It’s been a long road from HOMEWARD BOUND II: LOST IN SAN FRANCISO (Did anyone bother to check the chop suey?) David Ellis has cultivated a career out of stunting before he turned his attention to directing films.
While much has been written, and written, and written about SNAKES ON A PLANE I thought to add a novel, or lo-fi, approach to disseminating what was said at the press roundtable I sat at for S.O.A.P’s promotional campaign during the San Diego Comic-Con a few weeks ago.
Sure, you could read all about the process of what this absurd flick has done to the viral marketing community but that would take a lot of work on my part. In fact, it would take more time for me to transcribe this audio than it would for you to sit down, watch the movie, and then deal with the shame for having seen it. I didn’t feel like doing that but not for the sheer laziness that you might think. Yes, a little laziness, as you’re going to get Sam Jackson’s audio next week and I don’t even want to transcribe that but I think a movie like S.O.A.P exists solely for the fleeting moment that it’s going to have at the box office. It will go just as fast as it came and the audio here just snaps right through the energy involved in making this film. It’s all about the fun and no one understands this better than Sam, David and everyone else who made the film. Kenan Thompson, on the other hand, had a different kind of energy altogether, probably fueled by herbal supplementation, and you can listen to that next week.
It’s all about the cheap thrill, the flimsy and filthy excuse to have nudity and full-on profanity, and why try to gussy that up with exacting penmanship and accurate reporting? This isn’t the New York Times, this isn’t something that lends itself to careful introspection. This is SNAKES ON A PLANE and why mess with something that is going to make you feel dirty for having seen it? That’s why I’m not going to mess with it and offer something that no one else has offered (Finally! A not-so-exclusive but kinda is because I was so smart to do this and think of a good way of selling it to you and no one else was bright enough to do it and how sad is it that I need to end this sentence with an exclamation mark to make sure I accentuate my greatness!): the actual interview.
Now, I would disclaim the audio quality but, eff it, I could understand David and snake wrangler Jules Sylvester just fine so if you can’t understand the questions the answers sure as hell come in loud and clear for your listening enjoyment. And while David is a pretty impassioned fellow it’s really Jules who was just a treat to listen to. The guy is a reptile fan and he’s just as happy about his profession as much as I was dreading of having to sit through 20 minutes with him. He made a fan out of me and I hope the audio gives you a glimmer about why that’s the case. Both of these guys made for some good audio and I hope you all remember who’s the lazy asshole who wanted to write a real column this week and not get hate mail for supplanting it with some transcriptions that you all would just peruse anyway.
You’re welcome.
Roundtable interview with David Ellis (MP3 Format)
Roundtable interview with Jules Sylvester (MP3 Format)
Director: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Cast: Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Efren Ramirez, Dwight Yoakam
Release: September 1, 2006
Synopsis: A hit man (Statham) learns that a poison injected into his body will kill him if his heart rate drops slows a certain point. Now he must exact his revenge on the people who injected him before he takes his last breath.
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Prognosis: Can’t Wait Until It Comes To Netflix. This movie looks absurd, bestial, groan-worthy and worth my money when it comes out on DVD.
After I churned through this trailer I honestly thought this could be mistaken for TRANSPORTER 3. It’s got Statham click-clacking around in his romper stompers, just looking to skull anyone who bothers to enter his walking path, you’ve got guns sliding around and shots going off in every which direction and, what every testosterone-fueled young man wants to see: hot ladies accompanying Jason as he ass-kicks.
This really should be a negative review for a movie that will disappear from people’s collective consciousness but I just can’t deny that I love the way this trailer understands its audience, first of all, and is honest with itself in knowing that it’s better to just go whole hog than it is to try and put a dress on the pig and call it something else.
“My name is Chev Chelios and today’s the day that I die…â€
When we all meet up with Statham we’re immediately thrust into how this movie is going to end. Pure and simple, this is great. Most storytellers would frown on such a reveal but now we as an audience can feel we have something invested in this guy knowing that he’s going to flat line by the end. Oh, and the gorilla/alpha male look he’s giving the camera, looking all surly, is a machismo move that will no doubt get the ladies from who appreciate this kind of Neanderthal behavior all tingly and bothered.
“I’ve been poisoned with some kind of Chinese synthetic…â€
Um, so, we next get Jason telling his “doctor†that he’s been drugged with some kind of voodoo medicine and, without explaining what in the hell is going on, or what the context is of the situation, we are rushed into a pack of quick cuts of Jason screaming and pounding as herr doctor let’s us all know that his adrenaline levels are crapping out and that he’s, “gonna die!â€
Cue the Euro trash techno, hurry in the requisite action helicopter that means nothing to any of us, have him repeat the macho walk thing again, reveal some hotness with Amy Smart looking all beleaguered and then have Jason reappear in a dressing gown inside a hospital. Huh? Why is he in the hospital if he’s got one hour to live, as we’re told? Don’t know, couldn’t tell you, but I can say that this gives the filmmakers a great reason to have Jason get defibrillated while brandishing a nine millimeter on the resulting shockwave that sends him backward. Cute.
There’s a whole lot more ass kicking with Jason kicking down doors, him getting angry a whole lot, pausing ever so briefly to have a tender moment with his lady, breaking shit up with his car in a BLUES BROTHERS inside the mall kind of moment while adding in just one more moment of Jason walking with that swagger that only he could pull off.
The trailer ends rather abruptly but, really, who cares? I don’t. This is a trailer for a movie that has an endless supply of one liners and such a worldwide marketability quotient that I almost can’t wait to be able and see it when it comes to my video store.
THE GREAT NEW WONDERFUL (2006)
Director: Danny Leiner
Cast: Olympia Dukakis, Jim Gaffigan, Judy Greer, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Tom McCarthy
Release: June 23, 2006 (New York)
Synopsis: â€The Great New Wonderful†is populated by people you know: New Yorkers you see on the elevator, in the supermarket, at the gym. Without a trace of sentimentality, director Danny Leiner, a Brooklynnative, and his extraordinary cast paints five portraits of life in this city a year after the attacks of 9/11.
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Prognosis: Positive. Get off your self-important ass and rent JUDY BERLIN.
This was a movie I actually caught in the theater and couldn’t have been more taken at how well this movie, quiet as it was, spoke its artistic message. I’m a fan of Edie Falco and, not just because of her, but the movie was good because it showed how a solid ensemble can work together to all fit equally in a filmic puzzle.
That’s why I am really hopeful for a movie like this. You don’t see a lot of these kinds of films where, instead of an Altman kind of narrative, you have people slowly unraveling, as it would be in your everyday life; multiple people with layers of issues. This is the kind of film that can either be boosted by those involved or dragged down, as was the case with Madonna’s performance in FOUR ROOMS, by a singular, soft effort.
The trailer opens intriguingly enough.
It’s stated that it is September 11…2002. I’m feeling the city used for this movie’s backdrop is New York and it’s a curious selection; not so much for the location but why one year, exactly, after the terrorist attacks? Hmm, I’ve got nothin’.
You’ve got Jim Gaffigan and Tony Shalob (Really, one funny guy and the other, an enigma in the search for why this guy keeps winning awards for his show Monk) sharing a moment in a corporate break room. It’s an odd exchange but the two of them are well enough equipped that the resulting conversation, one that we really aren’t privy to, definitely produces a smile. It’s weirdly amusing.
Next scene, some woman in a hot pink panties (Really, is there any other kind? I think not.) tells her beau that it’s been twenty-two days since the two have done it. I know the hot wife/distant husband trope is about as fresh as a bucket of egg yolks that have been allowed to ferment in a pile of old tires behind an abandoned gas shack in Winslow, Arizona on a delightful 113 degree August morning but she’s still a hot lady in a pair of pink panties so consider me interested in this story, sight unseen.
Olympia Dukakis is some old coot who is trapped in a loveless marriage as she, no doubt, finds herself with nearly both feet in the grave. I’m sure it’s good but I’m not really engaged with the story for all the reasons above, minus the pink panties.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s despondency is not just pleasurable but it’s appropriate when she mentions that it all stems from her needing an undefined job. We don’t know what this job is but seeing her vacant expressions is enough to establish her position in this movie.
Steven Colbert, an odd duck if ever there was one, pops up in an authoritative capacity trying to dole out a little school justice as it pertains to a troubled little dude. What’s really at stake here? Ah, that’s right, we’re not privy to any defining information.
Olympia starts to get her swerve on with a guy who no doubt has a wrinkly sack so I am very appreciative of the trailer makers who quickly set the tension in motion and get the hell out of there.
Interestingly, these stories start to congeal like a rather spirited Paint n Swirl project. The lines aren’t really clearly defined with how these people relate with one another but the extended moment when a lot of these people are caught on an elevator that loses its lights and then stops briefly gives me pause. I don’t quite understand what this elevator moment is supposed to mean but I do know that I am unable to look away from what happens next.
“Rebuilding is a processâ€
This trailer gets a positive if for no other reason than I have nothing firm to go off of with regard to the aims of this story but I am absolutely taken with how well the tease functions here. It looks like a solidly interesting premise but, like I said, it all comes down to whether each story can be as good as the others. Even if one fails it, unfairly, I know, taints the rest of the experience.
Director: Ryan Murphy
Cast: Annette Bening, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jill Clayburgh, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Alec Baldwin, Vanessa Redgrave
Release: October 20, 2006
Synopsis: An adult man looks back on his childhood with his bipolar and self-centered mother.
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Prognosis: Next. Can’t there be any good non-fiction literature made today that doesn’t have an exquisitely twisted family at the center of it all?
I mean, I know it’s cool to just come from a completely fucked up family where the father has a predilection for rubbing Crisco on his nether regions right before going out for a nightly streaking or a mother that might as well be a walking Rush Limbaugh pharmacy with the amount of uppers and downers she’s been able to extort from hapless medical professionals? No, if you want to be taken seriously as a writer. When in doubt, mine your personal pain for profit.
Burroughs has. And, you know what? Good for him because if the opening scenes really happened in his life I am guessing we’re in store for a rather uppity exploration of middle-class twits who have a better handle on their own inner pain than they are with dealing with their family, interacting normally with their children and with really trying hard to decimate any semblance of what average humans do.
We’re introduced to Burroughs as a very young child as he polishes his coins in front of his father, played here by Alec Baldwin. The moment, to be sure, is trying to capture both the child’s odd behavior and Alec’s aloofness as someone who questions his own contribution to a kid that really doesn’t act like one. It’s an odd way to start a trailer, though, and I am not sure of what I really think: is it artifice dressed up in pretentious clothing or is there something else afoot? I’m unable to answer that question as the freak show goes on tour and lands in the head of Annette Bening, a fruity artiste who has grand designs of superstardom that clashes with Alec’s more grounded thoughts about having to put in an honest days work every day.
These values clash in a therapy session where our screen doctor suggests daily therapy for five hours at a time. It’s nuty, to be sure, but Annette is all over it with Alec chiming in with the reality of the situation. This part was amusing to me.
This is, unfortunately, the last time where amusing will be used in this article as the next moment for this film has Alec walking out on Annette, a woman who seems on the verge of a complete mental breakdown. Therapy only solidifies the family as ground zero notion but where the movie should have been about the mother doing what she can to take care of her child she decides to pawn him off to the therapist in an adoptive kind of situation.
Now, I guess since the movie actually happened this way in real life everyone deserves to do whatever they want in explaining Burrough’s own Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride but it just feels false as a story. I don’t have a lot invested in what we’re being whisked away from and to through this trailer but where some people might be shocked at this development, having to shack up with an eccentric (of course! All writers encounter eccentric characters never nut jobs who needed to have the NYPD break out some plunger justice on this cat.)
The home is a relatively safe one, where weirdoes also live with him, where drugs are as available as mama’s Skittle dish, The addition of Paltrow and Wood as the sexy young wards of the crazy old coot is a hapless attempt to try and infuse some pop and sizzle into this thing but I can’t see what this movie’s trajectory actually is.
Are we to believe that Burroughs had wonderful moments here or that he found love here or that he relishes in the oddity that is this family knowing that he’s going to be able and go on tour some day after he’s older and better able to handle a pen and pencil?
I don’t know what to think but there is the feeling of pretension that coats the whole trailer in a sappy gunk that I could not wait to scrub off with a viewing of the trailer for Frank Miller’s 300.
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, David Bowie, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Caine, Piper Perabo
Release: October 20, 2006
Synopsis: From the time that they first met as young magicians on the rise, Robert Angier (Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Bale) were competitors. However, their friendly competition evolves into a bitter rivalry making them fierce enemies-for-life and consequently jeopardizing the lives of everyone around them. Full of twists and turns, THE PRESTIGE is set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century London, the exceptional cast includes two-time Oscar® winner Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson and David Bowie.
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Prognosis: Sorta Positive. It’s ARMAGEDDON versus DEEP IMPACT all over again, I speak here of the Ed Norton/Paul Giamatti vehicle THE ILLUSIONIST that’s competing for the affections of movie going magis, but it really isn’t a battle between wits, it’s twits. I mean it’s not like this is a mano a mano between Doug Henning and Blackstone but this is something more than just a Deluxe 24 Pack of Tricks to Amaze Friends and Quadriplegics.
This is something more than dueling movies; Christopher Nolan has given us BATMAN RETURNS part 2 without using the masks.
As soon as you look at the opening sequence, Bale asking his proper and pale looking female companion to shoot him with a pistol, you don’t know whether Batman is trying out a new Gregorian vest for late Victorian nights on the town or if this something else entirely. I obviously know it’s the latter but there’s a BATMAN carryover here and it’s unmistakable.
It’s odd that the next scene is Hugh Jackman’s voiceover as a woman gets lowered down into a tank of water, him saying something about showing a trick that no one has ever seen before, but when we see his face, and he’s talking, he’s holding a disappearing birdcage. I guess this audience hasn’t yet been exposed to Tweety and Sylvester; that cat can make that bird disappear into his maw more times than even I can fathom. The moment is choppy.
And then we get Scarlett Johansson, doing her best English accent as she comforts Hugh’s magically delicious ego.
Bale and Jackman, we take it, are pals. They’re the kind of pals, even, that can share each other’s indentured help that, here, takes the form of Michael Caine. To someone who has seen BATMAN and then this it is hard not to see the same kind of cinematography represented. It’s not a bad thing, good thing, or otherwise but it’s curiously satisfying as I can think of a few Joel Schumacher flicks that do the same thing, aesthetically speaking, but to a much worse degree. It’s just an odd sensation to look at something that feels like an extension of another.
Things kick up to eleven when, in a rather confusing muddle of cockney and visual quick cuts, Bale performs a trick that seems to utilize the same kind of special effect-ness that TANGO AND CASH did when they had Robert Z’Dar fall in that unfortunate way into the electric cabling, thus allowing Sylvester Stallone to make a clean getaway. That’s pretty much what happens here.
Jackman seems genuinely blown away by the illusion.
The awe turns, obviously, into obsession and we’re all treated to the triad of a magician’s act. It’s a cheeky way to give us a basic understanding of what makes a good magic trick but there seems to be a lot more brewing beneath the surfaces of Bale and Jackman but the trailer just wants to feel like a glossy ad. I understand the need to have these two main characters trade furtive glances with one another but we’re not treated to something genuine about these men.
No, instead we get Caine voicing over a series of unrelated scenes that realty need to do more than just be an assortment of chocolates in a heart-shaped box. Yes, it’s great to taste these things but, seriously, the last third of this trailer is just a spooge of nonsense. I’m excited to see this movie only because I know what it was about before but the trailer needs to be more focused lest Doug Henning gets the upper hand on this one.
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