Some great minds thinking alike about Clerks II:

“A tender, scabrous and very, very funny comedy that picks up 12 years after the original.”
– Damon Wise, EMPIRE MAGAZINE [UK]

“If Clerks II doesn’t have quite the scabrous kick of its predecessor, the chance to revisit a classic premise must have renewed the writer in Smith, whose banter here often achieves a sharpness and quality.”
– Justin Chang, VARIETY

“What was charming, raunchy, and scabrous in Kevin Smith’s black-and-white debut Clerks, has become less charming, less raunchy, and less scabrous in his (unnecessary) color sequel Clerk II, 12 years later.”
– Emanuel Levy, EMANUELLEVY.COM

“Smith’s scabrous humor is more inspired than it has been since he left Dante and Randal at the Quick Stop.”
– Amy Taubin, FILM COMMENT (thanks, Jeff_V!)

Anyone need a synonym?

Back again with another roundtable discussion on another big summer blockbuster, the Cinemarati membership takes on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.

A quick warning: this discussion most definitely contains SPOILERS, so if you haven’t seen the film, you may want to stop reading here.

——————————

Low IQ Canadian:
A few questions occur to your Low IQ Canadian correspondent with respect to the rollicking Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men’s Chest…

Is Captain Jack Sparrow the Doctor Frank-N-Furter of the new millennium? Will (Bloom) and Elizabeth (Knightley) here seem to channel Brad and Janet, zero chemistry between them, each deeply focused on Depp’s boozy brigand deviant. Explaining the state of pure Will’s heart to Davy Jones, Jack exposits, “He’s in love…” and quickly adds “with a woman…” Uh-HUH.

Amusement park influence: baggage or boost? Big chunks of this movie play like theme park set pieces. But then again, theme parks can be a lot of fun. I really dug the film’s kinetic sense, like an expert juggler keeping an entire china set, a good-sized melon, and a running chainsaw in the air at once.

Any problems with Dead Man’s portrayal of native islanders? Oh well, they were only white-person-worshipping ritual cannibals who in a pinch would feast on dog. We should probably save our objections for 2007’s White Flight 6: Escape from Monkey-Humper Island. (more…)

Once again, three screen caps from randomly selected dvd’s in my collection. Some are screeners, some I bought with cold hard cash. Can you be the first person in history to guess all three caps and win a REALLY BIG PRIZE?

No cheating, now. Do this without the aid of google, imdb or barbituates.

Cap One:

CLUE NUMBER ONE FOR CAP ONE:

Cap Two:

Cap Three:

opening in wide release:
Little Man
You, Me and Dupree

opening in limited release:
Edmond
Gabrielle
The Groomsmen
Mini’s First Time
The Oh in Ohio
Time to Leave (Le Temps Qui Reste)

So, will it be You, Me and Dupree and you?

Now, I’m as interested as the next guy in seeing Sylvester Stallone take an ungodly beating. So the trailer for this year’s Rocky Balboa, pitting the aging southpaw against the current world champion for an exhibition bout, does have that going for it.

That’s for Stop or My Mom Will Shoot. That’s for Oscar. That’s for Tango & Cash. That’s for Frank Stallone…

But, c’mon — for serious? Sly just turned the big 6-0, fifteen more rings around the old tree than George Foreman had when he utterly stunned the world by grabbing back the World Heavyweight belt. Even though, true to the franchise, Rocky’s goal will surely be to “just hang in there” and “not get killed,” watching a near senior citizen get his clock cleaned with a sledgehammer in the inevitable fifteen-minute climax fight starts to verge on elder abuse.

Maybe Rocky Balboa will be perfectly pitched to Boomers and near-Boomers as a fable of exertion and heart defying the ravages of age. Our Commander-in-Chief, another slightly touched fitness nut, also just turned 60. Apparently, foolish women of a certain age go in for one last botox, while their male counterparts look around for one last war.

“A Scanner Darkly” is a perfect example of a film in which form blends with substance rather than merely enhancing it. Perhaps too much so. It goes almost without saying that rotoscoping - the technique by which animators “draw over” live action video - lends itself seamlessly to both the trippy dream-vision of Richard Linklater and the paranoid dream-vision of Philip K. Dick. Nothing else could quite achieve that look of being at once real, unreal, and hyperreal, or could so effectively evoke the constant existential fear that nothing you see, hear, or feel actually exists.

So it may seem beside the point to wonder whether the movie stands on its own apart from the animation. (The animation is fascinating, by the way - a big step forward from its first Linklater appearance in “Waking Life” - though in some ways I think the cruder, more exaggerated forms of “Waking Life” would have worked just as well, if not better, for a movie that becomes increasingly about getting lost in one’s own illusions.)

I think it does, though just barely. It’s a downer - make no mistake about that - and even though it’s set in the kind of total-surveillance corporate state we’ve seen before in futuristic films time out of mind, it’s less concerned with that broader context than it is with the private hell of drug addiction. This, too, we’ve seen before, and explored in greater depth. But something about the combination works: it’s a nightmare that’s only just outside the boundary of reality.

opening big:
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

opening small:
A Scanner Darkly
Heading South
Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos

Yo ho ho!

Too easy. That’s my bottom line on all sorts of “socially-relevant” movies, from Thank You for Smoking to Good Night, And Good Luck to the smug and self-certain docu-gandists aping Michael Moore. Watching these movies, you never have a moment’s doubt which side is utterly right and which is utterly wrong. Real evil seduces. Even when thrown aside, the oozing charm of evil can be sorely missed. The most toxic sort of sin is corruption, the lillies that fester, when something looks and feels right but festers into an awful wrong.* Straw men just go up in flames, unmissed and unmourned — as should the cinema of the straw man.

The Devil Wears Prada, of all things, breaks out of this box. Marketed as a boss-from-hell, fish-out-of-water comedy, you’d never expect all the right rich details in The Devil. While The Devil definitely picks sides in the struggle between the earning glam (Streep) and the earnest glum (Hathaway), there’s nothing foregone about the conclusion. Yes, the fashionistas working at Runway magazine are cold, cutting, and superficial. But they are also, in their way, artists, lovers of beauty, adhering to and upholding a set of values that set them apart from the herd of mercenaries working elsewhere. This isn’t the facet of Runway focused on, but it holds the light just long and often enough so that the temptation to sell out to that particular world is understandable, even for an eager beaver aspiring journalist.

Trade-offs — family vs. career, loyalty vs. probity, beauty vs. truth — trade-offs drive moral engagement. Moral pluralism — the recognition of multiple, legitimite, partially overlapping and partically conflicting values — drives great film. It’s all here, should you care to take a look. Pound your chest or search your heart. Easy pick, I think.

* Please, God, let All the King’s Men be awesome!

Hey folks, if you’ve been wondering why there’s been no official post on the biggest release of the summer, that’s because the Cinemarati members have been discussing it privately all week. Now, we present the first installment of a new (and hopefully ongoing) feature, in which we present a film dialogue for your enjoyment. This one, as you may have guessed, is about Superman Returns.

———————————————

Dan Jardine:
The movie just didn’t work for me. I found that the story really just plodded along during the first hour, when exposition was king and eyelids were droopy. When we finally get to the set pieces, only the Superman saves the plane sequence had any urgency or visual excitement to it. As for the characters, I felt like I’d walked into the B-movie version of Spider-Man. Both movies are primarily set in a newsroom, yet not a single casting choice here matches the quality of actors working in the Spider-Man series. More disastrously, there isn’t a single bit of chemistry between any of the actors who are supposed to feel so passionately about each other. No sparks, just a big old wet blanket.

Getting into the mythology of Superman, there’s something about the whole character that bugs me. (more…)

No, no, not THAT contest, you silly Seinfeld fan, this one.

So, you win the contest. What’s on the message that you have Wild Bill record?

Okay, I’ve been thinking about the flatline that is Kate Bosworth in Superman Returns, and how Katie Holmes had the same kind of non-impact in Batman Begins last summer. I’m wondering who should have been cast instead of either of them, and I’m pretty much coming up snake-eyes.

It occurs to me that there’s a staggering lack of American actresses in their mid-20s to mid-30s who could play competently alongside a superhero and not look like a total wet noodle. Thus far, my list is as follows: “Rachel McAdams. Maybe Rosario Dawson.” And that’s it.

Natalie Portman? Already done the franchise thing.

Kirsten Dunst? Ditto.

Reese Witherspoon? Not really her thing, is it. (Actually, she seems more like a credible superhero herself.)

I must be overlooking someone, right? Maybe a whole cadre of someones? Who would you ideally cast to play a strong, competent, good-hearted love interest for a superhero?

See if you can guess these three caps from three randomly selected films in my dvd li-berry. First person to guess all three will not only make Cinemarati history, but will win a BIG PRIZE. No cheating now.

Cap One:

Cap Two:

Cap Three:

Hint #1 for Cap 3:

I’ve recently completed a mammoth project of counting down the 200 Actors who’ve contributed the most to my cinematic pleasure in the past six years of this new millenium. The Actresses were ranked in the fall and the Actors I’ve just recently completed making this a nearly year-long project. *whew*. Since I am a list addict it’s been a lot of fun for me to dissect why I respond the way I do to various actors and actresses and to attempt to explain it. Lists as cinematic self-discovery. One strange and random personal taste peculiarity I’ve discovered: actors who tend toward the hammy (Geoffrey Rush for example) generally turn me off while their female counterparts (Annette Bening for example) don’t. Odd but generally true.

I’ve found the discussions the list has generated and the differences in opinion fascinating. To each their own, obviously, when it comes to film and fandom. So in the past six years of this new millenium, which actors, male or female, have contributed the most to your cinephilia? Who will always pull you into the theater? Why? And which celebrated actors of late have left you scratching your head thinking ‘what does everyone else see in them?’

opening wide:
Superman Returns
The Devil Wears Prada

opening small:
The Motel
Rank
Who Killed the Electric Car?
Strangers with Candy

It’s a holiday weekend in the U.S., which means boffo BO. Will you venture out to the ‘plexes, or hang out by the pool all weekend?

TVs most famous dog, Eddie of Frasier fame, has died at the grand old age of 16. Jack Russell’s aren’t my favourite breed, not big luggable enough, and, unlike say Rin Tin Tin, Lassie or The Littlest Hobo (that’s for our Canadian fans), Eddie wasn’t exactly essential to the action of the series, but hey, it was a career, and Eddie had it. Good on you, old boy. Give the dog a bone.