FRED Entertainment

By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

So, I was able to sit down for a couple of years and pump out a book. It’s got little to do with movies.Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

And now, you can follow me on Twitter under the name: Stipp. Some weeks you get lucky with the kind of information that people are talking about. This week there were clones galore, a conversation about Obama’s politics between webmasters broke out and the Twitterverse continues to write in agony at Alex Billington’s existence.

CAPRICA DVD GIVEAWAY

Who here loves Battlestar Galactica? Now, who wants something to take the edge off the series’ abscence from television?

Here then is CAPRICA.

Taken from Wikipedia:

Caprica is a television series set in the fictional Battlestar Galactica universe. Beginning 58 years before the events seen in Battlestar Galactica, Caprica tells the story of how Colonial humanity first created the robotic Cybernetic Lifeform Nodes or Cylons, who would later plot to destroy human civilization in retaliation for their enslavement.

An extended version of the pilot premiered exclusively on DVD and digital download on April 21, 2009. In early 2010, the first season, composed of the two-hour pilot and 18 hour-long episodes, is expected to begin airing on Sci Fi Channel in the United States. The rights to broadcast the series have also been picked up by Sky1 in the UK and Ireland.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment has graciously given me, well, lots of copies of this fascinating and pretty wicked program. Part film, part pilot this is actually a piece of Sci-Fi that was at once engrossing and entertaining.

If you’d lke to take the next step in Battlestar’s evolution just drop me a line at Christopher_Stipp@Yahoo.com and let me know if you want one. Knowing how ravenous some of you viewers are about BSG I have a feeling they may go pretty quick…

SAVE FERRIS CHUCK

Zach Levi and Josh Gomez are friends of this site.

I’ve talked to Zach more times than anyone else I’ve met since working here and I’m glad to be able and say that he’s, by far and away, one of the most deserving men working in showbusiness today.

Chuck has shown him to be a quick comedic actor who is able to blend goofiness with an action bent without any problems at all. He’s funny and it shows in this program. Teamed up with Gomez the two of them have a chemistry that the writers of this program have blended well together.

The cast is top shelf, the shows have always been solid entries into television’s prime time offerings insofar that they show you can be mainstream without yielding to blandness but they have had heart. You haven’t heard any kind of needless drama or people not getting along and, in fact, last year I was invited by Zach to hang at the Hard Rock with the cast after their presentation at Comic-Con. Unless they wanted to put on a show to someone who has zero pull in spreading any kind of rumor whatsoever, you would’ve thought this was a Sunday night dinner with family.

That’s why I wanted to post a little something to help the program out. Called Finale and Footlong Campaign it is an effort to help stave off any effort to cancel the show. I would hate to think this is an exercise in futility but since Check out this site here on Zach’s personal website to find out more information about how you can help possibly, maybe save the program from an early, and unfortunate, demise.

500 DAYS OF SUMMER – EARLY REVIEW

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t.

This post modern love story is never what we expect it to be — it’s thorny yet exhilarating, funny and sad, a twisted journey of highs and lows that doesn’t quite go where we think it will. When Tom, a hapless greeting card copywriter and hopeless romantic, is blindsided after his girlfriend Summer dumps him, he shifts back and forth through various periods of their 500 days “together” to try to figure out where things went wrong. His reflections ultimately lead him to finally rediscover his true passions in life.

I know it’s little more than hyperbole on my part but this is going to be a film you’re going to be talking about in effusive praise as the film breaks wide.

What separates this film from a lot of other less interesting takes on the nature of relationships that men and women find themselves falling into and out of is its originality. It’s difficult to mine a topic that has been done so many ways since time immemorial but what makes 500 DAYS OF SUMMER so precious is that they’ve found a way to do it again and do it in a pastiche of pleasure and pain.

In wanting to tell a story that doesn’t drip with the falsities of what happens between two people who come together this film goes beyond the tropes and trappings of less than fulfilling romantic narratives which usually end in perfectly predictable ways. Writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber have written a story that doesn’t try to be too dour, too deep or emotive. Rather, what they do manage to craft, and why this movie sticks to the ribs of your heart long after you realize what the narrator said in the beginning is true, is a story that tells what it’s like to really fall in love and have it fall apart. Such a simple premise, and I realize that in other hands this could have been yet another film in a long string of sub-par romance tales, but it’s the non sequential storytelling that at least primes the pump for an engaging movie experience.

After we’ve established that the story is not going to flow in normal order, some of the thrill is not knowing which in the 500 days you’re going to get next, almost like a visual Choose Your Own Adventure novella, we are beautifully ballasted by the school boy charms of Joseph Gordon-Levitt who simply plays a man named Tom and the girl-you-always-wished-lived-next-door in Zooey Deschanel as Summer. These two are matched up in a way that at once feels right and exciting; you can actually buy into the idea that this budding hipster could actually woo a woman of Zooey’s pedigree. She’s not portrayed as a woman who’s playing hard to get but, and this is absolutely where you have to praise the talents of the writers, she’s a woman who is independent and played as such throughout the movie. There is no abandoning the sense of who Summer is as a woman simply because she gets with a man like Tom. You want to think that everyone is able to cast aside their childish things once love walks into their lives, and certainly Tom does, but Summer stays constant and, I would posit, only heightens the searing pain of what happens when Tom’s devotion, dedication and dreams aren’t enough to make a whole.

Gordon-Levitt hasn’t been this arresting since his turn in THE LOOKOUT, his portrayal as Tom is alarmingly resonant to anyone who has loved so hard but ends up having nothing to show for it. Tom’s eventual meltdown in a staff meeting is particularly poignant as even though it’s played for dramatic effect and is obviously going for the overtly overwrought, despondent aspects of a man in a slight depression it’s psychologically telling as something that any human being who can’t make sense of their own emotional lives could relate to. As well, Gordon-Levitt, once he does get back on his emotional feet and has brushed off his shoulders a bit delivers a subtle, yet stinging, turn as Summer comes back into his life in a wedding sequence that kicks any man in the spiritual nut sack when you realize he’s still hanging on to “What if” instead of realizing it’s “What already was.”

Deschanel, for her part, mystifies. She’s a tough mistress in that she never gives us what we all want from her and that’s for Summer to realize that Tom loves her, that it should be enough for her to believe in but that there is more going on than any of us realize. Like it was mentioned, she’s her own woman but that only increases her attractiveness. She doesn’t fall into the usual trappings of young lovers or infatuation or any of the feelings that always befall her cinematic equals. We love her in this film because she is still herself, is gorgeously depicted as a woman who has a bedroom smile that you wish you could awake to, a demeanor that won’t allow stupidity but who ultimately will make you work for her affection.

The truly arresting moments come in the film’s quieter times. When Tom picks a fight with a guy who is obnoxiously coming on to Summer, and it’s a time when you can see the writers at work crafting a moment for a specific reason, that it doesn’t feel organic, the ultimate resolution of the fight between Summer and Tom is gorgeously shot and is bathed in the kind of silence that apologies without recriminations sometimes have.

On the opposite end of the heady and heavy you have Paul, McKenzie and Rachel. Played by Matthew Gray Gubler, Geoffrey Arend and Chloe Moretz, respectively, they represent Tom’s two closest friends in the film and Tom’s very young sister to whom he tells everything. These three represent the comedic relief in the film and while they do feel like they’re serving the story’s purpose of lightening the mood they are by no means wasted. Gubler is absolutely charming as Tom’s confidant, Arend is positively hilarious and wish I had followed that man’s love trajectory and Moretz is the film’s other female element and she plays it well, her youth is in stark contrast to the maturity the writers have imbued her with but it’s positively welcomed. Along these comedic lines there is a song and dance number by Hall and Oats that should absolutely become your go-to mental representation should you ever hear the ditty outside of the theater.

And that’s the other thing.

Kudos to the film’s director, Marc Webb, for choosing a soundtrack that isn’t a bunch of shoegazing emo idiots slapped together for the sake of molding a hipster mix tape. A song by the aforementioned Hall and Oats, a karaoke version of “Here Comes Your Man” by the Pixies from a wicked Gordon-Levitt who knows how to rock a mic and scads of other musical nuances round out an ephemeral environment that feels very real to those in this film. Webb deftly allows these two to become more than just prototypical constructs and those who want to take issue with the idea that we’ve been here, we’ve done that so many times miss the point that if you were to look at what people have been given as a cinematic representation of love in all its trappings and pitfalls we have not been given a movie that makes you understand why we’re all willing to do it all over again. And again.

This is a film that deserves the slow resonating buzz its been getting and without question deserves your support when it comes out on July 17^th.

RAY SCHILLACI GOES TO THE MOVIES

Highlights from the 9th Annual PFF

For those of you not in the know, PFF stands for Phoenix Film Festival, the largest film festival in the state of Arizona. It might very well be one of the friendliest in the nation for true independent filmmakers. This is the buzz that was going around the eight-day event amongst auteur young and old. A professional and friendly (from both staff and film folk) atmosphere abounded. There was more of a sense of camaraderie than of competition. Encouragement and goodwill spilled over into the audiences as well.

Not that every entry was a gem. There were a few diamonds-in-the-rough along with some coal, one just wanted to toss away (depending on your taste). There was the occasional offbeat and oft putting, but for the most part the festival offered a great escape from the pabulum served up by the major studios, and the pseudo-independents that are actually backdoor funded by the same perpetrators.

This brings me to a filmmaker favorite that graced the festival and was greeted with roaring acceptance and applause, Paul Osborne’s, “Official Rejection”. This documentary plays out as entertaining as the best of Michael Moore and then some. Osborne takes us on the treacherous and comical journey of several true independent filmmakers who enter the real world of the film festival circuit. The disappointments, the funds wasted, the lack of professionalism and the festivals that are mere “poser” independents for major studios is met with dismay.

Independent filmmaker, Scott Storm, is the center of all this and it’s amazing that the man does not end up punching somebody’s lights out. Osborne’s camera does justice for the new mavericks of media, making us want to cry foul. They pour their heart and soul into something only to have it discarded by money-grubbing schemers who have no intention on lending a friendly hand to help distribute the good word on an indie film. Storm knows from previous audience viewings that he has something worthy (later acclaimed indie thriller, “Ten “˜Til Noon”) and as the rejection letters mount one can’t help wonder if it is all for naught. Tales of payola abound as do festival shenanigans that have staff not only get accepted but win awards as well!

Storm plays the common man/filmmaker well. His story gets under our skin and makes us want to cheer for him. He’s our Mr. Smith, but instead of going to Washington, he’s traveling around the country with a micro budget siding with other frustrated filmmakers. After an exhaustive and heartbreaking trek, the man finally runs into some luck with our very own Phoenix Film Festival. It actually becomes a breath of fresh air. But what ensues between other festivals suddenly vying for the same film with the same schedule is an eye-opener. It’s amazing the moral fortitude Storm provides us with his journey.

Although director, Storm is the main focus, there are other noteworthy players; a real stand out is director, Johnny Montana. His off-the-cuff comments and blazon over-the-top personality elicits big laughs and one ends up wanting to see more of him. Another funny turn is director Osborne’s blatant pull for celebrities to pepper the documentary just for the purpose of getting them in the credits to draw box office attention no matter how short the interview is. Some of the more entertaining interviews are, Kevin Smith (would we expect anything less), Lloyd Kaufman (founder of Troma) and Andy Dick. A host of other notables are available and they round out the procession with an in-depth look into what has gone wrong with the system. Even Traci Lords (former pornstar and B-movie queen) puts in a few words; just cause she’s Traci Lords.

In the end Osborne and company have developed a unique double-edged sword piece of filmmaking that is rather ballsy. It’s beautifully executed and begging never to see the light of day, because it’s not only biting the hand that feeds it ““ it’s chomping down and devouring the appendage while shitting it out and laughing. As good as it is, it did not get accepted into Sundance, Slamdance or Tribeca. They were not even given the benefit of a rejection letter. Instead, phone calls were issued out and some had taken offense. Does the truth hurt that much? Obviously, yes! One only wishes that Osborne had gone a step further and pulled a Michael Moore by visiting Redford regarding his precious Sundance. But even without that, Osborne has accomplished a clear vindication to anyone who has spent their soul trying to get recognized for their passion. Personally, I would like to send kudos to Paul Osborne and company for a triumph of the will that has true independents rejoicing over their frustrated voices being discovered.

There is much more to come. The documentaries really shined this year and a few left field surprises had people talking for days. Also, I have to mention the wonderful creative opening sequence for the festival. A wink and a nod to Frank Miller’s “The Spirit” with Camerahead leaping the rooftops to get to the festival while featuring the sponsors in comic book frames. The presentation was a sheer delight. I will return with reviews on two highly noteworthy documentaries, “The Way We Get By” and “Shooting Beauty”. Also a peek at the surprise hit at PFF among others.