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Junkfood Cinema: Battle Beyond the Stars

Brian Salisbury — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:30:58 +0000

Editor’s Note: We hope you enjoy this new Friday afternoon column, Junkfood Cinema, by Brian Salisbury. It celebrates movies that are so bad, even though they are also sometimes so good. For more (coming each and every Friday), stay tuned to the Junkfood Cinema Archive. Also, please feel free to let us know what you think of this new weekly feature in the comment section below.

Battle Beyond the Stars

Directed by: Jimmy T. Murakami

Written by: John Sayles & Anne Dyer

Produced by: Roger Corman, Ed Carlin, & Mary Ann Fisher

Starring: George Peppard, Robert Vaughn, John Saxon, and Richard Thomas

For this second helping of Junkfood Cinema I will gorge myself on Battle Beyond the Stars. Operating a bad movie column, it was merely a matter of time before I snacked on something from the Roger Corman. He is the sultan of schlock and a genius in the art of box office manipulation. If you are unfamiliar with his work, go out and rent A Bucket of Blood, Deathrace 2000, and Humanoids From the Deep. Granted, he didn’t direct Deathrace or Humanoids, but his camp-covered fingerprints can be found all over any film he produces as well. Corman is a man who understands the irrefutable drawing power of boobs, blood, and mayhem; his entire catalogue is chock full of it. But Corman also understands film trends and how best to trick audiences into seeing his movies time and time again. Case in point, Battle Beyond the Stars was his brilliant plan for capitalizing on Star Wars. And before you paint the man as nothing more than a hack, bear in mind that Battle Beyond the Starsis an intergalactic remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. I wish I could fabricate information that incredible.

If you’ve seen The Seven Samurai, the plot of Battle Beyond the Stars should sound very familiar. An evil overlord, bent on conquering the entire universe, sets his sights on the bountiful, and totally defenseless planet of Akir. He threatens them, bullies them, and warns them that he will return for their crops and their vows of total submission in seven risings of their Red Giant. What is a completely wuss planet to do? They decide to let young Shad venture into the unknown and gather mercenaries willing to fight for the survival of Akir. He gathers seven ronin outcasts and heads home for what promises to be the most epic battle of 1980.

What Makes It Bad?

I honestly don’t know where to begin. The movie’s central setting is a planet with advanced computers that has mastered space travel and weapons controlled by xylophones(yup). But in an apparent effort to fly in the face of logic, a Corman trait if I ever saw one, these people live in caves, eat from clay pots, and display a aptitude for medicine that would shame a shaman. What the hell? Not to mention the fact that from this paradoxical planet is spawned Shad, arguably the weeniest hero of the decade. This kid is so wimpy, I don’t know whether to root for him or give him an atomic wedgie.

The effects of this movie provide for the greatest space battles this side of first generation screen-savers. And while the the blue screen is fuzzy and some of the makeup designs seem as though they were applied as the actors were running from their trailers to the set, the bedrock cheese of the effects in Battle Beyond the Stars lie with the models of the ships. There is a ship, and I wish I were kidding about this, that was fashioned from a terrarium salvaged from the garbage. Magic! And I would be completely lacking in my charge if I didn’t mention the crown jewel here: a ship that looks like a swinging set of testicles or a voluptuous pair of tits depending on your Freudian proclivities. Oh yes. The boob ship, called so here because that’s where my perversion stands, comes replete with viewing ports serving as aureoles and knocks about the galaxy as proud as a stripper with a brand new pair of cash-grabbers.

This film features a very, very 80’s representation of the future. I’ll admit this could be construed as nitpicking, but it is one of those unavoidable setbacks facing any film from a distinct era trying to interpret the future. It takes on a whole new level of anachronistic when robots have cassette tapes inserted into their chests in order to play music. And for that matter, when actors portraying robots demonstrate that they are robots by doing the robot. There’s really nothing like having an Aldolfo Shabba-Tron 3000 is there? And for the love of Flashdance if I saw one more pair of leggings on an alien female I was going to gag myself with a spoon.

Why I Love It!

There is a major film historian context behind my love of this film. While Roger Corman sadly remains largely unsung among the casual film viewer, he was the driving force behind some of the biggest names in Hollywood. When he fired nearly his entire visual effects team because he found out that their “worked on Star Wars” boasts were largely bullshit, he promoted the one employee with whom he had been impressed to the position of art director. That kid he promoted…a nobody named James Cameron. Yup, watch this film and see how it colors your anticipation for Avatar. Corman’s screenwriter, John Sayles, would go on to pen the scripts for The Howling, Eight Men Out, and The Spiderwick Chronicles. The composer, James Horner, has a body of work that includes Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Aliens, Apollo 13, and Titanic. Though not involved in this film, it is interesting to note that Corman also launched the career of Silence of the Lambsdirector Jonathan Demme. When you think about how many big names owe their careers to Roger Corman, it is even more fun to watch his super cheesy films.

Battle Beyond the Starshas an amazing array of characters. I especially love George Peppard’s space cowboy. He is part Han Solo, part John Wayne, and all awesome. I believe I need only mention that the man has a Scotch dispenser on his belt buckle to cement his greatness into your mind sockets; I know that’s all I needed. Not to be overlooked is Robert Vaughn whose character from The Magnificent Seven was apparently launched into space, became an effeminate pirate, and now resides on a Vegas planet. Sidenote for the dozen people that do not know this, The Magnificent Seven is another remake of The Seven Samurai so having Vaughn in both seems doubly legitimate.

This film also features a lizard man with a vendetta, a pair of thermal twins who are unsettling and weird, and a rack-tastic warrior women called Saint-Exmin (apparently Professor X achieved sainthood). The latter of the list is dressed, at various times throughout the film, as a dominatrix, an opera singer, and a birthday cake adornment. Hilarious! I also found it hysterical that the villain’s ground assault force had two uniform choices: race car driver or scuba gear. It was about as intimidating as a flock of second-graders on Halloween. Congrats!

I love this film. I love that even though the directing credit went to Jimmy Murakami, Corman was really the one in charge. I love the hokey effects, the outlandish characters, and the shameless Star Wars ripoffs. Don’t believe me? Listen for the sound effects used on the opening and closing doors on Dr. Hephaestus’ ship and see if it doesn’t remind you of the sound made by a certain Sith lord’s breathing apparatus. Do yourself a favor, if you haven’t seen this movie or if you haven’t seen it since you were a kid, go rent it right this second and have an out-of-this-world weekend.

Junkfood Pairing:

Astronaut ice cream – I know it seems a hack or perhaps just incredibly lazy choice, but when you think about it, astronaut ice cream is the perfect complement to this film. It takes a classic, beloved snack and gives it a crazy, science-fiction twist. Battle Beyond the Stars takes the classic Seven Samurai story and through the magic of Roger Corman and John Sayles, casts it in an overzealous sci-fi mold. So by “if you think about it” I clearly mean “if I shoehorn a metaphor into this”. Hooray!!

Kevin Carr’s Weekly Report Card for 11.20.09

Kevin Carr — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:04:22 +0000

NEW MOON

Studio: Summit Entertainment

Rated: PG-13 for some violence and action.

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene and Jackson Rathbone

Directed by: Chris Weitz

What it’s about: The not-so-epic Twilight saga continues with Bella bellyaching about how much she wants to become a vampire. Edward realizes that if he sticks around, he (or someone in his family) will kill and eat her, so he leaves to find himself. Bella falls into a depression until the hunky Jacob Black becomes her BFF but, surprise surprise, he’s actually a werewolf. And Bella wants to know what this all means for her.

What I liked: The second half. Seriously, once the claws come out with the wolf pack and we later get to see the Volturi (i.e., the awesome Italian vampires), things really pick up. The film turns into less of a teenage angst fest and looks more like a vampire movie. Particularly with the Volturi, Michael Sheen mops the floor with the rest of the cast in terms of acting. Too bad he wasn’t in the entire movie.

As for the rest of this film, there are some significant improvements on last year’s Twilight, the main elements being the make-up and the special effects. The vampires don’t just look like they’re padded down with baby powder, and the werewolves are pretty cool, even if they are blindingly obvious CGI models.

What I didn’t: The first half. Jesus Christ on a freaking crutch, could that Bella Swan be more pathetic. If I had been watching this movie on television, I would have turned it off in the first hour. In the beginning, she constantly nags Edward to make her a vampire. Then she cuts her finger and holds it up in front of the vampires, innocently saying, “It’s just a little blood.” Then she hits depression mode the likes of which has never been seen in a film, complete with alienating her friends, staying bedridden for months on end and waking up screaming about how much it hurts her heart. I found myself wishing a 60s-era Connery James Bond would walk in and smack her around a bit just to get on with the show.

With that said, if you’re going to have a lesser half of a film, better make it the first half. But still, I’d find myself so much more into the Twilight saga if we just got rid of Bella and Edward stopped being such a douche. Team Jacob all the way, people!

Who is gonna like this movie: Twi-hards, Twi-moms and their dates who want to get laid.

PLANET 51

Studio: TriStar Pictures

Rated: PG for mild sci-fi action and some suggestive humor.

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Jessica Biel, Justin Long, Gary Oldman and Seann William Scott

Directed by: Jorge Blanco

What it’s about: An alien world that inexplicably emulates 1950s America is wrapped up in paranoia about an invasion of brain-sucking extraterrestrial are shocked when an American astronaut lands in their back yard… and the hilarity ensues (or at least it should, in a perfect world).

What I liked: The concept is actually pretty funny, even though the film completely botches it. The animation is decent, although the bulbous aliens don’t quite work from a design concept level. But hey, they’re worlds better than the talking termites in Delgo.

Oh, and my kids really liked it, which is really the target market, after all.

What I didn’t: To make a good movie, you need a good plot and good characters. Planet 51 delivers neither of these. There’s a randomness to the entire film, throwing jokes at the screen that never quite stick. Dwayne Johnson slathers on the cheese in a role that makes me long for the January release of The Tooth Fairy.

The story is a real stretch. I get the idea to turn 50s paranoia on its ear, but even in the context of an animated movie, it’s a real stretch. Apparently the astronaut doesn’t realize that the planet has life because the roving robot sent as a scout only collected rocks. Yeah… that barely works even for a cartoon.

And speaking of the roving robot, when it decides to bond with one of the aliens, it looks like it’s humping him to death. That’s an awkward moment with your kids in an animated movie.

Who is gonna like this movie: Kids… and that’s about it.

THE BLIND SIDE

Studio: Warner Bros.

Rated: PG-13 for one scene involving brief violence, drug and sexual references.

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Kathy Bates, Tim McGraw, Ray McKinnon and Quinton Aaron

Directed by: John Lee Hancock

What it’s about: Michael Oher is a homeless teen in Memphis who is taken in by a wealthy white family. They eventually adopt him and help him bring his grades up enough that he can play football. This is the true story of Oher, who is now a player for the Baltimore Ravens.

What I liked: It might seem like a back-handed compliment to say that I didn’t hate this movie, but it’s an accurate statement. This movie was something I was dreading from the moment I saw that trailers, but the film itself isn’t as melodramatic as the trailers lead on. It is an inspirational story, and it’s a feel-good movie. For the most part, it manages to achieve this without being too schmaltzy.

The acting is pretty good, with Sandra Bullock pulling off the rich, southern mom. Too bad she kinda steals the show from Oher’s character.

What I didn’t: There’s no doubt about it… The Blind Side is a button pusher. Sometimes, these buttons are pushed a little too deliberately and it becomes a little shameless in this respect. Some of the scenes of Bullock’s sassiness are over the top and less than believable, but who am I to judge Hollywood’s retelling of a true story.

If you’re hoping for a big football movie, you’ll be disappointed. The story hits certain elements of football, but that’s only about 25 percent of the film. But that doesn’t stop it from giving some gratuitous ego boosts to known college coaches and recruiters.

Who is gonna like this movie: Inspirational sports movie junkies.

PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL “PUSH” BY SAPPHIRE

Studio: Lionsgate

Rated: R for child abuse including sexual assault, and pervasive language.

Starring: Gabourey ‘Gabby’ Sidibe, Mo’Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Sherri Shepherd and Lenny Kravitz

Directed by: Lee Daniels

What it’s about: Clarisse “Precious” Jones is an overweight, illiterate teenager in 1987 Harlem who is pregnant with her father’s child. She is kicked out of school for being pregnant and, against the advice of her caustic mother, joins a tutoring program so she can get her GED.

What I liked: This movie does have a good message and it will inspire its viewers. We’ve all heard the critics in this country stampeding to the chance to give the movie a glowing review. It’s good, but it’s a victim of its own hype at times.

The stand-out parts of this movie come from the performances of Gabourey ‘Gabby’ Sidibe as the title character. Other roles are given more hype right now, but let’s not take away Sidibe’s work on the movie. She does a great job in her role, and she deserves her accolades.

Mariah Carey has been given some kudos for her underplayed role as a social worker, but it is Mo’Nique who shines as the evil mother that allows abuse to happen to her daughter.

What I didn’t: Our illustrious executive editor Neil Miller has referred to this movie as “poverty porn,” and he’s absolutely right. There’s more social issues in this movie than a very special episode of any given 80s sit-com. About two-thirds through the movie, another social issue bomb is dropped on Precious, and I literally rolled my eyes. All we need now is for Somali pirates to be written into the film, and we’d have it all covered.

One other problem with this movie… where were all the psychic warriors? I thought this was Push!

Who is gonna like this movie: Anyone who has ever considered joining an Oprah book club.

Fat Guys at the Movies Ep. 141 – Big Fat Moon

Kevin Carr — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:00:05 +0000

On This Week’s Show: Neil squeals about Team Jacob in his review of the highly anticipated The Twilight Saga: New Moon while Kevin struts around the Magical Studio in the Sky with no shirt on, desperately hoping people will mistake him for Taylor Lautner. After recounting their harrowing stories of braving the hoards of teenage girls at their respective screenings, Kevin and Neil take a trip to Planet 51 then are Blind Sided by Precious before laying down a Fat Guy Five about awesome vampire/werewolf movies (hint: neither Twilight film makes the list). There’s also a bizarre discussion of where Somali Pirates might fit into one of this week’s movies… how does that all work? Listen and find out!

Films Reviewed this Week: The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Planet 51, The Blind Side and Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire and Not to Be Confused with the Psychic Warrior Movie That Came Out Earlier This Year That No One Really Remembers Because Sapphire Doesn’t Know Squat About Psychic Warriors

Download this Episode

Episode Schedule:

Segment 1 [8:50] – Reviews of Planet 51 and Precious

Segment 2 [10:40] – Review of The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Segment 3 [12:45] – Review of The Blind Side, Box office recap and the Fat Guy Five: Awesome Werewolf/Vampire Movies

Segment 4 [6:35] – DVD Round-Up: Neil’s picks are Star Trek, Fight Club on Blu-ray and the Gone with the Wind box set; Kevin’s picks include Bruno, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: A Very Sunny Christmas, The Kevin Smith Blu-ray Box Set, Drawn Together: The Complete Series, Scrubs: Season 8 on Blu-ray and (God help him) Dane Cook: ISolated INcident; Review Recap and a look ahead to next week.

Next Week’s Show:

Kevin and Neil say Happy Thanksgiving with a possible early show featuring reviews of Old Dogs and Ninja Assassin

Show Links:

The second episode of Fat Guys at the Movies: Second Reel – Roland Emmerich vs. Michael Bay
FSR’s Weekly Report Card for The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Planet 51, The Blind Side and Precious

Give the Fat Guys some love:

Subscribe in iTunes

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Email the Fat Guys
Follow Kevin on Twitter (@kevincarr)
Follow Neil on Twitter (@rejects)

Discuss: Would You Go On Another ‘Vacation’ With Chevy Chase?

Dr. Cole Abaius — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:45:04 +0000

Sometimes I feel like I’m just getting back from Wally World. I’m tired, irritable, and there’s an unseasonably high urine count in my sandwiches. But with the news that Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo are teaming up for a Superbowl commercial, I have to wonder if we should really be saving up for a real family vacation.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Superbowl commercials because 1) they are a colossal let down and 2) I’m usually watching the Puppy Bowl instead (after the NFC championship, don’t we sort of already know who’s going to win the Superbowl?), but I would much rather see that dynamic duo hit the big screen again.

I know I’m usually pretty negative toward the lack of creativity that this decade will be marred by, but if we’re in for a penny, why not be in for a pound? Let’s just sequelize everything. All of it.

Some possible downsides to a National Lampoon’s Vacation sequel in the here and now:

National Lampoon, like the magazine that spawned it, has become one of the least funny producers of The Funny around.
With John Hughes gone, who could possibly write it?
Year One

Some urine-soaked food for thought.

What do you think?

Bonus Weekly DVD Drinking Game: A Very Sunny Christmas

Kevin Carr — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:55:15 +0000

We at FSR love to drink. And we know that many of you love to drink, as well. This shared love has led us to a brand new (though not exactly new) feature here at FSR: The Weekly DVD Drinking Game. Every week we will chose a DVD release and give you a few simple steps toward drunken stupidity (or cinematic tolerance). This week we’re also offering up a special bonus drinking game…

Are you tired of the weepy family dramas, the feel-good television specials and all that peace on Earth, goodwill to men garbage? Well, take a break and head down to Paddy’s Pub in Philadelphia to have a few Christmas Eve drinks with the gang. Enjoy the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: A Very Sunny Christmas special the way it was meant to be… black-out drunk, as Dennis would say.

And now, to cover our butts… This game is only for people over the age of 21. Please drink responsibly, and don’t wear your Santa suit around Charlie.

TAKE A DRINK WHENEVER….

There is a flashback

Someone throws a rock

Eugene mentions “the Lord”

There is a reference to A Christmas Carol

TAKE A DRINK WHEN YOU SEE…

Santa

An elf

A present

Snow (real or fake)

TAKE A DRINK WHEN SOMEONE SAYS…

“spirit”

“Christmas”

A swear word

Anyone’s name

CHUG YOUR DRINK WHENEVER YOU SEE …

Someone’s bare ass

For more drunken shenanigans, check out our Drinking Games Archive.

Coroner’s Report: Friday the 13th Part VI

Robert Fure — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:06:38 +0000

It occurred to me recently that we hadn’t quite finished our journey through the world of Jason Voorhees. Somehow it slipped my mind and schedule that we never had a little sit down round the campfire to talk about Friday the 13th Part VI, Jason Lives. We’ve got a couple more after that we’ll get to in the future (lots of newer stuff to review in the mean time) but for now, let’s talk about six, baby.

When we last left Jason Voorhees, little Tommy Jarvis had went a bit psycho and killed him. Then Tommy Jarvis went psycho and helped fight off a mentally unbalanced medic who took up the machete. In this installment, the real Jason Voorhees is back and one might argue that this is the turning point of the series. Sure, he’s survived a lot before, but now he’s a literal corpse, risen from the grave, ready to get his kill on. Meanwhile, everyone still thinks Tommy is batshit insane as he tries to warn them that an unstoppable killer is on the loose.

Kills

This installment of the franchise tallies up a very respectable 18 kills, which is something to write home to mother about.

Ills

A heart is torn out, a spear is pushed into a guy who is then flipped over, then the spear is thrust into some dudes face. An arm is torn off, a tree limb is shoved into a face, two heads (COMBO!) are cut off with one machete swing. A bottle is inserted into a throat, two people are stabbed at once, a face gets smashed, a head is stabbed, another head is ripped off, then a head is smashed and someone gets bent in half. This is a bloody one, baby.

Lust

There is a sex scene with a hot girl, but we don’t get to see any boobs. We do get to see a panty shot later, but come on, where is the nudity at?

Learning

All it takes to bring back an unstoppable and evil killing force is a timely lightning bolt to a metal rod inserted in a villain’s chest.

Review

Jason Lives really, in retrospect, seems to celebrate the series. Yet, viewed through the eyes of the time this was a pretty radical change. Now, Jason movies are fun. This is when it stopped being about anything resembling a scary flick and more about embracing and enhancing the slasher genre it created. If you’re only passing familiar with Friday the 13th this is the movie you think of it – if not by name, then by substance. The kills are classic, full of blood and humor. You can call this the Combo-Kill Edition because on at least two occasions Jason scores two kills with one move, like he was playing some brutal video game in his head.

Speaking of humor, some of you youngsters might not remember this ever happening, but this is the installment that has its own little James Bond moment. Jason walks into the frame, kills the viewer, and the screen wobbles away. Definitely not a serious film here, folks, but one that I found very enjoyable. Sure, there is some bad dialog, most of it being full of exposition and unnecessary, but what do we expect?

If you’re a fan of the series and you’ve been away for awhile or you’re just getting into Friday the 13th thanks to the Platinum Dunes remake, do yourself a favor and check out Part VI. It’s the perfect mixture of camp, kills, and that “classic” Jason – that’s actually more like new Jason, at the time. Not a perfect film, but a fun as hell one.

Five Actresses Who Should Play the Black Cat in Spider-Man 4, And Three Who Shouldn’t

Neil Miller — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:48:06 +0000

If you read a lot of movie blogs, chances are that you’ve seen plenty of suggestions about this week’s top rumor, the question of who should play The Black Cat in Spider-Man 4. You can throw all of those suggestions out the window. Because as you know, it isn’t worth reading until we weigh in on the topic. And with that, I would like to suggest our own list of ladies who should be wearing tight outfits and sneaking into NYC banks.

Initially the rumor was that Wedding Crashers starlet Rachel McAdams would be slipping on a tight cat burglar outfit and playing Felicia Hardy — the noble, sweet and oh-so-dangerous villainess who once captured the heart of Spider-man. But that was squashed as an “internet rumor.” As well, there has also been word that Julia Stiles has read for the part. But nothing is certain for director Sam Raimi, as he gears up for production on this fourth Spider-Man flick, which is set to shoot early next year. But never fear, Mr. Raimi. Once again, the Rejects are here for you — and we have a few suggestions. Also, we have a few ladies of Hollywood we’d like to see you stay away from — far away.

Five Actresses Who Should Play The Black Cat

CAREY MULLIGAN: This sweet, cute lady would fit right into the Spider-man universe. She’s got that innocent look that fits in with the lighter tone of this franchise, and the acting chops to give the character a bit of depth. On top of that, she’s about to become the next major ‘It’ girl in Hollywood, which leads me to believe that she’ll be due to get into a higher profile project. And what better way to go high profile than to swing into a major comic book franchise?

ZIYI ZHANG: I am aware that The Black Cat is a cute, blonde, all-American white girl, but that doesn’t mean the role can’t be delivered with a bit of diversity. We’ve seen Ziyi Zhang in all kinds of American films, including Memoirs of a Geisha and Rush Hour 2, but we’ve yet to see her really settle into something on this side of the big ocean that shows off her graceful, acrobatic nature. Remember, The Black Cat is an agile cat burglar — and Zhang could deliver such agility and grace in a way that is unlike that of her American counterparts.

EMILY BLUNT: Ever since the lovely Ms. Blunt was rumored to be playing Black Widow in Iron Man 2, we’ve been itching to see her in a major superhero film. She’s got the charisma and the physical prowess to pull off such a role, and The Black Cat is a similar kind of character. That, and we do love that cute British accent of hers. Who says that Felicia Hardy has to be an American dame? I know, purists. Get over it — we want someone who can take the character to a level beyond that of being a sexy girl in tight clothes. Remember, Hardy is a troubled, lonely soul who has had a really hard life that’s driven her to become a cat burglar. We need an actress with some chops.

JANUARY JONES: Much like Carey Mulligan, who I mentioned above, January Jones is one of those actresses on the verge. She’s attained a relatively high level of stardom with just one major role — that of Betty Draper on Mad Men — and hasn’t yet done anything in the world of cinema that has made us stop and say “wow, she’s a major star.” So we think that she’d be worth a shot as The Black Cat. She’s got the look and she really needs to do something fun before we are completely convinced that she’s as drab and stoic as Mrs. Draper.

MILA KUNIS: Yet again, I pick an actress who is (a) not blonde and (b) doesn’t fit into that sexy, all-American girl stereotype. But remember, the casting of a role like this one should be all about personality — something that Ms. Kunis has in droves. The character of the Black Cat is a conflicted, tormented girl who is also devious and sexy. She isn’t all bad, but she isn’t all good either. And based on all of her previous work, I’d say that Mila could very well pull off that range of performance.

Three Actresses Who Should NOT Play The Black Cat

HAYDEN PANETIERRE: Casting an actress like this young Heroes star would be the equivalent of carrying over the “Jazz Club” scene from Spider-Man 3. We’ve seen nothing from her yet that tells us that she’s anything more than a surface-level star who, while cute, cannot bring any depth to her characters. And one thing that I seem to be mentioning over and over for The Black Cat is depth. This character is not a one-note character, but Ms. Panetierre is a one-note kind of actress.

MEGAN FOX: Sure, Megan Fox has a nice body (if you’re into objectifying women on a very base level, that is). And she seems to be the new go-to girl for big Hollywood blockbusters. But I see two glaring problems with even the thought of her in a Spider-Man movie. One, she’s a terribly stale actress. Unable to deliver emotion or anything resembling range. Two, she’s not a cute person. This is a franchise that tows the line between badass superhero movie and cute family fun. There’s nothing cute, or family friendly about Megan Fox. Which works in a movie like Jennifer’s Body, but not even remotely in a movie like this.

KRISTEN STEWART: Later this week, when New Moon hits theaters, Ms. Stewart is about to once again get a major injection of popularity into her career. And she’s done well to make a name for herself as the brooding, depressed girl next door. None of that translates to being a fun, dangerous vixen in a superhero flick. Sure, if The Black Cat is going to be a sad person who plays with her hair a lot and cries over Peter Parker, maybe. But that’s not this character. And I’d be disappointed if Kristen’s popularity translated into being considered for such a role.

So there you have it — a few simple suggestions from us to Sam Raimi. From where I’m sitting, there’s no reason why Raimi and crew can’t think outside the box on this one and cast someone we wouldn’t expect — just as long as they don’t go the predictable route and pick up someone who can’t bring anything to the character.

Who do you think should play The Black Cat in Spider-Man 4?

Exclusive: ‘New Moon’ Screenwriter Talks Adapting Empty Pages and ‘Eclipse’ Additions

Dr. Cole Abaius — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:38:45 +0000

I realize that not many in our core audience will be shouting Oh Em Gee whenever they see even the slightest bit of Twilight: New Moon news, but I think that most of our core audience (that means you, Darnell) loves the profess of filmmaking. You love the smell of color correction chemicals in the morning and the weight of an apple box in your arms. Or you just love that moment where you look up and a once-empty page is completely filled. With shit that you’re going to edit anyway. But the point stands.

Melissa Rosenberg is a screenwriter who straddles more two worlds in more than one way. The first is obvious: she writes heavily for both television and film. The second is less obvious: she has written three Twilight films (which seem to gain ire from certain sects of fanboys) and she writes for “Dexter” (which seems to get excited squeals from the same sects).

I was lucky enough to get her perspective on writing someone else’s story, the dream of writing, and falling in love with a guy in an L. Ron Hubbard costume.

As usual, I’m in bold.

We were just talking about going home for the holidays.

Where are you from originally?

Corpus Christi, Texas, but now I’m holed up in Austin.

I’m very fond of Austin, and my husband, ["Weeds" writer] Lev Spiro, did his graduate work in Austin for five years. His friends are sort of an Austin circle. In fact we met at an Austin Halloween party. We were out in L.A., and you know, all the Austin people together…

What were you dressed up as?

Well, I’d actually dressed up the week before as Liza Minnelli from Cabaret, but he was L. Ron Hubbard, and he had this volcano on his head that actually erupted when you lit it, and it was quite clever. He was handing out money.

Is that what did it for you?

Yeah, pretty much. [Laughs]

[Laughs] True love. And speaking of that, would you mind getting started by telling me a little bit about your philosophy of adapting someone else’s work?

Well, I’m sure it depends on whose work you’re adapting. With Stephanie [Meyer]’s work, my philosophy was to stay as true to the book as I could. But that doesn’t mean staying true to every scene and every line of dialog. Obviously one can’t do that. I think in some cases of people adapting books, they use it as a jumping off place. An interesting concept. Let’s expand on it and do something else. When approaching this particular adaptation, it was very much about adapting this book and bringing this book to the screen, and staying true to the emotional arc, the emotional journies of the characters.

Was there an urge to stay true to the book for the fans?

For me, honestly, I was fairly unaware of the fanbase. It was really – the book itself lent itself to adaptation. Stephanie has created such a rich mythology and such rich characters that I was compelled by the story and wanted to bring that story to the screen. I didn’t really see a need to go off the path of that. I loved the story. Earlier, you know, the galleys of the book had been optioned by Paramount before it was in print, and they had a different philosophy for this book and used it as a launching pad for a different story. I never read that script, but as Stephanie says, “It was a great script. It just had nothing to do with my book.”

Do you know what it was? You said you didn’t read it, but did you get an inclination of what they included and left out?

I know that the CIA was involved, and the character Bella was a track star or something like that. It’s so contrary to the character Stephanie created. So when Summit approached Stephanie about optioning the rights to the book after Paramount let them go, Stephanie was understandably wary. She was not particularly interested in letting them go for fear of the same thing happening. So she, in optioning the book to them, has very specific things in her contract for things that could and could not happen, and she sort of wrote a brief manifesto of things such as “No canines in the vampires should be longer than normal canines.” You know, fangs. This sort of thing.

When I heard about this manifesto, I thought, “Oh, God. Really? I’m gonna have to work within these restrictions?” I didn’t want any restrictions, ya know?

Sure.

So I read it. It’s only like a page or two, just a couple of details of what she wanted. And I thought, “Well, I wouldn’t do that anyway.” [Laughs] Because I’m interested in adapting the book. I think if I had been more interested in using it as a jumping off place that would have been more frustrating. But I had no interest in doing that, so it was just a good marriage for me.

Beyond the usual difficulties adapting something, this is the book that involves blank pages to show emotion. How do you adapt empty pages for the screen?

What I did was to show the passage of time and the lack of movement for [Bella]. That was to put her – have you seen the movie?

I haven’t gotten a chance yet. They screen it Wednesday.

Ah. Well, so, I put her – there’s a scene in which that passage of time happens, and it’s her sitting stone-still as time and seasons pass around her, and Chris [Weitz] did some really beautiful stuff visually with that. So that was my way of putting that same sense of blankness, and yet, the time is passing.

You’ve worked a lot in TV. Do you still feel young in film?

I am young in the film world. I’ve had four – when Eclipse is done – I’ll have had four movies made in a very short period of time. Sort of on a television schedule really. Typically movies take years and sometimes decades to get made, and I’ve been fortunate enough to work with Summit, and they really make movies. They’ve done all four of my movies.

I am young. I’ve worked for one feature studio; I’ve worked for one group of executives. My managers and agents keep telling me, “You gotta get out there and work with some other studios,” but I’m so happy at Summit. I’m really reluctant to go! They are such a great little studio. You hear all the horror stories about working at the major studios and development hell and your work being re-written by five or ten other people. I have no interest in that kind of career. Sounds like hell to me.

No doubt I will get lured in by some fantastic project, and hopefully it’ll be a good experience.

Is this what you wanted to do when you grew up?

I always loved writing, but I also loved performing. I was always into performing, so I think I saw myself as some sort of performer. A dancer. A musician of sorts. I had some talent, and I could have been perhaps good at any one of those things, but I was never going to be great I don’t think. I gave those up and went back to what I’d always loved to do, and not quite realized I could make a career out of it in the form of screenwriting. The next step was to move to Los Angeles, and start working for a film company. I started to get that I could marry my love of the performing arts with my love of storytelling into this one career. That’s when I went for it.

How are Twilight and “Dexter” similar?

Twilight and “Dexter” are similar in that the lead characters are both characters who are passing as humans. And are both in search of, they are studying humanity and moving toward their own humanity. They are both very much The Other. They are outsiders looking in.

And then, of course, there’s the blood.

Looking ahead to the future, are you even thinking about Eclipse at this point?

Eclipse has finished shooting.

It’s done?

It’s in post right now. I wrote New Moon, and then segued into writing Eclipse because they wanted to shoot them very, very close together. They shot New Moon and I think three months later went into production on Eclipse.

So when you say they make movies…

They make movies. Yeah.

I’m surprised. I’d checked out stories about it in post, and I guess it’s my mindset that I couldn’t believe the speed.

Well, there’s another element in that vampires aren’t supposed to age, so you have to stay on top of that one. But it’s also that you want to keep it in the zeitgeist. There’s probably a marketing angle there somehow. But for me it just worked out. I went from one to the other and without any time.

Was there anything in Eclipse that got you energized?

The triangle of the three characters is quite delicious, and a great deal of fun to write, and I was also really excited to write the finale – the battle. What I also got to do was to expand on what was in the book, things she could not have written. The books are all told intimately from Bella’s point of view – you get to see inside her head, and I think there’s a great deal of the appeal there. But what happens is that she’s only hearing about events that happen off-page. Anything that happens with the Volturi or with the evil vampires or the newborn army – she’s only hearing about it after the fact or through Alice regarding visions.

But we as filmmakers can actually go and see that and can develop little stories for those characters. I was able to develop the characters of Victoria and her lover and we could cut away to that, we could cut away to the newborn army to see what they’re up to. Those were fun scenes to write. I love that stuff.

What’s the deal with Breaking Dawn then? Are you interested in writing that?

Breaking Dawn is kind of a No Comment situation. Obviously I’d be a fool not to want to write it and complete the process. But nothing has been decided at this moment so we will see.

This Week In DVD: November 17th

Rob Hunter — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:41:33 +0000

Rob Hunter loves movies. He also loves his job as a CPA who occasionally finds a little mystery thrown his way. These two joys come together in the form of cash money payments that he receives every week and immediately uses to buy more DVDs. So join us each week as he takes a look at new DVD releases and gives his highly unqualified opinion as to which titles are worth BUYing, which are better off as RENTals, and which should be AVOIDed at all costs.

Click on any of the titles below to magically head over to Amazon.com and pick up the DVD. And don’t forget to check out Neil Miller’s hilariously titled This Week In Blu-ray column for reviews on the latest high definition Blu-ray releases!

Andy Barker P.I.: The Complete Series

Pitch: The short-lived adventures of a late-night talk show sidekick who gets mistaken for a detective…

Why Buy? Andy Richter is a funny guy, but he’s had more failed TV series than Nathan Fillion. One of those commercial failures featured Richter as a CPA who becomes an amateur detective. With a stellar supporting cast including Tony Hale, Harve Presnell, and Clea Lewis, the show managed to be hilarious each and every episode. Sadly, there were only six episodes… Shout Factory’s new DVD set includes all six along with some impressive extras for such a short-lived series. The gag reel alone is priceless just to see the clean-cut Richter say “fuck!” many, many times.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? Commentaries, featurettes, gag reel

Moon (UK)

Pitch: Who knew the Brits would reach the Moon almost two months before the US…

Why Buy? Some of you may be checking your release date calendars right now and wondering what exactly I’m smoking as I write up this column. The US release of Moon (both DVD and Blu-ray) isn’t until January 12th, 2010, but the Brits got it yesterday! The good news is that you can too if you don’t mind a few extra bucks shipping to get it across the ocean. The UK blu-ray is an all-region release meaning it will play on any Blu-ray player including a Playstation3. This is a fantastic little sci-fi debut from writer/director Duncan Jones and anchored by another stellar performance from Sam Rockwell. Neil Miller loved it way back in January (review here), and now you can too.

Blu-ray? This is my Blu-ray Pick of the Week!

Extra Features? Commentary, featurettes

Star Trek

Pitch: For every 1,701 remakes/reboots that get released each year, there’s always at least one that stands out as being even better than the original. This is that film for 2009…

Why Buy? This flick ended up being one of my favorite cinematic surprises this year. There were several better films, but few I expected so little of before seeing. There’s almost universal acclaim for the film from critics (FSR’s review here) and fans alike (KangarooBeStoned being one of the rare exceptions). Sure you can nitpick little details here and there, but there’s just no getting around how damn entertaining the movie is. JJ Abrams has crafted a fantastic piece of pop entertainment that bodes very well indeed for the future of the franchise. (If I hadn’t already picked my Blu-ray of the week above, this would have been it. Check out Neil Miller’s exhaustive Blu-ray review here.)

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? Deleted scenes, commentary, featurettes, gag reel

The Steve Coogan Collection

Pitch: Think you’ve seen all of Steve Coogan’s comedic glory? Think again…

Why Buy? Who knew this guy had a career before Tropic Thunder? Kidding. I knew, but I just didn’t realize it was so damn extensive. This extremely comprehensive set covers pretty much his entire BBC career from Paul & Pauline Calf’s Video Diaries to his most famous creation, talk show host Alan partridge. Eight TV series and several hours worth of bonus material are spread across fourteen (!) dvds guaranteeing even the most devoted Coogan fan will find something new here. Of course, all the content in England wouldn’t matter if it was all shite… luckily Coogan is funny as hell in almost everything he does.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? Commentaries, featurettes

Thirst

Pitch: A stylish and bloody vampire film for adults. Kinky, fun-loving adults…

Why Buy? In a world besieged by sparkling vampires that do more moping and sulking than ravishing and blood sucking, Park Chan-wook’s ode to those who crave the sticky red stuff is a breath of fresh air. Park’s style and dark sense of humor are all over this film about a priest who becomes a vampire. As if dealing with a newly discovered thirst for blood wasn’t bad enough, he’s also developed a fairly strong libido… luckily he meets a very attractive married woman. Unluckily she may be even more dangerous than he is. (My review here)

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? None

Bruno

Pitch: A gay, Austrian fashionista comes to America solely to piss off Harrison Ford…

Why Rent? This is an odd bird. I saw a sneak preview of about twenty minutes of footage back at SXSW (here) and it was hilarious. I literally had tears in my eyes from laughing. But when the movie actually released this past summer something had changed. Maybe it was the fact that the scenes we saw had been trimmed down for the feature. Maybe the humor just wasn’t as funny the second time around. Or maybe the film’s overly planned structure and screenplay didn’t feature enough raw and unpredictable moments. Watching the movie now I can only manage a few laughs, but your mileage may vary. The extras add a few more laughs as well, so it’s worth a rental.

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? Deleted scenes, commentary, featurette

Downhill Racer (Criterion Collection)

Pitch: It’s no Better Off Dead, but it’s still a fascinating look into the world of competitive skiing…

Why Rent? Maybe ‘fascinating’ is a bit too strong, but it is interesting at least. Robert Redford plays a cocky Olympic skier and Gene Hackman is his coach. Both men are incredible actors so you can watch it for them alone, but director Michael Ritchie also manages to make downhill skiing look exciting and dangerous. It’s a movie worth watching, and if you’re going to watch it may as well be the Criterion.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? Featurettes

Evilution

Pitch: Zombies and a clever combination of two words mashed together into a brand new one? Irresistible…

Why Rent? Maybe I’m being nicer to this movie than I normally would, but thanks to last night’s arrival of Left4Dead 2 on my PC I’m in a zombie-loving (and zombie-killing) mood. There’s nothing new here, but the zombies and the carnage they wreak look good and bloody. What more could you want? Sure, sure, a better script, better actors, blah blah blah. Just enjoy the zombie mayhem!

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? None

Franklyn

Pitch: Real-world drama concerning three Londoners dealing with depression, loss, and suicidal thoughts. Oh, and there’s a masked vigilante in a Dystopian alternate reality too…

Why Rent? This is an example of great concept/poor execution, but the concept is enough to make it worth watching. The story moves between a London we recognize where we meet a suicidal woman, a depressed man, and an older man searching for his missing son. But there’s also an alternate London, one where religion has become mandatory, atheism is outlawed, and a masked avenger stalks the streets looking to beat the snot out of some club-carrying priests. Interesting, odd, and often beautiful to look at, the film doesn’t manage to to pull it all together cohesively.

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? None

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia: A Very Sunny Christmas

Pitch: The gang explores the meaning of Christmas, and no part of the holiday is safe. Especially Santa Claus…

Why Rent? This show continues to be one of the funniest on TV, and I would normally have recommended any release from it as a Buy… but this lists at $27 for what amounts to a 43 minute extended episode. So rent this one and wait for the next full season DVD release which will most likely include this as well.

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? None

My Sister’s Keeper

Pitch: Parents with a dying daughter choose to bring a second child into the world to act as a living organ donor…

Why Rent? I didn’t really like this movie all that much, but the premise is incredibly interesting. Sure it’s played more for the melodrama than the ethical debate, but it’s still a pretty good conversation starter. If you can handle the emotional manipulation and the atrocious acting of Cameron Diaz then you may want to give it a shot. Or as Kevin Carr says in his review (here), you’ll like it if you “looooooooooove tear-jerkers.”

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? Deleted scenes

The Open Road

Pitch: A father and son who’ve grown apart embark on a cross-country road trip! Two cliches for the price of one…

Why Rent? Jeff Bridges gives yet another thoughtful and impressive performance here as a famous retired baseball player who had let the game and the fame steer him away from his family. Justin Timberlake isn’t bad as his son trying to get him across the country to see their wife/mother in the hospital. A few laughs and a bit of heart make for an okay little film.

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? Commentary, featurettes

Rome: The Complete Series

Pitch: Swords and sandals and sex! It was an HBO series after all…

Why Rent? I didn’t catch this show when it actually ran on HBO, but catching up with it now I can finally see what the critical fuss was all about. Engaging characters, fantastic acting, beautiful set design and CGI work, and some very deep and detailed story lines make this a show that will capture your attention.

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? Commentaries, featurettes

Vampire Party

Pitch: We know the French can do hardcore horror better than most, but how about the horror/comedy…

Why Rent? Turns out they’re pretty good at this too. A group of friends worm their way into a high class party in a large mansion outside of town, but soon discover the revelers are divided into two groups… party guests and party snacks. One guess which group are friends are on. The laughs are solid, the effects are limited but well done, and the great Tcheky Karyo stars as the lead vampire. Side note, the French title translates to The Teeth of the Night which is a lot better than the generic American one.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? None

Basement Jack

Pitch: An abused child grows up to become a serial killer. He gets points for killing sans mask though like most movie psychos…

Why Avoid? But he loses those points two-thirds of the way in when he inexplicably starts wearing a mask anyway. That’s a quibble, but the film’s major flaw that I can’t forgive is the use and abuse of CGI. A stabbing should never be accomplished via CGI, yet every single knife attack here is done with a computer. Knife through the head? CGI. Knife through the chest? CGI. So sad. There’s only a handful of practical effects visible here, and that’s inexcusable Mr. Jack.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? None

Hanger

Pitch: The product of a motel abortion is tossed in a dumpster and comes back for revenge eighteen years later…

Why Avoid? Ugh. The director of one of my least favorite Canadian films (Ryan Nicholson, Gutterballs) returns with another lowest common denominator flick filled with bad acting, explicit behaviors, and solid effects. A prostitute is given an abortion by her pimp, the fetus grows up and goes looking for the pimp, prosthetically ugly people fill the screen… blech. Skip it.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? Deleted scenes, commentary, featurettes

Humpday

Pitch: Two guy friends grow bored in their search for the clitoris and decide to go for the easy O instead…

Why Avoid? Two guys ramble on and on to each other. Occasionally other characters join in on the rambling. Miller liked it (review here) a lot more than I did, but that probably says more about him than anything else.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? Deleted scenes, commentary, featurette

The Limits of Control

Pitch: A mysterious man meets other mysterious people in Spain. The real mystery though is how this movie could be so incredibly boring…

Why Avoid? Seriously, it’s mind boggling how boring this film is. It’s basically a character going from A to B by way of the rest of the alphabet. (My review here) It looks beautiful thanks to cinematographer Christopher Doyle, and the talent on display is fairly hefty including Bill Murray, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, and Gael Garcia Bernal. One of the film’s few saving graces is a bespectacled and naked Paz De La Huarte as one of the many oddballs Isaach De Bankole meets as he walks his way towards a somewhat obvious conclusion.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? Featurette

Samurai Princess

Pitch: Scantily-clad Asian chick kicks ass. On a budget of $12 US…

Why Avoid? With that pitch above you may be surprised to see me recommend you avoid it. But I have some standards people, and one of them is that a movie shouldn’t look like it’s budget came from the coins found underneath couch cushions.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? None

Taintlight

Pitch: High-brow satire this is not…

Why Avoid? There’s exactly one gag that works in this spoof of the Twilight franchise, and it involves a mime pretending to talk on an imaginary cell phone while driving an imaginary car. It’s funny, and I laughed, but it was a lonely chuckle with nothing but silence and sighs to keep it company for the rest of the run time. That gag aside, the creativity and humor in this amateurish (but sincere) movie starts and stops with the title.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? Commentary, featurettes

Train

Pitch: Some American Turistas mistake a moving train for a Hostel…

Why Avoid? Thora Birch is the weakest link on an American wrestling team traveling in Eastern Europe, and when the group misses their train out of town they’re forced to settle for a less luxurious form of rail transport. Cue massive amounts of blood, gore, and stupidity… the first two are actually the only things this dumb movie has going for it. From the opening credits to the final scenes we’re witness to copious amounts of the red stuff and some very well done practical gore effects. But the characters are impossible to like or care for, the plot is simply Hostel on wheels, and the predictable survivor does so by using an inexplicably effective wrestling move.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? None

This Week in Blu-ray: Where No Man Has Gone Before

Neil Miller — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:35:59 +0000

Aside from taking Dr. Cole Abaius’ advice to change the name of this column to ‘This Fortnight in Blu-ray,’ I can’t say that I’ve done much in the way of the HD format lately. Sure, I’ve published two big special reports in the last week, but those don’t count. You don’t just want the big rundowns of movies like Up and Star Trek, you want the complete anthology each week — the big breakdown of all that is good and true in the world of Blu-ray home entertainment. So I’m back this week, with This Week in Blu-ray — our site’s most embarrassingly inconsistent, but also most handsome weekly column. This week we’ve got an embarrassment of another kind, one of riches. Everything from Trek to three movies from that chubby director who once gave us the early word that Chris Pine’s performance in Trek was going to be special. Also, we’re not talking about a certain Club and we’re coming back to a little indie that time seems to have forgotten.

It’s a busy week, so lets get started. Check out my picks below, and remember to support your local movie blog (us) by clicking the links and buying from Amazon.

Star Trek

This weekend, I dedicated 1,600 words in a completely separate article to this 3-disc behemoth, and I don’t see any reason to retract such statements now. Star Trek is the Blu-ray release that you’ve been waiting for. Especially if like me, you were disappointed with the special features on G.I. Joe and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (both fellow Paramount titles). It seems as if Paramount had all of their best people working on their best summer movie — one that delighted audiences everywhere, Trekker or otherwise. The Blu-ray features a ridiculous amount of special features, a glorious transfer and a gag reel that is second to none. If you don’t pick this one up this week, we are no longer friends.

Blu-ray exclusive features include 30 featurettes, 9 deleted scenes, an awesome gag reel and BD-Live.

Fight Club

Normally I wouldn’t even be talking about Fight Club because, well, we follow the damn rules. But in the case of this 10-year anniversary Blu-ray release, I think it is worth breaking that first rule in order to tell you all about some of the sweet extras that ended up in this release. On top of a great transfer of the film, we also get some brand new special features that weren’t part of the 2-disc special edition DVD set that was released a while back. There is a featurette about Ren Klyce and the Sound Design of Fight Club, an ‘Insomniac Mode’ in which we get an interactive search index, a commentary log and a topic search. The latter of which is a fascinating new feature that works well for a movie like this, but I can’t really see it working with many other releases. When combined with all of the previously released special features (several hours worth), it makes this Blu-ray an above average release, and a film worth adding to your collection. Also, it is likely that you, like me, have been waiting desperately to add Fight Club to your Blu-ray collection, regardless of the special feature collection.

Blu-ray exclusive features include a featurette about sound design, a ‘Flogging Fight Club’ featurette and Insomniac Mode, with interactive searching, commentary log, etc.

Scrubs: The Complete 8th Season

Like any major Scrubs fan — which oddly enough, I’m not — you are going to want to say goodbye to J.D. (Zach Braff) in the best way possible. And what better way to do it than to see it all unfold, the show’s epic eighth season, in glorious 1080p. Also, you might want to consider that the Blu-ray version of season 8 is hitting store shelves a whole week before the DVD. That’s an interesting plan on the part of ABC/Disney, but not much of a gamble. This is the first time the show has made it to Blu-ray, and it looks great. As well, the set has an additional BD-exclusive featurette called “It’s All in The Name,” an in-depth look at some of the show’s long-running, clever nicknames. Overall, it is worth picking up on Blu-ray, even if you don’t just want it a week earlier than your friends.

Blu-ray exclusive features include SeasonPlay, Seamless Menus and a BD-Exclusive featurette.

Bruno

The year’s most ridiculous, outrageous and mostly disturbing comedy. I guess the pundits were right when they said that Sacha Baron Cohen was out of his mind. Since seeing Bruno in theaters, I have been waiting for the Blu-ray release, safe in the knowledge that Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles surely must have left some good stuff on the cutting room floor. As it turns out, not only did they save some exclusive deleted scenes for the Blu-ray, they also recorded one of the most entertaining visual commentary tracks in the history of the format. We get front row seats as Baron Cohen and Charles remember all of the true stories behind the making of this spectacle of absurdity. That alone, is worth the price of admission. Also included is the new, experimental iPhone/iPod Touch feature called Pocket-Blu, which allows you to add additional content to your mobile device and use it as a virtual remote and keyboard. It’s pretty cool, and should become useful as Universal rolls it out to more titles in the future.

Blu-ray exclusive features include visual commentary, Pocket-Blu and BD-Live.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: A Very Sunny Christmas

To quote so many hipsters in this world, “this is happening.” The gang from Paddy’s Pub is celebrating Christmas… sort of. In order to rediscover the meaning of Christmas — something that escaped them long ago — we join the gang as they embark on a holiday adventure filled with stolen toys, childhood videos, naked elves and a bloody run in with Santa Claus. It is everything you’d expect from a direct-to-DVD holiday special, except more devious. Special features are pretty standard, including deleted scenes of “Young Mac and Young Charlie” as well as a ‘Making Of’ featurette and a Sunny Sing-a-long. Sadly though, all of those features are on the DVD as well. Either way, this is worth picking up.

There are no Blu-ray exclusive features on this title.

Gone with the Wind: 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition

This holiday season, what could be a more appropriate addition to your DVD collection than one of the greatest films of all-time, wrapped in a big, heavy-duty velvet box and packed with special features out the wazoo? I can only think of one thing, and it is the Star Trek Blu-ray that I mentioned above. Beyond that, this Gone with the Wind box set is one of the most spectacular collector’s sets I’ve seen all year. It includes a full-color 52-page book dedicated to the production and history of the film, a reproduction of the original 1939 Program, a CD soundtrack sampler, an archival letter from producer David O. Selznick. And that’s just the stuff that isn’t on the disc. The movie looks wonderful in HD, with a beautifully remastered TrueHD soundtrack. There is a BD-exclusive 6-hour documentary called MGM: When the Lion Roared. And 8-hours (yes, 8-hours) of special features that have previously been released on DVD. It is absolutely ridiculous. If you’re anything like me, you know someone in your family who would go nuts for this set.

Blu-ray exclusive features include a 6-hour documentary, collectible book, art and CD soundtrack.

Rome: The Complete Series

I must admit that I have never watched more than about 20-minutes of the show Rome, but what I’ve seen has led me to believe that this is (a) the kind of show that is worth buying in its most complete form, and (b) a show that looks fantastic in HD. All of these are true with this new Blu-ray release, the complete series. The only slightly sad part is that HBO has skimmed over the special feature selection, leaving a simple featurette and a few episodes of audio commentary. That won’t stop me from recommending that you get out there and pick this one up though, as the series is more than worth it.

There are no Blu-ray exclusive features on this title.

Kevin Smith 3-Pack

And lo, we have the first major disappointment in a while from the folks at Disney. This time it comes by way of a Miramax box set of Kevin Smith movies, which includes Clerks, Chasing Amy and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. To answer your first question, Mallrats was made at Universal, and this is a Miramax box set. That is why it isn’t in there. As for these titles, it is great to see them finally coming to Blu-ray, as I’ve long wanted to add some Kevin Smith movies to my Blu-ray collection, but overall they are very generically packaged. Thankfully, the special features have changed since the last DVD releases, the transfers are good but not great (as Smith would tell you himself, his movies aren’t visual spectacles), and the box set itself is worth it for fans. Both Chasing Amy and Clerks come with brand new behind the scenes documentaries about the anniversaries of the film. As well, Chasing Amy comes with a new Smodcast recording as a commentary track, in which Smith and producer Scott Mosier reminisce in their own special way. In a way, this is a must have for Smith fans. Others just might not get it.

Blu-ray exclusive features include three new behind the scenes featurettes (on Clerks and Chasing Amy) and a new Chasing Amy commentary track.

Franklyn

This dark little indie movie, which stars Ryan Phillipe as a masked crusader in a monolithic metropolis, has been on our radar for a while — ever since we reported on the trailer back in January. And after seeing many of our friends import Blu-rays from other regions, this title is now available to those of us who have regular ole Blu-ray players. The film itself is worth a look, visually stunning, engaging and full of intrigue, but the Blu-ray release is far from great. It has a stock selection of special features, all of which are shared with the DVD release, and no BD-exclusives. Aside from looking very, very good, this release isn’t worth buying. I would suggest throwing it in your Netflix queue (on Blu) and calling it a day.

There are no Blu-ray exclusive features for this title.

Galaxy Quest

It appears as if someone reminded Dreamworks that Star Trek, one of the legendary sci-fi franchises from which this movie derives its humor, is also hitting Blu-ray this week. That led them to rush into a lackluster release — in regards to its lack of special features and mediocre transfer (not grainy, just not quite smooth) — of Galaxy Quest. Still, even with the production company’s failings in the preparation of this release, the movie is still a lot of fun. And if you have never seen it, I would suggest using this Blu-ray release as an excuse to go out and rent it.

There are no Blu-ray exclusive features for this title.

My Sister’s Keeper

It would seem as if 2009 is the year in which Cameron Diaz really put herself out there, trying new and different roles with My Sister’s Keeper and Richard Kelly’s The Box. Sadly, both films were miserable failures on multiple levels. This ridiculously depressing story of a girl who is genetically engineered to donate body parts to her cancer-ridden sister, is just the trite, overly schmaltzy studio junk that make local movie theaters smell like embalming fluid. If you’ve seen this movie in theaters, you know exactly what I’m talking about — nothing but old people. Not even Cameron Diaz with no hair can make that experience okay.

Blu-ray exclusive features include an additional featurette and ‘From Picoult to Screen,’ an analysis of the page-to-screen adaptation.

The Open Road

For all intents and purposes, the few reviews that I’ve read of the Justin Timberlake, Jeff Bridges led drama The Open Road were surprisingly positive. Timberlake — no slouch in the acting world — plays a minor league baseball player trying to reconnect with his legendary baseball playing father (Bridges). It’s a predictable, but somewhat charming film that is almost completely forgettable. If I were you, I would take heed in this release’s lack of special features and lack of critical support and stay off the road.

There are no Blu-ray exclusive features for this title.

Also out on Blu-ray this week:

For more Blu-ray goodness every week, check out the This Week in Blu-ray archive.

Boiling Point: If You’re Gonna Watch, Watch

Robert Fure — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:00:20 +0000

In The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Tuco (the ugly) shoots a chatty man and afterwards advises him that “if he’s going to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.” Similarly, I’m of the mind that if you’re going to watch, watch, don’t do anything else. I’m sure it’s happened to you several times. You stroll into the living room, the TV is on with some mindless and bland show playing, a roommate or family member nearby, staring at a computer, reading a book, or perhaps dozing. You snag the remote, flip the channel and a few minutes later: Hey, I was watching that.

First, no, you weren’t. You were on Facebook. Facebook is not the TV. If you’re doing any activity that occupies your eyes, you lose television rights. If you start talking on the phone, you lose television rights. Basically the only thing you should be doing in front of the TV is watching it. And maybe having a snack.

The real reason that this is a problem lay in that because you’re distracted, you don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on. This will lead you to one of three possible outcomes, each of which is maddening, frustrating, and completely avoidable.

You’ll ask what’s going on. Do you want to know the easiest way to know what’s going on at any given time? Watch the fucking show, movie, or broadcast. Whatever it is that you so badly want to be a part of, be a part of it. Who was that guy, why did he do that, what did he say? The easiest solution is the simplest – pay attention.
You’ll fail at conversation about it. When people like us get together, we like to talk movies and television and all that good stuff. When people finish watching a TV show, they like to talk about the episode, about what just happened. You, having not paid attention, will suck at conversation. You won’t remember that part. Or you’ll “forget that happened.” This always leads to the “Oh yeah!” moment where you lie to us and pretend you were paying attention and have the slightest idea what’s happening.
Worst of all, you’ll be completely wrong in conversation. This is beyond failing at conversation. This ruins lives. Embarrasses people. You look like an idiot. You see, when you don’t pay attention, you miss a lot of things. Cut-aways, background objects, character glimpses, glances, winks, nods, nudges. You don’t hear every word. You don’t connect every dot. Yet, because you “watched” it, you’ll still assume you know what’s going on. You look to the screen and confidently declare “Wow, she’s going to leave her husband.” The rest of us stare, mouths agape, until we facepalm ourselves. No. No. No, she’s not going to leave her husband- what show were you watching? If you haven’t watched something completely, you shouldn’t talk about it. You definitely shouldn’t try to understand it or convey that understanding to others. You’ll tell two friends and then they’ll tell two friends and pretty soon everyone thinks House and Cuddy slept together.

So please, for the sake of my sanity, just pay attention to what’s going on. Put down the magazine, silence the phone and just take in the entertainment. Or get the hell out of the room. Serious entertainment watching business is about to go on and some of us want to enjoy and understand it. Every time I see someone “multitasking” their television programs or hear a stupid, misinformed comment, I go right past my hey what’s that over there?

Can’t get enough of Robert Fure’s rants? Get them in real time on twitter: Twitter.com/RejectRobert. Also, check out the Boiling Point Archive.

10 Great Films That Prove Slow Isn’t Always Boring

Rob Hunter — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:00:09 +0000

I’m not a constant reader of Landon Palmer’s Culture Warrior column for various reasons. For one thing, there’s not enough time in the day to parse my way through his weekly post and have it make even the slightest bit of sense. (There’s a whole world outside and I’d rather be out there enjoying the sunshine!) Believe me I try, but I simply can’t stay focused long enough to find his cleverly hidden thesis and watch it play out throughout the seventy-four paragraphs that follow… and I kid obviously, but it’s no joke to say Palmer’s columns are an education unto themselves and have a lot more to say about film than my usual posts about hot Asian chicks taking baths and fighting the Yakuza.

Once in a while though, Palmer chooses a Culture Warrior topic that’s compelling enough for me to force myself to slog through his dense prose from beginning to end, and I’m almost always happy to have done so. Last week’s installment is one such example, and it got me thinking about intentionally ’slow’ films that work exactly as their creators intended. I asked Palmer if he wanted to help put together a quick list of ten perfect examples of effective slow-paced films. We were going to do five each, but then Cole Abaius found out what we were up to and demanded a seat at the table. He played the ‘managing editor’ card so we had to let him join in the fun.

Le Jour se lève (1939)

Alongside Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo, Marcel Carné was part of the pre-WWII French film movement called Poetic Realism. While these filmmakers may not have invented mise en scène, they certainly perfected it, employing a style dominated by a wide frame that, theoretically, allowed audience eyes to explore where they please rather than be dictated by the intent of the filmmaker, resulting in a rare democratic form of classic filmgoing. In a way, this style invented great slow filmmaking. And Carné’s Le Jour se lève (Daybreak) is one of the best of the pack. A (now) familiar and simple story, the film opens with a disgruntled factory worker (Jean Gabin) committing murder then flashes back chronicling his involvement in a toxic love triangle. The width and depth of the Poetic Realism’s iconic long focus shots are complemented here by Carné’s deliberate pacing, and the end result is a film that can’t help but enrapture you in its dense, unforgiving tone. The visual and storytelling style are both interesting from a historical perspective, but at its core Le Jour se lève is just a damn good heartbreak of a movie. It’s shockingly dark and pessimistic, and proof that one hardly needs any fast-paced action to make a trilling and suspenseful mystery pre-noir noir. - Landon Palmer

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

While fully covered in Old Ass Movies, Treasure is a film that’s more about what’s not being said, what’s not being done, than it is about the actions of the characters. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), Howard (Walter Huston), and Curtin (Tim Holt) are three men that all want the same thing, and they’ll spend the entire run time of the movie plotting to get it and keep it for themselves. With the setting in the grizzly, gold-filled dust, there’s already an exotic danger, a death by the elements that looms over them, but the real action is in the struggle to find fortune and smuggle it all out without necessarily having to kill two other men in the process. Through the dialog, the revelation of past lives, and the prize at the end of the tunnel, these three men captivate with a dark intent and a finger that is trembling on the trigger for the entire run time. It might feel like nothing is happening, but the sweat running down your back while watching it should tell you differently. – Cole Abaius

Diary of a Country Priest (1951)

Only Robert Bresson would be able to take the slow exploration of faith and its failures and spin it into something intense. Granted, there’s the harsh treatment of the young Priest, who comes to the village completely unwelcome, that gives a lot of life to the movie, but for the most part it is the epitome of a slow burn. The girls torment him, his lifestyle is mocked openly, and his health worsens. That’s about it for two hours, but what’s fascinating is the study of an outcast, the look into the mind of a man who is not really part of this world. It moves with intensity and was certainly intriguing enough to influence Scorsese in making Taxi Driver. - Cole Abaius

Barry Lyndon (1975)

In another Scorsese connection, the iconic director has called it his favorite of fellow-iconic director Stanley Kubrick’s entire body of work. It’s a period piece recounting the whole life of an Irish adventurer in the 18th century. There’s a few duels, some incestuous seduction, some highway robbery, and some military careering, but make no mistake – this is Kubrick being the methodical director he loved being. Images and scenarios are lingered on to beautiful effect, and the charisma of Ryan O’Neal carries a lot of that attention. The ennui of high society is a major theme, but the film is absolutely never boring – maintaining a quiet, brooding interest that lasts a lifetime. Or almost two and a half hours. - Cole Abaius

Stalker (1979)

I just can’t let a list like this go out there without mentioning at least one film by the late, great Russian time sculptor Andrei Tarkovsky. I’ve discussed his filmmaking in depth in two CW posts so far, and it seems that he more than any other filmmaker has perfected the art of deliberate pacing. In Stalker Tarkovsky revisits science-fiction (after his sci-fi epic Solaris), but here he sticks to Earth as his palette instead of the reaches of space. Stalker portrays an oppressive, antiquated, inferentially fascist dystopian future. But emancipation exists in the mysterious Zone, a cordoned-off strip of land that supposedly defies the laws of physics and grants its visitors their innermost desires. Professional “Stalkers” (the term here meaning something along the lines of “hunting guide”) lead citizens into the Zone for a large sum of money, and this film concerns the journey of one Stalker leading a scientist and a writer into the mysterious Zone. The film’s ambient, experimental score (you can’t tell where the music ends and sound design begins) and astounding long shots make for a totally immersive experience, ratcheting up the mystery of what supernatural force lies in the Zone. Tarkovsky doesn’t just slow time—he temporarily halts the experience of time and space, potentially transcending his audience towards a new, revelatory plane of cinematic perception. - Landon Palmer

Afraid of the Dark (1991)

Creating a “slow” film that doesn’t bore or lose the audience in its deliberate pacing is difficult enough for traditional films, but it’s an incredible feat when it comes to thrillers. Writer/director Mark Peploe’s moody ode to childhood fears accomplishes this through a combination of quality acting, smart writing, and a game-changing event halfway through the film. A psychotic slasher is attacking blind women, and a young boy fears his mother may be next. He wanders his small town collecting clues to the identity of the madman and soon finds himself face to face with what he fears most… and it’s not exactly what you’d expect. The film puts the viewer right in the middle of one boy’s world, one where everyone may be bigger and smarter, but only he knows the truth that can save them all. - Rob Hunter

The Pledge (2001)

Sean Penn gets a lot of flack for a lot of things, but few can find fault with the man’s directorial skills. His third film (and I would argue his best) stars Jack Nicholson as Jerry Black, a newly retired detective with one unsolved case haunting him. A child had disappeared and he promised to never quit searching for the truth. Black enters into retirement but never forgets his promise, and instead turns his investigation into a hobby. But what happens when the hobby becomes obsession? Nicholson is fantastic and surprisingly understated, and he’s joined by an equally compelling cast including Benicio Del Toro as a suspect, Aaron Eckhart as a fellow cop, and Robin Wright Penn as a single mother with her own pains to bear. Black’s daily life begins to include more and more of Penn and her daughter, but are they they family he never had or are they simply part of his hobby? Penn moves his film methodically and purposefully towards a devastating truth, and it is mesmerizing. - Rob Hunter

3-Iron (2004)

Writer/director Kim Ki-duk has built a career on films that move slower than a bowl of kimchi on my dinner table (see, I don’t like kimchi). Films like Samaritan Girl and The Isle are brilliant explorations of lives that linger day in day out until brief bursts of violence reshape them (usually for the worse) into something new. 3-Iron is a different beast all together… it’s instead one of the most beautiful and romantic films I’ve seen. Tae-suk breaks into homes when the owners are away, but it isn’t theft he has on his mind. Instead he cleans up, fixes broken clocks and appliances, and does the laundry. His pattern is interrupted when he finds himself in a house that isn’t as empty as he first presumed. A battered wife named Sun-hwa has gone unnoticed, and as she watches his routine an odd relationship begins to develop. Not only is the film leisurely paced, but it’s also almost dialogue-free. Tae-suk never speaks a word, and Sun-hwa says barely a sentence or two, yet the couple find find themselves falling in love anyway. Their growing bond is evident solely through their expressions, glances, and minute actions, and yet it still manages to be an incredibly believable on-screen romance. The film plays like a dream, and is both beautiful and fascinating to watch. - Rob Hunter

The Clearing (2004)

Like two of my other three picks above, this is a thriller in every way except for traditional pacing. A high-powered executive (Robert Redford) is kidnapped and forced to fight for his life, not through violence but with reasoning and negotiation. His struggle is mirrored by his wife’s as she tries to come to terms with his disappearance and all of the truths that come to light in his absence. Writer/director Pieter Jan Brugge presents a film about a kidnapping that eschews chase scenes and explosive SWAT team rescues in favor of something more introspective. The husband has to revisit the choices in his life while his wife (Helen Mirren) reflects on the marriage she thought she had. Willem Dafoe stars as the kidnapper who may just bring the couple closer together if he doesn’t tear them apart forever first. - Rob Hunter

Caché (2005)

You see what looks like a banal, prolonged, uncut shot of a Parisian house. Suddenly, the images speed up and slow down, jumping forward and backward. You quickly realize this is not the filmmaker’s establishing shot, but a voyeuristic secret video made by a character within the film. Probably Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke’s strongest work to date (I haven’t yet seen his recent Cannes Palme d’Or winner The White Ribbon), Caché uses Haneke’s typical long shots and slow pacing throughout; but the brilliance of this film lies in its ability to make the audience continuously question whether anything they are seeing is the work of the filmmaker or the mysterious voyeur terrorizing the nuclear family at the film’s center. Coupled with a shocking on-screen moment that changes the name of the game entirely, the viewer becomes entirely on edge, knowing the filmmaker is always one giant step ahead of us. Haneke here turns the banal and the ordinary into something incredibly suspenseful and discomfiting, and the film’s meticulous pacing is central to achieving this effect. Caché is also a thematically heavy film, touching on issues regarding bourgeois cultural consumption, the long-term effects of imperialism, and privacy in the digital era, but the film thankfully provides few answers for the many questions it asks, instead showing how sometimes we often end up knowing a lot less about something the closer we look at it. - Landon Palmer

What are some of your favorite slow, but not boring films?

The Stretch: Find True Love in Fight Club [A Look Back]

Dr. Cole Abaius — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:20:59 +0000

Editor’s Note: In honor of the 10-Year Anniversary of the release of Fight Club and the release of the special edition Blu-ray this week, we’ve decided to go back into the FSR archive and resurrect one of our favorite Fight Club articles of years past. In this article, Dr. Cole Abaius compares the themes of Fincher’s brutal film to those of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Trust us, this is not a joke. This article originally posted on September 22, 2008.

Perhaps the most well known love story of all time, “Romeo & Juliet” has been adapted several hundred times and has even more imitators that attempt to recreate the magical, star-crossed romance in paltry homage pieces. However, there is one film that rises above the others as the best version of “Romeo & Juliet” since “Romeo & Juliet.”

That film is David Fincher’s Fight Club.

Just go with me on this for a second. Oh, and there might just be SOME SPOILERS for the three people who haven’t seen it yet.

The Breakdown

Man hates life. Man’s Condo explodes. Man goes to live with an insanely destructive nihilist who starts an underground fighting club and creates chaos all over the city. Along the way, he engages in an unhealthy relationship with a suicidal woman that he meets at a Testicular Cancer Anonymous meeting.

The Stretch

If this doesn’t sound like “Romeo & Juliet” right off the bat, I’m not sure what does.

Jack (the narrator) obviously represents Romeo – a bored male in love with collecting cheap Swedish furniture and obeying his corporate masters. This love, like Romeo’s love for the Swedish-born Rosaline, is a shallow one, that Jack must overcome in order to know true love with his life-partner, Tyler Durden.

It’s fairly clear that Jack and Tyler’s meeting on an airplane mirrors the Balcony Scene in “R & J.” Both are elevated above ground, and in both, the speakers’ lines form a Shared Sonnet – the ideal poetic structure for discussing both love and soap.

Thus, Tyler Durden represents Juliet. The two characters share the same lust for anarchy and lute music and have never been in a fight until they find love. It’s also well known that Brad Pitt was Franco Zeffirelli’s first choice for the role of Juliet in his 1968 adaptation, but Pitt was only five years old at the time so Olivia Hussey stepped in to fill the void.

This connection also becomes obvious later in Juliet’s storyline when she shaves her head and attempts to blow up the major Credit Lendors of Verona using homemade napalm.

Bob, the lactating support group friend is the story’s Tybalt. Both were revered fighters in their prime and now serve no purpose but to agitate Jack and Romeo. Bob also dies, as Tybalt does at the hands of Romeo, as a direct result of Jack’s actions. Both deaths spur on dramatic shifts in each story – forcing previously unaligned characters to choose sides and forcing the protagonists to rethink the path they are headed down. Much like how Tybalt’s death forces Romeo into exile in Mantua, Bob’s death sparks Jack’s departure to retrace Tyler’s plane flights all over the country.

Also, Bob’s Bitch Tits represent Benvolio, the comic relief of the story. Unfortunately, a sizable monologue about Queen Mab – Bob’s Bitch Tits’ only line in the movie – was cut due to time constraints.

Perhaps the most important figure in the story, Marla Singer, represents Suicide, a common theme in “R & J.” At the beginning of Fight Club, Marla is all Jack can think about, but instead of going after her, he seeks out the foolish man-love of Tyler Durden. At the beginning of “Romeo & Juliet,” Romeo waxes dramatic about suicide after being scorned by Rosaline, but chooses to seek out true love with Juliet instead.

Ultimately, and spoilerifically, Jack ends up choosing Marla over Durden in the same way that Romeo chooses suicide when he believes his life with Juliet cannot be realized.

In another thinly veiled reference, Juliet’s decision to take a dagger to her bosom is yet another obvious homage to Bob’s Bitch Tits. In fact, Shakespeare’s ability to foresee and allude to future works of art is one of the reasons he’s considered a genius.

Jack and Tyler being the same person may seem to complicate the comparison, but, yet again, it seems obvious that the consummation scene in “Romeo & Juliet” is an almost shot for shot twin with the scene in which Jack realizes that he’s Tyler Durden. In both, two people ceremoniously join together as one in a hotel room with slightly homosexual overtones while confusing the lark for the nightingale.

If read in this light, it becomes clear that Shakespeare’s Juliet might actually be a schizophrenic hallucination that Romeo creates after diving deep into depression over Rosaline’s rejecting him. It also means that Jack represents both Romeo and Juliet as does Tyler Durden. Confused yet? Neither am I.

If all of this is the case, though, the endings don’t quite line up. Jack chooses Marla just as Juliet chooses suicide – but in a very real sense, Jack survives the end of the story despite the bullet wound in his neck (Jack’s Neck clearly represents Juliet’s Bosom). However, in my scholarly research, I found an alternate version of “Romeo & Juliet” by Shakespeare in which Juliet is jolted back to life by an earthquake and stands on the edge of a cliff, watching the Capulet and Montague estates topple to the ground while “Where is My Mind?” by The Pixies plays in the background.

The Recap

Jack is Romeo and Tyler Durden is Juliet, engaging in a disturbing “menage au four” with himself. Marla is Suicide – a dark, dangerous release from Jack’s earlier love. Bob and His Bitch Tits represent Tybalt and Benvolio respectively – both fight skillfully, doth protest too much, and are killed ironically. And the author of “Fight Club,” Chuck Palahniuk, like Shakespeare, may have never actually existed.

Even though Chuck Palahniuk and David Fincher have never admitted to it in any interviews, when the two stories’ elements are critically reviewed, it seems almost too obvious (to any intelligent film critic) the connection between Fight Club and William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy of love.

Culture Warrior: What is Hitchcockian Suspense?

Landon Palmer — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:30:00 +0000

In a conversation with Dr. Cole Abaius while he was formulating his thoughts on spoiling and The Fourth Kind, he assessed the effectiveness of the scare tactics within the recent trend of found footage filmmaking in the horror genre. This past September when I reviewed Paranormal Activity at Fantastic Fest, I praised the film for ascribing to the “Hitchcock 101 School of Filmmaking” in that it achieves its frightening effect through revealing as little as possible. Having recently reassessed Psycho in my “Horror 1960″ post and while being surrounded by this continuously popular new brand of horror filmmaking, Cole brought up the idea that found footage horror filmmaking might not actually be employing Hitchcockian suspense at all—or, if it does, it’s a filtered, cheaper, and simpler definition of the term that’s come to be accepted when discussing horror and suspense.

Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense (not the Master of Horror, as they guy technically only made two horror films—Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963)) certainly advocated a faith in audience imagination, allowing a moment to potentially make any film far scarier through imagined, anticipated fears rather than the potential disappointment of something less terrifying being manifested on screen. He implied more than he exhibited, and this was central to the chilling effectiveness of many of his films. Hitchcock gave us a detail here and there, and our minds filled in the rest.

Not only was this style a product of shrewd directorial restraint, but it was part and parcel of the times as well. Hitchcock’s films existed before the ratings system, and thus were subject to the censorial force of the Production Code Administration (also known as the Hays Code). Movies could be released without a Code seal, but through the stigma this caused such films would often have trouble finding theaters which would be willing to show them. It was also understood that the big studio films with big stars that often characterized Hitchcock’s work had far too much riding on them not to be released with Production Code approval. So Hitchcock articulated stories of obsession, murder, and sexual frustration with innuendo and implication rather than blatant exhibition of content. Not that Hitchcock wouldn’t have employed such restraint and trust in audience imagination regardless, but such factors help make his films so rich and enduring. And several of his films seem even more subversive as a result—movies like Vertigo (1958), which chronicled the obsession of a misogynistic stalker, and in the process subverting the nice-guy everyman persona of Jimmy Stewart, or Rope (1948), whose central protagonists are read today as being a homosexual couple.

The point here is that restraint wasn’t a tactic Hitchcock used only to create suspense, but permeated many aspects of his filmmaking and was determined by factors both creative (interior) and social (exterior). But is restraint the central aspect to the effectiveness of his type of suspense? Is the act of letting audience imagination take the reigns all it takes to be characterized as Hitchcockian? If this was the case, found footage horror films like Paranormal Activity can very accurately be called successors of Hitchcockian suspense, as they no doubt rely on the audience’s ability to infer what they don’t show rather than in an exhibition of horrifying images that they do show. The demon is terrifying because he’s never revealed. Same with the witch in The Blair Witch Project, or only seeing bits and pieces of the alien beast in the first half of Cloverfield.

This is the definition we as a filmgoing culture have, for the most part, arrived at a consensus on when it comes to Hitchcockian suspense. There’s good reason for this, as the man himself discussed at length this restrained aspect of his process, and such stylistic choices are easily identifiable within much of his canon. But this definition does in fact reduce and simplify how Hitchcock achieved suspense in most of his filmmaking.

Restraint implies minimalism, and Hitchcock was hardly a minimalist, and not every horror film or thriller that uses restraint comes across as Hitchcockian. What we think of as Hitchcockian suspense today, in which fear is induced through minimal revelation and an ambiguity allowing for audience interpretation, was something only occasionally practiced by Hitchcock himself. I can’t think of a Hitchcock film besides The Birds that ends on a note of ambiguity or contains a mystery that isn’t revealed. Rather, what Hitchcock was talking about can be illustrated best in a scene from his early British film Sabotage (1936, you can watch it here starting at 5:50 and continuing here) in which a boy is assigned to deliver a reel of film from one location to another, and he doesn’t know—while the audience does know—that a bomb exists in the film can. So we watch him go through his lengthy, banal commute while we are being totally suspended waiting for the bomb to go off. (An excerpt on this scene is featured in the nitrate film explanation montage in Inglourious Basterds, and QT also homages this scene through the iris reveal of the bomb under Eli Roth’s chair in the movie theater at the end).

Hitchcockian suspense can’t be defined as mere restraint of audience knowledge, but a careful, intricate management of the differentiation between what the audience knows and the characters know (for more information about this practice, consult his lengthy interview on Sabotage in Hitchcock/Truffaut). If we know there’s a bomb and the character doesn’t, it’s suspense; but if neither the audience nor the characters know, it’s surprise (or, to put more relevantly, a jump scare). Ambiguity and audience imagination takes a surprisingly small role in this process. It’s more about audience control. It all sounds so simple, it takes a masterful filmmaker to really pull it off. Yet these found footage horror films are released and critics like me take the bait by calling them Hitchcockian, which simply isn’t true.

I get excited when any new horror film employs restraint and trusts audience imagination, and the success of Paranormal Activity should display the powerful effectiveness of movies that do this well. It’s a welcome relief and a return to classical form after torture porn’s many manifestations of the mistaken idea that the more you show, the more terrifying it is. But Hitchcokian suspense is called Hitchcockian suspense for a reason: because it’s a means to an end that the man himself achieved and perfected time and again, one that very few other filmmakers have accomplished.

Of course, the man himself explains it better than I ever could:

What do you think?

For more Culture Warrior: Click Here. We dare you.

Old Ass Movies: Duck Soup

Dr. Cole Abaius — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:14:30 +0000

Every Sunday, Film School Rejects presents a movie that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

Duck Soup (1933)

Duck Soup may be the funniest movie of all time. It deals with war, politics, fear, corruption – and it does so without taking any of it seriously. Not in the slightest.

But unfortunately, I really won’t be able to talk about it.

The reason for this is because the comedy is incredible experiential. Like a comic strip, the value of it can’t simply be read to a person and be expected to translate at all. I wish I could share with you each scene, but it’s something that stumbles off the screen and lands flat on its face right into a cream pie. Something you just have to see and laugh at yourself.

It is, in my humble opinion, the funniest offering from the Marx Brothers ever to be filmed. It’s also the last film they did for Paramount and the last film they did with all four of them being featured. Groucho takes top billing as usual as Rufus T. Firefly, the over-eager ruler of a failing nation called Freedonia (financed by the wealthy, easily romanced Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont). The neighboring ruler sends over the hapless spies Pinky (Harpo) and Chicolini (Chico) while Zeppo plays a dashing Lieutenant in the military.

None of this movie makes any sense at all. It pivots from scene to scene with little concern with how anything in the real world works. Ultimately, most set ups are built just to have a butt of the joke be hammered home by the outlandish absurdity of Groucho. These scenes are usually immediately followed by Harpo annoying Groucho by cutting his tie in half, answering his phone (despite never speaking) and generally running amok. It’s controlled chaos, and it works brilliantly. In the hands of lesser comedians, it would all seem random, but they infuse a preternatural likability into each character so that instead of ending up with your eyebrow raised, you end up rolling on the floor with laughter with your eyebrow raised.

First of all, Groucho gets away with saying the most offensive things to people because he’s slick, and they usually can’t understand half the words that are coming out of that rapid-fire mouth. Second of all, Harpo and Chico make a phenomenal comic duo and go through the ropes stealing a competing street vendor’s hat repeatedly (until the light it on fire) until they are tapped by the government to be top notch spies. Some would call this a satire on war and politics (especially since it’s huge fight at the end predates the great, missing pie fight scene that should have been in Dr. Strangelove) but I’m pretty sure it’s just anarchy that happens in the governmental halls. They really could have set this anywhere, but sending up the self-importance of politicians is too much a draw to refuse it.

Of course, Zeppo – the most talented of the group who could do everyone else’s parts at a moment’s notice – relegates himself to playing a dashing figure that never gets to make a joke.

Beyond the humor, Chico proves his incredible piano talent and Harpo displays some killer harp strumming. This sort of thing sounds completely foreign to a modern audience, but they work perfectly for a group that came straight out of Vaudeville. They wanted to display their comic chops, their slapstick, and their high art of music. If that doesn’t make sense to you, great. Because the whole damned film won’t make any anyway.

However, you will recognize at least one comic bit that made its way into a lot of other shows and movies – a bit where Chico pretends to be Groucho, using the doorway as a mirror and moving exactly how Groucho moves until the punch line of the site gag. It’s something that has been copied over and over again, and it all started here.

Beyond innovation, the “war” at the end of the film might be the funniest thing ever committed to celluloid. Groucho ends up in no fewer than 7 different costumes that seem to materialize at random (from the Civil War era to Boy Scout uniforms to Coonskin caps). In college, I watched this film maybe 100 times or so, and for some reason, my friends James and Aaron and I could never finish it because we would lose our minds during a portion of the fight where Groucho gets his head stuck in a large jar. He screams out, they try to pry it off of him, and the scene cuts away to more fighting. When the shot jumps back, someone’s drawn Groucho’s face on the outside of the jar as a quick, easy solution.

For some reason, this makes me lose it every time.

But like I said, I can’t explain it to you. It’s just something you have to see for yourself.

Film School Rejects » Site Features

Junkfood Cinema: Battle Beyond the Stars

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Kevin Carr’s Weekly Report Card for 11.20.09

NEW MOON

PLANET 51

THE BLIND SIDE

PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL “PUSH” BY SAPPHIRE

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Fat Guys at the Movies Ep. 141 – Big Fat Moon

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Discuss: Would You Go On Another ‘Vacation’ With Chevy Chase?

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Bonus Weekly DVD Drinking Game: A Very Sunny Christmas

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Coroner’s Report: Friday the 13th Part VI

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Five Actresses Who Should Play the Black Cat in Spider-Man 4, And Three Who Shouldn’t

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Exclusive: ‘New Moon’ Screenwriter Talks Adapting Empty Pages and ‘Eclipse’ Additions

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This Week In DVD: November 17th

Andy Barker P.I.: The Complete Series

Moon (UK)

Star Trek

The Steve Coogan Collection

Thirst

Bruno

Downhill Racer (Criterion Collection)

Evilution

Franklyn

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia: A Very Sunny Christmas

My Sister’s Keeper

The Open Road

Rome: The Complete Series

Vampire Party

Basement Jack

Hanger

Humpday

The Limits of Control

Samurai Princess

Taintlight

Train

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Boiling Point: If You’re Gonna Watch, Watch

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10 Great Films That Prove Slow Isn’t Always Boring

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The Stretch: Find True Love in Fight Club [A Look Back]

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Old Ass Movies: Duck Soup

Duck Soup (1933)

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