Inspired by those wacky geeks over at TWIT I have decided that instead of putting off and putting off and putting off my vow to somehow market my first book I would let people download and read it for free. Give it a preview, read the whole thing or, if you like what you see, send me some kind words or money for the actual book. Download and read my first book “Thank You, Goodnight” for FREE.
Quick shout out this week and then you’ll be free to ignore the rest of the column.
One of the biggest drags about living in this personal wasteland of hell on earth, known as Arizona, where you could not only be savaged by roaming rattlesnakes or impaled by any number of succulents that not only steal and store whatever water was intended for my consumption but you also run the risk, as happened to a friend of mine who lives here, get stung by scorpions that see your bed as a cool nest in which to lie in wait for you to fall asleep, forever haunting your ability to relax even under your own covers. Son a bitch walked around his bedroom with a black light for weeks following, just hoping to catch one of those venomous bastards and beat it with the business end of his Hush Puppies.
No, one of the biggest drags was that I wasn’t here when U2 recorded their hallmark concert film, RATTLE AND HUM.
The concert film never really took a toehold in American cinemas but with the success of this film and then a popular entry like Madonna’s TRUTH OR DARE you would have thought someone could have monetized this genre into something profitable like the scads of crap kids films that can be made on the cheap and then only really having to pull in the band’s estimated fan base.
In recent years there has been a smattering of corporations trying to make this a success once more, Regal Entertainment Group offering the turd-in-the-mediocre-punchbowl opportunity to see Matchbox Twenty perform live to all of their adoring pre-menstruating female fans and then you had even them testing out what would happen if you gave people the chance to see Prince shake his ambiguously sexual groove thing in the comfort of their own movie house. Even with Aerosmith getting into the act there still wasn’t the same vibe as when the boys from Ireland rattled some cages for the people of Sun Devil Stadium and only charged them $5, a far cry from the embarrassingly ridiculous amount of money I spent to see them during their recent tour.
One of the great things about U2, though, was their ability to see that people enjoyed tossing them the extra cash to get a copy of their show on video, now on DVD. They’ve always padded the concert films with a little something extra and for all the talk about them being more of a brand than a band, all valid concerns, they’ve wanted to feed the fan frenzy with the bread and circuses that they know will sell. Hot off the heels of their latest DVD venture, VERTIGO 05 LIVE, the boys are bringing something to Cannes this year and I can’t help but feel like this project just helps to push things forward in capturing an experience that has long eluded filmmakers’ grasps in being faithful adapters.
For my money U2 3D would be far and away one of the best films that is being screened there out-of-competition. Yeah, you have what hopefully will be one the best reasons to feel good about cream puff cinema, OCEAN’S THIRTEEN, and one that will also hopefully be the death knell for many of the unscrupulous bastards out there working in the health care industry, Michael Moore’s SICKO, but having the chance to mainline some of that same adrenaline you reserve for a good rock concert (and I realize that there are lots and lots and lots of U2 haters out there for one reason or another, in which case, get your own blog and talk about it) and seeing whether this experiment actually delivers is enough for me to actually pay attention to some of the talk that comes out of there in the coming days.
For more on what this film is about, here is part of the press release:
“NY-based editorial powerhouse Bluerock announces the 2007 Cannes Film Festival presentation of the film, “U2 3D,” billed as the first live-action concert film shot entirely in 3D and starring the renowned Grammy-winning band, U2. The 55-minute preview is intended to garner buzz for the upcoming full-length feature, and will screen at midnight on May 19th at the Palais des Festivals. Bluerock’s Olivier Wicki edited both the preview and the full-length versions of the film in 2D and it was then put through the 3D process. The film is the latest in a long-standing collaboration between Bluerock and U2’s Bono.
Bluerock President Ethel Rubinstein praises the film, “Bono and the band set the bar for dynamic performance, and Olivier Wicki used his creative and technical genius to ensure the film portrayed every bit of their awesome talent. We were honored to be chosen as a creative partner.”
“U2 3D” documents U2’s wildly successful “Vertigo” World tour. Armed with 3D glasses, viewers will now have the opportunity to see U2 in a concert atmosphere without enduring sweaty crowds and high ticket prices. The full-length version of “U2 3D,” featuring 15 songs drawn from over 700 hours of footage, will debut in the fall of 2007. The film was directed by Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington and produced by 3ality Digital, Los Angeles.”
There is very little I still find enjoyable that I enjoyed throughout high school and U2 is certainly worthy enough of the cred they’re trying to hold onto.
Check the trailer for U2 3D right here.
GOOD LUCK CHUCK (2007)
Director: Mark Helfrich
Cast: Jessica Alba, Dane Cook, Dan Fogler
Release: August 24, 2007
Synopsis: It all started when Charlie Kagan was ten years old. Breaking the cardinal rules of spin-the-bottle, Charlie refused to lip-lock with a demented Goth girl – and she put a hex on him. Now, twenty-five years later, Charlie (Dane Cook) is a successful dentist…and still cursed. While his plastic surgeon best friend, Stu (Dan Fogler), pursues as many of his patients as possible, Charlie can’t seem to find the right girl. Even worse, he discovers at an ex-girlfriend’s wedding that every woman he’s ever slept with has found true love – with the next guy after him. Before he knows it, Charlie’s reputation as a “good luck charm†has women – from sexy strangers to his overweight receptionist – lining up for a quickie. But a life filled with all sex and no love has Charlie lonelier than ever – that is, until he meets Cam (Jessica Alba). An accident-prone penguin specialist, Cam is as hard-to-get as she is beautiful. But when a genuine romance develops, Charlie realizes he’s got to find a way to break his good-luck curse…before the girl of his dreams winds up with the next guy she meets..
View Trailer:
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Prognosis: Negative. Just Wicked Awful. A pitch meeting, one afternoon. Two men in shirts that are rolled up from their wrists to their elbows. The office of someone with access to a large checkbook.
“Hear us out!â€
“Yeah, hear us out!â€
“An amazing comedy!â€
“Amazing…â€
“You’ve got a guy…â€
“One guy…â€
“Who, every time he sleeps with someone…â€
“Like sex, not really sleeping you see…â€
“They just happen to find their real true love after they do it and dump the guy who they slept with.â€
“Just had sex with, not sleeping.â€
“It’s like a cross between WEST SIDE STORY, AMERICAN BEAUTY and UP THE CREEK.â€
Sold.
So, I can’t really tell with any degree of accuracy how the pitch meeting actually went for this film but I can say with some degree of possibility that it was the premise, not the script, that was put out there at first and everything else was built around that What-If nugget.
Dane Cook could really have parlayed his juggernaut success with his second album and crafted a entry into motion pictures that could have further penetrated the American zeitgeist with his own self-made vehicle but it’s kind of telling that, so far, all we’ve been allowed to see of his filmic greatness has been in EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH and now a movie where his dong is supposed to be the lighting rod of divinity for any woman to find their true happiness after he’s worked that cooter for all it’s worth.
The mechanics of the trailer are a bit jarring, though.
When we open, and when we don’t really get that his wang has been infused with some kind of mystery ability, it’s probably some kind of STD that hasn’t been identified but hey it’s not my movie, we’re at a wedding and the bride thanks Cook for being her lucky charm. We’re not sure what that’s supposed to mean and it’s not until some old looking lady, I’m kind of shocked they couldn’t find someone a little easier on the eyes, attacks Cook in his parked car, rips her shirt off and explains the whole plot to us. “Ah,†we’re supposed to collectively sigh, “his dork helps women find their true, albeit at the expense of his own happiness and sense of purpose in the world, love!†How funny!
Cue Scorpions’ “Rock You Like A Hurricaneâ€
Cook goes on a f*ck spree with tons of women. Wow, this spell he has is really awesome. 120 messages on his voice mail, all from chicks wanting to spread their peanut butter sandwiches open wide for his man-jelly! This is totally my dream! Never mind that real overt homosexual male voice on his VM that says, in a way that some might consider real stereotypical, and damn near insulting, “Thissss is Bob. Juusssth hear me oooouuut…â€
Ooo, and then Jessica Alba walks into his life. What savage irony! The one woman who he would want to probably have a relationship with, and who are we kidding, this would be an excellent addition to the Hit-It and Quit-It club, he’s going to destroy it if he sticks it in her! Oh, noes.
Besides, and I think someone felt like going after another group of people that’s easily insulted, when Cook tries to stave off having actual sex with Alba and puts his curse to the test even though I thought all his other conquests were supposed to be proof of his ability, we’re subjected to an overdrawn clip of Dane preparing to be mounted by a woman who’s large enough that I guess social decorum gets lost after a certain poundage.
For those keeping score, Alba gets down to her skivvies twice, and remember that’s as close any of you geeks will ever see because she will never ever release the hounds for you to look at. It’s all a bit like 40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS tossed in with a real skeevy sidekick who just grates on the senses by the end of this thing.
It’s all a bit jumbled feels slapped together with a bucket of paste and spit.
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (2007)
Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Jason Isaacs Release: July 13, 2007
Synopsis: In HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, Harry returns for his fifth year of study at Hogwarts and discovers that much of the wizarding community has been denied the truth about the teenager’s recent encounter with the evil Lord Voldemort. Fearing that Hogwarts’ venerable Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, is lying about Voldemort’s return in order to undermine his power and take his job, the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, appoints a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher to keep watch over Dumbledore and the Hogwarts students.
But Professor Dolores Umbridge’s Ministry-approved course of defensive magic leaves the young wizards woefully unprepared to defend themselves against the dark forces threatening them and the entire wizarding community, so at the prompting of his friends Hermione and Ron, Harry takes matters into his own hands. Meeting secretly with a small group of students who name themselves “Dumbledore’s Army,†Harry teaches them how to defend themselves against the Dark Arts, preparing the courageous young wizards for the extraordinary battle that lies ahead…
View Trailer:
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Prognosis: Yeah, It’ll Do. You’re either a reader or you’re not.
I’m one of the latter if for the simple reason that I have scads and scads of more pressing pieces of fiction, and comic books, to consume. Maybe some day I will finally be able to see what has caused such a stir within the collective zeitgeist of this world’s young’uns but, for now, I’m only concerned with how this film presents itself.
And, for another installment, the trailer is remarkable.
Who cares that I don’t really get what’s going on here. I applaud the marketers, and trailer maker, for forgoing some lame half-assed attempt to try and fit years of history into the first few moments of the trailer.
No, instead we get a strange and eerie introduction that lets us know that this is, thankfully, not the land that Chris Columbus built. Maturity seems to reign here and the inclusion of a ghastly looking spirit that seems hell bent on acquiring Harry for some nefarious purpose. What’s more is the use of dark hues to further illustrate that this is not really a jaunty trip into Oz but, rather, another silly movie that will integrate some awfully heady material into the mix.
Yes, it’s amusing that we’re given the Eragon, flying dragon shot, it’s enough to give you a wicked case of déjà vu, and that the Grand Wizard or whatever the hell these people call themselves without accidentally stepping into KKK territory, but there’s a real attempt to balance the dark and light with an even hand. It works insofar that we see what we’re dealing with in this movie is not so much Harry, Harry, Harry but that there are still other people that inhabit this world.
From boys riding witches brooms to Hans Gruber whacking some young lad with a book in a really silly manner to a real thunderous crescendo of young wizards coming together to fight what seems to be an upcoming battle between…other…wizards…that…seem to exist in this world as well.
It’s all very silly and, by the end, the use of modern day machine guns and bullets are exchanged for archaic latin-like spell casting and X-Men Jubilee style fireworks that I am to assume really are supposed to be shocking in some manner. It’s dark, yes. It’s foreboding, sure. Is it really as heart-thumping as these actors posture it is? Not so much. I do believe that what we have here is something that will really speak to the core audience in ways that I can imagine a lot of people felt when X-MEN or SPIDER-MAN was done right. Since I can’t fault any kid who found Harry on their way through adolescence I can say though, for me, the ADD style in which we’re shoved through series after series of special effects is a little too much for my taste.
Maybe if I read the book it would be but, for now, this is all quite just another addition to young boys and girls playing around with special effects.
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Paddy Considine, Edgar Ramirez
Release: August 3, 2007
Synopsis: All he wanted was to disappear. Instead, Jason Bourne is now hunted by the people who made him what he is. Having lost his memory and the one person he loved, he is undeterred by the barrage of bullets and a new generation of highly-trained killers. Bourne has only one objective: to go back to the beginning and find out who he was.
Now, in the new chapter of this espionage series, Bourne will hunt down his past in order to find a future. He must travel from Moscow, Paris, Madrid and London to Tangier and New York City as he continues his quest to find the real Jason Bourne–all the while trying to outmaneuver the scores of cops, federal officers and Interpol agents with him in their crosshairs.
View Trailer:
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Prognosis: Fu$k Yeah! Doug Liman is a man among men.
What some people would write off as needless popcorn flicks I would call indispensable. To have action movies that further the case as to why it’s so pretty so see shit blow up, why it’s exciting to watch dudes get their trachea strangled with phone cord and why car chases that end in spectacular collisions, as Martha Stewart would say, is a good thing this series is even better than appreciators of the films would have you believe.
Action is Liman’s wheelhouse and for him to have not only hand delivered some of the most remarkable action sequences (Who didn’t yell “Fuck yeah!†as Matt Damon rode a dead body down the center of an open staircase, getting off a gunshot to a man’s forehead that could only happen in Hollywood?) in recent years. Even in the case of MR. AND MRS. SMITH, if you can just look beyond the 4th wall of craziness that surrounds Jolie like the vaporized plague, you have a film that you can watch over and over and over again and find something there to like. I do and, even though I don’t boast about it, I even give props to Liman for finding and creating the kind of chemistry that woeful matchups on the screen have a hard time bottling. However, with the addition of Paul Greengrass, the man who added his films as to things you shouldn’t experience if you get motion sickness easily, I wonder if these films will be less relevant under the power of another man.
I’m going to emphatically say no for the very reasons that his other films did so well as narratives: they feel real in ways that a static camera shot can’t capture. Greengrass is able to harness the thought that if you’re watching an event unravel before your real eyes you’re not especially going to be focused on any one thing for too long. You’re going to drift a little bit and it’s that drifting effect that lends itself, oddly, to this film’s power in a way that’s captivating.
Now, while I really dig it, I really do, when we seem Damon’s silhouette against the backdrop of a very snowy street, the sense that something bad is going to happen very quickly is communicated loud and clear without a single word or voiceover. The problem, then, is the copious flashbacks to the other films.
Yes, they’re great and add a lot of context and this is a teaser trailer after all and it’s way too early to get a substantial bead of everything because you want to whet people’s interest, et al, I would argue that the flashbacks are kind of a puss way out to those of us who stayed awake for the first two films.
Yes, “His memory erased.†Yes, (gack) “His loved one murdered.†Yeah, I get it, moron, “His past stolen.†All just very unimportant and needless for fans of this franchise.
It’s not until the nicely done statement that Damon is going to find the people that did all this to his life where I get the goose bumps that just seal the moment that Damon, to me, is really the kind of action star that many people easily overlook; the kid is just threatening in ways that Leonardo couldn’t pull off in THE DEPARTED. Damon does look like he’s capable of bad things.
Boom, some cars crash into each other, Damon does some hand-to-hand, and then uses a book (!) to crush the windpipe of some asshole, Joan Allen is back to deliver the kind of quarterbacking that I hope gets her killed in the end, we even get a treat of Damon doing some wheelies through some real tight quarters on a dirt bike and then, as a little treat, we get Damon’s stunt double jumping from a building into the window of another just across the way. Good, good stuff.
And the best part? It all feels very verite in ways that other directors only wish they could capture, if for the only reason that it gives the moment on the screen more weight. Now, the average action movie consumer could perhaps be blind to all these elements but I’m feeling respected as a donator to these kinds of productions and that means something.
Director: Julia Loktev
Cast: Luisa Williams, Josh P. Weinstein, Gareth Saxe, Nyambi Nyambi, Frank Dattolo
Release: May 11, 2007 (Limited), Coming Soon Near You
Synopsis: A 19-year-old girl prepares to become a suicide bomber in Times Square. She speaks with no accent; it’s impossible to pinpoint her ethnicity. We never learn why she made her decision — she has made it already. We don’t know whom she represents, what she believes in – we only know she believes it absolutely.
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Prognosis: Very Positive. Inches away from giving up on this trailer, I was.
Sometimes it’s all about art for art sake and, while that’s fine for some French, impressionistic work that bleeds pomposity, this trailer scales it back and justifies its artistic feel. It’s in the justification and that’s what makes this movie noteworthy. When I saw YOU CAN COUNT ON ME it felt like it drifted more to the side of artistic imagination than it did reality but the subject matter here is made relevant by what many will be dealing with as Baby Boomers creep toward old age. COUNT ON ME didn’t really inform as it did just ramble. There seems to be a real point here.
One of the best things the trailer does here in order to disarm any notion that the film will be a fetid affair of hardcore seriousness is the exchange Hoffman and Linney have regarding the entire theme of the movie without saying it outright; comparing the seriousness of the situation with their ailing father to Bush’s color-coded threat warning system is just funny. It’s amusing and it contextualizes the nature and relationship this brother and sister have with one another. The graphics that display Hoffman and Linney’s name, with the aforementioned color bars, is a nice touch.
And, big ups for the brief and almost blink-you-missed-it graphic that states the movie was at the Sundance Film Festival; the red color matte behind the Sundance graphic takes the joke one step further and it was appreciated.
The siblings meet. They’ve been away from one another for quite some time, Hoffman makes a self-deprecating comment about his own weight, and the sense of place we’re brought into, where geezers get to ride the streets in their golf carts, feels genuine.
The ailing father that brought these kids together feels like he’s serving a perfunctory role, because it’s all about Linney and Hoffman, but the situation they find themselves in is where the real magic starts to brew. The cheeky music that plays behind Philip’s suggestion they stick pop in a nursing home, and Linney’s reaction to the comment, feels smooth and funny at the same time.
Eventually, the nursing home is the option that’s going to have to be the right one and the two trying to connect, like fingers of opposite hands coming together, is less absurd than it is illuminating. I like these people and they’re likeable.
The moment where the two of them play a game of indoor tennis? It lasts all of three seconds but it’s a succinct, telling piece of comedic drama that what follows, their reticence in actually sticking pop in a nursing home, he thinking it’s a hotel, just feels genuine.
In this age of fractured families, ripped apart by ever increasing numbers of divorce, it’s a curious thing to see how those who have drifted apart deal with having to come back together. It has sold itself well.
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