and so different from those written by Russell T Davies. Don’t get me wrong; I adore Davies as a television writer. He’s a personal hero of mine, and a certifiable genius, but there’s something very light and frothy about his Christmas specials, even the sad ones (see my previous blog entry on how “Voyage of the Damned” encapsulates everything about Doctor Who, especially the Davies era). Moffat’s episodes always have very dark, even scary, overtones, and push the family-friendly boundaries of the show. The shadowy and mysterious Christmas advertisements make the holiday episode appear to be no exception. It’s the first Christmas special to not be written by Davies or starring David Tennant, and I’m excited to see what my beloved new gang will do with it.

Nonetheless, that has nothing to do with Matt Smith being hot. That just explains why he has been in the forefront of my thoughts despite his lengthy absence from the airwaves. Now, Matt Smith is not what some would call traditionally handsome. He’s tall and gangly and bowlegged with hair that has a mind of it’s own. These conveniently are all things I find irresistibly attractive; my fetish for tweed and suspenders does not help matter in the slightest. His portrayal of the Eleventh Doctor is sweet and adorable and oozes charm from every pore. It doesn’t help that I’ve met Matt Smith in person, and can safely say that the guy is just as delightful as one would hope, and genuinely appreciative of every single one of the show’s millions of fans. He signed autographs for as many people as he could before security dragged him away, and seemed genuinely excited and humble to do so, appreciative that we all wanted to meet him so badly. He bounced around frenetically, chatting with anyone, barely able to contain his excitement over being in New York for the first time in addition to being the new Doctor. He has a wicked sense of humor that can be seen in any interview or Doctor Who Confidential clip (one of my favorites is the video where he and Karen Gillan sing the Doctor Who theme; their rendition of “Have Yourself a Very Little Christmas” with Arthur Darvill is included below and smile-inducing for even the Grinchiest amongst us). Doctor Who never ceases to make me feel better when I am down, and Matt Smith’s episodes do this better than any other Doctor’s…even the sex god known as David Tennant.

It’s not just Matt Smith’s looks that are appealing; it’s his talent and personality as well. He seems like a guy I would love to just sit down and have a beer with while watching some soccer on the telly. If I got to make out with him afterward, that would just be a bonus. He’s a total package, and will always be my Doctor. If you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, tune in on Christmas Day and see for yourself.

Cinema and Caffeine #19: TRON: Legacy

2010-12-17T15:57:00.000-05:00

Film: TRON: Legacy

Dir. Joseph Kosinski

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde

Caffeine: Seattle’s Best Soy Latte

The initial reviews for TRON: Legacy have not been good, and that’s putting it mildly. Sci-fi blog io9 called it “a colossal failure of moviemaking,” and this is a blog that has been hyping this film’s release for months. So I feel in the minority with my opinion, which is definitely the opposite.

I loved TRON: Legacy! And you know what? I am not ashamed to say so.

Charlie Jane Anders over at io9, whose opinions I generally agree with, claims that this movie doesn’t have a speck of fun in it, which I find amusing considering I went at 11:30am, by myself—possibly the least fun way to view a blockbuster—and still had a delightful time. This can possibly be credited to the caffeine rush to the brain via the delicious soy latte I was chugging, but not entirely. It was more fun than I’ve had at the movies since this summer’s double-whammy of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Machete. It is not a masterpiece of moviemaking by any sense of the word, but I wouldn’t call it a “colossal failure.” In my review of the newest Narnia movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I cited the holiday season as a traditional time for fantastical fluff for the whole family to enjoy. Dawn Treader failed on that front, both as a story and as a spectacle. The PG-rated TRON: Legacy has a screenplay to rival Dawn Treader’s in awfulness, and first-time director Joseph Kosinski clearly has no idea what to say to actors who aren’t computer-generated to get a lifelike performance out of them, but the film definitely does not skimp on the three-dimensional spectacle. Unlike Dawn Treader, it is not boring. As a whole, I’d describe it as the epitome of a good dumb romp.

The first TRON opened in 1982 and bombed spectacularly, but stunned the few viewers who went to see it with it’s crazy visual stylings, lightyears ahead of it’s cinematic peers. Because of this, TRON became a cult classic. I watched it a few years ago and enjoyed it for the retro special effects and the sight of a young Jeff Bridges fighting off humanized computer programs inside a giant arcade game world, known as the grid. Jeff Bridges appears in the new TRON in two guises: his original character Kevin Flynn, only now twenty-eight years older and clad in zen robes he stole straight from Obi-Wan Kenobi’s closet, and Clu, a CGI-faced Bridges computer program who hasn’t aged since 1982. Clu is dead set on taking over the world of the Grid and setting his fellow programs loose on the real world. Or something. As I said before, the screenplay is nonsensical, and the majority of the dialogue is awful and ridden with seemingly every cliché the group of writers could muster. Jeff Bridges, one of the most charismatic and cool actors alive, has a hard enough of a time trying to make these words sound smooth. He does abide, but barely. Garrett Hedlund, playing Bridges’s twenty-something son Sam, tries his best, but in many cases doesn’t quite succeed in sounding believable. Nonetheless, he bears a startling family resemblance to Bridges and their father-son rapport does ring true. Better with the technobabble is hot-as-hell actress Olivia Wilde as program Quorra, who has a spark to her that one can’t help but find attractive; with this and next summer’s Cowboys and Aliens, she appears to have ascended to geek-chick royalty. I was also glad to see always-enjoyable Michael Sheen as Zuse, a flamboyant albino nut-job who plays air-guitar with a cane and chews the electrical scenery like his life depends on it. He too manages to make that absurd dialogue sound awesome, mostly because he clearly enjoys being so absurd himself.

Now, about those visuals. I am not an advocate of 3D in most cases; I find it unnecessary and headache inducing, especially in the half-assed retrofitted format, where it comes off as just a lazy way for the studios to grab a few extra bucks from the easily impressed general public. Yet I loved the use of 3D in this movie. The only film I’ve seen use the technology better is Avatar, and I honestly enjoyed this movie more than that one. The real-world portions of the film, which drag slightly and suffer from the worse dialogue in the entire movie, are shot normally (with one exciting bonus: the uncredited cameo of sexy go-to baddie Cillian Murphy as Edward Dillinger, the proposed villain of any future installments). Once Sam enters the Grid and goes down the proverbial rabbit hole, the 3D springs to life in a big way. The most obvious comparison is the famous switch from black-and-white plains of Kansas to the colorful world of Oz, only with a lot more electricity and explosions. Like Avatar, it doesn’t make use of the technology for cheap thrills like pointy objects flying at you. Well, plenty of discs do go zooming around, but they trace manic lines all over the screen, not just in your face. Instead, the 3D is used to make those lightstrips glow with extra power; the lines of the grid create a landscape that could not have been dreamed of in 1982. If you’re going to spring for one 3D experience this year, you should definitely make it this one (it’s also available in IMAX 3D, if you really want to splurge). That much-hyped lightcycle race lives up to it’s promise, accentuated by Daft Punk’s funky musical score, which is a mix of their own electronic dance gems and the epic orchestral elements of Han Zimmer’s equally badass Inception score.

For most of TRON: Legacy I felt as though I had been swallowed up into the world of the grid itself. I was thoroughly engaged even when I didn’t know quite what was happening. I didn’t take it seriously in any way, but I’d definitely want to watch it again, which is more than I can say about some of the dark, Oscar-caliber films also in theaters. It put me in a good mood; I was smiling widely and quietly giggling for most of the film, and not just because the dialogue was ridiculous (I don’t think I can drive home enough times how bad that screenplay is. I wish I could have taken a crack at it). Despite the awful screenwriting, the artistic team puts their all into creating an immersive experience while showcasing special effects just as groundbreaking as the original's. I was taken to another world, and I didn’t want to leave. I hope they scrounge up enough box office to make a sequel, and not just because I want to look at Cillian Murphy again (and actually, Olivia Wilde, too). The thing is, TRON: Legacy is essentially more of an extended Daft Punk music video starring some hot and stylish actors, than an actual narrative film. As long as you go into it expecting that kind of vibe, just screw what the legit critics say and trust me: you’ll have a great time.

Cinema on DVD: Winter's Bone

2010-12-15T21:49:00.003-05:00

Film: Winter’s Bone

Dir. Debra Granik

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Garrett Dillahunt

In the cold months leading up to Oscar night it’s a worthy pastime to seek out those tiny indie films one missed during the year that are now on DVD. Many of them become buzzworthy awards contenders. One such film is Winter’s Bone, which stars 20-year-old Jennifer Lawrence in the breakthrough female performance of the year.

The 2010 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Winter’s Bone is most notable for presenting two new and exciting talents on the Hollywood scene—Lawrence and her director, Debra Granik, who previously received accolades for her debut film, Down to the Bone (her film’s titles clearly take after one another). Granik brings her audience on a journey to the gloomy and eerily beautiful Ozarks, to a small community of outlaws where the primary source of scanty income is cooking crystal meth. Ree Dolly’s dad does it, and right he’s out on bail from jail, after putting the rundown house his mentally ill wife and three kids live in up for collateral. If Jessop Dolly doesn’t show for that court hearing, his family will be thrown out of the tiny cabin they call home and left to fend for themselves in the wild woods. They already barely have enough to eat, surviving on the kindness of the few neighbors who aren’t criminals as well as Ree’s hard work and bravery. She never asks for charity, but will accept in when it is offered with gratitude, and always try and find a way to make the most of it.

Jennifer Lawrence absolutely disappears into Ree’s baggy cargo pants and hand-me-down animal tee shirts, skinning squirrels and chopping wood like an expert. Her performance is not showy or reliant on tics and quirks; it’s so natural and seamless that Winter’s Bone feels like a documentary, not a feature film. Lawrence’s husky voice sounds rough and incongruous when compared with her youth and femininity, but matches the defiant expression in her eyes as she goes from door to door asking questions of people she knows would kill her in a heartbeat if she asks the wrong thing. Her round cheeks, long blonde hair, and pouty lips are strangely pretty, yet they don’t feel out of place in the world Granik has placed her in. That world is a dirty, dangerous world, where merely asking your neighbor where your missing father is can land you a beating you’ll never forget; yet it too is strangely pretty. The rugged terrain is perpetually bathed in a grey twilight that shines weakly through the bare trees, as though the entire town knows it’s dying slowly. The rotting wood of the huts and cabins, the broken-down toys and appliances littering every front yard, the sagging faces and bodies of so many tired and impoverished people throwing back whiskey in the local tavern until they’re too drunk to stand up in their holey boots anymore…I have never been to the Ozarks, but I felt a part of that world almost instantaneously, so perfectly was it portrayed by Granik and her artistic team. I’m sure as hell grateful I don’t live there, and I wouldn’t even want to visit that depressing area in real life, but to visit it for the short duration of a film is incredible. The cinematography, art direction, and creepily evocative folksy music all perfectly illustrate Ree’s journey and emphasize the bleakness of her seemingly impossible quest.

The only person willing to help Ree at all is her uncle, known as Teardrop. Teardrop is played by John Hawkes, most memorable for charming the pants off of Miranda July in the quirky romance Me and You and Everyone We Know. His character is ragged and tired but still dangerous when riled, a perfect fit with Hawke’s craggy face and hollow eyes. Like Lawrence, he does not seem to be acting at all—in my opinion, the sign of a truly great performance. He helps Ree, at first reluctantly but eventually loyally, as she tries to track down the faithless Jessop and save her family from utter destitution. It’s a depressing thought, that a teenager be forced to take on such life-or-death opportunity, yet one can’t deny that it is real.

Realism is both the strength and weakness of Winter’s Bone. The realism of the world and the lead performances are obviously an asset to making such a tough concept palatable. Yet by casting so many people who clearly aren’t actors (or are at least very inexperienced ones) just because their faces contain character and fit the landscape makes some of the supporting characters less compelling. Their dialogue, while well written, sounds stiff and overly rehearsed, or as if it is being read from cue cards. It appears that Granik sacrificed realism in performance for realism in appearance and attitude in almost every actor except Lawrence and Hawkes, and it does hurt the film. Also, the tension that is built so artfully throughout winds down rather abruptly and anticlimactically. The ending felt like a letdown and also was rather predictable. Yet it doesn’t take away from the many things this tiny film manages to accomplish. It has much more artistic merit than films with ten, twenty, even one hundred times the budget (for the record, Winter’s Bone cost just two million dollars to produce). It deserves any accolades it receives for Lawrence’s performance and Granik’s mostly superb craftsmanship. Overall, it’s definitely worth adding to your Netflix queue, if only so when Lawrence appears as young Mystique in the highly anticipated X-Men: First Class next summer, you can nod knowingly and say you saw her first.

Cinema and Caffeine #18: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

2010-12-14T22:36:00.001-05:00

Film: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Dir. Michael Apted

Starring: Ben Barnes, Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Will Poulter

Caffeine: None, but I almost wish I’d had a Four Loko to add some excitement.

Winter is always ripe with fantasy epics, designed for the whole family to partake in on holiday breaks as a warm, fuzzy bonding activity. These blockbusters take you out of the cold, icy real world, first into a dark theater and then into some sort of magical otherworld. The two weeks before Christmas has been host to many such films, most notably the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This year’s offerings include the latest outing in the Narnia franchise, and sadly, it falls short of the previous two volumes in the series, and fails to uphold the high standard of holiday entertainment one has grown to expect.

The Chronicles of Narnia epitomize the incorporation of family values in entertainment, their barely-concealed Christian allegories wrapped in a tidy package of cute kids and talking creatures with plenty of bloodless fantasy violence that always winds into a happy ending. This is a fine formula to stick to, and indeed, the adventures of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian were engaging enough that even the staunchest atheist could see past the obvious religious message and enjoy the fun. Yet the third volume, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, lacks a story compelling enough to keep the audience engaged, mostly because it rushes along at too breakneck a pace for any details to be absorbed before the next sequence begins. I lost track of new characters and I lost track of events; in fact, I honestly can’t recall enough of the plot to accurately summarize the story. It involves finding swords and lords that have been lost, in order to restore Narnia to its former glory, or something of that nature. It’s the typical fantasy nonsense; after all, all fantasy is essentially delightful, magical nonsense. In Dawn Treader, it is just delivered with less than the usual magical appeal. To be blunt, it's rather boring.

Unlike the Harry Potter franchise, which recently debuted its seventh volume to great success, the returning kids of Narnia haven’t matured very much as actors, though they are startlingly older than the last time we saw them. This time Peter and Susan take a backseat, leaving the main action up to younger siblings Edmund and Lucy. They are stranded in London during the Blitz with their wretched cousin, Eustace Stubb, before the trio is swallowed up into a painting of the sea and onto the Dawn Treader. In his portrayal of Eustace as an outrageously uptight child that growls in the voice of an elderly professor with a stick up his ass, Will Poulter has more than enough talent and charisma to make up for the earnestly lacking Pevensie siblings. His face is perpetually squinted into a scowl, and the barbed dialogue he addresses to his trusty diary contains some of the most entertaining lines in the film. It is obvious that Eustace will learn many lessons about being a better person during his adventures in Narnia, and it is implied that further films in the series would feature him rather than the Pevensies. I haven’t read any of the books in the series, but I do hope this is the case if the franchise continues. Even after Eustace makes his near-literal transformation into a better person he still possesses a spark that the other child actors in the franchise lack.

As far as the adults go, Ben Barnes once again brings the sex appeal and the charm to his role as Prince Caspian (give this man a star-making role already!), and Liam Neeson brings that familiar old gravitas to everyone’s favorite CGI Christ figure, the lion Aslan. However, with the exception of Aslan, most of the CGI in Dawn Treader seems thrown together and lacks realism as well as appeal. The film is also being screened in 3D, and while I saw it in 2D I imagine the visuals couldn’t have been much more compelling in the enhanced version; if anything, their shoddy quality was probably even more evident, and in a season featuring all-star visual effects contenders like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 and Tron: Legacy, that is a major factor in pulling in an audience as well as keeping them satisfied once they’re in the theater. Overall, director Michael Apted and the rest of his creative team just come off as lazy and make one long for the return of the helmer of the first two films, Andrew Adamson.

I have read that Walden Media, the team behind the Narnia franchise, decided to focus most of their marketing on Christian groups and stress those aspects of the movie more than the action and adventure touted in the promotions for the summer 2007 release of Prince Caspian. Yet there are more people interested in Narnia than just the religious right, and one reason why I loved Prince Caspian (apart from Ben Barnes, of course) was the way it appealed to everyone in a sweet and fun way. It contained an underlying religious message, but it wasn’t as heavy-handed as Dawn Treader, which hammered home the notions of faith and temptation over and over again. If one took a shot of whiskey every time Lucy was tempted to magic herself beautiful or Edmund was tempted by the White Witch (again—haven’t we been over this in the last two installments already?), and wise words were spoken in their minds by Aslan to urge them otherwise, one would pass out halfway through the movie. Thus, the more action-oriented Prince Caspian was more accessible for the average moviegoer. You know, the ones who spend more time in a theater than a church on the weekends. The ones who spend more money at the movies in the first place. There is nothing wrong with creating movies for a specific audience and marketing them as such; Tyler Perry has found great success doing so despite less than stellar critical praise. Yet the Chronicles of Narnia need to find that balance between secular adventure and religious fervor in order for the series to continue to be profitable, and I worry that after the disappointing first-week domestic returns that they won’t have a chance to try again.

Eye Candy of the Week: Colin Firth

2010-12-05T19:29:00.002-05:00

It is an old cliché, but it most definitely describes this week’s eye candy:

Like a fine wine, Colin Firth only seems to be growing better with age.

Yes, the man has always been gorgeous, ever since he first rose out of the waters of Pemberley in his wet tunic and breeches and into the hearts of Janeites everywhere in the role of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 miniseries Pride and Prejudice. The dream man of many a bookish young lady (myself included), Darcy is a sexy character even on the page, when one only has words to put to his name and no images. Yet the image of a young Colin Firth, uptight and restrained in his tight breeches (oh, those breeches) yet still full of passion and intelligence, curly hair swooping over his forehead, feels like the image Miss Austen must have had in mind. Why wouldn’t stubborn Lizzie Bennett eventually fall for him, if he looked that delicious?

Colin Firth’s hair doesn’t quite do that messy and curly thing anymore. It’s grown rather grey and he’s put on a little more weight than those days…though his tall frame carries it well. He looks every bit like the fifty-year-old man he now is. He no longer looks like Mr. Darcy; rather, as impossible as it may seem, he looks somewhat better. In the past couple of years, Colin Firth seems to have become even more handsome.

I don’t know exactly how it happened or when. He definitely oozed a rebellious, almost dangerous sex appeal as the painter Johannes Vermeer in 2003’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. The film showed a dark side of Firth as an actor that one rarely saw in his younger years, one that also popped up in 2009’s retelling of Oscar Wilde’s classic, Dorian Gray. Firth played the more mature devil on the shoulder of young Ben Barnes with such vivacity and such delight in sin that I was both shocked and intrigued. Perhaps seeing Firth stretch himself as an actor to embody these questionable characters was part of his increased appeal. In 2009 he also stepped up to the bat in Tom Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man, portraying a middle-aged and closeted gay college professor who prepares to commit suicide after his longtime love has died. The film is beautiful and sad, and all throughout various characters worry over Firth and remark how awful, how tired, how old the man looks. I couldn’t believe it. In his tailored suits and retro glasses, doing a more tragic and mature variation on Darcy’s emotional restraint, I’d never seen him look better. He was lacking in vanity, having put it all aside for the performance, but he made up for it in some indefinable way that can only be described as charisma. Few men have it, but Colin Firth has definitely got it—he always has. As he gets older and starts to rely on his talents more than his pretty face he grows even sexier, albeit in a different way than before.

In this month’s The King’s Speech, Firth delivers a career-high performance and is as hot as ever in his retro-regal duds. This film definitely drove home the fact that Colin Firth is not young anymore, but he is more talented and more attractive than he ever was. He is taking roles that allow him to be more than eye candy, more than simply a romantic interest, ones that allow him to use his charisma and experience to their fullest potential. By attaining such new heights in his career, he develops even more appeal. The lines on his face and his graying hair have transformed him from young and pretty to downright handsome. He might not be Mr. Darcy anymore, I’d still take him any day of the week.

Cinema and Caffeine #17: The King's Speech

2010-12-05T15:10:00.000-05:00

Film: The King’s Speech

Dir. Tom Hooper

Starring: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter

Caffeine: Diet Coke with Lime

Those crazy Brits. They seem to know what it is we obsessive Americans find so charming about them, and have reached that point where they no longer even bother to try and deny or even disguise those attributes. Instead, they play them up and occasionally send them up, especially on the big screen, which is the most fitting arena for such outsize characteristics. The King’s Speech contains all these landmarks of “Britishness” that Anglophiles adore: sharp and witty humor delivered in crisp accents, decadent historical costumes, subject matter that has the potential to be dull, and of course, royalty. All of this is what one would expect out of a film with a title like The King’s Speech, and all of it is present onscreen, yet the film is so much more. It combines these stereotypes with a deft hand to create a delightfully unique and engaging film that is one of the highlights of the holiday season.

Colin Firth, who entered the prime of his career at the age of fifty with his heartbreaking and Oscar-nominated role in last year’s A Single Man, tops even that remarkable performance with his portrayal of King George VI, also known as the Duke of York…Bertie to his familiars. Bertie suffers from a dreadfully powerful stammer that makes the public speaking engagements required of him as a member of the royal family painful and humiliating, both for himself and the audience watching. To make matters worse, a new invention called the wireless (we call it the radio) can bring royal speeches right into the homes of citizens across the United Kingdom, making eloquence all the more crucial a trait in a leader. When Bertie’s elder brother abdicates the throne, he is reluctantly thrown on it in his place, and with the worse timing. Hitler is about to invade Poland, and England needs it’s king to rally the nation and lead them into war.

His wife Elizabeth, played with friendliness and warmth by Helena Bonham Carter in a sharp turn from her recent villainous performances, has hired many doctors, but finally employs an unorthodox Australian speech therapist named Lionel Logue. Geoffrey Rush plays Logue with much hilarity, kookiness, and genuine care; overall, the trio of actors is sure to receive many well-deserved accolades this awards season. Many of the smaller supporting roles, especially Michael Gambon as Bertie’s father, King George V, and Guy Pearce as David, the elder brother who abdicated the throne, deserve to be noted for the excellence as well. Firth and Rush’s relationship is complicated on many levels, whether it be between doctor and patient or subject and monarch or even just close friends. Their chemistry is bubbly and their back-and-forth dialogue zings with humor and insults. Firth and Rush so thoroughly inhabit their roles one forgets that these are the actors who played such iconic roles as Mr. Darcy and Captain Barbossa until the end credits roll. It is honestly the most touching bromance I have seen onscreen this year, and in a British period piece to boot! That’s just one of the many surprises The King’s Speech has in store, hidden amongst those trademarks of British cinema I cited earlier.

Director Tom Hooper, who attacked the historical material of HBO’s John Adams miniseries with similar verve, clearly knows how to work with actors and has fun with the camera without being too distractingly experimental (see David Yates’s Harry Potter handheld mania). The cinematography keeps things modern and fresh, fitting the snappy tone of the piece, and uses the close-up well without overdoing it. The main strength of the piece, however, besides the acting, is David Seidler’s screenplay. His delightful dialogue and perfect pacing contains all the marks of true craft, and gave the actors and director all the material they needed to create something great. The climax of the piece is the speech mentioned in the title, Bertie’s first wartime speech as King George VI and his first big chance to show his people what kind of a leader he will be throughout the dark times ahead. The techniques utilized by director and crew make this moment, as well as the speech therapy sessions that comprise much of the earlier part of the film, much more stress-inducing and exciting than one would imagine they would be. All of this, surrounding the performance of Firth’s career, leads up to a magnificent cinematic moment that could school flashier films in the art of emotional catharsis.

Viewing The King’s Speech as a chaser to an exhausting day, during which I had to drink copious amounts of Diet Coke just to stay awake, was a great idea. The film soothed me with its delightful humor, finding a good-natured joke in even the most speech-troubled moments. As someone who, as the result of a pesky lisp, knows what it’s like to be judged for their public speaking skills, I found the film to treat speech problems with the proper amounts of realism and sympathy. The film is currently only playing in a handful of theatres around the country; however, I recommend you get yourself out to see it as soon as it arrives in your town…whenever that happens to be.

Cinema and Caffeine #16 (Special Extended Edition): Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1

2010-11-29T21:11:00.003-05:00

Film: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1

Dir. David Yates

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson

Caffeine: Diet Coke

Most Harry Potter fans can agree that the movies have always paled in comparison to the books. I’d say the rare exception is number five, Order of the Phoenix, mainly because that is my least favorite book due to it’s uneventful rambling. Screenwriter Michael Goldenberg cut out all the dull bits and emphasized the exciting climax that arrives after nearly 900 pages of waiting to create a film with an urgency that the book never had. However, Goldenberg is not the main screenwriter of the Harry Potter series. All the rest of the films have been penned by Steve Kloves, whom I have long suspected is the weakest link in the franchise's creative team. Deathly Hallows – Part 1Order of the Phoenix, Deathly Hallows – Part 1 does improve on a lackluster volume of the series; yet it is indeed flawed, in ways that I feel many hardcore fans are reluctant to admit, so enraptured they are by finally seeing the final volume of part of their childhoods come to life on the big screen. confirms these suspicions once and for all, mainly because the seventh Harry Potter book suffered from mainly of the same problems as the fifth—long stretches of nothing happening. Like Order of the Phoenix, Deathly Hallows – Part 1 does improve on a lackluster volume of the series, yet it is indeed flawed, in ways that I feel many fans are reluctant to admit.

This is not meant to be an overtly negative review, even if it seems that way at the outset. I enjoyed the film overall, and there are many areas where it excels far beyond any of the previous installments. One is most definitely the acting. Daniel Radcliffe has always been a reliable talent with natural presence, even as a little boy, but now that he is an adult he has finally learned how to hold his own against the crème de la crème of British cinema that comprises the adult cast of the film. Not only that, he is also become mind-bogglingly attractive. With that combination of talent and sexiness, he has a long career ahead of him. His costars, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, have both been grievously guilty of overacting in the past, but in this film they have finally learned how to tone it down to natural levels in front of the camera. Ralph Fiennes as the villain who haunts many children’s nightmares, Lord Voldemort, is at peak levels of menace. His first and last scenes in the film contain acts of evil that chill one to the bone. Same goes for Helena Bonham Carter as the bloodthirsty Bellatrix Lestrange, who doesn’t seem to be trying but still mesmerizes. This time, Rhys Ifans also shows up for a pitch-perfect turn as loony Luna Lovegood’s equally loony dad. His main scene, at the Lovegood home, features a beautifully strange animated storytelling sequence that seems straight out of a Tim Burton movie, and perfectly encapsulates the haunting tone of the film. Another sequence that strikes a chord is Harry and Hermione’s arrival at Godric’s Hollow, where they encounter ancient witch and friend of Dumbledore Bathilda Bagshot. It’s shot beautifully on snowy streets and in a creepy old house, and the entire time one is on edge, waiting for the inevitable scary twist you just know is coming.

There are several other scenes like the ones mentioned above, ones that bring invention and artistic achievement that the series has lacked previously. Yet it is all the ones in between that drag the film down and make one feel the two and a half hour length. Those scenes of woodsy walking and never-ending camping were boring on the page, and they’re still boring now, even when one has gorgeous scenery and gorgeous Harry to look at. Also, the chemistry between Watson and Radcliffe is electric and charming, even in their already infamous awkward dance scene. This would not be a problem except for the fact that they are both supposed to be in love with Weasleys, Weasleys who appear lackluster in comparison to these two, who seem so much more right for each other. Therefore, it is hard to be invested in their respective love stories, or to feel too much pain during Ron's brief jealous sojourn. The cinematography also gets a little too gritty and experimental for this kind of picture, utilizing a lot of Bourne-style shakycam that doesn’t fit well with the epic tone of the piece. When cinematographer Eduardo Serra simply points the camera at the lovely English countryside and his lovely young leads, and doesn’t bother getting freaky, it’s much more satisfying.

Yet the main problem that this film has, which I credit almost equally to screenwriter Kloves and author JK Rowling, is that it borrows too explicitly from another, older, greater, fantasy franchise, to the point of distraction and annoyance. One could argue that this is not really a fault; if you are not a fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you will not notice the points that I am about to expound upon. Yet that equally irritates me, for these copy-and-pasted sequences should be credited to the original franchise, a franchise that did this all much better the first time around. When young children see Ron bequeathed a light to guide him in dark places and dark times, they should know that this touching moment is nearly word for word pulled out of The Fellowship of the Ring. When the locket that is a Horcrux begins to elicit anger and jealousy out of its wearers, people should know that this is one of the primary functions of the One Ring, which like the Horcruxes, must be destroyed in a specific way in order for the Dark Lord (Sauron, not Voldemort, though the latter is greatly influenced by the former) to be utterly defeated. I could cite more instances, but I think my point has been made. JK Rowling has always borrowed from her forefathers in the fantasy genre, which is to be expected of any author. Tolkien himself borrowed from many Old Norse legends to create his magical world of Middle-earth, legends that until he wrote of their greatness had not yet been widely studied. Yet one might hope the influences would be more artfully disguised and less blatantly stolen, especially when stealing from the best-selling book series of all time. Rowling’s strength has always been character, not plot, and so subtly is not her strong suit. Kloves takes what was already heavy-handed thievery and emphasizes it. It is as though he wants to shout his plagiarism from the rooftops, and for this hardcore Ringer, it was downright irritating and diverted my mind from the action at hand.

I suppose one plus side to this is that perhaps young Potter fans who have not yet been introduced to Tolkien’s works might be led down that path by Harry Potter, in particular Deathly Hallows. I myself was obsessed with the Harry Potter series and from there discovered the lord of the Rings, and found myself transferring my allegiance to the latter. I have somewhat grown out of Harry Potter, but I will never grow out of the Lord of the Rings. That series has staying power and magic that stays with you forever. The magic of Potter fades somewhat as one ages beyond her young protagonists and discovers other strange worlds, mainly the world of adulthood. I hope this is true for other young Potter fans, more than anything, because for Rowling and Kloves to take credit for what is not rightfully theirs to claim eats away at me as a fan of both series, and nearly ruined my enjoyment of this pretty good film.

Eye Candy of the Week: Chris Evans

2010-11-21T10:28:00.001-05:00

There are many reasons why you might know Chris Evans. You might remember him as Johnny Storm in the two Fantastic Four movies...though you might have also chosen to forget ever seeing those ridiculous movies. Or you might have seen the underrated sci-fi films Sunshine and Push, which didn’t impress at the box office but did impress many critics. He’s been in several other moderately successful films with roles of varying importance, most recently as Lucas Lee, the second evil ex Michael Cera must fight to win his dream girl in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Evans is six feet tall and muscled like a pro athlete (the character of Lucas Lee is actually a skater turned actor), so to watch him go toe to toe with skinny Cera in the hyperactive action sequences is pretty hilarious in itself. Not only that, Evans showcases a comic timing underutilized in his previous pictures. Whether it be dramatically emerging from his trailer to the Universal Pictures theme music, complete with timed neck cracks, or laughing demonically about a random text on his phone, or talking about getting “blazed in his Winnie,” Evans never fails to crack me up. Every line is spoken in a husky, guttural growl reminiscent of the very actors Evans is gleefully sending up in his performance (does Paul Walker ring a bell?)

The combination of a killer sense of humor with killer good looks is essentially kryptonite for this moviegoer. I’ve always found Evans to be rather attractive, but his role in Scott Pilgrim sealed the deal for me. Then I found out he had been cast as Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America himself, in Marvel’s upcoming 1940s superhero epic Captain America: The First Avenger. Considering he’s already been cast as a Marvel character before, I wasn’t really surprised—he has the old-fashioned handsomeness, razor-sharp bone structure and hot body to be a superhero, especially one from the old guard like Captain America.

Then I saw the cover story for Entertainment Weekly. Whoa. My magazine seemingly knew exactly what I was looking for and magically opened up to an outrageously perfect photo of a shirtless Evans in the film, looking every bit the all-American poster boy. EW, you know me so well. How can I not be excited for the movie now? I love period pictures and superhero movies, and then you throw a super-hot shirtless man in the mix as well? I’ll be there with bells on opening night; if there’s one thing I love seeing in all it’s glory on the big screen, it’s a nice six-pack.

In the meantime, I have my DVDs of Sunshine and Scott Pilgrim to keep me company. Plus, Evans is rumored to have been cast as Jack Kerouac in an upcoming project, which piques my interest immensely. I think we’ll all be keeping an eye on him, his career, and his abs for awhile.

Cinema and Caffeine #15: Morning Glory

2010-11-15T23:12:00.000-05:00

Film: Morning Glory

Dir. Roger Michell

Starring: Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Patrick Wilson

Caffeine: Twining’s of London Cranberry Green Tea

Do you want to see a film that merely exists? For Morning Glory doesn’t really excel as a film, nor does it fail. It simply does what countless working-girl romantic comedies in glamorous settings have done before: charms the pants off of you. You’ll come out feeling warm and fuzzy and that good things do sometimes happen to good people, and hard work can pay off, and a dozen or so other popular adages that people repeat at you time and time again when they notice you feeling down, but that don’t really come true—except in the movies.

In this movie, Rachel McAdams plays Becky Fuller, an earnest television producer at a low-budget New Jersey morning show. When she’s laid off due to budget cutbacks she uses her impossible levels of pep, persistence, and awkward loquaciousness to land a dream job as an executive producer at a low-rated national morning show called Daybreak on IBS, a fictional fourth-place network (apparently named after Irritable Bowel Syndrome, something I was unable to erase from my mind throughout the entire film. Probably why they were struggling for viewers). Becky’s impossible levels of energy and rambling tangents that occasionally get her in trouble could have grown very annoying very fast if McAdams weren’t so damn likeable. She’s all dimples and bangs and flustered smiles. No wonder she instantly wins the attentions of sexy IBS producer Adam Bennet, played by the deliciously perfect Patrick Wilson.

However, Becky and Adam’s burgeoning relationship suffers, as do all of Becky’s attempts at dating, due to her immense obsession with her work. She is, to repeat yet another old phrase, married to her job. Right now, her job is to raise ratings on Daybreak or the entire show is canned by a unenthusiastic Jeff Goldblum. To do this, Becky hires veteran news anchor Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) to bring gravitas to the program. However, Mike Pomeroy is, to quote Adam, “the third worse person in the world.” He doesn’t mince words on what he thinks of the vapidity of morning television and only wants to do serious stories, not fluff pieces with co-host Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton, who could do this kind of comedy in her sleep). Naturally, he butts heads with everyone at Daybreak, especially Becky. Her cockeyed optimist schtick and his perpetually vicious negativity clash in a wonderfully entertaining but very predictable way. McAdams and Ford have a good chemistry in a comic, familial way. She’s looking for the approval her mother never gave her and a father figure, whereas his kids don’t speak to him, pushed away by his own workaholism—a fair warning cry to Becky and predictor of her own future.

If you know Harrison Ford at all you know he basically only has one setting as an actor: growling. It’s a fine setting and he does it well, turning it up to eleven here to spit nasty insults just as well as he describes the process of making frittata. He seems to be having a grand old time just being horrible to everyone, and is so witty while doing it that you can’t help but have a grand old time with him. He still has that Indiana Jones magnetism at the age of sixty-eight, where you want to be in the room with him even when he’s calling you a douchebag. Of course, you know that by the end of the film Mike’s heart might soften, at least just a wee bit, and Becky might learn about balancing work with love, just a wee bit, and maybe Daybreak will just scrape by and become the little show that could…none of these ideas are spoilers. You’ve seen this film before, and you aren’t going to see it again in order to see this magical formula upset. If you buy a ticket to see Morning Glory you aren’t expecting to see the reinvention of filmmaking as an art form (but you could try 127 Hours. Please). This is the director of Notting Hill combined with the writer of The Devil Wears Prada. Therefore, you’re going to see a tried-and-true recipe mixed together with practiced knowledge of what works that is replicated by people you enjoy watching. This is because they’re prettier than real life people and their problems have prettier than real life solutions, complete with a built-in soundtrack of inspirational girl-power-puff pop that would make Mike Pomeroy stick knitting needles in his ears.

This was the mood I was in when I decided to buy a ticket to Morning Glory. If you go and see it in any other mood, wanting to see any other kind of film, you’ll be slightly bored and possibly annoyed. However, I was not disappointed, my buoyant mood coming out of the theatre amplified by the equally sweet Cranberry Green Tea I had drank before. I needed to forget my own issues and live vicariously through someone’s prettier version of them, and this film did satisfied that need for approximately an hour and forty-five minutes, with the added bonus of Harrison Ford cooking eggs multiple times over the course of said interval. And he growled the word “fluffy.” I mean, what more do you need, really?

Cinema and Caffeine #14: 127 Hours

2010-11-09T09:25:00.000-05:00

Film: 127 Hours

Dir. Danny Boyle

Starring: James Franco

Caffeine: Screw caffeine, you'll need a beer after this is done.

I might as well start by getting this out of the way: I did not faint during 127 Hours.

This is partially because, after viewing countless zombie movies over the years, I have a pretty high tolerance for gore. This is also because the scene in question is less about the gore and blood and more about the emotional fallout; it is shot in as tasteful a manner as possible without downplaying the pain and the stress that I can’t even begin to imagine Aron Ralston (played by James Franco) was experiencing during those five days of captivity. The camera bounces and roves and cuts away quickly during the entire scene, opting for quick snippets of blood and muscle (and one particularly painful nerve-snipping) and Franco’s expressive face. This frenetic camera work, perfectly supported by A. R. Rahman’s equally furious musical score, does more to make the audience squirm in their seats and cause their hearts to beat fast than any amount of blood ever could.

The way filmmaker Danny Boyle dealt with this scene, the climax of a film that is really, essentially about a guy stuck in a canyon for five days with nothing to do but try different escape techniques that we all know are fated to fail, is typical of his unique style of filmmaking. Boyle and his team, now all Oscar winners after the success of 2008's Slumdog Millionaire, are masters at creating and conveying emotion through sound and image, rendering his work as close to feature-length music videos as can be seen in multiplexes. The film uses a three-way split screen, images within images, and high-speed colorful montages throughout the film, techniques that could have seemed gimmicky but because it is stuck to and used to the best storytelling effect seems rather fresh and new. My only fear is that lesser filmmakers will co-opt the technique and abuse it well into annoyance, so I'm going to bask the achievement of this film for as long as possible.

Danny Boyle is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers and, until Slumdog Millionaire, one of the most underrated. I was overjoyed at that film’s success less because I loved the film (though I did) than because I was excited to see the man who created Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, and Sunshine finally get his due. Rather than sit on his laurels, Boyle has come back two years later with a film that is drastically better than any of those, including Slumdog. There is a reason why it is currently the best-reviewed film in theatres, and I would recommend everyone go out and see it…once. The thing about 127 Hours is that it’s brilliant, but so emotionally wracking that there is no way that even I, with my near-immunity for blood and pain, could view it more than once. James Franco gives an Oscar-worthy performance as self-proclaimed adventurer Ralston, who takes off one weekend to explore Blue John Canyon without telling a soul where he’s going, or even picking up the phone when his mother calls on his way out. He encounters two cute hikers played by Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara, and charms them with his free spirit and knowledge. After a quick swim in a gorgeous underground lake, Ralston takes off, and one girl says to the other, “I don’t think we figured in his day at all.” Indeed, Ralston thrives on being alone in the wilderness and documenting it all on his camera and camcorder. Two random girls, however cute they might be, are not his primary focus.

Yet those girls were wrong, because once Ralston falls into a crevasse and gets his hand pinned under a boulder, they’ll figure prominently into his days of captivity as a fantasy of freedom. So will other figures from his past, including his parents, sister, coworker, and ex-girlfriend Rana, played by Clemence Poesy of Harry Potter and In Bruges fame. The main regret Ralston has—and the overall theme of the film—is that he pushed these people who loved him away, and if he hadn’t he wouldn’t be in this hard place. If he had only picked up the phone, his mother would know where he was. If he had only took more time with his coworker, the man might have noticed his disappearance and called mountain rescue. In a moment towards the end, when Ralston begins to grow delirious, he says, “This rock has been waiting for me my entire life,” as an instigator for him to change his habits towards others or, as Rana warns him in one flashback, “You’re going to be so alone.”

Boyle co-adapted the screenplay from Ralston’s own memoir (a reassuring thought—you know the hero will survive his tumult) with Slumdog screenwriter Simon Beaufoy, and together those two men take us out of the canyon and inside Ralston’s mind, inside his fantasies and hallucinations of his past and his quickly-fading future. This answers that question every audience member must have going in: How the hell are they going to make five days of sitting in a canyon exciting? Truth is, the film is never less than thrilling, from Franco’s heartbroken remembrance of Rana to his hallucinations of the actual Blue John coming to taunt his carelessness to a thunderstorm that nearly drowns him. When Ralston feels thirsty, Boyle doesn’t just convey this by focusing on Franco’s face and having him voice his thoughts; he creates a colorful montage of soft drink commercial clips to illustrate what a bliss just one bottle of Coca-Cola would be to this man right now.

The inevitable arm-cutting scene that leads to Ralston’s escape and survival is indeed mind-blowing intense, but as I mentioned above, it is more due to the filmmaking and Franco’s performance than any amount of blood or sinew. I came out of the cinema with my heart beating furiously, feeling as though I had run the emotional gamut. 127 Hours does catharsis like no other film currently showing in theaters right now; the question is, how much of this catharsis can you handle? How much stress do you like on the side of your intake of art? If you’d rather deal with something light and frothy when you go to the movies, that’s quite understandable. Yet take a chance on 127 Hours if you want to see what the future of filmmaking is, because with his ability to create such visceral entertainment, Danny Boyle has it.

Eye Candy of the Week: Real Madrid

2010-11-05T15:25:00.001-04:00

Real Madrid C.F.: They’re currently just holding onto the top spot in La Liga against longtime rivals FC Barcelona. They’re dominating in the UEFA Champions League. They’re considered to be one of the greatest football clubs in Europe, if not the world. All of these factors could be causes of their overwhelming popularity, which includes 5 million-plus Facebook fans.

Or it could just be because they entire team is ridiculously hot.

Seriously. I have never seen so many sexy men in one place at one time as when Real Madrid emerges from the tunnel and onto the field at the start of a match. It’s downright distracting from the game. You’ve got the yummy captain and goalkeeper, Iker Casillas, clean-cut and classy Xabi Alonso, slightly insane Brazilian Kaka (currently out dealing with injuries), adorable German-Turkish export Mesut Ozil, and of course, the one and only Cristiano Ronaldo. Oh, Cristiano Ronaldo. During a discussion with a friend we determined that if there is a heaven, all the angels should ideally look exactly like Ronaldo, complete with no shirts covering those glorious muscled torsos. If this were the case, I would get myself to a nunnery as soon as possible, seeing as Cristiano Ronaldo’s perfectly tanned and toned abs are as probably close to a religious experience as I will ever have. He’s objectively one of the sexiest men in the world, and the rest of his teammates aren’t exactly slacking off in the physicality department either. Not only that, they’re one of the best dressed football clubs in the world, arriving at press conferences in designer suits and doing magazine shoots that style the players so well that they’d be convincing supporting characters on “Mad Men” (Alonso happens to be a big fan, and dresses the part, too). It’s nice to see toned, fit men in tailored suits rather than shlubby pseudo-gangster gear (I’m looking at you, caveman Wayne Rooney). Non-American teams are just more in touch with their metrosexual sides, and that is fine by me.

Besides the plethora of eye candy, I do also enjoy watching Real Madrid for how they play the game. Don’t mark me down as someone who watches the sport just for the hot guys; it just happens to be a pretty nice bonus, especially when your television screen is as large and crystal-clear as mine. Madrid has a team of strikers unmatched in the football world right now, including all-stars like Gonzalo Higuain (a regular goal-scorer) and Angel Di Maria. A great deal of Madrid’s Spanish players played for this year’s World Cup Champions, and others such as Ozil, Higuain, and Ronaldo gave impressive performances for their respective nations. Jose Mourinho has put together a talented international squad that happens to be delicious to boot. Like I said about the American squad at the beginning of the World Cup, talent boosts sexiness potential to new heights. These boys have got it, as well as exotic European charm.

It’s hard to catch La Liga games on TV, but thanks to the Fox Soccer Channel the UEFA Champions League is covered thoroughly and with much awesome Madrid action. This includes much brotherly hugging, kissing, and wrestling every time they score, which is often. This fan wouldn’t mind being in one of those team huddles, that’s all I can say.

Cinema on DVD: The Ghost Writer

2010-11-03T14:02:00.000-04:00

Film: The Ghost Writer

Dir. Roman Polanski

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall

I chose to make an exception and review this film for the blog for two reasons. One, I have been too broke to see anything in the theatres lately. Two, The Ghost Writer is possibly the best film I’ve seen all year and one that probably slipped by many of you when it was in theatres months ago. Now it’s out on DVD, and it is most definitely a worthy rental.

The Ghost Writer did get some attention last winter upon its release, but it was mostly the bad kind and also totally unrelated to the film. Rather, it was focused upon the director, Roman Polanski, and his being placed under house arrest for a statutory rape charge he fled in the Seventies. He was unable to promote the film himself due to this, and so the release of The Ghost Writer was marked more by his absence than by the film itself. However, The Ghost Writer received glowing reviews from most critics who were willing to overlook the filmmaker’s less than savory personal life in order to partake in his art. Personally, I do feel Polanski deserves to be punished for his crimes, but I have no desire to enact this punishment by boycotting his work. Just because he made Chinatown, one of the greatest films of all time, does not make him exempt from the law; at the same time, just because he has done some terrible things does not make Chinatown, or Rosemary’s Baby, or The Ghost Writer, bad movies. Polanski’s work is consistently dark and unique and strong in regards to story and performance and cinematography; in other words, the man brings the full package and earns that elusive title of auteur that is bestowed on far too many lesser talents these days.

The Ghost Writer chronicles the mishaps of a character played by Ewan McGregor who is nameless and known, rather spookily, throughout the entire film merely as “the ghost.” He is a ghostwriter who has been hired to rewrite the memoirs of recent Prime Minister Adam Lang, played by Pierce Brosnan. Lang has cloistered himself within a gorgeous and spooky beachfront property in Cape Cod, along with his wife (Olivia Williams) and his faithful personal assistant (Kim Cattrall). All four leads deliver remarkable and magnetic performances, in particular Ewan McGregor, who has never looked more mature or sexier. He is one of my favorites and, in my opinion, also one of the most underrated actors working today. Another favorite of mine, Olivia Williams, as the wily and opinionated Ruth Lang, adds another charismatic role to a recent string of diverse turns in films such as An Education and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. Meanwhile, Brosnan, someone whose talents I have never been enthusiastic about, proves he can do more than drink martinis and look good in a tuxedo. He makes Lang a figure of power, mystery, and barely concealed anger, one that raises the hackles of the audience whenever he shows up in a scene. I was both drawn in by him and frightened by him at the same time.

Lang is rather blatantly based on Tony Blair, what with the constant implications that he was simply a tool of the American government who led the British people into an unjust and unfair war. After one of his staff members divulges some secrets from his time in power, Lang is due to be tried for war crimes. The ghost finds himself embroiled in far more drama and mystery than he ever could have predicted when he agreed to such an outwardly simple assignment. It doesn’t help that his predecessor in the task mysteriously drowned right offshore, or that the weather is constantly dark and stormy and accented by beating waves that just echo with the sounds of death and lament. The New England landscape is sued to its utmost potential and plays a role in the plot besides just being creepily beautiful, all blues and greys and shadows. The entire atmosphere reeks with tension and excitement, and the two-hour run time feels much shorter as a result. A sequence where the ghost simply follows GPS directions left by his predecessor to the home of a college acquaintance of Lang’s, played by cinema all-star Tom Wilkinson, is probably the only time a GPS device will be used as an effective creator of tension in a thriller. There is also a remarkable chase sequence involving escaping from a mainland ferry, during which I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.

There are no fancy tricks or CGI being used in The Ghost Writer, no bizarre story techniques or nonlinear structure. It is a straight-up, old-fashioned drama driven by interesting characters and an exciting story, which winds up, not down, into an intense twist ending guaranteed to both satisfy and torment the audience. The final shot, which is held for an uncomfortable amount of time and harks back to classic art house pictures like The 400 Blows, will echo in your head after it fades to black. There are not enough films like this being made today, and I think it says a lot about the up-and-coming generation of filmmakers that it takes an old pro like Polanski to execute such a seemingly simple formula correctly. I would love to see The Ghost Writer acquire some deserved Oscar nods, in particular for Polanski and novelist Robert Harris’s screenplay and for McGregor’s performance in the lead role. I am resigned to accept that it will probably slip through the cracks of voter’s minds in favor of showier pieces; however, that does not give you an excuse for missing out on one of the year’s best pictures.

Movie Music: My Love for Fictional Rock

2010-10-22T10:50:00.000-04:00

After I saw Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, I had the urge to immediately buy the soundtrack. Fortunately I live near a 24-hour Best Buy (only in New York), as I saw the movie at midnight and thus ended up purchasing my CD at around 2:00am. There is a great selection of indie and classic rock on the album, but I mostly bought it for the fake bands, Crash and the Boys and Sex Bob-Omb. This might seem kind of strange, as Sex Bob-Omb are supposed to be a terrible band. Scott Pilgrim himself attests to this. Sure enough, their songs are pretty much all under two minutes long and consist mostly of noise. But it’s noise written by Beck! And sang by the actors! I can’t help it—I've totally fallen for Sex Bob-Omb.

They aren't the only fake band I can profess myself a fan of. When it comes to the movies, I love the fictional rock bands that populate them. I recently saw the film Tamara Drewe, in which one of the characters, played by a delicious, eyeliner-wearing Dominic Cooper, is the drummer and songwriter in a band called Swipe. A song of theirs about some sort of domestic dispute (which I think had only about a dozen words) is played at various points throughout the film. Another Swipe song, inspired by a young fan and character in the film, “Jailbait Jody,” plays over the end credits. Both songs are unsophisticated and rather hilarious; like the music of Sex Bob-Omb, they aren’t meant to be great tunes of musical genius, but rather to convey some comedy via the medium of song. I loved both the Swipe songs and was disappointed that the soundtrack isn’t available in the USA…yet. However, it topped the Amazon.uk pre-sale chart before its release abroad, and I think that has a lot to do with other people’s strange affection for Swipe.

Besides Sex Bob-Omb, I also happen to possess music by fake rock bands from Love Actually, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and even the torch song by the fictional Judy Bridgewater that inspires the title of Never Let Me Go, far more beautiful than any made-up movie track ever needed to be. I’m not talking about your usual candidates for the Best Song Oscar here, your Bruce Springsteens and your Dylans and your musical theatre writers who stop collecting royalties long enough to pen one original track for the film adaptation of their show in order to nab that elusive nom. I’m not talking about songs that only play over the end credits, or are barely heard on the radio. I’m talking about songs that are performed in the film by actors playing musicians, not actual rock stars as themselves. In these films the musicians are characters themselves, and their music tells the audience a lot both about these characters as well as the tone of the film.

These fake rock songs are most often found in movies about musicians, such as the country tunes warbled by Jeff Bridges and Colin Firth in Crazy Heart, or on a sillier level, the Infant Sorrow songs sang by Russell Brand that feature in both Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek. In Crazy Heart, the penning of one song, “The Weary Kind,” is an actual plot point that ends up being a saving grace for Bridges’ character. It did win a Best Song Oscar, but that was for the “official” version by the songwriter, Ryan Bingham, a real country star, as opposed to the versions by either of the fake country stars.

It’s heartbreaking to be a fan of bands that don’t actually exist, because there’s no next album or live tour to look forward to; only the same songs played on repeat or the same DVD replayed on the same spot. Why do I love this stuff so much? I guess there’s a sort of novelty value to hearing your favorite actor attempt to be a rock star. There’s also the charm of the songs themselves. The music is perfectly crafted to match the characters performing it, and so while they might not be breaking the mold in regards to musicianship they are usually the epitome of whatever genre is being applied. If the idea is hipster garage rock, i.e. Sex Bob-Omb, you can bet that the songs in the film are going to be the best and most hipster garage rock tunes ever recorded. They aren’t being written purely as songs but as plot devices, as props, as pieces of musical art direction. Not only that, when the movie is over, you can more easily press play on your iPod and revisit it than watch the entire DVD over again.

The fact of the matter is, songs written solely for movies are catchy as hell and serve their purpose admirably. The lyrics to “Furry Walls” by Infant Sorrow (Get Him to the Greek) are outrageously stupid and bizarre, but they’re hilarious and lift your spirits. “Never Let Me Go” hits every romantic ballad cliché and thus satisfies all your corny-pop needs in one tidy serving. I don’t care if they’re not “real music” by any sense of the definition; I’d choose movie pop over most of the dreck populating the radio airwaves any day of the week.

Eye Candy of the Week: Martin Freeman

2010-10-22T00:02:00.003-04:00

2010 has been a breakthrough year in the career of British actor Martin Freeman. This summer he starred in the hit BBC miniseries "Sherlock," a modern-day version of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, as the detective’s loyal assistant Dr. John Watson. This week, Sir Peter Jackson (that’s right, PJ’s been knighted, don’t forget it) announced that Freeman has been confirmed to star as Bilbo Baggins in what are probably the most anticipated movies since…well, since the Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Hobbit, to be shot in two parts for upwards of $500 million. Principal photography is due to begins in February, in an as-yet unknown locale. Said Sir Peter on his choice:

“Despite the various rumors and speculation surround this role, there has only ever been one Bilbo Baggins for us. There are a few times in your career when you come across an actor who you know was born to play a role, but that was the case as soon as I met Martin. He is intelligent, funny, surprising and brave -- exactly like Bilbo and I feel incredibly proud to be able to announce that he is our Hobbit."

He’s been the top choice in this Ringer’s eyes too, mostly because I’ve been madly in love with Freeman since he first appeared as wisecracking office drone Tim Canterbury in the original BBC version of "The Office," starring Ricky Gervais. Freeman had a talent for adorable puppy-dog faces and bewildered looks at the camera that his American successor, John Krasinski, does his best to replicate. However, as much as I love Krasinski’s Jim Halpert, you can’t beat the original. I even shed tears when Tim finally managed to win over his long-time unrequited love, receptionist Dawn Tindsley. Theirs is one of the best, and most heartbreakingly realistic, love stories to be told via the medium of television. What I love about Tim is his method of dealing with boredom and heartbreak; he jokes about it, plays pranks, and attempts to mask his discontent while at the same time not hiding it at all. He's an unhappy man who deserves more, and when he finally wins Dawn at the end of the series one can't help but rejoice with him.

Freeman then went on to play a figure from literature almost as iconic as Bilbo Baggins: Arthur Dent in the movie adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I love the books by Douglas Adams for their wacky absurdist humor and their intergalactic setting; I love the movie as well, mostly for the spot-on casting of the four adventurers, and especially that of Freeman. The role of Arthur Dent was a fitting precursor for that of Bilbo; both characters lead rather normal, even boring, lives until they are swept up on an adventure to unknown lands, where they are forced to acquire skills and bravery quickly in order to survive. Both grow and mature as a result until they can be legitimately called heroes; they are also great comic creations by two genre masters.

Freeman has also shone in films such as The Good Night, Love Actually, and Hot Fuzz. I am such of fan of his performances and adorableness that I have on several occasions, usually when slightly inebriated, proclaimed him as “on the shortlist to father my children.” The characters he has played are for the most part so ridiculously lovable that I can’t separate them from the man himself, and transfer that love onto him. As seen by my eyelash-fluttering affection for Richard Hammond, I clearly have a thing for tiny Brits…keeping in mind that by tiny I mean “short for a man, but still taller than me.” Freeman’s charm and goofy smile make him instantly attractive to me, even if he isn’t handsome by a traditionalist standard. Plus, he managed to play a wonderfully badass version of John Watson, which showed that he has an even broader spectrum of talent than one could imagine. I am excited to see the world open up for him post-Hobbit, for I can’t think of many actors more deserving of their chance in the spotlight. Plus, if I get to ogle him on the big screen more, than all the better for me!

Postscript: Eye Candy alum Aidan Turner has also been cast in The Hobbit films, as dwarf Kili. I am glad to see his lovely face grace the big screen, especially in something so high-profile, but as a dwarf? Let's hope the beard doesn't obscure his hotness.

Cinema and Caffeine #13: Tamara Drewe

2010-10-17T11:00:00.001-04:00

Film: Tamara Drewe

Dir. Stephen Frears

Starring: Gemma Arterton, Tamsin Greig, Roger Allam, Dominic Cooper, Luke Evans

Caffeine: Twinings of London Earl Grey tea

To drink Earl Grey before seeing a film like Tamara Drewe is only natural—a quintessentially British beverage paired with a quintessentially British film. The stars all have either costume drama or romantic comedy pedigrees, which I swear are the two most common British film genres. The director, Stephen Frears, is known for his takes on Englishness that include The Queen, My Beautiful Laundrette, and the Chicago-based transplant of the English novel High Fidelity. If you are an Anglophile and like any of these people or things, you will love Tamara Drewe. In fact, I reckon American Anglophiles with probably love this movie more than the English themselves, because to us, this brand of comedy of manners and this setting will always be fresh and enjoyable.

Tamara Drewe is adapted from a graphic novel by Posy Simmonds. In it, the title character returns to her tiny country hometown to prepare to sell her deceased mother’s house. Once an ugly duckling, she got a nose job and is now cocky and gorgeous, though who wouldn’t be if they were as stunning as Gemma Arterton? Arterton is the typical English Rose, pale and lovely, and shines as an actress even in ridiculous flicks like Clash of the Titans. If she weren’t legitimately talented it would be very easy to be consumed with jealously and hate her, but Arterton comes off as intensely likeable…in most films. Her character in this one is a different story, but more on that later.

Most of the plot revolves around a farm nearby, where a local celebrity and mystery author, Nicholas (played with smarmy nonchalance by Roger Allam) cheats on his loyal wife, Beth (Black Books’ Tamsin Greig, proving she can do heartbreak as well as hilarity). Together, they run a writer’s retreat populated with eccentric characters, including American academic Glen (Bill Camp), who is writing a book on novelist Thomas Hardy. Hardy is one of my all-time favorite authors, so I could see as I was watching plot points that were scooped up from Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd (the title s even directly referenced) and placed in this modern version of Hardy’s beloved rural Wessex county. In particular, the three men who vie for Tamara’s affections fit the molds of the three who entangle themselves in the life of Bathsheba Everdene in Hardy’s novel. There’s the creepy older guy (Allam), the dashing bad boy (Dominic Cooper), and the local former love that’s obviously her soul mate (Luke Evans). The two younger actors in this trio are so ridiculously sexy that it’s impossible not to enjoy their screen time if you are a woman. Also fun to watch are two younger actresses, Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie, who stalk Cooper’s rock star character and engage in various interfering shenanigans. They’re probably the most accurate portrayal of small-town teenage life that I have ever seen, with dialogue that rang as true to my ears as if I had said it myself. Even when being reprehensible, they were funny and true, and you couldn’t help but love them. I look forward to seeing their natural comic timing showcased in other pictures

It may be chock full of references, but one does not have to be a fan of the most depressing writer of all time to appreciate this movie, which oozes charm from every pore. The setting is beautiful, though one can see how it could grow dull for locals. The cast is talented and likeable, even when they’re not being very nice to each other. I would reckon that Allam’s incorrigible adulterer and Tamara Drewe herself were the most unlikeable of the bunch. Considering that Allam is pretty much the villain of the story, while his wife is painted in such a warm, saintly light, his nasty turn makes sense, and Allam does his job admirably. However, to successfully create a protagonist who hurts several people throughout the film and is still the heroine of the story can be difficult. Then again, the typical Hardy heroine is often complex and brimming with emotional issues that cause her to make brash, horrible decisions, so in that case Tamara fits the mold. Like her predecessor Bathsheba Everdene, I didn’t hate her; I just wondered what she could possibly be thinking to be making so many of the choices that she did. At one point, Tamara wondered aloud herself why she keeps acting the way she does, so this redeemed her as a character in my eyes.

The main criticism I have heard other reviewers give this film is that it doesn’t know what kind of film it is, that it seesaws between frothy romantic comedy and dark melodrama, Indeed, the ending contains a few shockers that deviate sharply in tone from the rest of the picture…but what would Thomas Hardy think if the story didn’t contain a few good tragedies like the ones he was so fond of writing about? Personally, I like films that have multiple tones within them, since our lives are not just one big comedy or tragedy. They are a mix of both, and thus if films are to be at all realistic visions of our lives, they should be too. I’m not saying all films have to be realistic; Lord knows I love my share of escapist fantasies. Yet I think that Tamara Drewe, despite being so incredibly English when I am so incredibly American, was a truer depiction of life than many other films that stick more strictly to either the comedy or drama way of thinking. It straddles the line between laughing and crying, the way many of us do each day. I guess this rollercoaster of emotions is not what some people want to see when they go to the movies, and if done correctly it can definitely give you cinematic motion sickness, but Tamara Drewe did the job right. I left the theatre feeling warm and fuzzy...like I had just drunk another cup of Earl Grey. I look forward to buying it on DVD, sitting down with a plate of scones, and daydreaming about the English countryside that us Anglophiles will always view with such rose-colored glasses, even when people like Thomas Hardy are determined to darken the view.

Cinema and Caffeine #12: The Town

2010-10-15T11:56:00.001-04:00

Film: The Town

Dir. Ben Affleck

Starring: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm

Caffeine: Lipton’s Iced Red Tea

If you weren’t aware before, there’s one fact you will be clearly aware of by the time you reach the closing credits of The Town: Ben Affleck loves Boston. Like, he really, really loves it. I had previously though that people from New Jersey had the most regional pride of anyone else in the United States, but after watching this film I’m pretty sure that notion was inaccurate. The Town is ostensibly a dark love letter to Boston; more specifically, it’s an ode to a specific neighborhood in Boston, Charlestown, which apparently produces more bank and armored car robbers than anywhere else in the world. Affleck seems proud that his hometown could produce such drama, and so has co-written, directed, and starred in a very serviceable thriller centered around a group of locals who engage in such dangerous and illegal activities.

The film opens with a bravura bank robbery sequence, the robbery that will set in motion the plot of the movie through the most unlikely meet-cute scenario ever—bank robber holds bank manager hostage, then later falls in love. It’s a violently shot and fast-paced scene; by the time the opening title slammed onto the screen I was already on the edge of my seat. The other robberies, car chases, and shoot-outs in the film are shot with wild handheld cameras on the natural labyrinthine streets of Boston, the perfect twisty-turny car chase location. Affleck takes full advantage of the landscape of the city that he loves during these action sequences, and as a result those scenes are where the film truly shines. In particular, the finale that showcases the "cathedral of Boston," Fenway Park, is pretty wild, though it starts to ramble on towards the ending. Those bits in between the robberies, which we filmmakers like to call “story,” are not nearly as exciting. In fact, they drag a bit, mostly because the love story that fills most of those scenes is rather unbelievable. Would a lovely, middle-class woman like Rebecca Hall really agree to go out for a drink with a brash, lower-class townie who hits on her in a Laundromat? The only reason this is remotely believable is due to the charm of Ben Affleck, which is undeniable and also the best part of his onscreen presence. Affleck gives a serviceable performance, but not a great one. In fact, I’d say he was the weakest link of his all-star ensemble cast. Yet as a director he manages to get such good performances out of the other actors that his own weaknesses as a performer don’t figure in to the film too much.

Who are these other actors, and where do they fit into the story? The previously mentioned Rebecca Hall, an underrated yet often seen British actress who has been a remarkable presence in The Prestige, Frost/Nixon, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, to name a few, is Claire Keesey, the bank manager who falls for Doug MacRay (Affleck) without knowing that he’s a member of the gang who robbed her bank. Jeremy Renner plays a Jim, a bratty, Boston-born variation on his risk-taking Hurt Locker protagonist who is determined to silence Keesey if it means she won’t testify to any of their identities; Renner shines at playing these kinds of tightly-coiled and ready to explode characters. Two small-screen stars, Blake Lively and Jon Hamm, deviate sharply from their iconic television personas to give decent breakout film performances; Lively in particular surprised me in her role as Krista, Jim’s drug-addled sister and a far cry from her "Gossip Girl" character Serena van der Woodsen. The most exciting and also terrifying to watch, though, is acting veteran Pete Postlethwaite, who oozes grizzled menace and evil to spare as Irish florist Fergus, who moonlights as the gangster who hires out MacRay and his buddies. After one scene featuring him you’ll want to see him meet a morbid and well-deserved ending.

Despite a solid cast and some great action sequences, Affleck has taken a slight dip in quality with his sophomoric effort after his directing debut with Gone Baby Gone. I think that can be blamed on both a less original story and a less enigmatic leading man; Ben is just not as compelling to watch as younger brother Casey, and the story is less emotionally intense. The plot of The Town is your standard, paint-by-numbers thriller, but it makes a fine and entertaining night out nonetheless. I sat there compulsively munching chocolate and sipping my Lipton Iced Red Tea (usually not a fan of sweetened stuff, but this was delicious and addicting) and waiting to see what would happen next, and hoping that it would be another robbery. I look forward to see what Affleck does with his next picture.

Eye Candy of the Week: Tim Howard

2010-10-11T14:36:00.002-04:00

Now, those of you who are familiar with the archives of Cinema and Caffeine might be thinking, “Hey! The first Eye Candy blog was about the US Men’s National Soccer Team! That makes Tim Howard a repeat!” This is partially true; however, the US goalkeeper is so hot and so awesome that he merits a second, separate mention. I'm sure those of you familiar with him won't begrudge me the double-dip...ahem.

When not saving goals for the National Team, New Jersey-born Tim Howard is the goalkeeper for Everton in the English Premier League; before that, he played for Manchester United. I have heard commentators argue over whether he is the greatest American keeper of all time, but the general consensus is that he’s at least in the top five. His performance this weekend in the International Friendly against Poland further cemented his reputation as one of this country’s best soccer players, and gave him a chance to shine since his more famous teammate, Landon Donovan, wasn’t on the field. Unfortunately, the Polish boys stepped up their game after Jozy Altidore’s first goal, seemingly drawing inspiration to win from that early setback. They ended up drawing with our American boys 2-2, and I must admit, they did deserve it; the baby-faced Poles were all over the field and playing fast, exciting soccer. They had so many shots on goal that if Howard were any less of a keeper, the score would have been far bleaker. The same could be said for Team USA’s run in this summer’s World Cup. Tim Howard may not be able to stop every goal, but he gets the best of them as he moves like a flash around the goal box. His borderline-hilarious expressions of rage every time the ball sneaks past the line of defense are priceless, and when the guy does let the ball slide by…the disappointment in himself is quite apparent. Perfection is hot, and few can achieve it, but striving for perfection…that’s pretty good too.

While his athletic abilities add a lot of appeal, Howard is also undeniably physically attractive. Half African-American, half Hungarian, Howard stands six-foot-three and looms large over the goal. He is one of the few men who can shave his head and still look healthy and sexy, rather than like a chemo patient (I’m looking at you, Coach Bradley!) And that body! Whoa…covered with tattoos and toned to…well, perfection, Howard was featured in ESPN the Magazine's most recent Body Issue. The fine ladies at Kickette (a blog I highly recommend if, like me, one of your favorite parts of the beautiful game is the beautiful players) posted a link to several delicious photos last week, and I am sharing it with you below. Beware! Said photos are borderline-NSFW, mainly because after viewing these, you won’t be able to concentrate on work:

Kickette: Tim Howard Getting Durrrty (and Naked) for ESPN the Magazine

Damn, I miss the World Cup! I’m tempted to support Everton solely to bask in the hotness of Howard…but my loyalty to Arsenal just won’t allow it. However, every time the US National Team gets together I will be watching…and probably drooling, too.

Cinema and Caffeine #11: The Social Network

2010-10-10T10:12:00.001-04:00

Film: The Social Network

Dir. David Fincher

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justion Timberlake, Armie Hammer

Caffeine: Folger's Gourmet Creme Brulee Coffee

If there’s one thing I took away from David Fincher’s latest addition to his increasingly eclectic oeuvre, The Social Network, it is that I am damn glad I didn’t go to an Ivy League school. According to this movie’s logic, everyone at Harvard and similar universities is a total genius, a total yuppie, and a total asshole. Such a standard of character is made clear from the very first scene, a lengthy rambling bar conversation between future Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg, and his girlfriend, played by Rooney Mara (A choice gem: “Why don’t I have to study?” “Because you go to B.U.”) I don’t know anything about the real man, but Zuckerberg as interpreted by Eisenberg is a twitchy, motor-mouthed obsessive and a bit of an egomaniac. Well, more than a bit: the snide remarks and passive insults he lets fly at Mara’s character during the opening scene are more than enough to give any girl cause for dumping him, so indeed, that is what she does. That night, in a drunken, blogging rampage, Eisenberg and his cohorts create the insulting girl-ranking site called Facemash; the wheels that would set Facebook rolling begin to spin.

A lesser actor would stumble over Aaron Sorkin’s quick-witted and quick-flying dialogue, but Eisenberg proves that, after pretty standard nerd roles in comedies Zombieland and Adventureland, that he can play more than the awkward, socially inept Jewish kid. He can play the awkward, socially inept Jewish kid who can conquer the world and become the youngest billionaire alive while still wearing the same pair of shitty sandals. Andrew Garfield, still riding high off of the buzz of Never Let Me Go, plays Eduardo Saverin, the economics major who was Zuckerberg’s only friend and Facebook co-founder and CFO…until he was edged out of his shares. Other characters who appear to be wronged by Zuckerberg are the Winklevoss twins, both played via magical CGI shenanigans by the phenomenal and entertaining new star Armie Hammer. The twins approach Zuckerberg early on about creating a social networking site for Harvard students, and like Saverin, later file a lawsuit against him. These two lawsuits are intercut with the main story thread chronicling the creation of the most addicting internet phenomenon of all time. It’s a great time capsule of a movie; I feel that future history classes should view it if they want an accurate taste of early twenty-first century culture.

Yet The Social Network would never have worked at all if penned by a lesser hand than Sorkin’s, and even though it may be a perfect time capsule, it is not a perfect movie. It is a movie full of talking. Impossibly clever, biting, vicious talking, but talking nonetheless. I couldn’t tell you my impressions of the cinematography, or even Trent Reznor’s much-hyped score, since I barely noticed either due to all of the talking. The only other screenwriter who could possibly have pulled off such a stunt would have been Quentin Tarantino, and even he would not have been able to resist the urge to throw in a gunfight or two to up the ante. There is no major climax to The Social Network, no firestorm that brings the film to a neat close. The plot is just one steady stream on tension, intercut with the short bursts of exposition that the lawsuit sequences serve as, that eventually winds it’s way down to a pretty predictable ending. Like I already said, if any lesser scribe attempted to make this kind of story into a screenplay, they would fail miserably at creating anything remotely engaging. Sorkin succeeds for the most part, but despite being an energetic film, it still lacks a sense of urgency, a rush to channel that energy into, and it’s two hour running time (a tad excessive) drives that point home. Of course, the story of Facebook is still being written to this day, this origin taking place in a very recent period history known as 2003, so that makes sense. Yet while the film is as engaging as it could be, it is still imperfect material to draw from, and therefore no perfect film could have been made.

However, in the capable hands of Sorkin, Fincher, and the talented young ensemble cast, the film is indeed far better than the story of Facebook should have had any right to be. Eisenberg and Garfield, as previously mentioned, deliver great performances. However, the majority of the praise should be doled out to Armie Hammer and (surprise!) Justin Timberlake. Hammer’s separate performances as Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss don’t solely rely on the CGI process that glues his face onto another man’s body; he plays Cameron and Tyler as two different brothers with conflicting ideas on how to deal with Zuckerberg. One brother is angry, passionate, and wants to sue; the other is upset but wants to let it slide to focus on their other overachiever activities, such as rowing crew for Harvard (and later, we find out, the Olympics). This one man’s portrayal of brotherly collaboration and love, enhanced by some of the film’s best and funniest dialogue, makes Hammer a remarkable actor to watch out for in the future. Meanwhile, Justin Timberlake plays paranoid and drug-fueled Napster founder Sean Parker, who comes into the Facebook old and shakes things up, in particular the relationship between Zuckerberg and Saverin. Timberlake buzzes with excitement and fire throughout the entire film, showing that his acting talents extend far beyond the "Saturday Night Live" stage.

If I was Mark Zuckerberg, I would have hated this movie; it’s remarkably biased towards the young men he apparently betrayed, and paints him as a brilliant but selfish young man who doesn’t seem to care about the feelings of anyone around him. However, I am not Mark Zuckerberg (which is a shame. I could use some of his money). Perhaps he’d have more to say about his side of Facebook’s Genesis. However, in the meantime, we have the Fincher/Sorkin version, and despite not being terribly fair and balanced, it’s a remarkable portrait of a time and an invention that no one could have predicted the impact of…except maybe Zuckerberg himself.

Brassy British Divas: Five to Listen For

2010-09-29T22:22:00.001-04:00

Anyone who knows me knows I love the Brits. Actually, I’m sure anyone who reads this blog is also aware of my affection for those across the pond; I’m pretty sure most of my Eye Candy selections hail from either England or their neighboring country of Ireland, and of course, can’t forget the repeated mentions of "Doctor Who" (notice how I manage to work that into nearly every blog entry? I am good). My infatuation for all things English extends from their television to their men, their soccer teams (GO ARSENAL!) to their authors, their literature to their film. However, one cannot forget the area of pop culture that Brits have been exporting to America since the 1960s and the accurately named British invasion: the music.

The British pop and soul revival began around 2006 with hit albums by the stylish, diva-licious, and always troubled Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse. Between the two of them, they established two distinct styles of music that many other talented young ladies (and a few less so, but with enough sass and pizzazz that we let them slip by) tried to imitate. The first was Allen’s cockney-pop, blasted through with hip-hop influences, naughty language, and references to London culture, all coated in a cartoonishly exaggerated accent. Kate Nash is the best and brightest of these imitators, but many others have co-opted this fun, flashy sound. The second is Winehouse’s smoky soul, which appears to have been ripped right out of the 1960s and slapped down in the twenty-first century completely intact. Duffy tries her best in this genre, but she’s just too clean cut and fresh-faced. Yeah, she’s healthier and a better role model, so power to her, but she just lacks the attitude that Winehouse injected into her music. I shouldn’t say past tense, since fortunately and somewhat miraculously she’s still alive; however, who knows when we’ll be seeing another record from her?

Yet there are plenty of artists to fill that gaping hole in your iTunes library. The following artists are the perfect blend of those two sound, pop and soul, and carry with them that accent that we Americans can’t seem to live without. I’m not going to go into detail describing each one, mainly because I know little about them other than what my last.fm station tells me. However, I think their style and sound can speak for them better than I.

1. Paloma Faith

2. Shingai Shoniwa (of The Noisettes)

3. Eliza Doolittle

4. VV Brown

5. Ellie Goulding

Enjoy!

Eye Candy of the Week: Andrew Garfield

2010-09-26T17:48:00.002-04:00

I first fell in love with Andrew Garfield when I saw Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus last winter. Who was this interesting, adorable young man facing off with the late Heath Ledger for the affections of Lily Cole? He was cute and charming as he tried his best to face off against the enigmatic stranger that was Ledger’s Tony, which I should note is no small feat for any actor. I found myself actually rooting for him by the end of the film, or at least wanting to take him home with me and cuddle him to pieces if Miss Cole didn’t want him.

I immediately checked his Imdb when I got home and sadly noted that his credits were few, and mostly the obscure-British variety. Yet later on, when I discovered the wonders of “Doctor Who,” Andrew Garfield appeared again, this time as a poor young man in Depression-era Manhattan, joining forces with Martha Jones and the Doctor to face off with those most dastardly villains, the Daleks. It was a similar character to his Parnassusrole: sweet, brave, and just plain trying his best to save the people he cared about. However, his most impressive performance comes in the first part of the British crime trilogy Red Riding. Here he plays Eddie Dunford, a young crusading journalist with a bit of an ego and an axe to grind. He is determined to solve the series to child murders that plagues Yorkshire, but is thwarted by the corrupt Yorkshire police. Red Riding, like Never Let Me Go, his most recent big-screen outing, is a beautiful piece of work, but trying on the emotions. The scenes of crime and torture, often directed at Dunford, are stomach-turning. Yet Garfield holds his own opposite older name actors such as Sean Bean, David Morrissey, and Rebecca Hall. It is a markedly adult role in comparison to his previous ones, and puts him forth as a force to be reckoned with onscreen. This continues in Never Let Me Go, where his character evolves from a confused, messy-haired youth to a more confident, bald-headed young man who seems content with the sad fate allotted him…almost. role: sweet, brave, and just plain trying his best to save the people he cared about. However, his most impressive performance comes in the first part of the British crime trilogy

Next week Garfield follows up Never Let Me Go with The Social Network, also known as “David Fincher’s Facebook movie.” These two projects, both critically acclaimed, are giving Garfield the momentum needed as he launches his next big career move—playing young Peter Parker in the Spider-Man reboot. I am glad that now when I check his Imdb there are a plethora of opportunities coming up for me to watch him on the big screen. Garfield is undeniably handsome, but in a slightly awkward way that makes him a perfect Peter Parker…and perfectly my type. He is tall and lanky with a swanlike neck and prominent features. His heavy brow makes his eyes all the more noticeable and aids his ability to convey almost any emotion with them alone. At 27, he’s a little old to be playing a high-school aged Spider-Man, but his crazy hair and youthful features, along with his immense talent as an actor that becomes more apparent with every project, make him a surprisingly ideal choice. I would almost reckon Garfield is too talented and too sexy for such a project, but I suppose to be overqualified is better than to be lacking. And hey, boy’s gotta eat, right?

Cinema and Caffeine #10: Never Let Me Go

2010-09-26T11:34:00.000-04:00

Film: Never Let Me Go

Dir. Mark Romanek

Starring: Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley

Caffeine: a glass of 3-buck pinot grigio (not caffeine, yeah, but more suitable for this kind of cinema)

If you plan on seeing Never Let Me Go, the latest offering from director Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo, various awesome music videos) and screenwriter Alex Garland (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later), then proceed with caution. Especially if you, like me, have a tendency to get emotional over anything from Love Actually to an episode of "Gossip Girl" to the beginning of Star Trek (hey, Kirk’s father dying is absolutely tragic! No judging). You’ll leave the theatre, like me, wishing you had not applied so much mascara beforehand…or at least wishing it were the waterproof kind.

Never Let Me Go is on the surface a standard, elegant, high-class British tearjerker in the vein of Atonement, starring a trio of talented young actors who are all very good as this sort of thing. None of them disappoint, in particular Keira Knightley, who seems to have been absent from multiplexes for quite some time. Her flawless beauty and acting makes a very welcome return here as Ruth, a selfish and impetuous girl who intercedes in the young love blossoming between our narrator, Kathy (Mulligan) and Tommy (Garfield), while at the mysterious boarding school of Hailsham. While at Hailsham, one of their teachers, played by the reliably-phenomenal Sally Hawkins, informs them that they are not like normal children. They will not grow up and live normal adult lives. Her speech regarding their doomed fates, which I will not spoil too much, is simple and heartbreaking, and sets the tone for the rest of the film that follows. Young love interrupted has never seemed to sad as when said lovers realize how little time they actually have.

Never Let Me Go is thus a brand of dystopian science fiction disguised as a British romantic drama. It is not just about thwarted passions, but entirely thwarted lives. Some critics have argued that these two drastically different flavors of cinema do not taste well together; however, I beg to differ. The elegant restraint of the British talent means that those moments of true tragedy, when they finally let loose, are all the more heartbreaking. I was in literal physical pain upon leaving the cinema. This is also a problem with the film, albeit a small one in the grand scheme of things. It was so devastating to watch the events unfold before me that by the film’s second half I longed for it to end, to put me out of my misery! As glimmers of hope sparkle on the horizon for Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth, one can’t help but know that it is all a mirage. Things never end happily in these kinds of stories; as a moviegoer I have learned this time and time again, despite never having read Kazuo Ichiguro’s original novel upon which the film is based. The result is a film that hammers you again and again, not in the head but the heart, as you root for these beautiful hopeless young people and know that nothing good can come of it. It’s sickening and not at all enjoyable to watch at these moments of unhappy revelation, while at the same time said moments sucker you in and makes you unable to look away.

I have already spoken of Knightley’s talents. It is also worth mentioning that Carey Mulligan has grown up so much since she played Knightley’s silly younger sister in Pride and Prejudice. Now she holds her own on the screen, her tight-lipped, crooked smiles and sad eyes hiding all of her feelings for Tommy. It is one of the most subtle and effective performances you will see this year, hopefully leading to her second consecutive Oscar nomination, though being far less showy than most Academy favorites. And speaking of Tommy, it is refreshing to see Andrew Garfield, a name on the British indie circuit, becoming a star. When the Spider-Man reboot finally hits everyone on earth will know his name; his current choices, such as this, The Social Network, and Red Riding, are proving him to be talent worthy of such imminent renown. The acting ensemble, much like the recent Jack Goes Boating, is integral to making the film work, because it requires seriousness and light touches that few of the younger generation possess.

I have used the word subtle multiple times, and indeed, that is the source of the power of Never Let Me Go. The cinematography is not showy, shaky, and in your face, but rather stark, clear, and elegant; with a color palette of icy grays and whites mixed with earthy browns and repeated fades to beige rather than black, it envelopes you in the closed-off world of these people. Suspension of disbelief is important in buying the existence of a world that would treat young people in such a way, and the care taken to execute the simple and yet almost otherworldly visuals of the world aids the viewer in that regard. When awards season rolls around, I expect that both the actors and the craftsmen will receive several nods for their work on this film.

The film’s ending, aided by Kathy’s matter of fact narration, will sucker-punch you if you have a soul at all. By the film’s end I was so taken aback that even with tears running down my face I longed for a second viewing. At the same time, I don’t know if I could stand to run the emotional gauntlet a second time anytime soon. I recommend the film, but only if you are in the proper state of mind to truly endure it.

Cinema and Caffeine #9: Jack Goes Boating

2010-09-17T13:16:00.000-04:00

Film: Jack Goes Boating

Dir. Philip Seymour Hoffman

Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Ryan, John Ortiz, Daphne Rubin-Vega

Caffeine: Celestial Seasonings Honey Vanilla Chai Tea

Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of the greatest actors of this generation, on both stage and screen. It makes sense that directing actors would come easily to him. The original play of Jack Goes Boating starred the same cast that appears in the film, including Hoffman, with the exception of Amy Ryan as Jack’s love interest, Connie, and received very positive reviews during it’s Off-Broadway run. I’m sure the same will hold true for the film, as I thought it was one of the most heartrendingly romantic films I’ve seen in ages.

Jack Goes Boating is a remarkable story in that it realistically portrays the comedy and tragedy of two things often poorly represented in cinema: the beginning and ending of relationships and working class life in New York City. Both of these topics are dwelt on time and time again, holding immense interest for the viewing public, it seems. Yet as someone who lives and works in New York and finds herself befuddled by the romantic scene here, Jack Goes Boating is in my opinion the truest depiction of this kind of lifestyle. The apartments can be shitty, the jobs can be unsatisfying, the streets and subways can be dangerous…this is the New York most of us know and yet love nonetheless, not the glamorous, shoe-filled landscape of Sex and the City.

The title character, played by Hoffman with greasy blonde dreads and a stammering voice, drives for his uncle’s limousine service and lives in his basement. He constantly plays reggae on his Walkman in order to bask in the “good vibes.” He’s never had a serious relationship, and his only friends are fellow limo driver Clyde (Ortiz) and his more successful wife, Lucy (Rubin-Vega). Yet Jack tries to maintain those “good vibes” and a positive attitude, especially after he meets fellow lonelyheart and perpetual victim Connie (Ryan) and forces himself to expand his horizons in order to be with her. This includes learning to cook and also to swim, so that eventually he can embark on the task of the movie’s title. As Jack and Connie’s relationship blossoms, Clyde and Lucy’s begins to deteriorate. For the new lovers, it’s terrifying, both to think about beginning their first serious relationship, to fall in love for the first time, while at the same time seeing their best example of that love fall apart.

Yet the film is not all high drama and unhappiness. There’s also tenderness and humor and dialogue that rings true for it’s awkwardness and frankness, though it does have that indefinable tone that one can immediately recognize as being taken from the stage. Bob Glaudini adapted his own play for the film, and I can’t imagine he changed much of the language, as sometimes I could almost see the scenery drop away around the actors and picture them on a bare stage. Yet unlike some play adaptations, which seem stagy and two-dimensional on camera, as though the director simply wants to put the play on celluloid and leave it to it’s own devices, Hoffman experiments with visual techniques such as rapid-fire editing and sequences from Jack’s imagination. These choices, along with a beautiful indie-rock soundtrack, turn the film into exactly that—a film, with all the devices one has at one’s disposal, not a play confined to a stage. If one wants to simply place the play in front of an audience, without any of the accoutrement that comes with the art of cinema, then leave it as a play.

However, as with a play, the most extraordinary and important thing here are the performances. Hoffman is, as usual, brilliant. His round face conveys sadness and hope more easily and subtly than pretty much all other actors working today. He has a lack of vanity that by Hollywood standards is also remarkable. So does his female lead, Amy Ryan, coming off of her breakout performances in Gone, Baby, Gone and as Michael Scott’s paramour Holly Flax on "The Office." Ryan has a realistic kind of working-class attractiveness, and a unique ability to inspire pity in the viewer. She and Hoffman have a sweet, delicate chemistry, a marked contrast to the fiery, combustible combination of Ortiz and Robin-Vega. The four main characters all interact with the natural and recognizable habits that mutual friends have—occasionally crossing lines, repeating things they shouldn’t have, interfering with each other’s lives. I could see myself being friends with them—hell, I actually probably already know them, or at least the twenty-something versions of them.

I saw the film as a free screening at my alma mater, on a cool rainy night where hail sprinkled the sidewalk and a tornado touched down in Brooklyn. It was a tea drinking kind of night, not meant for anything as aggressive as coffee, so the sweet and spicy nature of the Honey Vanilla Chai hit the spot, as did the film itself. After all the insane action-thrillers I’ve been going to see lately (as much as I do love that genre), it was nice to bask in the relative quietness and gun-free story of Jack Goes Boating. I look forward to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s next directing project.

Cinema and Caffeine #8: The Girl Who Played with Fire

2010-09-13T15:38:00.003-04:00

Film: The Girl Who Played With Fire

Dir. Daniel Alfredson

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyvquist

Caffeine: Starbucks Natural Fusions Caramel Coffee

When I reviewed the first film in author Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I noted that the main strength of the film was the perfect casting. The two talented lead actors took two very flawed and borderline-distasteful protagonists and made them vastly more appealing, while losing none of the dysfunctional complexity that made them so compelling to follow. It’s a difficult balancing act to master, and it is the main reason why I enjoyed and admired the film so much. The same is true to an even bigger degree in The Girl Who Played with Fire, mostly because the film as a whole is a slight step down from the first volume, forcing the audience to really dwell on the strengths of the actors due to the weaknesses in the story.

Don't get me wrong: The Girl Who Played with Fire is a magnetic thriller more compelling than most American movies of that genre currently in theatres. Indeed, I pity prejudiced filmgoers who still shy away from subtitles; they are missing out on some of the most exciting performances and beautiful cinematography in theatres today. Nor do I place the blame directly on the director, Daniel Alfredson, or the screenwriter, Jonas Frykberg. Both are new to the Millennium trilogy, and also the ones who are responsible for the conclusion of the saga, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, due out in the States at the end of October. To take on such plot-heavy and popular books is a terrifying task for any filmmaker, and for the most part Alfredson and Frykberg are successful. The problem lies mostly in the late author himself: the second book has a more slapdash storyline, that while more directly involving our troubled heroine Lisbeth Salander suffers from too many characters, messy plot turns, and expositional solutions. That messy storyline is translated a little too accurately to the screen, and without nearly as much detail as the novel, rendering the film even more mentally exhausting than Larsson’s book.

While Dragon Tattoo’s mystery regarding the perverse Vanger clan was confined to that novel, the saga of The Girl Who Played with Fire, concerning Salander's personal history and her long-ago institutionalization at the hands of the corrupt Swedish government, was hinted at in the first novel and doesn’t reach its conclusion until the end of the third. This gives the middle chapter of the trilogy, as is often the case (see The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers as another example), a lack of a true beginning and an end, which is mildly unsatisfying. A plethora of brand new characters that readers and viewers previously had no emotional attachment to, mostly police officers, are thrown into the fray as Lisbeth Salander goes into hiding after being accused of a murder she did not commit. This gang of secondary characters, so intricately detailed by Larsson in the book, are merely glossed over in the film. This makes it hard to truly care about them or even distinguish them from each other, since they come and go onscreen so quickly. The worst causalities in this regard, no pun intended, are the murder victims themselves, who aren’t given time to develop their bond with Mikhail Blomqvist and the Millennium staff as they did in the novel, thus rendering the punch of their deaths less painful. Yet it is still the bombshell that kick-starts the film, with Blomqvist determined to figure out who was responsible while at the same time publishing the dead journalist’s article on sex trafficking, an article that names several men who would have the motive to silence him. Somehow Salander is tied to the murder weapon, and while Blomqvist embarks on a crusade to clear his friend's name, Salander tries to obtain a police file on herself from the early Nineties, thus revealing more and more of her shadowy past. It’s a lot to handle on either page or screen. While Dragon Tattoo clocked in at over two and a half hours, necessary for fully constructing such a massive plot and exciting enough that the hours flew by, Fire runs for barely over two hours. I think the story and the characters would have all seemed a lot more filled in and less sketched out if perhaps a little more time had been taken to sort them all out onscreen.

Yet the two most important actors, Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyvquist, so electric in their portrayals and their chemistry in the first film, still deliver the goods in the second, and make up for the lack of distinction in the rest of the ensemble. This is all the more remarkable in that their characters spend the entire film apart, only communicating via computer, and aren’t united until the final scene. All I can say is, I pity Rooney Mara, who has gigantic shoes to fill when she steps into the role of Salander in David Fincher’s American remake. Rapace once again takes one of the most unique and badass female protagonists in history and gives a no-holds-barred performance, sometimes going whole scenes without saying a word and conveying all of Salander’s heartbreaking memories and motives through the flicker of an eyelid or the twitch of a lip. Her tiny body is thrown around and abused and yet she always jumps up and keeps going, using boxing training, a trusty Taser, and sheer cleverness to defeat men three times her size. Hopefully when Oscar time rolls around the Academy will remember Rapace, since she is proving herself more exciting to watch than half of the English-speaking actresses who will likely be in awards contention come winter, with much more thankless roles. In my review of Salt I noted that few women could pull of the combination of stunning beauty and genuine dangerousness the way Angelina Jolie can; Noomi Rapace deserves to join that elite group. I am excited that she has been recently cast in the sequel to Sherlock Holmes; she will be more than a match for Robert Downey Jr. Nyvquist also continues to impress his fiery portrayal of the fearless, crusading journalist Blomqvist, who never listens to the friends and enemies who warn him about the danger he is in. He keeps going and digging up the dirt with a sharp wit and sense of humor, and his affection for Salander is palpable despite their sharp contrasts in personality.

The film is also as beautiful to behold as the first, proving that the Swedes have an unmatchable talent for capturing lightness and dark to the utmost dramatic effect. Cinematographer Peter Mokrosinski creates moody atmospheres that perfectly accentuate the tension of each scene (though it helps that the twisting streets and gorgeous waterfront of Stockholm are a perfect natural backdrop for a murder mystery). The final sequence, in which Salander confronts the true villain of the piece, is a masterful collage of constantly moving camera and pitch-perfect performance that made me jump out of my seat several times, gasping in shock even though I knew what was going to happen next. I don’t want to give away too many more plot details, because it would take so long to do so and also because, once again, I urge everyone to read the novels before seeing the films anyways. I enjoyed the experience of reading the Millennium trilogy so much that I would never want to spoil that experience for anyone else. Suffice to say, The Girl Who Played with Fire is a mostly-solid thriller that continues in the way of the first, and while a little too overwhelming at times, is still more worthy of your cinema dollars than half the Hollywood action pictures currently in theatres. Put in the effort to read those subtitles and dammit, you will be rewarded.

Eye Candy of the Week: Richard Hammond

2010-09-11T13:15:00.001-04:00

The moment when I finally realized that I have rather untraditional taste in men was when I realized that I have a huge schoolgirl crush on tiny Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond. A middle-aged, hobbit-sized man with a penchant for necklaces, on a television program about cars? Not my usual cup of tea, for sure. Yet I have developed a mild infatuation with the man as well as with the show he is on, despite having almost no knowledge or interest in the subject matter.

I started watching Top Gear by accident. I enjoy getting my daily dosage of Doctor Who at five o’clock each day on BBC America, and afterwards when I would get up to begin preparing my dinner I simply didn’t bother to turn the television off. The result is that bits of Top Gear began to slowly eat into my subconscious, since the show came on every day post-Who, and I felt myself starting to actually pay attention to the program. It went from being simply background noise and visuals while I cooked to something I legitimately looked forward to. I even found myself recording a few episodes when I knew I wouldn’t be home, just to get my fix.

It was an addiction that I couldn’t really explain. After all, I have always looked with mild amusement and disdain upon the stereotypical male obsession with cars. I acknowledge that with my interests I defy a few gender stereotypes, but this was one that never caught my fancy. I just don’t care about cars. Sure, I’d like to drive a nice one, if I could, but for the most part I only care if it can get me from one place to another easily and safely. I never understood the appeal of having a driveway full of untouched sports cars with all the extraneous fixings like bedazzled rims and DVD players that can be seen on every episode of MTV Cribs that features an athlete or a hip-hop star.

Yet I can enjoy a show like Top Gear because it’s less about the cars and more about the entertainment. The three presenters are funny and knowledgeable and have a great chemistry, and the challenge they take on, whether it be redesigned a police car (my personal favorite for it’s sheer absurdity) or driving from France to northern England to turn on the Blackpool Illuminations, the adventures Clarkson, May, and Hammond embark on are fun to watch even if you could care less about the difference between four and rear-wheel drive. It doesn’t help that Richard Hammond’s round eyes and messy hair rapidly grew on me for reasons I can’t really explain other than he’s really earnest, funny and of the trio, the only one who could be considered remotely attractive. Besides, I’ve always been a sucker for a guy in jeans and a leather jacket…even if he wears necklaces (a little questionable, but I can overlook it, especially when paired by a British accent). As for the height thing…I find it strangely adorable, probably because even at 5’7’’ Hammond is still taller than me. Plus, a big smile can eliminate most other physical shortcomings in a guy. Men, take note: girls like guys who are having fun and want to have fun with us. Richard Hammond seems like he’s having the time of his life every time I watch Top Gear, something that I can say about very few guys in the real world, and that joy is infectious—and attractive.

Thoughts After a Visit to the Brooklyn Museum

2010-09-11T12:48:00.001-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I took myself out to the Brooklyn Museum to finally see Andy Warhol: The Last Decade before it closes on Sunday, September 12th. It was an eye-opening look at a part of Warhol’s life that, even though I have always been an admirer of his work and the world he created around himself at the Factory, I was previously less than knowledgeable of. I have always been more engaged in the pre-shooting Warhol era of the Sixties. As a result, it was interesting to see snippets of Eighties Warhol gems such as episodes of his various television programs for MTV and his giant Last Supper replications. Afterward I strolled throughout the rest of the Museum; it’s not very large and I had been before, so the entire act took only a couple hours, including a brief moment of sketching time inspired by the European painting collection in the Beaux-Arts Court. While I was attempting a marker study of Bouguereau’s The Elder Sister (1864), I was once again struck by how little I care for any art produced before the 1500s. Yet at the same time, as I strolled past the portrait area to the devotional art, nearly all produced between 1300 and 1500, I could still see the value of it.

I admire ancient art less for what it is and more for it’s age, it’s legacy. I remember visiting the National Gallery whilst in London and being utterly bored by the rooms devoted to the 1200s, mainly because every painting or altarpiece was a variation on the same theme and style: lots of blues and gold leaf and sharp details illustrating the same set of events from the New Testament. The most common were the birth of Christ and the Assumption; I remember thinking to myself, if I see one more painting or Mary and Jesus ascending to Heaven I’ll need to run to the portrait gallery just to reassure myself that secular art was still alive and well, albeit in the form of portraits of Kate Moss. A disrespectful attitude, you might say. Yet I also feel that these pieces, while not as aesthetic pleasing to me as say, the Hudson River School’s landscapes, 19th century European portraits, or the Pop Art explosion of the 1960s, have a separate value in that they make me feel so tiny, so insignificant in the scheme of the universe.

How is feeling tiny and insignificant a plus? It make one realize that in the grand scroll of history one is just a footnote, and rather than feel bleak and depressed at this notion, it makes the hardships and little annoying issues of one’s days shrink down to nothingness and dust. When I look at medieval tapestries, worn and fading and chronicling battles that occurred hundreds of years before I was born, I feel history envelope me and transport me, and I feel reassured that millions of people lived and died before me, and millions more will after, and artists will continue to chronicle it all and post those chronicles on museum walls for visitors of the next millennia to see. Perhaps those people of the future will be as bored by 19th century art as I am by anything pre-Renaissance, but hopefully they will also feel a sense of awe that such art actually exists, that people have always had a creative impulse. This impulse should be celebrated in any way, shape, or form that it chooses to assert itself, even if to your individual set of eyes it’s nothing more than yet another flat religious icon.

I had the same reaction, only heightened even more, when I visited the Ancient Egyptian wing at the museum. It seemed to me just to repeat the same pieces I had seen in the British Museum, the Met, and basically every other institution with the ability to collect such relics. After awhile, I fail to find pleasure in observing the worn-out and weathered rock sculptures of Egyptian gods and leaders, the noseless icons of a faraway place and time, but I do continually find pleasure in reading the dates attributed to each piece. When I see a number that places it thousands of years before the birth of Christ (thousands of years before those devotional painter could glean their inspiration), I feel a tingle in my toes that I, here in the twenty-first century, can share a room with something so massively hold. Massive is the correct word, for indeed it weighs you down with the epic amount of time that has passed since.

Upon leaving the Brooklyn Museum, I felt the most aesthetically pleased and creatively inspired by the works of Warhol and the post-Renaissance landscape painters, whose eye for the delicate stroke of detail and flash of light cannot fail to make an impression on the viewer. But even though my eyes had lingered here and merely slid over the more ancient pieces, it was the latter that stayed with me throughout the rest of the day. Not the visuals they conjured, but the days, the decades, the millennia—the time.