Quick note: Want to help me out this week? Go on over to Gather.com where I posted the first chapter of my book, Thank You, Goodnight, in the hopes I can win the First Chapters prize from Simon and Schuster. You’d be doing me a huge solid if I can at least make it to the final rounds and since I’ve never really pimped my book in this space I hope this could be the beginning of something really good or it could mean my writing really sucks and I deserve the mantle of writing a column named Trailer Park. Anyway, thanks for reading… http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976932701
I mean, really, who puts caraway seeds in their Irish Soda Bread?
For a few moments I thought I had been poisoned by my local Jewish deli, I even thought this was payback for something or another a mick relative of mine might have done, but I found out, after I investigated various recipes that actually accepted this form of larcenous bakery. I was all set to complain to the highest courts at the Hague, maybe even get that Saddam judge, but in my noshing as I looked at the trailer for WILD TIGERS I HAVE KNOWN there was a sense this might be the worst trailer I’ve ever had to write something about. I know I should hyperlink to the film’s site but I’m protesting that practice because I had my sensibilities so scarred by the kind of pretension that warrants an ass kicking. A deep, throbbing pummeling that should only stop when I say it’s time. Feel free to gaze upon the greatness of this movie’s trailer but I’m on a hunger strike until next Friday.
I know this is should be reserved for my own wheelhouse when I think about the different sources I tap into to get inspired by film, never minding that I’ve seen so many infinitesimally engaging critics on Ebert and Roeper and am wondering when I am going to get my shot to have a chaw session with good old Richard, I have to resort to listen to how others are thinking about what’s new on my iPod.
I love Podcasts but have yet to get into a real good rhythm with someone who is producing a quality show much like the good people at TWIT who make being a techie a thing of sonic beauty. I thought for sure that the fellows at CHUD could make a ‘cast that deserves consistent praise, Lord knows their written coverage is some of the most extensive out there, but it’s just not fun to listen to. You’ve got a band of dudes who seem to pop copious amounts of Dramamine prior to getting on the mic and the tangents are too many to make it a worthwhile download.
It wasn’t until I heard the fellows over at FirstShowing.net doing their HypeCast, an honest gathering of some guys who love film and spend a good amount of time delving into topics that are otherwise just the subject of written columns. The discourse isn’t as professional as you would expect for such a nicely recorded, and weekly, addition to the online film community but for my money, and it’s free, it’s good enough that it deserves some cross-website promotion and attention for being a much welcomed voice in a community that should be more populated with the voices of thirtysomethings who eschew mainstream fare but are still hankering for B-movies that we’ve all celebrated in our youth but have yet to be released on DVD. My suggestions, fellas? HEARTBEEPS with Bernadette Peters, Christopher Guest and Andy Kaufman (I will never forget the strangeness of it all…and the fact that I just learned it does indeed exist on DVD) and GOING APE with Danny Devito, Tony Danza and Arrested Development’s Jessica Walter.
Criticism exists beyond the mainstream and some people are proving that you’ve got to just D.I.Y. if you want to be listened to.
SNOW CAKE (2007)
Director: Marc Evans
Cast: Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver, Carrie-Anne Moss
Release: April 25, 2007
Synopsis: Alex Hughes, recently freed from prison, begrudgingly picks up a vivacious 19-year-old hitchhiker, Vivienne, while driving through Ontario. When the car is hit by a truck on the outskirts of her home town, Vivienne dies instantly. Shocked and stranded in snowbound Wawa, Alex is drawn to seek out Vivienne’s mother, to talk to her in person about the fate of her daughter.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Like A Glass Of Warm Milk…Or Soy…Whatever You Put On Your Wheaties. Riveting, absolutely.
Every since seeing the trailer for THE BOURNE SUPREMACY I am always in the mood to stay with a trailer if they give up a little somethin’ somethin’ in their presentation that gets my attention. Here, it works and I am glad to see it’s done where I never expected it to come out.
It’s hard not to just be cynical about the moments that lead up to the early payoff in this trailer but it’s an earned combination of having a girl who looks like a grown-up version of Jordan Cochran, nee Michelle Meyrink, from REAL GENIUS, bowl cut and all and Mr. Hans Gruber himself as a man who wants the girl to exit the vehicle just as soon as he’s had enough of the hitchhiker.
It’s an odd thing, the orchestrated moment we’re given. These two seem to have an amiable time talking and I’m lulled into the thought that this flick is going to take a left turn into bondage/serial killer territory. And I begin to meditate on how brilliant it is that Alan Rickman was tapped to be this sick, twisted dude, Lord knows how well he infused Gruber with that megalomaniacal sense of entitlement and then, blam, the car is slammed into by an 18 wheeler.
I’m actually taken aback.
Swiftly, we’re shown the notable festivals where this movie has played, we get a nice classical suite and we get Alan, hat in hand, having to deliver the news to the girl’s mother. The response isn’t what I would have expected but I think that’s the point. Sigourney Weaver, who just amazes with every choice she makes, shows the flash that makes her the silent killer many actresses could only hope to become.
Afflicted with autism but loaded for bear as this mother and Alan, who really becomes the anchor to the emotional heft that needs to be acknowledged in order for this piece to be effective, equally shows why he can subsist within the action and kid genre with no problem at all.
It’s nice to have small pull-quotes regarding Rickman’s abilities in this film and I have to give it up to the editorial staff in not giving too much away about where the core of this movie really is while making it every bit as engaging with the single “Just Looking” by The Stereophonics playing underneath it all.
I don’t think that to make light of Weaver’s autism is the real comedic hook that the trailer makes it seem to be but you have what appears to be a very tight story between a few people with not much in the way of an explanation of how these pegs fit into holes.
THE PRISONER OR: HOW I PLANNED TO KILL TONY BLAIR (2007)
Director: Michael Tucker
Release: March 23, 2007
Synopsis: In an absurd comedy of errors, a freedom-loving Iraqi journalist is mistaken as Tony Blair’s would-be assassin and sent to Abu Ghraib Prison where he discovers the true meaning of liberation.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Positive. Geez, these things are just flooding the market on a weekly basis.
It’s like, declare a war, have things go really, really bad, increase global unrest, stir, stick in an Ez-Bake for 10-20 and, viola, instant bad coverage for a situation that everyone agrees with somehow, someway, devolve into mass civil war, the likes of which not even Marvel can keep up with covering.
What sets this movie apart, though, is its use of creativity to set the story up in order to get my attention. It used to be that you had a movie like GUNNER PALACE, a lone voice, but with all of these movies you’ve got to hustle for market share. This trailer really does it well and it blasts right out of the gate with its opening.
“One day you have a life…â€
You’ve got some surf style music, an odd choice but effective, against the backdrop of our prisoner in question. He explains who he is as we get the sunblocked slathered butt cheeks of some nameless woman as we take in a day at the beach. The man explains to us he was born in Baghdad, a nice hand-drawn picture of the place pops up, and lets us know how many brothers and sisters he has. We see home videos of these people and when the jaunty surf sounds stop, the pictures are supplanted with George Bush’s opening shot about his invasion of Iraq, we get soldiers streaming into the streets of this guy’s country.
When you listen to the man’s account that these soldiers were like Rambo or Indiana Jones (with accompanying photo renderings) to him, having hope that these men were going to be real liberators, things change again to the Army going door-to-door, kicking the hell out of any gate that isn’t opened when they come a’calling; it’s just like Cops but they’re no mullets and no toothless ladies bawling that their meth-addled abusers are being hauled off to be arraigned in front of a judge on grounds of domestic violence. The issue here, though, and the trailer should rattle what’s left out of anyone’s emotional core for this war, is that there is no judge these men are going to go before and plead their cases to. These guys are off to Abu Ghraib and they might as well be entering a DMZ of hopelessness and lawlessness.
“We weren’t prison guards…and it was obvious.â€
What’s also telling in this trailer is the back and forth between the man who sits before the camera and relates the torture he had to endure at the hands of our troops and the troops who administered it, no doubt, under the direction of their superiors. Without making value judgments we sidestep any finger pointing but we do get a verbal parry of what happened to one man and what happens when you put guys who have zero clue about what they’re doing in charge of a place like Abu Ghraib.
And I think this is what makes the material that much more compelling; when you have someone who is well-versed in language and is able to render events into prose that your average “prisoner,†and I say this lightly because who knows how many more like this man are being detained for doing nothing more than being in the ultimate wrong place at the wrong time, just would not be able and communicate to those who might listen.
WILD TIGERS I HAVE KNOWN (2007)
Director: Cam Archer
Cast: Malcolm Stumpf, Patrick White, Max Paradise, Fairuza Balk, Kim Dickensi
Release: Now Playing…Unfortunately
Synopsis: Logan is a soft spoken and lonely 13 year old boy with a crush. Unlike his equally lonely friend Joey, who obsesses over the sexual exploits of the popular boys, Logan is fixated on the boys themselves, particularly Rodeo Walker. Rodeo is the only one of the group of cool kids who shows any friendliness towards Logan, in other words, he doesn’t go out of his way to make Logan’s life miserable. As they strike up a mismatched friendship, Logan’s infatuation with Rodeo inspires him to create a new persona named Leah. Leah and Rodeo grow close through whispered late night phone calls, and when Leah agrees to meet Rodeo face to face it is Logan who must finally prove that he can ask for what he so achingly wants.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Burn This Film At The Stake. I hate pretension.
It’s a Nazi kind of hate, really. One gets told something with a snotty air and, depending on your world view, you either realize very quickly that you’re being talked down to and deal with it or, the correct response everyone should have, you go to your car, pop the trunk, take out the Louisville Slugger and go to town until they say something that you can understand, namely “Uncle.â€
I have such animosity for this trailer that I can’t help but feel that if I took an informal poll of everyone who watches the first minute of this thing, and tried to gage how fast your money was leaving your wallet to be able and see this thing, I would have a percentage that would be damn near zero. And, the thing is, it didn’t have to be this way.
I don’t know who was in charge of making this trailer but when I watched this thing open up with a kid, standing all alone in a room filled with balloons and the sound of a fire alarm, I thought, “Bitchin! This like Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy†video! Kid probably went all ape shit and killed everyone with an uzi or an AK or Glock or a TEC-9 or some kind of automatic machine gun with enough ammo to put down an entire prom procession. I was foaming at the violent, American mouth I have.
And then we get creepy European voice over guy.
Essentially, and I completely understand if none of you ever sit through this whole thing, this proper, accented fellow matter-of-factly states that, “Warning, the movie which you are about to see is an account of several days…fantastic and unreal in their nature…†I’m caught off-guard at first. I think this is a joke or that we’re leading into something tangible. No, we plunge into this dude’s narrative where we’re exposed to how this movie is about a middle schooler that has a story so overwhelmingly profound that it will be “ferociously locked in your mind for years to come†The fuck?
It gets better.
Not only is the screen cluttered with credits and places where this film has played but the snippets of film we get of this brooding young man seem ripped from the latest CK ad campaign. These snippets of a story, and who knows if there really is one, is art for art sake and implies no vicissitude to whatever any of us may have associated with what middle school is like. Yeah, the masturbation scene is a bit much as well; it’s gratuitous on an exploitative level. It’s sick.
And let’s get to all the kudos that flash on the screen. Yes, this is probably a really profound movie but when you basically have just one shot throughout this entire trailer, a young boy who is obviously grappling with his own homosexuality and cross-dressing leanings, which consists of him sneering like a little whiny bitch it’s hard to feel like I would want to shell out money just feel like slapping the protagonist around for a while. This kid may be very likable but we can’t gleam that from the trailer!
When I see a trailer I want eye candy. I want to be seduced into the wiles of artistry that an entire studio helped to make. Instead I am bombarded with arrogance, pomposity and no reason why I need to see this in the theater.
The director has a movie I wish I could see AMERICAN FAME PT. 1: DROWNING RIVER PHOENIX, I could riff for an hour of how I wish that Carl guy from SNEAKERS and that kid from THE EXPLORERS never went the route of drug abuse, but this film is about as abhorrent in audio and video slop as I have ever consumed.
Director: Satoshi Kon
Cast: Megumi Hayashibara, Toru Emori, Katsunosuke Hori, Toru Furuyas
Release: May 25, 2007
Synopsis: 29 year old Dr. Atsuko Chiba is an attractive but modest Japanese research psychotherapist whose work is on the cutting edge of her field. Her alter-ego is a stunning and fearless 18 year old “dream detective,†code named PAPRIKA, who can enter into people’s dreams and synchronize with their unconscious to help uncover the source of their anxiety or neurosis.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Positive. Crazy.
I would suggest a nice, deep, long bong hit (of tobacco of course, unless you live in California and have an “herbal prescription†to ease the pain of day to day stress) before partaking of this trailer.
I never am quite sure of what I am about to get into when I see a list of movie titles only to start clicking away, skipping some after only a few seconds, but when I am able to stop what I am doing and take in what I’m watching then I know there’s something to it and this is no different. Now, while I’m really dead set against to those saccharine soundtracks to Japanese anime movies and programs, you see throngs of geeks lining up to purchase the OST of various productions at any comic book convention, the ditty here isn’t so bad. It’s not “Good Luck†by Basement Jaxx from the APPLESEED trailer but this ephemeral number will do just fine.
The other thing you need to keep in mind is that, unless you read the synopsis of what this film is about, there isn’t any way you’re coming out of the experience knowing which side is up. I was intrigued, initially, simply BECAUSE I was just presented with the film without any context. When we were all babies we learned by observing and intuiting. As you watch a woman walk into a strange, strange garden you can just feel your mind trying to make sense of it.
Get a little further into the trailer.
Shattered glass, strange cityscapes and nightmares we’ve all had, the sensation of running without being able to get anywhere, of falling, of flying of bending reality in odd, yet physical, ways make for just enough room in the part of your brain for making sense of the absurd.
“Evidence that Japanese animators are reaching for the moon, while most of their American counterparts remain stuck in the kiddie sandbox.â€
Damn, I’ve never seen a bitch slap happen inside a trailer but since there’s a first time for everything I can say that most anyone’s objection to this would be overruled on the account that the New York Times is right.
A dude rips himself open only to reveal thousands of blue butterflies, a giant Stay-Puft marshmallow woman terrorizes a Japanese city, wreaking havoc and delivering destruction, J. Jonah Jameson authorizes a full-scale military assault on said woman and, at the very end, we’re clued in that a single woman named Paprika is like a NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS kind of lady. It looks like she goes into dreamscapes but, to do what, I have no idea; although, the answer is enough to make me want to pay to find out.
Brilliant mix of music and animation.
Comments: 1 Comment
One Response to “Trailer Park: When Can I Guest Star On Ebert and Roeper?”Leave a Reply |
August 31st, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Good day!,