People in show business work in China. Andrew Lau, for instance, has 40 credits as director on IMDB since 1990 (including his second English-language feature for later this year). Shu Qi is credited there for 64 movies since 1996, and while many of those are likely smaller roles, it worth noting that both listings are likely quite incomplete; because IMDB is by and large crowd-sourced, and most of that crowd is in the US and UK, non-English language films in particular often have incomplete data. As an example, A Beautiful Life has two entries, one for both its Chinese and English names, and both have very sparse data, not even including Shu Qi, arguably the star of the movie.
(Aside - get on this stuff, China Lion! If you're going to distribute movies in the United States, it really behooves you to make sure that there are full entries for them at IMDB; that's the first place people go when an unfamiliar movie appears in listings.)
Doing so many movies likely gives filmmakers a chance to do different things, at least - to look at them side by side, you might not believe that Legend of the Fist and A Beautiful Life were the work of the same filmmaker. There are similarities - Shu Qi plays the female lead in each (and hits some of the same notes in her performances), and Anthony Wong has a supporting part - but they're different genres, and while Legend is a heightened, constructed reality, Life is very down to earth. Both look beautiful - Lau is also a cinematographer, photographing Legend and likely having at least some input on how Life was shot. Based on just these two movies, I might suspect that drama is more up Lau's alley, but the guy did also co-direct the Infernal Affairs movies, so I suspect Legend is just him being a little off that month.
It's an interesting coincidence that the two movies opened the same day in Boston; while A Beautiful Life opened day-and-date, Legend of the Fist followed more of a conventional foreign-film track - it opened in China, played the Toronto Film Festival, got acquired, opened in New York, and then made its way to Boston a month later. As I've said before, I'm not sure how viable a plan that is in general any more - Chinese pirates are fast and this put eight months between the movie's Hong Kong release and it playing Boston. It still got a fair crowd, though, possibly from the local-guy angle. A bit disappointing that it wound up being digital projection, likely from the consumer Blu-ray or DVD being released next month; seeing compression artifacts on the big screen is not cool at all. Here's hoping that it did well enough for the Brattle to schedule more Asian action films again; I gather they were at one point a staple of the theater, but that seems to have faded as those movies have become more readily available as opposed to cult films that one really has to search to find. A Beautiful Life had a scattered audience when I saw it, perhaps a bit disappointing compared to If You Are the One 2 and considering that nothing but Pirates 4 opened this weekend, but better than some other "crowds" I've seen for Chinese openings in Boston Common.
Well Go seems to realize that the traditional import system is less effective; they've announced that their next major acquisition, the Jackie Chan-starring 1911, will open in the US day-and-date with its Chinese release.
According to China Lion's website, their next release seems to be The Founding of a Party in mid-June, and... Good luck with that. As much as it will probably be a star-studded, epic thing, I wonder who the audience is. Americans don't particularly like Communism in general, and I strongly suspect that a good number of Chinese-Americans (the usual audience for these releases) are here because they want nothing to do with the Chinese Communist party. It's been impossible to miss the increasing nationalism that's been popping up in Chinese movies over the past few years as Hong Kong gets absorbed and the trend toward bigger-budget blockbusters seems to make filmmakers more beholden to state-controlled studios, but a movie about the founding of the Party seems like almost hubristic egotism.
Jing wu feng yun: Chen Zhen (Legend of the Fist: Return of Chen Zhen)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 May 2011 in the Brattle Theatre (special engagements)
Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen starts off in a familiar way, with text explaining a bit of Chinese history, this time involving how Chinese laborers served in Europe during World War I. Most aren't trained as as soldiers, so they're getting pinned down and picked off, until Donnie Yen's Chen Zhen suddenly remembers that he's a kung fu superhero. Then things get kind of awesome. It's a shame this doesn't happen more often, because the movie could occasionally use some more of this sort of larger-than-life fun.
Seven years after that battle, Chen Zhen has returned to Shanghai using the name of a fallen comrade. It's a contentious time, with Japan looking to expand its influence on the mainland, European powers making their presence known, and local factions splintered and fighting among themselves. In Shanghai, the Casablanca club is the center of everything, and owner Liu Yutian ("Anthony" Wong Chau-sang) brings Chen on as manager and partner. Information seems to be leaking from the Casablanca to Colonel Takashi Chikaraishi (Ryu Kohata), but can Chen Zhen find the source of the leak before the Japanese run through everybody on their "death list" - especially with the club's sultry headliner Kiki (Shu Qi) certain that "Qi" is more than he seems.
The Chen Zhen story is a popular one; the character has been played by Bruce Lee (Fist of Fury) and Jet Li (Fist of Legend; co-written and directed by the new film's screenwriter, Gordon Chan); heck, Yen himself played Chen in a TV series fifteen years earlier. This movie in many ways feels more like a sequel to those projects than a remake of them; it's mentioned that Chen Zhen fakes his death because he's wanted for killing the man who murdered his teacher, more or less how Fist of Fury and Fist of Legend end. That Chen apparently fakes his death twice - once in Shanghai and once in Europe - is unfortunately an example of how sloppy Chan's script is. Perhaps a Chinese audience will have more familiarity with the basic story and thus be better equipped to fill in the blanks, but it too often seems like Chan has more ideas than he has room for. For instance, a lot of time is spent on two Chinese generals negotiating (with a third, unseen one referenced quite a bit), but all this talk never really matters. We're quite deliberately pointed to the scarring copper bracelets that the soldiers in the opening segment wear, but then we never really see the scars and the bracelets that do matter are more or less unrelated. The last act is really just a complete mess until the inevitable showdown between Chen and Chikaraishi (and half the Japanese army).
Full review at EFC.
Mei li ren sheng (A Beautiful Life)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 May 2011 in AMC Fenway #12 (first-run)
You've got to sort of admire a movie like A Beautiful Life. It's filled with characters that could easily be defined by how they are handicapped or burdensome, and yet it's not a pity-baiting exercise. Well, not more than any other romantic drama; that's their stock in trade. The point is, even when things start going bad, it's more a film about people we like than people we feel sorry for, and that makes up for a few flaws.
Li Peiru (Shu Qi) moved to Beijing from Hong Kong to start work as a real-estate broker a year ago; Fang Zhendong (Liu Ye), "Dong" to his friends, has been a policeman there for fifteen years. They meet outside a karaoke bar, a plastered Peiru needing Dong's help to get home, and since he's a good guy, leaving a party early so that he can make sure his little brother Zhencong (Tran Liang) is okay, he helps her out, even when she's looking for help cooking for her married boyfriend. She finds herself taken with Dong, and likes the withdrawn Zhencong and his mute would-be girlfriend Xiaowen (Fairy Feng), but the drinking is only part of her troubles, and they may consume her even though Dong is going to find himself in need of support himself.
It's a somewhat specialized skill, but Shu Qi plays drunk well (interestingly, she played a character I called "boozy" in her last movie with director "Andrew" Lau Wai-keung). She's sexy and funny at first, but always gives the feeling of someone careening out of control. It's a tricky role, I imagine, as we get to know Peiru by her being demanding and taking advantage of Dong pretty shamelessly, but Shu pulls it off in a way that highlights her as being ambitious and energetic as much as selfish, and she is able to work the moments of Peiru being low or honestly charmed by the Fangs and Xiaowen to show another side of the character without making her feel schizoid.
Full review at EFC.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
This Fall in TV: Sifting through what the networks will inflict upon us this fall
It's a funny thing, habit. I haven't logged onto The Home Theater Forum in months, and yet, as the TV networks began making their upfront presentations to advertisers, I felt like I was shirking something by not putting together a forum thread on what the networks were doing. It wasn't an official duty of mine, but just something I'd done for the past few years, and enjoyed doing. Now, though, I don't really have a place where I talk about TV. But, on the other hand, this is my blog, and I can hijack it if I want.
I suppose I could go back to HTF; I didn't exactly quit. It was just last year's casualty of Fantasia - I go to Montreal, I do nothing with my computer but write reviews between days of seeing movies, and when I come home, I've got so much to catch up on elsewhere that something online just looks too daunting.)
As per usual, the information comes from The Futon Critic. The bolded selections are the things I plan on watching, comments follow.
SUNDAY
07:00 - ABC - American's Funniest Home Videos
07:00 - CBS - 60 Minutes
07:00 - Fox - The OT
07:00 - NBC - Football Night in America
07:30 - Fox - The Cleveland Show
08:00 - ABC - Once Upon a Time
08:00 - CBS - The Amazing Race
08:00 - Fox - The Simpsons
08:00 - NBC - Sunday Night Football
08:30 - Fox - Allen Gregory
09:00 - ABC - Desperate Housewives
09:00 - CBS - The Good Wife
09:00 - Fox - Family Guy
09:30 - Fox - American Dad
10:00 - ABC - Pan Am
10:00 - CBS - CSI: Miami
* I'm really pleasantly surprised to see The Good Life make it to a third year; I got the impression that its sinking ratings might end it after two. It's been remarkably good and remarkably consistent since the start, and the politics gives it a unique angle.
* Good lord, does Allen Gregory look insufferable.
* ABC's Once Upon a Time looks a whole lot like the great Vertigo Comics series Fables, which is especially interesting considering that ABC had optioned Fables about a year or so ago. I hope Bryan K. Vaughn and Mark Buckingham and company are getting paid a little. Also, Pan Am doesn't look great, but it's got Christina Ricci, and gets a sample for that.
MONDAY
08:00 - ABC - Dancing with the Stars
08:00 - CBS - How I Met Your Mother
08:00 - CW - Gossip Girl
08:00 - Fox - Terra Nova
08:00 - NBC - The Sing-Off
08:30 - CBS - Two Broke Girls
09:00 - CBS - Two and a Half Men
09:00 - CW - Hart of Dixie
09:00 - Fox - House
09:30 - Fox - Mike & Molly
10:00 - ABC - Castle
10:00 - CBS - Hawaii Five-0
10:00 - NBC - The Playboy Club
* Those two hour unscripted shows are ridiculous, just filled with air.
* Amber Heard is not enough to get me to watch The Playboy Club; Kat Dennings may get me to sample Two Broke Girls.
* Stephen Spielberg and dinosaurs certainly gets me to give Terra Nova a shot. Shame about Brannon Braga's involvement, though - how he keeps getting work after running Star Trek into the ground is beyond me.
* Nice job spoiling Castle's finale in your press release, ABC.
TUESDAY
08:00 - ABC - Last Man Standing
08:00 - CBS - NCIS
08:00 - CW - 90210
08:00 - Fox - Glee
08:00 - NBC - The Biggest Loser
08:30 - ABC - Man-Up
09:00 - ABC -Dancing with the Stars Results
09:00 - CBS - NCIS: Los Angeles
09:00 - CW - Ringer
09:00 - Fox - New Girl
09:30 - Fox - Raising Hope
10:00 - ABC - Body of Proof
10:00 - CBS - Unforgettable
10:00 - NBC - Parenthood
* ABC's 8pm hour of henpecked-men comedies make me ill just reading about them.
* Ringer, from what I gather, actually started life as a pilot for CBS before getting bounced to CW. I guess Sarah Michelle Gellar just doesn't get to sit at the big kids' table, no matter how convoluted her new show's premise is.
* As much as I'm tempted to start watching Parenthood, what with its cast filled with people I like and the show no longer up against The Good Wife, I really like Poppy Montgomery, so Unforgettable gets a look.
* Why the heck do I feel obligated to give New Girl a look because Zooey Deschanel stars? When was her last good work? And with Jake Kasdan directing the pilot, too.
WEDNESDAY
08:00 - ABC - The Middle
08:00 - CBS - Survivor
08:00 - CW - H8r
08:00 - Fox - The X Factor
08:00 - NBC - Up All Night
08:30 - ABC - Suburgatory
08:30 - NBC -Free Agents
09:00 - ABC - Modern Family
09:00 - CBS - Criminal Minds
09:00 - CW - America's Next Top Model
09:00 - NBC - Harry's Law
09:30 - ABC - Happy Endings
09:30 - Fox - I Hate My Teenage Daughter
10:00 - ABC - Revenge
10:00 - CBS - CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
10:00 - NBC - Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
* H8r? Really? Shouldn't this be on MTV or something?
* Up All Night, Suburgatory, and I Hate My Teenage Daughter all have better casts than their generic premises deserve.
* Revenge actually has a pretty nice cast, and Philip Noyce directing the pilot. But it's pretty clearly a single-story serial without an apparent mechanism for done-in-one stories, so I don't see how it avoids becoming a train wreck.
THURSDAY
08:00 - ABC - Charlie's Angels
08:00 - CBS - The Big Bang Theory
08:00 - CW - The Vampire Diaries
08:00 - Fox - The X Factor Results
08:00 - NBC - Community
08:30 - CBS - How to Be a Gentleman
08:30 - NBC - Parks & Recreation
09:00 - ABC - Grey's Anatomy
09:00 - CBS - Person of Interest
09:00 - CW - The Secret Circle
09:00 - Fox - Bones
09:00 - NBC - The Office
09:30 - NBC - Whitney
10:00 - ABC - Private Practice
10:00 - CBS - The Mentalist
10:00 - NBC - Prime Suspect
* Apparently The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle have the same producers and are adapted from books by the same author, but one is not a spinoff of another. Weird.
* Person of Interest doesn't do much for me from the description, but it does come from J.J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan.
* Prime Suspect terrifies me. It has a hell of a supporting cast, Peter Berg directing, and I really like Maria Bello. However, she's competing with Helen Mirren in the role that made everyone stand up and take notice - in large part because she made herself look like every case was killing her. I honestly don't know if you can keep that pace up over a 22-episode season with anyone.
FRIDAY
08:00 - ABC - Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
08:00 - CBS - A Gifted Man
08:00 - CW - Nikita
08:00 - Fox - Kitchen Nightmares
08:00 - NBC - Chuck
09:00 - ABC - Shark Tank
09:00 - CBS - CSI: New York
09:00 - CW - Supernatural
09:00 - Fox - Fringe
09:00 - NBC - Grimm
10:00 - ABC - 20/20
10:00 - CBS - Blue Bloods
10:00 -NBC - Dateline NBC
* Wow, Jonathan Demme directed the pilot of A Gifted Man? Biggest case of apparent slumming since Spike Lee did episode 1 of Shark. Shame it seems to be CBS's designated Friday night "communicating with the hereafter" drama, because it's got Margo Martindale.
* The guys who have to watch every sci-fi/fantasy show must hate 9pm. Grimm looks like the odd one out for me, despite Angel's David Greenwalt in charge. I'll probably wait on the Blu-rays for Supernatural as I have with the last two years, leaving Fringe the clear winner.
* Supposedly Chuck is having "final season" and "13-episode order" tossed around again. That would get it right to the 100-episode area, although I'm not sure just how crucial that is any more. I do hope they find ways to keep Timothy Dalton around, because he has been killing it on this show (Linda Hamilton, not so much).
* I wonder if Blue Bloods got better in the second half of its first year. I liked it well enough, but when it got scheduled against something else, it lost its space on my DVR, and I never felt a particular need to keep up with it.
SATURDAY
08:00 - ABC - Saturday Night College Football
08:00 - CBS - Rules of Engagement
08:00 - Fox - Cops
08:00 - NBC - Repeats
08:30 - CBS - Repeats (Comedy)
09:00 - CBS - Repeats (Crime)
09:00 - Fox - Repeats with the occasional "America's Most Wanted" special
09:00 - NBC - Repeats
10:00 - CBS - 48 Hours Mystery
10:00 - NBC - Repeats
* Poor Rules of Engagement; it looks like it either has a multi-year renewal order CBS couldn't get out of or it just needs to get over a hump for syndication.
THE BENCH - ABC
Apartment 23 (tentative - Tuesday 9:30pm)
The Bachelor
Cougar Town (tentative - Tuesday 9:00pm)
Good Christian Belles
Missing
The River
Scandal
Secret Millionaire
Work It
* Apartment 23 has Krysten Ritter and a somewhat offbeat premise. I'll go for that.
* Missing and The River both seem like Revenge, in that they're single-premise shows that will be stretched out forever if successful. It just doesn't seem like a good way to do business.
THE BENCH - CBS
The 2-2
Undercover Boss
* CBS never seems to need a deep bench these days, between their solid and predictable hits and a bunch of crime shows that they can use for re-runs.
THE BENCH - CW
The Frame
One Tree Hill
Re-Modeled
* Ugh. Why is this network still here?
THE BENCH - FOX
Alcatraz (tentative - Monday 9:00pm, House to 8:00pm)
American Idol (tentative - Wednesday 8:00pm)
American Idol Results (tentative - Thursday 8:00pm)
Bob's Burgers
The Finder (tentative - Thursday 9:00pm)
Napoleon Dynamite (tentative - Sunday 8:30pm)
Touch
* Alcatraz is J.J. Abrams again, and has the one guy I liked a lot from Lost. But like Fringe, it's got a central mystery that also lends itself to single-episode stories, so it's got a chance.
* I liked Heroes for longer than most, but Tim Kring's Touch looks like a disaster. And if the backdoor pilot that aired as part of Bones is any indication, The Finder is going to be really, really annoying.
THE BENCH - NBC
The Apprentice (tentative - Sunday 8:00pm)
Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea
Awake
Bent
Best Friends Forever
Betty White's Off Their Rockers
Dateline NBC (tentative - Sunday 7:00pm)
Fashion Star
The Firm (tentative - Sunday 10:00pm)
Smash (tentative - Monday 10:00pm)
The Voice (tentative - Monday 8:00pm)
Untitled Brian Williams Newsmagazine
* I'm almost certain I've seen the premise for Awake used in a graphic novel recently. The guy jumping between parallel universes with important differences seems like the sort of thing that would make a great pilot but would run out of steam, especially once the audience encounters "married in one universe, widowed with love interest in the other" for very long.
* Smash could be a really nifty idea - following the process behind mounting a Broadway musical - and has Steven Spielberg behind it. The cast seems to be people who can sing, too, so if "musical drama" means "show where people burst into song" as opposed to just "drama about a musical, with in-story songs", it could be something interesting. It could also be a trainwreck, of course, and I sort of hate the idea of Glee inspiring imitators.
I suppose I could go back to HTF; I didn't exactly quit. It was just last year's casualty of Fantasia - I go to Montreal, I do nothing with my computer but write reviews between days of seeing movies, and when I come home, I've got so much to catch up on elsewhere that something online just looks too daunting.)
As per usual, the information comes from The Futon Critic. The bolded selections are the things I plan on watching, comments follow.
SUNDAY
07:00 - ABC - American's Funniest Home Videos
07:00 - CBS - 60 Minutes
07:00 - Fox - The OT
07:00 - NBC - Football Night in America
07:30 - Fox - The Cleveland Show
08:00 - ABC - Once Upon a Time
08:00 - CBS - The Amazing Race
08:00 - Fox - The Simpsons
08:00 - NBC - Sunday Night Football
08:30 - Fox - Allen Gregory
09:00 - ABC - Desperate Housewives
09:00 - CBS - The Good Wife
09:00 - Fox - Family Guy
09:30 - Fox - American Dad
10:00 - ABC - Pan Am
10:00 - CBS - CSI: Miami
* I'm really pleasantly surprised to see The Good Life make it to a third year; I got the impression that its sinking ratings might end it after two. It's been remarkably good and remarkably consistent since the start, and the politics gives it a unique angle.
* Good lord, does Allen Gregory look insufferable.
* ABC's Once Upon a Time looks a whole lot like the great Vertigo Comics series Fables, which is especially interesting considering that ABC had optioned Fables about a year or so ago. I hope Bryan K. Vaughn and Mark Buckingham and company are getting paid a little. Also, Pan Am doesn't look great, but it's got Christina Ricci, and gets a sample for that.
MONDAY
08:00 - ABC - Dancing with the Stars
08:00 - CBS - How I Met Your Mother
08:00 - CW - Gossip Girl
08:00 - Fox - Terra Nova
08:00 - NBC - The Sing-Off
08:30 - CBS - Two Broke Girls
09:00 - CBS - Two and a Half Men
09:00 - CW - Hart of Dixie
09:00 - Fox - House
09:30 - Fox - Mike & Molly
10:00 - ABC - Castle
10:00 - CBS - Hawaii Five-0
10:00 - NBC - The Playboy Club
* Those two hour unscripted shows are ridiculous, just filled with air.
* Amber Heard is not enough to get me to watch The Playboy Club; Kat Dennings may get me to sample Two Broke Girls.
* Stephen Spielberg and dinosaurs certainly gets me to give Terra Nova a shot. Shame about Brannon Braga's involvement, though - how he keeps getting work after running Star Trek into the ground is beyond me.
* Nice job spoiling Castle's finale in your press release, ABC.
TUESDAY
08:00 - ABC - Last Man Standing
08:00 - CBS - NCIS
08:00 - CW - 90210
08:00 - Fox - Glee
08:00 - NBC - The Biggest Loser
08:30 - ABC - Man-Up
09:00 - ABC -Dancing with the Stars Results
09:00 - CBS - NCIS: Los Angeles
09:00 - CW - Ringer
09:00 - Fox - New Girl
09:30 - Fox - Raising Hope
10:00 - ABC - Body of Proof
10:00 - CBS - Unforgettable
10:00 - NBC - Parenthood
* ABC's 8pm hour of henpecked-men comedies make me ill just reading about them.
* Ringer, from what I gather, actually started life as a pilot for CBS before getting bounced to CW. I guess Sarah Michelle Gellar just doesn't get to sit at the big kids' table, no matter how convoluted her new show's premise is.
* As much as I'm tempted to start watching Parenthood, what with its cast filled with people I like and the show no longer up against The Good Wife, I really like Poppy Montgomery, so Unforgettable gets a look.
* Why the heck do I feel obligated to give New Girl a look because Zooey Deschanel stars? When was her last good work? And with Jake Kasdan directing the pilot, too.
WEDNESDAY
08:00 - ABC - The Middle
08:00 - CBS - Survivor
08:00 - CW - H8r
08:00 - Fox - The X Factor
08:00 - NBC - Up All Night
08:30 - ABC - Suburgatory
08:30 - NBC -Free Agents
09:00 - ABC - Modern Family
09:00 - CBS - Criminal Minds
09:00 - CW - America's Next Top Model
09:00 - NBC - Harry's Law
09:30 - ABC - Happy Endings
09:30 - Fox - I Hate My Teenage Daughter
10:00 - ABC - Revenge
10:00 - CBS - CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
10:00 - NBC - Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
* H8r? Really? Shouldn't this be on MTV or something?
* Up All Night, Suburgatory, and I Hate My Teenage Daughter all have better casts than their generic premises deserve.
* Revenge actually has a pretty nice cast, and Philip Noyce directing the pilot. But it's pretty clearly a single-story serial without an apparent mechanism for done-in-one stories, so I don't see how it avoids becoming a train wreck.
THURSDAY
08:00 - ABC - Charlie's Angels
08:00 - CBS - The Big Bang Theory
08:00 - CW - The Vampire Diaries
08:00 - Fox - The X Factor Results
08:00 - NBC - Community
08:30 - CBS - How to Be a Gentleman
08:30 - NBC - Parks & Recreation
09:00 - ABC - Grey's Anatomy
09:00 - CBS - Person of Interest
09:00 - CW - The Secret Circle
09:00 - Fox - Bones
09:00 - NBC - The Office
09:30 - NBC - Whitney
10:00 - ABC - Private Practice
10:00 - CBS - The Mentalist
10:00 - NBC - Prime Suspect
* Apparently The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle have the same producers and are adapted from books by the same author, but one is not a spinoff of another. Weird.
* Person of Interest doesn't do much for me from the description, but it does come from J.J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan.
* Prime Suspect terrifies me. It has a hell of a supporting cast, Peter Berg directing, and I really like Maria Bello. However, she's competing with Helen Mirren in the role that made everyone stand up and take notice - in large part because she made herself look like every case was killing her. I honestly don't know if you can keep that pace up over a 22-episode season with anyone.
FRIDAY
08:00 - ABC - Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
08:00 - CBS - A Gifted Man
08:00 - CW - Nikita
08:00 - Fox - Kitchen Nightmares
08:00 - NBC - Chuck
09:00 - ABC - Shark Tank
09:00 - CBS - CSI: New York
09:00 - CW - Supernatural
09:00 - Fox - Fringe
09:00 - NBC - Grimm
10:00 - ABC - 20/20
10:00 - CBS - Blue Bloods
10:00 -NBC - Dateline NBC
* Wow, Jonathan Demme directed the pilot of A Gifted Man? Biggest case of apparent slumming since Spike Lee did episode 1 of Shark. Shame it seems to be CBS's designated Friday night "communicating with the hereafter" drama, because it's got Margo Martindale.
* The guys who have to watch every sci-fi/fantasy show must hate 9pm. Grimm looks like the odd one out for me, despite Angel's David Greenwalt in charge. I'll probably wait on the Blu-rays for Supernatural as I have with the last two years, leaving Fringe the clear winner.
* Supposedly Chuck is having "final season" and "13-episode order" tossed around again. That would get it right to the 100-episode area, although I'm not sure just how crucial that is any more. I do hope they find ways to keep Timothy Dalton around, because he has been killing it on this show (Linda Hamilton, not so much).
* I wonder if Blue Bloods got better in the second half of its first year. I liked it well enough, but when it got scheduled against something else, it lost its space on my DVR, and I never felt a particular need to keep up with it.
SATURDAY
08:00 - ABC - Saturday Night College Football
08:00 - CBS - Rules of Engagement
08:00 - Fox - Cops
08:00 - NBC - Repeats
08:30 - CBS - Repeats (Comedy)
09:00 - CBS - Repeats (Crime)
09:00 - Fox - Repeats with the occasional "America's Most Wanted" special
09:00 - NBC - Repeats
10:00 - CBS - 48 Hours Mystery
10:00 - NBC - Repeats
* Poor Rules of Engagement; it looks like it either has a multi-year renewal order CBS couldn't get out of or it just needs to get over a hump for syndication.
THE BENCH - ABC
Apartment 23 (tentative - Tuesday 9:30pm)
The Bachelor
Cougar Town (tentative - Tuesday 9:00pm)
Good Christian Belles
Missing
The River
Scandal
Secret Millionaire
Work It
* Apartment 23 has Krysten Ritter and a somewhat offbeat premise. I'll go for that.
* Missing and The River both seem like Revenge, in that they're single-premise shows that will be stretched out forever if successful. It just doesn't seem like a good way to do business.
THE BENCH - CBS
The 2-2
Undercover Boss
* CBS never seems to need a deep bench these days, between their solid and predictable hits and a bunch of crime shows that they can use for re-runs.
THE BENCH - CW
The Frame
One Tree Hill
Re-Modeled
* Ugh. Why is this network still here?
THE BENCH - FOX
Alcatraz (tentative - Monday 9:00pm, House to 8:00pm)
American Idol (tentative - Wednesday 8:00pm)
American Idol Results (tentative - Thursday 8:00pm)
Bob's Burgers
The Finder (tentative - Thursday 9:00pm)
Napoleon Dynamite (tentative - Sunday 8:30pm)
Touch
* Alcatraz is J.J. Abrams again, and has the one guy I liked a lot from Lost. But like Fringe, it's got a central mystery that also lends itself to single-episode stories, so it's got a chance.
* I liked Heroes for longer than most, but Tim Kring's Touch looks like a disaster. And if the backdoor pilot that aired as part of Bones is any indication, The Finder is going to be really, really annoying.
THE BENCH - NBC
The Apprentice (tentative - Sunday 8:00pm)
Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea
Awake
Bent
Best Friends Forever
Betty White's Off Their Rockers
Dateline NBC (tentative - Sunday 7:00pm)
Fashion Star
The Firm (tentative - Sunday 10:00pm)
Smash (tentative - Monday 10:00pm)
The Voice (tentative - Monday 8:00pm)
Untitled Brian Williams Newsmagazine
* I'm almost certain I've seen the premise for Awake used in a graphic novel recently. The guy jumping between parallel universes with important differences seems like the sort of thing that would make a great pilot but would run out of steam, especially once the audience encounters "married in one universe, widowed with love interest in the other" for very long.
* Smash could be a really nifty idea - following the process behind mounting a Broadway musical - and has Steven Spielberg behind it. The cast seems to be people who can sing, too, so if "musical drama" means "show where people burst into song" as opposed to just "drama about a musical, with in-story songs", it could be something interesting. It could also be a trainwreck, of course, and I sort of hate the idea of Glee inspiring imitators.
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 20 May 2011 - 25 May 2011
Seriously, Hollywood? One wide release this weekend? I know it's a popular franchise, but... really? No counter-programming at all, except for those of us that missed Bridesmaids last week?
My plans? Legend of the Fist and A Beautiful Life, for sure, and after that mostly catch-up - probably Bridesmaids and 13 Assassins, which given my recent work schedule will probably be enough until Kung Fu Panda 2 and a lesser sequel open next Thursday.
- So, instead, let's look at what's coming out of China, the source for a fair amount of entertainment playing the Boston area this week. The Brattle gives most of the weekend over to not-quite-local-but-we'll-claim-him-as-our-own Donnie Yen, whose latest, Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, has him as the masked vigilante of the title, fighting for justice in 1930s Shanghai. It's a part most famously played by Bruce Lee in Fists of Fury (this version clearly tips its hat to Lee's time as Kato on The Green Hornet< as well), but which Yen has also played before, on a TV series back in the 1990s. It plays Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but check the schedule, as the times vary from day to day.
This is in part to make room for a Saturday afternoon double feature of more Donnie Yen martial arts action somewhat connected to Bruce Lee, as he takes on the part of the man who taught Lee wing chun in Ip Man and Ip Man 2. There's some pretty amazing action in these pictures - Wilson Yip directs and Sammo Hung choreographs the martial arts (and squares off against Yen in the sequel). The first is flat-out fantastic, and while the second only really suffers when compared to its predecessor. (Note that according to the Brattle's site, all but Ip Man 2 appear to be digital projection.)
If you like Chinese movies but don't feel like a whole lot of punching and kicking, the latest day-and-date release from China Lion, A Beautiful Life, opens at Boston Common Friday night. There's not a lot of information to be found about it in English, but it appears to be a romantic comedy/drama starring Shu Qi (who also co-stars in Legend of the Fist), and one of those - If You Were the One 2 - has thus far been the importer's biggest success in North America. It might well be worth a look; Shu Qi certainly manages the "beautiful" part well enough. - The Brattle also has a couple other things programmed. On Wednesday the 25th and Thursday the 26th, they will have Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, an interesting film by famed Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul about a man dying of kidney failure who opts to spend the time he has left with family - living and dead. Very odd, but pretty good. Sunday night, the Alaska Wilderness League presents a simulcast of Bears of the Last Frontier, an episode of PBS's nature series focusing on the bears of Alaska's North Slope. And on Tuesday, acclaimed author China Miéville will read from his new book Embassytown at 6pm and introduce a screening of Jan Svankmajer's Alice (a retelling of Alice in Wonderland in Svankmajer's surreal style) at 8pm.
- Three new movies open at Landmark Kendall Square. The one-week warning is for Blank City, a documentary about underground cinema in 1970s New York, back when Manhattan was less gentrified and independent cinema didn't have a national network getting its pictures into major theaters.
Going from 20th-century New York to 16th Century France, we see The Princess of Montpensier, a story about a beautiful woman in love with one man, promised to another, and placed in the care of a third. It looks like a grand-scale period melodrama, and it's getting exceptional reviews that promise a contemporary pleaser rather than a stodgy period piece.
The First Grader, on the other hand, takes place in contemporary Kenya. It's the story of an eighty-year-old man who, now that the country he fought for long ago is offering free education, would dearly like to learn to read. It looks like a warm crowd-pleaser. - The Coolidge's new releases will be a bit familiar from the last few weeks, although they become a little more accessible. Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams has been playing at Boston Common, for instance, but if 3D gives you a headache, you can now see it on flat 35mm film. They'll also be giving a one-week run in the digital rooms to These Amazing Shadows, a documentary on film preservation that was part of their Coolidge Award festivities a week ago.
The midnight show this weekend is Dream Home, a not-perfect but extremely bloody (especially in this uncut version) tale of a woman who will do anything to get an apartment in an exclusive Hong Kong building. It's pretty good, although it's kind of strange that there are enough older horror fans that they are now making movies about the high cost of home ownership.
There's also a special screening on Wednesday the 25th of Eric Metzgar's Reporter, which follows New York Times reporter Nicolas Krisof during the summer of 2007, when he went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and reported on the dangerous poverty and violence there. A student and a teacher also shadowed him, and the student, Leena Wen, will be there to introduce the film. - You may have heard about Tree of Life getting booed at Cannes, but that's just France for you. Those curious about its iconoclastic director's earlier work can catch up with three of his four previous features with ArtsEmerson's Terrence Malick retrospective at the Paramount Theater - Badlands and Days of Heaven both play Friday and Saturday night; The New World plays Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening.
- The Harvard Film Archive continues its look at the careers of mother Sharmila Tagore and daughter Soha Ali Khan in Two Generations in Indian Cinema. Soha Ali Kahn will be appearing in person on Saturday the 21st to introduce and discuss 2006's Bollywood hit Rang de Basanti, and also plays in Khoya khoya chand on Friday the 20th. Sharmila Tagore will also be in town, introducing and discussing Satyajit Ray's Days and Nights in the Forest on Sunday the 22nd; she also appears in The Goddess on Friday and The Hero on Monday the 23rd (both also directed by Ray).
- At the MFA, the Global Lens Film Series continues, with encore screenings of Dooman River and The Invisible Eye on Friday, along with Kyrgyzstan's The Light Thief (Friday and Saturday), Iran's White Meadows (Saturday and Sunday), Brazil's The Tenants (Saturday and Sunday), and Uruguay's A Useful Life (Sunday and Wednesday).
- The Somerville Theatre's "microcinema" will be playing Inventory, an independent comedy produced on the South Shore for the next three Friday nights (20 May, 27 May, and 3 June). It's a slacker comedy with Clerks and The Breakfast Club DNA about slackers who are supposed to be counting the stock at a local furniture store. Somerville also opens Win Win, which isn't done with the Boston area after a pretty good run at Kendall Square, the Studio Cinema in Belmont, and the Coolidge.
Also, while the first screening is a month away, the Somerville has put up their schedule of classic films that will be playing in 35mm on their big screen this summer. - The Studio replaces Win Win with Jane Eyre, but also has special Saturday and Sunday afternoon screenings of Akkara Kazhchakal - The Movie, a feature version of what is apparently a popular web series about a family of Malayali immidgrants in New Jersey. It's not clear from the description whether there are English subtitles to this Malayalam-language movie.
(Also not clear - whether anything is running at the Studio's sister cinema on Stuart Street in Boston. Update your website, guys, I'm starting to get worried!) - Oh, and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides opens all over the place, in 3D and 2D, on the IMAX screens at Jordan's Furniture, the IMAX-branded screen in Boston Common, and the RPX screen at Fenway. I don't want to rain on anybody's parade, because I like writers Elliott & Rossio and co-stars Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane, but... Well, Rob Marshall directed Chicago and Nine, which were pretty awful (and I've heard little good about Memoirs of a Geisha). And putting Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow front and center seems to be a mistake; as much as I recall people complaining about Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom being boring in the previous Pirates movies, I suspect he'll be too much here.
Plus, if this tanks, maybe that will make Warner reconsider the whole "have Marshall and Depp remake The Thin Man" idea, because that's got to be stopped.
My plans? Legend of the Fist and A Beautiful Life, for sure, and after that mostly catch-up - probably Bridesmaids and 13 Assassins, which given my recent work schedule will probably be enough until Kung Fu Panda 2 and a lesser sequel open next Thursday.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Two good shows in New York: True Legend and the Sox beat the Yankees
The last time I went to ballgames in New York City, it was to see the previous Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium before they met the wrecking ball. I was kind of surprised just how subdued Yankee Stadium was; sure, it was an interleague game against the Reds, but I always got the impression that New Yorkers were like us in Boston, baseball-mad east coasters who really got into the game; instead, it seemed like the crowd did nothing unless the jumbotron told them to.
So this time, I went to a Yankees-Sox game. I took precautions, of course. I got a seat 180 degrees away from the bleachers, where the rowdiest fans sit and where you generally see the clips of people being hauled out after altercations. I didn't wear a cap. My Sox t-shirt mostly stayed hidden under my fleece out of necessity - there was some wind, so it wound up a bit chilly - but if anyone had seen it, it would be for #9, and while they may get on you for the team you support, few mock Ted Williams. (Although the original plan, when Matsuzaka was pitching, was to wear the shirt with his name and "Red Sox" spelled out in kanji, all stealthy-like.)
Because I am who I am, and had plenty of time to kill in the afternoon, I opted to take in a movie, and it was mostly a happy coincidence that this was the week Indomina opened True Legend in New York. After all, something new is going to open up in New York that doesn't open elsewhere every week, and if I just happen to get a press release about the Yuen Woo-ping movie, well...
Unfortunately, Indomina's website doesn't state anything about plans to release it beyond its current four or five cities, and they as a company aren't quite secretive, but have occasionally seemed less than forthcoming - they spent much of last year acquiring US rights to movies without much talk about how they are being distributed. A look at Indomina's website indicates a few pretty interesting pickups, but everything other than True Legend has "TBD" in the information fields. There is, as yet, no word on whether it will come to Boston.
Which would make my spending a good chunk of an afternoon in NYC and $13.50 a little silly, but then again, I would have just used it on another movie otherwise. Although maybe with a less expensive movie ticket; that $13.50 for a show at 2pm in the afternoon that wasn't 3-D or large-format (sure, it was 4K digital and comfy seats, but that's not quite "premium" if you ask me). Apparently the Regal E-Walk on 42nd street just doesn't have matinee prices, the cost goes up from there if you want the 3-D, RPX, or, good lord, 3-D RPX (where you're basically looking at a $20 movie ticket).
It does, however, include the Coca-Cola Freestyle machines, which I'm a bit split on. Yes, it was very cool that I got to mix my own soda out of a whole bunch of different options (I went for about 90% Raspberry Coke Zero and 10% Lime Coke Zero), but I can see this becoming a real bottleneck on a busy night; instead of the concession crew just putting your cup under a tap and letting it fill while they get the rest of your meal (several at once if you order different kinds of soda), you've now got every guy with a drink confronted by a touch screen interface that is not necessarily intuitive. I had a guy come up to explain it to me, which I appreciated but likely didn't need. Multiply this by a couple hundred, and it sounds like a potential mess.
(Note: I still want them in Boston theaters, even if it did overwhelm the bladder which shrunk to the size of a pea on Saturday. And if you don't care about sports, jump down past the baseball stuff and photos to the review.)
After that, I pondered spending some time in a museum or something, but wound up just heading to the Stadium. It absolutely should not have taken three trains for me to get there, but I looked at the map wrong and initially took the wrong one, and then when I was on a D train it switched to express and I had to get off and wait for the next.
New Yankee Stadium is weird. The Bronx neighborhood around it is sort of like the area around Fenway, in that you get off the train and you're surrounded by baseball, but even outside the park, all the vendors are official Yankee employees; there's nothing like the guys hawking Boston Baseball or the sausage guys aside from some people selling $1 bottled water. It's also enormous inside; the concourses are huge and each concession window seems to be twice as wide as its Fenway equivalent. As much as I'd like to describe it as an evil, horrible place to visit, it's not; there are guys with "How May I Help You?" signs everywhere, and if you arrive early enough, they'll let you get down close to the field to take pictures and look around.
Although I admit, I wish I'd brought a bag to hold my books and stuff in; I'd heard that the Stadium's policy on them was more draconian than it actually is. It's mostly weird - you have to demonstrate that your bag can fit in a receptacle like they use at the airport, and for some reason they don't let you bring a laptop, tablet computer, or e-reader in, which is just silly, and would annoy the heck out of me if I was trying to see a game after work there. Seriously, how's a Kindle worse that the big hardcover I had?
I didn't get much trouble from the fans, although, as I said, I made sure not to set myself up for it. The game helped; it wasn't the blowout it looks like from the final score until after Adrian Gonzalez hit a three-run homer to that short porch in right, and I was pretty nervous up until then - even though the Red Sox had grabbed two runs, it seems like C.C. Sabathia was on his game but Josh Beckett couldn't seal the deal with individual hitters, even as he racked up six scoreless innings.
The crowd was a lot more involved this game, although it's kind of interesting how, despite this palace of a park and a great team with a bunch of dedicated fans, the Yankees often seem to be trying too hard. There are trivia contests and promotions every half-inning that feel kind of minor league to me, and noise between practically every pitch. What really boggles the mind is the "Make Some Noise" things that go up on the scoreboard every once in a while; I'm used to Fenway, where the people running the show assume I know when to clap. Plus, it's almost like they're not sure when to place the emphasis; they'd flash "make some noise" when a Red Sox hitter was down 0-2, but also when the Yankees are in the same position. There are big, animated things on the scoreboard whenever someone got a hit, even if it's late and they're down 6-0. It's like a movie director who doesn't know what to emphasize, so he makes everything big and loud. Fortunately, the crowd didn't always respond robotically this time, for which you've got to give them a little credit - they could see the situation wasn't good and weren't pretending otherwise.
(Interestingly, at the Sox-Orioles game in Fenway that I just got back from, you could really see the difference. The music choices responded to the mood of the crowd and didn't get bombastic until the game was close and such things were earned. Plus, we never were told when to applaud.)
It was fun, though. There was a kid screaming behind me, and I had to smile whenever he got started. Sure, he was rooting against my team, but it's a kid excited about baseball; he's got no control over fate putting him in a situation where the local team is the Yankees. And I completely missed all the hoo-ha about Jorge Posada asking out after being insulted by being penciled into the ninth spot of the order until I was checking Twitter the next morning - I suspect Joe Buck and Tim McCarver beat it to bloody death.
After that, it was time to take the subway back to where Megabus picks up and wait out a couple hours until the 1:30am bus (mostly in a 24-hour diner; bless such things). I got into Boston at 6am, and was back a my house just in time for my brother to pick up up for a trip north to Maine for another brother's baby shower. I suspect I'm going to be tired all week, but the day was worth it.
And now, merely mediocre photography:
New Yankee Stadium, Gate 6. An imposing, monolithic thing, compared to the homey brick of Fenway Park. I must admit to a thrill of excitement, going into enemy territory, that I absolutely did not feel when going to see the Sox play at Camden Yards last year.
I got close enough to watch the Sox take some batting practice. Neat to get so close behind home plate with relatively few crowding the place at this point. I then started walking through the stadium to check out Monument Park, but it was apparently closed to visitors that day, thus depriving you of a picture captioned "bastards all".
My seat for the game; a $29 seat I paid rather more for, but it was in the front row of its section, so a pretty nice view.
Su Qi-er (True Legend)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 May 2011 in Regal E-Walk #7 (first-run)
As the English-language title suggests, True Legend is based upon an actual historical figure, although I strongly suspect that he is, as they say, being "used fictitiously". After all, you don't go to a Yuen Woo-ping movie for historical accuracy, but for martial-arts madness, and on that count, he delivers - perhaps more than the movie can handle.
A prince has been kidnapped, and it's up to the kingdom's bravest soldier, Su Can (Chiu Man-cheuk, credited as "Vincent Zhao"), to save him. This he does, with the help of friend Ma Quingfeng (Guo Xiaodong) and foster brother Yuan Lie (Andy On). He declines a promotion in order to return home to wife Ying (Zhou Xun) - also Yuan's sister - and start a family and teach wushu. Five years later, Yuan returns, not to see his nephew, but to avenge the death of his father at the hands of Su's. Body and spirit broken, Su will need the ministrations of the reclusive Dr. Yu (Michelle Yeoh) and the training of the mysterious "Old Sage" ("Gordon" Liu Chia Hui) and "God of Wushu" (Jay Chou) in order to return home and rescue little Feng from the clutches of his ever-more deranged uncle.
Many will recall Yuen Woo-ping for his work as action director for films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Matrix, and Kill Bill and expect gravity-defying wire-fu. And while he hasn't directed a movie in nearly fifteen years, longtime fans will remember some of Yuen's earlier Hong Kong work, which while not so elegant, have an over-the-top, anything-goes energy like little else. True Legend has a heaping helping of both, with the opening gambit amazing but too disrespectful of the laws of physics, but once Yuan returns, we're getting stuff like "Five Venom Fists" and "Black Gold Armor" that are even more outrageous than they sound.
Full review at EFC.
So this time, I went to a Yankees-Sox game. I took precautions, of course. I got a seat 180 degrees away from the bleachers, where the rowdiest fans sit and where you generally see the clips of people being hauled out after altercations. I didn't wear a cap. My Sox t-shirt mostly stayed hidden under my fleece out of necessity - there was some wind, so it wound up a bit chilly - but if anyone had seen it, it would be for #9, and while they may get on you for the team you support, few mock Ted Williams. (Although the original plan, when Matsuzaka was pitching, was to wear the shirt with his name and "Red Sox" spelled out in kanji, all stealthy-like.)
Because I am who I am, and had plenty of time to kill in the afternoon, I opted to take in a movie, and it was mostly a happy coincidence that this was the week Indomina opened True Legend in New York. After all, something new is going to open up in New York that doesn't open elsewhere every week, and if I just happen to get a press release about the Yuen Woo-ping movie, well...
Unfortunately, Indomina's website doesn't state anything about plans to release it beyond its current four or five cities, and they as a company aren't quite secretive, but have occasionally seemed less than forthcoming - they spent much of last year acquiring US rights to movies without much talk about how they are being distributed. A look at Indomina's website indicates a few pretty interesting pickups, but everything other than True Legend has "TBD" in the information fields. There is, as yet, no word on whether it will come to Boston.
Which would make my spending a good chunk of an afternoon in NYC and $13.50 a little silly, but then again, I would have just used it on another movie otherwise. Although maybe with a less expensive movie ticket; that $13.50 for a show at 2pm in the afternoon that wasn't 3-D or large-format (sure, it was 4K digital and comfy seats, but that's not quite "premium" if you ask me). Apparently the Regal E-Walk on 42nd street just doesn't have matinee prices, the cost goes up from there if you want the 3-D, RPX, or, good lord, 3-D RPX (where you're basically looking at a $20 movie ticket).
It does, however, include the Coca-Cola Freestyle machines, which I'm a bit split on. Yes, it was very cool that I got to mix my own soda out of a whole bunch of different options (I went for about 90% Raspberry Coke Zero and 10% Lime Coke Zero), but I can see this becoming a real bottleneck on a busy night; instead of the concession crew just putting your cup under a tap and letting it fill while they get the rest of your meal (several at once if you order different kinds of soda), you've now got every guy with a drink confronted by a touch screen interface that is not necessarily intuitive. I had a guy come up to explain it to me, which I appreciated but likely didn't need. Multiply this by a couple hundred, and it sounds like a potential mess.
(Note: I still want them in Boston theaters, even if it did overwhelm the bladder which shrunk to the size of a pea on Saturday. And if you don't care about sports, jump down past the baseball stuff and photos to the review.)
After that, I pondered spending some time in a museum or something, but wound up just heading to the Stadium. It absolutely should not have taken three trains for me to get there, but I looked at the map wrong and initially took the wrong one, and then when I was on a D train it switched to express and I had to get off and wait for the next.
New Yankee Stadium is weird. The Bronx neighborhood around it is sort of like the area around Fenway, in that you get off the train and you're surrounded by baseball, but even outside the park, all the vendors are official Yankee employees; there's nothing like the guys hawking Boston Baseball or the sausage guys aside from some people selling $1 bottled water. It's also enormous inside; the concourses are huge and each concession window seems to be twice as wide as its Fenway equivalent. As much as I'd like to describe it as an evil, horrible place to visit, it's not; there are guys with "How May I Help You?" signs everywhere, and if you arrive early enough, they'll let you get down close to the field to take pictures and look around.
Although I admit, I wish I'd brought a bag to hold my books and stuff in; I'd heard that the Stadium's policy on them was more draconian than it actually is. It's mostly weird - you have to demonstrate that your bag can fit in a receptacle like they use at the airport, and for some reason they don't let you bring a laptop, tablet computer, or e-reader in, which is just silly, and would annoy the heck out of me if I was trying to see a game after work there. Seriously, how's a Kindle worse that the big hardcover I had?
I didn't get much trouble from the fans, although, as I said, I made sure not to set myself up for it. The game helped; it wasn't the blowout it looks like from the final score until after Adrian Gonzalez hit a three-run homer to that short porch in right, and I was pretty nervous up until then - even though the Red Sox had grabbed two runs, it seems like C.C. Sabathia was on his game but Josh Beckett couldn't seal the deal with individual hitters, even as he racked up six scoreless innings.
The crowd was a lot more involved this game, although it's kind of interesting how, despite this palace of a park and a great team with a bunch of dedicated fans, the Yankees often seem to be trying too hard. There are trivia contests and promotions every half-inning that feel kind of minor league to me, and noise between practically every pitch. What really boggles the mind is the "Make Some Noise" things that go up on the scoreboard every once in a while; I'm used to Fenway, where the people running the show assume I know when to clap. Plus, it's almost like they're not sure when to place the emphasis; they'd flash "make some noise" when a Red Sox hitter was down 0-2, but also when the Yankees are in the same position. There are big, animated things on the scoreboard whenever someone got a hit, even if it's late and they're down 6-0. It's like a movie director who doesn't know what to emphasize, so he makes everything big and loud. Fortunately, the crowd didn't always respond robotically this time, for which you've got to give them a little credit - they could see the situation wasn't good and weren't pretending otherwise.
(Interestingly, at the Sox-Orioles game in Fenway that I just got back from, you could really see the difference. The music choices responded to the mood of the crowd and didn't get bombastic until the game was close and such things were earned. Plus, we never were told when to applaud.)
It was fun, though. There was a kid screaming behind me, and I had to smile whenever he got started. Sure, he was rooting against my team, but it's a kid excited about baseball; he's got no control over fate putting him in a situation where the local team is the Yankees. And I completely missed all the hoo-ha about Jorge Posada asking out after being insulted by being penciled into the ninth spot of the order until I was checking Twitter the next morning - I suspect Joe Buck and Tim McCarver beat it to bloody death.
After that, it was time to take the subway back to where Megabus picks up and wait out a couple hours until the 1:30am bus (mostly in a 24-hour diner; bless such things). I got into Boston at 6am, and was back a my house just in time for my brother to pick up up for a trip north to Maine for another brother's baby shower. I suspect I'm going to be tired all week, but the day was worth it.
And now, merely mediocre photography:
New Yankee Stadium, Gate 6. An imposing, monolithic thing, compared to the homey brick of Fenway Park. I must admit to a thrill of excitement, going into enemy territory, that I absolutely did not feel when going to see the Sox play at Camden Yards last year.
I got close enough to watch the Sox take some batting practice. Neat to get so close behind home plate with relatively few crowding the place at this point. I then started walking through the stadium to check out Monument Park, but it was apparently closed to visitors that day, thus depriving you of a picture captioned "bastards all".
My seat for the game; a $29 seat I paid rather more for, but it was in the front row of its section, so a pretty nice view.
Su Qi-er (True Legend)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 May 2011 in Regal E-Walk #7 (first-run)
As the English-language title suggests, True Legend is based upon an actual historical figure, although I strongly suspect that he is, as they say, being "used fictitiously". After all, you don't go to a Yuen Woo-ping movie for historical accuracy, but for martial-arts madness, and on that count, he delivers - perhaps more than the movie can handle.
A prince has been kidnapped, and it's up to the kingdom's bravest soldier, Su Can (Chiu Man-cheuk, credited as "Vincent Zhao"), to save him. This he does, with the help of friend Ma Quingfeng (Guo Xiaodong) and foster brother Yuan Lie (Andy On). He declines a promotion in order to return home to wife Ying (Zhou Xun) - also Yuan's sister - and start a family and teach wushu. Five years later, Yuan returns, not to see his nephew, but to avenge the death of his father at the hands of Su's. Body and spirit broken, Su will need the ministrations of the reclusive Dr. Yu (Michelle Yeoh) and the training of the mysterious "Old Sage" ("Gordon" Liu Chia Hui) and "God of Wushu" (Jay Chou) in order to return home and rescue little Feng from the clutches of his ever-more deranged uncle.
Many will recall Yuen Woo-ping for his work as action director for films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Matrix, and Kill Bill and expect gravity-defying wire-fu. And while he hasn't directed a movie in nearly fifteen years, longtime fans will remember some of Yuen's earlier Hong Kong work, which while not so elegant, have an over-the-top, anything-goes energy like little else. True Legend has a heaping helping of both, with the opening gambit amazing but too disrespectful of the laws of physics, but once Yuan returns, we're getting stuff like "Five Venom Fists" and "Black Gold Armor" that are even more outrageous than they sound.
Full review at EFC.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 13 May 2011 - 19 May 2011
Not many movies for me this weekend, as I'm going to be spending a bunch of time traveling. Not to be too negative, but it's kind of a good weekend for it to work out like that. Not that the stuff opening is bad...
My plans... Extremely light. I'm heading to New York on Saturday to see the Red Sox and Yankees at the new Yankee Stadium (pray for me!), and then up to Maine on Sunday for my brother & sister-in-law's babies (plural) shower. I refuse to even ponder the situation where the ballgame is rained out and rescheduled for Sunday. I refuse!
Around that... Maybe something Friday night - I really would like to give We Are What We Are another chance, but I'll probably just watch the game. In New York, I may catch True Legend, a martial arts flick directed by the legendary Yuen Woo-ping and starring Michelle Yeoh, among others. After I get home, hopefully at least The Robber and 13 Assassins, with Bridesmaids put off until next weekend when the big opening is something I really don't care about at all.
- ... in fact, my friends who went to SXSW quite liked Bridesmaids, a new comedy co-written by and starring Kristen Wiig, directed by Paul Feig, and produced by Judd Apatow. Everyone I've talked to says it's one of the funniest mainstream comedies they've seen in a while, especially considering that its sub-genre - the female-oriented comedy - has taken a lot of hits in the past few years for seeming to have an active disdain for its target audience, even when women are writing and directing.
Priest, on the other hand, is not getting the same sort of love. It didn't screen for critics and the last time Paul Bettany worked with director Scott Stewart, the result was the much-reviled Legion. Folks who read the original manhwa about a priesthood fighting vampires in a dystopian future tell me it's good stuff, but it's not going to be available anymore because TokyoPop, the rights-holder and one of the companies producing the movie, shut down their publishing division. Even if it looked good, I might stay away just because this being a success might be said to validate Stuart Levy's decision to make his company nothing more than a rights-holder. If he doesn't want my money for the comics, I'm willing to not give it to him for the movie, either. - Boston Common is keeping a surprising amount of it's boutique-y stuff around - Cave of Forgotten Dreams, There Be Dragons, and The Beaver are still playing, even though the latter has already left Kendall Square - and bolstering that line-up with a couple new ones. Everything Must Go is based upon a Raymond Carver story, and features Will Farrell as an alcoholic whose wife (Rebecca Hall) throws him out with his stuff, leading him to set up a yard sale to purge his old life. Not a big fan of Farrell, but he does his moments.
Also opening is Hesher, which... Hey, it's about another guy setting up shop outside a house where he's not really wanted. This one's more metalhead the rummy, though, with Joshua Gordon-Levitt as the title thrasher who begins squatting in someone else's garage and teaching them life lessons. The movie also features Natalie Portman, Rainn Wilson, and Piper Laurie. - Those two also open at Kendall Square, which also has the Canadian nominee for the Foreign Language Film category at this year's Academy Awards, Incendies. It's the story of two siblings who receive two envelopes at the reading of their mother's will, addressed to their father and brother - the thing is, they believe the former to be dead and had never heard of the latter. It sends them on a quest to the middle east to learn more about their family history. It looks excellent.
Also on tap are Forks Over Knives, a documentary espousing a natural, vegetarian diet, and The Robber, a German film about a marathon runner who found a use for his unique talents in robbing banks. That one has the official one-week tag on it. - Incidines also plays at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, which also opens Last Night. That one features Keira Knightley and Sam Worthington as a married couple whose relationship suddenly becomes complicated when Knightley's character sees that one of her boyfriend's colleagues is a beautiful woman and encounters one of her own exes soon after. I'm kind of curious to see how Worthington is in this; he's basically been a functional good-looking guy who doesn't mind working against a bunch of effects in his American career, but supposedly he showed himself capable of much more back in Australia, and this is a movie that perhaps demands a bit more. Just make sure you check the schedule; depending on the day and time, it may be playing on any of the Coolidge's screens, either on 35mm film or digital video.
The special programs this week include Oldboy at midnight on Friday the 13th and Saturday the 14th. It's excellent, and you can't really go wrong with Park Chan-wook directing Choi Min-sik. (Yes, I know I gave Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance one star; I intend to re-evaluate that soon, considering I've loved absolutely everything else Park has done). Also playing at midnight on Saturday is the monthly screening of The Room.
On Sunday evening, there is a special program Honoring Eleanor Roosevelt, to raise money to preserve the late First Lady's home. It includes a film, as well as guest speakers and awards presentations. Less pricey is Monday's specialPublic Speaking, a new Martin Scorcese documentary about New York writer Fran Lebowitz, who will be present to answer questions. - The Somerville Theatre, in addition to their usual mix of first- and second-run movies, is having a Charlie Chaplin Weekend - from Friday the 13th through Sunday the 15th, their main screen will be showing City Lights, Modern Times, and Limelight, all classic movies that have recently had new 35mm prints struck.
- The Museum of Fine Arts and Brattle Theatre wrap up the 27th Annual Boston LGBT Film Festival; Sunday the 15th is the last day. It finishes during the afternoon at the Brattle, while running all day at the MFA.
Afterward, the Brattle will be featuring a Mini Green Film Festival as part of Cambridge Climate Change Week. Panel discussions will be part of the screenings of PBS documentary Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization and Food, Inc., while Winged Migration stands on its own. The screen will be dark much of the rest of the week, with an as-yet-unannounced screening Wednesday evening and "Best of Open Screen" on Thursday.
The MFA, meanwhile, will be beginning its Global Lens Film Series on Wednesday afternoon with Dooman River, a Chinese film set along the border with North Korea, and The Invisible Eye, set in an Argentine private school during the military regime of the 1980s. The evening will feature a preview of The First Grader, about an old man who enters elementary school at the age of eighty to learn how to read. - It's a relatively quiet week at ArtsEmerson's Paramount Theater, for film at least. West Side Story plays once again on Saturday night, while Friday night features two screenings of We Are What We Are. It's another one that may call for a re-evaluation; I wasn't very fond of it at Fantasia last year, but it got enough acclaim that I wonder if I missed something while trying to maintain that 25 film/week pace.
- The Harvard Film Archive runs a Berlin School Now series, showcasing a new wave of German filmmakers who are bigger on formal experimentation than melodrama. Notable directors included in the series are Christoph Hochhäusler and Isabelle Stever, who each have two films playing in the program; Hochhäusler will be there in person on Saturday to introduce and discuss The City Below. On Monday, the program switches to a series spotlighting two generations of Indian actresses, mother and daughter Sharmila Tagore and Soha Ali Khan, starting with Tagore's first appearance in Satyajit Ray's The World of Apu. That series will continue next weekend.
- That would be a great way to seque into the Indian movies playing at Fresh Pond, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, as near as I can tell, all three are unsubtitled, so unless you know Tamil (Ko) or Telegu (Mr. Perfect and 100% Love), you're out of luck.
- The Regent Theatre in Arlington has one film program this week, the 2nd Annual Family-Friendly Bike Film Festival, a program of short films about bicycle travel.
- The second-run scene is quiet, with Of Gods and Men opening at the Arlington Capitol. Something may be playing at the Stuart Street Playhouse, but their website has been ominously blank for the past week. Has anybody been by there since IFFBoston to see if the lights are still on?
My plans... Extremely light. I'm heading to New York on Saturday to see the Red Sox and Yankees at the new Yankee Stadium (pray for me!), and then up to Maine on Sunday for my brother & sister-in-law's babies (plural) shower. I refuse to even ponder the situation where the ballgame is rained out and rescheduled for Sunday. I refuse!
Around that... Maybe something Friday night - I really would like to give We Are What We Are another chance, but I'll probably just watch the game. In New York, I may catch True Legend, a martial arts flick directed by the legendary Yuen Woo-ping and starring Michelle Yeoh, among others. After I get home, hopefully at least The Robber and 13 Assassins, with Bridesmaids put off until next weekend when the big opening is something I really don't care about at all.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Queen to Play
I arrived at this movie mainly as a fan of Kevin Kline, and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see that, despite the way the U.S. posters were put together. It is, after all, a French movie, and Kline, after all, is playing the role Jean Reno or Stellan Skarsgard would play in an American film, which is seldom the lead. Still, you seldom see people doing that sort of thing in reverse; the Hollywood money is so good that a person who would be a lead in France will often take supporting roles in the US, and it seems odd to see someone going in the other direction, taking what is likely a cut in both prestige and pay.
But, then, it's not like Kline has been a lead in a while. This actually surprises me; in my head he's still the guy in his forties carrying movies like Dave and In & Out, but that last one was almost fifteen years ago, and though he doesn't really look like he's aged out of those roles, he hasn't had a lead since 2007's Trade (likely not as good as I thought at the time, and which didn't get picked up by a major studio). In the meantime, his calendar age caught up with him on screen something fierce; he now seems to be specializing in supporting roles where it seems to be fifty/fifty that he dies in order to teach the younger main character about the fleetingness and preciousness of life. Truth be told, I can't recall if one of his characters has actually died yet, but, man, the threat is sure alive.
It's a shame, really. He's still a vital, funny guy, and I hope doing another comedy with Lawrence Kasdan (set for release next year) gets him back center stage where he belongs.
Not that I'm complaining about the guy I came to see being in a secondary part, becuase I found myself really loving Sandrine Bonnaire. Apparently I had seen her before, in Intimate Strangers, but I didn't realize that at the time; she was a vaguely familiar name but not face. Quite a lovely face, though, especially once she smiles. Expressive, too, which is a good thing when much of the movie is going to be her playing chess.
The movie doesn't get too much into the mechanics of the game, which is a little disappointing but makes it accessible. Not that I am the guy to look down his nose at straightforward descriptions of the game. My chess-playing abilities are pretty reflective of me as a person - I am reasonably intelligent and retain information well enough to know the rules and how the pieces move, but stink at long-term planning. Still, it would have been nice to hear something more specific than how chess is about knowing the time and place to break the rules (like life, you know), just because I like specifics and would kind of like to learn something so that I could be better at chess, on the off-chance I ever find myself playing the game with someone who doesn't stink at it as much as I do.
Anyway, sorry for the late review, as tomorrow (Thursday) appears to be the Queen to Play's last day in town. It's certainly not a bad couple of hours.
Joueuse (Queen to Play)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 9 May 2011 in Landmark Kendall Square #5 (first-run)
There should be more chess movies, although there are probably more than I think because I just haven't gotten around to seeing many (I remember Siskel & Ebert raving about Fresh, but I missed it). It's a game where everyone knows the rules but can gain some insight over the course of the film. And with it such a game of the mind, you can see something special from close-ups of faces as expressive as those of Sandrine Bonnaire and Kevin Kline.
When the movie starts, Hélène (Sandrine Bonnaire) has never played chess; she's a maid at a small Corsica hotel. Something about a pair of American guests playing the game catches her eye, though, and she gets her husband Ange (Francis Renaud) an electronic chess game as a birthday present, something they can play together or practice individually. He's not interested, but she suddenly sees reminders of the game everywhere. She soon finds herself unable to go much further with the cheap computer, but it turns out that the American expatriate whose house she cleans for extra money, Dr. Kroger (Kevin Kline), plays a little himself, though he has to be cajoled into teaching Hélène.
Director Caroline Bottaro (who also wrote the screenplay, adapting a novel by Bertina Henrichs) is not doing anything tremendously complicated or unpredictable; from the opening where Hélène looks longingly at the American tourist couple to the pride that's on the line in her last on-screen game, the movie is cinematic comfort food for the most part. Even the obvious triangle with Hélène, Kroger, and Ange is played relatively low-key, as if Bottaro knows that the audience will roll their eyes at too much melodrama. It does get weird for a bit in there, but she rights the ship soon enough. And while most in the audience can see what she's going for with each minute, she doesn't feel the need to underline it. Yes, a scene is clearly about how Hélène's co-worker is giving up on something she loves as Hélène ponders doing the same, but there's no speech about it.
Full review at EFC.
But, then, it's not like Kline has been a lead in a while. This actually surprises me; in my head he's still the guy in his forties carrying movies like Dave and In & Out, but that last one was almost fifteen years ago, and though he doesn't really look like he's aged out of those roles, he hasn't had a lead since 2007's Trade (likely not as good as I thought at the time, and which didn't get picked up by a major studio). In the meantime, his calendar age caught up with him on screen something fierce; he now seems to be specializing in supporting roles where it seems to be fifty/fifty that he dies in order to teach the younger main character about the fleetingness and preciousness of life. Truth be told, I can't recall if one of his characters has actually died yet, but, man, the threat is sure alive.
It's a shame, really. He's still a vital, funny guy, and I hope doing another comedy with Lawrence Kasdan (set for release next year) gets him back center stage where he belongs.
Not that I'm complaining about the guy I came to see being in a secondary part, becuase I found myself really loving Sandrine Bonnaire. Apparently I had seen her before, in Intimate Strangers, but I didn't realize that at the time; she was a vaguely familiar name but not face. Quite a lovely face, though, especially once she smiles. Expressive, too, which is a good thing when much of the movie is going to be her playing chess.
The movie doesn't get too much into the mechanics of the game, which is a little disappointing but makes it accessible. Not that I am the guy to look down his nose at straightforward descriptions of the game. My chess-playing abilities are pretty reflective of me as a person - I am reasonably intelligent and retain information well enough to know the rules and how the pieces move, but stink at long-term planning. Still, it would have been nice to hear something more specific than how chess is about knowing the time and place to break the rules (like life, you know), just because I like specifics and would kind of like to learn something so that I could be better at chess, on the off-chance I ever find myself playing the game with someone who doesn't stink at it as much as I do.
Anyway, sorry for the late review, as tomorrow (Thursday) appears to be the Queen to Play's last day in town. It's certainly not a bad couple of hours.
Joueuse (Queen to Play)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 9 May 2011 in Landmark Kendall Square #5 (first-run)
There should be more chess movies, although there are probably more than I think because I just haven't gotten around to seeing many (I remember Siskel & Ebert raving about Fresh, but I missed it). It's a game where everyone knows the rules but can gain some insight over the course of the film. And with it such a game of the mind, you can see something special from close-ups of faces as expressive as those of Sandrine Bonnaire and Kevin Kline.
When the movie starts, Hélène (Sandrine Bonnaire) has never played chess; she's a maid at a small Corsica hotel. Something about a pair of American guests playing the game catches her eye, though, and she gets her husband Ange (Francis Renaud) an electronic chess game as a birthday present, something they can play together or practice individually. He's not interested, but she suddenly sees reminders of the game everywhere. She soon finds herself unable to go much further with the cheap computer, but it turns out that the American expatriate whose house she cleans for extra money, Dr. Kroger (Kevin Kline), plays a little himself, though he has to be cajoled into teaching Hélène.
Director Caroline Bottaro (who also wrote the screenplay, adapting a novel by Bertina Henrichs) is not doing anything tremendously complicated or unpredictable; from the opening where Hélène looks longingly at the American tourist couple to the pride that's on the line in her last on-screen game, the movie is cinematic comfort food for the most part. Even the obvious triangle with Hélène, Kroger, and Ange is played relatively low-key, as if Bottaro knows that the audience will roll their eyes at too much melodrama. It does get weird for a bit in there, but she rights the ship soon enough. And while most in the audience can see what she's going for with each minute, she doesn't feel the need to underline it. Yes, a scene is clearly about how Hélène's co-worker is giving up on something she loves as Hélène ponders doing the same, but there's no speech about it.
Full review at EFC.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
German guys with odd releases: Rammbock and Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Happy Barely-A-Theme Day, as I take a couple day break from doing IFFBoston write-ups to comment on a couple of things that won't be in theaters long, but may well be worth a look while they're there. Both are directed by folks from Germany, so it makes a little sense to group them together like this, and although both are somewhat unusual fits for big multiplex theaters, they're targeted toward fairly different audiences (with the overlap, obviously, being me).
Rammbock is the first film to be released by The Collective under their "Bloody-Disgusting Selects" partnership with, well, Bloody-Disgusting.com, which will release a different horror film at AMC theaters nationwide every month, with Friday midnight shows and encores on Wednesday at 10pm. Each film gets four weeks, and then the next one takes its turn. In this case, that next one is Yellowbrickroad, which might have been an easier sale as the first, being in English and having a name that means something to the audience.
I kind of wonder whether many of the small audience that saw Rammbock with me will be back. There was a technical screw-up that made the movie somewhat difficult to watch, in that the screen was configured for a "scope" movie (2.35 times as wide as it is tall), and this one was flat (1.85 times as wide as tall). In this case, that means the top and bottom of the image wasn't quite cut off, but they were being projected against the black wall rather than the white screen. This could have been a real problem, as the subtitles were in that bottom space, although they were large and white enough to be readable - enough so that nobody (myself included) felt the need to go find an usher, but it was annoying.
Also, this was a very, very short movie - Google listed its running time as sixty-four minutes, while the IMDB says fifty-nine; I suspect Google is including the "what to do in case of a zombie attack in the theater" short that preceded it. Now, I'm generally for shorter movies if that's the proper length, but this one could have used some room to breathe on the one hand, and on the other... This is going to be everyone's first encounter with Bloody-Disgusting Selects, and while I think it's a pretty neat idea, you can't really say that the audience got a whole lot for its money. There are no matinees for these movies, and $11.50 is pretty steep for an hour of movie (plus, no way to take the T home on Friday). The audience doesn't know that July's selection, Cold Fish, is two and a half hours long and brilliant. With no reason to assume that Rammbock is an outlier, Yellowbrickroad may be a hard sell, even with its good-looking preview.
After some quick sleep, I was back at Boston Common for Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a little surprised to see it playing there. It seems to be very last-minute; Google didn't have it on its movie listing page (I only found out about it when checking Fandango to make the pricing chart for last week's "Next Week"), and up until a few days earlier it had been on Landmark's schedule of movie's opening at Kendall Square on the 6th. Neither were where I'd expected it to show up; when I heard of Werner Herzog doing a 3D documentary, I figured on AMC's Harvard Square theater, which has 3D projection but would often get the more upscale studio and indie product. I don't know as that's so much the case any more; they seem to be more mainstream now that the studios aren't enforcing exclusion areas around here (Thor opened in Harvard Square, Fresh Pond, and Arlington, which are pretty close to each other; that never used to happen).
It was a surprisingly good crowd, which is very cool - folks were paying $15.50 a ticket at the evening show, and whenever you hear somebody pooh-poohing 3D, one of the frequent comments is that it's all very well for kiddie or dumb action movies, but you'll never see a crowd of adults putting on stupid glasses to watch a serious film. As it turns out, they just might, so long as you give them a compelling reason, and this one, at least, filled the bill.
Rammbock (Berlin Undead)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 May 2011 in AMC Boston Common #5 (Bloody-Disgusting Selects, digital)
Rammbock is far enough outside what usually the parameters of what shows up on multiplex screens - a low-budget German horror movie so short that only an hour and fifteen minutes passes between the lights going down and the last credit, even with a repeated preview and a draggy shorty accompanying it - that the expectation is that it must be extraordinary. After all, this wouldn't be one of four horror movies chosen for a national release (albeit one that gets eight or nine screenings total per location over the course of a month) unless it were too brilliant to be denied, right? Well, that's not the case. It's pretty good in spots and clever in others, but not the sort of thing to make plans for.
Michael (Michael Fuith) and Gabi (Anka Graczyk) broke up some time ago, but Michael has not really accepted it yet; he's just made the trip from Vienna to Berlin to return her keys rather than just dropped them in the mail because what he really wants to do is convince her to get back together. When he gets to her apartment, she's not there, but a workman of some sort is, and he's come down with one of those highly-contagious diseases that makes him crave human flesh and not communicate so well. Another worker, Harper (Theo Trebs), helps him dispatch the infected guy and barricade themselves in the apartment, but in the process Michael drops his phone in the hall. Now it's ringing, Michael is convinced that it's Gabi calling for help, and there's not much room to fall back - they can see other people stranded in their apartments across a courtyard that fills with infected whenever someone tries to make a break for it.
It's not a bad set-up at all, especially for a feature being shot on an indie budget - a basically contained location, a small cast, the effects limited to some well-practiced prostheses. Director Marvin Kren does fairly well by his limited resources; we get to know the location well enough to feel things tighten up as Michael and Harper are forced to fall back, and he's able to get shocks from just gore; perhaps the most horrifying scene has a victim simply disappearing amid a horde of ravenous flesh-eaters.
Full review at EFC.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 May 2011 in AMC Boston Common #1 (first run, Real-D 3D)
Pundits declaiming the use of 3D in recent years often act like it was gone for a generation between the mid-eighties and late-naughts, but that's not really the case; it was used extensively for documentaries that played at science museums and the like. With few exceptions, those tended to be the work of relatively anonymous filmmakers, the subject more important than authorial voice. That's the case here, to an extent; even a personality like Werner Herzog eventually steps aside to simply marvel at the Chauvet cave paintings.
The Chauvet cave system was discovered by a trio of explorers on 18 December 1994, and while it would have been a remarkable discovery regardless, the contents are the reason why the government of France strictly limits access: There are paintings in the cave estimated to be thirty-two thousand years old, by far the oldest ever discovered. They are a tremendous resource to anthropologists, archeologists, and even zoologists - before seeing these paintings, they could only guess as to whether the extinct cave lion had a mane like present-day African lions - but even beyond the macro level, these paintings touch something in the romantic souls of the researchers; there's a connection between them and an artist who lived millennia ago.
The paintings themselves are interesting, but Herzog and company do an impressive job of placing them in context. An image on the wall of a horse with eight legs will lead to discussions of how even at this incredibly early stage, the artists were already using distortions and other techniques beyond simple representation to illustrate movement, power, and emotion; the sole human figure leads to sculptures with similar designs found at a German site not far away. We see what a fine, technologically sophisticated process archeology has become; work with a shovel would likely destroy the small, fragile artifacts in question, and a laser-generated map allows researchers to explore the cave without opening it up to potential contamination.
Full review at EFC.
Rammbock is the first film to be released by The Collective under their "Bloody-Disgusting Selects" partnership with, well, Bloody-Disgusting.com, which will release a different horror film at AMC theaters nationwide every month, with Friday midnight shows and encores on Wednesday at 10pm. Each film gets four weeks, and then the next one takes its turn. In this case, that next one is Yellowbrickroad, which might have been an easier sale as the first, being in English and having a name that means something to the audience.
I kind of wonder whether many of the small audience that saw Rammbock with me will be back. There was a technical screw-up that made the movie somewhat difficult to watch, in that the screen was configured for a "scope" movie (2.35 times as wide as it is tall), and this one was flat (1.85 times as wide as tall). In this case, that means the top and bottom of the image wasn't quite cut off, but they were being projected against the black wall rather than the white screen. This could have been a real problem, as the subtitles were in that bottom space, although they were large and white enough to be readable - enough so that nobody (myself included) felt the need to go find an usher, but it was annoying.
Also, this was a very, very short movie - Google listed its running time as sixty-four minutes, while the IMDB says fifty-nine; I suspect Google is including the "what to do in case of a zombie attack in the theater" short that preceded it. Now, I'm generally for shorter movies if that's the proper length, but this one could have used some room to breathe on the one hand, and on the other... This is going to be everyone's first encounter with Bloody-Disgusting Selects, and while I think it's a pretty neat idea, you can't really say that the audience got a whole lot for its money. There are no matinees for these movies, and $11.50 is pretty steep for an hour of movie (plus, no way to take the T home on Friday). The audience doesn't know that July's selection, Cold Fish, is two and a half hours long and brilliant. With no reason to assume that Rammbock is an outlier, Yellowbrickroad may be a hard sell, even with its good-looking preview.
After some quick sleep, I was back at Boston Common for Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a little surprised to see it playing there. It seems to be very last-minute; Google didn't have it on its movie listing page (I only found out about it when checking Fandango to make the pricing chart for last week's "Next Week"), and up until a few days earlier it had been on Landmark's schedule of movie's opening at Kendall Square on the 6th. Neither were where I'd expected it to show up; when I heard of Werner Herzog doing a 3D documentary, I figured on AMC's Harvard Square theater, which has 3D projection but would often get the more upscale studio and indie product. I don't know as that's so much the case any more; they seem to be more mainstream now that the studios aren't enforcing exclusion areas around here (Thor opened in Harvard Square, Fresh Pond, and Arlington, which are pretty close to each other; that never used to happen).
It was a surprisingly good crowd, which is very cool - folks were paying $15.50 a ticket at the evening show, and whenever you hear somebody pooh-poohing 3D, one of the frequent comments is that it's all very well for kiddie or dumb action movies, but you'll never see a crowd of adults putting on stupid glasses to watch a serious film. As it turns out, they just might, so long as you give them a compelling reason, and this one, at least, filled the bill.
Rammbock (Berlin Undead)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 May 2011 in AMC Boston Common #5 (Bloody-Disgusting Selects, digital)
Rammbock is far enough outside what usually the parameters of what shows up on multiplex screens - a low-budget German horror movie so short that only an hour and fifteen minutes passes between the lights going down and the last credit, even with a repeated preview and a draggy shorty accompanying it - that the expectation is that it must be extraordinary. After all, this wouldn't be one of four horror movies chosen for a national release (albeit one that gets eight or nine screenings total per location over the course of a month) unless it were too brilliant to be denied, right? Well, that's not the case. It's pretty good in spots and clever in others, but not the sort of thing to make plans for.
Michael (Michael Fuith) and Gabi (Anka Graczyk) broke up some time ago, but Michael has not really accepted it yet; he's just made the trip from Vienna to Berlin to return her keys rather than just dropped them in the mail because what he really wants to do is convince her to get back together. When he gets to her apartment, she's not there, but a workman of some sort is, and he's come down with one of those highly-contagious diseases that makes him crave human flesh and not communicate so well. Another worker, Harper (Theo Trebs), helps him dispatch the infected guy and barricade themselves in the apartment, but in the process Michael drops his phone in the hall. Now it's ringing, Michael is convinced that it's Gabi calling for help, and there's not much room to fall back - they can see other people stranded in their apartments across a courtyard that fills with infected whenever someone tries to make a break for it.
It's not a bad set-up at all, especially for a feature being shot on an indie budget - a basically contained location, a small cast, the effects limited to some well-practiced prostheses. Director Marvin Kren does fairly well by his limited resources; we get to know the location well enough to feel things tighten up as Michael and Harper are forced to fall back, and he's able to get shocks from just gore; perhaps the most horrifying scene has a victim simply disappearing amid a horde of ravenous flesh-eaters.
Full review at EFC.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 May 2011 in AMC Boston Common #1 (first run, Real-D 3D)
Pundits declaiming the use of 3D in recent years often act like it was gone for a generation between the mid-eighties and late-naughts, but that's not really the case; it was used extensively for documentaries that played at science museums and the like. With few exceptions, those tended to be the work of relatively anonymous filmmakers, the subject more important than authorial voice. That's the case here, to an extent; even a personality like Werner Herzog eventually steps aside to simply marvel at the Chauvet cave paintings.
The Chauvet cave system was discovered by a trio of explorers on 18 December 1994, and while it would have been a remarkable discovery regardless, the contents are the reason why the government of France strictly limits access: There are paintings in the cave estimated to be thirty-two thousand years old, by far the oldest ever discovered. They are a tremendous resource to anthropologists, archeologists, and even zoologists - before seeing these paintings, they could only guess as to whether the extinct cave lion had a mane like present-day African lions - but even beyond the macro level, these paintings touch something in the romantic souls of the researchers; there's a connection between them and an artist who lived millennia ago.
The paintings themselves are interesting, but Herzog and company do an impressive job of placing them in context. An image on the wall of a horse with eight legs will lead to discussions of how even at this incredibly early stage, the artists were already using distortions and other techniques beyond simple representation to illustrate movement, power, and emotion; the sole human figure leads to sculptures with similar designs found at a German site not far away. We see what a fine, technologically sophisticated process archeology has become; work with a shovel would likely destroy the small, fragile artifacts in question, and a laser-generated map allows researchers to explore the cave without opening it up to potential contamination.
Full review at EFC.
Sunday, May 08, 2011
IFFBoston 2011 Night #3: Green, Submarine, and The Catechism Cataclysm
I had the uncharitable thought, toward the beginning of Green, of hoping that this was one of those movies where one of the people in the opening scene gets killed, not just for the reason of that meaning there would be less of them, but because it would at least give the rest something to complain about. And, hey, if one of them had actually murdered the other, then we've got a story.
Fortunately, Green, at least, makes itself into something fairly interesting quickly enough, but the other movies in the festival that gave me the same sort of first aggravated impression (Submarine and The Future) didn't have the the same ability to redeem themselves. It's an odd thing - as I've grown older and more aware of how fortunate I am, I've made attempts to not complain about minor things. I inevitably backslide, but my annoyance with movie characters who do so only accumulates.
Which makes a nice segue into my annoyance with the festival schedule this year, I guess. I love the folks at IFFBoston, but as soon as it came out, my first impression was "man, that's a lot of documentaries, specifically performer-related docs." I don't blame festival programmers for loading up on those - from a purely pragmatic point of view, they bring their own audience who might be convinced to stick around for the rest of the festival; from a personal perspective, folks who are drawn to the arts enough to run (and attend) a film festival are going to be drawn to films about artists and performers.
Still, that leads scheduling dilemmas like Friday night, when I look at the schedule for the 9-10pm slot, realize that while I may get to the Brattle in time to see The Troll Hunter, I likely wouldn't be able to get back to Somerville in time for The Catechism Cataclysm (even not knowing until later that Troll Hunter would start late). At that point, my thought process is basically "documentary about a musician I don't care about (Last Days Here), documentary about a musician I don't care about (Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story), documentary about a skateboarder I don't care about (Dragonslayer), so, Submarine it is, even if the program does compare it to Rushmore". Followed by "wait, I liked Rushmore; have Wes Anderson's crappy later movies really soured me retroactively on his earlier ones?"
Maybe I would have been better off going to The Troll Hunter anyway, but then I would have missed The Catechism Cataclysm, which isn't perfect by a long shot, but has its moments. And I have to admit, I found myself mentally marking it up a notch when director Todd Rohal mentioned that some of the stuff from the end was lifted pretty directly from Funky Forest: The First Contact, and I love me some Funky Forest.
And now, the terrible photography and reviews:
Green's Kate Lyn Shiel, Lawrence Michael Levine, and Sophia Takal
Green's Sophia Takal. I've spent a lot of time in movie theaters as both a customer and an employee, and I don't think I'd even consider going barefoot in one. Although, granted, I don't like going barefoot for the ten feet between my bedroom and bathroom in the morning.
The Catechism Cataclysm's Todd Rohal
Green
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #2 (IFFBoston 2011)
Ignore the first scene of this movie; it sets a tone and a theme that winds up being a relatively minor part of what follows. The remaining hour or so turns into something much more interesting than the conversational one-upmanship that starts Green, and while uneven, it's at least an interesting and focused look at something that can be a cliché.
Sebastian (Lawrence Michael Levine) and Genevieve (Kate Lyn Sheil) have been together for four years before they rent a house in Virginia. The idea is that Sebastian will make an attempt at farming and blog about it, and since they are New Yorkers rather than people used to living off the land, hilarity will ensue. On their first morning in the rented house, they find Robin (Sophia Takal) passed out on the front lawn; the owner of the place keeps a spare set of keys there for her. After that, Robin's always around, which isn't so bad at first - she's friendly, and while not part of the sophisticated crowd from back home, Genny finds it nice to have someone to hang around with, what with all the time on her hands. At least, until one day at the swimming hole, when it seems like everyone's getting a little close.
Green takes a major turn there, and having come into the film cold, I'm a little loath to say exactly what the change is, although it is almost impossible to discuss the film's merits and faults without doing so. At first, the change in tone seems like a fatal flaw in the film; it's sudden, unmotivated, and irrational, and when it appears as an incidental occurrence in a movie, the filmmakers usually deserve every bit of ripping they get for it. Here, writer/director/editor Takal doesn't explain causes, basically just inviting us to look at the two halves of the film, compare them, and consider whether or not we engage in this sort of ridiculous destructive behavior.
Full review at EFC.
Submarine
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #5 (IFFBoston 2011)
Watching Submarine, I wondered about director Richard Ayoade's youth, speculating that he'd spent his time in the cinema, watching French movies rather than hanging out with other kids. There's an argument to be made that one is better off that way, at least until trying to make a movie about a teenager and winding up with a bunch of characters who only barely seem human, even once the thick crust of quirk is pulled back.
The teen is Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts); he's a smart but self-aware boy who decides he wants Jordana (Yasmin Paige) to be his girlfriend and sets out to make it happen. Since she's just as off-kilter and self-designed as he is, it does, albeit in a formal, self-examined way. There are some things at home which distract Oliver from Jordana, though - his new neighbor Graham (Paddy Considine) is not just a flashy self-help guru but his mother Jill's ex-boyfriend. Oliver is terribly worried that Graham will steal Jill (Sally Hawkins) away from father Lloyd (Noah Taylor), a rather bland marine biologist, so he starts planning.
Oliver is one of those movie kids who not only gives everything he does a lot of thought, but gives those things the same sort of thought as an adult screenwriter. So of course he narrates the film, peppering it with little comments that are meant to sound adult and sophisticated in his head while revealing his actual immaturity to the audience. Unfortunately, the line between "precocious but misguided" and "annoying little snot" can be a fine one, especially when the adult characters aren't particularly nuanced, and Oliver winds up on the obnoxious side on a rather consistent basis. Part of his deal is spying on his parents, and bits about "routine searches" of their bedroom start out kind of funny in their matter-of-fact delivery, but eventually Ayoade can't get the right contrast, and a sequence involving Jordana's dog later in the movie is just utterly misguided.
Full review at EFC.
The Catechism Cataclysm
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #3 (IFFBoston 2011)
There are two distinct types of strange at play in The Catechism Cataclysm - a weird character in a somewhat conventional situation and parts that are just plain bizarre. Some in the audience aren't going to be down for the whole package, but there's enough of each sort of oddity to satisfy most anyone willing to pick the movie up of a shelf.
Father William Smoortser (Steve Little) is a Catholic priest, but not a very good one. His parables are more like bad jokes than biblical illustrations, and he spends a lot of time on the diocese's computer watching YouTube videos. His superior (Wally Dalton) suggests he take a few days off to reassess his relationship with God, which he opts to do by going on a canoe trip with Robbie Shoemaker (Robert Longstreet), the brother of his high school girlfriend. Robbie's music inspired William as a teen, but he's been a little less successful as a musician than William imagined. Still, they head out on that trip, only to get lost with a pair of Japanese girls calling themselves "Tom Sawyer" (Miki Ann Maddox) and "Huckleberry Finn" (Koko Lanham) and their guide "Jim" (Rico).
Steve Little's Father William is a difficult character, to put it one way. There is, perhaps, an interesting drama to be made about this guy or someone like him - a socially stunted outcast who finds himself drawn to the Church's unconditional acceptance, but not really bright enough or good enough with people to do the job despite the utter sincerity of his belief in God and desire to help. Little actually does an impressive job acting the part; we're given little exposition, but Little makes it possible to infer the guy's whole story. Similarly, Longstreet builds his working class opposite number just as solidly; he's the film's straight man, but one whose confusion is real and tempered with curiosity.
Full review at EFC.
Fortunately, Green, at least, makes itself into something fairly interesting quickly enough, but the other movies in the festival that gave me the same sort of first aggravated impression (Submarine and The Future) didn't have the the same ability to redeem themselves. It's an odd thing - as I've grown older and more aware of how fortunate I am, I've made attempts to not complain about minor things. I inevitably backslide, but my annoyance with movie characters who do so only accumulates.
Which makes a nice segue into my annoyance with the festival schedule this year, I guess. I love the folks at IFFBoston, but as soon as it came out, my first impression was "man, that's a lot of documentaries, specifically performer-related docs." I don't blame festival programmers for loading up on those - from a purely pragmatic point of view, they bring their own audience who might be convinced to stick around for the rest of the festival; from a personal perspective, folks who are drawn to the arts enough to run (and attend) a film festival are going to be drawn to films about artists and performers.
Still, that leads scheduling dilemmas like Friday night, when I look at the schedule for the 9-10pm slot, realize that while I may get to the Brattle in time to see The Troll Hunter, I likely wouldn't be able to get back to Somerville in time for The Catechism Cataclysm (even not knowing until later that Troll Hunter would start late). At that point, my thought process is basically "documentary about a musician I don't care about (Last Days Here), documentary about a musician I don't care about (Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story), documentary about a skateboarder I don't care about (Dragonslayer), so, Submarine it is, even if the program does compare it to Rushmore". Followed by "wait, I liked Rushmore; have Wes Anderson's crappy later movies really soured me retroactively on his earlier ones?"
Maybe I would have been better off going to The Troll Hunter anyway, but then I would have missed The Catechism Cataclysm, which isn't perfect by a long shot, but has its moments. And I have to admit, I found myself mentally marking it up a notch when director Todd Rohal mentioned that some of the stuff from the end was lifted pretty directly from Funky Forest: The First Contact, and I love me some Funky Forest.
And now, the terrible photography and reviews:
Green's Kate Lyn Shiel, Lawrence Michael Levine, and Sophia Takal
Green's Sophia Takal. I've spent a lot of time in movie theaters as both a customer and an employee, and I don't think I'd even consider going barefoot in one. Although, granted, I don't like going barefoot for the ten feet between my bedroom and bathroom in the morning.
The Catechism Cataclysm's Todd Rohal
Green
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #2 (IFFBoston 2011)
Ignore the first scene of this movie; it sets a tone and a theme that winds up being a relatively minor part of what follows. The remaining hour or so turns into something much more interesting than the conversational one-upmanship that starts Green, and while uneven, it's at least an interesting and focused look at something that can be a cliché.
Sebastian (Lawrence Michael Levine) and Genevieve (Kate Lyn Sheil) have been together for four years before they rent a house in Virginia. The idea is that Sebastian will make an attempt at farming and blog about it, and since they are New Yorkers rather than people used to living off the land, hilarity will ensue. On their first morning in the rented house, they find Robin (Sophia Takal) passed out on the front lawn; the owner of the place keeps a spare set of keys there for her. After that, Robin's always around, which isn't so bad at first - she's friendly, and while not part of the sophisticated crowd from back home, Genny finds it nice to have someone to hang around with, what with all the time on her hands. At least, until one day at the swimming hole, when it seems like everyone's getting a little close.
Green takes a major turn there, and having come into the film cold, I'm a little loath to say exactly what the change is, although it is almost impossible to discuss the film's merits and faults without doing so. At first, the change in tone seems like a fatal flaw in the film; it's sudden, unmotivated, and irrational, and when it appears as an incidental occurrence in a movie, the filmmakers usually deserve every bit of ripping they get for it. Here, writer/director/editor Takal doesn't explain causes, basically just inviting us to look at the two halves of the film, compare them, and consider whether or not we engage in this sort of ridiculous destructive behavior.
Full review at EFC.
Submarine
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #5 (IFFBoston 2011)
Watching Submarine, I wondered about director Richard Ayoade's youth, speculating that he'd spent his time in the cinema, watching French movies rather than hanging out with other kids. There's an argument to be made that one is better off that way, at least until trying to make a movie about a teenager and winding up with a bunch of characters who only barely seem human, even once the thick crust of quirk is pulled back.
The teen is Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts); he's a smart but self-aware boy who decides he wants Jordana (Yasmin Paige) to be his girlfriend and sets out to make it happen. Since she's just as off-kilter and self-designed as he is, it does, albeit in a formal, self-examined way. There are some things at home which distract Oliver from Jordana, though - his new neighbor Graham (Paddy Considine) is not just a flashy self-help guru but his mother Jill's ex-boyfriend. Oliver is terribly worried that Graham will steal Jill (Sally Hawkins) away from father Lloyd (Noah Taylor), a rather bland marine biologist, so he starts planning.
Oliver is one of those movie kids who not only gives everything he does a lot of thought, but gives those things the same sort of thought as an adult screenwriter. So of course he narrates the film, peppering it with little comments that are meant to sound adult and sophisticated in his head while revealing his actual immaturity to the audience. Unfortunately, the line between "precocious but misguided" and "annoying little snot" can be a fine one, especially when the adult characters aren't particularly nuanced, and Oliver winds up on the obnoxious side on a rather consistent basis. Part of his deal is spying on his parents, and bits about "routine searches" of their bedroom start out kind of funny in their matter-of-fact delivery, but eventually Ayoade can't get the right contrast, and a sequence involving Jordana's dog later in the movie is just utterly misguided.
Full review at EFC.
The Catechism Cataclysm
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #3 (IFFBoston 2011)
There are two distinct types of strange at play in The Catechism Cataclysm - a weird character in a somewhat conventional situation and parts that are just plain bizarre. Some in the audience aren't going to be down for the whole package, but there's enough of each sort of oddity to satisfy most anyone willing to pick the movie up of a shelf.
Father William Smoortser (Steve Little) is a Catholic priest, but not a very good one. His parables are more like bad jokes than biblical illustrations, and he spends a lot of time on the diocese's computer watching YouTube videos. His superior (Wally Dalton) suggests he take a few days off to reassess his relationship with God, which he opts to do by going on a canoe trip with Robbie Shoemaker (Robert Longstreet), the brother of his high school girlfriend. Robbie's music inspired William as a teen, but he's been a little less successful as a musician than William imagined. Still, they head out on that trip, only to get lost with a pair of Japanese girls calling themselves "Tom Sawyer" (Miki Ann Maddox) and "Huckleberry Finn" (Koko Lanham) and their guide "Jim" (Rico).
Steve Little's Father William is a difficult character, to put it one way. There is, perhaps, an interesting drama to be made about this guy or someone like him - a socially stunted outcast who finds himself drawn to the Church's unconditional acceptance, but not really bright enough or good enough with people to do the job despite the utter sincerity of his belief in God and desire to help. Little actually does an impressive job acting the part; we're given little exposition, but Little makes it possible to infer the guy's whole story. Similarly, Longstreet builds his working class opposite number just as solidly; he's the film's straight man, but one whose confusion is real and tempered with curiosity.
Full review at EFC.
Friday, May 06, 2011
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 6 May 2011 - 11 May 2011
There's going to be some tooth-gnashing about how summer movie season has started and now it's time for non-stop sequels, remakes, and comic book adaptations (especially after Universal self-awarely pushed the start back to late April in the advertising for Fast Five), and while that's not entirely undeserved, this is really one of the most downright odd movie weeks I've seen in a while. The big 3-D comic book movie is by a guy best known for Shakespeare, the boutique cinema has new movies starring Kevin Kline (where he speaks French) and Mel Gibson (where he speaks through a puppet), the multiplex has a Werner Herzog documentary (in 3D), there's a German zombie movie popping up, and the remake is Takashi Miike with samurai.
My plans? I'm thinking a horror 2-fer at Boston Common on Friday with Scream 4 (wow, that cleared out of theaters fast!) and Rammbock, and then probably Thor and Cave of Forgotten Dreams on Saturday. Maybe Fast Five after seeing a ballgame with my brother, sister-in-law, and nieces on Sunday. Some time will be spent at Kendall Square during the week with 13 Assassins, Meek's Cutoff, and Game to Play.
In short, it's going to be a crazy-fun week at the movies.
- The big, big opening this week is Marvel's Thor, with 3D, digital, IMAX... the works. I'm more than a bit excited about this, because it's got a darn good cast - I liked Chris Hemsworth in Star Trek, Anthony Hopkins and Natalie Portman are usually pretty solid, and there are folks like Kat Dennings, Colm Feore, Idris Elba, Rene Russo, and Tadanobu Asano in the supporting cast. I love Kenneth Branagh.
And, really, how crazy is it that there's a Thor movie directed by Kenneth Branagh with that crazy cast, that looks like the production designers have gone full Kirby? When Iron Man came out, I wondered at how, when DC couldn't get their big-name heroes into movies, Marvel made Iron Man, whose fame doesn't really extend outside the comic shop, a big deal. And Thor is less well-known as a superhero (even considering the references in Adventures in Babysitting). Marvel has been really clever about putting together good cast and crews with their comics - I'm really looking forward to Captain America, and wish they could get the rights to Fantastic Four back. They've also been clever with the marketing, pushing how it appeals to women, and despite the Nordic origins, Thor has surprisingly broad appeal (as in, you'd be surprised how many African-American and Latino people go for the comics).
As for what it's going to cost at its various venues, let's go to the grid:Screen Price (before noon) Price (afternoon) Price (evening) Fresh Pond, digital/RealD 3-D N/A $9.00 $12.00 Arlington Capitol, Digital 3-D N/A (Mon-Fri) $9.00 $11.50 (Sat-Sun) $10.00 AMC Harvard Square, 35mm $6.00 $8.00 $10.00 AMC Harvard Square, digital 3-D N/A (likely $9.00) $11.00 $13.00 AMC Boston Common, 35mm N/A (likely $6.00) $9.50 $11.50 AMC Boston Common, digital 3-D $10.00 $13.50 $15.50 AMC Boston Common, IMAX Digital 3-D $12.00 $15.50 $17.50 Regal Fenway, 35mm $9.00 $9.00 $11.50 Regal Fenway, digital 3-D $13.00 $13.00 $15.50 Regal Fenway, RPX 3-D $13.50 $13.50 $16.00 - The studios are going to give counter-programming the old college try, though. Something Borrowed is a chick flick with Ginnifer Godwin as the nice girl who meets a nice guy (Colin Egglesfield) only to have her best friend (Kate Hudson) scoop him up. I've seen the trailer about a dozen times, and it looks inoffensive enough, although quite generic. There's also Jumping the Brrom, with two families from different social classes gathering for a wedding; Angela Bassett, Paula Patton, Laz Alonso, Loretta Devine, Meagan Good, Mike Epps, and Romeo Miller star.
Boston Common fills their theaters out with a few smaller releases. There Be Dragons is writer/director Roland Joffé's with a journalist investigating a would-be saint during the Spanish Civil War. It's got some interesting people involved - Wes Bentley, Dougray Scott, Olga Kurylenko, and Geraldine Chaplin - but, wow, Joffé's reputation seems to have just gone steadily downhill since The Killing Fields. There's also The Beaver, which stars Mel Gibson as a family man trying to deal with clinical depression who takes to dealing with people via a hand puppet. Gibson has a bunch of baggage, but he can be a great actor, and this looks like some of his best work.
One of the 3D screens there will be showing Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which should be a real treat - Herzog makes great documentaries, and here he'll be using 3D photography to bring us inside France's Chauvet Caves for an up close and personal look at the world's oldest known pictures drawn by human hands. This seems to be a last-minute shuffle - it's not listed on Google's movie page and the 2D version was originally scheduled to open at Landmark in Cambridge, but now I'm seeing no sign of it there.
And, remember that Bloody-Disgusting Selects series that was announced a few months back? It starts this week, with Rammbock (aka Berlin Undead), a German zombie movie from last year. It apparently opened on Wednesday, and is playing twice a week for the next month - Wednesdays at 10pm and Fridays at midnight - when it will be replaced by the next film in the series. It appears to be extremely short - roughly an hour - so it won't keep you up too late. - The Beaver also opens at Kendall Square, which has a genuinely exciting slate of films opening. 13 Assassins, for instance, is fresh off its win of the Audience Award at IFFBoston, and it looks like a cracker - though Takashi Miike is known for his strange, even grotesque, work, even when doing family movies, by all accounts this is straight-ahead samurai action. As much as I like his screwy stuff, there have been times when it seemed to get in the way of just doing a great action movie; and I'm looking forward to seeing if this one delivers.
Another notable director with a new movie out is Kelly Reichardt with Meek's Cutoff. She reunites with Michelle Williams for a story of settlers moving into Oregon, likely led astray by their guide and not sure whether they can trust the native who offers to lead them. Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton, Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano and Shirley Henderson make for a heck of a cast.
The one-week warning is for Queen to Play (aka Joueuse). It's a French comedy with Sandrine Bonnaire as a chambermaid who discovers an aptitude for chess and Kevin Kline as the American who tutors her. Kline is always worth watching, and I believe he speaks French fairly well, so this should at least be interesting. - The Coolidge Corner Theatre has another indie opening, Beautiful Darling, a documentary by James Rasin about Candy Darling, a transgendered actress who rose to fame in Andy Warhol's Factory but died young. It's split between two screens, the small digital "Goldscreen" during the afternoon and screen two in the evenings.
They also kick off a new series of midnight shows, a month of bloody Asian thrillers, with Kim Jee-woon's I Saw the Devil. It's pretty fantastic, and the later movies in the series (Oldboy and Dream Home) aren't bad either. It plays midnights on Friday the 6th and Saturday the 7th; Saturday midnight options also include "The Taunting", a burlesque show featuring the Slaughterhouse Sweethearts. If your tastes run a little more toward the wholesome, there's a Saturday morning screening of the original animated version of Charlotte's Web.
And on Tuesday, the festivities for the annual Coolidge Award begin. This year, rather than presenting the award to an individual, the Coolidge Foundation honors film preservation with programs throughout the week. Tuesday night there is a screening of These Amazing Shadows, a documentary on the American Film Registry, with an introduction by the co-director and a panel discussion after the film. Wednesday brings a panel discussion on "Film Restoration and Access in the Digital Age" in the afternoon and a screening of All About Eve in the evening. - The Museum of Fine Arts and Brattle Theatre will both be the venues for the 27th Annual Boston LGBT Film Festival; it runs through the 15th at both locations; there's also a screening of Go Go Crazy at the Machine dance club on the 11th.
The MFA will also feature various compilations of short films: On Friday, a program of Boston College Senior Thesis projects will run at 1:30pm. On Thursday the 12th, the half-hour "Dave Chihuly in Action" will run continuously in the Alfond Auditorium as part of their Chihuly exhibit. Thursday evening will also include a program of short animated films by the 2011 graduates of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. - Another short program will play at the ICA at 3pm on the afternoons of Saturday the 7th and Sunday the 8th; New England Animators features 24 animated short films by local filmmakers. There will be guests on both days, with filmmaker Joel Frenzer on Saturday and Rhode Island School of Design professor Amy Kravitz on Sunday.
- Only two films at Emerson's Paramount Theater this weekend, but they're both notable. Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train plays Friday and Saturday night, followed by chapter 7 of Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinema. Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening bring screenings of West Side Story, in part to promote a Boston Ballet presentation of works choreographed by George Balanchine and West Side Story choreographer Jerome Robbins.
- The Harvard Film Archive has Nicolás Pereda in person this weekend; the young Mexican director will introduce his films on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night; another pair of films will play Monday the 9th, although he is not scheduled to attend.
- The second-run scene is relatively quiet this week (pending Stuart Street's always-late listings); Somerville picks up Source Code and the Capitol in Arlington picks up African Cats
My plans? I'm thinking a horror 2-fer at Boston Common on Friday with Scream 4 (wow, that cleared out of theaters fast!) and Rammbock, and then probably Thor and Cave of Forgotten Dreams on Saturday. Maybe Fast Five after seeing a ballgame with my brother, sister-in-law, and nieces on Sunday. Some time will be spent at Kendall Square during the week with 13 Assassins, Meek's Cutoff, and Game to Play.
In short, it's going to be a crazy-fun week at the movies.
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
IFFBoston 2011 Night #2: The Bengali Detective and On the Ice
Not a whole lot to say about this day - both shows were on screen #2 at the Somerville, which is not my favorite; there's zero leg room, an aisle right up the middle, and as you can see from the picture below, it's not the best for Q&A type situations, although my phone's camera doesn't help.
It was however, a pretty good day for eating. With coupons to use up, I picked up a chocolate banana cream pie at Petsi Pies before working from home that day, and was able to do the quick running in and out of Boston Burger Company and scarf down a King burger (bacon, peanut butter, fried bananas) while standing in line between films. Let me tell you, I got me some potassium that day.
So, anyway, one movie that didn't quite live up to its potential, one that was surprisingly good. I could say more, but let's just get to the awful photography and reviews:
On the Ice director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, answering questions about his film and not zapping us with laser eyes.
The Bengali Detective
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #2 (IFFBoston 2011)
Often, a good documentary will seem like the result of as much good fortune as anything; after all, it's entirely possible to have a compelling topic, an interesting subject to follow around, and a good crew, but that's no guarantee of having a great film come together. Sometimes, a filmmaker will have all that and just be unable to will something fascinating to happen on camera. The Bengali Detective certainly seems to be that sort of movie - a good concept whose great, climactic scene just never materialized.
Rajesh Ji is the Bengali detective of the title, a private investigator who started fifteen years ago with just a pair of cell phones. He now has an office, a half-dozen or so employees, and multiple clients who have him investigate a broad range of cases. His bread and butter is infidelity and stores selling counterfeit products, but his firm has just been engaged by a family that doesn't believe the police are doing enough to investigate a grisly murder. The detectives are a close-knit group, entering a television dance competition together, although Rajesh is showing the strain from other parts of his life - his wife Minnie is seriously ill.
Those last two elements often seem to be at war with each other; this dance thing seems to be taking up a fair amount of time that Rajesh could be spending with his family while he still can. Sure, the audience can't really judge how any man deals with that sort of stress - practicing his dance moves might be just the release Rajesh needs - but most are certainly going to give it a try and find it lacking; we see a man lying to himself and his wife about the seriousness of her health problems. Besides that, the dance competition seems like extra tacked-on quirkiness, comic relief at the expense of the movie's subjects.
Full review at EFC.
On the Ice
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #2 (IFFBoston 2011)
Thrillers like On the Ice are traditionally set among shadows and night, with the lines and crags on the actors' faces all the backstory needed to explain how they wound up in such a spot. Of course, you don't get shadows if the sun never sets, so it's entirely appropriate that this film's twisty plot is navigated by a fine young cast.
Qalli (Josiah Patkotak) and Aivaaq (Frank Qutuq Irelan) are best friends in a small Alaska town, but they are on different trajectories. Responsible Qalli is headed to college in the fall, while Aivaaq has just learned that his girlfriend Uvlu (Sierra Jade Sampson) is pregnant. The morning after a party, they're going seal-hunting with their classmate James (John Miller), but Qalli arrives late, to find Aivaaq and James in a serious fight, and before he really knows what is going on, James is dead. The truth doesn't seem to be an option, so they do what they can to misdirect the authorities to make it look like an accident. Of course, no plan is perfect, and something seems off to Qalli's father Egasak (Teddy Kyle Smith), head of the local search & rescue team.
On the Ice is not an extraordinarily complicated movie; writer/director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean and his cast lay out just about everything the audience needs to know about the characters and the situation in the first ten or fifteen minutes. It is, however, the sort where the next complication follows logically and inevitably - not just because the plans are flawed mechanically, but because human nature in both general and specific cases will not be denied. MacLean makes the plot twists interesting in a number of specific, interesting ways - scenes where geography is important are shot clearly, blows to the head produce realistic concussion-like symptoms, and James's girlfriend Michelle (Adamina Kerr) has an interesting role.
Full review at EFC.
It was however, a pretty good day for eating. With coupons to use up, I picked up a chocolate banana cream pie at Petsi Pies before working from home that day, and was able to do the quick running in and out of Boston Burger Company and scarf down a King burger (bacon, peanut butter, fried bananas) while standing in line between films. Let me tell you, I got me some potassium that day.
So, anyway, one movie that didn't quite live up to its potential, one that was surprisingly good. I could say more, but let's just get to the awful photography and reviews:
On the Ice director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, answering questions about his film and not zapping us with laser eyes.
The Bengali Detective
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #2 (IFFBoston 2011)
Often, a good documentary will seem like the result of as much good fortune as anything; after all, it's entirely possible to have a compelling topic, an interesting subject to follow around, and a good crew, but that's no guarantee of having a great film come together. Sometimes, a filmmaker will have all that and just be unable to will something fascinating to happen on camera. The Bengali Detective certainly seems to be that sort of movie - a good concept whose great, climactic scene just never materialized.
Rajesh Ji is the Bengali detective of the title, a private investigator who started fifteen years ago with just a pair of cell phones. He now has an office, a half-dozen or so employees, and multiple clients who have him investigate a broad range of cases. His bread and butter is infidelity and stores selling counterfeit products, but his firm has just been engaged by a family that doesn't believe the police are doing enough to investigate a grisly murder. The detectives are a close-knit group, entering a television dance competition together, although Rajesh is showing the strain from other parts of his life - his wife Minnie is seriously ill.
Those last two elements often seem to be at war with each other; this dance thing seems to be taking up a fair amount of time that Rajesh could be spending with his family while he still can. Sure, the audience can't really judge how any man deals with that sort of stress - practicing his dance moves might be just the release Rajesh needs - but most are certainly going to give it a try and find it lacking; we see a man lying to himself and his wife about the seriousness of her health problems. Besides that, the dance competition seems like extra tacked-on quirkiness, comic relief at the expense of the movie's subjects.
Full review at EFC.
On the Ice
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #2 (IFFBoston 2011)
Thrillers like On the Ice are traditionally set among shadows and night, with the lines and crags on the actors' faces all the backstory needed to explain how they wound up in such a spot. Of course, you don't get shadows if the sun never sets, so it's entirely appropriate that this film's twisty plot is navigated by a fine young cast.
Qalli (Josiah Patkotak) and Aivaaq (Frank Qutuq Irelan) are best friends in a small Alaska town, but they are on different trajectories. Responsible Qalli is headed to college in the fall, while Aivaaq has just learned that his girlfriend Uvlu (Sierra Jade Sampson) is pregnant. The morning after a party, they're going seal-hunting with their classmate James (John Miller), but Qalli arrives late, to find Aivaaq and James in a serious fight, and before he really knows what is going on, James is dead. The truth doesn't seem to be an option, so they do what they can to misdirect the authorities to make it look like an accident. Of course, no plan is perfect, and something seems off to Qalli's father Egasak (Teddy Kyle Smith), head of the local search & rescue team.
On the Ice is not an extraordinarily complicated movie; writer/director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean and his cast lay out just about everything the audience needs to know about the characters and the situation in the first ten or fifteen minutes. It is, however, the sort where the next complication follows logically and inevitably - not just because the plans are flawed mechanically, but because human nature in both general and specific cases will not be denied. MacLean makes the plot twists interesting in a number of specific, interesting ways - scenes where geography is important are shot clearly, blows to the head produce realistic concussion-like symptoms, and James's girlfriend Michelle (Adamina Kerr) has an interesting role.
Full review at EFC.
Monday, May 02, 2011
IFFBoston 2011 Opening Night: Being Elmo
Man, if this is just getting up today, I fear for how long getting the rest up will take!
I don't see movies multiple times when they're on the festival circuit, so I haven't yet caught a fillmmaker telling two separate audiences that they're the best. I don't doubt that the emotion, at least, is true most of the time, and I'm not sure how you differentiate between them other than the obvious - those French audiences that boo, for instance, are likely not going to be anyone's favorites.
This comes up because director Constance Marks and company made frequent comments about the IFFBoston audience in Somerville being the best, and while I'm sure some of that is playing to the crowd, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little more to it than that. After all, about midway through the movie, there was a real frisson of excitement and anticipation when Kevin Clash started talking about Henson & Oz calling him to work on The Dark Crystal, and disappointment when he ultimately didn't take the job because it would mean quitting the ones he had at the time. This audience, perhaps more than the ones at Sundance and SXSW, dug puppetry enough that a sizable chunk found The Dark Crystal really cool; it wasn't just parents taking their kids to "the Elmo movie".
There were a fair chunk of those, of course, and that was a great demonstration of how the people involved knew how to work an audience: After the movie, Kevin pulled Elmo out of his bag and asked all the kids to come up to the stage so that Elmo could say hi and give them hugs. Then, the kids could go home and to bed, and Elmo went back in the bag while Clash, Marks, and company answered questions about the movie and the stuff that wasn't covered in it.
Then, after that, Elmo came back out to participate in the Q&A himself. As I mention in the movie's review, it's a real testament to Kevin Clash's skill as a puppeteer that you can see how he manipulates Elmo and still see the character as an individual. It's also fun to see the way Elmo changes when he's not on a Sesame Street segment; he's a little more of a troublemaker and wiseguy. He does a great Barry White impression on demand, and in a way he's Kevin Clash less filtered.
My favorite bit, just because it would please my neice, came when someone asked the best and worst parts about being on such a popular TV show: "What's he talking about? Elmo's not on a show, Elmo just lives on Sesame Street!" (Amazingly cute fawning for the camera) "But Oscar can be difficult."
So, here's some pictures, and the start of the review underneath. I apologize for how the camera on my Droid isn't really that great; sometime, I'll have to get a real one.
Director Constance Marks and Kevin Clash
Elmo greeting kids on stage
A young fan shows Kevin Clash & Elmo his puppet.
Q&A w/ Constance Marks, Elmo, Kevin Clash, and cinematographer James Miller (l-r). Yes, Elmo has his own guest badge that says "Cast & Crew: Elmo".
Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #1 (IFFBoston 2011)
I don't have kids of my own, but I have a four-year-old niece, and Elmo sort of drove her parents up the wall, at least for a while. Something about the high voice, the talking in the third person, and utter omnipresence of the energetic, almost aggressively friendly little red monster makes him connect to kids like few other Muppets have, but at the same time makes adults grumble about how in their day, Sesame Street's Muppets weren't so one-note. There were more sophisticated and less annoying characters, like Grover. Being Elmo won't necessarily change that opinion, but it will at least let them appreciate Kevin Clash, the performer who brings him to life.
Like many a parent of Elmo's fans, Clash watched Sesame Street as a kid too, sharing a small house with four siblings in Baltimore. As much as the characters delighted him, he was just as curious as to how the puppets were made and how they worked, and it wasn't long before he was cutting up his father's trenchcoat for materials to make his own. He had a talent for it, and it wasn't long before he was doing shows for his mother's day care kids, then in the parks, and then on local television. He also got to meet two important mentors - Kermit Love, the Santa-bearded puppetmaker who showed him some of the tricks of the trade, and Jim Henson. He'd go through a number of different jobs before landing on Sesame Street, developing a few characters that didn't quite connect (the most notable probably being Hoots the Owl) before picking up a red puppet that veteran puppeteer Richard Hunt just couldn't make work.
Much of Being Elmo is a "local boy makes good" story, and it's a very pleasant and well-made example of the genre. The filmmakers are very fortunate in a number of ways: Their subject is an open, friendly person who never seems to be holding back but brings out extra bits of himself when performing. He's humble and self-deprecating but takes pride in his accomplishments. While some important figures like Love and Henson are sadly no longer with us, Clash's parents are, and the time we spend with them certainly backs up another mentor's claim that they are the inspiration for Elmo's boundless energy and love. Director Constance Marks and the other filmmakers were able to dig up some impressive material from the archives - it's really an incredible stroke of luck that a visit by Clash to Love's workshop as a teenager was recorded for a TV show.
Full review at EFC.
I don't see movies multiple times when they're on the festival circuit, so I haven't yet caught a fillmmaker telling two separate audiences that they're the best. I don't doubt that the emotion, at least, is true most of the time, and I'm not sure how you differentiate between them other than the obvious - those French audiences that boo, for instance, are likely not going to be anyone's favorites.
This comes up because director Constance Marks and company made frequent comments about the IFFBoston audience in Somerville being the best, and while I'm sure some of that is playing to the crowd, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little more to it than that. After all, about midway through the movie, there was a real frisson of excitement and anticipation when Kevin Clash started talking about Henson & Oz calling him to work on The Dark Crystal, and disappointment when he ultimately didn't take the job because it would mean quitting the ones he had at the time. This audience, perhaps more than the ones at Sundance and SXSW, dug puppetry enough that a sizable chunk found The Dark Crystal really cool; it wasn't just parents taking their kids to "the Elmo movie".
There were a fair chunk of those, of course, and that was a great demonstration of how the people involved knew how to work an audience: After the movie, Kevin pulled Elmo out of his bag and asked all the kids to come up to the stage so that Elmo could say hi and give them hugs. Then, the kids could go home and to bed, and Elmo went back in the bag while Clash, Marks, and company answered questions about the movie and the stuff that wasn't covered in it.
Then, after that, Elmo came back out to participate in the Q&A himself. As I mention in the movie's review, it's a real testament to Kevin Clash's skill as a puppeteer that you can see how he manipulates Elmo and still see the character as an individual. It's also fun to see the way Elmo changes when he's not on a Sesame Street segment; he's a little more of a troublemaker and wiseguy. He does a great Barry White impression on demand, and in a way he's Kevin Clash less filtered.
My favorite bit, just because it would please my neice, came when someone asked the best and worst parts about being on such a popular TV show: "What's he talking about? Elmo's not on a show, Elmo just lives on Sesame Street!" (Amazingly cute fawning for the camera) "But Oscar can be difficult."
So, here's some pictures, and the start of the review underneath. I apologize for how the camera on my Droid isn't really that great; sometime, I'll have to get a real one.
Director Constance Marks and Kevin Clash
Elmo greeting kids on stage
A young fan shows Kevin Clash & Elmo his puppet.
Q&A w/ Constance Marks, Elmo, Kevin Clash, and cinematographer James Miller (l-r). Yes, Elmo has his own guest badge that says "Cast & Crew: Elmo".
Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #1 (IFFBoston 2011)
I don't have kids of my own, but I have a four-year-old niece, and Elmo sort of drove her parents up the wall, at least for a while. Something about the high voice, the talking in the third person, and utter omnipresence of the energetic, almost aggressively friendly little red monster makes him connect to kids like few other Muppets have, but at the same time makes adults grumble about how in their day, Sesame Street's Muppets weren't so one-note. There were more sophisticated and less annoying characters, like Grover. Being Elmo won't necessarily change that opinion, but it will at least let them appreciate Kevin Clash, the performer who brings him to life.
Like many a parent of Elmo's fans, Clash watched Sesame Street as a kid too, sharing a small house with four siblings in Baltimore. As much as the characters delighted him, he was just as curious as to how the puppets were made and how they worked, and it wasn't long before he was cutting up his father's trenchcoat for materials to make his own. He had a talent for it, and it wasn't long before he was doing shows for his mother's day care kids, then in the parks, and then on local television. He also got to meet two important mentors - Kermit Love, the Santa-bearded puppetmaker who showed him some of the tricks of the trade, and Jim Henson. He'd go through a number of different jobs before landing on Sesame Street, developing a few characters that didn't quite connect (the most notable probably being Hoots the Owl) before picking up a red puppet that veteran puppeteer Richard Hunt just couldn't make work.
Much of Being Elmo is a "local boy makes good" story, and it's a very pleasant and well-made example of the genre. The filmmakers are very fortunate in a number of ways: Their subject is an open, friendly person who never seems to be holding back but brings out extra bits of himself when performing. He's humble and self-deprecating but takes pride in his accomplishments. While some important figures like Love and Henson are sadly no longer with us, Clash's parents are, and the time we spend with them certainly backs up another mentor's claim that they are the inspiration for Elmo's boundless energy and love. Director Constance Marks and the other filmmakers were able to dig up some impressive material from the archives - it's really an incredible stroke of luck that a visit by Clash to Love's workshop as a teenager was recorded for a TV show.
Full review at EFC.
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