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May 30th, 2008
Steven Tyler is claiming his recent stint in rehab was only to recover from foot surgery and not drug and/or alcohol related. Did I miss a memo about it being Celebrity Bullshit Excuses for Rehab Week? Jesus. Anyway, for those of you who actually care about Aerosmith, here's Steven's formal statement to People:
"The doctors told me the pain in my feet could be corrected but it would require a few surgeries over time," Tyler says in a statement released Thursday. "The 'foot repair' pain was intense, greater than I'd anticipated. The months of rehabilitative care and the painful strain of physical therapy were traumatic. I really needed a safe environment to recuperate where I could shut off my phone and get back on my feet. Make no mistake, Aerosmith has no plans to stop rocking. There's a new album to record, then another tour."
Foot surgery? Give me a break. Why couldn't he just say it was depression? Oh, right, Kirsten Dunst used that... Why couldn't he just say it was foot surgery?
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May 30th, 2008
It's gearing up to be a strange summer at the movies.
Three of the big guns have already come and gone -- "Iron Man," "Prince Caspian," and "Indiana Jones etc etc" -- making piles at the box office without much of a dent in the cultural consciousness. (I confess to being confused by some of the sheer rage expressed toward Spielberg's return to this series: what were you expecting? This was always thin but fun Saturday matinee cheese.) Coming up are "Kung Fu Panda" (looks great, less filling) and Adam Sandler in "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" (which Wes swears is pretty funny; maybe it's the Judd Apatow influence)
Now comes the big-screen "Sex and the City," and while many people care, I'm honestly not one of them. But Wesley liked it, and some of the other reviews are positive. And some of them are not.
If you want mindblowing eye candy in the service of a chilly, tonally wobbly "Princess Bride" imitation, by all means check out "The Fall," playing at the Kendall. The photo above is a tasting sample, and two others are here and here. Tarsem Singh's labor of love is a continent-spanning design layout that needs to be seen on a big screen if at all.
At the other end of the scale is "Chop Shop," a gritty little realist fable about a kid in the third-world automotive shops of Queens, New York. It's playing at the Brattle. Two solid documentaries kick in today, too: James Carroll's "Constantine's Sword" sticks it to church orthodoxy for ignoring Christ's message of peace in favor of war-mongering and anti-Semitism, while Laura Bialis' "Refusenik" is a thorough accounting of the struggle to save Soviet Jewry the 60s, 70s, and 80s. (Bialis will be present at the 6:50 screening tonight at the Kendall Square).
"The Strangers" is the latest torture porn movie from a young and soulless director out to prove himself. Liv Tyler showed up, but you don't have to.
Over at the Harvard Film Archive, the quite essential round-up of Shaw Bros. classics continues through the weekend. You want to see the originals that everybody from Quentin Tarantino to "Kung Fu Panda" have been ripping off for so long? Look no further. That's 1972's "14 Amazons" below; it's at the HFA Sunday at 3 pm.
The Armenian Film Festival takes over the Museum of Fine Arts for the weekend. Tonight is "The Lark Farm," the latest from Italy's Taviani brothers.
By the way, please join me in saying hello to the Globe's new art critic, the marvelously named Sebastian Smee, who we've somehow convinced to move here from Australia. Welcome, Sebastian, and I hope your family's adjustment from the Antipodes to the, um, Podes, goes smoothly. Here's his piece today on the Anish Kapoor show at the ICA. Like all good criticism, it provides the context and whets my appetite to experience the thing for myself; it also reads like a charm.
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May 30th, 2008
A classic popcorn movie gains its first hi-def release.
Hot Shots: Part Deux parodies the two Rambo sequels, but mostly focuses on this one since there’s such a massive amount of material to draw from. What's amazing about that film is that hardly any of it is changed from what is actually in First Blood Part II. It simply recreates most of the action with different actors. Even Weird Al…
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May 30th, 2008
Matthew Perry shows a different side of his acting abilities.
Admittedly, I was originally interested in watching Numb strictly because of the involvement of Friends star Matthew Perry. I knew nothing about the film's storyline or its writer/director, Harris Goldberg. Upon receiving the DVD, I decided to look up Harris Goldberg on IMDb. My heart sank when I realized he was responsible for writing The…
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May 30th, 2008
USA’s new series is a combo of stock characters and plots, but somehow pulls it off.
Not all television series come to our screens as clear winners or clear losers. Most fall somewhere in the middle. They have good bits and bad, and one isn't quite sure watching the first couple of episodes exactly where the series will end up. Such is the case with the latest scripted drama on USA, In Plain Sight. If pressed, I'd say…
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May 30th, 2008
Posted in Filmmaking | No Comments »
May 30th, 2008
Fans of actor-director Tom McCarthy\'s highly praised debut, THE STATION AGENT, will not be disappointed by his second film, a gentle drama about illegal immigration. At 62, Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is sleepwalking through his quiet life as an economics professor in Connecticut. A conference for work forces him to return to New York City, where he finds something unexpected in his nearly forgotten Manhattan apartment: a pair of illegal immigrants is renting his place from a dishonest man, and they\'re just as shocked by his presence as he is by theirs. But Walter\'s kindness prevails, and he allows Syrian immigrant Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese love Zainab (Danai Gurira) to stay. Tarek and Walter form an unlikely bond over Tarek\'s talent for playing the djembe drum, and soon Walter is spending his spare time with the couple. When Tarek is unjustly arrested, deportation hangs over the young man\'s head and Walter is determined to help. The arrival of Tarek\'s mother (Hiam Abbass) adds another element to the trouble, but she provides unexpected companionship for Walter as he crusades for her son\'s freedom.<br><br>THE STATION AGENT was a pleasant surprise for everyone who saw it, and while THE VISITOR revisits some of the same themes (particularly loneliness), it doesn\'t feel like a retread. In his first two films as writer and director, McCarthy has displayed an impressive touch with both quietly funny dialogue and complex characters. All the actors deserve credit for their emotional performances, but Jenkins adeptly carries the film on his shoulders. Until THE VISITOR, he has been a prolific character actor, perhaps most recognizable as the dearly departed dad on SIX FEET UNDER. But as magnetic as he has been in small roles, the depth of his talent becomes even more obvious in this remarkable lead performance.
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May 30th, 2008
Perpetually stoned pals Harold and Kumar (John Cho and Kal Penn) are back in this sequel to the 2004 cult favorite HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE. While on route to Amsterdam, the pair is mistaken for terrorists, leading to a series of misadventures that include another run-in with Neil Patrick Harris.
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May 30th, 2008
Nicholas Stoller\'s FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL is a romantic disaster comedy produced by the same team that made such hits as THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN and KNOCKED UP, headed by writer, director, and producer Judd Apatow. When he gets suddenly and unceremoniously dumped by his longtime girlfriend, television star Sarah Marshall (VERONICA MARS lead Kristen Bell), composer Peter Bretter (FREAKS AND GEEKS alum Jason Segel) is devastated. Miserably depressed, he seeks solace in tawdry one-night stands, but he is desperate to win Sarah back. On the advice of his stepbrother, Brian (SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE\'s Bill Hader), Peter heads off to Hawaii for a much-needed vacation, but he gets even more freaked out when he discovers that Sarah and her new beau, wild and wacky British singing sensation Aldous Snow (comedian Russell Brand), are staying there as well. Mired in sadness, Peter is befriended by hotel employee Rachel Jansen (THAT \'70S SHOW\'s Mila Kunis), who encourages him to get back his life and pursue his own dreams, which include staging a Dracula musical with puppets. But Peter is blinded by his desire for Sarah even as he grows closer to Rachel and starts hanging out with some of the hotel\'s odder personalities, including Chuck (Paul Rudd), a drug-addled surf instructor, and Matthew (SUPERBAD\'s Jonah Hill), a drug-dealing restaurant worker obsessed with Snow. Segel, who gets fully naked several times in the film, wrote the screenplay, a sharp blend of comedy and drama, and is solid in his first major starring role. Stoller, making his feature-film directorial debut, gets the most out of his diverse cast and beautiful setting, especially Jack McBrayer and Maria Thayer as a newlywed couple having some bizarre sexual problems, and Billy Baldwin as Sarah\'s costar in the television show CRIME SCENE: SCENE OF THE CRIME. FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL is an outrageously funny yet touchingly sweet movie.
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May 30th, 2008
Most romantic couples--onscreen or otherwise--would kill for the type of chemistry that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler share in the gyno-centric comedy BABY MAMA, even though the women are only playing friends. Fey stars as Kate, a 37-year-old vice president at an organic foods company whose womb starts a-kickin\' every time she sees a baby. Though her career has kept her from marriage and children, she has decided that it\'s time for her to get pregnant. But multiple tries with in vitro fertilization leave her disappointed, and Kate turns to a surrogate mother. Enter Angie (Poehler), a high-school dropout desperate for the large check that comes with carrying someone\'s child. Though she agrees to be Kate\'s surrogate, it\'s clear that the women disagree on everything from music to the type of food Angie should be eating. When Angie leaves her apartment after a fight with her obnoxious common-law husband (Dax Shepard, EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH), she moves into Kate\'s posh Philadelphia apartment, and the women spend the rest of BABY MAMA alternately battling and bonding.<br><br>Steve Martin appears in a small but enjoyable role as Kate\'s oily boss, and Oscar nominee Greg Kinnear gets good mileage out of playing her love interest. WEEDS star Romany Malco earns a bit more screen time--and plenty of laughs--as her over-involved doorman, but this is clearly Fey and Poehler\'s film. After several seasons of co-anchoring SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE\'s "Weekend Update" together, the pair is reunited, and it feels good--for both the talented actresses and the audience. BABY MAMA pays less attention to the serious issues of pregnancy and motherhood than its baby-driven contemporaries--JUNO, WAITRESS, and KNOCKED UP--but this is simply a comedy, and a very funny one, that succeeds on the merits of its two lead actresses and their comedic talents.
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