Not really a remake in the standard sense, the Robert Rodriguez-produced Predators wants to make you forget everything that's happened with this "franchise" since 1990. That's when the wayward Predator 2 brought the alien hunters to a not too distant future L.A., with very middling results. So forget Alien vs. Predator and the equally awful follow-up and prepare yourself for another Most Dangerous Game take on the material. This time around, a rag tag group of killers (both professional and "hobbyists") are whisked off to an extraterrestrial game preserve. There, they are pitted against well-armed squads of the crab-mouthed monsters in a deadly, frequently derivative, test of survival.
We first meet Special Ops mercenary Royce (Adrien Brody) as he's freefalling toward the planet's surface. Within minutes, he's hooked up with an executioner from a Mexican drug cartel (Danny Trejo), a Brazilian military ace (Alice Braga), a Russian war vet (Oleg Taktarov), a rebel soldier from Sierra Leone (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), a death row inmate (Walton Goggins), a member of the Japanese Yakuza (Louis Ozawa Changchien) and a doctor (Topher Grace). Quickly figuring out their "kill or be killed" place on this jungle otherworld, they discover that they are not alone. Not only is there a band of space slayers out to get them, but the area has been populated with beings from other galaxies as well.
Thus we get the Predator riffs we know so well: the infrared night vision sequences; the ominous vocal clicks; the ability to mimic the environment around them; the arm blades, the shoulder lasers, and the pulse cannons. New this time around are the predator attack dogs (cool), flying surveillance devices, a long standing blood feud that finds the bigger hunters picking on the smaller, and one incredibly whacked out cameo (no - the Governator does not show up here, though his original movie mission is referenced). Had Predators done more with this, had it offered up even more novel reinterpretations of the creature and its mythology, we'd enjoy this movie a lot more. Instead, director Nimród Antal goes back to the standard action movie beats -- some down time to establish personality and exposition, and then ramp up the foot chases and jungle firefights. The results are fun if wholly formulaic.
It's sad that the man who made Vacancy and Armored doesn't have more to say. There is no vision here, no spark of imagination to get your inner geek re-invested in this series. Basically, if you loved the first film and can tolerate the Arnold-less sequel, you'll have a good time. But if you are expecting something inspired, something that takes the whole Predator experience to a whole new level (like James Cameron did when he turned Alien into Aliens), you will need to look elsewhere. What you get instead is a thoroughly professional, journeyman thriller which avoids surprises and stays well within the genre. Even the acting is nothing short of decent. Brody and crew aren't give all that much to do, and they manage such a minimized requirement quite well.
Frankly, one expects a little more from producer Rodriguez. Given the blood-splattered insanity of his Planet Terror and the astonishing optical wonders of Sin City, should we really be simply satisfied? Granted, it's Antal behind the lens, but one imagines the filmmaker functioning under the full faith and artistic credit of his overseer. Somewhere buried deep inside a scenario in which interstellar sportsman hunt humans for fun lies a really superior cinematic experience. In fact, it's already happened -- some 23 years ago. Predators had two decades to find a way to freshen up this concept. Instead, it goes back to the motion picture truisms that worked before. While not bad, it's definitely not bad ass.
Predators
July 8th, 2010The Kids Are All Right
July 8th, 2010
A video featuring men going down on one another (in cowboy costumes, no less) that a suburban couple breaks out when they decide to fool around is undoubtedly the most "gay" thing about The Kids Are All Right, Lisa Cholodenko's terrifically entertaining and moving fourth feature. The fact that the couple in question is comprised of two women, one a serious-minded doctor and the other a scatterbrained job-hopper, factors in only as much as your definition of "liberal" and "conservative" limits your views on family dynamics and, indeed, concepts of right and wrong.
But as the title suggests, the film begins and ends with the two children Dr. Nic (Annette Bening) and earth-mother Jules (Julianne Moore) conceived through an anonymous sperm donor. Both Joni (Mia Wasakowski, much stronger here than in the languid Alice in Wonderland), mere weeks away from collegiate bliss, and Laser (a very good Josh Hutcherson), a pensive jock, come from the same donor but only Laser has the itch to meet the man, evident in a scene where he joyfully watches his borderline-psychotic best friend (Eddie Hassell) literally wrestle with his father. Fulfilling her sisterly obligations while keeping the "moms" in the dark, Joni is the one who first contacts their absentee donor, a restaurateur and organic farmer named Paul, played with reliable intelligence and swagger by Mark Ruffalo.
Unexpectedly, it's Joni who takes to Paul right away, while Laser gets rustled and mildly insulted by his ambivalence to sports; the denim-adorned donor is seemingly too busy putting it to his gorgeous hostess and flirting with a dread-locked hippie at his farm to throw around the ball. Whereas Paul is overwhelmed with his lover man persona, Laser lets their meeting slip while being passive-aggressively grilled over his possible homosexuality by the moms. Hesitant as always, Nic allows the motorcycle-driving Lothario into their house for wine and a barbecue before Paul impulsively hires Jules to redecorate his "fecund" backyard. A shot of Paul hypnotized by Jules' thong as she works and her rousing reaction to a slice of his strawberry-rhubarb pie points to the stormy weather ahead.
Cholodenko has gone from treating the LGBT community as a seductive society, as she did in her superb debut, High Art, to portraying a singular homosexual couple as, well, suburban. The casting of Moore and Bening, both spectacular and wildly funny, and the film's pedestrian structure could have been shallow attempts at commercial acceptance, but this actually constitutes a risky maneuver on the director's part, one that pays off immensely. The politics and sexuality of The Kids Are All Right are covertly complex or, perhaps more pointedly, so natural that they defy mapping. Either way, they are embedded in the characters rather than guiding them, something that many films strictly about homosexuals have been unable to fathom.
Don't be mistaken: The Kids Are All Right certainly comes from a liberal state of mind but it never belittles or condescends to conservatives, nor does it bark its opinion like so many films of its ilk have in the past. Here, Cholodenko, who co-wrote the script with Stuart Blumberg and who herself gave birth to a boy with the help of an anonymous sperm donor, enters a similar class of filmmaker as Alexander Payne in her handling of serious comedies grounded by complexly drawn characters and urgent social issues. Sideways, it is not, but The Kids Are All Right is, in a particularly dull summer at the movies, a friendly reminder that there are...alternatives.
But as the title suggests, the film begins and ends with the two children Dr. Nic (Annette Bening) and earth-mother Jules (Julianne Moore) conceived through an anonymous sperm donor. Both Joni (Mia Wasakowski, much stronger here than in the languid Alice in Wonderland), mere weeks away from collegiate bliss, and Laser (a very good Josh Hutcherson), a pensive jock, come from the same donor but only Laser has the itch to meet the man, evident in a scene where he joyfully watches his borderline-psychotic best friend (Eddie Hassell) literally wrestle with his father. Fulfilling her sisterly obligations while keeping the "moms" in the dark, Joni is the one who first contacts their absentee donor, a restaurateur and organic farmer named Paul, played with reliable intelligence and swagger by Mark Ruffalo.
Unexpectedly, it's Joni who takes to Paul right away, while Laser gets rustled and mildly insulted by his ambivalence to sports; the denim-adorned donor is seemingly too busy putting it to his gorgeous hostess and flirting with a dread-locked hippie at his farm to throw around the ball. Whereas Paul is overwhelmed with his lover man persona, Laser lets their meeting slip while being passive-aggressively grilled over his possible homosexuality by the moms. Hesitant as always, Nic allows the motorcycle-driving Lothario into their house for wine and a barbecue before Paul impulsively hires Jules to redecorate his "fecund" backyard. A shot of Paul hypnotized by Jules' thong as she works and her rousing reaction to a slice of his strawberry-rhubarb pie points to the stormy weather ahead.
Cholodenko has gone from treating the LGBT community as a seductive society, as she did in her superb debut, High Art, to portraying a singular homosexual couple as, well, suburban. The casting of Moore and Bening, both spectacular and wildly funny, and the film's pedestrian structure could have been shallow attempts at commercial acceptance, but this actually constitutes a risky maneuver on the director's part, one that pays off immensely. The politics and sexuality of The Kids Are All Right are covertly complex or, perhaps more pointedly, so natural that they defy mapping. Either way, they are embedded in the characters rather than guiding them, something that many films strictly about homosexuals have been unable to fathom.
Don't be mistaken: The Kids Are All Right certainly comes from a liberal state of mind but it never belittles or condescends to conservatives, nor does it bark its opinion like so many films of its ilk have in the past. Here, Cholodenko, who co-wrote the script with Stuart Blumberg and who herself gave birth to a boy with the help of an anonymous sperm donor, enters a similar class of filmmaker as Alexander Payne in her handling of serious comedies grounded by complexly drawn characters and urgent social issues. Sideways, it is not, but The Kids Are All Right is, in a particularly dull summer at the movies, a friendly reminder that there are...alternatives.
Winnebago Man
July 8th, 2010
The phrase "YouTube sensation" gets thrown around an awful lot, describing every popular online video from lip-synching loonies to adolescents on Novocaine. But Jack Rebney is the real deal. Who's Jack Rebney? That's a good question, one that filmmaker Ben Steinbauer felt destined to answer in his search for the guy who became known as Winnebago Man. The result of Steinbauer's three-year journey is knee-slapping fun, a relentlessly entertaining documentary about fame and the unlikely famous. And the art of cursing.
Jack Rebney didn't start in the limelight: In the late 1980s, he was just a guy starring in a corporate sales video for the Winnebago RV company. Innocent enough, sure, until you see Rebney's outtakes, in which he regularly spews a slurry of profanity so raw, so ridiculous, so harmlessly angry, you can only laugh at the performance.
Somehow, Rebney's bloopers and blunders were put onto a VHS tape, copied onto many other tapes, and distributed throughout the entertainment industry. They eventually stormed the world on YouTube some 20 years after the Winnebago Man first filled the frame with filth.
Lucky for us, Steinbauer wants to know everything about this lightning strike of popularity, and wants to share it with us, the right approach for a culture now supersaturated with the very idea of sharing information. After the quiet director breaks down the particulars of how and why the outtakes spread like wildfire, he is practically obsessed (or, he appears obsessed) with finding Rebney. Questions abound. Does Rebney know of his fame? Has he ever watched YouTube? Is he still really pissed off?
Steinbauer and company make sure we get plenty of Rebney's rants right up front; when the filmmaker actually finds the guy, the thrill is a bit intoxicating, like finally meeting a famous actor and wondering about his "real" persona. When he shows up on screen, Rebney is in his 70s, crotchety yet charming, and sly enough to continually keep us guessing about the real Jack Rebney. He's a character with character.
And that's where Winnebago Man turns from a simple idea into a complex look at cultural iconography and public perception. Rebney's initial fame -- or infamy, if you will -- is as viral as it gets, a pristine example of the retweet, long before there was a Twitter. But when Rebney starts showing up at public screenings of his videos, revving up the cult crowd, fame takes a very revealing turn.(Think Troll 2's popularity, as seen in Best Worst Movie).
Intended or not, Steinbauer creates an enlightening case study about the zeitgeist, and how cool becomes cool. And even if Winnebago Man didn't peer deeply into the eyes of popular culture, it works simply by recognizing how exciting it can be to see a frustrated guy curse his brains out.
Jack Rebney didn't start in the limelight: In the late 1980s, he was just a guy starring in a corporate sales video for the Winnebago RV company. Innocent enough, sure, until you see Rebney's outtakes, in which he regularly spews a slurry of profanity so raw, so ridiculous, so harmlessly angry, you can only laugh at the performance.
Somehow, Rebney's bloopers and blunders were put onto a VHS tape, copied onto many other tapes, and distributed throughout the entertainment industry. They eventually stormed the world on YouTube some 20 years after the Winnebago Man first filled the frame with filth.
Lucky for us, Steinbauer wants to know everything about this lightning strike of popularity, and wants to share it with us, the right approach for a culture now supersaturated with the very idea of sharing information. After the quiet director breaks down the particulars of how and why the outtakes spread like wildfire, he is practically obsessed (or, he appears obsessed) with finding Rebney. Questions abound. Does Rebney know of his fame? Has he ever watched YouTube? Is he still really pissed off?
Steinbauer and company make sure we get plenty of Rebney's rants right up front; when the filmmaker actually finds the guy, the thrill is a bit intoxicating, like finally meeting a famous actor and wondering about his "real" persona. When he shows up on screen, Rebney is in his 70s, crotchety yet charming, and sly enough to continually keep us guessing about the real Jack Rebney. He's a character with character.
And that's where Winnebago Man turns from a simple idea into a complex look at cultural iconography and public perception. Rebney's initial fame -- or infamy, if you will -- is as viral as it gets, a pristine example of the retweet, long before there was a Twitter. But when Rebney starts showing up at public screenings of his videos, revving up the cult crowd, fame takes a very revealing turn.(Think Troll 2's popularity, as seen in Best Worst Movie).
Intended or not, Steinbauer creates an enlightening case study about the zeitgeist, and how cool becomes cool. And even if Winnebago Man didn't peer deeply into the eyes of popular culture, it works simply by recognizing how exciting it can be to see a frustrated guy curse his brains out.
Doc Talk: ‘Gimme Shelter,’ ‘C**ksucker Blues,’ and ‘Stones in Exile’
July 7th, 2010Filed under: Documentary, Independent, Music & Musicals, Celebrities and Controversy, Johnny Depp, NSFW, Columns, Cinematical Indie
Just as there seems to be a rule that every great filmmaker at some point must make a movie about making movies, there also appears to be an unwritten law that their career is not over until they make a Rolling Stones documentary. Actually there's little support for the latter claim. It's just that there are so many concert films and other non-fiction works involving the band, and a good amount were made by notable directors, including Martin Scorsese, Hal Ashby and Jean-Luc Godard. And another is currently being made by Johnny Depp, though it will primarily focus on Keith Richards.
With the most recent Stones film, Stones in Exile, hitting DVD recently, I thought I'd take a look at a few other related works, namely Albert and David Maysles' infamous classic Gimme Shelter and Robert Frank's little-seen, officially unreleased C**ksucker Blues. These two documentaries, neither necessarily concert films, both qualifying as examples of "Direct Cinema," form bookends to what you'll see in Stones in Exile, which is the latest from Stephen Kijak (Cinemania; Scott Walker: 30 Century Man) and which presents a history of the making of the band's masterpiece album "Exile on Main Street."
It would be fitting to also include Rollin Binzer's Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones in this Rolling Stones marathon, but I haven't yet managed to see it. Even though Frank's film is all but banned, it's easier to see that on the Internet than it is to see Binzer's film in any form until it finally hits DVD and Blu-ray this November. For now, the trio I present here is an adequate look at the Stones' American tours in '69 and '72 and a little of what they did in between. There are a couple years in there not documented in the following films, but few bands, or other famous figures, have such an overflowing time capsule for a specific era as this.
Continue reading Doc Talk: 'Gimme Shelter,' 'C**ksucker Blues,' and 'Stones in Exile'
Is Jodie Foster’s Directorial Career Cursed?
July 7th, 2010Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Distribution, Focus Features, Movie Marketing
Jodie Foster's acting career has been steady and strong since she began her career as a child, but her attempts at directing and producing seem to be thwarted at every turn. She can push our buttons with a glance, whether as Iris the 12-year-old prostitute in Taxi Driver, Sarah the gang rape survivor who challenges the "she asked for it" defense in The Accused, or, of course, the seemingly unshakable Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs. However, things have been a bit quiet on the Foster front lately. The Brave One, a revenge thriller that she starred in and executive produced, didn't wow audiences or critics, and neither did the family friendly 2008 film she co-starred in, Nim's Island. 1991's Little Man Tate, which she also starred in, was a promising directorial debut, and Home for the Holidays was fair to middling, but since then she hasn't stepped behind the camera. As she told Entertainment Weekly in 2007, another movie she was set to direct, Sugarland starring Robert De Niro, "just fell apart again... That's the story in Hollywood. You make personal movies and they're really hard to get off the ground. S--- happens." Another passion project of hers, Flora Plum, was being shopped around to international distributors as early as 2000 by Good Machine, the company now known as Focus Features.
Continue reading Is Jodie Foster's Directorial Career Cursed?
Woman Claims ‘Death at a Funeral’ Ripped Off Her Real-Life Funeral Nonsense
July 7th, 2010Filed under: Sony, Celebrities and Controversy, Remakes and Sequels
Lawsuits claiming such and such film stole so and so nobody's idea are a dime a dozen. But here's one that's more interesting than usual: unknown author Pamella Lawrence is suing Sony, Chris Rock, Frank Oz, Neil Labute, "White male" screenwriter Dean Craig and many others for stealing her ideas and turning them into Death at a Funeral. Both the UK original and the recent African-American-heavy remake. Specifically, they allegedly ripped off her 1995 book Caught on Video ... The Most Embarrassing Moment de Funeral, July 11, 1994, Jamaican Volume 1, as well as the actual embarrassing video the book is based upon, and also included inside jokes, such as one involving KFC's recipe, directly targeted at her. Additionally, Lawrence is calling the act racist and sexist, arguing that she pitched a film adaptation to Columbia TriStar (a division of Sony) in 1998 but was sent on her way because she's a woman from the inner city. And then they went ahead and ripped her off instead of working with her. She later sued the studio and the case was settled out of court (which she believes is referenced through the KFC joke). Now that two films have been released, she's back for more -- $20 million, to be exact. Not just for copyright infringement, but also for "breach of contract," "fraud" and "theft."
Continue reading Woman Claims 'Death at a Funeral' Ripped Off Her Real-Life Funeral Nonsense
Will La Lohan’s Jail Stint Ruin Her Linda Lovelace Film?
July 7th, 2010Filed under: Drama, Celebrities and Controversy
You've no doubt heard Lindsay Lohan has been sentenced to 90 days in the slammer (and then 90 days in rehab) for violating her probation stemmed from a 2007 drunk-driving arrest. Prior to the ruling, while she was crying (she didn't Chris Brown it, either) and pleading with the judge for lenience, she mentioned that, "This is my life. It is my career. It is something I have worked for all my life." Did she blow it? Are both her life and career over? Not quite, and at the very least there will likely one day be a Tarantino in shining armor to save her from near obscurity (if not the Tarantino another director, maybe John Waters?). In the meantime, she's also not seeming to lose the few gigs she'd already lined up before heading back to court. One of those projects is the biopic Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story, in which she is still cast as the titular former porn star. According to 24 Frames, the film's director, Matthew Wilder, says he'll wait for La Lohan to finish out her punishment and will not re-cast her part, despite being fully financed and ready to begin shooting now. Some of his willingness to delay filming for the troubled former child star may be that financiers put up money because she was attached. You also have to figure that anyone who wanted to work with her before the sentencing was already okay with her reputation, work ethic and other factors that could potentially hurt the production anyway. It's hard to imagine Inferno losing any of its initial audience because of Lohan's jail time, and it's also hard to imagine Inferno keeping its initial audience with another actress in the lead.
Continue reading Will La Lohan's Jail Stint Ruin Her Linda Lovelace Film?
‘Fraggle Rock’ Movie ‘Edginess’ Explained
July 6th, 2010Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Family Films
Do you remember watching Fraggle Rock when you were growing up? Then you're the target market for the new Weinstein-produced Fraggle Rock movie, because it's aimed at an edgier, adult audience. That was the verdict of The Weinstein Company, according to director Cory Edwards in blog posts last month, as reported by Cinematical here.
According to the director of Hoodwinked! fame, the Weinstein Co. had sought a screenwriter to bring an edge to the material that would appeal to moviegoers most likely to be familiar with the property, an audience which has grown up in the nearly 30 years since the show aired.
We speculated at the time that the Weinsteins wouldn't have been happy with Edwards's comments. Talking to You Bent My Wookie, Edwards explains that things have changed. "Since then, I've been able to sit down with Weinstein's new VP of Development and really talk about their issues with the movie. We've had some very good conversations about what they think 'edgy' is and what I think 'edgy' is."
Continue reading 'Fraggle Rock' Movie 'Edginess' Explained
Imitations of life
July 5th, 2010
It's the rare person who's seen every Woody Allen movie. Woody Allen may not even be that person. How else explain "Alice" or "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion"? Anyway, I'd never seen "Celebrity" until this weekend. That's the one in which Kenneth Branagh plays a free-lance writer who manages to get romantically entangled, to one degree or another, with Melanie Griffith, Judy Davis, Winona Ryder, Charlize Theron, and Famke Janssen. Can you tell he's the Woody stand-in?
Watching Branagh channel his inner Woody is kind of amazing. There's this whine he gets in his voice, along with a physical tentativeness, the hesitation, and general stop-and-go rhythm, that's like a RADA version of Alvy Singer. This is no small feat. Four years earlier, John Cusack played the Woody stand-in in "Bullets Over Broadway," and there's no comparison. That's just a good actor playing an underdeveloped role rather than a good actor (maybe even a great one) doing an inspired impersonation.
This got me to thinking about actors imitating other actors onscreen -- not playing them in a biopic, like Robert Downey Jr. as Charlie Chaplin, say, or in "Ed Wood" Vincent D'Onofrio's cameo as Orson Welles (with vocal assistance from Maurice LaMarche). No, I mean taking over another actor's style and manner and making it his or her own. Between the cult of originality in this culture and actors' egos being what they are, this is a fairly rare occurrence. Offhand I can think of maybe half a dozen other examples beside Branagh/Allen.
Not the last picture show
July 5th, 2010
Today's New York Times has a front-page story about the survival of movie theaters in small North Dakota towns. The photo at left shows the Roxy Theater, in Langdon. Rural population loss is a major concern in North Dakota, and the idea is that keeping these theaters as going concerns is a way of providing de facto community centers for these towns.
Even today, when the popularity of flat-panel TVs at home and ubiquity of DVD drives on laptops and netbooks have made the multiplex seem like a dinosaur, the idea of vintage single-screen theaters remains very much a part of the romance of moviegoing. It's not the sturdiest part, to be sure. ("The Last Picture Show," which takes its title from the closing of the only theater in a Texas town, is set in 1952.) Movie theaters have been shutting down almost as long as there have been movies. But so long as teenagers want to get out of the house on a Friday night, and people want to share an emotional response in a darkened auditorium with others similarly inclined, there will be movie theaters.
There's a terrific website, CinemaTour.com, whose self-described mission is "to research and document the locations and histories of cinemas throughout the world." Check it out.
