Director: Michael Dowse
Cast: Paul Kaye, Mike Wilmot, Beatriz Batarda, Kate Magowan, Pete Tong
Release: April 29, 2005 (LA)
Synopsis: Its All Gone Pete Tong is a comedy following the tragic life of legendary Frankie Wilde. The story takes us through Frankie’s life from one of the best DJ’s alive, through subsequent battle with a hearing disorder, culminating in his mysterious disappearance from the scene. A genius in his own right, he clawed his way to the top of the DJ ranks, now living the opulent life of a superstar, he resides in his trophy villa in Ibiza with his trophy wife. This is when tragedy hits. Born with a hearing disorder he is rapidly going deaf with only one functioning ear to complete the new Ibiza season. How is he doing behind the decks? Horrible. How is he doing in the studio where he produces his remixes? Frankie dives into a low period, struggling with deafness in utter depression. After a year of locking himself away he emerges on the other side with a fresh attitude towards his affliction. He accepts his deafness and learns to function without sound. Will Frankie make it back to the DJ booth? Will his new single be any good? Will he get back his opulent old life or does he even want it back? When you can’t hear, things look very different.

It starts off like it’s going to be a very interesting bio-pic of sorts.

The static of a record loops over and over with the words “…I don’t know where he is…” slowly echoed in blackness.

You get interview, documentary, style footage of people speculating where this once prominent DJ is about whom this movie is based. It’s intriguing, sure, as a character portrait of someone who was immensely popular and then, literally, dropped off the human radar with no trace.

The filmic portion of our film comes from Paul Kaye, playing the part of our lost DJ in question, Frankie Wilde, who starts party people up by spinning some beats. We’re treated to various forms of adulation this man was given for his work inside indoor clubs to outdoor events. Interposed with the fictional portrayal of Wilde are more interviews from people who knew him, worked with him or were inspired by him. I’ll admit that I was intrigued by the premise of this movie and can’t tell if Wilde was a real person of this is all just improvised.

Next, as there is always an element of substance abuse in any effective Behind the Music-style of story, we’re shown his decent into drug addiction. From licking hallucinatory toads to just abusing his body we come to the portion of the film where it starts with the words, “…and then it was gone.”

Wilde is standing on a majestic mountainside, somewhere very warm and expensive looking, and is cupping his hands over his ears as he screams out to no one. We’re given a few different angles of “The Scream.” It leads us to the quote that pretty much tells us how this process of self-destruction speeds up.

“There’s not much you can do as a DJ if you can’t hear.”

Wilde is shown tearing his world apart, destroyed by his inability to communicate in the way he was best known for doing. He was useless as a DJ. He was useless to everyone or so it seems.

The interview footage speculates on what this deafness drove him to do. Is he really just a record clerk in some store in the middle of nowhere? Did he kill himself? Is he even still around?

Even though we don’t get any answers there is a really poignant moment where Wilde is sitting in a restaurant where a woman, Spanish perhaps, dances to a classical guitar solo. She’s wearing a vibrantly red dress and holds part of it up as her legs start to move. Her thick black dancing shoes rap tap tap, rap tap tap, rap tap tap on a hardwood floor. There’s something in the vibrations he can feel that transcend auditory sensations (kind of like that one episode of Quantum Leap where Sam is “Rod the Bod” and he finds this hot deaf girl who uses bass from a speaker to help her dance and he really digs her but he doesn’t know sign language but he wants to because you know he wants to hit that like it was 1999) and you can see it in Wilde’s eyes that there is something there that he can respond to. It’s a wonderful trailer moment that’s pure and speaks for everyone who hasn’t done so already.

The trailer eventually just trails off into a heavy mix of snippets and scenes but that’s what you’d expect to see out of a movie about a DJ whose life was all about BPM’s and getting people up to let them get down. Again, it’s probably a good pseudo bio-pic but it’s just not my thing.

Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach De Bankolé, Willem Dafoe, Danny Glover
Release: May 16, 2005 (Cannes)
Synopsis: A story of slavery, set in the 1930s American South.

Now that’s out of the way, I see MANDERLAY, a title I thought would show me an insight to Las Vegas showgirls, via some Dogme movie making technique, that would show just how seedy that town is and finally give me a good reason to plan a trip but was sadly let down when I realized I didn’t read correctly. This film is an important piece in Trier’s trilogy of sorts that really began with DOGVILLE.

This piece here, set yet again in America, stars Willem Dafoe, Danny Glover (Good to see he’s making a concerted effort to come back into the cinematic fold) and everyone’s favorite nepotistic IT girl for the moment, Bryce Dallas Howard. The context is the 1930’s and the exact geographical location is a bit ambiguous but it’s stated that it is the South.

A foreigner cobbling together a racially based film, one that will no doubt raise the cackles of Mama’s Family U.S.A., shouldn’t be that much of a hot button, right? The trailer, though, is very good at capturing what the rest of the world already knows about our past. As simple as it sounds, this installment of Trier’s insight into human nature around the 3rd decade of the 20th century eases us gently into exactly what’s happening. There is no ambiguity and I appreciate its straightforwardness.

There is an orchestral string movement that paces the action of this trailer and it opens up on the small, physically, plot of land where all the action takes place. Yes, it looks like a stage production at some moments just like in DOGVILLE but when Willem enters the scene as the wealthy white guy, riding in style, while black people are depicted hurling cotton bails into the back of a truck as they labor away, you can feel the powder keg that’s being packed.

The subsequent narration of the events that transpire in this film talks about our main characters. The slave system in all its hideous glory is given context by introducing us to our cast. Unfortunately, even though it’s effective in lighting the wick all on its own without anything more elaborate, the word “nigger” is used to describe all of the black characters and I can’t imagine this trailer will ever be seen on PAX TV. The word is pejoratively used, obviously, to show the kind of environment everyone exists in and, ostensibly, to let everyone in the audience know that this isn’t going to be a very feel-good experience.

What’s odd is that all of our players are given numbers. These numbers correspond, according to the narrator, to the person’s personality. I don’t know the real meaning behind it but when it’s stated that this number system was used to keep a psychological grip on the slaves that our heroine, Bryce Dallas Howard, is going to come save the day on her own I am at the same time not impressed nor have any belief that a pale and hot looking white cracka’ like her is going to be anything else but a target for the white rage that will no doubt erupt when she tries to upset the status quo of the land.

Director: Joss Whedon
Cast: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin
Release: September 30, 2005
Synopsis: The feature-length adaptation of Joss Whedon’s TV show “Firefly”, set five hundred years in the future, aboard Serenity, a transport ship captained by Capt. Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds.

I wouldn’t be caught so much as flipping past Angel on my way to watch a Cubs game on a Sunday afternoon.

I’ve never watched, or had an interest, in checking out Firefly.

But if you got a movie with that dude from MY BODYGUARD (man, the way he bitch slapped Matt Dillion is the true stuff of movie magic…) and D.C. CAB (the touchstone of my youth that taught me that Mr. T deserved more acting roles and that it is possible to get a fire going in one’s home with a flamethrower) I am all in. It’s been forever since I’ve seen Adam Baldwin and he looks really engaged with this material. It’d be hard not to be as the one thing I do consume of Joss’ is his take on the X-Men franchise. God bless that man for that and it allows me to understand what this guy is doing with the script.

Now, keeping in mind I’d rather click over to C-Span if an Andromeda or an X-Files episode comes on, I am pretty engaged with this trailer from the very first moment. The spaceship that is carrying our mixed crew in the opening sequence (is it the same one from the series?) looks like one of those Ertl model jobbies I used to find at KB Toys as a little kid; you know, those bulbous white shoebox looking thingies that had various antennae sticking up and seemed awfully ill-designed for space travel but were sold as space ships.

It’s alright, though, as it somehow piques my interest in what’s happening off-screen as we get the captain’s subdued, but still bombastic, in that captain sort of way, speech about how everyone’s come aboard for different reasons but now’s the time to, well, just suffice to say that he’s getting everyone ready for a fight of intergalactic, interplanetary, Beastie Boy, proportions. Cheesy as it may be I am sure someone gets all goosey when they hear him say that.

The effects are what really get me. They’re really well done. Even though there’s no air in space and you can’t really hear explosions, and that anything that blows up would implode, I’m fine with putting that aside for some good space battling.

The lines here are also pretty heavy handed. “I’m taking your sister under my protection,” and the way our captain inflects that line, makes me laugh and roll my eyes, but the subsequent crash landing effect using a very real shot of some rural American location more than makes up for it. The juxtaposition is welcomed.

“Whoa,” I yell, and I do yell “whoa,” as a crispy looking zombie pops up for a wee second on the screen, our captain with a pistol at his side does an Indiana Jones hip shot and takes it out.

We get a Wesley Snipes/Blade guy with a sword that seems to be in pursuit of the previously mentioned girl because there is something obviously up with her. This is just made more apparent during the sound stage kung-fu demo she gives us as she moves and gives carefully blocked martial arts ass kickings. Again, it looks choreographed by Bob Fosse but whatever.

What I do have a problem with, though, is the written fellatio heaped upon Whedon’s work on this movie and past endeavors. Yeah, he’s great as a writer, no doubt about it, even not having ever seen a Buffy or Firefly episode, the man is demand I get that but, slow the pole smoking a little.

You get my positive vote but turn that volume down a notch.

Director: Vadim Jean
Cast: Martin Short, Jan Hooks, Linda Cardellini, Janeane Garofalo, John Michael Higgins Elizabeth Perkins
Release: May 6, 2005 (Limited); Soon to be playing at a dollar theater near you
Synopsis: “La La Wood” follows the legacy of Jiminy Glick (Martin Short in a fat suit), first introduced on “The Martin Short Show,” who went on to get (non)-critical acclaim for his talk show “Primetime Glick,” where Mr. Glick interviewed countless celebrities (which usually ended in verbally–sometimes physically–insulting/assaulting them). Now comes “La La Wood”–Jiminy Glick’s home. This is his story (sort of).

In the annals of moviedom I would imagine other properties out there could be made better use out of than this wholly useless film. Here’s my sincere mea culpa about how it pains me to kick this a little: I like Martin Short. Big fan of his work in INNERSPACE and his first stint in FATHER OF THE BRIDE and Glick is a fairly amusing sideshow act in small doses but this is the whole bottle compared to a sip or two.

When this trailer begins, selling itself in a wholly different way, one of those “Gotcha!” things that studios are so fond of doing for some reason, you think that this could be a horror movie of some kind.

“Beyond your deepest fears…”

I mean you have some knife wielding woman walking down a dark hallway, ready to slice and dice, and you have throaty Voiceover Guy doing his best to be all creepy with the tense wood instruments flailing in the background. The joke that’s supposed to make all of us guffaw is that the biggest terror in Hollywood is Glick. Get it? Yeah, stupid, I’m sure Joe Bob Montana will think, “Man, I done thought it was goin’ be ‘orror movie. Dem suits sure is smarter than me.” Smart one, Chief.

So, it seems that Glick is going to the Toronto Film Festival. He’s starry eyed, and says so a few times before he actually makes it to the red carpet where he’s knocked over by a horde of women who run to get Brad Pitt’s autograph. Now, Brad is nowhere to be seen, the women are obviously not clotheslining Glick, which would be funnier than all get out, but there’s nothing genuinely slapstick-y about the pratfall. The only real display of what Martin Short is known for with this character, making asinine comments or asking questions that don’t even come near home plate, doesn’t even clock in until the trailer is nearly half way done. That’s not smart, that’s just plain ignorant.

My spirits rise a bit with none other than Pat “Leave a Horny Message at the Beep…Allegedly” O’Brien as he makes a faux Hollywood Insider report on Glick being catapulted to media fame from obscurity; it’s was like seeing O.J. Simpson after his run-in with the law when watching NAKED GUN. The rest after this, though, just doesn’t evoke any laughs whatsoever. I’m not trying to be callous but, damn, it’s just not funny. There’s even a Scooby-Doo style mystery sub-plot that’s hinted at but I’m not sure I get what is happening as I’m too enthralled with trying to wonder how much it cost to make this film and how it will do in the secondary market.

I do have to say, though, that seeing John Michael Higgins in this was like finding a life preserver on a burning ship; I’m not so sure he’ll be able to do anything with what’s given to him but John is an actor that I wouldn’t mind seeing week in and week out doing informercials or playing the part of a recurring attorney in the on-again, off-again series Arrested Development. The man is just good.

As for the trailer? I can’t find anything worth salvageable. If this were a record review I would have to put this entry into the “Recommended only to fans” and even then I would probably write the article under a pen name.

Director: Jay Chandrasekhar
Cast: Seann William Scott, Johnny Knoxville, Jessica Simpson, Burt Reynolds, Willie Nelson, David Koechner
Release: August 5 2005
Synopsis: Cousins Bo (Scott) and Luke (Knoxville) Duke, with a little help from their cousin Daisy (Simpson) and Uncle Jesse (Willie Nelson), egg on the authorities of Hazzard County, Boss Hogg and Sheriff Coltrane.

It’s en vogue to be a hater against a band that has so obviously and completely “sold-out” and no longer makes the kind of music that really elevated them to rock star status back when Joshua Tree was huge; those bitches have really given it to all of us since then with their arena tours and iPods. People engender a kind of myopic definition of purism when it comes to explaining what makes a true rock band and I, for one, don’t understand a note of it.

I say fuck-all to that.

People want rock stars to be larger than life. Fans want someone to give them a show, to give them something worth paying their money to come out and see, and people, ultimately, want their rock stars to be nothing more than entertainers but somehow they want their rock stars to be gaunt, emo-self-loathing paragons who would eschew stardom and all it’s trappings. However, critics need to take their spotlight of shame and direct it at talentless, here-today-gone-yesterday, preening and vacuous bitches of corporate manufactured music and leave the contemporary masters of public ceremony alone. It’s not enough that Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 is still selling CDs to a willing public who celebrates mediocrity like it’s manifest destiny but yet there’s something inherently wrong to keep a gravy train chugging after more than 25 years.

That’s a long way around of trying to say that DUKES OF HAZZARD looks like big fun the movies, isn’t it?

Yeah, I have to admit it: this is a really nice trailer for a summer movie and among all the people who will rally against it I was one of those voices until I saw this trailer. I’m usually wrong about these things but I feel alone, again, in my support for a film that’s looking at an uphill battle.

Things start off on the right foot as the “countdown” beings. Throaty Voiceover Guy booms in with a serious tone as he comments that the countdown is beginning for the movie event of the summer; we all know how facetious that comment is but its purpose lays in the way the countdown begins at 05 and works its way down to, yup, 01, in all its orange glory.

That at least shows a little creativity if nothing else; thank god that’s not all.

The “yee-haw” that blares out of the screen as the General Lee clears a long ravine takes me back to Seann William Scott’s last car clearing, ROAD TRIP, but its obvious here when the car doesn’t blow up a few seconds after it crashes into the ground that we’re in a whole new realm of physical probabilities. (Translation for those residents of Macon County, Alabama: The car ain’t done blown up af’er it should’ve went up like a ro-man candle; he-haw, git ‘er done!) And that’s fine because the car sequences look fabulously executed. Not only that but we oddly saved from any more voiceover work and are treated to a nice musical interlude, a little Southern rock to get the feet a-tappin’, and it’s much appreciated because we, the viewer, can watch some of the car work that this movie will revolve around.

Jessica Simpson’s introduction, even though I am not a fan of that blonde Barbie who may or may not be as dumb as she appears and acts, is actually not entirely disruptive.

After we get that she’s going to be an empowered member of the Duke threesome, we get the very classic theme song of the old TV show and get more stunts. And that’s what really this movie should be about, you know? Nothing but car chasing and some old school Burt Reynolds SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT moves with a dash of T&A that the children really like nowadays. As the song is playing the graphics on the screen introducing everyone is a nice touch as well, a wink to the standard way our guys came to us every week on CBS. It’s cheesy, grainy and looks put together by 1st year film editors, but with a kind of irony that really works.

Problems? Yeah, a few. When Scott and Knoxville open their mouths there are few old and busted things that come drooling out. Like when Scott makes a “shrimp on the barbie” joke when introduced to an Australian hottie I immediately think back to DUMB AND DUMBER. Boss Hog walks into the screen, pimped out in the old school creamy white suit, resplendent in the form of Burt Reynolds himself, at one point offers up a C-note to anyone who can knock out some perp in a jail cell, which is also holding Bo and Luke Duke, who is taunting Hog. What’s really funny is the delivery of some anonymous goon as he immediately clocks the guy out. The goon who does the hitting rushes to the bars to say, “Don’t you you’re not supposed to wear white after Labor Day?” in a way that’s oddly appropriate and funny.

It’s dumb, stupid, but I loved the tone and delivery of the joke. And that’s why, people, when I see that Jay Chandrasekhar, one of the main minds behind SUPER TROOPERS and CLUB DREAD, might be making appreciators out of haters.

Might.

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