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November 29, 2006
My Amazon wishlist
For all who've been having trouble finding it, it's HERE
Please note that Amazon's prices on action figures are not necessarily the best or most competitive. On everything else, they're pretty damn good.
And the list is three pages long, so if you're like my mom and won't buy me figures, turn the pages for more. You can sort by priority if you'd like to see what I want most on the list.
No obligation is intended on anyone's part to buy me anything. Being dead broke, I probably can't reciprocate much this year, but I'm trying to put together a li'l something for my nearest and dearest. We'll see if it happens.
Posted by LYT at 5:32 PM | Comments (0)
Angry Chairman
Down in a hole
Losing my soul
I'd like to fly
But my wings have been so denied...
Tonight I got to see Alice in Chains, which I had some apprehension about. I always loved the AIC, the most "metal" of the Seattle bands from the early '90s, and never quite understood why they don't have the same kind of following today as Pearl Jam or Audioslave...not that it helps that lead singer Layne Staley died 4 years ago. And hardly anyone seemed to notice. Given his heroin addiction, and that all his songs are about foretelling his own death, some might have assumed he died long ago.
Quick...name a rock band that got better after it changed lead singers. The only one I can think of Anthrax, and I'm sure some would debate me on that. Usually what happens is you get something like Van Hagar.
Layne's replacement is as unlikely seeming a choice as you can imagine. William DuVall, a skinny black Englishman with a big afro. He looks not unlike a handsomer, less retarded version of Tim Meadows' "Ladies' Man" character.
And he sings exactly like Layne. With your eyes closed, you wouldn't know.
Part of why this works is that the real force behind the band is actually lead guitarist Jerry Cantrell, who also sings harmonies on most of the songs. Jerry looks like a no-shit heavy metal veteran should -- long straight hair, beard, aging eyes that look like they've seen the path to hell and back, black t-shirt, jeans, small ball-necklace, and a couple of tats on the left arm. It's been a while since I've seen so many people in a crowd do the "devil horns" sign, but Jerry earns it.
To label AIC as metal may be doing them a disservice, though. They're at least as known for acoustic hits as hard-driving ones, and the set tonight reflected that, with an unplugged session as the centerpiece, during which the band chilled out with ample free samples from tour sponsor Corona. DuVall is better at playing guitar than Staley was, which adds a slightly new dimension to the sessions. He also moves around a bit more.
The rap on Alice back in the day was that in concert, they always sounded exactly like the albums. That's truer of the heavy songs than the acoustic ones, some of which now give a better opportunity to hear Jerry's unadorned voice than ever before.
Though there were no Natalie Cole/Hank Jr. style duets with the dead voice of Layne, tribute was paid in the form of two video packages that served as transitions from electric to acoustic and back again. The rest of the time, various psychedelic images flooded the back screen.
Not every favorite was touched on -- "I Stay Away" was one absence I noted -- but nearly all of "Dirt" was heard, and I've often said that I consider it the greatest hard rock disc ever, one I'd stack even above anything Nirvana, and in stiff competition with Guns N Roses' "Appetite for Destruction."
I don't know what the band's plans are after this. What I saw tonight was the last stop of their current tour, and none of the material was new.
But if they do decide to lay down some new stuff with DuVall, I will now accept it as bona fide Alice in Chains. And that's no small thing.
Posted by LYT at 12:57 AM | Comments (8)
November 28, 2006
Name that tune
I had some luck doing this before, so let's see if my readers can't help me again.
Especially Ben Boyer.
The song I'm looking to find is a pop song, danceable, not a current hit but definitely one in the past few years. Female vocal, young-sounding.
Chorus features lyrics that sound to my ears like: "Turn out the lights, turn out the lights...there's a party party party, going now now now..."
Googling the lyrics does nothing, as they're very common lyrics taken by themselves.
If MTV still did its job I'm sure I'd know by now now now.
Posted by LYT at 6:29 PM | Comments (5)
Britney Spears vagina photos
Uhh, think I'll get many hits with a headline like that?
Anyway, thanks to a heads-up from the Pererro crew, you can see them here. For real.
Made my day.
Posted by LYT at 11:59 AM | Comments (6)
November 25, 2006
Briefly checking in to despam
I will be avoiding the Internet for most of the rest of my time here in San Diego. If I gave you the phone number here, call me.
Back with more when the new work week begins.
Posted by LYT at 3:50 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2006
Thanksgiving post
I may not be online much over the holiday, so I might as well give this a shot now.
Basically, I'm finding it harder than ever to feel thankful this year. One has to try, but as I looked over the last year of posts in trying to compile a blogaversary recap that never happened, I wasn't exactly heartened. In many ways, I've never fully come out of the funk that I fell into following my surgery last year. This isn't entirely unrelated to the fact that they kept finding more ways to charge me for it, and I made less and less money. Then the city of LA hit me with a business tax, which I don't make enough money to be charged, except that because I didn't tell them that in time, I am being charged.
I thought the New Times/Village Voice merger would be good for me, but all that's really happened is that I've become the scapegoat among pretentious New York cineastes for everything they hate about New Times. Okay, I'll be the bad guy, the designated villain, the Marilyn Manson of film criticism. Maybe one day Disney will offer me a big paycheck to record a song for a movie that covertly undermines people like me.
Friends are disappearing, moving away, coupling up and circling the wagons. I'm very thankful for the times I do spend with them. I wish there were more.
Over the past year, this blog has turned more into a review blog than anything else. In part that's because I felt like I got burned by confiding anything about my personal life, and so there's lots of that stuff I never said a thing about. The things I've been through in the dating game this past year would read like a comedy of errors if I told them all. But we can always talk movies, and that seems to get me the most hits anyway, so hey, I'm thankful for that.
I'm thankful for the real friends, especially Matt and Jaye who go above and beyond and I probably don't thank them enough in person.
I'm thankful for family, though I hardly see anyone in that category as they all live far away. My choice, I guess.
I'm thankful for those who allow me a creative outlet and collaboration -- film-makers like Greg, Paul, and Sean who believe in what I can bring to the table. And Julia and Lindsay for getting me to No Shame Theater.
I'm thankful for the editors who respect me.
I'm thankful Mad Cowgirl will soon be out there on DVD for the world to find, and see my multifaceted contributions.
I'm thankful my health is better than it was a year ago. And I know there's more that could go wrong; I'm thankful that it hasn't.
After this past summer, I'm also more thankful for fall weather than I ever have been before.
And I'm thankful I have somewhere to be today. I hope you do too.
Posted by LYT at 1:36 AM | Comments (11)
November 22, 2006
In case you were waiting...
Here's my take on DECK THE HALLS
[no more comments on this entry; it's attracting too much spam.]
Posted by LYT at 11:33 PM
E! Online reviews
I'll have a third one up later today for DECK THE HALLS.
In the meantime, enjoy...
TENACIOUS D IN THE PICK OF DESTINY
and
If you're moviegoing this weekend, the options are good.
Posted by LYT at 3:36 AM | Comments (3)
November 21, 2006
So much for the 30-year-old heart
Robert Altman is dead. Old as he is, I don't think anyone expected it.
I still say POPEYE is his best movie.
Posted by LYT at 1:41 PM | Comments (8)
Toysrus.com misses the point
...of wishlists, that is. You can make one, but it's not visible to anybody except you.
They seem to think that the whole purpose of a wishlist is to put in stuff you can't afford to buy right now. As opposed to actually delineating what you'd like people to buy for you.
If anyone actually cares what I'd like for Christmas from toysrus.com, drop me an email.
Posted by LYT at 2:42 AM | Comments (3)
Two weeks until MAD COWGIRL on DVD!!!
I just recently had the chance to peruse the final production samples. This is going to be a good one. The picture quality is brighter and better than any projected version I've ever seen (Linton Semage's facial features are easily discernable despite his dark complexion), and the soundtrack can be played in Dolby 2.0 or 5.1.
We had to make some soundtrack changes due to clearance issues, but it's not as bad as you might think. Some parts of the instrumental score have been replaced with very similar, non-copyrighted music. The Bollywood number has been replaced with a different one, which is the one choice I'm a little sad about. E.L.O.'s "All Over the World" has been replaced by a hip-hop number about the Master of the FlyigngGuillotine, which I find to be a vast improvement. And obviously we couldn't get Roxette, but the Chinese song in its place isn't bad.
Though there isn't a commentary track, there are lots of deleted scenes and outtakes (labeled "Sides of Beef"). Most of the deleted scenes expand on the subplot with Aimee (Devon Odessa), including a make-out scene between her and Sarah. C'mon, you know you want to see that! There's also more of Therese (Sarah Lassez) and the mysterious Catholic priest (Christo Dimassis), as well as a wacky dance number from my character, Lenny/Big Brother Cheng.
Outtakes include scenes from some fake TV shows we created for the movie, including Wally George; bloopers involving Sarah and Douglas Dunning; martial arts training footage; and Linton greeting the audience at the Silver Lake premiere.
Hidden somewhere on the disc are interviews with Jasper Boring, Douglas, and me. And there's more -- vintage kung-fu trailers!
Now here comes my sales pitch: I need you, yes YOU, to buy this DVD. Unlike some past releases I've been associated with, I'm not getting a ton of freebies.
This is part of the inaugural slate from Cinema Epoch, a company run by Gregory Hatanaka. If Epoch does well, we get to make more movies like MAD COWGIRL. But we need to prove that it can. Pre-orders have been great so far, but what would be even better is if you could buy it at Virgin Records when it comes out. Prove to them that Cinema Epoch can succeed at retail. If they don't have it, ask them to order it. They'll be able to do so.
Your local rental place may not carry it, but Netflix will. At the very least, rent it from them.
I know it's not a movie for everyone, but if you're a regular reader of this site, I guarantee that you will like at least some parts of it. If even half my readers buy it, we'll be doing well. And get to make another movie for you guys that'll be even better.
If you are a blogger friend of mine, pleasepleaseplease help me get the word out. It matters to my film-making career. If you'd be willing to let me place a free Blogad, let me know -- I can't afford to buy, I'm afraid. There'll be one in my sidebar shortly.
Posted by LYT at 12:46 AM | Comments (3)
November 20, 2006
Reader survey
I want some feedback from the cineastes among you.
Soon, various editors will be asking me for end of year stuff. I can't see everything, but I can do my best to see everything that matters. Movies like DOOGAL and THE NATIVITY STORY will not be priorities.
So...what are the best films you've seen this year so far? And of the films scheduled to open in December, which ones do you want to see, either immediately or later on DVD?
If you know for a fact that I've already seen something (i.e. I reviewed it), no need to list it. I just want to make sure I don't totally overlook someone's favorite.
My December "to-see" list so far is Dreamgirls, Inland Empire, Apocalypto, The Fountain, Eragon, Paprika, and Letters from Iwo Jima.
The only major DVD catch-up I can think of is District B13, and possibly The Illusionist if it comes out in time
I encourage readers who don't normally post comments to chime in on this one, as well as our regulars.
Posted by LYT at 12:01 AM | Comments (12)
November 17, 2006
Movie review: CASINO ROYALE
I haven't seen it, but my mother, in England, has.
Here's her review:
"TOO VIOLENT FOR ME, BUT HE IS GOOD ON THE EYE"
Posted by LYT at 7:38 PM | Comments (16)
Quick take
E Online review of Let's Go to Prison
Posted by LYT at 6:50 PM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2006
Am I "dispiritingly facile"?
Stu van Airsdale seems to think so.
Posted by LYT at 2:21 PM | Comments (11)
In love with Brittany Murphy again
Whatever else you can say about HAPPY FEET -- and we'll get to that -- one thing that will stick with me is Brittany Murphy's singing voice. It's beautiful. Heartbreakingly so, because right at this moment there's nothing I feel like I want more than for a woman to sing to me like the Brittany penguin sings to the Elijah Wood penguin, and I'm fairly certain none ever will.
I know what you're probably thinking. "Brittany Murphy the coked-up skank?" I once thought as you did, but there is still good in her. Seeing her in THE DEAD GIRL talking like a regular human being without any trace of her "Luanne" voice, and now this...her rendition of "Somebody to Love" might even have given Freddie Mercury a mild stiff one.
I don't like to recommend that actors make CDs, but Brittany should, if she hasn't already. [Edit: Only thing I found in that regard is that she sings one track on a Paul Oakenfold CD]
Besides that, the movie is a really mixed bag. Its primary target audience is girlfriends, particularly the kind who get all atwitter over cute widdle fuzzy wuzzy things and also think about environmental activism all the time. The tone of the thing is all over the place. At first it's like a penguin version of MOULIN ROUGE, with penguins singing classic pop songs to try and win a mate. Then Mumble, the Elijah Wood penguin, is born, and he can't sing worth a damn, but he can tap-dance, which everybody tells him is weird and abnormal and against the Penguin Deity. A metaphor for homosexuality, basically. His dad (Hugh Jackman impersonating Elvis) tries to "cure" him; mom (Nicole Kidman doing a Marilyn Monroe voice, which, according to the end credits, requires the permission of the Marilyn Monroe estate even if you're being subtle about it and don't mention her name. Regardless, it makes Kidman sound stupid so they should have saved some money and used her normal voice) thinks it's cute.
[EDIT: According to some other reviews that actually used press notes, Nicole Kidman's character name is "Norma Jean." Hence the royalties, I guess. Still a bad idea.]
Mumble goes off on a quest, and here things get very intense, a slarge predators try to devour him several times. I'm talking big scary gulls and seals that fill the screen, and will freak the shit out of kids who aren't prepared, because it's fairly photorealistic CGI. The gulls try to peck Mumble to death in mid-air. He doesn't die, of course, but there's potential nightmare material here.
After that, he runs into a tribe of Mexican penguins who are all short and think dancing is cool. The main one is voiced by Robin Williams, who also voices a Barry White type "black guy" penguin. Only in Hollywood would they pay a more expensive white guy to do the job two minorities could handle cheaply and more effectively. Williams sounds about as "black" as Dusty Rhodes, or my Uncle Kip when he tries to fake a Motown voice. Anyway, regardless of how you find his comedy shtick, it's yet another odd tonal shift.
Then the last part of the movie involves humans, and there's even a ridiculous live-action sequence comprising part of one of the worst endings ever. It begins with an odd 2001 reference, then turns into something out of Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Suffice it to say that tap-dancing saves the world, but I'll bet you knew that. You'll never guess how, because it's pretty out there.
Some will say I went in prejudiced, and could never have liked the movie. I'll tell you this: I went into ICE AGE 2 pretty sure I wouldn't like it, and came out having enjoyed myself in a manner I would not have thought possible from a movie featuring Queen Latifah and John Leguizamo.
With HAPPY FEET, I'll tell you that I enjoyed parts of it a lot (the parts with the big carnivores, mostly, and Brittany Murphy's singing). But not enough parts to recommend it as a whole.
Posted by LYT at 2:52 AM | Comments (7)
AFI FEST 2006: ELECTION/ELECTION 2
That was fun, writing the BUG review without looking at imdb. I think I should do that more often. Like now. No sense in sounding too sophisticated when I ain't.
I closed out AFI Fest by seeing two movies by Johnnie To -- ELECTION and its sequel, sometimes called TRIAD ELECTION. A couple AFI Fests ago, I missed seeing all three INFERNAL AFFAIRS movies, so this year when Scorsese had his remake, I wasn't as prepared as some of my critical brethren and sistren. However, when he decides to remake ELECTION -- and someone probably will, if not him -- I'll be ready. Funny thing is it's kind of a Hong Kong version of Scorsese and/or Coppola to begin with.
So anyway, you think U.S. elections are bad? These movies deal with the notion that every two years, the Hong Kong Triads elect a new godfather. Candidates for the position may not directly harm each other, but they'll for damn sure wage a proxy war to ensure that the choice is effectively made before it ever comes to a vote. In the first ELECTION, the choice boils down to the cocky, showy Big D, and family man Lok, distinguished by his graying sideburns. In addition to avoiding the cops and having their surrogates battle it out covertly, the key to victory seems to hinge upon possession of a baton passed down through generations and hidden somewhere in mainland China.
What's strange about part one is that Lok and Big D are the main characters who dominate the film's first and third acts, but they disappear almost entirely from the second. This makes things harder to follow for Western audiences unused to distinguishing between a bunch of unfamiliar Asian men in suits. I think a second viewing might be more rewarding, or even goign in knowing that Big D and Lok drop out for a while.
TRIAD ELECTION picks up two years later, as the winner of the previous one (I'll be coy about his identity just in case you plan on renting them tonight or something) decides he wants to run again, despite laws forbidding such a thing. Opposing him is young Jimmy Lee, a businessman who joined the Triad purely for protection and wants out, but when a deal goes bad on the mainland, he's told he can never do business in China again...unless he becomes Triad chairman. So reluctantly, but vehemently, he throws his hat in the ring against an incumbent who's even more dangerous and corrupt than he was in part one.
The sequel hangs together much better as a movie -- it never loses focus from Jimmy (who's a total Michael Corleone type) and his opponent. It also features several unique torture scenes, including some creative mutilations involving dogs.
You might have to watch the first film to properly understand the second, but I'm not sure you do. The second is more action based -- the first had very little actual violence, but lots of intrigue. Sequels are always bigger and splashier. There's certainly an opening for part 3 to happen, but if it does, let's hope Johnnie To doesn't imitate Coppola too closely.
Posted by LYT at 1:21 AM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2006
Cathy Seipp writes about me
In a column about Jill Stewart:
People who know Jill - even if they're reflexive lefties like New Times film critic Luke Y. Thompson, who disagrees with her politics but likes her as a person - think all the panicky criticism about here from the true believers at the Weekly is ridiculous.
Funny thing is, I just got called a "soft rightie" yesterday by a San Francisco musician who likes to send out mass unsolicited emails about how much of a fascist Bush is. I don't really consider myself "reflexive" anything, but more to the point...I DON'T disagree with all of Jill's politics. As I recall, she and I both voted for Nader in 2000.
Jill has always had a bit of an obsession with the "L.A. Mummified" school district, and not having any first-hand experience, I can't say I have a strong opinion on that one way or the other.
If Jill ran for office, I'd strongly consider voting for her. I can't say the same for the friends whose politics I disagree with almost 100%.
Posted by LYT at 2:29 PM | Comments (4)
AFI FEST 2006: BUG
BUG is the new William Friedkin movie that he insists is not a horror movie even though Lionsgate is promoting it as one. But he also says THE EXORCIST isn't a horror movie, and that the head of Lionsgate is a proctologist.
BUG is based on a play, and if you didn't know that, you'd figure it out quickly, because 99% of the story takes place in a motel room. Ashley Judd is all freaked out because her white trash ex just got out of jail, and like every husband in every Ashley Judd movie, he likes to hit her. She gets over this by drinking vodka and Coke.
But then her lesbian best friend brings a dude over one night, and it's that creepy Sergeant Karnes fella from WORLD TRADE CENTER. He says he doesn't want to go to bed with her (Ashley). At some point he changes his mind, which is a good move on his part.
Then he starts seeing bugs everywhere. He's an ex military dude, and figures he was experimented on. He starts cutting himself, and fumigating the place. Ashley roles with it and believes him. They both get crazier and crazier.
I won't spoil the ending, but they both get naked.
I like the story, but it needs a big change from the play. A little ambiguity, too. Let us see the bugs, maybe believe crazy Karnes dude a little bit. Otherwise, I just don't get what Ashley sees in him. I get what he sees in her -- dressed down and acting trashy, Ashley is hotter than she's ever been since, like, HEAT. But there's no way she should be as crazy as Gulf War Guy in three days.
Actresses normally hold off on nudity for the big prestige projects, but Ashley does it for this and EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. Odd choices, I'd say.
This needed to be a more radical adaptation, and it isn't. But go if you want to see Ashley naked, or Karnes (though you don't see schlong, ladies).
Only the last part's a horror movie. Ashley was there at the screening and said she thinks it's a comedy.
Posted by LYT at 1:44 AM | Comments (1)
AFI FEST 2006: RE-CYCLE
I just saw a trailer for the Pang Brothers' new English language horror movie, from Sam Raimi's Ghost House company. It made the audience laugh at loud (not in a good way), especially at the end when we get the obligatory "kid creepily sings a nursery rhyme" bit, and it's "Old McDonald had a farm." Kristen Stewart stars, and it's about a kid who can see dead people. A totally original idea, no?
Danny and Oxide Pang have some nice ideas from time to time, but their storytelling skills aren't the best. If Tom Cruise ever gets around to remaking THE EYE, it may well be better than the original. RE-CYCLE has some great stuff going on, and I'd love to see it as a video game, but as a movie, the ending kills it. I'll try not to spoil with specifics.
The first act of the movie deals with a popular romance novelist who is now trying her hand at somethign supernatural, but as she's writing it, strange things start happening. Scary blurry ghosts in the distant background, wadded up bits of paper that move, long hairs appearing on the kitchen counter. Then one night she takes the elevator downstairs, and lands up in the land of Re-Cycle, a limbo world where discarded ideas live, including one particularly memorable area where aborted fetuses continue to grow. There is of course an obligatory abandoned carnival (why are those always so inherently creepy?), worn-out giant toys, and things floating in the air that should not do so under conventional physics. Not to mention Langolier-like destruction of the past if one does not move sufficiently swiftly.
The imagination in some of these sequences is reminiscent of the likes of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Terry Gilliam, which is why it's a shame the story isn't on the same level. After several creative journeys through the dreamscape, we get a heavy-handed anti-abortion screed and a bizarre "surprise" ending that's totally unexplained.
Somebody get the remake rights, and get a solid screenwriter to take a crack at it. RE-CYCLE is almost brilliant, but the finish needs more processing.
Posted by LYT at 12:40 AM | Comments (1)
November 13, 2006
No more Sideshow ads
Enough was enough.
When they started generating a password box to get to this blog, that pissed me off way too much. And they never sent me free toys as promised.
I hope you'll find the blog loads a lot faster now.
So no more. They still make good toys though.
Posted by LYT at 10:46 PM | Comments (2)
My tiny bit of post-election punditry
Stuff I think affected the results:
-Republicans didn't secure the homophobe vote that was a huge help in 2004. They couldn't effectively cry "Fag Marriage! Booga booga!" after the Foley and Haggard incidents. In general, though, I think it's still an issue that can win for them in the absence of huge honking counter-examples. I'm certainly not saying that's right, but it's still the way it is. Though one important caveat is that a presidential candidate will not win if he says anything too overtly homophobic.
-They're way behind on the environment. When even Pat freakin' Robertson says global warming is happening, and evangelicals and fundamentalists in general are getting more actively environmentalist, running against it is a loser. You can make all the technical arguments you want, but regular folks just got through a heatwave, and that's what they're going to believe.
-No progress in Iraq the last two years. Voters figure trying something new can't be worse.
It's easy for us in the media to read all the pundits and the blogs and so forth and get a distorted picture of what might happen. Meanwhile, I think the vast majority of Americans don't really pay much attention, because they have lives. And most of them aren't rabidly partisan, but have one or two issues they care about.
Posted by LYT at 2:29 PM | Comments (3)
November 12, 2006
AFI FEST 2006: HOLLYWOOD DREAMS
I went to see Henry Jaglom's newest movie not because I'm particularly a fan of his work, but because I heard that Douglas Dunning was in it. That turned out to be a false rumor. But I didn't regret seeing it, nonetheless.
I'm surprised Jaglom can still sell out shows at festivals, since I don't think I know anyone who'll admit to actually liking his stuff. Mainstream movie fans find him boring, and cineastes find him insufferable and pretentious. There's some truth to the criticisms, but less so when he doesn't cast himself or his wife in a major role. In HOLLYWOOD DREAMS, he has merely cast his kids, and they deliver the best scene in the film, directing a home movie in their backyard as the one in the "director" role sports a goofy black hat just like Jaglom always wears, and spouts pretentious director-ish banter.
As you might expect from Jaglom, most of the movie appears to have been shot at some rich friend's house in the Hollywood Hills, and most of the movie consists of shorter, possibly improvised scenes. Stick enough of them together, and you have a movie by default. I get the feeling the director just calls up all his actor buddies every once in a while, and says, "Hey guys, let's fuck around with my camera and see if we can't turn it into a feature." Like Kevin Ford with a less good eye for visuals.
Technically, the movie's barely competent. Sound and picture editing are jarringly awkward, and the lighting...well, there's one scene in particular, shot outside, where it couldn't be more obvious that the camera's F-stop setting was turned to "Automatic." Oh, and the issue of the LA Times that supposedly has our main characters appearing on the cover? Could not be more obvious that the photo is pasted on to an existing copy. Considering how many movies Jaglom has made, I was surprised at such things.
Another of Jaglom's trademarks is to fixate on some of the most grotesque female neuroses and celebrate them, preferably while complaining about the movie industry at the same time (one senses some resentment, perhaps, that wife Victoria Foyt never became a big star). Tanna Frederick plays Margie Chizek (pronounced "cheese-ick"), a stereotypical just-off-the-bus Iowa girl trying to make it as an actress. She's the sort who insists on yelling in Chinese when she practices kickboxing, and gobbles marshmallow cookies without actually swallowing them, spitting the chewed-up remains into a bowl. Her body's in great shape, but her face looks like Barbra Streisand. And she has a fixation on memories of her brother and how she used to dress him up in female clothes -- she wants a man who can be like a girl.
Through a chance encounter, she ends up staying at the guest house of a producing team (Zack Norman and David Proval) who are also preparing to get gay-married. But there's someone else in the guest house too: a hot young actor (Justin Kirk) who's perceived as ambiguously gay, which is thought to help his career so he never denies it.
That's about the whole story -- of course Margie turns out to be really neurotic and apparently lovable for it, but most men I know other than Jaglom probably aren't into that type so much (one acquaintance in particular claims to never find famous actresses attractive "because they're actresses," and Margie seems to some up every reason why that would be). I can't quite tell if we're supposed to be shocked at the revelation that working in the film business can screw up your personal life and result in Faustian trade-offs; really, it's no head-scratcher.
But with all that said, the movie's still kinda fun. It's navel-gazing of a sort, and if you're not in the entertainment industry yourself, it might well play much too in-jokey. Some scenes work better than others; just imagine watching a hit-and-miss improv troupe. Pretentious? Not really. For Jaglom, it's almost breezily self-effacing.
And no Douglas to propel the story forward.
Posted by LYT at 9:47 PM | Comments (2)
VENOM!
Not the clearest image, but you get the idea.
Posted by LYT at 2:40 PM | Comments (3)
My Grandfather's Column
Christmas or Winterval
I've a vague feeling that it was Birmingham City Council that planned recently to substitute for 'Christmas' the word 'Winterval'. The idea struck most people as grotesque but the intention behind it was to ensure that the large non-Christian section of Brummies would not be offended by having Christianity rammed down their throats. It was a non-starter because the great majority of Muslims, and indeed of other non-Christian faiths, prefer to keep a festival religious rather than purely secular.
Before we get too hot under the collar about the 'grotesque' suggestion it's as well to remember that it was a pagan mid-winter festival that was taken over by the Christian Church, which decided that December 25th would be a good day to celebrate the birth of Jesus since nobody knew the real date and people were used to having a day of festivity which could be christianised.
It's not only the actual date of the birth of Jesus that is quite unknown. The circumstances surrounding the event are equally shrouded in mystery. The earliest Christian Gospel has nothing to say on the subject. The last of the Gospels contains no historical details but gives a deep Christian understanding of the meaning of the event. St. John's Gospel tells us that in Jesus the Word of God was made flesh and dwelt among us. This Jesus was divine. In him God had visited this planet. This is what we Christians now celebrate.
The wonderful, but slightly conflicting birth stories in the other two Gospels are simply not history but bear witness to the wonderful nature of the event they describe with much adornment and imaginative detail. Our Christmas carols perform the same kind of service to us, building up the sense of mystery and joy that properly surround the incarnation of the Word of God - or in simpler terms - the coming of perfect love and compassion into our human race, for that is the nature of the God who was made man in Jesus.
All things considered there was something to be said for 'Winterval'; and since we can scarcely now be described as a Christian country, that Council certainly had a point. However the vast majority of English people of whatever religious tradition, still prefer to have the Christian festival rammed down their throats than the pagan one.
I don't think I could ever bring myself to wish you a Happy Winterval but I do wish you all much joy and happiness as we celebrate Christmas with its lovely stories and carols, however unhistorical much of it may be.
-Peter Graham
Posted by LYT at 2:13 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2006
BLOGADS are back!
Nobody told me that our site Blogads weren't workign properly, until Matt placed that ad for his new CD, and ha dto go in and reconfigure the system.
But we're back now, I hope. Let's make some money. And if you're a friend who's desperately poor and needs free publicity, let me know and maybe we can work out a deal.
Posted by LYT at 4:06 PM | Comments (0)
Deaf Jam
Ed Harris as Beethoven? Hardly the most instinctive choice, one would think, especially when stacked up against someone like Gary Oldman, who embodied the maestro in Immortal Beloved. You don’t expect the man who played John Glenn to be convincingly German, and indeed, the accent issue is more or less ignored...but as Jackson Pollock, he did bring to life a tormented, alcoholic artist who broke new aesthetic boundaries in his field. Strap on a large metal ear trumpet, attach a fright wig, and place a piano before him, and you’re probably not as far off as one might think. Does the portrayal stray dangerously close to parody at times? Of course. But Ludwig von Beethoven is, after all, larger than life in most of our minds.
Perhaps too large. Like Immortal Beloved, Copying Beethoven refrains from making the great composer its actual protagonist, viewing him instead through the eyes of someone close to him. It’s a similar technique as the one on display with Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland -- create a fictional composite character and make that person the lead, so they can be the relative “straight man” with a conventional character arc, while the big-name actor hams it up in the celebrity role, unconstrained by the need to necessarily be sympathetic or narratively dynamic.
Our composite lead and vicarious guide through Ludwig’s world is Anna (Diane Kruger, best known as Helen of Wolfgang Peterson’s Troy), whom we first see rushing to Beethoven’s deathbed, apparently perceiving the world outside her carriage as a series of quick cuts that perfectly match the symphony playing in her head. This opening scene is rather pointless, since the story that follows neither leads directly to Beethoven’s passing nor returns to that point in time, but it does allow Harris to play a dramatic death scene, something actors tend to enjoy almost as much as summoning tears or pretending to be insane, both of which, of course, are also part of the menu here. Harris’ fun is infectious, though Kruger’s performance isn’t especially noteworthy.
Anna is a student at the Vienna music conservatory, and the best one they have, though being a woman, it is thought she’ll not have any future as a composer. But she does get recommended as a copyist for an important employer, whom she only discovers upon arrival is “The Beast” himself, a man whose own publisher claims that “death will be a vacation!” compared to life with the superstar. Beethoven turns out to be like every obnoxious self-absorbed creative type you’ve ever met, amped up to ferocious levels due to the fact that (a) he’s famous, and can get away with it; and (b) he really is that damn good, though the public is starting to tire of his work. Anna is hired when she opts to make a change in the piece she’s copying, instinctively feeling that Beethoven made a mistake in writing down the wrong note. She’s right, and her perceptiveness gets her the job.
Director Agnieszka Holland (Europa, Europa)doesn’t drape the story in finery as was done in Immortal Beloved or Amadeus. This Vienna is rainy, dirty, visually cold, overrun with rats, and full of piss-pots to be emptied. Anna receives room and board at an austere convent, while Beethoven throws his possessions all about the place, relishing the rats because he says they scare away cats, and firing all his cleaning ladies because he suspects they’re stealing from him. It’s a scenario that makes for a grand contrast when he finally debuts the Ninth Symphony in an opulent concert hall, insisting on being the conductor even though he can’t hear the orchestra, so Anna must use hand signals to keep him on pace. This is the film’s climax, and a spectacular one even if you’re not much of a classical music fan; Holland makes you feel the power and understand that this was a rock star for his time. Then she puts you inside his head, dropping out the sound so that you only experience the bass vibrations of an applauding audience.
Unfortunately, this climax occurs in the middle of the film, and nothing much happens afterward, which is a major structural misstep. Screenwriters Steven J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson are best known for two ponderous biopics, Ali and Nixon; no doubt they could make a good case that real life forces their narrative hand. Here, however, as they have almost entirely invented the lead character, they could and should have built to the Ninth and sent us out on a powerful high, unless they intended a deliberate irony in having a movie about a composer be awkwardly composed.
Posted by LYT at 2:22 PM | Comments (0)
New LYTrules.com 2007 calendar is ready to buy
Assuming anyone other than my mom cares...
Posted by LYT at 2:29 AM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2006
And more
I missed seeing PAN'S LABYRINTH in order to go see A GOOD YEAR.
Paycheck aside, was it worth it? Read for yourself.
Posted by LYT at 6:28 PM | Comments (0)
More stuff
MY review of Sarah Michelle Gellar's THE RETURN is now posted on this page as well.
Posted by LYT at 5:48 PM | Comments (0)
Goodbye, Jack Palance
87 is a respectable age to reach, but I bet I'm not alone in having expected him to live longer still.
So, are any of the great crotchety old badasses still left alive, other than Clint Eastwood?
Posted by LYT at 3:28 PM | Comments (5)
Dammit Matt
I just ordered the Poperratic album from CDBABY.com yesterday. Now you got one up there too? And it's too late to combine shipping?
Graargh!
Here's the link.
Posted by LYT at 3:02 AM | Comments (1)
November 9, 2006
E! Online review of HARSH TIMES
read it HERE
I should have a couple more reviews and stuff late tomorrow, thanks to stuff that didn't screen in advance.
Posted by LYT at 8:06 PM | Comments (4)
Spider-Man 3 trailer
No Venom in this one, sadly. But rest assured, as I told you after Comicon, he looks like he should.
Posted by LYT at 8:00 PM | Comments (7)
AFI FEST 2006: TIME
This wasn't on my agenda at first, but none other than AICN's Drew McWeeny, possibly the only other person at the fest who likes front row seating, reminded me it was directed by Kim Ki Duk, who at the very least is always interesting. I find THE ISLE a bit of a mess, albeit one with very memorable moments; but SPRING SUMMER AUTUMN WINTER AND SPRING was genius. The overall sense of him I had from those two movies is that the man likes a slow pace.
Except here he doesn't. There's nothing extraneous at all in this, a movie that has elements of VERTIGO, FACE/OFF, and Lucky McKee's SICK GIRL (helluva combo there, eh?). You can't really do the mysterious blonde/brunette lookalike thing that Hitchcock and Lynch are so fond of when dealing with Koreans, since almost none of them are naturally blonde. But throw in plastic surgery instead, and the idea is similar.
Our main character is a photographer named Ji-woo (Ha Jung-woo), whose girlfriend Seh-hee (Park Ji-yeon) is a total paranoid nutcase likely to start fights with any woman who even looks at her man...but as many guys have discovered, psycho in life = great in the sack. So Ji-woo's still hopelessly in love with her, but she has determined that all men inevitably get bored of the same woman, so she disappears, and gets plastic surgery to look totally different.
Ji-woo is distraught, but soon begins a flirtation with a waitress named See-hee (Seong Hyeon-a), who, as it turns out, may in fact be Seh-hee with her new face. Before the story is done, more surgery will be involved.
As with SICK GIRL, the metaphor at work here is how people change when you get in a serious relationship with them, and not always for the better. And yet, if you try to recapture exactly what was there before, you just might screw things up way worse than you can imagine. This isn't horror, and no-one goes on a killing spree or turns into a bug, but in terms of the twisted things people in relationships can unintentionally do to one another with their own insecurities, there's certainly some emotional horror.
I'm not sure the plastic surgery element is entirely handled realistically, but just remember it's an allegory.
Good stuff, with some haunting images. If the sculpture garden is a real place, Kim's got a great eye for location; if he designed it himself, bravissimo. I find it hard to believe that a sculpture of a dog biting a guy's dick off is on public display somewhere in Korea, but maybe...
Posted by LYT at 6:12 PM | Comments (3)
AFI FEST 2006: THE DEAD GIRL
THE DEAD GIRL is actress Karen Moncrieff's feature directorial follow-up to BLUE CAR, the movie that basically introduced the world to Agnes Bruckner. No such introductions in this one -- it's loaded with familiar names and faces, strewn throughout five short stories that are all linked by the presence of one notable corpse (Brittany Murphy). If you know anything at all about this general sort of movie, it won't surprise you to know that the first story is about the woman who discovers the body, and the last is a flashback to the last day on earth of the dead girl.
Toni Collette is the one who finds the body, a nervous and introverted type bullied constantly by her ailing mother (Piper Laurie, I think...imdb credits are unclear). She saves the dead girl's necklace for herself, then leaves home after mom yells at her for reporting the crime and bringing unwanted attention to the area. Anyway, then a grocery bag boy (Giovanni Ribisi) asks her out on a date. Collette hasn't played this modest since MURIEL'S WEDDING, so it's kind of ironic that she ends up doing a full-on nude scene and turns out to be in very good shape after all (also doing nudity in this movie: the substantially older Mary Beth Hurt).
Then there's Rose Byrne as the coroner's assistant who hopes that the body belongs to her long-missing sister, so that she can properly grieve and move on. Others in this segment include Mary Steenburgen and Bruce Davison as the parents, and James Franco as the boyfriend.
But it's not that dead girl; the real mom (Marcia Gay Harden) shows up with her own segment, trying to piece together her daughter's final days.
And then there's a dysfunctional married couple played by Mary Beth Hurt and Cullowhee, North Carolina's own Nick Searcy. Wife suspects hubby of infidelity, then finds out it could be worse than that.
The cinematography, by Michael Grady, is some of the best I've seen all year, consistently stylized and lit in a way that makes everything look like it's happening underwater -- not in the murky sense, but in the still, wavy, aquamarine sense. Hard to describe exactly, but there isn't a single shot in the film that has what you could call natural light. If it had lots of quick-cut editing, this might be annoying, but on its own, it works, giving a dreamy, drowny feel. We are, after all, building towards a death the whole time. And because of the structure, the maudlin grieving parts are dealt with upfront, allowing the dead girl's final story to feel more alive and unsentimental by the time we get to it.
The movie's a big step up from BLUE CAR, which had a similar stillness but less to say (and an annoyingly cliched plot development I really hoped wouldn't happen). Brittany Murphy is of course an obvious choice to play a strung-out runaway, but Moncrieff gets her to dial down her usual shtick just enough that she can play on it while nonetheless bringing an actual character to the table.
Posted by LYT at 4:21 PM | Comments (3)
The timing on this review couldn't be better
This is dedicated to David N.Scott, because, just so you know, I'm ashamed he's from California.
"Those who are still mad at Maines aren't going to be won over — the right-wing demonstrators interviewed on-camera mostly come off as idiots, and Bill O'Reilly is shown advocating that the Dixie Chicks be slapped around, though no doubt he'd claim that to be amusing hyperbole. Most hilarious of the detractors, however, is Toby Keith, who defends himself against Maines' criticism of his songwriting skills by saying, "She said anyone can write 'Boot in Your Ass,' but she didn't!" Anyone can make a movie as bad as Broken Bridges, too, Toby, but thankfully these filmmakers didn't."
Whole thing HERE
Then go HERE and scroll down the page for my reviews of UNKNOWN and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3-D (the latter of which was previously reviewed in more detail on this blog).
Posted by LYT at 2:06 PM | Comments (6)
November 8, 2006
Almost getting my ass kicked
Today I wore my "Fuck Bush" t-shirt. Seemed appropriate. Never thought it'd get me into trouble at a film festival in the heart of Hollywood.
But then I was at the free food table in the Cinema Lounge at AFI Fest, and a guy starts saying to me, "Yeah, Bush fucked you! We're gonna come back and kick your fucking asses! Liberals and Democrats are a bunch of whiny pussy faggots!"
I look up, and see the guy. Dark skin (I hesitate to say black because I'm not sure he was African in heritage), shorter than me but pretty solidly built. I respond to the effect that we kicked ass yesterday. He comes back with something like "At least we're not crying and whining about some stolen election like you pussy bitch faggots! You guys are such whiny pussy bitches!"
He's being so aggressive at this point that I actually step closer to him. "You calling me a pussy bitch?"
"yeah, you wanna do something about it? You wanna step outside?"
I laugh. "No I don;t want to step outside."
"Why not? Because you all are pussy faggots?"
Me: "Because I'm not the one with a problem!"
It briefly ends there, with him reciting the pussy bitch faggot mantra, but then later, he looks my way, and says, "Hey, man, I wanna show you something!" He digs into his backpack and pulls out a homemade shirt that has pictures on it of John Kerry and Michael Moore with red circles and lines through them, and the phrase, "Liberals suck. Bush rules." on it.
"A-HA!!!" he goes. Then a pause.
"You wanna trade shirts?" he says.
"Nahh, man, I don't think that one fits me," I say
If I were the equivalent of a typical rightie blogger, I would now proceed to make some point about how this man is representative of the entire Republican party. But I won't. And I hope he isn't.
Well, duh, of course he isn't. He wasn't white!
Posted by LYT at 8:31 PM | Comments (6)
AFI FEST 2006: WRISTCUTTERS
WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY is the next great American cult movie. At least, it should be; I've been wrong about such things before. I thought BRICK would take off even more than it did, and maybe it still will in years to come, but perhaps I can be more objective about WRISTCUTTERS since I don't personally know anyone involved with it.
You just can't go wrong with teenage suicide, road trips, and Tom Waits. You can go wrong with weird-ass cultish road trips in postapocalyptic surroundings, though -- WRISTCUTTERS recalls both SIX-STRING SAMURAI and BEACH PARTY AT THE THRESHOLD OF HELL, only it isn't pretentious crap. Although some will think it is.
Depressed teen Zia (Patrick Fugit) tidies up his messy apartment and then slashes his wrists. He awakens in an afterlife just for suicides, which he notes is kind of like the real world but it sucks a little more. There are no stars, everything is gray, it's physically impossible to smile, every building looks like the most run-down roadside gas station you've ever seen on a cross-country trip, and the only music on the radio is by bands whose singers killed themselves.
(Oddly, one of the shots, perhaps by accident, captures a billboard for radio shock jock Mancow. Are they implying that he has committed suicide, or just that he sucks?)
You still have to make a living in the afterlife, so Zia works at a pizza place, where he befriends a Russian drunk named Eugene (Shea Wigham) whose entire family committed suicide, one after the other, so he still lives with them. Eugene's particular chosen method of death was to pour beer on his electric guitar during a live performance.
Zia killed himself over a girlfriend (blonde bombshell Leslie Bibb), but when he finds out that she too committed suicide a month later, he sets out to find her. Persuading Eugene to come along because there's nothing better to do, they set off in Eugene's broken down car with non-working headlights and a black hole vortex under the passenger seat. Across a barren landscape, without any specific direction, they also encounter Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon) who's on a quest to find the People In Charge, since she claims not to have killed herself and thinks she's there by mistake. Eventually Tom Waits comes into play and things take a different turn, but I'm not going to spoil that for you.
Director Goran Dukic, working from a short story, creates a great, fully-realized world on a low budget, and never cops out as you think he might. Most genre movies that sustain a mystery tend to deflate once the mystery is revealed, but this keeps it strange. There's a hint of LOST to it -- characters in a strange place, with occasional flashbacks to their "real" lives (nothing huge; mostly just revealing all their deaths), and the dilemma faced by Zia when he finally finds his dead girlfriend is palpable and believable. And just wait till you see what trains look like in the afterlife.
Surprisingly, this movie apparently has no distribution yet. That seems insane to me.
I can imagine that if Justin Stone and I codirected a movie, it might be a bit like this one.
Posted by LYT at 2:46 PM | Comments (2)
House Speaker Pelosi, eh?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, fuckers!
Posted by LYT at 12:26 AM | Comments (4)
November 7, 2006
AFI FEST 2006: COMIC EVANGELISTS
The idea sounded fun: A documentary about an improv comedy troupe dedicated to spreading the Gospel, as they compete at a comedy festival in Canada.
Too bad it isn't a documentary, but a mockumentary. The cast of unknowns is likable, and they all create good characters, but the humor as parody is hard-pressed to outdo the real thing, as seen in JESUS CAMP (which got Ted Haggard on camera right before the scandals, in a hugely fortuitous timing coincidence). One of the characters is obviously gay but no-one sees it, and one is a black woman who's constantly being shut-out and having her name mispronounced (those wacky Christians and their prejudices!). Then there's the atheist neighbor, dragged along on the trip because he's divorced and bummed out and everybody wants to help him. Fine performances, all.
My biggest issue is that the actual logistics of the movie don't seem to have been worked out very well. In a mock-doc, there are some crucial things that need to be considered, notably, who is doing the filming? Is it a professional crew, and if so, what are they interested in? Is it one of the characters within the story? COMIC EVANGELISTS never answers this; the filming is not organic to the narrative. You could argue that hand-held faux-doc is simply a directorial choice and doesn't imply that an actual cameraman is in the story, but if that's the case, don't use interspersed "confessionals" where characters talk directly to the camera in obvious staging areas. And what's the focus? It should be the actual comedy these guys do, but we really don't get to see much of that.
I think there's potential in a project like this, and in the folks performing it...but the execution is sloppier and less thought-out than it should have been. If I were in their shoes, I'd be pitching it for remake possibilities rather than actual distribution.
(I haven't named any of the participants because it isn't listed on imdb yet, and I don't have notes. So mea culpa if I've neglected someone's previous credits.)
Posted by LYT at 3:30 PM | Comments (4)
SCREENING OPPORTUNITY again
HAPPY FEET in IMAX, penguin cartoon starring Robin Williams and about 15 other big names, directed by George Miller.
next Tuesday night.
Posted by LYT at 3:12 PM | Comments (1)
If you got Lemons, make lemonade
Stephen Lemons, formerly known as "The Fat Man" at New Times LA, now has his own blog at the flagship in Phoenix. His new moniker, for whatever reason, is "Feathered Bastard."
(Note: Lemons also wrote that fake story I linked to a while back about the crazy Japanese chef who cooks rare animals)
Posted by LYT at 2:55 PM | Comments (1)
I'm sorry...is it April 1 already?
""I’m excited to do a sequel to BloodRayne and this time in the Wild West. I'm a big fan of Sergio Leone and John Ford," says Uwe Boll.
Reading that quote reminds me of the time I was commissioned to write a 3-D porno about a horny invisible man, by a French producer who proclaimed his admiration for Orson Welles.
I wrote one 30-page script -- probably the worst thing I ever did. The producer found it "boring." I believe the show finally got made and released on DVD as "The Erotic Adventures of an Invisible Man."
link via AICN
Posted by LYT at 2:14 PM | Comments (2)
CHRIS SIVERTSON and LINDSAY LOHAN - together at last
Not romantically...But hard-partying THE LOST director Chris will next be helming a thriller starring perhaps the one actress in Hollywood who can out-party him.
No word yet whether she has a taste for Tecate.
Posted by LYT at 1:27 PM | Comments (1)
SCREENING OPPORTUNITY
TENACIOUS D IN THE PICK OF DESTINY, starring Jack Black. Monday night, Nov. 13.
Posted by LYT at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
New wrestling promotion to start TV tapings in LA
There has been talk about this for some time. MTV is trying to launch a new wrestling show called Wrestling Society X, which will supposedly be going for a gritty, warehouse party type vibe complete with live bands. Name wrestlers signed include Sean Waltman (X-Pac), Vampiro, and Teddy Hart.
Free tickets are being offered NOW. Go get some.
Posted by LYT at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
November 6, 2006
VOTE, YO!
It's election day Tuesday, so I remind you to vote.
Back in June, I posted some links to websites that help you figure out which judges are most qualified, since very few sources seem to endorse judges either way.
Here's my June post. Follow the links in it to learn more about the judges.
Amoeba records will give you $2 off a purchase tomorrow if you show your voting stub.
Posted by LYT at 10:11 PM | Comments (2)
AFI FEST 2006: THE HOST/THE LIVES OF OTHERS
THE HOST
I don't know about you, but when I hear someone say something like, "Oh, this movie isn't REALLY a monster movie -- it's actually a family drama at heart!", I just want to tell them to fuck off. Who decided that family drama audiences and monster movie audiences were compatible in the least? I want to see the monster eat people, and I don't care what their issues are. Director Bong Jun-ho gives us a great monster movie in the beginning, as a giant carnivorous fish with legs walks out of Korea's Han river and starts eating people -- the early sequences with it chasing down crowds of potential victims are amazing. But then the monster disappears, and we get into a red herring plotline about how contact with it apparently causes disease, and the family of one of its victims are quarantined, where no-one listens to their pleas that the apparent victim is actually still alive. This is no drama, though -- the family are all a bunch of overacting dullards, and when all we want is to see the monster again, it takes forever to get back to it.
Some of the film is a lot of fun. The rest is way too long.
THE LIVES OF OTHERS
Germany's official entry for the Oscars is absolutely worthy of the honor. Though the title sounds pretentious, and the publicity focuses on the films political statements and artistic credibility, the most important thing is that it's a great story, depciting a world (East Germany 1984) that's almost science-fiction-like in its weirdness, as if Star Trek went to a fascist planet. Early on, we're introduced to a crack interrogator for the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, by the name of Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), teaching a class how to break political prisoners. Before long, he's put on his next assignment, monitoring playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), who appears to be the only good socialist in teh artistic community, but something feels off about him to the party brass. When it turns out that the actual reason for the monitoring is that party bigwig Hempf (Thomas Thieme) is conducting a rather forced affair with Dreyman's lead actress/girlfriend, and the surveillance is a pathetic attempt to get Dreyman out of the way, Wiseler becomes somewhat sympathetic to his potential victim, and even covers up actual evidence of Dreyman rebelling, mostly because the system is pushing Dreyman in that direction in hopes of catching him out.
It's a great, tense story, and doesn't play simple good guy/bad guy...the characters on both sides are human, all giving lip service to a greater ideology that no-one is actually upholding. The only minor qualms I have with it are a montage sequence over which a crappy German pop song plays, and the conclusion, which has way too many "Two Years Later" moments...the point could have been conveyed with less. Great movie overall, though.
Posted by LYT at 2:01 AM | Comments (4)
November 5, 2006
The exciting conclusion of the Batterton & James saga!
Give Jasper some love.
All the previous spots can be seen in order HERE
ALSO: I've reset the poll on the message board now that you've seen every spot. Go vote again.
Posted by LYT at 3:20 PM | Comments (2)
November 4, 2006
Cathy Seipp Roast DVD release party is coming soon
November 18th, in fact.
Anybody who wants to come, email me. It may be quite a while before there's another DVD release party for a movie directed by me.
Posted by LYT at 3:17 PM | Comments (6)
I don't think this sets a good precedent.
BOSTON - A radio talk show host was fired Friday after he made a derogatory comment about the weight and sexuality of the Green-Rainbow party candidate running for Massachusetts governor."In the context of what he said and the tone with which he said it, the comments were completely inappropriate, derogatory and will not be tolerated," said Jason Wolfe, the vice president of AM programming and operations for station owner Entercom Boston.
Wow. Sounds pretty bad. Knowing how awful most AM talk radio hosts are, one certainly imagines the worst. So what was the derogatory comment?
...he told listeners he wished someone would "tell the fat lesbian to shut up."
Okay. "Shut up" is a rude thing to say, but certainly not out of the realm of debate. As for "fat lesbian"...well, is she?
The woman in question, Grace Ross, is openly lesbian. I don't know what she looks like, but "fat," while perhaps upsetting, can be an accurate description.
I've been told over the past year that simply saying "Jews" is offensive, and we had a huge kerfuffle here over the use of the phrase "black guys." We've got to get past taking offense at descriptive words that aren't slurs.
If the guy said "Shut it, you obese dyke!", that's a slur. But he didn't.
If I gave a speech in, say, Harlem, and somebody said "Tell that tall bearded white guy to shut up!" I might not appreciate it, but I wouldn't go calling it bigotry. It's true, I am tall, white, and bearded. My mother calls me fat sometimes. I disagree with it, but it's not something someone should be fired over.
The host in question sounds like a jerk, and any employer can choose to fire someone it doesn't like. I'm just not sure it's the right thing here. Makes me think of when Bill O'Reilly complains about being called "conservative."
Posted by LYT at 1:23 AM | Comments (15)
November 3, 2006
My SANTA CLAUSE 3 review
...can now be found on this page.
Be sure to read Scott Foundas' SAW III review directly udner it, in which he proclaims the movie's emotional superiority to BABEL, and sorta compares Tobin Bell to Greta Garbo. I almost wish I'd written it.
Posted by LYT at 1:46 PM | Comments (2)
AFI FEST 2006: DANIKA
Marisa Tomei plays the title character, a hot mom with three kids, a job doing some kind of desk stuff at a bank, and a marriage to Craig Bierko. And yet it sucks to be her, because she has hallucinations a lot, and they're always about her kids doing something dangerous and getting killed as a result, or stuff blowing up, or everybody in the world suddenly disappearing.
That's it. That's the whole movie. Marisa Tomei has hallucinations.
There's one really good scare in the movie, and you'll know it if you see it. But it seems to have so exhausted the creative juices of director Ariel Vroman that he couldn't come up with another one. Funnily enough, Vroman introduced the film by saying something like, "You'll come out of it thinking 'what a piece of crap,' but then maybe you think about and you'll see that it was leading up to that the whole time." Something like that - I'm paraphrasing, but it really sounded like a pre-emptive insult to throw critics off their guard.
The problem with the hallucinations is that you know when they're happening. It's not like in the early Freddy movies where you can't always tell which part is the dream and which is real. And they don't move the narrative forward -- it's a bunch of padding until we get to the inevitable twists of the climax. It's a bit like a lower budget version of Marc Forster's STAY, though I quite like dthat one, in large part because it was so obvious from the start that we were within some sort of dream that the revelation of it all didn't feel like a cheap stunt, just an inevitability that cleared things up. Then again, maybe it's a bit more like his EVERYTHING PUT TOGETHER, in which Radha Mitchell gets depressed and sits around while the color filters on the camera change. Marc Forster isn't the best director to emulate.
Also, casting two fo the stars of SCARY MOVIE 4 (Bierko and Regina Hall) isn't the best move if you're trying to be genuinely scary. You wouldn't put Leslie Nielsen in a horror flick, would you?
I don't mean to be too hard on this movie, because the acting is all good (Hall's a bit miscast, but there's a narrative reason behind it). It just doesn't really have much to say, and the ending makes what little one does invest in it utterly irrelevant.
If you're big fan of Tomei, though, or just of mad mood-swingin' MILFs in general, it's probably worth it just for her performance.
Danika screens again today (Friday) at noon, and will open theatrically in L.A. in December.
Posted by LYT at 12:28 AM | Comments (3)
Royal Flush
Find out what I think about FLUSHED AWAY.
Posted by LYT at 12:09 AM | Comments (1)
November 2, 2006
Borat
I saw BORAT a month ago at one of those secret myspace screenings. Wouldn't have gotten in, except for the fact that the myspace folks decided there were sufficient resources to fofer a second screening, and that took care of the rest of us.
I wanted to love the movie, and while I like and respect it, I don't adore it. To some degree, this is not the movie's fault. The funniest sequence in the whole film, by far, was already shown at Comicon, and I was hoping everything else would be at that level. It isn't.
Also, a significant portion of the humor in BORAT involves public defecation and naked fat people, not to mention the response of a surprised public to same. But JACKASS NUMBER TWO goes so much further in both directions that it has rather defused the shock and the joke. And Cohen's been doing the talk show rounds, as Borat, delivering many of the same lines from the movie over and over.
I doubt I need to explain the plot or the set-up much -- Borat is the alter-ego of Sacha Baron Cohen, and as an alleged reporter from Kazakhstan, he basically does a Candid Camera routine that tests the limits of how much his interview subjects will tolerate from someone whom they believe is from another culture. At his best, Borat does what comedy in the most classical sense was designed to do, holding a mirror up to common human foibles that we may laugh at them.
In the "U.S. and A" this often leads to him exhibiting openly anti-Semitic, homophobic, or sexist thoughts, which generally either provokes an overly shocked reaction or a shocking co-conspiratorial one, as when a Texan at a rodeo tells him he'd like to see homosexuals hanged. At a dinner party in the South, Borat's behavior is ridiculous, disgusting (he hands the hostess a bag of what is ostensibly his own shit, which leads to one of the funniest end credits ever..."Feces provider for Mr. Baron Cohen." Put that on the ol' resume!), but none of it gets him kicked out of the house until he invites a black woman over to join them.
Cohen and his costar Ken Davitian (who also appeared in FROGTOWN II alongside Douglas Dunning) exhibit an aboslute fearlessness and the strongest commitment to character I've ever seen. They do things here that must have gotten them in trouble with the law at some point, but character was not broken even then. I'd nominate both for Oscars.
Still, I'm left a little mixed on the "moviefilm" itself. It has great moments, but the scripted aspect of the story, which has Borat travelling cross country to propose to Pamela Anderson, isn't its strongest suit -- it's hard to feel any empathy for a character whom we know full well is a complete put-on, and hard to relate to his journey in any way otherwise, though most of the incidental skits along the way are funny. Perhaps, like Jackass, it might have been better to dispense with plot altogether. Dispensing with the reality aspect wouldn't likely have worked -- Baron Cohen tried that before with ALI G INDAHOUSE, which failed to find a theatrical release here, though it was a hit in England.
What I like and respect the most is the way this movie is likely to be a daisy cutter bomb in teh cultural wars -- folks on the right, especially out here, like to pretend that racism and bigotry is a thing of the past, no longer a problem, and certainly not anything they'd have anything to do with, because of course it's liberals who are intolerant. But extreme prejudices are very much alive still, and the way Borat exposes some of them is very well done. I don't think everyone's as awful as they're made out to be -- some people are clearly being polite and humoring a few of Borat's more outrageous remarks. But then there are those who take the ball and run with it, and leave you just a little more disappointed in humanity than you might otherwise have been.
This isn't the funniest movie of the decade, or even the year (I rate JACKASS NUMBER TWO above it for sheer laughs). But it is one of the more daring and experimental features I've seen from a major studio.
Posted by LYT at 2:41 PM | Comments (4)
Reviews
Not much to look at, perhaps, but...
I wrote a couple blurbs for the LA Weekly AFI Fest preview
and then did this cap of Shottas for the Voice.
I'll have something up on The Santa Clause 3 later on, and because it's a formal review thing I won't even use the obvious description.
If Santa Claus, and Jack Frost, if they fighted...Whowouldwin?
[Due to excessive spam, this entry is now closed to comments]
Posted by LYT at 12:51 PM
You go, girl!
Jill Stewart has been named News Editor at the LA Weekly. For those who remember her at New Times LA, this is either sweet irony or armageddon.
Speaking as her former co-worker, and friend since 1999, I'm very happy for her. Jill gets an undeserved rap as some kind of arch-conservative that is patently untrue -- she is arch-conservative on some issues, but she's arch-liberal on others. At any rate, she's one of the most giving and hard-working human beings I've ever known, and I'm glad to see her back in a position where she can wreak a little havoc in this town.
Posted by LYT at 2:02 AM | Comments (5)