Category: Trailer Park

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.”

–From Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Back again.

It’s been a busy time around these parts for a while with all the interviewing I have been doing, Lord knows I need to actually get on the stick to find a new day job that can pay my light bill (One of the perks of unemployment? Watching tons of Arrested Development on my TiVo), but I hope at least some of you found some merit in getting to know a lot of different people in the industry called film.

It’s been a wild month and it actually sums up perfectly about why I have enjoyed my three years here at Quick Stop Entertainment/Poop Shoot. (Yeah, I liked the old name too but after hearing how the moniker hindered access to certain people I’ve now been able to talk to I am now in full agreement with Bill up there.) Gertrude Stein had nothing on Poop Shoot, I will tell you that much.

Some of the greatest developments of my writing career came in 2006 and I have no one to thank more than my wife who has showed her constant support for the Sunday nights I spend working on this column by only asking “So, do you think you’ll actually get paid for this someday?” every once in a while. (Lord knows that having the chance to spend 1:1 time with some of my most inspiring artisans is almost compensation enough. Almost. Really.) Last year rocked my insignificant world fairly hard with everything I did and along with my lady I have to give thanks to every one of you who continue to make me a pit-stop on your Fridays/weekends/whenever you’ve read everything else on the Internet. I hope to continue with the work that has gone on ignored by most every film/entertainment based periodical I have sent samples to (More on that in the coming weeks) and am eager to see what unsuspecting entertainer I can foist my interviewing skills upon in the new year.

I am eager, more than anything else I’ve done in years, to tease next week’s column where I was humbly thankful to speak to one of rock’s alternative contributors in the early 1990’s: Tanya Donelly. From The Throwing Muses, The Breeders, Belly to her own solo work I can’t remember a more satisfying conversation with someone that went on for as long as it did. I initially believed that interviewing musicians would necessitate a different approach than I take with other kinds of people but I am absolutely floored by how well the discussion went; one of the best interviews I’ve ever had the pleasure to participate in, without question. I wouldn’t normally be giving everyone reason to start their plans to avoid my column next week so early but consider this an early Christmas present.

Now, before getting on with this week’s trailers I absolutely had this email with regard to the review I ran about the DREAMGIRLS trailer a few weeks ago. I admired this guy’s passion so much I just had to include it here for your perusal. Enjoy!

Brandon C. writes:

Mr. Stipp,

Although I’m sure (or rather, I hope) I won’t be the first person to inform you of this, Dreamgirls is in no way based upon the story of Destiny’s Child. The film is an adaptation of a successful Broadway musical first staged in 1981, which was inspired by the history of Diana Ross & the Supremes and deals with the assimilation of black artists into the white pop music mainstream (similar to the days of Motown). The film’s script holds closer to its Supremes inspiration than the stage musical, and was not retooled to include any references to Destiny’s Child.

The use of Beyoncé Knowles as the character of Deena Jones (essentially a Diana Ross pastiche) hasn’t much to do with her parallel experience as lead singer of Destiny’s Child, although it is alarming just how similar the Destiny’s Child story is to the Supremes’ story. This plot, and that character, were first presented when Knowles was only a few months old. On top of that, Beyoncé’s Deena character isn’t even the plot’s central figure: Jennifer Hudson’s character Effie is the character with most of the emotional weight and the big solo musical numbers.

I have already seen the film and, while I enjoyed it very much (Hudson does a fine debut, and Eddie Murphy gives his best performance in at least a decade), I don’t assume you’d want to see the film any more after you’ve read all this, as its subject matter doesn’t seem to be within your scope of interests in the first place. I know your review is based upon only the trailer (which isn’t quite an accurate reflection of the actual film), and you’ve probably never heard of Dreamgirls before, but I would at least have assumed you’d heard of Diana Ross and/or the Supremes. For all I know, however, you may have already known all of this (especially after the plethora of media coverage of the film), and you may have just been attempting a comedic dismissal of the film.

Regards,
Brandon C.

P.S. The hairstyle you referenced in your article as a “Jheri curl” is in fact a “conk”: a pompadour created by using lye to straighten an African-American male’s natural hair. A Jheri curl is a different hairstyle altogether (it is what Michael Jackson wore back when he was “Michael Jackson”). Conks were popular up until the late-1960s, while the chemicals used to create the Jheri curl hairstyle weren’t invented until the late 1970s.

Some highlights from my letter back to Brandon:

Brandon,

I wanted to let you know that I really do appreciate your comments on the film proper. Additionally, I wanted to let you know that everything I wrote about what my impressions were of the movie were solely based on 1) the trailer/marketing department’s ability to convey what the movie is about and why I should see it and 2) to point out what a piss poor job they did in getting me excited about this musical.

The column I write on trailers is supposed to point out the absurdity in what companies think is the best way to market a film, there are excellent examples of what I think when they do it right, but when they do it wrong I open up the sarcasm box and just unload on everything and anything I can make fun of.

I am actually a huge fan of musicals. Hugh Jackman’s Oklahoma was a *fantastic* example of theater done right and certainly movies like CHICAGO helped bring musicals back into modern moviegoers’ consciousness when movies like WEST SIDE STORY dazzled as well as made money at the box office. I do plan on watching DREAMGIRLS, just so you know.

So, long story short, I really do appreciate you writing in with your knowledge of the film and the origins of Jheri Curl; that really amazed me you either knew that off the top of your head or that you took the time to check that out.

What I didn’t write back in the response is that his was the real in-depth response to a stance I took on a trailer. It’s amazing that a lot of people just take my opinion at face value for what I think but I am always appreciative when there is a little dissent within the ranks.

Ooo…and what father would I be if I didn’t give a WGCI-old-school shout-out (“Yeah, this is Dawanna from the south side givin’ it up to my mannn, Shaun. Can you play “Rub Me The Right Way” by Johnny Gill….”) if I didn’t say Happy Birthday to my daughter, Ella, who turned 1 today. I happen to love this picture in all its raw natural-ness and it also happens to be one my wife is never too keen on me displaying in public BUT it is my column after all, not hers, so here you go. Happy Birthday, little lady, from dad.

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER (2007)

Director: Tim Story
Cast: Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans, Ioan Gruffudd, Andre Braugher
Release: June 15, 2007
Synopsis: Marvel’s first family of superheroes, The Fantastic Four, meets their greatest challenge yet in FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER as the enigmatic, intergalactic herald, The Silver Surfer, comes to Earth to prepare it for destruction. As the Silver Surfer races around the globe wreaking havoc, Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben must unravel the mystery of the Silver Surfer and confront the surprising return of their mortal enemy, Dr. Doom, before all hope is lost.

View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)

Prognosis: Not A Chance. I loved this film when it was called TERMINATOR 2.

Really, have effects not evolved further than this kind of rendering that looks like it was cribbed from James Cameron’s outtakes?

Let me try and cut and slice through what seems to be at issue with the way this trailer is executed. First and foremost, props to the trailer for creating an air of mystery right out of the gate with the mysterious flash entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Even if you don’t know that’s the Silver Surfer it still is fairly exciting with the uncertainty that bodes for the F4.

Now, we pull back a bit, which is a bit jarring, and witness the wedding of Jessica Alba and that dude, with the elastic body, who I don’t know, really don’t know what else he’s been in, being married by Brian Posehn, hopefully he’ll serenade the duo later with a scorching rendition of “Metal by Numbers.”

Now, things, obviously, turn to pot when the mystery blob does a fly-by, close enough to the wedding party, how convenient, and Mr. Guy Who I Don’t Know tells Chris Evans to go check that shit out. I will heartily admit that I have had no love for Chris Evans, I mean, really, am I the only person who hoped that Kim Basinger really would’ve received a bullet or two from Jason Statham, but Chris made F4 #1 watchable; he was genuinely humorous and self-centered, the way Johnny Storm should be played.

Here, again, his quip is just as smart, if not predictable when asked to get his “flame on” while wearing a tux. It’s cheeky. And, just for a moment, I am hopeful that something unique is going to come out of this. I get my hopes up when the camera movement through a series of banks and turns races through skyscrapers of all sizes. It’s a genuinely fluid chase scene but seeing the Surfer plow straight into the side of a building, only to materialize a la T-1000, it’s like I had my nuts slapped by Andre The Giant; it hurts.

The dogfight through a tunnel looks awfully animated and I don’t mean that in a cheerful exuberance sort of way, either. You can see the camera is blatenly sped-up as the two sliders and divers jockey for pole position over one another. The Surfer is further shown in all of his liquid metal glory, I am now convinced they got a cut rate on the software that can render anything to look like shimmering metal, T-2 is 15 years old so they MUST have got a screaming deal.

I’m not really sure whether this application of an old technology really gets me going like I thought it would when the mere mention of The Silver Surfer in a movie, for me anyway, in the 1989 classic HOW I GOT INTO COLLEGE got me kind of excited to think of how this could have been only to figure out in 2007 that it could have looked like it does way back in 1991.

Of course, T-2 didn’t ride a metallic surfboard that could have been used to asphyxiate his opponents into submission and I have to admit that does look like one advantage I’ve never pondered until Mr. Evans is led away from the ground and is allowed to free fall after he’s properly extinguished. We could have a movie here, people, if Evans is allowed to die but since this IS a franchise, don’t let your banker tell you otherwise, I am sure there is some explanation as to why his head didn’t explode from the compression and lack of oxygen.

One can dream, though”¦

EVAN ALMIGHTY (2007)

Director: Tom Shadyac
Cast: Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham, John Goodman, John Michael Higgins, Wanda Sykes, Jonah Hill, Johnny Simmons, Jimmy Bennett, Graham Phillips
Release: June 22, 2007
Synopsis: The last time we saw Evan Baxter (Steve Carell), he was being tormented by rival Bruce Nolan onscreen, live from their Buffalo TV station. But as time passed and Evan has made up with Bruce, he’s gone onto bigger and better things. Newly elected to Washington D.C. as a congressman, Evan has left Buffalo, New York in pursuit of a greater calling. But that calling isn’t serving in the illustrious ranks of America’s politics, but being summoned by the Almighty himself (Morgan Freeman), who has handed Evan the task of building a new ark, much as Noah did before. With time passing by and his family belittled by Evan’s newfound realization, Evan will have to do the work that God has given him in what promises to be an unusual adventure for a man who just wanted to serve his country, might actually be serving humanity.

View Trailer:
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Prognosis: Nope. You know those movies where you start off with a bias and then by end you’re completely amazed that you honestly were won over by a singular performance?

As you may have guessed, yeah, this isn’t one of them.

I just haven’t been able to jump on the Steve Carell bandwagon or become a member of the He Can Do No Wrong superfan club and I don’t think it’s because there’s isn’t anything to like about him. He seems like a genuinely funny dude to a lot of people but sometimes comedy is like a musk given off by some people and I just do not like the funk he leaves in my nose. The Office, ANCHORMAN, everything just ricochets off my funny bone like high velocity dodge balls. Unfortunately, even this teaser trailer misses the mark with me.

“Throughout history the Almighty has appeared unto a very few”¦”

I am, as well, taking this thing to task for the idiotic presentation. Is there no other way to start a comedy trailer than getting that one Voiceover Guy to try and secretly give us his verbal left hook as we stare at his other curled fist, telling us of noble people who God has supposedly “talked” to personally. Flashes of Moses, Abraham, Joan of Arc and even Bruce flash by, too bad they didn’t have the low hanging balls to mention Muhammad, but we’re all waiting to see it, waiting, waiting, waiting and then, Steve pops up on the screen doing that tongue thing that my father thought was piss-your-pants hilarious from BRUCE ALMIGHTY.

Cue Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit In the Sky.”

So, we’re supposed to believe that God has chosen Steve Carell, I would too if I saw what Jim Carrey would’ve demanded to be paid, and I guess it’s appropriate enough that this is the sweetest middle finger Universal could’ve ever given anyone but the slapstick here doesn’t seem funny.

“Are you starting a Bee Gees tribute band?”

Steve knows how to flop around in ways the Three Stooges would’ve been proud of but if this is supposed to be the costliest comedy in movie history I don’t see how Wanda Sykes, the greatest go-to comedienne that any studio could’ve asked for, she seems to be in so many movies as the brash loudmouth it almost appears to be scrawled on her resume as that’s the only part she ever plays, delivers the best line in this trailer.

Even John Michael Higgins has a tough time with even making me grin. I don’t know if this due to the crap line he delivers or the poor choice of scene to display how he can really deliver but I’m disappointed.

The disappointment only continues further by the end when Steve is trying to explain to his wife that the boat he’s been asked to build how it’s going to come in handy. Mumbling that it would be great to put on a lake or, as he sticks in “in case it floods or something” does not a joke make.

I’m trying here, I really am. A lot of you have made The Office something for NBC to hang their hat on and Steve has really become the “It” jokester as of late but I just can’t see it. This trailer certainly doesn’t help.

NORBIT (2007)

Director: Brian Robbins
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Thandie Newton, Eddie Griffin, Terry Crews, Clifton Powell, Cuba Gooding, Jr.
Release: February 9, 2007
Synopsis: Norbit (Eddie Murphy) has never had it easy. As a baby, he was abandoned on the steps of a Chinese restaurant/orphanage and raised by Mr. Wong (Eddie Murphy). Things get worse when he’s forced into marriage by the mean, junk food-chugging queen, Rasputia (Eddie Murphy). Just when Norbit’s hanging by his last thread, his childhood sweetheart, Kate (Thandie Newton), moves back to town. In the comedy “Norbit,” he’ll show them all that nice guys sometimes finish first.

View Trailer:
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Prognosis: Not Even Close. What the hell happened to Eddie Murphy?

I mean, seriously, I don’t like to seem I am just echoing what everyone else already knows but is dressing up like fat people the only way for him to really stretch his comedic reach? I know he probably made a lot of coin for his DADDY DAY CARE and that THE NUTTY PROFESSOR has bankrolled any other transvestite proclivities he may want to indulge in by offering this segment of the population rides to nowhere in particular, that is if you believe what the Globe and National Enquirer have reported. But, where is the Eddie Murphy that made DELIRIOUS or RAW?

He’s gone and we have this pod person taking his place: an unfunny shill who’s on par with Tim Allen as the king and drag queen of crap film fare.

That all said, however, it’s important to be impartial and as we open up I am all sorts of available to accept that there might be a funny or two in here. As we quickly go through Eddie’s history as a youth who is ditched out of a car, picked up by a Chinese proprietor of a restaurant/orphanage, yeah, real funny those writers are, I did laugh when Eddie’s younger self plays with a little duck only to have it taken away. It dies on the chopping block, the head tumbling down to his feet as he’s told to play with that instead.

He’s then playing in the sandbox, some ruffians destroying what he built, only to have a very large girl take the twin attackers to task for doing so. She forces him to be his girlfriend as Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” chimes in.

I get it. The fat angle is where we’re going with this, right?

Yeah, it is. For those needing some inclination of what this movie really is I can tell you just by seeing the first split screen: think of this flick as the unholy union of the unfunny parts of BOWFINGER and the gelatinous make-up that made the NUTTY PROFESSOR such a hit around the world.

We’re then treated to Eddie’s fat woman character as she’s lounging in her bikini, yeah, it’s that bad, talking to her friend about how she’s all sorts of sexual as we’re treated to Eddie getting body slammed into his bed by his airborne lover, crushing their bed every single time. I don’t know whether to laugh or be afraid.

The fat joke is then taken a notch higher as we’re treated to a rendition of the Pussycat Dolls’ “Don’t Cha” as Eddie’s fat lady hand washes a car and her plump make-up breasts push their way onto the car’s windshield. I guess it’s supposed to be funny.

I did enjoy watching the She Eddie picking up her gut when asked at the entrance of a water park if she’s wearing bottoms; you get a full-on look that confirms, yes, she/he is. I don’t know whether I need to be disgusted or find it horrifying. I settled on disgusted.

The sing-along at the very end of this trailer seems quite unnecessary to why I would want to pay to see this but, I guess, this whole trailer seems like a fair warning of what’s to come than anything else.

Sigh. Eddie, we hardly knew ye.

DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREEN, THE LIVES OF OTHERS (2006)

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch
Release: February 9, 2007 (Limited)
Synopsis: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s movie debut focuses on the horrifying, sometimes unintentionally funny system of observation in the former East Germany. In the early 1980s, the successful dramatist Georg Dreyman and his longtime companion Christa-Maria Sieland, a popular actress, are big intellectual stars in the socialist state, although they secretly don’t always think loyal to the party line. One day, the Minister of Culture becomes interested in Christa, so the secret service agent Wiesler is instructed to observe and sound out the couple, but their life fascinates him more and more…

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Prognosis: Very Positive. I need to see this film.

Sure, there seems to be a little similarity between what happened with that island girl and Tom Cruise in THE FIRM, if you ask me he was probably really disinterested from what I could tell talking to people in the know, but, beyond that, this is pure electricity.

The only thing I really knew about what was going on in East Germany versus what was happening in West Germany is only what my media told me. It was all Communism, totalitarianism, oppression, repression and every other evil ““ssion you can link into a sentence. What leaped out at me, then, was not the awards that this film has won, and they’re especially well-placed, but the color palate and weight of the images that follows the initial moments of this trailer.

If I am able to say it I would mention that the whole feel of this movie is like an onomatopoeia for what it was like in East Germany. The manhandling of an individual, no doubt the Stasi who took a page from Adolf Hitlers’s Book of Fashion and How To Look Good While Killing Fellow Countrymen, and the score that ripples right below the action on the screen is haunting.

We get a few good words about what the police there were really in the business of doing, and it certainly helps those of us trying to determine to see this foreign flick whether it’s worth our time, and it nicely leads us to the crux of what this film is about in a way. Sure, we don’t know particulars but we know our protagonist is a playwright who has a hottie for a lady and the Stasi want then bugged, wired and everything else that help them delve into their lives.

So, events are in motion: the man is followed, you have a perv on the other line who is drinking in these stranger’s private moments and we get a few well-chosen blurbs from the American media about why this film stands out against the rest.

I think it’s also worth noting that the use of subtitles in the trailer is a bold choice; I, for one, do not have a problem with it but it certainly defines itself as a foreign language movie and hopefully prevents some dope from going and thinking it’s all in English.

What intrigues me more about this film is that one of the listeners on the other end of this surveillance campaign seems genuinely moved by what he’s hearing and learning. A lot more is going on underneath the surface of some police officials wanting to keep tabs on a anti-government dissident but there’s the sense this movie is a dramatic piece wrapped up in a cat-and-mouse game. One of the last that would happen before the East Germans figured out what the rest of us already knew: oppression of a population can only last so long before change comes. Too bad North Korea, Turkmenistan and a lot of other Central Asian nation-states haven’t figured this out but a movie like this one could illustrate the absurdity of how futile it is to try and keep rose colored glasses on their society.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here”¦

I am a fan of advertising.

In the three plus years that I have been writing this column I have tried, desperately so, to deconstruct movie advertising’s biggest lasso that’s aimed at your wallets: trailers. I’ve always been attracted to this woefully neglected segment of the movie business as I’m constantly amazed we can have meaningful dialogue sessions about what this or that actor is getting paid or how much a production cost to shoot but we all might as well be troglodytes when it comes to having a meaning discussion about the obscene monies that are spent to try and get your attention.

It warms the sub-cockles of my heart to see a trailer, then, like the one for HOMO ERECTUS: THE MOVIE that only balances the needs of an audience to know what the movie is about but to infuse some genuinely earned laughs and also warm that special region of our corporal vessels that can now appreciate an Ali Larter from Heroes in what I can only say is the greatest cavegirl costume in, well, ever. And the trailer has good laughs. When you don’t have a corporate sized budget you are handicapped in that your wallet can’t afford to have a Don LaFontaine voiceover your preview or have a house like Trailer Park to produce it. What’s here, then, is a solid representative sample of a little film that not only could, it looks like it has.

What follows is a conversation I had with the film’s director, writer and actor, Adam Rifkin, after seeing the trailer and talking about things that caught my eye as well as letting Adam have the chance to explain about why he would visit a genre that really hasn’t been done since money-grubbing corporate ooze dripped over THE FLINTSTONES and hasn’t been funny since HISTORY OF THE WORLD and Sid Caesar showed how you could make the pre-historic amusing. You’ve also got elements of Woody Allen absurdity, dumb bo-hunk hilarity, the clubbing of ladies like seals which is always a good comedic device regardless of the time period and Gary Busey. Gary Busey, by the way, needs no modifiers; he is like the dice in a Yahtzee! tumbler after a vigorous shake: completely unpredictable when it comes to the outcome.

It was my pleasure to talk to the man behind not only this film but of THE CHASE, THE DARK BACKWARD, PSYCHO COP RETURNS and scads of other productions that range from completely normal to films that obviously display his passion for the medium. When you have Ron Jeremy, David Carradine, Talia Shire, Busey, Larter and a cast that well exceeds a few dozen I imagine there are some stories behind how this little movie was an exercise in moviemaking, expediency, balancing and how it ended up being a part of Slamdance.

See the trailer and believe that a man has the power to evolve”¦and take a beating, clubbing and a whooping for thinking he can.

And, while you’re at it, take a look at a very special “video” cut by Mattt Potter for HOMO ERECTUS entitled “That Homo Ishbo” as it will re-affirm your very belief in the power of hot love, humanity, homo-eroticism and dingle berries.

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: First of all, thank you for talking with me before you took off for Slamdance and, secondly, I really liked the trailer for the movie. It actually made me want to see the movie without giving away too much.

ADAM RIFKIN: I appreciate it, thank you.

STIPP: Seeing how it was an independent picture did you have to cut that trailer yourself or did you get help from Mr. Potter…

RIFKIN: Mattt cut it. He’s been cutting all the media for us and he’s been doing a great job.

STIPP: That guy. He initially sent me one of the trailers that was bat-shit crazy. It’s got all the quick clips”¦.

RIFKIN: Right, right”¦

STIPP: And it’s all, “DIRECTED BY”, “WRITTEN BY,” with completely unrelated action movies tossed in there and it drove me nuts. He’s asking me to look into this film and I couldn’t tell anything by the initial trailer he sent. So, thankfully, after he sent me over to your MySpace page I was thankfully able to get a great look at this movie. So after all this rigmarole of establishing what this film looks to be, tell me what this movie is really about.

RIFKIN: The basic idea of the movie is that I play a somewhat philosophical, somewhat neurotic caveman who believes that we as a species have the ability to evolve way beyond sticks and stones to possibly great heights”¦but the rest of my tribe thinks I’m an idiot. I’ve got all these ideas for these inventions, all these ways I think I could make life better for ourselves and they just think I am out of my mind; because they like it the way it’s always been. And I’m madly in love with the beautiful cavegirl who is, in turn, madly in love with my big, great-looking, really dumb brother which has me completely heart-broken. Basically, it’s like navigating all those minefields but, at the same time, the whole tribe is gearing-up for war against a tribe on the other side of the mountain that is plotting an attack”¦so everything leads up to that.

The idea, essentially, is that nothing has changed.

Everything is the same then as it is now but hopefully it’s real funny. Also, there’s no grunting or anything like cavemen-speak. We talk completely normal dialogue, I wear my glasses in the movie, which is never mentioned”¦and it’s just inspired, as when I was young, loving the older Woody Allen movies, Mel Brooks movies”¦just inspired by those kinds of movies.

STIPP: I was going to say it reminded me of HISTORY OF THE WORLD when I saw the trailer.

RIFKIN: Yeah, HISTORY OF THE WORLD, exactly”¦HISTORY OF THE WORLD and BLAZING SADDLES, and BANANAS, LOVE AND DEATH, SLEEPER all those movies and just loving those movies is what gave me the kind of idea to do this movie.

STIPP: And, on a sidebar, what happened to Woody Allen’s zanier sensibility? I think movies like PROOF and MATCH POINT and good, they’re decent, but they’re no BANANAS.

RIFKIN: He even comments on that a lot in his own stuff, STARDUST MEMORIES in particular, and I am a huge Woody Allen fan by the way, huge fan, and LOVE AND DEATH is his transitional movie; it was still wacky but it started to get a little philosophical. And, right after that, he made ANNIE HALL, which won Best Picture, and it changed his career.

I think, knowing what I know of him, just by being a fan of his, I think he needs to do what he feels inspired to do.

STIPP: And are you trying to capture some of that Woody Allen absurdity in HOMO ERECTUS?

RIFKIN: I don’t know if I would ever be able to do that but just loving those movies is what inspired me to want to make this movie.

STIPP: And quite a big cast. This is not your average, no name, no recognition, independent movie. You’ve got Ron Jeremy, Ali Larter”¦and Gary Busey of all people!

(Adam Laughs)

RIFKIN: Yeah. David Carradine and Talia Shire play my parents. And, yup, Gary Busey plays the villain. Tom Arnold plays the first gay caveman to come out.

STIPP: Oh, that’s him in the trailer! I thought that guy looked familiar.

RIFKIN: That was Tom Arnold. Ali Larter, who is now in Heroes, which is great timing.

It’s shocking to me that anyone showed up”¦in a movie opposite me because I’m not an actor. I never considered pursuing acting but, again, out of my love for Mel Brooks and Woody Allen I felt that in order to go for it and to do this movie in the way they made their movies I had to do it they way they did it. I mean, they always made these movies that they wrote and they directed and they starred in. That was the formula and I wanted to see if I could do it.

It was a load of fun.

Like I said, I’m not an actor and anyone who sees the movie will get evidence of that but everyone around me IS a real actor and they’re all real good and they helped me be better.

STIPP: I am curious to know, being someone who saw one of your earlier films that I paid to see in the theaters and enjoyed in high school, THE CHASE, talk about how the difference between having a bigger budget for that than you doubt had for this movie. Any outside studio financing beyond what you kicked in?

RIFKIN: No, not at all. This was made totally independent.

(Laughs)

Nobody would be crazy enough at a studio to put money behind a movie starring me. Maybe someday, hopefully, but not quite yet.

What happened was this company out of Texas called Burnt Orange financed the movie and they are affiliated with the University of Texas in Austin. The film department there gets to work on the movies that come through this company. So, the basic idea is that they’ll finance a movie as long as you come and shoot it in Austin and, in exchange, they’ll give you all kinds of free PA’s and interns and things. All of the students get to work on the movie and they get to learn how movies get made at the same time. So, it all sort of works out real well. Austin was perfect for the setting because Austin has all kinds of caveman/nature settings and, what was funny, was we lucked out.

Their production schedule is directly linked to the semester schedule so they needed to greenlight a movie by a certain date and they didn’t have (Laughs) a different movie in time. Our movie, by luck, they needed to greenlight something, otherwise they would’ve missed their semester, the timing was perfect.

STIPP: Was there an oversight committee that watched what you were doing with their resources?

RIFKIN: Oh yeah, they’re all down with it now but, at the beginning, they were like, “Well, we’ve got to a movie.” It’s just funny how it all worked out, timing wise, because if they had the luxury of time I am sure they would’ve talked themselves out of our movie.

STIPP: With a cast this large, and with the budget being the size it was, how did you coordinate everyone’s schedules with regard you having to be done within a certain period?

RIFKIN: That is an amazing question that I don’t really have a good answer for because I am as shocked as anybody that we got people to show up.

I mean, David Carradine, for God’s sake; he’s legendary. And it wasn’t like anyone was saying, “OK, I’ll do it for the cash.” That’s not how it happened. Maybe”¦you know what”¦Maybe people got into the idea of dressing up like cavepeople. I don’t know.

Listen, I’d like to believe they did it because they read the script and they thought it was funny but I HAVE to believe there was more at play here than meets the eye. If I was an actor, and I’m not, but if I were I would think, “Hey, this is a pretty short schedule, it would be fun to dress up in a caveman costume, I’ve got nothing to do for the next six weeks, I’ll do it.” I’d like to think this is how it went down but I don’t really know how I got them to show up, I swear to God.

STIPP: And did everyone have to come from L.A.?

RIFKIN: Some of them came from L.A. and some of them we cast in Austin.

STIPP: And how long was the shoot?

RIFKIN: It was four weeks in Austin and then we did a week of pick-ups in L.A. It was quick, I mean we had to move fast. And here’s what was really crazy….The locations were, every one of them, at least an hour or two hours outside of town. We had to drive two hours outside of town before the sun came up every morning and then, every location beyond that, we had to hike, like sometimes miles, in to these remote areas to get to where we actually shot”¦All done in the dark because we shot late in the year and we had very few hours of sun. We had to make sure that the second the sun started coming up we were shooting. It was crazy but somehow we pulled it all together. People just got into it. It was a mindset. They just became maniacs about just getting out there, getting on location and getting as much shot as possible. I didn’t have time to be nervous about the acting part because before I got down there I thought, “Jesus, how am I going to pull this off?” But, because we were so pressed for time, and racing against the clock so much, I just did not have the time to get nervous. I would just jump in front of the camera and do the lines, and jump behind the camera again and watch what we just shot and move on, and run to another location and “Ok, let’s shoot this” and then jump in front of the camera and say a line and it was insane. But it was fun.

STIPP: And at anytime did the process of moviemaking turn into personal motivator after all this hustling?

RIFKIN: Yeah, you know, but not a lot. For the most part everyone was pretty down for the challenge because we all had a big powwow before it started and we basically all said, “This is going to be like four weeks of insane hell but let’s all just go for it. Let’s just be maniacs and get it done. We can rest when it’s over.” For the most part, everyone was pretty down with it.

And I will say that the locations were so pretty, and I’m not even like a nature guy, I’m from Chicago, I like the city, but the locations were so great that everyone was digging being out there in these nice locals.

STIPP: I usually don’t ask the question, because I know I’ll get a pat answer, but what was it like working with Mr. Joshua, Gary Busey?

RIFKIN: Oh my God, Gary Busey”¦ the best way I can describe him, of working with him, and he comes off really funny in the movie”¦ he’s difficult to wrangle. The best way to describe it would be what would happen if you brought a homeless person onto the set and tried to make him act professionally? I mean the guy has been in eight zillion movies but he’s”¦ a little bit kooky and it’s tough to know what you’re going to get and he doesn’t quite do the same thing twice and marches to the beat of his own drummer and, suffice to say, there’s some pretty crazy footage of him that didn’t make it into the movie, maybe we’ll cut something together.

STIPP: And, Ali Larter. Who would’ve thought?

RIFKIN: We totally lucked out. Aside from the fact we were thrilled to get her because she was perfect for the part, because she’s a legitimately good actress, but as soon as we finished the movie she booked Heroes which is obviously one of the biggest shows on TV right now. Amazing luck on everyone’s part.

STIPP: Was she the one you wanted right from the get go?

RIFKIN: When you’re going into a situation, casting a role like that, and you don’t have the money to pay whatever someone wants to have someone show up, you never know who is or is not going to be open to it. So, with our L.A. casting person we put the word out that we were making this movie to the agents of the people we thought were good for the role. And we got word back about whether we would open to Ali Larter, she was high on our list, would we be open to her because she was tickled by the idea that it was a caveman movie. I immediately said, “One-hundred percent. Absolutely. Stop sending it to anybody else and let’s play this out because she’s perfect for the role.” She’s been in a lot of things and I’ve always thought she was really solid. I was in Texas, though, while this was going on and Brad Wyman, the producer, in L.A. was the one who sat with her, explained to her who I was, what we were up to and then she and I had several phone conversations as she had some questions and I made her watch movies like LOVE AND DEATH, SLEEPER because she hadn’t seen those”¦and we got really lucky. She got the script, she said, “I’m game, let’s do it, what the hell. I’ve never done a movie like this before. It seems like fun.”

STIPP: Now, I want to be able and see the whole thing. Where can we see the film?

RIFKIN: Here’s where we stand right now: the movie was selected to premiere at the Slamdance film festival and it premieres this Wednesday night. Now, because it was made independently obviously we need to sell it to a distributor who’ll put the money up to release it at a theater near you.

One place to get attention for an independent film is at a film festival like Slamdance. So, what we’re hoping is that we get some positive feedback, some positive attention, some positive buzz from our Slamdance screening and the more people who can check out the trailer, the better, because the more people that the distributor see are checking out the trailer, the higher the numbers are, in terms of views, and we can say, “Look at how many people are watching the trailer for a movie that’s just come out of the blue, that’s a small movie that doesn’t even have a distributor.” That’s big.

STIPP: Now, I was told, by someone in the know, to ask about what Blumps are in your films. They seem to be like Sam Raimi’s yellow 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 cameos. Can you explain what Blumps are and why they’ve been a fixation in your films?

RIFKIN: Blumps is a fictitious company that manufactures everything. Like Blumps Squeezable Bacon, Blumps Accordions or Blumps Washing Machines or Blumps Suppositories, whatever, and so the logo, the character, the face of Blumps is actually a painting of my grandmother’s face but it’s got that 1950’s smiley, happy, like everything’s happy if you buy our product kind of 1950’s vibe. So, since THE DARK BACKWARDS I have put Blumps, some sort of Blumps product, in every movie, to a lesser or greater degree.

The challenge in HOMO ERECTUS, then, is that it is set in caveman times so where would you ever stick a product of any kind?

STIPP: Right.

RIFKIN: So, it is prominently displayed in HOMO ERECTUS but I can’t tell you where it is.

STIPP: I have to find it.

RIFKIN: Oh, it’s easy to find. You’ll see it, plain as day.

STIPP: And when is THE DARK BACKWARD coming out on DVD?

RIFKIN: DARK BACKWARD will finally come out in October of this year.

STIPP: Really?

RIFKIN: It’s been years but it is finally coming out October, 2007 and the disc is going to be loaded with extras.

STIPP: Did you get Bill Paxton and Judd Nelson to contribute?

RIFKIN: Absolutely. They did interviews and we made a documentary on the making of it and we did a screening and a Q&A afterwards and a whole bunch of other cool stuff.

STIPP: Adam, that’s it from me. Thank you kindly for talking with me before you take off for Slamdance. Good luck to you on Wednesday.

RIFKIN: Thank you so much.

##

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here”¦

I swear as HEY-SOOS is my Lord and Saviour, he isn’t but I think saying that carries a lot of sachet with my Blue State constituency, this is the last time you’re going to hear anything from me regarding THE FOUNTAIN.

Never mind that the interview I posted on Monday with Golden Globe nominated composer Clint Mansell was heartbreaking if for no other reason than having to endure Pepe Le Peu’s acceptance speech about why his middling little flick was even deserving of an award much less my attention as that croissant-eatin’ , baguette schmearin’, Virginia Slim smokin’ frog tried to appear all humble as we all know Clint was robbed in a Louisiana Purchase sort of way out of that meaningless globe thinggy.

However, there is one award left in my possession that I won’t be giving away to anyone of French descent and that is the winner of a signed FOUNTAIN poster that I’ve unbelievably managed to keep in pristine condition since taking possession of it in November. I am not only glad to be getting rid of it but I am glad that is one more neuroses I won’t have to tend to once it leaves my home.

There does need to be a winner, after all, and I have to tell you that this was a great contest for me if for no other reason than I was comforted by all the entries that let me know there WERE people who went to see this movie when it was in wide release. I am tired of the blank stares from people who don’t know what I am talking about when I mention THE FOUNTAIN’s merits as my top film for 2006 and I am hopeful that the DVD release of this movie will help people understand why it was a crime that there wasn’t more of a swell in support when there was a chance to save it from box office obscurity.

Every one of you out there know what kind of pole-smokin’ I’ve done for this movie but what did other people say they appreciated about this little film that could so they could swipe an Aronofsky original from me? Read and appreciate the sentiments…Each one of you who entered gets a little blue foil star next to your name from me. I know it sucks cock that you didn’t win something but I am over the moon, to borrow such a crap phrase, that so many of you took the time to hammer out a response. I love you all. Sorta. Not really.

2nd Runner-Up is John M. (Short, concise and captures the one singular moment in the movie where it all coalesces very well…)

1st Runner-Up is Jesse R. (Why couldn’t have Jesse been in my creative writing classes? No, instead I get people who think death is this finite emotion that only AFI or My Chemical Romance can capture. Pure brilliance here…)

This is a movie that I have been watching the development from almost day one. I have the graphic novel and from reading that and watching the movie you can clearly see that this was a huge labor of love. There are short comings in the graphic novel namely how you can’t quite tell why the flash backs are important to the story except on a purely metaphorical stance.

I do agree with you that The Fountain is one of the very best movies of 2006. There are very few movies currently created that transcend entertainment and become art, and not even art that gets the reply “that is pretty,” but real art that you gain more appreciation upon days after you have see it. It is impossible for me pick just one scene from the movie, that is like stating that eggs are the most important part of a cake. A movie is not just single scene as I am sure you know, but it is how they all interconnect that make them great. The Fountain is a perfect example of such a movie where every scene could be written in great detail describing the importance of it, and the psyche of how men think. Upon reflection of the movie I can narrow it down to two scenes at least that strikes me the most emotionally.

The first one is when his wife wanted him to go for their traditional first walk in the snow, and instead he didn’t go because of his righteous duty to find her a cure. You see him there in the hallway about to leave; cocking his head to see his wife head out alone, the choice creep across the face and it silently hurts when he turns the other way.

The scene shows the struggle men have with wanting to enjoy the moment verses fixing the current issue.

The second scene is where he finishes reading her story, puts the book down and begins weeping. It reminds you of every time you realize what you had, what you gave up for your own selfish desires, and then it is too late. He grabs pen the she gave him, and starts redoing the wedding ring he lost. He is now committed completely to her and will not let anything else come between their love.

In essence this movie is the epitome of the man’s emotional struggle when faced with losing his very soul mate.

Jesse R.

And The Big Weiner, 1st Place Winner, is Dave M. (What’s unique about Dave’s point of view is that he has the same level of passion for this film that I do and he’s able to not only look at one moment but how small pieces fit into the larger whole of this movie. I swear to God, ’cause I think there is some kind of God but I don’t think there was really a HEY-SOOS, if I have only a fraction of AintItCool’s readership I am thankful because I am pretty fucking sure there aren’t as many people as articulate and well-punctuated as Dave here; he really wasn’t exception, either. He’s the norm. Thank you, Dave, for being smart enough to string sentences together coherently and your comments are well appreciated.)

As someone who loves the film, you know it’s impossible to pick one scene, so I’ll give you a couple and why they resonated with me.

-The entire story thread where Tommy is trying to find a cure for Izzi. I’ve never been put in the position of losing someone as close to me as a spouse, but the thought of not only having to watch your wife die, but also being smart enough to possibly find a cure bring a heart-wrenching question. Do you spend the time left racing the clock for a cure, or do you spend it as quality time with that person and build memories. The scene where he takes Izzi’s book into the other room and just has a moment of collapse truly brought me to tears. For me, that one scene they play several times of her in long hair running is a glimpse of the picture he has of her and will always hold. When she passes, the complete deconstruction of the man is heartbreaking.

-On the other side of the coin, at the end of the film when he resigns himself to dying was very powerful. A few people I know saw it as supremely depressing. I saw it as the ultimate release for Tommy. He’s been miserable being alive for so many years trying to save Izzi/The Tree that when he finally realizes that not only is he going to die, but he’s going to join Izzi again and that death isn’t necessarily the end of the road, he is truly relieved and happy. This is one point of the movie that is very open to interpretation, and that’s mine.

-One other thing that must be mentioned is the score by Clint Mansell. After the emotional grinder that The Fountain is, to listen to the piano piece during the credits was a release for myself and really allowed me to process the movie. Absolutely beautiful.

Dave M.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

(So where the hell is the winner for the Darren Aronofsky signed FOUNTAIN poster contest? Good question and one that will be answered with a very special, after school edition, of the Trailer Park. Next Friday’s normal column will be supplanted with the entries that I received as Monday, this Monday, you can catch a fresh interview I did with Golden Globe nominated, and Chicago Film Critics award winning, composer Clint Mansell of THE FOUNTAIN, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM and PI fame. I would thank you for your consideration in this matter but I know we’re all adults here. Some with more pubes than others but adults nonetheless…)

Now, I’ve regaled you with numbers 10-6 and now it’s time to finish out this list and toss you some fresh reviews while I’m at it.

5. 300

Of all the panels that I wasn’t expecting much out of during the 2006 Comic-Con this was one I didn’t have any preconception of prior to the lights going out and having my brain put through an adrenaline blender.

The Nine Inch Nails score does a lot to carry the action of this flick forward but, really, it’s the trailer’s ability to capture the raw masculinity that makes me, first, question my sexuality if for a brief moment when Gerard “DEAR FRANKIE” Butler kicks some sap down a very large well while being all bombastic and, secondly, it’s the ladies that were initially topless in the Comic-Con footage but appropriately dressed here that pulls me back into where I really belong: on the front lines of a battle where I wouldn’t mind swinging a battle ax or two.

There is so much to drink up as we barely, barely, get any sort of contextual basis for where the plot is going but I can honestly state that I don’t care that I don’t know what’s happening by the end of this thing. It’s the road to the destination that’s so engrossing here.

From hordes of armies that I can’t keep straight about who is a friendly and who is an aggressor I get the distinct impression that it’s every man for himself. It’s a long lost, and forgotten, piece of our natural history about how we’ve come to where we are today but what’s shown here seems like a demonic mix of the absurd and the very real.

I’ll be there with a heartily reinforced codpiece.

4. BORAT

I saw the trailer and knew what was coming just had to be good; the opening sequence was what really caught my attention. No voiceover, no quick cuts and no snappy soundtrack. In fact, this trailer eschews every modern hook to attract attention to itself and it’s this sticking to its uniqueness and knowing that is something different, refusing to sell itself any other way, that made me an interested suitor.

It’s Sacha’s admission “it’s nice” about his home country of Kazakhstan that really got me wondering what in hell I was watching. Was this a mockumentary? A comedy? Both or just some odd hybrid that made ALI G IN DA HOUSE so shitty? It’s the latter that scared me just enough to keep watching and try to gauge whether this was going to be something worth paying for.

His tour of his home, just a few seconds worth of the overall running time of this trailer, was what sold me immediately; it was what put this trailer on my top 5 of 2006 without ever seeing whether the movie lived up to the insanity. If you can’t see Sacha’s dedication to this character in that brief moment, his verbal cadence, his rhythm, the way he makes him genuine enough to believe he’s telling the truth, then you were probably a person deserving of the kind of treatment so many are now suing him for.

The ending, with him telling us that he’s planning on coming to America, was enough evil portent to tell me that this was the basis for what was, no doubt, going to be Sacha’s foray into American culture. He did it so well in his HBO series and, coupled with this trailer, it’s the promise that there was more to follow, leaving me wanting more, that made this trailer so spectacular.
Sometimes great movies can transcend our own lives in their own way, be it the ones that win awards or the ones that just mean more than any prize given to it.

3. THE FOUNTAIN

This film got me twice in the same place.

There is a moment in this film that is so brutal, so honest and so effective that I believe it’s downright deplorable the movie didn’t make it onto anyone’s Top of 2006 list.

The trailer was one of the best indicators that this film was not only to play Yahtzee! with your sensibilities but it was also going to reach. It was going to reach beyond what so many other films feel comfortable being corralled by and there isn’t anything standing between Darren’s promise of what will be and what is being sold.

Such a rare delicacy to have someone’s unfettered presentation about what a film is going to be about without there being any kind of sugar coating but it’s frightening that we’re given just that. A real peek into what we’re going to have served up to us.

If you can take the time to notice, as we transition from the 16th century to the 21st, there is a definite tonal shift that cleaves the two time periods perfectly. Even not knowing what was about to happen with this movie is irrelevant as the assumption that this was going to be a movie about the same guy, same woman, and spans hundreds of years, it would be perfectly correct and incorrect at the same time. The trailer doesn’t obfuscate even as we’re thrust into the year 2500. Even when I saw this trailer, and even the movie, you’re not sure what’s really happening until you get some context. The trailer, in retrospect, was being completely open and forthright; it wasn’t selling itself as being something it wasn’t.

You get the entire movie’s emotional weight packed right in there but, like a Rubik’s Cube, if you don’t know how it all fits together you’re just grasping at something that’s not there. This trailer rewards the newest viewer and even amazes those who have even seen the film.

Life and death have never been captured so effortlessly and with as much brevity than within these moments here.

2. SUPERMAN RETURNS

I can’t tell you how many piss poor reviews I read on this film.

The words flop have only been used more in an Orlando, Florida Waffle House than were used to pinpoint the correct word to sum up years worth of work Singer did on this epic flick. I can tell you that the bad word-of-mouth kept me away from the theater and that I didn’t catch it until it made its way on DVD. I can see why my hesitation served me well.

The trailer, though, definitely gets my vote for a film that had everything going for it and could not have been marketed any better,

There was the hint that this film was going to break down walls and pummel humanity with this envisioning of a new Superman, one that was going to bring the pain, bring the noise, bring back a mannequin style of acting not seen since that Jake Lloyd kid did a number on us from PHANTOM MENACE. But you never would’ve known the latter based on what’s here.

This film sings right from the beginning of this trailer, the second in the series that really bursts with pleasure, and it’s the hazy sequence where Spacey intrudes into the Fortress of Solitude and Supes snaps awake from his meditation where there was the indelible promise that there was going to be a fight here, a raison d’etre. Without making a smarmy remark about what we DID get, we put aside the usual accoutrements of getting more explosions stuffed in there and get a real serious look at the human side of this alien from another planet. With John Williams’ score underneath it all you, for once, felt this movie was going to marry the very serious with the very spectacular.

Who knew?

I mean, shit, the shredding of bullets on his chest, the ripping apart of a falling jetliner, the kinesthetic sense of physical weight as he stops himself on the ground, splitting it as he does so, this movie sold itself well as it could have for what we all ended up seeing on the screen.

There are so many things that could have been changed about the eventual version we got but no one can deny the superiority of this trailer.

1. SPIDER-MAN 3

Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, Dylan Baker, Elizabeth Banks
Release: May 4, 2007
Synopsis: A strange black entity from another world bonds with Peter Parker and causes inner turmoil as he contends with new villains, temptations, and revenge.

View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)

Prognosis: Best There Was In 2006. Pardon me for a moment while I wipe this explosion of geek goo out of my underwear.

Sam Rami really knows what he’s doing with these films. Much like Peter Jackson and unlike Brett Ratner Sam realizes what makes these movies fill an economic and social niche at the multiplex. It would be easy, real easy, to write these films off as just fodder for a pyre that’s all too willing to use cultural hallmarks as burnable properties. Sam has had to tow a line that needs to be respectful of the mythos of Spider-Man while being accessible by throngs of people who want to be dazzled and entertained.

His style of storytelling and filmmaking for SPIDER-MAN 1 and 2 have set records because he unlocked the barrier for entry for folks who would otherwise see a dude in blue and red tights and say “Pass.” Respect for the material and for the dweebs who have spent their hard earned lunch money bridged the other 50% of the equation to make these movies more than just hits. There could have been big issues if Sony decided to pull a X3, like New Line has now done with Jackson and THE HOBBIT, because there is something to be said for films that bookend and possess a definitive voice. Things from the 1st film carried over into the 2nd and, obviously, now in this 3rd chapter we need resolution and if Sam didn’t keep to his vision it would have been like reading a book with the final chapter scrawled in by someone who wasn’t the original author; it would be disconcerting to say the least but Sam realizes this and he explodes right back into things.

What I like about this trailer the most, then, is that we come into this movie knowing there aren’t going to be the requisite gun battles and violence that is present in other films in mass quantities but this about the story and we get right into things without any needless exposition whatsoever.

Sure, there’s a hokey pro-Spidey party going on when we begin but, you know what, there’s no Macy Gray, and that unto itself is a good thing. Also, we get all the players’ shining mugs as if to say, “Yes, they’re all back and, hey, we got Topher Grace.” Oddly, there is no sign of Ms. Bryce Howard, which I am confounded by, but it’s not addressed, either in any fashion.

We get Pete trying to get his swerve on by laying his lady in his man-webbing, his voiceover letting us know he wants to get married. What’s great about this moment is that Pete’s next evolution of being Spider-Man lends itself quite nicely with the responsibilities of being a husband and it’s delicately addressed by Aunt May, the one constant that I’ve really enjoyed through the first two parts of these movies; she is the anchor that centers Pete and it is her moments that are especially inspiring as we go further on in these films.

“DANGER Particle Physics Test Facility KEEP OUT”

Okay, yes, that sign that Thomas Hayden Church passes by as he scales the fence as he tries to evade the cops is a bit obvious. I mean it’s really obvious. Have you ever seen a government facility keep its signage that gleaming white? Neither have I. But, as such, it does help the other people in the audience “get it” and the shot of Thomas losing his shit to that tri-beam is pretty fucking sweet. As is Spider-Man’s punch to his mid-section in mid-robbery only for Hayden to pump up that fist, with accompanying squishy sand sound, and knock the “˜Man right out of the getaway vehicle.

“Revenge is like a poison”¦”

The sound of the symbiote oozing its way onto Spider-Man’s body and the visual gooeyness of the Black Death is nothing short of brilliant. The contrast, the weight it seems to have, the sense that it has life, makes going to see this movie if only to witness what this is going to do all worth it. Can I get an amen?

I don’t know what to make of The Sandman as Bag Lady in the subway or the black McFly hair slick that Parker is sporting after his “infection” but I can only shrug and be consumed by the other, other sub-plot of Franco coming correct in his quest to avenge his father’s death. That looks like it’s not going to have a pleasing ending but, really, if we want to stay true to the reality of the first two films then it won’t be sugar-coated.

The quick cutting of all sorts of insane visual effects does a body good, namely mine, and while I can only wonder where Venom is or where Gwen Stacy fits into this picture (Um, isn’t this going to be a large part of the plot?) the trailer that we’re given is just a shot of adrenaline that’s been shoved past our chest plate and injected into the heart.

Consider this the first real shot heard across the world.

PRIMEVAL (2007)

Director: Michael Katleman
Cast: Dominic Purcell, Orlando Jones, Brooke Langton, Jurgen Prochnow
Release: January 12, 2007
Synopsis: In one of the most remote places on earth, a bloodthirsty serial killer has claimed over 300 victims, and is still at large to this day. Now, inspired by the true story of the world’s most prolific killer, comes PRIMEVAL, a nail-biting horror-thriller that follows an American news crew determined to capture this terrifying murderer alive. The danger begins as producer Tim Freeman (Purcell), cameraman Steven Johnson (Jones) and their rag-tag team set out on a journey up-river in search of their subject. But the deeper they probe into the mystery of this elusive assassin, the deadlier their trip becomes.

View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)

Prognosis: Worst There Is (So Far) In 2007 Lame.

What kind of world do we live in where this constitutes a respectable horror trailer?

Right, it doesn’t, because this one sucks high tit. It’s not so much the spooky skulls that are prominently displayed in this trailer, because there are, but it IS so much the wasting of my time as I wait for something, anything, cool to happen. There isn’t anything to really be stricken by as this thing rolls on and on and on without so much of a blood dripping corpse.

It pains me to say that the very beginning of this trailer may be the one reason why I’m not parting with my cash. The “Inspired by a True Story” is a respectable swing at the piñata which is my frontal lobe but it completely whiffs as we then open up onto a resplendent safari landscape. What the hell? Is this a movie of slasherific goodness or is this Sunday morning on the nature channel?

Unfortunately, I can’t appropriately answer that question because the tweet-tweet of the birds, fuckin’ rhinos, fuckin’ giraffes, fuckin’ gazelles and, ooooooo, a thunder clap.

“In one of the most remote locations on earth”¦”

Yeah, so is my Johnson because I’m married, you douche.

“Lives the world’s most prolific serial killer.”

Nope. You’re forgetting about McDonald’s and their sinister ingredients, to say nothing of their guerilla marketing tactics as they rope kids into their incestuous fold.

Oooo, again with the pseudo spookiness, but this time it’s the close up of a dirty skull.

“He has claimed over 300 victims.”

Lightweight.

“Looks like another mass grave”¦”

Um, have any of you read the history books about what Slobodan Milosevic perpetrated on the world stage? Tard.

I could just go on and on with the far-reaching statements and superlatives that are tossed out there like balls hoping to make it into Bozo’s Buckets but it doesn’t work. The creepy voodoo guy conducting a ritual of some sort is a little cool, I have to admit, but where does that move the story? What does any of this have to do with the plot? Absolutely nothing, friends.

In fact, as the trailer rolls on and on we aren’t allowed in anywhere close to knowing why any of us should pay to see this movie. There’s a lot of running through underbrush, we get a lot of ADD inspired quick clips and there’s even one of those dramatic pauses by Dominic Purcell that I am guessing is supposed to be “spooky.” It’s not, I’m bored and I am moving on to my cell bill; that’s a lot scarier than what may be in this movie.
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By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

Quick Note: I will be getting to the winners of THE FOUNTAIN poster contest next week but I did want to take this moment to thank all of you, the readers, who have made this a real banner year for me. I am thankful and grateful for all the opportunities I was given to really bring this column further into something that I can find delight in doing every week (I haven’t missed a week since starting nearly 3 years ago) with my interviewing and long-form pieces I’ve been able to write for this site. I finally came to accept that I am half-way decent at my efforts to branch out and I want to continue that trend in ’07 by providing even more free content that you Inter-Tubers seem to consume so much of. So genuinely, from my heart, many thanks to you, the teeming dozen or so consistent readers I have been able to talk to every week with my writing. (Let’s all say a prayer in hope that I can earn more than $30 in the New Year)

I hope all of you have a safe New Year’s Eve and keeping with my end of year goings-on in the Trailer Park it’s time to dim the lights, chill the ham and get down to the trailers that rocked my wiz-orld in 2006. Talk to you next year.

10. THE LAKE HOUSE

See this middle, extended phalange?

It’s up for every critic that shredded this movie.

I absolutely dug this trailer from start to finish. From Sandra’s opening monologue that really re-defined my view of her abilities as an actress; CRASH, come on, was wretched in the way she tried to vamp up her part of the upper-class white lady with a lot of racist anger. To top it off, she looks absolutely gorgeous.

The plot is quickly put into motion the crux of the movie’s plot: “What if you lived two years apart?”

I don’t know why but it was this tagline that hooked me. More than just mere science fiction, I believe this film’s premise was completely inventive. Someone took your average romantic film and infused it with a little something interesting.

The halfway point of this trailer has Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know” is instrumental in further defining how this film is going to pull off having the two leads be entirely separated from one another for the entire film, save two scenes. What’s more is that the leads are never even hinted at ever coming together; how easy would it have been to try and hose people to just insert a moment when they actually do?

The trailer at almost the very end just explodes with nicely confusing moments that really pushed me over the edge in wanting to see what this film was all about. Judging by the box office I am still stumped at figuring out why no one else wanted to. The trailer is still a favorite of mine and one that superbly defined how this kind of film needed to be presented, even if people didn’t show up to support it.

A-holes.

9. TRUST THE MAN

I don’t know why but this movie just struck some sort of nerve.

With the opening you have the entire movie mapped out in front of you: man has friend. Man loves sex, craves it. Julianne Moore actually seems like she’s in a film to help propel the plot, not be the overreaching thumb of the hand that tries to outdo her fellow ensemble actors; she’s likeable, of all things.

David Duchovny wins me over with his instant charm that’s on full display. The way his relationship with Billy Crudup, an individual who needs to be around more often in film, works, I would assert, comes through like a bullhorn in a bathroom stall. If you can believe the relationship all the rest is dependant on the writing.

What’s more is the inclusion of James Blunt’s “Wisemen” which has the overall Grey’s Effect (It’s in the process of being trademarked.) of having the music carry the dramatic weight of the events that come after the midpoint, namely Billy and David’s relationship. And I think this is what gets me every single time I watch the trailer.

The preview is excellent at promising a movie that will deal with relationships between men. In this age of female-fueled romantic comedies, i.e. RUMOR HAS IT, it is nice to know there might be a film that looks at the way men deal with each other when it deals with matters of the heart.

8. CRANK
Stop pointing your fingers and laughing, this movie was everything that the trailer said it was going to be.

I have to commend this trailer for a lot of reasons but the one thing I’ve come back to every single time is that the narrative is established wonderfully within the first 15 seconds. Because you knew, up front, that Statham had his one-way ticket to death punched and that the Reaper was going to collect by the end of the flick it set the tone for everything that comes after.

It’s easy to slap around these kinds of mindless, brainless, masturbatory male-oriented action flicks around but they serve such a vital role in the landscape of cinema. For every art project that a director wants to do that somehow defines what it is to be human in the grand tradition of Grecian drama you absolutely need to have movies that showcase the other side of human nature: the need to blow shit up.

The trailer takes you on an ADD ride that, while it hinders most other trailers that want to seem “edgy” or exciting, absolutely adds to this film’s attraction. From Statham’s action-movie smoothness to the blatant absence of any kind of plot other than what was stated at the beginning you have a recipe for warm and fuzzy destruction.

7. CASINO ROYALE

Parkour.

I think that’s one of the things that did it for me in this teaser trailer and why I selected it to be the one trailer I reviewed for Moving Pictures magazine, my first real published work.

I will be honest when I say that I didn’t have feelings about Daniel Craig being the new Bond one way or the other. Sure, you had purists that tried to petition Craig’s presence in the role while also having the media report on every misstep the man had on set. Yes, he had his teeth kicked in and there was speculation he didn’t really know how to handle a gun but this teaser trailer locked me in for good. This was surprising even for me because I am usually very suspicious of teaser trailers as opposed to their two and a half minute brethren.

When Craig takes on a bloke in the loo, and gives him a proper thrashing, I was absolutely sold. For me it was always an issue that the Pierce Brosnan years for the Bond series were kind of dull. There wasn’t a whole lot of fisticuffs or much in the way of substance, just ludicrous and implausible stunting and bad writing.

This teaser exudes the kind of mystique and allure that a Bond movie should have in ample amounts. There is a reason why people can’t stop talking about how this film is really a return to form for the franchise and this teaser had everything you needed to know before everyone else said it.

6. FEARLESS

Do I really need to explain this one?

Jet Li’s “supposed” last film of this variety is delicately but efficiently introduced with David Lo Pan of BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA fame makes this history lesson real easy to understand: China gets occupied, white men want to overtly show how utterly awesome their strength is and Li comes in to school these guys while mopping their faces inside a fighting ring.

There’s a delicate balance of how you sell this action movie that definitely has a solid heart and this trailer manages to do it. Li comes off as quietly effective at being this character with a largess that’s just indescribable. However, I can put into words the kind of eye-popping action that comes in the form of Li thrashing some nameless, faceless dude while holding an umbrella.

Then there’s the duel of swords in the pool.

The effect of showing these fight sequences works in marriage with the larger plotline of this movie having at least some kind of context in the real world. The overall feel of this trailer feels more like a dramatic action movie than just an all-out martial arts extravaganza. This being Jet’s last foray into the genre you would have thought he would have done it with enough panache and fanfare to make everyone stand-up and take notice. The nice part is that the trailer shows that Jet wanted to have a movie that was substantial, not exploitative. A class act.

STAY TUNED NEXT WEEK FOR THE FINAL FIVE…And would someone clean up the yak that’s dried up on the carpet? Thanks.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

I was recently watching Arrested Development re-runs that my TiVo (All hail at the feet of this technological wonder….Aaaaa-uuuummmm…) picks up on a daily basis and came across an episode that simply bursts with inside-joke goodness, Good Grief!, and was reminded of how this show could be amusing, tragic and razor smart. One of the other things that I picked up on was the nice, mellow sounds of the “Christmas Time is Here” jingle that plays in the background of one scene and it got me thinking: “Shit, self, I need to give away some swag…”

I know I hinted at it a few weeks ago but I am here today that the entry gates are now open for a new contest (There are some of you who are Lifers at trying to snag something from this Prize Patrol and I admire your shamelss tenacity to get your mittens on something free. Huzzah, good sirs.) and one that I can’t believe I am offering up. It’s not because of the sheer coolness of the prize but since THE FOUNTAIN is easily in my Top 3 for 2006, it’s damn well in my Top 10 for movies that came out post-2000, I am amazed that I am able to give a couple of you out there the chance to own a hand-signed Darren Aronofsky poster for THE FOUNTAIN.

I can attest honestly that if I was on the other side of this giveaway I would be stewing in my Jockeys in anxious anticipation to get one but I want to pass along the love to one of you out there who have seen the movie and loved it enough to send in an entry.

Now, you’ve to work for this win.

It was damn hard to get these in my possession and I don’t want any of these to go somewhere where they’re not going to be treated with a little love and reverence. I would get too maudlin if I explained why I think that Richard Roeper from the Sun-Times (Thanks for responding so swiftly to my email, Dick.) or A.O. Scott from the New York Times (How witty to be called by a truncated version of your nombre. Do your peeps call you up and say, “Hey, A.O., want to grab a beer with the rest of the crew down at Applebees?” If I was close enough to call you “friend” A.O. would be the last thing on my list to call you and you could be assured I would bust your balls relentlessly of you perpetrating this ruse on others.) are both completely wrong regarding what they thought THE FOUNTAIN was, or was not, in their eyes. They are certainly entitled to their opinion but they’re wrong on this one.

Give me an Etch-A-Sketch, a Texas Instruments TI-81 graphing calculator, 10 minutes on Ebert and Roeper to make my case, a fruit smoothie just to keep me hydrated and I can break this movie down to a compelling enough defense as to why A.O. and Roep just missed the mark with their jaunty rip-fest into this deep movie.

Look, I won’t get into why I love this film as much as I do and why I weep for those reviewers who think that Aronofsky is anything less than genuine and earnest but I feel completely stable in my assertions regarding how important this film is to anyone who wants a second opinion about what death, life and love are all about in a way that accessible. All I know is that I’ve got a couple of posters to give out that Darren graciously signed when he was out here in God’s country, Arizona, and I want to give them to you.

All you need to do is tell me one scene that you enjoyed, just one, and make sure it isn’t anything you could pick up simply by watching the trailer. If in doubt, check here or here and be sure to check your work.

Just tell me a scene and give a little context. If the film meant anything to you, you’ll write something that justifies why you’re angling to slap this on your wall. This contest is open to the world so come one, come all.

A.O. and Roeper can suck it.

BLOOD DIAMOND (2006)

Director: Ed Zwick
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Connelly, Arnold Vosloo, Michael Sheen, Stephen Collins
Release: Now Playing
Synopsis: Set against the backdrop of civil war and chaos in 1990s Sierra Leone, Blood Diamond is the story of Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), a South African mercenary, and Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), a Mende fisherman. Both men are African, but their histories as different as any can be, until their fates become joined in a common quest to recover a rare pink diamond that can transform their lives. While in prison for smuggling, Archer learns that Solomon – who was taken from his family and forced to work in the diamond fields – has found and hidden the extraordinary rough stone. With the help of Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), an American journalist whose idealism is tempered by a deepening connection with Archer, the two men embark on a trek through rebel territory – a journey that could save Solomon’s family and give Archer the second chance he thought he would never have.

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Prognosis: Negative. Ed Zwick doesn’t have to explain anything but did he really want me to believe that Tom Cruise pulled a move straight from Kevin Costner in DANCES WITH WOLVES and dodged the gauntlet of bullets that rained down straight at his person? It was that move that nearly obliterated any disbelief I was suspending for THE LAST SAMURAI.

I’m hoping that we don’t get a repeat performance of this moviemaking crutch and, from this trailer, I see the same kind of hopefulness that hooked me into SAMURAI. It’s gorgeous to look at and I think this trailer really exemplifies the kind of selling to a mass market in a way that, while there’s nothing “edgy” or “borderline” about the advertisement at all, does what it is supposed to do: be accessible.

Now, I get a little pang in the heart as the opening reveals a little JURASSIC PARK goodness as a helicopter weaves itself between a lush green canyon but it’s Djimon (why do I always think of a spicy mustard when I see his name?) who really captures our attention in a moment that just propels the events of the movie forward. His black palm holding a muddy stone and the really “dramatic,” read here: obnoxious, voiceover that tells us that people kill each other for these things.

I laugh just a little on the inside when the first shots of Leo and Jennifer are in slow-motion, their faces perfectly sharpened in that I’m-trying-to-look-scared/strong-here-people, kind of way but it’s ok. Even though, yes, the precious stone trade in developing nations is stained with the very real blood, sweat and tears of, essentially, serfs who are enslaved by their poverty and that this movie won’t make this situation any better but the imagery here is undeniable.

And this is about the time when Leo opens his mouth. It’s accented. I wish I could say that I am trying to concentrate on the story but I just can’t get past it. It’s funny, people. Really, it is. I’m already more partial to Djimon’s plotline of having to liberate his family from the clutches of marauders who know he has the gem which they want. I am at a loss to try and see how Jennifer wants to insinuate herself into this movie as Leo gets that she’s using him for some nefarious reason of her own, Leo using Djimon for the obvious reason of wanting the stone, it’s like RAIN MAN all over again, but there’s a real reason why I am so high on this movie.

Arnold Vosloo.

“I don’t give a damn who’s down there”¦kill them all.

A real South African by birth and a bad-ass by trade Arnold really deserves more than he’s given and, thankfully, as he’s precariously perched on the open doorway of a fast moving helicopter with some sweet armament attached to it I feel like this is, really, the true sequel to HARD TARGET. I mean, come on, you’ve got the obligatory romance between a dude and a lady, toss in Djimon as the wild card, while savages are hot their heels to kill them and Arnold is really all you need here to seal the deal. Just disregard all the talk at the end of this trailer about a man on the hunt for his child; this movie should be called HARD TARGET II and this trailer hints about Arnold catching up and, hopefully, finally getting the kill that eluded him so many years ago in that Van Damme entry.
One can hope.

DREAMGIRLS (2006)

Director: Bill Condon
Cast: Beyoncé Knowles, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, Danny Glover, Jennifer Hudson, Keith Robinson, Hinton Battle, Sharon Leal, Anika Noni Rose
Release: December 21, 2006
Synopsis: Set in the turbulent late 1960s and early “˜70s, DREAMGIRLS follows the rise of a trio of women: Effie (Hudson), Deena (Beyoncé) and Lorrell (Anika Noni Rose), who have formed a promising girl group called The Dreamettes. At a talent competition, they are discovered by an ambitious manager named Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Foxx), who offers them the opportunity of a lifetime: to become the back-up singers for headliner James “Thunder” Early (Murphy). Curtis gradually takes control of the girls’ look and sound, eventually giving them their own shot in the spotlight as The Dreams. That spotlight, however, begins to narrow in on Deena, finally pushing the less attractive Effie out altogether. Though the Dreams become a cross-over phenomenon, they soon realize that the cost of fame and fortune may be higher than they ever imagined.

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Prognosis: Negative. At first I thought it was a joke.

I asked the questions: Are they serious? Is this really a movie?

When I heard some of the singing that Eddie Murphy is supposed to be doing I was reminded, no joke intended, of his James Brown impersonation back when he used to be funny. I wasn’t quite sure, but I thought I was pretty close in assuming it to be so, if I should have been anticipating a comedy when the hubbub started swirling around this movie. I am sorry that I was wrong about the assumptive power of a hokey Eddie Murphy that appears to be completely serious and I apologize when I say in advance that this trailer does a crap job in debunking the lingering thoughts that this film is a comedy.

The laughs really begin when Beyonce graces us with her screen suckage ability as she treats us to her dizzying capabilities as an actress when she asks the question of how long the girl group to which she belongs, I wonder if her screen mother makes all of her own outfits in this film as well, has been together. I’m a bigger fan of the cowbell that’s clanking in the background, sounding like we’re going to get a rousing version of “Everyone’s Working For The Weekend”, but all we get is a line straight of MY COUSIN VINNY when Jamie Foxx says “If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’” to Beyonce’s amazement that she’s being given a big break. I really don’t know if I should be containing my laughs or not but this exactly when Eddie screams, “1, 2, HIT ME!” It’s amusing.

But that’s also the thing that plagues this trailer: Eddie’s singing is the soundtrack of the action that populates its content. I dare any of you not to smile when you see that guy with his pompadour all Jheri curled and that obnoxious smile of his; one really doesn’t know whether this is supposed to be an exaggerated, ironic emblem for men of that era who were the front for bands like this or whether this is supposed to be played straight.

That said, then, I can tell you that between Beyonce’s plasticine smile, looking like it was shaped by some Geppetto-like doll maker, and Eddie’s prancing and preening on the stage I don’t really care about any of these characters. There simply isn’t any reason why I am emotionally drawn in by whatever story is trying to be constructed around these two titular actors.

Oh, and this makes me just have a mental meltdown, I forgot to mention one thing about the thrust of this film’s action that we’re let in on about two-thirds of the way through this trailer: Beyonce, who begins the film as a second-banana, ends up as the girl who becomes the real star and gets all the attention much to the chagrin of her other two friends. What a fucking unbelievable change of events right? Beyonce becomes the star of a three person vocal group and somehow has to learn how to deal with her newfound glory. I mean, seriously, how this plot wasn’t ripped from the Behind the Music story of Destiny’s Child’s rise and fall as a crap pop group is beyond me.
Just skip the rest of this trailer because all we get is a montage of what happens in so many other videos, No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” come to mind rather fast in this regard, when one person gets more attention than someone else. It’s clichéd, hackneyed and I am sure someone will hail it as this year’s Oscar shoe-in. God help us all.

ERAGON (2006)

Director: Stefen Fangmeier
Cast: Jeremy Irons, Robert Carlyle, Djimon Hounsou, Sienna Guillory, Ed Speleers, John Malkovich
Release: December 15, 2006
Synopsis: Based on the Christopher Paolini-penned bestselling fantasy novel about a youth whose discovery of a dragon egg leads him to become a knight and battle an evil king. The medieval-set tale revolves around a farm boy who learns he is the last of a breed of benevolent Dragon Riders, whose magical powers derived from their bond with the beasts.

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Prognosis: I Liked It More When It Was Called LORD OF THE RINGS. Just stop for one second.

If you could, please, keep these things in mind before viewing this trailer: 1) THE LORD OF THR RINGS trilogy proved that movies made in 3’s can be enormously profitable 2) Studios love to steal 3) New Line made a shitload, and, yes, in accounting circles it is common parlance to say the word “shitload” when referring to an investment that breaks triple digit percentages when discussing profitability, of money on a franchise that initially only appealed to geeks and those with pale skin and 4) Every child wants what the other kids have; it’s an inevitability that doesn’t stop with the advent of pubes.

That said, what a rip-off, man.

Yeah, this seems like a wholly different story than THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy but when you see that this flick is being pimped as the first of three, that the photos of this flick show dudes and dames wearing nearly the same leatherwear as their more recognizable doppelgangers you just have to feel that, yes, this movie is going to make some coin.

I mean, really, when we open the sweeping vistas that we look on, nearly the same as the New Zealand location for Peter Jackson’s hard-fought vision, I stop and wonder how many people will psychologically transfer their happy-happy joy-joy goodness onto this flick simply on looks alone. And, as a lot of you know, many will.

We get some nice shots of a dragon that dips and dives, I have my breath taken away as I realize this winged beast could replace my favorite winged dragon of all time from THE NEVERENDING STORY, but I digress. I mean, this one doesn’t seem to have any witty or snappy things to say so I think my boy from 1984 has nothing to worry about.

So, about halfway though this thing I still don’t know what’s going on; we’re shown the replacement for Liv Tyler, we’ve got a stand-in for Saruman, Orlando Bloom is taken care of and we’ve even got the wood and leather strap scaffolding that was indicative of the Fraggle Rock/Orc’s underground operation. Speaking of which, haven’t these people learned how to illuminate a little? I know archetypes demand that bad guys work at night and by fire but can’t any of these people wait until daylight to do their evilness?

And big ups to Jeremy Irons who obviously didn’t learn a thing from DUNGEONS & DRAGONS as he comes correct once more, he obviously was enamored with the concept, to play the kind of role that Jeremy Irons plays so well again and again.
If I was the guy who lobbed this to Fox this would have been the 10 second meeting that would’ve secured financing: Mix 1 part LORD OF THE RINGS with 2 parts franchise potential with a splish of REIGN OF FIRE and a splash of SOUND OF MUSIC location. Mix to taste and accent with Jeremy Irons. Boom. Now where’s the financing?

PERFUME (2006)

Director: Tom Tykwer
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Ben Whishaw
Release: December 27, 2006
Synopsis: Based on the bestselling novel by Patrick Süskind, PERFUME is a terrifying story of murder and obsession set in 18th-century France. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille has a unique talent for discerning the scents and smells that swirl around him, which he uses to create the world’s finest perfumes. Strangely lacking any scent of his own, he becomes obsessed with capturing the irresistible but elusive aroma of young womanhood. As Grenouille’s obsession turns deadly, twelve young girls are found murdered. Panic breaks out as people rush to protect their daughters, while an unrepentant and unrelenting Grenouille still lacks the final ingredient to complete his quest.

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Prognosis: Wonderfully Creepy. We’ve talked about this before.

I am a huge fan of Marcel Proust’s writings. “Du Côté de chez Swann” is, perhaps, one of those rare novels, like Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway”, where psychology met prose in a wonderful confection of words and experience. One of the key things, then, that links these two authors together with the movie by bad ass Tom Tykwer, dude who slung RUN LOLA RUN into our collective cool film conscious, is that while the two authors proved that you can make a sensory experience translatable through words Tykwer has to prove that a movie about perfume is translatable to film.

The trailer is promising that he has done it.

I about shat myself when this trailer opens, the twinkling music very sublime in the background, and we see a little baby on its back. It’s lying there, eyes closed, as some dirty index finger slowly makes its way to the child’s nose. And, before you can figure out what’s happening, the kid grabs the finger and pulls it close to its nose.

The voiceover here, as well, is calm, soothing and, dare I say it, gentile as we delicately get led down the path of where we are, what is happening and why we should care about the protagonist. Bam, bam, bam, this trailer hits the high points and I am thankful that as we see Tykwer begins showing us how he’s going to translate the sense of smell through visual rendering it is completely enveloping.

While I am equally pleased to see that the graphic which states this movie is based on a novel weaves its way quickly from recognition to dissolution I am not so sure that showing our main man as a little bit of a freak by his closed eye smelling of the goings-on inside the town square is endearing as it is a little off-putting.

It’s nice to see Dustin Hoffman as a recognizable face in this production, while the production values seem just as impressive, and the tension that’s created when voiceover guy tells us that it was our protagonist’s work to preserve life within a bottle; it’s poetry, I would posit, in a combination of both sight and sounds.

This kid’s work, however, takes a turn for the freakish and demonic as he hunts down a woman who seems to embody a lot of what his nose is driving him to capture and big props to the trailer makers for giving us a glimpse of this boy’s turn towards murder when he snaps the neck of some fraulein. Not only that, kids, but he then sticks her in a tank, wrapped up like a tea bag to steep for a while, to try and leech the scent that drove this boy to kill.

And then, bam, he kills again.
The kid can’t stop and Hans Gruber himself, Alan Rickman, which details the delicacies of what a serious perfume was capable of in that era, treats us to a delicious voiceover. The visuals that accompany the destructive nature of this boy and his prey, a pale redhead that would drove me to kill a few kittens if you know what I mean. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. While I know this movie is not for a lot of people it managed to stoke my interest for its visual capabilities and riveting premise.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

Timely couldn’t be a better word to describe the events of these past couple of weeks.

First of all, 10 Quick Questions. What started out as being this big goof on the wall of silence that was erected around anyone who communicates by the written word has stared to take on a life all on its own. Corri English was nice enough to be, ostensibly, our first victim to see how an interview would work if it would be done in a style much like Entertainment Weekly’s Stupid Questions but with a little more weight. The people and things you’re going to see in the coming weeks will have a lot to with television, movie spokespersons, The Amazing Race, charitable organizations and the fashion industry. I promise, it will all make sense soon. I know it may take me away from trailer reviewing every once in a while but please, people, understand that I love you just as much as I do my fresh stack of comic books that I get every Friday afternoon so fear not. This column will be just as low-profile and non-noteworthy as ever but Stipp just needs to spread his wings a touch, ya dig? Thanks for understanding.

Secondly, I was in Tucson over the weekend. Now, some of you know that I don’t care that much for organized sports, Chicago Cubs excluded as that’s something that exists in my DNA for being 1) born in Illinois and 2) having a predilection for consistently being last in everything.

Now, I was part of a 4-person trek for a 2-hour drive southward to Tucson in order to be witness for the traditional post-Thanksgiving match-up of ASU and UofA. I could go on and on about rivalries but this one’s pretty deep around these parts, I could honestly give a fuck, and it’s all about football and heavy drinking. I was in for the latter, really, but there was something else I was on the hunt for that I heard existed. I don’t get much opportunity to come close to Hollywood history living in this state that seems to be more occupied with building 20 story fencing across our southern border with Mexico than it is with being concerned for those living within it but I heard about a house that exists in Tucson, Arizona that was of great interest to me.

It was the Alpha Beta house.

Yes, the REVENGE OF THE NERDS production used the University of Arizona campus for its exteriors in 1984 and one of the people I was heading down to Tucson with mentioned that he could take me to the house. He swore that the fraternity that currently has possession of the home have decided to treat it like an undergraduate co-ed who has pounded one too many Pabst Blue Ribbons on a Friday night and has mentioned to her Cro-Magnon date that she’s feeling randy.

I didn’t think it could have been all that bad. I mean, if the school is allowing them to be on the campus isn’t there a HOA that establishes how well the property needs to be maintained?

No, there’s not.

On Sunday morning, after reeling from the many beers I chugged with the young’uns of the school’s student body, trying to convince myself that I can still roll with those who weren’t born until 1988, I can’t, I sauntered over to the house that stood to mean so much misery to Louis and Gilbert as they pulled a heavy trunk across the school grounds. After asking my guide twice if he was sure this was the right house, I had little idea of what the house REALLY looked like pre-Fireball in the movie, I stood on the sidewalk in front of the place that has been a watershed for so many of my comedic moments growing up as a young man. It depressed me to see the home was in a sad state of disrepair. The paint was splotchy, the landscape was just a slap-dash of grass that looked like it was on the verge of death, bushes that don’t look like they’ve been trimmed with anything more than a cigarette lighter by various drunken frat boys “for a laugh” and an overall aesthetic that this was a place where all should abandon hope ye who enter there.

I took a picture of it and briefly pondered what this really meant to have such a cultural touchstone like the AB fraternity house just disrespected. It should be more than just a place where male students start their journey of pillaging and conniving with their other guy friends, thinly disguising their homosexuality by participating in acts like paddle spanking and elephant walking. I don’t know if I was just being sensitive, overly sensitive, because REVENGE OF THE NERDS was that first comedy which spoke to me on a level that went beyond naked chicks and Dudley Dawson. Shouldn’t there be more awareness of places that should at least be paid some sort of attention and care if for no other reason than to preserve a moment that has meant a lot to so many?

I would have to say no. There really is no reason why the house should be any better maintained than any other fraternity house. It makes me sad, true, to see it but I can’t complain. I almost take some kind of delight in the recent news last week that the entire production of the new REVENGE OF THE NERDS has been indefinately shelved for the time being.

I know there were some cackles raised in opposition for the newest incarnation of this film but where the hell were you all for Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation or even the God awful, the truly heinous, Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love? There couldn’t have been a better reason out there for the complete annihilation for this franchise than these two TV movies. What started out as a comedy that really gave us male Gen Xers a movie that we will all be proud of having seen with our dumb little buddies on any given Friday or Saturday night sleepover (Do kids still do these things or have they somehow been outlawed in this age of uncertainty?) and exposed most of us to our first true taste of…exposure of the female variety? I know I can be counted in that vote.

There are just some films that mean more than just the stock they’re on. REVENGE OF THE NERDS has that kind of resonance that hasn’t ever diminished, in my estimation. Seeing the house that essentially just offered the real exterior for a faux college story on some backlot where the players themselves were well beyond the freshman felt invigorating in a way. I enjoyed the fanboy-ness of it all and it sure made me think of sliding that movie in again, delighting in the immutable truth that I have never used the word “bush” and not thought of Curtis Armstrong every damn time.

Sometimes great movies can transcend our own lives in their own way, be it the ones that win awards or the ones that just mean more than any prize given to it.

UNKNOWN (2006)

Director: Simon Brand
Cast: Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinnear, Joe Pantoliano, Barry Pepper, Jeremy Sistoe
Release: Now Playing
Synopsis: Five men wake up in a locked-down warehouse, none of them able to remember how they got there or even who they are. They soon realize that they were all part of a kidnapping – without having the slightest idea of which side they were on.

View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)

Prognosis: Negative; Maybe I’ll Leave It On If It Happens To Make It On TNT Some Night. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Jesus wakes up in a warehouse without knowing who he is.

I think I included this trailer if for no other reason than the premise seems completely absurd. I honestly had visions, not unlike having a peyote clambake inside a walk-in closet, of some guy, two guys because it would be funnier that way, explaining the idea for this movie to some guy in a $5,000 suit who is thinking about either having an endive salad with his sea bass or a romaine leaf that’s covered in mango pieces. These two monkeys would have their shirt sleeves pulled back over their elbows as they spooge their brilliant concept of this completely made-up premise only to have the suit break out his checkbook by the end of it all.

I mean, really, would you buy a film based on the idea that any high school freshman could come up with for his creative writing class? I believe most of you would but that’s beside the point.

What’s really remarkable here is that there isn’t anything to remark on when we open up on things. We have a wide shot of a building that seems to be in the middle of such a wretched industrial park that only rape and felonies seem like the only legitimate business practice.

Next, somewhere far off, a phone rings. We travel down the corridors of this lonely building, the hum of fluorescent lighting the only real spooky thing about this place, as Jesus wakes up from his nap time.

Hey-Soose doesn’t know who he is, where he is, what is going on or who he’s talking to on the phone but the dude on the other line gives us the great SAW-esque set-up that our Lord and Savior should a) not kill anyone b) look after the hostages c) sit tight and d) realize that since this movie is only a couple hours long he’s going to have to MacGyver his ass out of there tout de suite. But, oh noes!, he doesn’t know anything about anything so what’s the Son of God to do?

Turn to Barry Pepper, that’s what.

“And that makes some of us hostages and some of us kidnappers”¦”

HomeSchool Barry breaks it all down for us like we’re drooling Neanderthals who need to have things explained to other people in the film while not addressing the audience directly; I mean, really, all that’s missing here is a wink to all of us in attendance that he did us a solid by explaining the plot. Thanks, Barry.

Of course from here it’s all about the red herrings and the finger-pointing. I realize that some people dig trying to figure out what’s happening because they took Murder, She Wrote off the air some years ago and you’re jonsin’ for some good old-fashioned mystery but I guess as a one-off you could do a lot worse than this.

Besides, the last ¼ of this trailer is just chock filled with accusatory “It’s you!” and “You’re the one!” When things devolve into being something that we’ve all seen before, without anything new to say within the parameters of the trailer, I just can’t help but shrug and move on to something fresh.

8 FILMS TO DIE FOR (2006)

Director: Various
Cast: Various
Release: November 17, 2006
Synopsis: A revolutionary, nationwide theatrical release of eight films that are deemed too controversial, too graphic by the mainstream studios. HORROR FEST is an all-weekend horror event featuring celebrity appearances, signings, giveaways, and other special events.

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Prognosis: Positive. Who was lucky enough to catch any of these films last weekend and was it worth the effort to see any of them?

Now:

A) Those with epilepsy should not see this trailer; you’ve got enough flashing and blinking lights that could induce a few seizures that could rival Super Mario Bros.’ numbers.

B) This trailer not only forgoes trying to sell this movie on its merit of filmmaking but, yet, pushes the “controversial” angle on us like it’s a badge of honor.

C) This looks like one of the greatest entries into the horror genre since ON GOLDEN POND. Seriously, can anyone here they aren’t still haunted by Henry Fonda’s request to “suck face” with Katharine Hepburn? (Shudder)

I honestly do have to give it up for this trailer for its complete packaging. I think that if I were the one responsible for this movie trailer I wouldn’t want to give short shrift to the varied voices contained in this flick, regardless of the label of “too controversial to be shown in theaters,” but I get that maybe a coalescing of voices in order to do the greatest good is what is in order.

Don LaFontaine just comes right out of the gate with his throaty voiceover as he really plays up the idea that these movies on their own were just too much to be played nationwide at the local AMC but it’s the visuals that are of interesting note. You’ve first got a scared looking girl with a shaking flashlight, a close-up of a face that has a single bead of sweat running down it and then, even after you see a grotesque doll morph into something more hideous, we get a lady in her bra. And this what brings up an excellent topic in modern horror storytelling: the people behind a lot of genre fiction love tormenting women. There is some paper, some thesis, that I know could be made regarding the use of women and their effectiveness in amping up an already tense situation but we’re not left to linger very long on this notion.

It’s the zombie sitting in the bed with the long salt and pepper hair on bloodied sheets that gets me. It’s fantastic. As is the image of a person, or something, that’s on a medical examiners’ steely slab underneath a very dirty sheet; you’ve really got to employ some pausing and rewinding to see it but it’s well worth the effort just try and make out whether it’s human in origin.

How else to explain the Nosferatu looking creature that places its hand on his female victims’ breast than to say that even though there is no context given there really isn’t any needed as the females keep doing a man’s job better by screaming, shaking and, at one point, reaching out for help.

The minimalist scoring of this trailer only segments its appeal to those who would best be served by this movie’s offerings. Discordant images in the middle of this trailer only help to establish the wretched settings, and reveals, that these movies are going to have. I am especially taken by the image that’s nearly dead center in this trailer’s length of a woman (surprise) who wields an ax above her head, her face all sorts of fucked up, in a flickering room.

Even though I find myself pausing for a moment after seeing a lady (what is it with this device) having a coffin door slamming on top of her in fresh grave as she cries out I can’t help but quickly looking about when I can see this movie for myself.

I don’t know where movies like THE TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE or CREEPSHOW went in the 80’s but I am delighted, over the moon, that horror still beats alive and well. This movie looks like it wants to be the kind of film that’s best enjoyed at night, a kind of function that’s been lost for a while. Disregard all that crap at the end of this trailer about this studio being the only one to have the balls to show these movies. This just looks like a good time, regardless of the hype behind it.

SMOKIN’ ACES (2006)

Director: Joe Carnahan
Cast: Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Ryan Reynolds, Alicia Keys, David Proval, Chris Pine, Kevin Durand
Release: January 26, 2007
Synopsis: An incendiary array of stars – including Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven, Ryan Reynolds, Peter Berg, Martin Henderson, Taraji Henson and, in their motion-picture debuts, Alicia Keys and Common – star in SMOKIN’ ACES, the new dark action comedy from Joe Carnahan, the acclaimed director of NARC. In these interlocking tales of high stakes and low lifes, Mob boss Primo Sparazza has taken out a hefty contract on Buddy “Aces” Israel (Piven) – a sleazy magician who has agreed to turn state’s evidence against the Vegas mob. The FBI, sensing a chance to use this small-time con to bring down big-target Sparazza, places Aces into protective custody-under the supervision of two agents (Reynolds and Liotta) dispatched to Aces’ Lake Tahoe hideout.

When word of the price on Aces’ head spreads into the community of ex-cons and cons-to-be, it entices bounty hunters, thugs-for-hire, smokin’ hot vixens and double-crossing mobsters to join in the hunt. With all eyes on Tahoe, this togues’ gallery collides in a comic race to hit the jackpot and rub out Aces.

View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)

Prognosis: On My Top 10 For 2006. I have a new girlfriend and this trailer is it.

It’s hard to be passionate about big, bloated budgets and star-studded productions but I’ll be goddamned if this preview isn’t the hottest thing to surface in recent months.

Now, to me, I enjoy answering other people’s questions about what music is playing a trailer; I remember growing up that one of the more frustrating parts of evolving as a young man, besides the sudden appearance of body hair below my natural equator, was to hear a tune on the radio and not know who sang it. The real mark, then, of laying down the competition with real force with regard to making people ignore the white noise emanating from other trailers is realizing that Cut N’ Pasting late 80’s hits isn’t acceptable and that ripping your ears off with a pimp track from DJ Shadow is just good business when trying to get your audience’s buy-in. I’d recommend you tune-in and turn it up.

At first, though, you don’t really what to make of the story. There’s no voiceover, there’s no flashes of the high-powered actors who are in the movie to get your attention and there are no conventional set-ups to be found; there is only the presentation of a moment to set things in motion. And it works well.

We get Jason Bateman, Peter Berg, Martin Henderson and Ben Affleck in a room; no, this isn’t the beginning of some ribald joke involving K-Y and a monkey but expediency is the order of business and everyone uses their time well in establishing all we need to know about this film.

Bateman looks disheveled and while I don’t really find myself getting lost in whatever character he’s trying to inhabit I find his delivery delightful. We get the set-up and the reason why we are going to pay to see this flick: Jeremy “Poke My Person With An Emmy” Piven is going to testify against the mob and a whole lotta people want him dead. The idea, let’s face it, isn’t so original but Joe Carnahan’s style here rises above those who have come before, stealing a little bit of something from the Guy Ritchie playbook and the McG School of Flash Over Substance, straps you down on the examination table and goes to town on your synapses with the quick cutting.

We get additional information that there’s a $1 million price tag on Piven’s head and, of course, naturally, there are all sorts of seedy elements out to get their fingers on the prize money. What’s also making this movie even more popcorn-y and is going to get me to the multiplex is that we get a slew of “characters” who are so over-the-top and outrageously out of the norm that I can feel the pulsing of wanton violence bumping like bass lines right underneath the veneer of things.

Seeing Ben Affleck put out onto the pavement in an all too brief moment, his aggressor rocking a dirty wife-beater and couldn’t be more obnoxious looking even if put into Brett Ratner’s hands, I am reminded that while this may have given away too much there is the very palptable sense that everyone could be expendable; that would be a very nice thing, indeed, to realize and again would validate my suspicion that Carnahan has created something original out of the simple kill-the-informant plot line.

It’s about a third of the way in when the real style of the trailer’s creativity comes into bloom and bleeds all over the screen. Ryan Reynolds, sporting the same scruffy/patchy facial hair that made his part in BLADE 3 oh so memorable, carries the tension of the moment when you can feel that we’re about to launch into hyperspace.

Ah, but not yet.

A jaunty Muzak song plays as we’re treated to a real close up of a guy, who the hell knows who he is, quietly taking a black marker to his face, creating a Hitler “˜stache which I am thinking is not an ironic statement. It’s very out of the norm but it’s all sorts of great.

BOOM.

Thrust back into the action, and I mean action with a capital A, the whole world is shredded around your eyes. More freaks than a circus, more guns than at an army supply depot and enough shattered glass to make DIE HARD look like a prissy warm-up, there is one moment I hope you turn your speakers up to listen to.

As soon as you hear Ben Affleck say “These guys will go megaton” just feel the bass and listen to the way the sound dances around the field as bullets on the screen whiz in every which direction just before some wiggidy-wack white boy with a vision problem and in need of serious dental work pops in with his own bon mot. It’s gonzo, nuts and complete chaos all wrapped in a tasty package.

Seriously, kids, this is one of the most intense action trailers this year. It’s perfection of mindless action at its greatest.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

Alright, let’s hope all of you out there helped to continue America’s reputation as the fattest country in the free world, which, ironically, isn’t but that’s neither here nor there. What IS here, though, is a shortened column this week as I am well aware that the numbers of you who are presently reading this equate to nearly zero, the only people genuinely looking at these letters I’m writing right now is the result of what happens when you have a boss who thinks the day after Thanksgiving is a great time to catch up on all that work you neglected from Monday to Wednesday of this week. Believe me when I say I’ve been there. It’s crap for those who have to work today, it’s enough for you to think that yes you need to look for a new job where you get these one-offs every now and then, and instead of just hanging my keyboard up for the week I want to continue what I’ve been doing for you shackled people of the world for the past two years: giving you new content.

I don’t feel like writing about trailers this week. I am all sorts of ready to unload what I think of the new SPIDER-MAN 3 trailer (I mean, really. Holy shit. I would go toe to toe with any nerd who wants to take umbrage with anything there in the trailer. I also thought enough in advance to download the OTHER SP3 trailer that wasn’t so much debuted but leaked onto the Intertubes. I am thinking that either this was a well placed “tease” or some person(s) are looking for new employment.) I’ll make sure this is all talked about next week. Promise.

As for what I’m doing this week I am beyond words to describe it. I thought since I am feeling like taking the week off but still wanting to give the two of you who stopped by today something interesting I would take my family out to see a film and get their reactions to it.

I am taking my mother, father and wife to see BORAT.
Many of you know, or should know, that good art, beyond the kindergarten notion of just being pleasing to the eye, should evoke. Be it repulsion or manical attraction a work of art should be something that produces that psychological shape, its gestalt, which people can interpret as they wish. BORAT, to me, is a rare comedy that evokes something in its audience by making them project their own thoughts about what people are really like when you, “just come down right to it.”

To wit, Dave Chapelle described it best, and woefully interpreted the situation much to his own detriment, when he described a scene he was shooting for Season 3, the doomed season, wherein:

“Chappelle…admitted to Oprah that he felt some of his sketches were socially irresponsible. He singled out the “pixie sketch” (in which it implied everyone has a pixie that appears to them and encourages them to act in a way stereotypical for their race) and said during the filming of the blackface pixie sketch a white crew member was laughing. Chappelle said “it was the first time I felt that someone was not laughing with me but laughing at me.” He also said that during the sketch he was called nigger by one of the other non-important cast members.”

Right, Dave. That’s the point, you dolt; sometimes comedy is about people finding something within their own set of prejudices that illuminate a greater evil. Did Sacha ever state that he wanted to stop with the idea of going forward with filming BORAT because he found a dirty underbelly of American society as he did when he sang “Throw The Jew Down The Well” at a bar no more than a couple hours south of me here in Arizona? No, this, hopefully, was the reason he knew he SHOULD have made this movie.

Besides this situation reflecting why Dave Chapelle is not the great emancipator of comedy like he truly could have been, and why he’s a whiny little girl, this shows why getting together three different people of varied backgrounds was such a neat idea. The questions bounded everywhere in my mind: “What would they find funny?” “Would they feel comfortable laughing at material that is beyond anything their sensibilities have ever been socked with before” “Would they really be offended by the movie’s main thrust?” or “Would they simply write everything off in this film as just sophomoric, and dismiss any grand notions about what this film says about America as simple overreaching on my part?”

Perhaps.

Mary-Anne is a 59 year-old who enjoys all sorts of cinema. She’s the matriarchal vanguard of the family with regard to film. While she doesn’t go out of her way to catch out every and any independent film, she does find joy in taking advantage of any opportunity to indulge in the occassional LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE while letting her son do the footwork in bringing her to important flicks in the last few years like CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, MEMENTO, and, my personal favorite that makes me proud that moms went along with this one just based on a “trust me”: REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. It was a profound experience for me to have been able to see this movie in the theater and taking her to the film, for my second go-around, is a very special mother/son memory that I think a lot of film geeks would no doubt appreciate. I’m looking forward to her and I taking in THE FOUNTAIN in the coming days for what should be another solid moment.

Jack. Jack, oh Jack. Dad would’ve peeled his face for the duration, I would posit, if I would’ve also taken him to the above films. He probably would’ve liked the wire-fu of CROUCHING TIGER but, he no doubt, would’ve bitched like a school girl that he had to read the screen. Yes, dad, they’re subtitles; there are some places in the world that don’t speak “American.” He is a guy, however, that any college dude with a predilection for explosions and the desire for there to be nary a trace of any noticable amount of character development could relate with. He loves STRIPES, ANIMAL HOUSE, THE BLUES BROTHERS. He was a fan in recent years of OLD SCHOOL, WEDDING CRASHERS and even the recent release of OVER THE HEDGE had the man in stiches; the man travels every week by plane so many of his cinematic adventures of late have been sanitized for his protection by the airlines. He has zero desire to see anything daring, in my opinion, and would’ve done well in Roman times when it was all about the bread and circuses and not much else. You all know a man like this, especially one like my father who enjoys absorbing himself in DIE HARD and showing-off his pimp surround system to his other WASP-y friends with the first five minutes to TOP GUN. Someday I hope he understands there has been great strides since TOP GUN was remastered and that the lobby scene from THE MATRIX, the club scene from BLADE or even the opening sequence of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN would allow the paternoster of the family to show how good his built-in system (I mean, the guy had the speakers installed INTO the walls and ceiling) really is.

Sherry Stipp. My blushing bride. The light of my life, the mother of my children and a woman who would willingly push me out of the door to see X-MEN a dozen times on my own before sitting through a single viewing. A woman who has a clear sense of taste I am amazed by what she wants, and does not, want to see at the theaters. Sure, she’ll make me sit through LEGALLY BLONDE but should I want to pop in BATMAN BEGINS or any other movie made based on a comic book character then I might as well be offering to watch a snuff film of a puppy being put down with a spork. I love the woman with all my heart but with regard to movie watching I see this as a lifelong battle of wills of what DMZ we can meet at whenever it comes to our cinematic adventures. She did like LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE a lot and, believe it or not, it’s moments like this that make me feel like she’s allowing to come deeper into my territory as long as I pick movies that give her something she can grab onto.

This is what I was dealing with as the lights went down and I hoped at least someone would see what I did; just one would’ve made this experiment worth while.

Flash forward 84 minutes. There was some gasping from mom, she really got into some of the more ribald moments so high-five to her, my wife damn near covered her eyes for a majority of the screening as she has this thing about feeling sorry for Sacha’s victims and about the copious amount of male man-ass on display and dad, well, I didn’t hear much out of him.

Walking out the theater I was curious, what was the final verdict from these not-so-representative samples?

Dad: “Well, I had real high expectations. I had heard so much about this film being really funny but… I kind of felt let down. They could’ve eased up on the offensiveness of it all… And I cannot understand how [Sacha Baron Cohen] didn’t get arrested for some of those things.”

[Excellent observation, pops. How he evaded imprisionment could be a whole movie unto itself.]

The Wife: “I can’t get that friggin’… Just too much wrestling with men! I don’t think I would be able to see that again because I felt so bad for the people he was duping. Plus, I can’t believe you have our 3 year-old daughter walking around the house saying ‘High-fiiiive’ and ‘Thaat’s nice’”

[Don’t forget I am also working on getting her to say “Greeeat success…”]

Mom: “It was so offensive, so offensive to everyone; nobody was left out.”
Dad: “Well, he didn’t do anything to the Native Americans… or even the Spaniards.”

[Right. Sacha did drop the ball with that large Spaniard population in America.]

Wife: “I did think that the prostitute was really cute. She seemed really genuine.”

[Hmm…]

Dad: “Whether Pamela Anderson was in on it, I’m not sure, [She was] but I would seriously consider getting new security personnel if she didn’t tell her bodyguards.

Now, this is just my opinion, but I think [Sacha’s] next movie needs to be serious. I can’t see how he would be able to continue to do this without affecting his longevity in movies.”

[Gee, dad, for a guy who finds the dialogue from OVER THE HEDGE to be gut-burstingly funny, this is a good assertion.]

Favorite parts?

Wife: “The high society dinner. Best part of the whole film.”

Mom: “The pastor’s face when [Sacha] pointed to the other men’s wives in adulation and then put down his wife right in front of him. Great, very funny.”

Dad: “The rodeo. I thought he was going to get killed or beaten up when he started singing his national anthem.”

Mom: “You know, the driving instructor. I think he really did, was perhaps one of the only ones, who genuinely liked Borat the way he was. ‘Will you be be my boyfriend?’ [Laughs] Very funny. Now I can see why everyone wants to sue him.”

Dad: “Here’s my take: it’s all about saving face. It really only costs a few bucks to file a lawsuit but these people have been humilated, publicly, and now they need to do something to show that they’re not the idiots they really are. It’s not so much about the money, there’s a little bit to that, but the only option left to them is to sue in order for these people to try and convince the rest of us they were wronged.

They’re just screwed. That’s all.”

[Well, dad, thanks for putting such a button on the proceedings. Very astute observation. Color me impressed.]

I thought that while none of my filmic companions had as much love for the greater themes of the film as I did, the larger statement on our own issues as a nation and how Borat was really just a magnet for drawing out what’s beneath that thinly veiled superficiality we all put on in order to exist in this society, none of them remarked that they were disgusted by the film or that they were offended by what they saw. I think they all “got it” but obviously once you have two dudes wrestling naked with one of the getting a facefull of ass crack and balls you run the risk of alienating the audience.

Not me, though, as I laughed just as hard the second time, wiping tears from my eyes from the sheer delight of it all.

The next morning my mother sent me an email as an addendum to the previous night’s conversation:

From:
XXXXXX@aol.com
Date:
Wed, 22 Nov 2006 08:06:03 EST
Subject:
Borat
To:
christopher_stipp@yahoo.com

Well, here’s one more — I mean two more. Just thought of another thing to mention, both from your dad:

On the way home I asked him if he knew where the guy who played Borat was from and your dad said he obviously was Americanized and he could tell he’s lived in this country a while. It was too funny when I told him he was from London.

[I wish I could say I’m suprised that dad didn’t know Sacha not only was from England and was Jewish himself but his epiphany on this matter evoked enough laughter out of me that it made me realize how flawless Cohen’s performance actually was.]

Then, I talked about the part that we didn’t mention at dinner and that was when Borat was having a meeting in Washington, D.C. with some guy. And it was funny that before the meeting it was his tradition that all meetings begin with sharing cheese. Then your dad said, “That cheese didn’t really come from where he said it did, you know that don’t you?” I laughed my fanny off half way home.

[Kids, you know you’ve arrived at a certain plateau in your life when you’re able to share in the frivolity of a good breast milk joke with your mother.]

Your dad is soooo black and white. Not too much middle. He spends too much time on airplanes!

We had a great time. It was a movie I shall never forget and am still processing it this morning. Can I sue for having seen it???????

Yes, mom, it’s one of the benefits of living in this glorious country of ours, of living in America.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

“Hey,” Joe said, an unusual call coming from my wife’s cousin who lives and studies here in Arizona, “There were some people handing out passes for a movie tonight. Have you ever heard of THE FOUNTAIN?”

Usually, when there are Sneak Previews that are promoted and pimped in the local paper, these free pass features are free for a reason; the movie obviously needs some word-of-mouth for it to come close to being profitable or it’s a crap film that needs someone, anyone, to go see it. It was odd, really odd, to hear Joe tell me that THE FOUNTAIN was about to be screened for a collegiate audience. This wasn’t a flick for the frat boys, I thought, and everything I’ve understood about this film, reading the graphic novel months ago, it just didn’t add up as to why Darren Aronofsky would debut a film of this caliber in the middle of the desert.

It’s not like I don’t have a little state pride, I do, kinda, sorta, not really, but when I saw RAISING ARIZONA as a child that’s what I thought Arizona was like: desolate, sparce and teeming with dudes who wear panty hose on their heads and stick up Circle Ks. I’ll have you know that I wasn’t too far off when I came here over a decade ago. The point here is that, yes, this city is like Las Vegas in that this town shouldn’t be here. It’s a dust bowl and nothing ever happens here that’s of note to anyone outside of this enclosed metropolis that’s damn near claustrophobic inducing with the mountains that are threatening to squeeze everyone like a STAR WARS dumpster set on “Crush.”

“It also says that,” Joe continued, “That there’s going to be a Q&A with the director following the movie.”

I don’t know if you’re a fan or not of Darren’s but when you hear this kind of information from someone the first impulse should be to tell the messenger to maim and/or run a blade through anyone who stands in the way of getting those passes.

I asked Joe to get one for me.

The events that follow between hanging up the phone and meeting Darren poolside at a local hotel for an-honest-to-goodness 10 exact minutes will be recounted later but this introduction today is aimed at doing only one thing: To help get the word out about a movie that not only deserves Oscar attention next year but to let you know that Darren honestly needs help in making this film resonate through the throngs of moviegoers that pay to see movies.

I don’t want to write a review for this movie because I really think that my interview will kind of touch here and there about what I felt after seeing the efforts of six years worth of dedication to a singular story but, suffice to say, I have to say that I already know how you should approach this film. I figured it out after leaving the theater.

You’ve got to allow yourself to be open.

This movie’s specific gravity is going to weigh you down. It needs you to be available, emotionally and spiritually, but even if you’re not it’s going to affect you in some way. I learned by watching this film that there is a reaction everyone has after seeing it. Darren mentions that there is a lot that’s left open to interpretation but there is a story here. There is nothing that can’t be explained after you see it. I was worried, initially, that there is three, different, stories happening at once but to quell those who have seen the wicked trailer I can tell you that there is only one story you need to know before going into the film: a wife is on the verge of death and she wants to try and put into words what her husband cannot emote and will not express. This film is more about Hugh and the wretchedness that is caused by fighting inevitability; what happens, as well, when the tympany is too loud in your head to just be quiet, sit still and find peace.

That’s all the film is but you can see how that might be a little hard to squeeze in the trailer.

This film is the best there is for 2006 and, dare I say it, the real benchmark for every film to follow with regard to what it means to lose a loved one. The movie is sad and it breaks your heart in two, it made me cry just a little, but, by the end, you are allowed to finally breathe in the comfort knowing our protagonist has found what he was searching for.

The movie shakes you, again, if you let it, and challenges basic notions of the heart and what it means to die in 21st century America where we believe that death is challengable, defeatable. There is so much present that in the film that it would be larcenous to point out a few moments that really show how Darren’s style has evolved since REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, it’s a misnomer if you see any review that says Darren’s style has “matured” instead of recognizing that these movies are just different from one another in every sense, but those elements that you come to expect from him are still present. The music is woven and wrapped around every moment perfectly, the performances are just solid and the way you are brought into a world you’ve never been to before but by the end you understand it completely is sheer craftsmanship. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz give performances that feel completely devoid of any hubris and are nothing short of emotional believability.

Make no mistake, it’s a fool’s errand to think you can live forever but Darren has made a masterpiece out of a thought that tries to show you, really, what kind of an existence that would be for one person who can’t let go.

I’ve got the exceptionally short interview here for you next week but also know that I have another suprise up the sleeve inside this column and, hopefully, for some lucky readers of this site but like everything else worth waiting for you’ll have to come back next week and check it out.

THE FOUNTAIN opens in a week and a half on Wednesday, November 22nd.

And what would this column be worth if I didn’t mention BORAT? After trying to spread the good word of Borat Sagdiyev I am pleased, quite pleased, that Sacha Baron Cohen has shown the might of this movie’s power by absolutely destroying the competition with raking in nearly 30 million dollars. Not only that but something to keep in mind when looking at the raw totals is to also consider how many screens BORAT was playing on: 837. The 2nd place film? 3,458. Over 4 times fewer screens yet the film showed what I hoped would happen when it was released unto the world. No one could be more happier than Sacha who managed to score a huge payday for this outing and, I have to confess, I am happy too that I managed to interview Borat before the film’s opening; you can read all about that one-of-a-kind experience here. I could write on and on about this movie being able to live up to the hype, unlike many other filmic turds that have landed in the proverbial box office punch bowl but I just feel a certain amount of satisfaction of knowing that my comedic radar is still just as sharp as ever and that I didn’t run my mouth in supporting a film that completely sucked for nothing.

JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE (2006)

Director: Stanley Nelson
Cast: No one
Release: October 20, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: On November 18, 1978, over 900 members of Peoples Temple died in the largest mass suicide/murder in history. What drew so many people across racial and class lines to the People’s Temple? How could a diverse group of 900 people be convinced to drink the poisoned Flavor Aid that caused their deaths?

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Prognosis: Positive. I’m not one to draw much inspiration from song lyrics.

One tune, though, “Dogma” from KMFDM, has lingered with me for a long, long time. It goes, “The only reason you’re still alive is because someone has decided to let you live.”

The thing that I learned after watching the deplorable things our government exacted on the residents of the Branch Davidians in a movie called WACO: THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT is that the government not only are the storytellers when it comes to explaining to the writers of history their own version what’s happened but that there isn’t a concerted effort to teach this kind of social studies inside the public educational system. I have never been exposed to a true explanation of what happened in Jamestown but it’s this kind of documentary filmmaking, exposing these tales to a little air and public scrutiny, that gets me all sorts of excited to finally feel I have a handle on all those “drink the Kool-Aid” jokes we’ve all heard in one context or another.

And this trailer begins, spooky as all fuck, with the sounds of distant church bells and a black scene with all the background information we need: “On November 18th, 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana, 909 members of the Peoples Temple died in what has been called the largest mass suicide in modern history.”

You’ve got my undivided attention.

We see slow-motion file footage of the people who ostensibly made up the rank and file of this “cult,” the voice-over of someone who we don’t see explaining that no one joins a cult, that they are people who are joining a movement and are trying to be with other individuals who they enjoy being around, and it’s disconcerting. You realize that all these vibrant people are going to be dead quite soon.

Next up is a brief look into what these people were subscribing to when they all decided Jim Jones was on the level: they felt he was someone who could bring positive change. It doesn’t feel religious as it does social. Society was rocking and rolling in a tumultuous cement mixer of polar issues and people looked to Jim for stability. Too bad that when we first see Jim you can immediately see those crazy eyes of his; I mean, they look bat shit crazy.

It breaks your heart when you listen to one of the interview subjects talk about what these people were escaping in modern America, racism being one, but when you see a pack of kids just happy to be kids in this hippie playground you can’t turn away from what’s coming.

This is when you see a photo of Jim Jones with his fingers on a stack of clear plastic cups.

The narration of our interview subject, on the verge of tears as he tells of the pain that still swirls around his heart, telling us that those who were followers of Jim were just “fucking slaughtered,” the beep being the one thing that’s added to his twice echoed sentiment, all you can do is stare at the photos of the dozens of dead people on the ground. Entire families just face first in the dirt. Dead.

Gripping stuff and this trailer just begs to be seen for no other reason than to try and see what it was that moved these people into complete obedience and acceptance of their collective fates.

BOBBY (2006)

Director: Emilio Estevez
Cast: Harry Belafonte, Joy Bryant, Nick Cannon, Emilio Estevez, Laurence Fishburne
Release: November 17, 2006
Synopsis: Revisits the night Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968. With an incredible ensemble cast portraying fictionalized characters from a cross-section of America, the film follows 22 individuals who are all at the hotel for different purposes but share the common thread of anticipating Kennedy’s arrival at the primary election night party.

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Prognosis: Positive-ish. Now, memory escapes me on this one.

I think it was either Greg Speetzen or Doug Saam who I saw MEN AT WORK with when it was at the dollar theater in Barrington, IL. What I can remember, though, was that this movie was really a lot better than it has been credit for being. I still love to watch it for its golf clapping, for Keith David’s insane performance and, without spilling a single drop of irony when I say this, the man-on-man action on the children’s carousel was way hot.

I believe Emilio has learned a lot in the 16 years since his last major feature, discounting THE WAR AT HOME, and his experience really shines through in this trailer for a movie that I hadn’t really followed until now.

We start this trailer stoically with a really nice suite of music playing beneath a slow introduction of what is going on when we meet Sir Anthony Hopkins, explaining what it was like to be a doorman at the Ambassador hotel. It’s odd that this trailer doesn’t show its hand about the crux of what we’re all tuning in for, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, but we gingerly jump like checker pieces around a whole lot of players in this movie.

“June 4, 1968″

Seeing Emilio in that latter-day porno moustache, engaged in a game of bocce ball, makes me wonder about who he’s portraying, some kind of wag, some kind of stuffy playboy, but I forget about Mr. St. James when I see that Estevez splices in file footage of Bobby Kennedy into the mix of it all. It’s a bold, FORREST GUMP-ian move, but it’s so brief that it doesn’t feel disingenuous.

I hate to essentially say that this movie starts to delve into PULP FICTION territory with all the players in this thing, 22 people in total, and beside Hopkins, Estevez, Belafonte, Rodriguez, Slater and others spilling into the scenes it’s hard to get a firm grip on how this story is going to be told. 22 people is a LOT of storylines to keep in the air like a juggler’s balls, the film could live or die based on how well each person is allowed to be developed without giving short shrift to the film’s overall impact, but when I see Sharon Stone I briefly wonder if this could be a “re-imagining” of sorts with Sharon being the recipient of some bullets. It’s all for naught, however, as the tension slowly creeps its way into this thing.

The issues of Vietnam, civil rights, racial inequality and the sense that the world was at the precipice of something huge all get swirled nicely into the overall vibe but what’s really noteworthy here, and something that I can’t help but comment on, is the actual use of Bobby Kennedy’s speech as a way to define all the chaos of the moment that we’re watching.

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe having all these storylines and all these different motivations is the way Emilio is tying to illustrate what this assassination meant in a larger context; that it maybe wasn’t all about Bobby, perhaps. It was about the people living within the reality of what he represented.

FACTOTUM (2006)

Director: Bent Hamer
Cast: Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei, Fisher Stevens, Didier Flamand
Release: August 18, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: Henry Chinaski (Dillon) considers himself a writer, and on occasion writes. Mostly he quests for the booze and women that sidetrack and seduce, rather than inspire greatness. When he falls for Jan (Taylor), the soulful connection fails to save either from their self-destructive ways, and the relationship totters between earnest connection and loathing.

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Prognosis: Sure. MY BODYGUARD.

You watch a film like that and it encapsulates everything there is to know about Matt Dillon: he’s greasy, charismatic, threatening and possesses the kind of emotional tractor beam that prevents your gaze from pulling away. I’ve seen this flick more times across so many different periods in my life yet it still holds up thanks in large part to Dillon’s timelessness as a bully that we all have known at one time in our youth. Sure, the dingy city life that’s depicted in the movie has since been replaced with squeaky clean gentrification and a concerted effort to make suburban life, with all these white kids shooting up their high schools, seem a little bit more risqué than inner city existence but Matt Dillon keeps going on.

This movie looks like one of those parts that, while not as thrilling as him getting his ass kicked by Adam Baldwin, makes you cheer for a dude who has persevered as long as he has in an industry that has shorter shelf-life for their talent than a bowl of fruit salad.

To be honest I didn’t know what to expect from this movie but while I don’t think the trailer aspires to be anything greater than the sum of its parts I have to give praise here because this advertisement really feels like a small film all unto itself. The opening sequence is completely absurd. An apartment building is on fire, Matt steps into the hallway to find out what all the commotion is, gets barked at that it’s a blaze by a fireman and then proceeds to close the door and slips back in bed. How can you not like a guy like that as a protagonist? I’m not one to really suffer long sequences in a trailer but this works.

Quickly, we rip through the images of Dillon’s drinking problem. He drinks. A lot. We establish that this is all coming to us via the scribblings of Charles Bukowski, a man who had his own chemical issues as well, and then whip through a series of moments where it is implied that he is incapable of holding gainful employment and, surprise surprise, has a gambling problem.

Normally these things just add up to hackneyed storytelling but as I watch Matt I am transfixed by his innate ability to at once seem right at place sitting still at a bar, flushing his life away, and completely believable as someone who feels the motion in his fingers to write but just suffers from synaptic retardation; he just can’t get it together.

The accompanying quotes from the Post succinctly punctuate what we see on screen as Dillon just drifts back and forth on the screen with those who he is interacting with as it doesn’t seem like he’s acting, he appears to be occupying a person.

While this film looks like it has already come and gone the trailer is still a great example of what the sublime can be for those who want to be engaging, persuasive but not completely pushy.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION (2006)

Director: Christopher Guest
Cast: Ricky Gervais, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Harry Shearer, Eugene Levy, Bob Balaban, Jennifer Coolidge, Michael McKean, Fred Willard
Release: November 17, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: Christopher Guest turns the camera on Hollywood for his next film, “For Your Consideration.” The film focuses on the making of an independent movie and its cast who become victims of the dreaded awards buzz.

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Prognosis: The Film Just HAS To Be Better, Right? I’ll reveal a little sliver of my psychoses that not many of you know.

Ahem, well, whenever I see Fred Willard in anything, be it television or film, I cannot get past that moment in my life when I first came upon this wickedly sharp master of the sly. It was in a little movie called SALEM’S LOT and he was getting his swerve on with the wife of a crazy bumpkin who suspected the woman was stepping out on him and nearly blew Fred’s head clean off before showing his hand, revealing the shotgun he had stuffed in Fred’s mouth was not loaded. It wasn’t the tension of that scene, how perfectly it was captured, no. It was that floozy and Fred’s matching silk tennis short ensemble that I think a) freaked me out a bit and b) made me question why a dude would let himself dress up in silky underwear like that. Since that moment in the 80’s when I saw that film I have never been able to see Fred without first seeing him in those silky ball huggers. Thank Lord Jebus that Fred has shown he is much better at comedy than he was with getting smoked by a 10 foot tall vampire and this film, FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, looks like comes correct in ways that A MIGHTY WIND slightly fell short of being able to accomplish.

“And you know what they say about blind prostitutes”¦You really have to hand it to them.”

Catherine O’Hara shows her ability to assimilate any character she’s asked to inhabit as we’re introduced to her in all of her dumpy glory in this rather subdued opening for a movie that eschews flash and pomp with regard to how they’re selling this film; they completely depend on the actors to make the moments and, ah yes, Mr. silky short Willard knocks what looks like his first pitch straight into left field and over the fence. He’s just perfect as a dolt who doesn’t have a mean bone in his body and not a synapse that hasn’t been fried by a bad sense of humor.

I, unfortunately, can’t say the same about Eugene Levy who really does need to atone for his miserable turns in films, checks that he obviously needed in a bad way, since his precise wit sliced straight through his character’s malaise as a cuckolded husband in BEST IN SHOW. The joke we’re pitched from him is flat but the smiles pick up as Harry Shearer more than makes up for the lost moment in his portrayal as a wiener who is looking to make a serious comeback.

And, oh my, how far has Parker Posey come since her turn as ho-hum actress before landing in BEST IN SHOW, giving what I believe was a stand-out performance, and just coming correct as we see her overacting here in a film where she reveals to her mother that she’s a lesbian.

I am also buoyed here by Ricky Gervais, a man who deserves a turn to participate in this absurdness, who quite matter-of-factly suggests to a pack of filmmakers that they should tone down the level of “Jewish-ness” in their movie so “everyone can enjoy it.” He is so smooth when he delivers these lines that you damn well believe he means it with a straight face and without a drip of insincerity.

I can’t say that I am all that giggly when O’Hara tells John Michael Higgins about there being a rumor on the Internet which says she might be an Oscar contender and John responds blankly about what the Internet is. Personally, and I hate to be old school on this, but I have to say that I liked the moment in JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK more when Ben Affleck has to explain what the Internet is to Jay. It’s an easy joke here and I’m not sure it really hit me the right way.

“In every actor there lives a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. You never know which one is going to show up.”

I like the ending to a degree in this trailer but I have to say that it’s really the riffing that’s inherent in the scenes themselves that will determine whether Guest has done it again. If there is enough Willard, Gervais and Higgins in this movie as the trailer suggests there might be then I think he has. While I think I set my expectations for this trailer awfully high, and to some degree I have to admit that it does disappoint a bit, what is funny is enough to get me out of the house to buy a ticket.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

Note bene: I just wanted to start off with a bit of a tease for next week. 2 nights ago I saw THE FOUNTAIN here in Tempe, Arizona. I don’t know how or why but I was additionally allowed 10 minutes with Darren Aronofsky the next morning at his hotel for a 1:1 right before he flew away. I’ll save all my comments until then but, suffice to say, THE FOUNTAIN has the ability to define what it is to live and what it is like to lose while breaking your heart with every frame that slips and glides by your eyes.

I’m keeping things real short this week because I really indulged in some storytelling last week as I replayed the events that led up to my appearance in this month’s Moving Pictures magazine. Did you all run out to get it? It’s got a picture of Lucy Liu on the cover so you can purchase it just for her if you want a real reason to get a magazine. I know there are a lot of people who could go either way with Lucy but color me a fan of hers just for that mouse-y pose she struck in CHARLIE’S ANGELS II for Sir John Cleese. Yummy.

Also, I wanted to do two things before sending you people on your collective way this weekend:

1. Go vote this Tuesday. A lot has been made of the apathy that so plagues this generation and I can’t say I don’t agree with how far down we are as a collective voting body on the list of people who actually give a fuck what happens to us as a nation but, please, for the love of all that’s holy, take some time on the way home from work, Lord knows many of us actually have jobs to tend to, and pull that lever. Or punch some chads or, as we do here in God’s country, Arizona, we’ve got to color in arrows. Yeah, we do, I’m not kidding. Democrat or Republican, show those buttheads who think that the Internet is made of tubes, courtesy of Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), and that Internet service providers deserve to charge you more for access based on a promise that tele-co’s would upgrade slow-ass copper wire with fiber optic lines, and have now since reneged on, that you don’t appreciate the liars that are in there now; you want liars in there of your own choosing.

2. Big ups to my man Rich N. who solicited me for a donation recently. Called the St. Baldrick’s Foundation this organizaion gives money to CureSearch National Childhood Cancer Foundation and it is dedicated to raising funds for childhood cancer research. Coming from a family with a fireman I always enjoy helping other first-responders whenever possible and, being a mick myself, I have a soft spot for anything that comes close to being affiliated with St. Patrick’s Day. Rich emailed a few people looking for donations as one of the goals for this charity results in not only money going to a good cause but the person drumming up the support and dinero has to shave their head when it’s all done. So, it was with a hearty laugh that I whipped out my AmEx and tossed a few bucks his way if for the delight and amusement of getting a photo weeks later with the attachment labeled “Rich_Shaved.jpg.” I admit that attachment scared me a bit with a name like that but here Rich is, bald and lovin’ life. I don’t speak New York-ian very well but I can say that’s “week’id ha-d-core.”

…SO GOES THE NATION (2006)

Director: James D. Stern, Adam Del Deo
Cast: Paul Begala, Mary Beth Cahill, Thomas (Tad) Devine, Terry McAuliffe, Matthew Dowd
Release: October 4, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: A documentary that examines America’s tumultuous electoral process through the eyes of diverse politicians, activists, and voters. The 2004 presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry provides the stage, showing how the voting public is manipulated by both parties’ leaders and their political marketing machines.

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Prognosis: Just vote, you assholes. I mean, a lot of you out there don’t care you’re being cornholed by your elected officials but show a little spine, would ya please? Kinda yeah, kinda nah.

One of the most important things about having to sway people to see your movie is that when the intended audience are jamokes like me, who have zero clue about your feature, you’ve got to hook me within the first ten seconds or I start to wonder why I’m looking at boring trailers and I’m off to find free porn.

This trailer has some unique angles to work around but it’s hard to get over how exquisite the computer graphics are in the opening sequences, the Katie Couric’s voiceover letting me know that Ohio is too close to call, as does Wolf Blitzer, as the contentious topics of debate for the 2004 election scroll over the screen. That hooked me. I can get what’s going on and I feel fairly engaged as a casual onlooker.

But then I’m deflated like a hot balloon that’s been put in the freezer.

“We’ve got truth on our side.”

We get some digital video about how awesome it is that so many people came out and volunteered to come help the campaign of Kerry/Edwards. Of course, we all know how that went and I think we linger way too long on this lost cause that has been beaten like a dead whale in every sort of public forum. Yet, we’ve got the star of MY SCIENCE PROJECT, Fischer Stevens, crazy eyed Steve Buscemi, star of THE KARATE KID III, Hilary Swank, all to tell me what I already knew a couple years ago.

Yes, Michael Moore, if the majority of Americans did show up at the polls George W. Bush WOULD have been punted like a pigskin from the White House but, as you know, we didn’t do what a lot of blowhards said would happen this time.

“In the last 42 years, only two democrats have won the presidential election. Why?”

We’re halfway through this thing and NOW you want to pique my interest? You see it’s a little late to be saying the one sentence that grabs me by my eyeballs. And, worse yet, we linger far too long with getting to the point which is this: the Kerry/Edwards campaign weren’t as nearly as organized as Bush/Cheney with regard to planning and execution.

That’s it.

The campaigns of these two dudes were so diametrically opposed that it was Bush’s angle at getting people to vote for him, while Kerry tried to sway those who would be swayed instead of being methodical not emotional in their attack, that ultimately led to Kerry’s demise as a contender; and we great talking heads to tell us again and again, in this trailer, to tell us this fact.

So why do I need to see this movie in the theaters? And, to tell you the honest truth, there just isn’t one here. You’ve told me everything I need to ostensibly know about this movie and I am just as well to just wait until video in order for this flick to tell me why democrats lost an election to the republicans.

SURF’S UP (2007)

Director: Lisa Addario, Joe Syracuse
Cast: CJeff Bridges, Shia LaBeouf, Zooey Deschanel, James Woods, Jane Krakowski, Jon Heder, Mario Cantone, Brian Benben, Michael McKeana
Release: June 8, 2007
Synopsis: This animated mockumentary, based on the revelation that surfing was actually invented by penguins, will take audiences behind the scenes of the exciting Penguin World Surfing Championship.

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Prognosis: Positive. I don’t care if this movie turns out to be a piece of SHARK TALE crap this is a solid trailer for a kids movie that I would want to see on my own.

It’s hard to deny the fact, the pure essential truth, that when you pitch a kids movie studio opens its wallet to a point because they know they can nearly be guaranteed of a certain amount because of the dearth of flicks in the marketplace. This explains a lot of scum in the marketplace and why straight-to-DVD “sequel” Disney flicks like BAMBI and LION KING do so damn well. This would even explain why a TOY STORY 3, no matter how shitty if Disney made it without Pixar, would’ve yielded a certain percentage just because of its cache with its youthful fan base. This movie, though, gets kudos from me because the makers could’ve slapped a milquetoast trailer on this thing and released it unto the world.

Instead, we get a thoughtful, creative trailer that some people put effort into with an eye towards really creating a voice. You can he-haw all you like but I appreciate having to stop for a moment and figure out what’s happening; this kind of risk is lost on a lot of people but penguins and surfing? What the fuck? Exactly.

“As soon as there was the first wave”¦there was the first surfer.”

The image of a penguin on a surfboard, etched like glyphs on a long deserted cave wall, papyrus and even a Japanese block print, first caught my cynical nature and I nearly dismissed what was happening. The voiceover is not ironic when it takes the lore of surfing and applies it to the animal kingdom, penguins, and if this wasn’t so absurd I would’ve dismissed that too.

The voiceovers feel so genuine as “old footage” of penguin pioneers in surfing, the piano suite twinkling in the background doing a superb job of keeping the conceit perfectly believable, and I actually had a great laugh as one enterprising penguin in archival black and white crashes his hybrid surfboard into a reef, the pieces scattering everywhere with the penguin’s fate in serious question.

“He lived so hard because he wasn’t afraid to live”¦he wasn’t afraid to die”

Big Z, the ostensible focus of this voiceover’s, this particular penguin’s, life seems to be the alpha surfer who we follow for a bit in this pseudo-docu trailer and I dare you to scoff at the clip where Z takes on a few story tall wave; it’s hard to tell where the animation starts and where photo-realism ends. It’s a wonderful blend to behold. We see how the young penguin who we’re going to be following was influenced and it’s as good of a backstory that most movies ever give us.

And then, blickety-bam, rock n’ roll is infused to this trailer, Red Hot Chili Peppers-like, and we see this little penguin just riding a wave in the same kind of cinematic blend that just shows how you don’t need to splash freakish amounts of color, a la SHARK TALE, MADAGASCAR, etc., to catch the attention of people who would otherwise pay to see your movie.

Finally, a reason to look forward to seeing a movie with the kids.

HOME OF THE BRAVE (2006)

Director: Irwin Winkler
Cast: Samuel Jackson, Jessica Biel, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Brian Presleyr
Release: December 15, 2006
Synopsis: The story of four American soldiers nearing the end of their tours of duty in Iraq. Shortly after learning their unit will soon return home, they are sent on one final humanitarian mission to bring medical supplies to a remote Iraqi village. The unit is ambushed and takes heavy losses. The surviving troops suffer both physical and psychological injuries.

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Prognosis: You had me at hello and then you cheated on me. For those who may or may not know, I am a fan of Frontline on PBS.

I am not one to dwell, like some, on The History Channel where I can see Allied forces tear apart Nazis or pick apart issues that drove us as a nation into the Vietnam War. Just doesn’t hold my interest. Now, put these issues into a context that informs the here and now, something that I can get a handle on, and you’ve got my undivided attention. That said, I am innately interested, by default, for movies that want to render fictional moments against the backdrop of recent history. WORLD TRADE CENTER? Maudlin. UNITED 93? Moving. The key here is being unique with everything that goes into a production. The former wanted to Ron Howard things and the latter wanted to be honest. This movie, though, seems like it wants to be a little BLACK HAWK DOWN with a dash of COURAGE UNDER FIRE. Not a bad combo but the trailer is really solid.

I like, I really like, that we open with the establishment of location “70 miles south of Baghdad” and a haunting score that succinctly sets the tone for the kind of ominous portent of what’s to come. I enjoy the moment so much that I damn well ignore Fiddy Cenn’s presence. True, we might as well be hit with an obvious brick in the nuts when Jessica Biel and Co. start talking about going home, everyone else making plans about what they’re going to do when they get there but that’s forgivable when the second obvious brick finishes off my testes when a dude riding in a convoy essentially says he’s got a bad feeling about this; I’m just hopeful there is going to be a wicked firefight and that Fiddley Sent catches an RPG to the chest.

And just like that we get a bottleneck that is reminiscent of CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, although, to be fair, CLEAR was a little more dramatic than what seems to happen here. I mean, really, one rocket and it’s over? One? And to top it, Fliddy makes it through.

We don’t dwell, thankfully, on the fight, it’s not extended, and I’m impressed because this movie could have easily been sold on the conflict but we really get right into the thrust of the film’s center: the aftermath of war and what it does to people on the inside. And then, I’m dropped emotionally like a $2 hooker when we get Dave Matthews’ “The Space Between.”

Huh?

The music doesn’t really jive with the posttraumatic stress disorder angle that could’ve easily been more crafted rather than the pop effluence that is the undeniable stylings of Mr. Matthews being pumped like a spewing artery through my speakers. I can see where there is some promise of how these people all react to being in the line of fire and having to live with the things they went through in Iraq, violent behavior and despondency being great examples, but I feel that a lot of slo-mo hugging and disingenuous smiling that ends this trailer just smacks of Ron Howard-ness that doomed WORLD TRADE CENTER to mediocrity.

If Flippy Cien-t commits suicide, a very real product of this war that Frontline explored in honest detail, I might be inclined to actually pay to see this.

300 (2007)

Director: Zack Snyder
Cast: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham, Vincent Regan, Rodrigo Santoro
Release: March 9, 2007
Synopsis: Based on the epic graphic novel by Frank Miller, 300 is a ferocious retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in which King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army. Facing insurmountable odds, their valor and sacrifice inspire all of Greece to unite.

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Prognosis: This’ll put hair on your chest…And balls. What an absolute coup.

You think to yourself that while you rocked the party hard with your re-imagining of DAWN OF THE DEAD you need to curry even more favor with the hopelessly virginal dweebs who don’t really know what to make of a work that, while sharply written, needs to attract a big chunk of audience and create a big buzz. Solution?

You bring a teaser trailer to Comic-Con that absolutely explodes with bombastic noise and testosterone, death, war, screaming, yelling and bare boobs that swish and sway in slow-motion. And then proceed to show it a few times within the time allotted to you.

Score.

Now, while the hooters are gone, did you really think they’d let them be unfurled unto the world in all their womanly glory, this trailer gnashes on silt and dirt while calling it sustenance; and, while it’s at it, it would like to start a fight with your mom.

There isn’t much in the way of a voiceover to couch what you’re seeing in the opening images, soldiers slowly falling off a sharp precipice, a kid squaring off a wolf that looks like it could be a hellspawn demon dog of Gozer from GHOSTBUSTERS and a randy looking monarch of some kind on his stately throne, but that’s alright. I’m being roped in and this is the way to do it.

“This”¦is”¦Sparta!”

I’m a Gerard Butler fan. Eff his work on DRACULA 2000, that wretched junk heap of a film, his talent really bled through the screen in DEAR FRANKIE. Here, as well, his charisma as a leading man demands your respect with the stoic bravado that mires so many other movies that have dudes reciting monologues that seem spoken just for the sake of speaking them in that manly intonation, your eyes rolling backward in its disingenuousness. No, here, his threats, his weapon at the ready, and that kick which just knocks down that fool in a well that Borat would well reserve for some Jews just lights a fire in me. It’s effective.

“Then we will fight in the shade.”

What’s more is the Nine Inch Nails suite that accompanies the other unrelated sequences here; it really captures the spirit of the movie in a way, I would posit, that trumps a lot of other “cast of thousands” productions. Things feel dirty, messy. The way they should be.

You can’t expect to try and wrangle the ladies in with this trailer and it’s really bold, and refreshing, to see a campaign just slice out that 50% of the potential audience and just represent the movie’s hard edge without regard to any superfluous romance or foo-foo hook to be everything to everyone.

Splendid.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

The story really wasn’t worth telling at the time.

It was spring of this year and I wanted to be able and cover the Phoenix Film Festival for what was then Movie Poop Shoot. It was a festival that was peppered with some solid films, LA MUJER DE MI HERMANO and HARD CANDY, and some that will go without mention and have since been shown for the turkeys they are. It was an exciting time for me, personally, because, as some of you know, I am a bit of a misanthrope. I don’t “get it” when it comes to needless schmoozing with those who would otherwise not even make it on my cell phone list of people I’d like to spend more time with if given the chance. I have an actual day job that is so remote from what I live to do, writing, that it would be damn near embarassing to confess what brings in the real money. It follows, then, that I don’t have the oppulent lifestyle that is so romanticized in movies where writers are always dressed like hip, yet sloven, nomads who are in a constant need of a shave and are usually brooding about their work.

I don’t brood.

I like what I am able to do and if that means being happiest when I can focus on my own work and not worry about getting the greatest exclusives all the time then so be it. Josh Holloway, Robert Patrick and even the latest Andy Dick pieces mean a lot to me because I was the one who accepted the opportunity and, here’s the kicker, there is nothing in my mind about how many issues the piece will sell. There’s no money involved yet, when I think about it hard enough, I know that there are brick and mortar office jockeys, of which I am one, that will never be able to ensconse themselves in their passion and I realize I’m lucky. I’m one of the few but, the other edge to that Ginsu knife is that…I don’t get paid.

Fast forward to last spring during the Phoenix Film Festival when I catch wind that Moving Pictures Magazine, a publication that’s closer to a Film Comment than it is a Premiere, not only has a presence here in Scottsdale, my city, but that they’re having a party to celebrate their involvement at the PFF.

I needed to be at that party.

I don’t know why I felt a surge, an urge, a desire to make a play at trying to make this game of rochambeau come out in my favor for once. There was a lot of drivel being spilled within the pages of modern film magazines and I knew that over two years of slugging it out within the confines of Internet journalism, where I learned interviewing by doing, where I learned how to exact information without attributing, where I hit every single deadline without exception and where I made sure every single letter, note, comment, complaint, inquiry and even churned out some good pieces every now and then. I wanted to be paid for something. I wanted to prove that I could run with those who did this for a living and even do it better. I had to convince someone and when, like manna from heaven, I not only was given the date and place of the party by a representative of the magazine who was at opening night but they gave me the name of the person in charge who could help me break through to the other side.

I can’t go through all the reasons why I didn’t make it to that party until roughly 10 minutes before the party was set to break up or how I managed to finally find that same represntative from Moving Pictures magazine after wandering around the restaurant looking for someone, anyone to talk to but I did. I found the rep and without so much as thinking twice I asked about who I needed to talk to for freelance work. This woman, this kind, kind woman literally planted me in front of the end-all, be-all for this magazine’s opportunites and I made my pitch. Fast.

I don’t remember much anything about it but I do recall being very open, honest, smiling a lot, eager, I may have begged a bit but I’m not too sure, confident, name dropped like I was a waiter delivering ball bearings while standing on a paint shaker, and it ended with me, I think, sending her a note to express once more my interest. While I know she told me about the limited range of writing about trailers, the magazine is a lot more than just a glib mo-fo like myself talking about flicks through their marketing and I understood that, I know that my work on Poop Shoot and now Quick Stop is akin to having a dude on a paper writing obitiuaries until his opportunity comes; except, with me, my obituaries sometimes help to make a movie seem more alive or assist with putting the nails on the pine box in which the flick should take a permanent dirt nap.

And that was it for a little while. A long while.

I was checking my e-mail after finally coming down off a rather obnoxious afternoon at the San Diego Comic-Con in July when I noticed my contact’s name. The e-mail, very matter-of-factly, stated that if I was interested Moving Pictures wanted me to write a small blurb about the CASINO ROYALE trailer.

After a lot of back and forth with paperwork, suggestions, some uncertainty on my part and the nagging feeling that I would be smited by some diety should I publicly announce that I have 75 words appearing in print I decided to sit on the information. It wasn’t until I stood in front of a magazine kiosk at the Borders across the street from where I work when it really came home that I had finally done it. I bought all five copies there and when I took them out in that plastic bag there was an internal satisfaction that I don’t think could be expressed in words; those who can understand what it means to be someone devoted to the printed word, would.

So, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone out there, every reader who has helped to make a small comment here, a small high-five there, in making this possible. I wrote it, sure, but it wouldn’t have happened unless a guy like Chris Ryall saw something in me and let me run with whatever was in my head week after week. Certainly I also have to give thanks to my wife, Sherry who, while she has always been cool with me doing this column every damn week, is really the reason why I am able to take time out of my life every week to just give you people something to read. For her, I am eternitally grateful.

So, please, if it’s not too much to ask, go and get the magazine. Read the glory that is 75 words on page 17. Send the editor a message and tell them what you really think of this weasel’s ability to inspire so many rip-offs in other, lesser, publications like Entertainment Weekly. Or, if you’re just lazy, just check it out when you’re out and about inside a Barnes and Noble, Borders or even Blockbuster; it would be very meta for me to know someone from across the country was able to read my name in print. I’m even in the Contributing Writers section which just thrills me to no end even though most would just shrug and say, “whatever.”

And just to show you how the enduring positivity keeps on going, I decided to give you all out there the chance to enter into a contest where you could make a real dream come true for yourself….Peep the press release from Sony:

“INTERNSHIP CONTEST”

— Eight Winners To Be Offered Once-In-A-Lifetime Career Opportunity With Gap Inc., The Hollywood Reporter, Morgan Stanley, NBC, the National Football League (NFL), PEOPLE Magazine, Playstation & Yahoo
— Contest Winners to Attend Hollywood Premiere of Will Smith’s The Pursuit of Happyness