The Moviefone Blog

'Small, Beautifully Moving Parts' SXSW Review: A Smart, Female-Centric Drama

Jette Kernion — 2011-03-23T16:15:00+00:00

It's difficult for me to find interest in "women's films" or "chick flicks" unless the chicks in question are practicing martial arts, wielding machine guns or fighting zombies. But I was charmed by 'Small, Beautifully Moving Parts,' a portrait of a woman who generally prefers the company of technological items over humans until she becomes pregnant and ultimately decides to seek advice from her mother.

Sarah Sparks (Anna Margaret Hollyman) is a "freelance technologist" who loves taking things apart to examine all the components, as you might guess from the movie's title. Even when she is waiting for her pregnancy test to show its results, she admires the way the test is put together. She primarily communicates with people in an interview style, stopping folks in a park or on the street to ask their opinion about whatever question is on her mind at the moment. The exception is her husband Leon (Andre Holland), a supportive guy who is almost too good to be true and might make you envy Sarah just a bit.

After a trip to California for a disastrous baby shower thrown by her sister Emily, Sarah feels like she's not ready to be a mom. She wants her own mom. It turns out, though, that her mother is not especially easy to find. Sarah ends up on a road trip, visiting her equally tech-loving dad and her husband's sister Towie (Susan Kelechi Watson), a masseuse who believes in all kinds of odd things. Sarah isn't worried about the road trip because she has her GPS to guide her and her phone to keep her connected ... until they stop working and she enters a techie-free zone.

The performances in 'Small, Beautifully Moving Parts' are terrific across the board, unusual for a low-budget indie film. Hollyman comes across as a less flaky, more grounded version of Drew Barrymore, and her character feels realistically pregnant without the usual sitcom-y pregnant-lady antics. The movie is also beautifully shot, especially once Sarah enters Arizona. Although it's hardly a plot-heavy movie, it never drags or feels slow.

'Small, Beautifully Moving Parts' filmmakers Annie Howell and Lisa Robinson have given me exactly what I want from a drama about women: smart characters who aren't restrained by stereotypes and who behave believably if not predictably, with a sense of humor that isn't mean. Here's hoping that the filmmakers have the opportunity to share this movie with as many people -- male and female -- as possible.

'El Bulli: Cooking in Progress' SXSW Review: Voyeurism for Foodies

Jette Kernion — 2011-03-19T10:00:00+00:00

Have you ever heard of the restaurant El Bulli, and do you know anything about its secluded location in Spain, its 35-course meals and jaw-dropping prices? Is the term "molecular gastronomy" familiar to you? If so, you will certainly be fascinated by the documentary 'El Bulli: Cooking in Progress,' an immersion into the research and experimentation undertaken by the restaurant's chefs. If not ... you might feel a little lost.

The conceit of this German documentary is to drop you right in the middle of the chefs' work, with the barest minimum of context, explanation or information. The only set-up consists of a little bit of text informing you that every 12 months, chef Ferran Adria closes El Bulli for six months to develop a new menu for his restaurant.

The first part of the film focuses on a few days during the six months of R&D (so to speak) in which the chefs perform in their "lab" location. They take copious notes and the scene does indeed look like a science lab, as they experiment and record what happens when mushrooms and sweet potatoes are cooked in numerous different ways. Adria is blunt with his sous chefs and has no qualms about expressing his disapproval.

In the second half of 'El Bulli,' the scene shifts back to the restaurant itself as the chefs and staff prepare to reopen. More experimentation takes place, this time focusing on specific arrangements and dishes rather than on "What happens when I do this to a carrot?" The chefs also train the kitchen and house staff. The restaurant reopens and we see the results from the kitchen point of view -- the camera peeks in the windows of the dining room, but no further.

The focus and storytelling method work on a certain level -- kitchen voyeurism, ideal for foodies. But this film from German documentary director Gereon Wetzel doesn't work as an experience a wider audience might enjoy. So many questions are left unanswered, so many potentially fascinating avenues are unexplored. Who goes to this restaurant? How much does it cost? Who are these chefs -- we barely learn their names. The question of whether some of the deconstructivist/molecular gastronomy experiments and dishes actually qualify as food is another one I would have enjoyed seeing explored.

'El Bulli: Cooking in Progress' is as single-minded in its intent as the chef it shows us ... but not nearly as creative or innovative. I enjoyed watching the chefs at work, both researching and preparing a meal with dozens of courses ... but afterwards I felt oddly unsatisfied and in need of something a little more filling.

'F*** My Life' SXSW Review: Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Jette Kernion — 2011-03-18T17:30:00+00:00

One of the nicer surprises of SXSW this year was discovering that the movie 'F*** My Life' ('Que Pena Tu Vida'), despite the title, was a downright sweet and practically adorable romantic comedy. Chilean writer/director Nicolas Lopez's previous film was a comic-book superhero film, 'Santos,' and this is quite different in story but with the same light touch.

Javier (Ariel Levy) is a young advertising professional whose best friend since childhood is Angela. They text each other almost continually, asking for advice and support ... or in Angela's case, cracking wise. Javier falls for Sofia (Lucy Cominetti), a lovely singer, and while the beginning of their relationship is a bit rocky, they have two years of bliss until he feels stifled and breaks up. He regrets this almost immediately, so most of the story is about his attempts to win her back, to mourn, or to get over the breakup. The title of 'F*** My Life' reflects the way he feels throughout most of the film.

It's not difficult to understand why Sofia won't relent: Javier is the Chilean cousin of the immature man-child who is becoming a staple of American comedies these days. He's more in love with love than interested in Sofia personally. Fortunately, Levy makes the character so charming that you can understand why so many minor characters are eager to dance with him ... or jump into bed.

The supporting characters are all whimsically odd, as you'd expect in a romantic comedy. His embarrassingly permissive mother Patricia heads the list, but the policeman who approaches Javier and Sofia in the car, the bartender at Javier's favorite local joint, and the gentleman who steals Javier's belt also add to the fun.

'F*** My Life' is set in Santiago, Chile, and the story is interspersed with interviews with the principal characters, reminiscent somewhat of 'Annie Hall' (or 'When Harry Met Sally,' depending on your favorite romantic comedy). This allows the movie to skip around in time for the first third, although it eventually settles into a traditional narrative structure.

The social media aspects of 'F*** My Life' and the narrative jumps in the first part of the movie, much like '(500) Days of Summer,' add a little freshness to the genre. 'F*** My Life' is a reminder that straightforward romantic comedies can hit all their expected marks but still feel entertaining.

Ultimate SXSW Guide: Everything You Need to Know About the Film Venues

Jette Kernion — 2011-03-10T15:00:00+00:00

The SXSW Film Festival has a whopping eight venues for moviegoing this year. They range in size and style from the cozy Alamo Ritz second theater to the temporary but convenient Vimeo Theater in the Austin Convention Center to the majestic Paramount. Some theaters are walking distance from the convention center and from one another, some are remote satellite venues aimed at pleasing Austin filmgoers.

If you're trying to figure out how to see six movies a day, or how to manage meals and parties around a few films you're dying to watch, this guide can help you get organized ... at least a little.

Some of the info in this venue guide has been excerpted (with permission) from the Slackerwood Guide to SXSW 2011 Film Festival Theaters/Venues. Check out that online guide for more detailed information about places to eat near theaters, parking options and theater pros and cons. In addition, SXSW Film badge-holders can attend the Beginner's Guide to SXSW Film panel on Friday (which I'm on) and feel free to pelt the panelists with questions.

Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz (320 E. 6th)
Alamo Ritz is probably the most popular SXSW theater -- everyone wants to see something here. Make sure you get in line at least an hour before the movie starts. While you wait, you can people-watch on Sixth Street, which turns into one big party after the Music fest starts on Thursday.
Best Reason to Go: Booze ... OK, and pretty good food, too, so you can watch movies all day without having to schedule a lunch or dinner break.
What to See: Get a taste of films from around the world with the SX Global series, which Alamo Ritz is hosting this year.
How to Get There: Walking distance from all downtown theaters and Film Shuttle stops.

Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar (1120 S. Lamar)
This year, Alamo South Lamar is showing SXSW movies on three screens: two seat 118 people, the big one seats 218. Like Alamo Ritz, this theater also has a full restaurant menu and serves beer and wine (no liquor) ... plus weekend brunch.
Best Reason to Go: The milkshakes. Not to mention the projection and sound quality here are usually excellent.
What to See: Stay up late for the SXFantastic films at midnight. You never know what crazy stunts Alamo staff will pull as part of these screenings.
How to Get There: Alamo South Lamar is a stop on the SXSW Film Shuttle. Don't try walking here; it's too far even if you're a super-amazing NYC pedestrian.

Austin Convention Center (ACC)/Vimeo Theater (501 E. 4th)
ACC is SXSW Conference Central, but it also holds the second-biggest festival theater, which has been expanded to hold 600 seats this year. If you've got a badge, you can also hang out at the trade show, and you don't need a badge to visit the Flatstock poster gallery from Wednesday through Saturday.
Best Reason to Go: On a rainy day, this is the one theater that has indoor lines ... and on any day, it's convenient and rarely sells out.
What to See: The Documentary Competition features will primarily screen here.
How to Get There: Walking distance from all downtown theaters. ACC is also a stop on the SXSW Film Shuttle.

Paramount Theatre (713 Congress)
The largest SXSW venue and the oldest by far is the Paramount Theatre, which seats nearly 1,200 people. The seats may not be the most comfy, but it's a lovely old theater convenient to just about everything you want to do downtown.
Best Reason to Go: How often do you get to see movies with more than a thousand other eager audience members?
What to See: Splashy gala premieres with red carpet events outside, and celebrity Q&As after the movie. Line up early for the opening-night film; last year the line wrapped entirely around the block, and the theater filled quickly.
How to Get There: Walking distance from all downtown theaters. You can catch the SXSW Film Shuttle at 7th and Congress.

Rollins Theatre at the Long Center (701 W. Riverside Drive)
Rollins is a small theater in the huge Long Center for the Performing Arts complex, and it's normally not used for showing movies. The temporary setup for SXSW seats 210, and should be a good place to watch films, away from the downtown crowds.
Best Reason to Go: So you can walk across the street after the movie to Sandy's Hamburgers for frozen custard.
What to See: The Lone Star States features and Texas Shorts program are screening here ... cowboy boots optional.
How to Get There: Rollins is a stop on the SXSW Film Shuttle. It's halfway between downtown and Alamo on South Lamar, and a long-ish walk to either of those areas.

State Theatre (719 Congress)
The State Theatre hasn't officially reopened since it flooded in 2006, but it's in good enough shape to show movies at SXSW this year. It'll seat almost 300 people and movies will be projected in HD on a standard theater screen.
Best Reason to Go: It's right next to the Paramount.
What to See: The Narrative Competition features will primarily screen here.
How to Get There: Walking distance from all downtown theaters. You can catch the SXSW Film Shuttle at 7th and Congress.

Regal Westgate/Regal Arbor at Great Hills
Westgate and Arbor are SXSatellite venues this year, aimed at appealing to locals. The theaters are too far away to walk and are not on the SXSW Film Shuttle. The SXSW 2010 films screening in these theaters also will play downtown theaters, which are a better choice for visitors.
Best Reason to Go: Avoid the downtown crowds and parking difficulties, especially once the Music fest is underway.
What to See: Encores of popular SXSW films from previous years, as well as this year's feature and documentary award winners.
How to Get There: Drive or take a cab. You can also take the #338 bus to Westgate.

Check out this video from SXSW to see all the SXSW Film venues on a map.

Need to know more about SXSW? Our pals have got you covered with their own guides:

At UGO - The Must See Panels
At JoBlo - The Late-night Screenings
At Gordon and the Whale - The Food Around Austin
At FSR - A Dirty Guide to Picking What to See
At AICN - A guide to cool places to hang out in Austin

Scenes We Love: 'Home for the Holidays'

Jette Kernion — 2010-11-23T19:00:00+00:00

Thanksgiving gets somewhat shortchanged in the movies, Eli Roth fake trailers aside. Perhaps screenwriters and filmmakers think that Thanksgiving doesn't present opportunities for cinematic conflict and action. If that's the case, they have a profound lack of imagination ... and they haven't been to a big family Thanksgiving dinner. My favorite Turkey Day scene in any movie is set at a family dinner table, but the action is riveting, just like a train wreck. Director Jodie Foster and writer W.D. Richter get it exactly right in the 1995 film 'Home for the Holidays.'

'Home for the Holidays' is a lovely movie to watch on Thanksgiving with your family, if for no other reason than to feel thankful your own dinner isn't like the one in the movie. Holly Hunter's single mom Claudia, laid off from her dream job and feeling low-spirited, is spending her holiday with her parents. It's easy to sympathize as she battles a cold, is enveloped immediately by her mother in a pink monstrosity of a coat, and can't even get a decent night's sleep without being attacked by relatives. Fortunately, her family is portrayed by a fantastic array of actors who bring empathy to characters we might not want to spend our own holiday with: Anne Bancroft as her chain-smoking mother; Charles Durning as the sentimental dad, complete with video camera; Cynthia Stevenson as the super-perfectionist, super-unhappy sister.
Into all of this steps Claudia's little brother Tommy -- Robert Downey, Jr. with an unfortunate haircut -- dragging his attractive friend Leo (Dylan McDermott) in tow. And that brings us to the Thanksgiving dinner scene, which I adore. Of course I do not adore it because there have been years where I wish the calamity with the turkey would happen to someone at a family dinner I was attending. I love my family too much to want that to happen. And I have to admit, as uptight as some of us have been known to act at times, I think that if such an accident happened to someone in my family, we would handle it with greater good humor than the character in the movie.

The Thanksgiving dinner scene begins with a prayer from Durning's character -- a very spontaneous prayer. Warning: the video below contains PG-13-rated language.

But the high point of the scene is the mishap, which is simultaneously funny and cruel. The question isn't how I would handle it if such a thing happened to me, but how I'd handle it if it happened to my sister. Would I laugh? Should we be laughing? Where should we be drawing the line between family humor and family cruelty? It's a question that may be an integral part of many families' holiday celebrations this year, and 'Home for the Holidays' depicts it with unblinking accuracy.

And that's why the following scene is one of the best family holiday moments in film that I've watched. The action is slightly over-the-top and the characters are larger than life, but the emotion behind it feels real, and you're faced with the same emotional choice as the characters. Do you laugh? Probably. Should you feel sorry for the character? Do you want to give Tommy a smack, just for good measure? Perhaps. If it happened to your family, would you be telling the story (and playing the video) at Thanksgiving dinner for the next 20 years, or would that be too mean to the person directly involved? Those are the kinds of things that family holiday dinners are made of.

Warning: The following video contains R-rated language.

Two Views of Austin at AFF: 'Echotone' and 'Boxing Gym'

Jette Kernion — 2010-11-04T14:35:00+00:00

Austin Film Festival prides itself on showing a number of local films -- there's even a category called Austin Screens, and other films with local connections often appear elsewhere in the lineup. Two locally shot documentaries stood out this year, showing audiences two very different perspectives on the city. One was a "marquee screening" of Frederick Wiseman's film 'Boxing Gym', shot at Richard Lord's Gym in north Austin; the other was 'Echotone,' a look at local musicians and how local condo/building development is affecting the music scene.

'Boxing Gym'

Don't expect a neatly plotted story arc in Frederick Wiseman's documentary 'Boxing Gym.' You won't find a "cast" of several selected documentary subjects working toward a specified goal, either. Instead, you'll spend 90 minutes or so inside a boxing gym, just as you might if you were sitting on a bench in a corner, watching and listening without anyone noticing. The members and visitors at Richard Lord's Gym in Austin appear to be entirely unaware of the camera as they train, spar or chat.

The boxing gym draws a variety of people. One woman works out with her baby watching from a nearby carrier. Kids are training in earnest, with help from gym owner Richard Lord. Some are just starting out and still figuring out how to put on their hand wraps; some are preparing for boxing matches. Two guys in a corner are conversing in Spanish, which the movie doesn't translate. One guy talking about the Virginia Tech shootings -- 'Boxing Gym' was shot in 2007 -- may be recognizable to some viewers as Richard Garriott, although he's not identified in the film. Richard Lord weaves through it all, meeting prospective new members in his tiny office, explaining to a teenage boy how boxing is different from street fighting or leading a group of men in a strenuous version of leapfrog.

I used to work out in Richard Lord's Gym, and I was amazed by the way Wiseman captured it on film, so palpably I could practically smell the unairconditioned place. 'Boxing Gym' has no soundtrack other than the ambient sounds in the gym -- the rhythmic slams on the speedbag, the thuds of punches in the ring, the crack of jump ropes and again and again, the buzzer on the time clock. In the beginning of the movie, most of the scenes are of people in ones and twos, but as the movie progresses, we see larger groups, even small classes. Nearly every scene is inside the gym (or right outside on the "porch"), except for a sequence shot during the weekly runs up and down the ramps at Texas Memorial Stadium, and a lovely shot of the Austin skyline that closes the movie.

'Boxing Gym' doesn't include a big climactic fight scene or a suspenseful final match. Don't expect 'Rocky' in this documentary. It's a fascinating look at a place where all kinds of people go, perhaps to build a career as a fighter, perhaps to work off a little aggression, perhaps just to stay in shape ... or simply because they love what they do in the boxing gym. The only real problem with watching 'Boxing Gym' is that you may feel tempted to join them.

'Echotone'

The documentary 'Echotone' premiered at Marfa Film Festival in May, where I was lucky enough to see it. I liked this look at Austin musicians and Austin music issues enough to catch it again at AFF, where it screened at Alamo Drafthouse Ritz on Sixth Street -- the street where some of the film was shot. Although its focus is on Austin, the issues in 'Echotone' are universal in any city with musicians and a live music scene.

Profiles of local musicians make up about half of the film, with a focus on what these musicians are doing to survive financially and artistically. Director Nathan Crist follows Joe Lewis (of Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears) around Austin as he delivers fish for a local seafood business. Lewis isn't terribly fond of his day job, and many of the remarks he makes in the delivery van are priceless. It looks like he's on the way up, with a professional photo shoot and a CD release party at Waterloo that's tied into SXSW, but he keeps delivering the fish.

Bill Baird, on the other hand, had a big record ing contract and a gig at ACL Fest when he was in the band Sound Team ... until things went sour with the record label and the band broke up. Now he's starting fresh with a new band, Sunset, and hoping for a different kind of success. Cari Palazzolo happily hand-paints and cuts up paper to use as CD liners for the band Belaire, while chatting about her day job as a courier ... delivering blueprints and plans for Austin condo development companies.

These intimate interviews alternate with shots of business development in Austin, which is impacting the music scene. For such a potentially disruptive force, the scene are beautifully shot -- one "dance of the cranes" sequence is especially lovely. Business developers comment that people in Austin are always fearing that change will ruin the city, and have been talking that way for decades. The current problem on which 'Echotone' focuses is that condos are being built in the city's long-time live music districts (like Red River), and then the people moving into the condos and apartments complain about the live music being too loud.

'Echotone' also relies heavily on footage from Austin City Council and the Austin Live Music Task Force as they try to reach compromises on the noise levels from live music so bands can continue to perform and (hopefully) residents will be less unhappy. However, the film never shows the direct effect of city music ordinances and neighborhood complaints about live music -- the musicians interviewed have no experiences to share about these problems when performing, and we never see a band shut down or kicked out or told to turn down the volume. The musician profiles don't quite intersect with this theme.

Still, 'Echotone' does tell a compelling tale about what happens when music intersects with business in all its forms. The musicians in the film are dealing with juggling day jobs, promoting themselves, finding gigs and ways to sell their music, and in Austin, dealing with the musical behemoth of SXSW. The documentary also includes excerpts from a number of local musicians' performances -- a mixed bag of musical tastes from the Austin scene, a little something for just about everyone.

AFF Reviews: 'Raging Boll,' 'Miss Nobody' and 'S&M Lawn Care'

Jette Kernion — 2010-11-02T17:32:00+00:00

'Raging Boll,' directed by Dan Lee West

The first 20 minutes or so of 'Raging Boll,' the documentary profiling director Uwe Boll, are excellent. The film, which had its U.S. premiere at Austin Film Festival, provides background on Boll for those who aren't familiar with him, while at the same time entertaining the Boll lovers/haters with some good interview lines and fascinating details. The movie consists primarily of interviews with Boll, both on a black background and during some key events, with a smattering of footage from his events and a little extra media coverage. Title cards fill in the gaps.

However, the film's second half becomes slow and repetitive, and Boll's dozenth or so rant against "fanboy" bloggers, Michael Bay and the Hollywood distribution system becomes terribly tedious. It builds to a climax around Boll's "Raging Boll" boxing match against several online journalists, a publicity stunt that turns out to be much less interesting than it might sound. The movie settles for showing us Boll's public persona and the cult of personality that has formed around it, instead of trying to find the man underneath the rants.

The 'Raging Boll' interviews take place primarily around 2007 and 2008: from the time Boll is trying to sell the American theatrical rights to his third video game adaptation, 'Dungeon Siege: In the Name of the King,' through the U.S. premiere of 'Postal.' And once in awhile, the film does catch a glimpse of Boll with his guard down -- most notably, at the end of a screening of 'Dungeon Siege' Boll hosts for Sony, looking stiff and nervous. On the other hand, while at his parents' house, Boll pulls out a diary he kept as a young man of all the films he watched, and tells us what's inside of it ... but never shows us the actual pages or reads any excerpts. Once again, we are supposed to take his persona at face value.

At the beginning of 'Raging Boll,' a series of pull quotes from negative reviews of 'House of the Dead' and 'Alone in the Dark' generates a lot of laughs. (Full disclosure: one quote is from Cinematical Managing Editor Scott Weinberg.) At the end of the film, a title card notes that the lower-budget independent films Boll is currently making, like 'Rampage,' have generated a much more positive response ... but we get no pull quotes. 'Raging Boll' is full of missed opportunities like this one, and instead just lets Boll rage on repetitively. There's a good 30- or 40-minute documentary in here, but after nearly 90 minutes, I never wanted to hear Boll rant again.

'Miss Nobody,' directed by Tim Cox

The best opening-credits sequence I have seen this year is in 'Miss Nobody' -- stylish, humorous, and a perfect way to set the right note of dark comedy for the movie ahead. Fortunately, the rest of the movie is pretty good too, although the story is a bit predictable. It's a lot like the Ealing comedy 'Kind Hearts and Coronets,' although Leslie Bibb only plays one character.

Bibb is the shining star of this 'Miss Nobody' (besides that credits sequence), and the film is an excellent vehicle for her talents. It's hard to imagine anyone else who could have carried off this role so beautifully. Her character Sara Jane McKinney is a sweet, innocent secretary who prays to her guardian angel St. George the Dragonslayer for counsel, assistance and occasionally vengeance. At the urging of her best friend Charmaine (Missi Pyle), she manages to land a junior exec job at her pharmaceutical company ... only to have it snatched away by a handsome and ruthless guy (Brandon Routh) who inadvertently provides her with an ambitious scheme for business success. However, pursuing this scheme is causing Sara Jane to lose a lot of her innocence, at least on the inside. It's also building up a body count.

It's enjoyable to watch such a great cast: Adam Goldberg plays the combination romantic interest/suspicious cop, Vivica A. Fox is one of the executives in Sara Jane's way and Eddie Jemison ('Ocean's Eleven' et al) is delightfully sleazy as the nastiest executive in the company. Kathy Baker feels a little too intentionally strange as Sara Jane's mom, and Missi Pyle seems oddly unbelievable as the best friend, due to often awkward-sounding dialogue.

Sadly, the script from Doug Steinberg ('Beverly Hills 90210') is the weakest part of this movie. The story follows a rather obvious path at times, and loses a lot of its dark humor near the end. The dialogue often sounds unreal and odd ... except for Sara Jane's. Bibb's perky performance carries the movie over its rocky points. 'Miss Nobody' is not a "chick flick" or a standard romantic comedy, but something a little more twisted and enjoyable.

'S&M Lawn Care,' directed by Mark Potts

Sometimes the best films at festivals are the ones without any big-name stars, the low-budget wonders that make you wonder if you are going to be able to say in 10 years that you knew these guys when. One of the funniest films at AFF this year was 'S&M Lawn Care,' from a filmmaking team out of Oklahoma. You might remember our linking to their short 'Kane' earlier this year -- the fake trailer for a reboot of 'Citizen Kane.' The biggest name in 'S&M Lawn Care' is Helen Thomas, who appears briefly in a dream sequence.

'S&M Lawn Care' takes place in a small, almost surreal Oklahoma town where lawn-care companies battle for dominance, often in the oddest ways. Mel (director/co-writer Mark Potts) and Sal (co-writer Cole Selix) are partners in S&M Lawn Care, which despite the name has nothing at all lurid about it. However, competitor Drake (William Brand Rackley) is able to stake a claim in the lawn-care business not just with fancy new equipment, but with his scantily clad assistants, Lora and Lara. How will Sal ever raise the money for his dream expedition to Africa? Will the pressure cause Mel to overdose on corn dogs?

All three lead actors are fearless about doing whatever it takes physically to pull as many laughs from a scene as possible. Potts in particular isn't afraid to look goofy, whether he's bounding across the screen in a homemade commercial for S&M Lawn Care, barfing up an entire bucket of popcorn or trying to wrestle a lawnmower on and off the back of a pickup truck. The scenes where Selix works in a shopping-mall snack stand are also pretty funny, especially his slow burn over the customers' inability to specify the correct frozen treat.

'S&M Lawn Care' isn't quite as bizarrely hilarious as Potts' previous film, 'Simmons on Vinyl,' but its storyline provides a somewhat more conventional comedy. I'm not bothered by four-letter words in movies, but I'm amused that the worst profanity used in this movie is "Sweet Paula Deen!" I look forward to the day when these guys can land budgets big enough to actually put Paula Deen in their movies, should they so desire. Their comedies are easily as funny as what's coming out of Hollywood these days.

'Brother's Justice' Review: Dax Shepard Becomes a Martial Arts Action Star (AFF)

Jette Kernion — 2010-10-28T20:32:00+00:00

When you think of actor Dax Shepard, you might remember him in 'Idiocracy,' 'When in Rome,' 'Baby Mama' or more recently, the TV show 'Parenthood.' He plays comic roles, sometimes as a humorously not-so-bright guy. You don't think "action hero" or "martial-arts star." But in the movie 'Brother's Justice,' co-directed by Shepard and David Palmer, Shepard wants to change that perception. He's ready to be the next Bruce Willis or Jet Li, if only someone will give him the chance.

The movie is shot documentary style, with the cast all playing themselves. Shepard and his old friend, producer Nate Tuck, decide they want to make a movie Dax has thought up called 'Brother's Justice,' an action film in which Dax plays the hero. They approach a number of people to enlist in their project: Dax's agent, producer Andrew Panay ('Wedding Crashers'), director Jon Favreau, and to play the hero's brother, Ashton Kutcher. All of them are skeptical, because Dax is not really action-film leading man material, and because Dax's pitches of the movie range from nonexistent to barely coherent. Dax also approaches Tom Arnold, in one of the funnier scenes of the movie. However, Dax and Nate can't seem to find anyone who really wants to back Dax's great idea ... at least, not with Dax in the lead.

When I heard about this movie, I thought it would be like 'My Name is Bruce,' in which Bruce Campbell plays an actor named Bruce Campbell who encounters evil monsters -- a narrative, fictional story but with a "real" main character. However, 'Brother's Justice' is shot documentary style and, apparently, Shepard and Nate Tuck didn't always let the people they filmed know exactly why they were filming them, except for possibly Tom Arnold. Shepard is playing himself as a little slow and obnoxious and letting himself be the butt of all the humor, but otherwise people are being filmed naturalistically.

Arnold really did go on a TV talk show and tell the host he was working on an action movie with Dax Shepard called 'Brother's Justice.' Shepard's session with the martial-arts expert weren't faked, either -- apparently Shepard cracked a rib during the scene -- and the talk-show appearance where the actor demonstrated his martial-arts skills was not intended to have quite the result it did.

The description of 'Brother's Justice' and how it was shot might remind you a little of Joaquin Phoenix's recent film 'I'm Still Here.' However, Dax Shepard has no thought of deceiving his audience -- he's just having fun. This movie borders on a personal joke -- something he did with his friends for fun. Fortunately, it's funny for a wider audience than Shepard's acquaintances. Most of the movie was shot in 2006, and one source of unintentional humor is that many of the people onscreen in this film are much more well-known now -- Jon Favreau had just started working on 'Iron Man' and was probably better known for 'Zathura' (in which Shepard has a role). The two actors who steal the film almost shamelessly at the end of the movie are extremely familiar faces right now: David Koechner and Bradley Cooper.

The only difficulty with this conceit is that while Shepard is actually playing a colorful character, Tuck is playing it straight, and his "character" is not quite as strong. 'Brother's Justice' relies on situational humor rather than characterization to carry the film, and the results are uneven. Subplots are scarce, and the story drags somewhat in the middle. Fake trailers for other projects Dax wanted to make liven things up a bit, and the ending explodes once Cooper and Koechner become involved. The credits sequence wasn't finished when the movie premiered at Austin Film Festival, but apparently they're hoping to work in a sequence with Seth Green that had been cut from the body of the film.

The over-the-top moments in 'Brother's Justice,' whether they are genuine, faked or downright fictional, provide the best moments in the movie and make it a worthwhile comedy. The close-ups and reality-show vibe might work better on TV than on a big screen, but the comedy is successful in any setting.

Their Best Role: Susan Sarandon

Jette Kernion — 2010-10-27T20:00:00+00:00

Actress Susan Sarandon has been enjoying a long and varied career. The earliest movie I've seen her in is Billy WIlder's 1974 remake of 'The Front Page,' in which she sings between films at a movie theater and tries to lure Jack Lemmon away from journalism into a life of respectability. It's a far cry from her portrayal of Sister Helen Prejean in 'Dead Man Walking,' which won her a Best Actress Oscar in 1996.

She's danced around in lingerie in 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show,' defied authority in 'Thelma and Louise,' and threatened to destroy Manhattan as the wicked Queen Narissa in' Enchanted.' She's played one of the most understanding mothers in American literature -- Marmee in 'Little Women' -- and also one of the meanest bitch moms ever to scorch the screen in 'Igby Goes Down.' Over the years, she's moved from perky heroines to memorable moms and in last year's 'The Lovely Bones,' even a feisty grandmother.
But as the World Series is about to gear up, I'm reminded of Susan Sarandon's best role ever: Annie Savoy in 'Bull Durham,' who loves baseball, literature, and one minor-league player per season, usually the young ones in need of "life experience." Sarandon has had her share of sexy characters, but none are quite as alluring, compelling and downright amusing as Annie.

Sarandon was over 40 when she made 'Bull Durham,' proving that people who think sex appeal is limited to the under-thirties are just plain wrong. Annie Savoy doesn't walk, she sashays, and under her full skirts, her hips swing harder than any of the Durham Bull players. Her periodic utterances of "Oh, my," are practically a sexual act in and of themselves. Writer/director Ron Shelton scripted a beautiful monologue for Annie at the beginning of the movie ("I believe in the church of baseball ...") that sets up her character and the movie's situation perfectly, as you can see in the following clip.

'Bull Durham' is about the baseball season in which Annie may or may not have picked the wrong baseball player to hook up with for the season. She chooses up-and-coming pitcher "Nuke" LaLoosh ... played by Tim Robbins, which started a long-term offscreen relationship between the two. In 'Bull Durham,' however, Sarandon's character is sorely tempted to break her season-long monogamy for the team's catcher, Crash Davis, who has been assigned to be Nuke's mentor. I was never a big Kevin Costner fan until this film -- he and Sarandon work well together, swapping punchy dialogue and slowly starting to smoulder onscreen.

A woman who loves baseball, poetry and sex, and whose idea of a fun time is to tie her partner to the bed and read Walt Whitman to him with Edith Piaf music on for background, is a challenge to play convincingly. It would be too easy for Annie to be a stereotype or caricature, but Sarandon gives her depth and warmth and makes her believable. The movie's focus is equally divided between Annie and Crash -- the guy doesn't take over the picture -- and I believe this is due to Sarandon's strength in the role.

Susan Sarandon tried to reprise her success playing a sexy older woman with a younger man in the 1990 film 'White Castle' with James Spader, but Nora Baker was no Annie Savoy. Although she's played many powerhouse roles since 1998, and I've enjoyed watching most of those characters, her best has always been 'Bull Durham.' Her next role will be in the Duplass brothers' comedy 'Jeff Who Lives at Home' ... and I can't wait.

Jessica Alba, Bill Hader and Others Prove Why 'The Hand Job' Has to Become a Movie

Jette Kernion — 2010-10-27T18:20:00+00:00

Would you buy a ticket at your local theater (or rent a DVD, or VOD) to watch a movie called 'The Hand Job'? And no, it's not about life as a hand model or some kind of weird mannequin-related caper film. It's a comedy about a young woman who graduates high school and decides she needs to learn about sexual activities before college, including the one in the title.

'The Hand Job' isn't a movie yet. It currently only exists as a screenplay from writer Maggie Carey ('The Jeannie Tate Show'), unattached to any studio or production company. The screenplay made Franklin Leonard's 2009 "Black List" of top-notch unproduced screenplays, and the Austin Film Festival decided to see what all the fuss was about. The fest held a staged script reading on Sunday, with 15 actors and actresses reading the roles and narration. The talent included Jessica Alba, in Austin to shoot 'Spy Kids 4'; original 'Spy Kids' Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara; 'Saturday Night Live' star Bill Hader (who is also Carey's husband); and Colin Hanks, who was at AFF promoting his film High 'School.'

Actress Aubrey Plaza ('Scott Pilgrim vs. the World') is attached to play the lead in 'The Hand Job' if it successfully goes into production, and she read the role at Sunday's script reading. She sounded just right, but we hope the movie gets made soon so she'll be convincing as a 17-year-old. Vega played the Best Friend with a lot of verve and sass; someone should get her attached to the project too. Many of the actors were unafraid to throw themselves into their characters, a few even cleverly miming the sex acts in which their characters were participating in a given scene. (Austin actor Gabriel Luna earned an award for bravery for mimicking a more oral activity than the one in the title.)

Hollywood has given us many coming-of-age comedies with young men experimenting sexually, from 'Porky's' to 'American Pie,' but very few with curious young women. 'The Hand Job,' set in 1993 and based on some of Carey's own teen experiences, manages this feat gracefully and with a lot of humor, ranging from gentle to downright raunchy. Carey said after the reading that producer Jennifer Todd is attached to the script; they are trying to find other actors to attach as well, and then they'll start looking for financing. Having heard the script read live, we hope it won't be too long before we can actually see 'The Hand Job' ... although we suspect the finished movie would have a different title. Should it?

'I Love You Phillip Morris' Review: It Was Worth the Wait

Jette Kernion — 2010-10-26T15:36:00+00:00

For many of us, it's been a long wait to see 'I Love You Phillip Morris,' which has had its release date pushed back numerous times because of distribution difficulties. It's so easy to feel let down by a film you've waited a long time to see. Happily, however, the film adapted and directed by the 'Bad Santa' writing team -- due in American theaters starting in December -- did not disappoint, with a wonderfully skewed sense of humor keeping a love story from becoming overly sentimental.

'I Love You Phillip Morris' is based on a nonfiction book by Houston journalist Steven McVicker, about real-life con man/prison escape maestro Steven Russell. Russell, played by Jim Carrey in the film, is an average Southern guy -- ex-policeman, working successfully in the produce business, happily married to a nice Christian woman (Leslie Mann) -- until an auto accident convinces him that he should stop concealing the secret part of his life and come out of the closet. Russell separates from his wife and begins to lead an ostentatiously gay and wealthy lifestyle, which his career choices can't afford ... so he turns to a life of crime, mostly fraud. While serving time in a Texas prison, he's swept off his feet by fellow prisoner Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), and suddenly his judgment becomes seriously impaired by True Love.

McVicker's book glides over the relationship and spends more time on the logistics of Russell's crimes. However, writer/directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra have decided to focus on the love story, which blossoms in a small prison cell -- not the usual setting for courtship and cooing. Although the movie does include sex scenes -- depicted above the waist but very easy to decipher -- 'I Love You Phillip Morris' is less of a heist/caper film and more of a romantic comedy, although the comedy is rather twisted at times. McVicker's long description of Russell's prison escapades is boiled down to a very effective and amusing montage.

One oddity of the movie is that the timeframe of the story is never clearly stated. I knew from the book that most of the action takes place in the early to mid-1990s, but prisons do have that timeless look about them. Suddenly you may find yourself wondering why Russell's cell phone is so huge, and why people are relying so much on paper copies and not computers. But the real drawback is that the lack of a specific timeframe makes it harder to understand why, for example, Russell doesn't tell his coworkers that he's gay. That was a lot more difficult to do even 15 years ago than it is now, even in Texas.

Jim Carrey is entirely believable as a Southern ex-cop turned flamboyant gay con artist turned prison escape expert who charms nearly everyone he meets. Normally I find prison rape humor distasteful, but Russell is so delightfully loopy that his guided tour of the facilities punctuated by the cheerful refrain of "Or you can suck his c***" had me laughing despite myself. Phillip Morris didn't have a lot of personality in the book, but the screenwriting combined with McGregor's performance gives us an almost ridiculously sweet character ... with the occasional edge. Leslie Mann's portrayal of Russell's wife Debbie makes me wish Russell spent more time with her so we could too.

The last third of the film delves into darker comedy/drama than you might find in a typical twinkly romantic comedy, although if you've read the book, you may be immune to the suspense element added to the film's climax. I can't be more specific without spoiling the film, but my reaction was noticeably different than the people around me, and I have to wonder if the suspense element was a good idea. It may have diluted the comedy a little too much. Still, 'I Love You Phillip Morris' manages successfully to overlay a sweet and occasionally tragic romance -- if an unconventional one -- with great galumphing comedy and a stellar performance from Carrey.

'Exporting Raymond' Review: The Russian Ray Romano?

Jette Kernion — 2010-10-25T19:00:00+00:00

How do you make a very American sitcom funny for a Russian audience? This is the question that Phil Rosenthal asks throughout his documentary 'Exporting Raymond.' Rosenthal was the creator of 'Everybody Loves Raymond,' the long-running popular sitcom starring Ray Romano. Several years ago, he was asked to assist in creating a Russian version of the TV show ... and he brought a camera crew with him to document the process. The results are often funnier than any fictional situation comedy.

Rosenthal opens the movie in America, showing us footage of 'Everybody Loves Raymond' to demonstrate how it was shot (for later contrast), even taking us to his parents' house before he leaves for Russia. He jokes that his parents' house was often the inspiration for much of the humor in the American sitcom ... and a scene with his parents demonstrates that he is not exaggerating. In Russia, he has to face all kinds of cultural barriers to getting what he considered a "naturalistic" sitcom off the ground. The costume designer wants the stay-at-home mom to dress in trendy fashions; the writers want over-the-top humor; the network execs don't like the actor whom Rosenthal thinks is the obvious choice for the title character in 'Everybody Loves Kostya.'

'Exporting Raymond' is meant to be a comedy and a personal essay, and was shot primarily for laughs. In between meetings with writers and producers, Rosenthal gets to know his chauffeur better and tries to find out whether the family-centric humor of 'Everybody Loves Raymond' will work in Russia. One of the best scenes in the film is a dinner that Rosenthal and his translator spend with a large, multi-generational Russian family ... who will toast anyone, with more vodka, at the drop of a hat. Some of these interludes don't quite work -- I never quite understood what the Britney Spears video-related sequence was doing in there, although it was pretty funny. I'm also not entirely sure why music from 'The Nutcracker Suite' was selected for the soundtrack (except that it's Russian), but it does work in an odd sort of way.

Phil Rosenthal and his humorous insights keep 'Exporting Raymond' afloat, both in voiceover narration and in the comments he makes on camera. Sometimes he seems a little too uptight; a little too obsessive with getting the pilot of 'Everybody Loves Kostya' to work the way he wants. But his observations nearly always generate laughs. He's cast himself as the main character in this sitcom-like documentary -- and just as he insists that the "Raymond" character must be comic (in a naturalistic way), he understands that he too has to be comic in the context of this film in order for it to be entertaining to an audience.

'Exporting Raymond' is being distributed by Samuel Goldwyn and will probably not be shown for many audiences the size of the one at the Paramount on the opening night of Austin Film Festival, which exploded with laughter during many of the documentary's funniest sequences. Still, it doesn't need audience reactions to be funny, and should play well on home entertainment as well as in theaters. You don't have to be a fan of 'Everybody Loves Raymond' to get a kick out of this documentary.

Boyle! Aronofsky! Dog Sweat! Austin Film Festival 2010 Is Underway!

Jette Kernion — 2010-10-22T18:35:00+00:00

Thursday marked the beginning of the 17th annual Austin Film Festival and Conference (AFF). The festival regularly draws a crowd of not just film buffs, but also aspiring screenwriters and filmmakers. The screenwriters' conference is what puts this festival above the usual run of regional film festivals ... although the gorgeous fall weather in Central Texas and a lot of good barbecue doesn't hurt, either.

Writing is a big focus of this film festival, and the conference and special screenings feature a number of excellent movie and TV screenwriters. David Peoples is receiving the AFF Distinguished Screenwriter Award this year -- the movies he's scripted include '12 Monkeys' (which Peoples will screen and discuss), 'Unforgiven'' and 'Blade Runner.' The Outstanding Television Writer Award this year will be presented to David Simon, who created 'The Wire' and 'Treme.' And Austin writer/filmmaker Robert Rodriguez will be at the fest not only to show 'Sin City' -- and answer an infinite number of inquiries about 'Sin City 2' -- but to receive the festival's Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award.

The film festival officially kicked off Thursday night with the world premiere of 'Exporting Raymond,' a documentary from 'Everybody Loves Raymond' producer Phil Rosenthal about his experiences trying to remake the sitcom in Russia. At the same time, actor/filmmaker Edward Burns was at Alamo Drafthouse screening his film 'Nice Guy Johnny,' which hits cable VOD and iTunes next Tuesday.

AFF is also a great opportunity for attendees to get a sneak peek at many Oscar contenders as well as films that have been popular at film fests like Toronto and Telluride. One of the most anticipated screenings this year is Darren Aronofsky's film 'Black Swan,' which Eric Snider reviewed at Telluride ... and which screens Wednesday night at the same time as Frederick Wiseman's documentary 'Boxing Gym' (pictured at top), which was shot in Austin. Like many other film fests, AFF often forces some tough decisions on which movie to see, or which conference panel to select ... not to mention the lure to join the continual film-related chitchat and networking that traditionally takes over the bar at conference headquarters, the Driskill Hotel.

Other films from previous festivals that are generating buzz at AFF are 'Meek's Cutoff,' which David Ehrlich reviewed at NYFF; 'Blue Valentine,' which Kevin Kelly caught at Sundance; '127 Hours,' which Eugene Novikov caught at Telluride; the Texas-set 'I Love You Phillip Morris' and the closing-night film, 'Casino Jack,' with director George Hickenlooper and actor Jon Lovitz attending, and which Scott Weinberg enjoyed at Toronto. ''Brother's Justice is the directorial debut of Dax Shepard, and stars Shepard as ... himself, deciding to give up his career in comedy to try to become a martial-arts star. Shepard and actor Tom Arnold will be at the screening.

But the smaller, independent films are also gathering a lot of interest. A colleague recommended 'Dog Sweat,' an Iranian film that was partially shot covertly about young Iranians dealing with "forbidden" cultural issues such as feminism, sexuality and homosexuality. 'Echotone,' which I saw at Marfa Film Festival, is an excellent film about what happens when Austin musicians clash with Austin development ... and it has a great soundtrack, too. Mark Potts, whose AFF 2009 film 'Simmons on Vinyl' was sidesplitting, is back with a new comedy feature, 'S&M Lawn Care.' And Uwe Boll fans are interested in the U.S. premiere of a documentary about the filmmaker, 'Raging Boll.'

So many choices. So little time. Austin Film Festival runs through next Thursday, October 28. Keep an eye out for reviews and other features.

Karl Urban on 'Red,' 'Dredd' and Picking Movie Roles

Jette Kernion — 2010-10-16T22:20:00+00:00

The type of movie you like will probably determine how you know Karl Urban. Big fan of the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy? He played Eomer. Like the 'Star Trek' reboot? He was "Bones" McCoy. Fond of culty syndicated TV shows like 'Hercules' and' Xena'? He was both Julius Caesar and Cupid (not at the same time). Or perhaps you've caught the New Zealand actor in 'The Bourne Supremacy,' indie film 'Out of the Blue' or even, if you care to admit to watching it, 'Doom.'

Urban returns to the big screen this weekend in 'Red,' a heist comedy so chock-full of big-name stars like Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich that Urban isn't even in the trailer, which is practically a crime. In this adaptation of a D.C. Comics graphic novel, he plays William Cooper, a CIA agent who is hired to take care of certain retired agents who possess dangerous secrets.

Cinematical sat down with Karl Urban at Fantastic Fest, where 'Red' had a special screening, to discuss not only his role in 'Red' but a few upcoming roles, such as another comic-book adaptation, 'Dredd,' in which he will portray the title character. He also talks about a couple of New Zealand films he's been in that you might check out if you want to see him in some slightly different types of movies.

The Fantastic Fest screening was your first time seeing 'Red' as a finished film. How was the experience?

Karl Urban: Oh, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was great to see it with an audience and hear them rolling with laughter. There seemed to be a consistently bubbling fun reaction to the movie, and that's great. I mean, quite often you do theater and you get an instant response, but it's not until later -- in this case, 8 months later -- that we get to see how people like a movie.

What attracted you to the role of William Cooper?

I thought he was a pretty interesting character on the page. He was a CIA officer-slash-hit man. And he also has a family -- he has a wife and kids, and trying to balance these two lives out, I thought was pretty interesting. Also, my character, William, starts in one place and ends somewhere different; he's got a great arc. It gave me a lot to play with.

Do you have a goal or pattern with the roles you're picking right now?

I don't. I don't really plan what I'm going to do out to any great degree. To me, the destination isn't important -- the journey is the key. The journey is everything for me -- it's who I get to work with, and at the moment, I feel pretty blessed, I'm working with some amazing people.

Yes, the cast in 'Red' is pretty amazing.

Working with Ernest Borgnine was a trip. I've been watching his films since I can remember. And just to be on set with him -- he's still got that twinkle in the eye. To hear him talk about 'From Here to Eternity' and Monty Clift and Sinatra and Mitchum and Lee Marvin -- and all those other people he's worked with -- it was pretty amazing. He's one of the last of the old-timers, that's for sure. He would have been around Hollywood in its heyday, through the Forties, the Fifties.

Many of the recent roles you've taken have been serious: strong silent types, the straight man. McCoy is probably the closest we've seen to you doing comedy lately... do you have any interest in lighter roles?

Well, I have had them. The role that got me 'Lord of the Rings' was an independent New Zealand film, a little comedy called 'The Price of Milk.' It was off the back of that film that Peter [Jackson] offered me the role of Eomer in Lord of the Rings. Certainly it was a lot of fun to do that sort of material again, and the comedic material in Star Trek, but as I said before, it's a question of -- I'll read a piece of material, and if I like it, if there's good people involved, then I'll do it.

I'm sorry I haven't seen 'The Price of Milk,' I'll have to go track it down.

Yes, it's kind of quirky. It predates 'The Flight of the Conchords' without breaking out into spontaneous song and dance, but it really is that kind of slightly offbeat humor.

Are you interested in making more films in New Zealand?

Definitely. I am interested in continuing to contribute to the New Zealand film industry. I think that you become a global citizen when you start working internationally, and I think it's very easy for you to be deceived, to have lost your cultural identity, especially I think in your home country. So it's important to me.

A couple of years ago I did a film called 'Out of the Blue,' which is the last film I shot in New Zealand, and I'm always on the lookout for some good material, and films that are grounded in the New Zealand culture -- films that are uniquely New Zealand and not genre ripoffs. I think the Americans do a fantastic job of making genre films, so I'm kind of interested to look for diversity in picking my roles out of New Zealand.

'Dredd.' It's probably a requirement that everyone who interviews you asks about it. How is the work on that going right now?

We haven't started shooting, we're about 6 to 8 weeks away. We're pretty blessed with a great script by Alex Garland, and Pete Travis is directing it. They've got some really brilliant ideas, and the support of the creator, John Wagner. And I'm pretty excited about it. It's going to be pretty hardcore, action-packed. I think it'll be a film for fans of flim, but also for the Dredd fans, it'll be the film they've long been waiting for.

So you're working to make it different -- and better -- than the previous adaptation ['Judge Dredd' in 1985].

It's going to have very little resemblance to that movie. It's not a sequel, it's in no way related to that film. And you know, I read online an interview that Sylvester Stallone gave not long ago where, by his own admission, he felt that his version of 'Dredd' was a missed opportunity. So we're going to make sure that this one hits the mark.

Any news on the next 'Star Trek' movie?

I believe we start shooting it around August next year, I think. I'm looking forward to that.

The Bright Side of Fantastic Fest: Animated Features Reviews!

Jette Kernion — 2010-10-03T22:57:00+00:00

'Redline,' directed by Takeshi Koike (Japan)

'Redline' is fast, furious and out of control. Seriously, I do not ever think I've seen such loud anime, both aurally and visually -- this auto-racing movie makes 'Speed Racer' look like a Sunday drive, and is a long way from 'Cars.' The film was eagerly awaited at Fantastic Fest because it was written by Katsuhito Ishii, who wrote and directed Fantastic Fest 2006 selection 'Funky Forest,' and directed by Takeshi Koike, who animated 'Funky Forest.'

The "Redline" of the movie is one of the biggest auto races -- not in the world, but in the galaxy in this futuristic tale. In fact, it's being held on a planet whose inhabitants are actively opposed to its being there and intend to destroy all participants and maybe the spectators too. The prime competitors for the prize are Sonoshee, who has been devoted to cars since her girlhood, and JP, a dark horse with a reputation for being involved in race-fixing and criminal activity.

Before this all starts to sound like a straightforward action film with fast cars, let me point out that the supporting characters range from magical princesses to bizarrely slimy creatures to robot overlords to Funky Boy, which has to be seen to be believed. Apart from JP's souped-up but traditional-looking Trans Am, the cars are like nothing you've ever seen, either.

'Redline' is a whirlwind of a fun movie, and definitely not for children, unless you are nonchalant about showing your kids animated nudity and gore. Anchor Bay will be releasing this frenetic film in the U.S., and it's playing at VIZ Cinema in San Francisco later this month. This is definitely a movie to see in a theater if it appeals to you -- it's almost overwhelming, but not quite.

'Summer Wars,' directed by Mamoru Hosoda (Japan)

If 'Redline' is punk rock anime, 'Summer Wars' is High School Musical in comparison -- pastels, schoolgirls, adorable children and delightfully nerdy teens. (But better music.) Oh, and possibly world destruction via computer, but involving very cute avatars! John Gholson called it "'WarGames' re-imagined as a Japanese ensemble family drama. And then animated." That just about says it all, but neglects to mention the lively characters and lovely visuals.

The focal point of 'Summer Wars' is an enormous ultimate social media application called OZ, the love child of Facebook and Second Life, in which everyone is represented by a cute avatar. Kenji, a teenage math genius, is planning to spend the summer working to monitor security holes in OZ. However, the lovely college student Natsuki persuades him to work for her at her family's country mansion, setting up the lavish arrangements for her grandmother's 90th birthday party. Oh, and she forgets to mention that he'll also be posing as her boyfriend. When Kenji inadvertently hacks OZ, an artificial intelligence called Love Machine proceeds to wreak havoc on the virtual world ... and threatens to do the same to the real world as well.

'Summer Wars' seemed a little slow at times, although perhaps anything seems sluggish after watching 'Redline' the night before. But the animation style is lovely, and the characters are engaging and fun to watch. Natsuki's extended family is one of the most delightfully loopy seen onscreen since 'The Host' -- everyone a little offbeat but still generally loving and happy. In addition, the film's depiction of the dark side of social media might make it a great double-feature with 'The Social Network.'

'In the Attic,' directed by Jiri Barta (Czech Republic)

The third animated feature at Fantastic Fest is a far cry from the Japanese anime of the above two films. 'In the Attic' is a stop-motion animated children's film from the Czech Republic, set almost entirely in the sprawling attic of a family home. It is especially creepy for a family film -- Tim Burton comes off as merely Hello Kitty in comparison -- but the animation style is fascinating and unusual.

'In the Attic' begins with a typical morning in the lives of the toys in one corner of the attic, who come to life in a cute and goofy way. Buttercup the doll makes breakfast for her teddy bear, marionette, and modeling-clay friends, who then go off to "work" in a train station, or in the case of Sir Handsome the marionette, slaying a dragon. Madame Curie, the button-ear rat, runs an attic-wide radio station. But in the dusty far corner, evil creatures lurk, and one of them has his eye on Buttercup.

The Golden Head of Evil, who longs for Buttercup, is portrayed by a live actor's head at times, which is disconcerting and possibly the most repellent part of the film. It would have been better to have kept all the attic creatures as stop-motion animation, but perhaps that wasn't feasible with this character. On the other hand, the live-action cat fits right in with the other attic characters, and it's regrettable that his character arc is never completed.

'In the Attic' has a very simple, very slight children's story, but that's not the reason to watch this movie. The best reason is to marvel over the animation. Animator Jiri Barta has created a beautiful, delicate little world. Many of the animation set pieces, are absolutely incredible: in particular the train as well as an airplane fashioned from a vacuum cleaner. The movie currently has no U.S. distribution ... you may need to keep an eye out for imported DVDs if you want to see 'In the Attic' for yourself.

For more on all of Fantastic Fest 2010's films, animated and otherwise, click here!

Cinematical Seven: Great Fantastic Fest Films That Deserve American Distribution

Jette Kernion — 2010-09-28T21:32:00+00:00

Fantastic Fest 2010 is past the halfway point, and some of the movies that have screened once already are generating spectacular buzz among the attendees. I was impressed at the size of the standby line last night for 'Rubber', the French film about a telekinetic killer car tire. Magnet Releasing picked up the U.S. distribution rights for 'Rubber' back in May, so anyone who has missed it on the film-fest circuit may get a chance to see it at a later time.

However, some of the best and most popular movies at Fantastic Fest this year don't have an American distribution deal yet. We can urge you to see them, but can't tell you how or when that could happen. We may have to resort to buying a DVD or Blu-ray from another country a year from now, and finding a multi-region player to watch it. That's inconvenient and often expensive, so we're hoping that the seven films listed below will soon find U.S. distributors who will buy the rights for an American DVD release and, if we're lucky, theatrical release as well.

Agnosia

Possibly my favorite film (so far) at Fantastic Fest this year, 'Agnosia' is the second feature from Spanish director Eugenio Mira, who brought 'The Birthday' to the fest in 2005. I've heard a few people dismiss it as "just another costume drama," but they're wrong. It's a beautiful film with fairy-tale elements about a young woman suffering from an ailment where she cannot perceive the world around her properly, the men who love her, and the industrial espionage that affects all three of their lives in unexpected ways. 'Agnosia' opens in Spain in November and hopefully we'll see a U.S. release next year.

Sound of Noise

This Swedish "musical cop comedy" attracted attention at Cannes earlier this year ... and just won the Best Picture (Fantastic Feature) award at Fantastic Fest. It was also an audience award runner-up, and when I saw 'Sound of Noise' a few days ago, people left the theater with big goofy grins on their faces. You can read our review for more details.

Golden Slumber

Another runner-up for the audience award (who won? Keep reading!), 'Golden Slumber 'was a film many Fantastic Fest attendees were looking forward to seeing as soon as the fest lineup was released. Director Yoshihiro Nakamura's previous film 'Fish Story' was extremely popular at the fest last year. Normally I get fidgety during long movies, but I don't think I glanced at my watch once during this 139-minute suspenseful and often amusing drama about a trusting man wrongly accused of a heinous crime. Peter Martin said in his review, "Yet even when the movie's heart is on its sleeve, it never feels contrived; Nakamura reins in the melodrama in a captivating, compelling manner."

Drones

I'm hoping to see 'Drones' tonight -- I do tend to enjoy comedies that riff on the workplace. Also, it stars Angela Bettis, whom I always like watching in films. Peter Hall described it to me as: "A very charming, quite funny riff on cubicle life; only the cube life in Drones is filled with various species of aliens hiding as humans, each of whom has a different plan for planet Earth." William Goss saw it earlier this year at the Florida Film Festival and noted its "off-kilter charms." Surely some U.S. distributor will find it charming as well?

Bedevilled

'Bedevilled' won the Audience Award at Fantastic Fest this year, as well as a Best Actress award for Seo Yeong-hee . Peter Hall's description: "Its increasingly bleak subject matter is not congruous with the normally 'fantastic' movies programmed for the fest. Trades fun and flare for gut-wrenching drama with a truly cathartic payoff."

Kidnapped (Secuestrados)

'Kidnapped' was one of those movies I decided to see on a whim after some friends touted it as "the best home invasion movie playing the fest this year." They also assured me that the violence would not be too intense for my wussy self ... although it did push those boundaries a bit. It's not only a tense, taut ride, but it's also stylistically interesting -- very few cuts, and some interesting split-screen sequences. John Gholson disagrees, calling it a "tiresome feature-length onslaught of relentless tears, screaming, and sobbing amidst occasional bursts of queasy shock-value violence." I think you should get the chance to decide for yourselves.

The Man from Nowhere

Our Peter Hall called it "the most badass film at the festival." He further explained that "'The Man From Nowhere' is what happens when you combine a South Korean revenge film with an American don't-mess-with-the-secret-agent mindset." Since most of us don't want to have to find a South Korean DVD and the player to watch it on, hopefully someone will pick this up for American theatrical/DVD release.

'Sound of Noise' Review (Fantastic Fest 2010)

Jette Kernion — 2010-09-26T16:35:00+00:00

"Musical terrorism." When I heard this phrase in conjunction with 'Sound of Noise,' a Swedish film that screened at Fantastic Fest on Saturday, I immediately thought of 'The Blues Brothers.' Those gentlemen wreaked a lot of havoc ... but of course it was for a charitable cause. In 'Sound of Noise,' musicians wreak major havoc all over the city, on purpose, simply because they love music and want people to hear the music in everyday life, as opposed to Muzak and even traditional classical music. The film's successful balance of comedy, music, and police procedural make it easy to understand why it won two Critics Week awards at Cannes this year.

Amadeus Warnebring (Bengt Nilsson) is a police inspector and also the only completely tone-deaf member of an extended musical family, including a younger brother who is a famous conductor. Warnebring knows enough about music to realize that a ticking noise his colleagues believe is from a car bomb is in fact a metronome ... and the discovery of that metronome puts him on the trail of a gang of musicians perpetrating odd crimes. Sanna (Sanna Persson) and her composer friend Magnus (Magnus Borjeson) are the head of a group performing Magnus's symphony "Music for One City and Six Drummers," which comprises four movements set in the most unlikely parts of town and involves the most unlikely musical instruments. Everything has musical possibilities in this group's hands, from medical equipment to shredders to bulldozers.

'Sound of Noise' plays exactly like a good old-fashioned caper film, specifically the kind where the criminals leave whimsical clues at the scenes of their crimes ('The Thief Who Came to Dinner' leaps to mind) and form a mysterious bond with their pursuers. But these aren't criminals, ma'am, they're musicians, although hardly law-abiding. Their musical performances are delightful, and nothing like anything you'd hear in a traditional movie musical, I assure you. I mentioned 'The Blues Brothers' above and I feel certain the filmmakers love the movie too, and have made some sly jokes echoing that film.

The movie reminded me a lot of the 2009 American film '(Untitled)', which also addressed the themes about what constitutes art and music, and how people work to explode those boundaries. 'Sound of Noise' is more overtly humorous, less snarky and lighter in tone -- and frankly, the music is often easier to listen to. However, if anyone ever plans a remake of this particular Swedish genre film, I hope they'll get David Lang, who composed just the right score for '(Untitled),' to work on the musical aspect.

Filmmakers Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjaerne Nilsson made a short film in 2001 with the same theme (and musicians) on a smaller scale: 'Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers', which you can watch online. I've embedded it below, so you can get an idea of the bizarre and entrancing way that these characters make music. Combine that with a well-paced police story and even a touch of romance, and 'Sound of Noise' is a charming result. It's my favorite film from Fantastic Fest so far (although admittedly we are not quite halfway through the fest).

Davis Guggenheim on 'Waiting for "Superman"' and Getting People to Care About The Education System

Jette Kernion — 2010-09-24T17:32:00+00:00

Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim may be best known for the 2006 documentary that won him an Academy Award, 'An Inconvenient Truth', although a lot of people seem to associate that film solely with Al Gore. More recently, Guggenheim directed a feature film, Gracie, based on the high-school experiences of his wife, Elizabeth Shue, and It Might Get Loud, a documentary about the electric guitar with a focus on Jimmy Page, Jack White and The Edge.

Davis's most recent documentary feature, 'Waiting for "Superman' ,opens today (
Cinematical sat down with Davis earlier this month in Austin to talk about his film, the issues he chose to address and other related topics.

So how long have you been working on Waiting for "Superman"?

About two and a half years. It was really tough -- first of all, to tell the story in a way that was entertaining, and also to be accurate. Also, it needs to speak to people -- a lot of people say "Don't bother me with that stuff," so you have to cut through all the b.s. and tell people a good story. And there's a sense of, "I've gotta get it right." If I don't get it right, people won't care -- I want people to care about Daisy, I want them to care about Anthony.

I fell in love with these kids. I think there's sometimes this feeling in people's heads, "Kids over there, they're just not interested, they don't need to learn, they don't care." But you drive over to East L.A. or to Harlem or even to middle-class schools in northern California and you realize that kids are all the same. They all have big dreams. And they all want a great education. And that's what's so heartbreaking, is that I think we're letting those kids down.

How did you find the kids who are in your movie? It was impressive to see them open up to you -- not only the kids and their parents, but also the schools.

We just found kids that were in the lottery, and were available. The biggest challenge was to get parents who were available. "You want to make a movie? Sure!" "We want to come at 6 am tomorrow when you wake up Francisco." "Really? Why? I'm too busy, I've got three kids." A lot of it is just finding people who can make time for you. And kids who can talk about themselves. Anthony is so wonderful because he talks about what's going on with him.

One of the problems Waiting for "Superman" cites that bugged me a little was with teachers' unions, which are portrayed solely in a negative light in the film.

I've got to be really clear. I believe unions are essential. I mean, I'm a member of a union. I'm a lefty. I know my history about how workers unionized, and it's a proud chapter in American history. And I think there should always be teachers' unions -- they're essential, and they should protect teachers. And they should fight to get them to be paid more, and more, and more.

The problem is that in lieu of getting them paid more, they've fought for other things, which have kept schools from getting better. And they should not protect bad teachers. I hope people don't draw the wrong conclusion, that I'm bashing unions.

I don't think they will, but it's an interesting point because in the movie, we're only seeing the problems that the unions are causing.

Well, I made a decision to be hard on all the adults, starting with myself. What's different about this movie is that it's told from the point of view of the kids. You've got five kids, all they want is a great education. What's in their way? What's in their way is a system that, in large part, works for the adults. I make things work: I pay for three private schools [for my kids]. So I'm hard on myself, because I pulled my kids out of public schools and put them somewhere else.

I hope that smart teachers see this movie -- smart and effective teachers -- and say, "Yeah, you know what? They're right. And in the next union meeting, I'm going to go and demand that we get on the right side of this."

What were some aspects of the education system you wanted to include in Waiting for "Superman" but couldn't -- because of time or complexity?

Like ... everything? [laughs]

Movies are by nature simple -- reducing very complicated things. If you really want to learn a lot about our public schools, you'd read a book. So I had to leave out a lot of things. I wish there was more about art in schools. I wish there was more about the nature of testing and teaching to the test. I'd love to have spent half an hour talking about what makes a great teacher, and why we don't do a better job of recruiting good teachers. So there's a lot of stuff ... maybe that's the next movie.

At the end of the film, there's a URL to a website that has a lot of options about how you can take action. What is the one thing people can do about public schools -- the equivalent of the "Replace your light bulbs with CFLs" action from An Inconvenient Truth?

The first step is to be informed. I find that even friends of mine that are extremely well read don't know the basic stuff that is going on in our schools. And I honestly believe -- it was the same with An Inconvenient Truth -- the first step is to see the movie.

You obviously want your documentaries to have an effect. How do you know that they are?

I already know this film is having an effect. When the movie's playing, I'll sneak in and watch an audience watch it. That's really exciting for me. So the biggest challenge is, how do I get as many people to see it as possible? I know it has an effect, but how broad an effect? And then -- how you measure that is a little inexact.

But with An Inconvenient Truth, the percentage of people who thought global warming is real went from something like 30 to 80, and there were a lot of laws passed, and a lot of lives changed. And hundreds of people kept coming to me saying, "My company changed its policies," and "My daughter made me buy a Prius," and "I put solar panels on my house."

Do you have anything in the wings you're going to work on after this?

Davis Guggenheim: No. It's the first time in eight years I don't have the next thing, and it feels great. My next mission -- my next movie is to be a good dad. That's an endless movie.

Cinematical Seven: How to Manage Instant Millions ... According to the Movies

Jette Kernion — 2010-08-17T22:40:00+00:00

One of the movies opening in theaters this weekend is Lottery Ticket, about a young man who finds out the ticket he bought is a huge winner. I love seeing what characters in movies do when faced with a sudden acquisition of wealth, whether it's from the lottery, an inheritance or ill-gotten riches. Few seem to enbark on a life of philanthropy -- it's always a good excuse to show off the vulgarity of the nouveau riche. The Beverly Hillbillies is the classic comic example of how funny it is to give millions of dollars to just plain folks, but Hollywood movies have a number of amusing instant rich people as well. Many characters do show their best selves when given a lot of money, too.

Here are seven fine examples of how movie characters have dealt with becoming millionaires, or at least a lot wealthier than they originally were. I thought I'd include more gold digging dames from the 1930s, but usually their "wealth" is someone else's credit line, not money of their own to spend. However, my very favorite example is at the end of How to Marry a Millionaire but I don't want to spoil it, so you'll have to find it for yourself. These are rather less spoiler-y examples.

It Could Happen to You (1994)

This light romantic comedy is probably the most appropriate movie for this list, since a lottery ticket is actually involved. Nicolas Cage buys a lottery ticket at his wife's request, but promises a waitress that if he wins the lottery, he'll share it with her. Lo and behold, he does, so we get to see how three people are affected by sudden wealth. Cage's kind policeman (remember when he used to play the non-crazy?) and Bridget Fonda's generous waitress contrast nicely with Rosie Perez as the selfish wife. And since this is a Hollywood fairy tale, everyone is ultimately given their just rewards.

The Jerk (1979)

The Jerk contains one of the funniest, most over-the-top examples of nouveau riche vulgarity ever in film, as Navin Johnson (Steve Martin) and Marie (Bernadette Peters) go to town when his invention makes him rich. They hire a butler and maid before they even more out of their apartment, but once they get more money, they move to a huge mansion. The mansion scenes were shot in the Sheik Al-Fassi Mansion on Sunset Boulevard ... with much of the original decor, including the disco room. Navin's acquisition of wealth makes him crass and gauche and hilarious. I think I just talked myself into seeing this movie again.

Easy Living (1937)

One of my very favorite rags-to-riches movies is this Depression-era screwball comedy, directed by Mitchell Leisen and written by Preston Sturges. Jean Arthur is riding to work on the top of a bus and suddenly a mink coat falls on her head, changing her entire life. She loses her job because her employers think she must have been a Bad Girl to get such a coat, but her encounters with the family to whom the coat originally belonged lead to a case of mistaken identity and suddenly she's living in a swanky hotel with a car, and dogs ... she's so bewildered she doesn't have time to be vulgar about her wealth. The scene in the Automat (pictured above), in which wealthy Ray Milland is working behind the counter but the woman in mink can't afford any of the food, is absolutely priceless.

Speaking of Jean Arthur, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (in which she plays a hard-boiled reporter) is another great "instant wealth" movie from that time.

Trading Places (1983)

I'm starting to wonder if I should write a companion list to this one about how characters handle being instantly poor ... and you get both sides of the coin in the very funny film Trading Places. Eddie Murphy's sudden elevation to riches (which he doesn't realize is due to a "nurture vs. nature" bet that Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche have made) starts down the road of big vulgar parties and ostentatious clothes, but quickly becomes conservative and even guarded of his possessions. He starts to feel confident of his skills in his new profession, well, at least until he overhears Bellamy and Ameche. Meanwhile, Dan Ackroyd has to deal with the sudden loss of wealth and position, and he doesn't handle it at all well.

Annie (1999) / Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980)

It's often enchanting to see how children in movies deal with surprise riches. Two of the classic rags-to-riches kids are Annie and Little Lord Fauntleroy. In both cases, I have to say I prefer the made-for-TV adaptations of these stories to the movies. Rob Marshall's 1999 version of the Broadway musical is more fun for me than the Annie directed by John Huston in 1982, but in both cases we get to see the little orphan girl absolutely delighted as she is taken from the orphanage and placed in the lap of luxury for a week with Daddy Warbucks. She appears to be unspoilable. The same is true of Cedric in Little Lord Fauntleroy as he leaves the streets of New York for the lavish English country estate of his uncle, the Earl of Dorincourt. The 1933 adaptation with C. Aubrey Smith is fine, but I am fond of Alec Guinness as the uncle -- and even lil Ricky Schroder in the title character -- in the 1980 version, which I grew up with. Let's hope Annie and Ceddie didn't grow to be spoiled sullen teenagers.

Brewster's Millions (1985)

I haven't seen this movie since I was a wee tyke -- okay, a high-school tyke -- and ... wait, Walter Hill directed it? Really? Directed by Walter Hill, starring Richard Pryor and John Candy, featuring a cast of solid character actors, written by the team that did so well with Trading Places ... and this movie was kind of blah for me. Still, there's some fun in watching Pryor's character try to blow through $30 million in 30 days so he can inherit an even more staggering sum of money. The one-joke expenditures (like the stamp) are much funnier than the long expensive schemes involving baseball and politics. Brewster's Millions was originally a novel by George Barr McCutcheon, written in 1902 -- it's been adapted no less than nine times for the big screen (including Miss Brewster's Millions with Bebe Daniels, which I'd love to see). Hey, aren't we due for another remake soon?

Stella Dallas (1937)

I have to say, I have always had difficulty with Stella Dallas (both this version and the 1925 silent one) in that I never thought the title character was quite as vulgar and tacky as the other characters accuse her of being. And the ending always makes me a little angry, because I think the "sacrifice" was not really necessary. This may simply be the result of changing times -- perhaps in 193x Stella really was seen as unacceptable with her shiny, glittery accessories and her "low" friends and her blunt manner of speech. Or it may be Barbara Stanwyck's excellent performance. The point is supposed to be that the feisty, brassy golddiggers from many delightful 1930s movies may not live happily ever after as society wives -- Stella is out of her depth. I think she should have refused to be ashamed, myself, but then we wouldn't have a good excuse to cry our eyes out at the end of the movie.

'Bernie' Will Reunite Jack Black and Richard Linklater

Jette Kernion — 2010-08-06T19:15:00+00:00

The news spread quickly around Austin film circles today via a casting call notice on the Short Film Texas website: Richard Linklater was starting casting for his new feature film Bernie, which will be shot in East Texas and Austin this fall. The film will reunite him with actor Jack Black, who co-starred in Linklater's School of Rock back in 2003. Bernie will also star Shirley MacLaine. Variety confirmed the news this afternoon. Castle Rock and Mandalay Pictures are producing the film.

Bernie's storyline is a far cry from School of Rock or Linklater's most recent film, Me and Orson Welles. It's based on a 1998 Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth, "MIdnight in the Garden of East Texas," about Bernie Tiede and the Texas town of Carthage. Small-town undertaker Tiede, whom I assume will be played by Black in the movie, confessed in 1997 to murdering his companion, Marjorie Nugent, "the richest lady in town" -- that would be MacLaine. Linklater appears to be aiming for a dark comedy with the material, and according to the casting call, hopes to cast nonprofessional actors in the smaller roles.

This isn't the first I'd heard about Bernie, thanks to Austin film writer Joe O'Connell. He's been working to track down details and confirmation on this project for the past couple of months. He caught a whiff of the story back in June, when Linklater described the project as "my Fargo in East Texas." A few days later, O'Connell published a photo of the real-life Bernie with Marjorie Nugent as well as a link to part of the original Texas Monthly article (the rest of it is subscribers-only). He even found a 2006 made-for-TV movie, Strange Felony Files: Deadly Sinner, based on Tiede's life. I believe I'll wait for Linklater's version, myself.

Cinematical Seven: Main Characters You Just Can't Stand

Jette Kernion — 2010-07-13T22:30:00+00:00

Two movies are out on DVD today that have one thing in common: truly unsympathetic protagonists, people you would not want to spend more than five minutes with if you ran into them in real life. Surprisingly, however, I liked both of these movies very much: Greenberg, in which Ben Stiller is one of the most consistently off-putting characters ever onscreen; and Harmony and Me, in which Justin Rice's whiny, melodramatic title character practically leaks self-pity wherever he goes.

There's something to be said for a great movie with a grating character you want to strangle, who just plain drives you nuts. For one thing, it's a refreshing change from the supposedly unlikeable character who ends up just being a big old softy by the end of the film, and gets all sentimental or changes his/her ways. It's a challenge to have a horrible character that an audience can still somehow sympathize with, and although it's risky I find it quite rewarding to watch.

So here are seven characters that might be fascinating to watch, but that you could not possibly stand to spend any time with, and may not even be able to stand watching onscreen. Nonetheless, they appear in seven movies that are widely considered good (even if I don't like a couple of them myself). Bernard Berkman (Jeff Daniels), The Squid and the Whale

Writer/director Noah Baumbach has a talent for presenting us with simply awful people who nonetheless are fascinating and even occasionally sympathetic. He's also the filmmaker behind Greenberg. I have a theory that the title character in Greenberg is actually Jesse Eisenberg's character from The Squid and the Whale, all grown up. But it's Daniels' father character in this movie that is truly horrible at times. He's unable to be a successful writer anymore and he's taking it out on his family, especially his ex-wife, who turns out to be achieving some success in that field herself. One scene that especially sticks in my mind is Eisenberg and his high-school date out at dinner with Daniels ... who then adds up how much everyone at the table owes. What kind of parent does that?

Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), In a Lonely Place

Many of Bogart's characters seem unappealing or unsympathetic at first, but the idea is that we break down the character's hard shell and find out that he's really a rank sentimentalist, or a romantic, or just plain insane or something. One of my favorite performances of his is in Nicholas Ray's 1950 drama In a Lonely Place -- his character shows glimpses of a vulnerable, even tender side, but is still chilling, violently angry and even repellent throughout the film. It's easy to see why his writer character might be accused of murder; more difficult to see why Gloria Grahame's character falls for him.

Kym (Anne Hathaway), Rachel Getting Married

Like Roger Greenberg, Kym has an excuse for her unpleasant behavior -- it's tied in with a mental disorder, and in fact she's just been released from a mental-health facility. Still, one suspects that no matter what her psychological state of health might be, Kym is never someone you'll want to invite to dinner. To paraphrase Stephen King's novel The Stand, being around her is like biting on tinfoil. Unfortunately, since her sister is getting married, she pretty much has to be around for the wedding, and we get to watch her family try to deal with her attempts to fit back into a "normal" routine. Anne Hathaway has never yet been better -- or harder to watch.

Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson), Five Easy Pieces

Nicholson's abrasive character travels from one class of society to another during the film, but changes very little. Frankly, he's a real jerk -- a snob to his blue-collar friends, a cynical critic of his upper-class patrician family. Well, it was 1970, and a lot of people felt empathy with a character who didn't know where he fit in, and felt the rules that society had established were chafing him. I can sympathize with him myself, but it's without ever liking him, and sometimes I just want to tell him to suck it up and deal with it, dude. Perhaps that's why this is such a good movie. Nicholson has a knack for playing unlikeable characters well, and I like it best when they're undiluted by moments of sentiment or self-doubt, as in About Schmidt.

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), There Will Be Blood

I was torn about whether to include Plainview on this list -- he may be the protagonist of There Will Be Blood, but he's also the villain -- monstrous, in fact. It's as if someone remade Chinatown to focus on Eli Cross, or more aptly, remade Giant to focus on Jett Rink. Plainview in the beginning of the film is merely determined and ambitious, then a ruthless businessman who reminded me of development execs trying to tell you why a big-box store in your neighborhood is a good thing. But as the film progresses, it's fascinating to see him become less and less human, and lose any shreds of sympathy or understanding we might have had for him early in the film. Of all the characters on this list, he's the one I'd most enjoy having dinner with ... but boy, I would absolutely be watching my back.

Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro), The King of Comedy

I can think of several films that I'd love to include on this list with the notation that every single character in them is difficult to watch, unsympathetic, and just plain horrible. Martin Scorsese's 1982 film The King of Comedy is one of them. Sandra Bernhard's character makes me feel the same way as fingernails down a chalkboard, and Jerry Lewis is just obnoxious. But Rupert Pupkin manages to be creepy, ambitious in a really stupid way, and downright annoying. Like several of the other actors on this list, De Niro is brilliant at playing repellent characters -- Rupert Pupkin goes hand-in-hand with Travis Bickle from Scorsese's Taxi Driver -- and I considered putting Jake La Motta from Raging Bull (also Scorsese) on this list instead. But Pupkin is even more of a loser than the other two characters, and yet one you'd rather kick than help.

Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn), Breakfast at Tiffany's

Okay, true confession time: I have never made it all the way through a screening of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Go ahead and send me to Film Critic Jail. I have two points in my defense: Mickey Rooney's unwatchable, racist portrayal of a Japanese character, which makes me amazed that this movie is still shown in public places or on TV at all; and Holly Golightly herself, who is so incredibly annoying that I want to run screaming out of the room. The only thing about her I can stand is her wardrobe. I don't know if her character improves by the end of the movie and frankly I don't care. She's too horrible, and this is from someone who loves many gratuitously flaky heroines in films like Bringing Up Baby and The Awful Truth. Admittedly, as I've grown older I've realized that I'm not fond of Audrey Hepburn's acting style, and that's probably prejudicing me as well.

Watch This: Rebooting 'Citizen Kane'

Jette Kernion — 2010-06-14T15:02:00+00:00

Have you ever felt like Citizen Kane was a little too slow, a little too black-and-white, a little irrelevant to today's modern newspaper situation? In short, have you ever wanted a reboot of the 1941 Orson Welles film? Of course you have. Those old movies all need a facelift, remake or reboot, as everyone knows (or at least as Hollywood believes).

Mark Potts and Singletree Productions understand that universal need, and the result is a trailer for Kane, a fresh and contemporary (and color) remake of Citizen Kane. The Kane trailer premiered on Friday night at the 2010 Aspen Rooftop Comedy Festival. Since we all couldn't make it to Aspen, I've embedded the video after the jump. You'll never look at the AP Stylebook the same way again, is all I'm saying.

If you haven't heard of Potts, you're missing out -- his feature film Simmons on Vinyl played Austin Film Festival last year to sold-out theaters and was very funny indeed. In fact, it just won the Grand Jury Prize this weekend at the DeadCenter Film Festival in Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma indie filmmaker is currently putting the finishing touches on his next feature, S&M Lawn Care. His collaborative filmmaking team includes co-writer Cole Selix and actor William Brand Rackley, who stars in the Kane trailer (pictured at right). Who knows ... someday perhaps they really will reboot Citizen Kane, which would be Very Wrong but at least would make me laugh a lot.

Cinematical Seven: Movie Titles We Can't/Won't Pronounce

Jette Kernion — 2010-06-08T22:32:00+00:00

So. Tchoupitoulas. How many of you can pronounce the word? And I bet most of you who can, are from South Louisiana. Bill and Turner Ross, whose documentary 45365 won awards at SXSW and Full Frame last year, are currently working on a film about New Orleans nightlife -- amazingly and promisingly, the title is the name of a street that is not in the French Quarter. I grew up in the New Orleans suburbs and I still had to check my spelling on Tchoupitoulas -- it's going to be difficult for people to get right. Still, 45365 was good and I never could remember that title properly, either, entangling it with my zip code and Social Security number and having to describe the movie to people instead.

Do unpronounceable movie titles hinder a movie's popularity, or are they simply part of the fun? In Hollywood Shuffle, the "Sneakin into the Movies" guys hate Amadeus automatically because the title's too hard to say. I can think of some movies with titles I can pronounce, but they're spelled so weirdly that I curse every time I have to look up the exact title: Baadasssss! (I kept chanting "two a's, five s's" as I wrote an essay on it), Se7en, [REC] ... not to mention Inglourious Basterds, which my inner copy editor despises. Finally, there are titles that I can pronounce but hate to do so in public because they're incredibly stupid, like Pootie Tang. Gaaaaah.

The following seven (or so) movies are difficult for some of us to pronounce, or we may be too embarrassed to speak them aloud around others. I'm not saying I can't pronounce any of these titles, but in a few cases it was a challenge. You all can school me in the comments.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

This movie was my favorite of 2008 but it's also at the top of everyone's list of tough-to-pronounce titles. I found several articles online explaining the phonetic spelling of the name, how it should be said, which dictionary pronunciation was preferable, and so forth. You can always do as certain friends of mine and call it "That Charlie Kaufman film that looks even weirder than its name ... no, I don't want to see it. Let's watch Slumdog Millionaire instead." Your loss.

Koyaanisqatsi (1982) and Powaqqatsi (1988)

I'm proud that I got the spelling right on Koyaanisqatsi without having to look it up. And I did eventually figure how to pronounce it correctly, when we scheduled it to show at LSU back when I was in college. But I never did learn the proper pronunciation for Powaqqatsi, the follow-up film. Apparently there's a click or a pop or something my mouth just did not want to do in mid-word. You can always refer to them as "those experimental 80s films with the Philip Glass scores" if you're hesitant.

Ratatouille (2007)

I do know how to pronounce Ratatouille. But a lot of people don't ... or so Disney believed. Many posters and ads for this film had a phonetic spelling listed underneath the title in parentheses, to help everyone out. And at least one of the trailers stressed the title in a silly way so we'd all know how to say it. I find it hard to believe that was just for children, either. I'm absurdly pleased Disney let such a potentially difficult title stand for the Brad Bird film and didn't force it to be changed to The Great Rat Chef Adventure or something equally lame.

Gigli (2003)

Thank goodness this Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez movie bombed. Not only did we have to have the pronunciation explained to us, but even when pronounced correctly, it sounds really dorky. "GEE-lee." On the other hand, once a movie becomes universally popular and beloved, we stop caring how stupid the title is (Braveheart, Cloverfield). So if this had been the smash hit of the year, we'd probably all be naming our kids Gigli. What a thought.

Zzyzx (2006) and Zyzzyx Rd (2006)

I have no idea how to pronounce either of these movie titles, which to my mind could have benefited from some vowels and a few letters from the front end of the alphabet. What's weird is that movies were made around the same time, too. They take their name from a street in Las Vegas. Zyzzyx Rd, a thriller starring Katherine Heigl and Tom Sizemore, holds a record for the lowest official box-office take ever -- it opened in one Dallas theater and took in a whopping $30. Zzyzx, an even lower-budget film, is also a thriller -- and seems to have gone straight to DVD. Looking at these titles together is making me reach for the Advil bottle.

Dick (1999)

Admittedly, when Dick had its brief run in theaters in 1999 I was a bit of a delicate flower and the idea of talking about Dick in public was against my shy and retiring nature, even though we are talking about a U.S. President's first name and not any other slang. I had to keep referring to it as "you know, that comedy about Richard Nixon, what's it called?" and therefore made everyone else say the title instead. I would probably be less flaky about it now, or at least take some amusement in it. Other titles along the same lines: Good Dick, Blow and Snatch. "Wanna see Snatch?" sounds like a joke out of Blazing Saddles, for heaven's sakes.

Sssssss! (1973)

Fortunately, I was too young when this movie was released to have the problem of talking about it in the general public. Because how do you work this into a conversation? "What do you think we should see tonight?" "I heard good things about Ssssss!" "About what? Did you just spit on me?" It could get very Abbott-and-Costello very quickly. The movie is about a serum that could turn people into snakes, and apparently in some countries the title was changed to Ssssnake, which would have been a bit annoying (the old "count the s's" game again") but at least understandable when spoken aloud.

'Karate Kid' Inspires Anti-Remake Protest

Jette Kernion — 2010-06-08T16:32:00+00:00

I suspect we will all eventually hit a point where one of our favorite movies will be remade, re-adapted from its source, or "rebooted" with a younger cast ... and we'll crack and go bananas in our rage. If that remake of The Wild Bunch ever hits theaters, I may start raving uncontrollably. For Jacob Walinski, his breaking point is The Karate Kid remake, due in theaters this Friday.

Walinski is organizing a protest against remakes in general and The Karate Kid in particular, in Austin, Texas on Friday at the Regal Gateway multiplex, where the movie will be playing on two screens. The press release he sent to Cinematical states, "Together we can demand original stories. Together we can demand good plot lines. Together we can stand up and say we do not support remakes and reboots." However, he not only protesting "the blatant mockery of the original Karate Kid," but is unhappy about flaws he's noticed in the remake: for example, that it's about kung fu instead of karate, which is not reflected in the title. Is he protesting remakes, or sloppily made films, or both? The message seems diffused, which can be problematic for protests that work best with a short, clear slogan.

Gateway gets pretty crowded on a Friday night with people wanting to see the latest blockbusters, so Walinski and his protesters are guaranteed a big audience. Whether they'll be receptive is another matter. There's a "1,000,000 Strong Against Karate Kid" Facebook page ... which currently has 1,300 members. I can't find anything about Walinski's protest online, so I'm not sure how big or organized it will be. But if you're fed up to the neck with movie remakes and/or can't abide the idea of a Karate Kid remake, you may want to join Walinski at 7 pm on Friday. That is, if you don't already have movie tickets to The Karate Kid or any other remake, sequel, adaptation or reboot currently in theaters.

Interview: Jonah Hill and Nicholas Stoller, 'Get Him to the Greek'

Jette Kernion — 2010-06-04T21:45:00+00:00

A few weeks ago, actor Jonah Hill and writer/director Nicholas Stoller turned up in Austin for a special preview screening of Get Him to the Greek, entertaining an enthusiastic audience at an Alamo Drafthouse. The comedy stars Hill as Aaron Green, who works for a record label and somehow ends up with the responsibility of making sure rockstar-in-decline Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) gets to an anniversary concert in LA at, of course, the Greek. Aldous Snow is also a character in the movie Stoller directed before this one, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The above photos are from the Austin event -- many thanks to photographer and film geek Heather Leah Kennedy for granting permission to use them after I found them in her Flickr stream.

The morning after the Alamo screening -- bright and early, let me tell you -- Cinematical interviewed the actor and filmmaker. Stoller showed me how to play MASH -- the paper game that schoolkids play, which I'd played under a different name in grade school -- while Hill drew a doodle of Stoller that I'm sorry I didn't steal and share. We poked fun at the hotel's odd background music, which Stoller described as making him feel like we were in "the waiting room in Purgatory." It was a very lively interview, and I hope I've captured that after the jump.

Cinematical: What made you decide to take a character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and spin off a whole movie?

Nicholas Stoller: At the first Sarah Marshall table read, I thought Jonah and Russell had really good chemistry, and I knew that was a movie, if I get to make another movie after this. Then when we were shooting Sarah Marshall, I pitched them this idea and they both thought it was a really fun idea and different than stuff they'd done before. I originally started writing Aldous as a different rock star for this movie, because the plot required a rock star, and then I realized that would just seem lazy. So we made it a spinoff.

Jonah Hill: A lot of times, I'll just go by the safety of working with a certain director, and Nick is a complete comfy cozy blanket of safety. I never would worry about Nick making an awesome movie. And I trust him wholeheartedly, and was wanting to work with Russell and thinking the two of us would be funny together. So it was an easy decision.

Cinematical: The "African Child" video that opens Get Him to the Greek is right on target, a great spoof. What were the inspirations for that?

NS: Every pretentious song that a rock star sings when they're trying to be charitable. There isn't really a specific song, I just tried to think of the most horrible, borderline racist song -- without meaning to be racist, this pretentious condescending song. Dan Bern and Mike Viola wrote it -- I thought of the title "African Child" and they did a great job with the song.

Cinematical: Who wrote most of the songs in the movie?

NS: It was a combination of us thinking of titles or lyrics, and then we would give them to actual songwriters. Jason Segal wrote two of the songs, Dan Bern and Mike Viola wrote songs for Walk Hard and are singer-songwriters in their own right, Jarvis Cocker from Pulp, Carl Barat from The Libertines, and Inara George from Bird and the Bee wrote some stuff. It's a great lineup, and it was really important to us that you buy the songs as being real rock songs.

Cinematical: So Jason Segal wrote some of the songs, and there's a cameo from Kristen Bell as Sarah Marshall -- are there other Forgetting Sarah Marshall-ish things that people should keep an eye out for?

NS: In the opening title sequence, there are Sarah Marshalls in the corner of one of those magazines that flies by.

JH: For fanboys.

NS: Yeah, for fanboys of Sarah Marshall.

Jonah: It's like Super 8.

NS: Yes, our movie's a lot like Super 8. That's our Thor hammer at the end of the movie.

Cinematical: And the movie also has a lot of pop-culture references and cameos.

JH: Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Mick Jagger, The Beatles --

NS: President Obama --

Cinematical: I didn't know who Paul Krugman was, and my husband was laughing his ass off when he saw Krugman, and had to explain it to me later.

JH: That gets such a big dad laugh.

NS: Yeah, that's our dad laugh.

JH: People love it though, when he shows up.

NS: You're either like, that's a weird-looking guy, and you chuckle, or you think it's the funniest thing if you know who he is.

JH: He [Krugman] liked it because he thought it was like Annie Hall.

NS: The philosopher in Annie Hall, I can't recall his name --

Cinematical: Marshall McLuhan.

JH: "You know nothing of my work." Like that. And little did he know, our movie's not as good as Annie Hall.

NS: I knew for that scene, we wanted someone you'd run into on the Today Show, but not from music or movies. And I'm a fan of his writing. He's a great cultural critic. But there's a moment where he's supposed to be enjoying the concert. And I asked him, "Can you tap your foot, you're watching the TV, just tap your foot." He said, "I wouldn't do that." And I wasn't asking him to do anything crazy, but I asked him, "Oh, okay, what would you do?" And he said, "I would do this --" and he moved his hand, like, imperceptibly to the music, and gave the weirdest smile. But I was very excited to meet him.

Cinematical: My husband didn't know who Tom Felton was, so I got to explain that one to him.

NS: Yeah, we're hitting both ends. If you don't know who Tom Felton is, you probably know who Paul Krugman is.

Cinematical: Do you think the movie will hold up in the long run, with so many pop culture references?

NS: Yes. Look at that Marshall McLuhan reference, it still works. And for a movie that takes place in the world of celebrities and celebrity culture, to ignore pop culture, I think would be irresponsible.

Cinematical: Jonah, is there any improv that you came up with in Get Him to the Greek that you're particularly pleased with that's in the film?

JH: Oh, yeah. There's certain ones I love. Like the sneezing with the drugs in my ass, that's something we just thought of while we were sitting there. But -- improv is one thing, but we're all writers, Russell and myself and Nick and Rodney Rothman [producer], and Nick is so incredibly cool and open about being collaborative, and I respect that so much. We can just sit, and you might think of a joke, and talk about it. You might think of 10 jokes and try them out.

NS: And before this point, we've really worked on the script. I mean, if we just shot the script, the movie wouldn't be as good, but it would work. I think there's a misperception that we just hang out --

JH: No, Nick wrote a great script.

NS: So we all work and rewrite the script. And that's true of Sarah Marshall. That's true of all of these movies -- so when the day comes, we're not just depending on improv. Improv works the best when you have a solid foundation.

Cinematical: Do you think you'll want to do some directing, and do you think you'd direct in a similar style?

JH: My goal in life is to be a director; that's my number-one ambition, is to direct movies. I'd definitely be collaborative, and I'd be open to improvisation because that's always what I enjoy the most in my experiences thus far. So, yeah, depending on the kind of movie and what your restrictions are, shooting-wise. But I definitely would hire people that I trust to be collaborative with. Working with Nick or Judd [Apatow] or the Duplass brothers, they're all similar in that they're collaborative and they're open to good ideas, no matter who has them, and that's something I've been lucky to be around. Some directors don't want to get anyone's ideas.

NS: I've worked on those movies, you know, when you don't improv or you don't get extra jokes, you just shoot the script. And you're making this kind of comedy, then when you're cutting the movie, you only have one joke to choose from, and what if it doesn't work? You need options. Oftentimes, the funniest thing on set just doesn't work. And vice versa -- a really small moment that you didn't notice when it happened can destroy.

JH: That's why, when I say I really trust Nick, that's when it comes into play. You know he's shot enough stuff, and he's willing to listen to the audience and figure it out. He listens to the audience and he listens to people's ideas and gets it to a place where it's the best it can be. And that's all you could ask for in a director, in my opinion, is that trust.

Cinematical: Okay, let's ask the predictable last question -- what you're working on now. I tried to look it up and Jonah, it looks like you're working on maybe 20 things.

JH: Yeah. I'm splitting myself into eight different people. I'm starting Moneyball soon, which stars Brad Pitt and myself, and we just found out Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Wright joined the cast today, which is awesome. And then I'm going to make this movie called The Sitter with David Gordon Green, I'm excited about that too.

JK: And Cyrus coming out at the end of June.

JH: This is the most insane year of my career, in that I never thought I'd be so lucky to have a movie like Greek and a movie like Cyrus come out in the same year. It's a dream situation: a big awesome comedy that I love, and then this smaller, really special, artsier film. I never thought I'd be lucky enough to get to express both sides of my taste like that.

Cinematical: I keep hearing about the new Muppet movie [The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever, which Stoller has co-written], is that happening?

NS: Oh yeah, it's happening, it's exciting. James Bobin from Flight of the Conchords is directing. He was our top choice, and he's a Muppet fanatic. I have a movie called Gulliver's Travels coming out at Christmas that I wrote, and Rob Letterman is directing. It's awesome, I saw an early cut, it's great.

If this isn't enough interview for you, check out Hill and Stoller discussing male nudity in films.

Jonah Hill and Nicholas Stoller Confront Male Nudity

Jette Kernion — 2010-06-03T20:32:00+00:00

Normally, when I interview actors and/or filmmakers, the results are relatively family friendly. I hardly ever have to use asterisks. And then I interviewed actor Jonah Hill and writer/director Nicholas Stoller about their upcoming comedy Get Him to the Greek, which also stars Russell Brand. The interview was very polite as well as very lively, but we did touch upon some subjects that steered us into R-rated territory.

A dramatic scene in the film includes some partial nudity from Jonah Hill, and this reminded me of a well-known scene in Stoller's previous feature film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which Kristen Bell is breaking up with a buck naked Jason Segal. In both cases, the nudity took a dramatic and serious scene and added a layer of vulnerability and an almost pathetic absurdity. Which is not to say that either of these gentleman looked pathetic while unclothed, of course.

So I've excerpted the "naughty bits" from my Get Him to the Greek interview, which you can enjoy after the jump. Keep an eye out for the full interview, which Cinematical will publish tomorrow, as well as for our review of the film. Warning: Some of the language and topics below may not be safe for work (although the asterisks are out in full play).

Cinematical: Jonah, was this your first nude scene?

Jonah Hill: Yeah, I think so. First of many. And you're welcome, for it turning you on.

Cinematical: I was sitting next to my husband when I saw it, I had to be very careful.

JH: I know. I was there. I saw the jealous rage in his eyes.

Cinematical: We were sitting right behind you.

JH: Yeah, I felt the heat. No, it was interesting. Nick was very respectful, he told me I had a cute butt.

Nicholas Stoller: He has a cute butt.

Cinematical: So that's how you get people to do nude scenes.

NS: You flatter them into taking their pants off. It's how I've led my whole life.

JH: The only thing that was weird was the second I dropped the robe -- the first time I dropped the robe, there's all the crew people around and stuff. It's like one of those nightmares where you leave home and you're not wearing pants at work? Because I'm literally not wearing pants and underwear at work, in front of all the people I work with.

NS: And then we shot the whole scene. It's in there for, like, a second. But we shot the entire scene, which is a five-minute scene, uncut, and it's a very serious, dramatic scene.

Cinematical: The mood in the room shifted so fast as soon as we saw it --

JH: Because it's a serious scene, and then you realize, the guy's been bottomless this whole time, Donald Duck style.

Cinematical: It reminded me of the scene everyone talks about in Forgetting Sarah Marshall --

NS: I don't know what scene that is.

Cinematical: They're having a very serious relationship conversation, and the whole time, I kept thinking, "He's not dressed. At all." It pulls you out of these scenes, just slightly.

NS: We did that because he was emotionally exposed, we didn't do it for a cheap laugh.

JH: I remember that was the first thing I heard about that movie, from Jason [Segal]. We were shooting Knocked Up while Jason was writing it, and I asked him, "What's it about?" And he said, "It's about a breakup, and the guy goes on vacation, and the girl's there with her new boyfriend, and while she's breaking up with me, I'm showing my d*ck. And I'm gonna show my d*ck."

NS: He said to me, "I want to show my d*ck," and I said to him, "We can't do that," I didn't know the rules, you know? So we're in the meeting at Universal, the green-light meeting, and Judd [Apatow, the film's producer] says, "You know what you should do? You should show your d*ck." And Jason was like, "I was just saying I should show my d*ck!" And I said, "Can you do that?" And the head of Universal, Donna Langley, was like, "Yeah, you can do that." And it turned out the rule --

JH: Flaccid.

NS: Right, it's not just flaccid, you can be anywhere below 90 degrees, that's fine, but if it gets anywhere above that -- this is the MPAA rule -- it's an X.

JH: Wait, so you can show a boner, as long as it's not above 90 degrees?

NS: I guess, if you have a weird boner.

JH: And you can show a flaccid penis all day.

The definitely R-rated Get Him to the Greek opens in wide release on Friday.

What Movie-Related Tattoo Do You Want?

Jette Kernion — 2010-06-02T22:02:00+00:00

I've seen some interesting film-related tattoos in my time, in person as well as onscreen or in photos. Alamo Drafthouse programmer Zack Carlson has a Troll 2 tattoo as well as one I especially like that commemorates the late great days of VHS. I noticed some pretty cool movie tattoos when my husband went through a weekend-long marathon of watching LA Ink on Netflix Watch Instantly. And yesterday, the Alamo Drafthouse blog highlighted a tattoo that one of their projectionists just got that references the movie The Human Centipede. I am way too chicken to watch this movie (read Todd Gilchrist's review to find out why), but I know enough of the film's conceit to appreciate the tattoo, which is recognizable yet moderately tasteful.

I've been wondering lately -- if I ever got a tattoo, what would it be? And would it reference movies in some way? I have yet to think of, or see, a tattoo that symbolizes movies as I love them, or references a movie that is meaningful to me. And since I'm too wussy to sit through The Human Centipede, you know that any tattoo I might even imagine getting would need to be rather small and simple and not in one of the more painful places. A small strip of film ... but what would be on it? A beloved movie quote? A tiny, winged Sam Lowry? Nothing has grabbed me yet, at least not enough to consider it seriously.

Do you have any movie-related tattoos yourself -- and if so, can you share a photo or two? And if not, what movie, or aspect of the movies, would you imagine you might want to have tattooed on yourself? An autograph of George A. Romero, perhaps? Do any of these appeal to you?

Tim League Takes Over Alamo Drafthouse Company, Plans to Expand

Jette Kernion — 2010-06-01T10:32:00+00:00

Whenever I've tried to explain to people that the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema company is not the same as the three Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters that founders Tim and Karrie League own in Austin, everyone ends up confused, including me. The Leagues sold the company in 2004 -- except for three theaters, for which they licensed the Alamo name back from the company -- and it's never been entirely clear to me what role, if any, they had in the franchise after that. What we do know is that they've built a solid reputation for combining movies, dining and other entertainment with their three Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters.

Today, it's a lot simpler. Effective immediately, Tim League is assuming the role of CEO of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, and has plans to oversee and expand the brand's franchise operations. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema currently has nine locations spread throughout Austin, the greater Houston area, San Antonio and Winchester, Virginia. League hopes to lure franchise operators to open Alamo Drafthouse theaters in other parts of the U.S.

It appears that as of this announcement, all the Alamo theaters including the ones the Leagues own are now under a single umbrella, which at least makes it all easier to explain. It also means that with League at the helm, Alamo franchise theaters are likely to resemble the three League-owned theaters more closely in terms of menu, programming and special events. The current Alamo Drafthouse Cinema theaters all offer food and beer/wine with the movies they screen, but most focus primarily on first-run Hollywood movies. They don't have quite the variety of programming you'd find at the League-owned Alamo Ritz, for example, where the schedule can include classic Hollywood movies, sing-alongs, 1970s exploitation flicks and locally made indie features all within a single week.

League says he is looking at "expanding some of the signature programming that has been developed over the past few years in Austin and expanding it to our franchised locations." I believe this is one of the things that gives Alamo an edge over other movie theaters -- making a movie outing more like a special event, so you feel like you're getting an experience you could not possibly have in your living room, and also feel like you're getting good value for money. Maybe it's a special guest at a premiere screening of a big Hollywood movie, maybe it's a four-course feast served during a film, but it's all a great way of keeping the theatrical experience alive and kicking. League also is one of the founders of Fantastic Fest and owns an entertainment-and-event bar/restaurant called The Highball adjacent to one of his Alamo theaters. Sometimes I wonder if he ever sleeps.

Tim and Karrie League filed a lawsuit in March 2009 against Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, then-CEO John Martin, and others involved in the company, claiming they were misled by the company's partners about the level of franchise expansion and growth that would occur. Apparently the Leagues retained some partnership interest in the company even after they sold it. The press release announcing Tim League as CEO does not mention this lawsuit, and the obvious question is whether this move is a resolution of that disagreement. The announcement also notes that former CEO Martin will work on the expansion of the franchise outside of Texas as an area developer.

"I feel ready to share the results of our Austin 'incubator' with the rest of the country," League said in the press release. Is the rest of the country ready for Alamo Drafthouse?

Interview: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 'Micmacs'

Jette Kernion — 2010-05-30T19:02:00+00:00

A small, surreal bit of France descended upon SXSW this year: filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet, whose earlier films include Delicatessen, Amelie and A Very Long Engagement. Jeunet was in Austin to present his latest film, Micmacs (aka Micmacs a tire-larigot -- read our review here), a comedy about a man who survives a gunshot wound and has to start life fresh with a new set of people ... and as in many Jeunet films, all these people are all charmingly eccentric, and some quite surreal antics result. You can read my review of the comedy from SXSW -- let's just say that I liked it so much that although I saw the movie at a press screening before I interviewed Jeunet, I then went to the Paramount that night and watched it again. Micmacs opens on Friday in limited release, and I haven't decided whether I'll see it a third time when it reaches Austin. (Probably.)

I was pleased to be able to sit down with Jeunet for a few minutes during SXSW to talk about Micmacs and some of his other films. We were accompanied by a translator -- the interview was in English, but occasionally Jeunet needed a colloquial phrase or slang explained to him. This was a difficult interview to transcribe because he was so funny, I kept giggling, making it difficult to hear him on the audio recording. I hope his humor translates to the written word. Special thanks to Debbie Cerda for taking the above photo on the SXSW red carpet that night. If you ever plan to visit Montmartre, especially the cafe where Amelie was shot, study this photo carefully before you go. You'll find out why in the following interview.

Cinematical: Please tell us how to translate the title -- translation websites couldn't give me an answer.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet: It's difficult, even in French. "Micmacs" -- in England, they say, "Shenanigans." But "a tire-larigot," it's a very old French expression. Forget it, it's not part of the American title.

Cinematical: Your titles do seem to get shorter as they travel over here -- I liked the whole French title for Amelie [Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain] and was sorry that got cut.

Jeunet: The first title was Amelie of Montmartre, and by the end -- Amelie. I try as much as possible to keep the poster the same. But for Amelie, the French poster was a little bit dark. And for Micmacs, it's very interesting. For the US poster, they kept the French poster, but behind it they put interesting faces -- original, funny faces for every character, and it's much better.

Cinematical: Dominique Pinon has been in all your films. Do you write roles specifically with him in mind?

Jeunet: This time, yes. For Amelie, I was very shy about approaching him, because I thought I had nothing very interesting for him. But he said, no, I would like to play this Joseph guy, and he was amazing.

It's just a superstition that I can't make a film without him. All the time, I think, what to do for Dominique, you know, and it's a game to push him into a dangerous situation. This time, we threw him in the Seine.

Cinematical: I loved the nod to Delicatessen in Micmacs. What made you decide to sneak that in there?

Jeunet: The first time it was a different joke, and we needed a videogame there -- I won't explain why. It was a Wii, but they said no for commercial reasons. At the last moment, I had to find another idea. And I wanted to have Amelie -- with two babies, crying, Mathieu Kassovitz on the couch with a beer, watching a football game, you know? And Audrey Tautou said, "No, because I'm shooting Coco Chanel [Coco Before Chanel]." So at the last moment, we changed.

Cinematical: Have you made any other references to your other movies in Micmacs?

Jeunet: No, but I make a couple of references to older movies: Mission Impossible, Buster Keaton, Pixar films -- I put everything I love in this one.

Cinematical: Why did you choose The Big Sleep to show in the film's opening?

Jeunet: Because I wanted to make a joke with the end, at the beginning of the film -- also, it was perfect in terms of music. And it gave us the idea to use the Max Steiner music for the whole film.

When we heard the music from the clip, we thought, oh, this works perfectly for the action scenes. And then we opened the catalog of Max Steiner, because he worked on so many films, it's crazy. And we were very lucky, because we found some very good recordings he made back in the 1970s, in stereo.

It worked so well, it was strange. Sometimes we would use 40 seconds of music while we were editing, and it would work perfectly, we had nothing to cut. It was like a miracle.

Cinematical: One of the movie's themes seems to be how we're affected by movies whether we're watching them or imitating them or making them ourselves.

Jeunet: Yes, because when you make movies, in fact, you don't have a real life. Vacations? No. So all my references are coming from books or other films, much more than real life. Except the small details are from real life. You are in the line in the supermarket, every time the other line goes faster than you are. I love to notice all these stupid things, and I put that in my films. You know, I put the poster of the film [Micmacs] in the film.

Cinematical: The billboards! I remember seeing that.

Jeunet: There are five. You will have to find them all. You will have to buy the DVD.

I made this film for fun, because I was starving to make a film. Because I lost two years working on Life of Pi. It was a great project, and it was a huge pleasure to write the script -- but it was too expensive. Now Ang Lee is supposed to make the film. Good luck, Mr. Ang Lee.

Cinematical: Do you think movies do affect most of our lives?

Jeunet: For Amelie, I received so many letters. It changed the lives of so many people. You know there is a cafe from Amelie in Montmartre [Cafe des Deux Moulins] and now it's 10 years after, all the time people still take pictures. All the time, it's crazy! And they never invite me. And they never pay for coffee for me, can you believe it? I am sitting down at the cafe, I am sitting very close to the poster -- there's a poster there [from Amelie]. And some Japanese girl tries to take a picture, I am used to [he ducks and scrunches down in the chair].

Cinematical: Wait, you have to hide, so they can take a picture of the poster?

Jeunet: One day I am there with Jodie Foster, and they asked us to push over so they could take a photo of the poster. Sometimes I try to say, "You know, I am the author of Amelie." They don't believe me. At Cafe des Deux Moulins they sell 1,012 creme brulees per week, and they never invite me, can you believe it?

Cinematical: Are you there often?

Jeunet: I live right by the cafe. But they have repainted it, it is like an 80s cafe, it's ugly. They had repainted it in pink. But then no one wanted to come inside. One week later, they repainted it again.

Cinematical: What would you like to work on next?

Jeunet: Ideally, I would like to make an adaptation. But I don't want to make a film just to make a film. I need to be in love with the subject. And it is difficult -- I was very pissed off because I would have wanted to make The Lovely Bones.

Cinematical: I wonder if you've read A Confederacy of Dunces.

Jeunet: Everybody speaks about this book, and I couldn't read it. I don't know why, but I had to leave after 50 pages. But a lot of people have said that, "Oh, you have to make this movie."

Cinematical: Well, I thought I would be the first. I was wrong. Is there a type of film you haven't made yet that you would like to make, some day?

Jeunet: I would like to come back to a more emotional film. Because this one was funny, but it was for kids, that kind of slapstick. Now and I would like to go back -- when I mean go back, I think about Amelie, maybe with more emotion. And to shoot faster with a light camera, maybe.

Marfa Film Festival: A Long Laid-Back West Texas Weekend

Jette Kernion — 2010-05-14T18:45:00+00:00

Marfa, Texas, is at least 200 miles from a public airport, and a seven-hour drive west from Austin. It's a small town near Big Bend National Park that seems to have become popular in recent years with artists looking for a quiet, low-key retreat. All I knew about it before last weekend was that it was the home of the Marfa Mystery Lights, and that my grandfather was stationed there during WWII. That's not altogether true. For the past couple of years, I'd heard that they throw one hell of a great film festival, and I was determined to see for myself.

The rumors were absolutely correct -- Marfa hosts a charming film festival -- not large, but very satisfying. Some of its selections have been making the festival rounds, but a few were world premieres. A surprising number were shot or set in Marfa or the surrounding regions.

The Marfa Film Festival takes up a lot of room in a small town -- many attendees camp out in tents since hotel rooms near the festival are scarce. A number of Austin people attend, so I kept running into people I knew whom I didn't realize would be there. Many residents worked in some capacity or other on There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men, both of which were shot in the area a few years ago, and souvenirs from those productions are often displayed in shops and restaurants.

I wasn't able to attend the entire festival, which ran from Wednesday, May 5 through Sunday, May 9, but arrived on Thursday afternoon. I was just in time for a short film featuring a Marfa artist called Art Elimination Project. Adam Bork filmed himself destroying artwork he'd done a decade or two ago. If this sounds arty to you, I haven't mentioned yet that most of the destruction involved very showy explosions, almost Muppet-like. It was playful rather than pretentious, which was the tone for most of the art and film I experienced during Marfa Film Festival.

Other films I enjoyed that played the fest this year:

Features

The Sun Ship Game, a 1969 documentary from Robert Drew about men who pilot glider planes, with a focus on a national tournament that takes place around Marfa. Some parts date badly, but the shots of the gliders mid-air are lovely. The film has not been available except in bootlegs for decades.
The Dry Land, which premiered at Sundance, a feature about an Iraqi war veteran returning to his West Texas home and fighting post-traumatic stress disorder. We were surprised by a special guest during the Q&A -- the film's actress/producer America Ferrera.
Echotone, which had its world premiere at the fest. The documentary is about the problems that musicians face with day jobs, residential developments springing up near music venues, and other issues. The focus is on Austin music, with special attention to the downtown condo developments and the SXSW Music Festival. But it's not all politics and social issues; the film included performances from Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, Belaire, Bill Baird and other bands.
GasLand, another Sundance film that made its way to Marfa. This film about the effects of natural gas extraction on surrounding people and their water supply manages to make descriptions of chemicals interesting. Josh Fox gives the movie a personal angle without getting in your face too much about it.

Shorts

Quadrangle, an excellent short documentary that premiered at Sundance but has been picking up awards at other film festivals. Amy Grappell interviewed her parents about a time in the 1970s when they engaged in partner swapping with a neighboring couple. Absolutely riveting. Grappell allegedly wants to expand this into a feature-length documentary but the short film stands up quite well on its own.
Breaking Borders, a look at a group of cross-dressers and transvestites in El Paso who perform regularly at a Taco Cabana. This film by Diana Cordova is currently available online.
The Big Bends, which won a jury prize at SXSW before playing in Marfa. The short feature is set in West Texas and is about a man isolated in the desert area who has to come to terms with death sooner than he expected. Beautifully shot.
A Young Couple, a short film from Barry Jenkins, shot around the same time (and place) where he shot his excellent feature Medicine for Melancholy (my review). Jenkins spent an afternoon in the San Francisco apartment of John and Jenny, interviewing them about their experiences living together. Again, this film is available online.

The festival also hosted a number of special events. My favorite was an audience participation screening of a silent film, in which Mexico City musician Lazaro Valiente led the audience in supplying sound effects for the film clips using a number of noisemakers and musical toys. Live music was present throughout the festival, from mariachis to Austin band The Monahans and Tom Chasteen from Dub Club.

The festival closed with a short documentary directed by musician Lou Reed, Red Shirley, in which he interviews his 100-year-old cousin. However, I had to leave earlier that day -- my closing-night film was on Saturday night, and was a festive outdoor screening of the 1972 Jamaican reggae film, The Harder They Come. It was chilly outside, a great contrast to the tropical atmosphere onscreen, but audience members wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled together in great enjoyment. A nearby food trailer served "Jimmy Cliff Bangers," lamb sausages in a bun with Jamaican chutney, which were also quite warming and appropriate.

It was difficult to tear myself away from the festivities on Sunday afternoon for the trek back to Austin. Marfa Film Festival has a mellow yet contagious vibe, with some excellent programming, and I hope I'll be able to make time to drive out there again next year.

[Photo credits: "Tree-lined theater" and "Barely a line" by Flickr user juliettek. Used under Creative Commons license.]

Cinematical Seven: Movie Moms I Wish I Had

Jette Kernion — 2010-05-04T22:30:00+00:00

First of all I need to say very loudly and clearly that I love my mom and I would never want to trade her in for anyone else. And I am not just saying that because she sometimes reads Cinematical. However, I know I'm not the only person who has watched a mom do something especially wonderful in movies and wish for a split-second that my own mother would do that. I'm not, right?

So just in time for Mother's Day this weekend (psst: have you sent a card yet?), here's a list of seven female characters I've enjoyed watching in movies, whom I've wished very briefly and in a non-serious way were my mom. Some of them are not actually mothers, but are in charge of a child in some admirable way. I can recall plenty of other parent characters I've liked watching, but that isn't the same as wanting them in charge of your childhood self. No matter who plays her, Mama Rose in Gypsy is too scary a mother for my liking, and we won't even talk about Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate.

Mame Dennis (Rosalind Russell) in Auntie Mame

Well, of course you knew this would top my list. Who wouldn't imagine the fun you could have with a 1920s character like Russell's witty, well-dressed Auntie Mame? (We won't speak of Lucille Ball.) I always felt that young Patrick Dennis was quite the little stick in the mud about his situation, too. I wish my parents had taught me how to mix a perfect martini. Now that I'm older, I also have occasional days when I want to be Auntie Mame, but I suspect my brother and sister are never going to fall for that one.

Brenda MacGuff (Allison Janney) in Juno

Allison Janney has played some of the worst moms and authority figures on the big screen: enjoyably in the Hairspray remake and as the romance-writing guidance counselor in Ten Things I Hate About You, and almost cringingly in American Beauty. It's considered the thing these days to dismiss Juno as something trendy that we are now too cool to appreciate. But the scene in which Janney's stepmom character confronts the ultrasound technician is one of the finest moments in the film -- I'd want my mom to do the same exact thing.

Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Aliens

Ripley may not be June Cleaver by any means. However, if you were Newt, the abandoned little girl in Aliens, you'd want a mom just like that, who would go to incredible lengths to keep you safe. She's also kind to cats.

Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig) in Whip It

Wiig's character doesn't get as much onscreen time as I'd like in Whip It and we don't even find out she's a mom until about halfway through the film, although she's a good mentor for rollergirl-wannabe Bliss. Still, let's face it: I only added her character to the list because I think it would be supercool to have a mom in the rollerderby. Besides, Wiig does give one of the best performances in the film, right behind Marcia Gay Harden as Bliss's actual mom. I liked Harden's character but I had no desire to be her daughter (well, maybe just a bit at the end).

Mary Rowengartner (Amy Morton), Rookie of the Year

I am not usually interested in sports movies starring little boys, and saw Rookie of the Year more or less by accident. But Daniel Stern's 1993 movie about a kid whose arm injury transforms him into a major-league pitcher is one of the best of this genre, and I still remember it all these years later. Most of all I remember the kid's mom, who is not like your usual sports-movie supportive mom. I absolutely love the scene in which she decks someone, and another scene in which she reveals a small secret had me almost in tears, which you know I hate doing (or admitting to). A very sweet, surprisingly good movie that you should all go rent immediately.

Etheline Tenenbaum (Anjelica Huston), The Royal Tenenbaums

Apart from her questionable judgment in marrying Royal Tenenbaum before the film's action begins, Etheline appears to be a model parent. She encourages her children to try all kinds of creative things, and even mothers the boy across the street. You get the impression that the kids are all successful because of their mom and messed up because of their dad. She even welcomes her grownup children back home, although puzzled by their return. I can't imagine what my mom would do if all of us turned up on her doorstep, practically at once. (Aside to Mom: I know you'd welcome us all in quite happily. Of course.)

Elaine Miller (Frances McDormand), Almost Famous

Despite a lot of maternal nagging via telephone, Mrs. Miller lets her son travel on tour with a rock band in hopes of pursuing a story for Rolling Stone. I am not sure my mom would have let me even go backstage to visit said rock band when I was William's age, for fear I might have turned out more like Penny Lane. And I do love the phone conversation Mrs. Miller has with Russell, Stillwater's guitarist. McDormand in Almost Famous is a much better mom than the one she played nearly 13 years earlier in Raising Arizona.

Check Out the New Robert Rodriguez-Directed Music Video

Jette Kernion — 2010-05-04T15:45:00+00:00

As if Robert Rodriguez were not busy enough, with Predators being released to theaters in July and Machete in September, he's also directed a music video. The filmmaker helped out another Austinite, musician Bob Schneider, and shot a video in one weekend of "40 Dogs {Like Romeo and Juliet)" from Schneider's latest album, Lovely Creatures. Rodriguez recruited an actress from his recent film Shorts for the video -- Kat Dennings, who has also starred in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and Charlie Bartlett. One of Rodriguez's sons also makes his first onscreen appearance.

The video is now available to watch online after the jump (via IFC). In addition, on the same webpage as the video, you can read an interview with Rodriguez and Schneider -- how they ended up collaborating, where they shot the video, and questions about music. For those who prefer to watch music videos on television, IFC will air "40 Dogs (Like Romeo and Juliet)" tonight at 9:53 pm EST as part of their Tuesday Night Automat programming.

If you're more into movies than music, you might remember Bob Schneider from the Bob Byington's indie comedy Harmony and Me, in which he plays a sleazy wedding singer. You can watch that performance online too -- it was one of the "Scenes We Love" that Cinematical highlighted earlier this year. His music has also been on the soundtrack of at least a half-dozen movies, from Jay and Bob Strike Back to Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (two movies I never expected to reference in the same sentence).

Read Roger Ebert's Unproduced Sex Pistols Screenplay

Jette Kernion — 2010-04-28T09:45:00+00:00

Ever since I started watching Russ Meyer sex flicks back in college and reading about the filmmaker, I have heard about the movie that Meyer tried to make with the Sex Pistols in the mid-1970s, Who Killed Bambi? Before he started on his film criticism career, Roger Ebert had worked on scripts for a couple of Meyer's movies and had been assigned to write a script for the proposed Sex Pistols film. But no excerpts from Who Killed Bambi? were available ... until now.

A couple of weeks ago, shortly after Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren died, Ebert wrote a rollicking blog entry titled "McLaren & Meyer & Rotten & Vicious & me" about his experiences trying to get Who Killed Bambi? made. The entry included a few fragments of the screenplay Ebert started writing. This week, he's published a follow-up blog entry that includes the entire script he wrote for the Sex Pistols project. The screenplay is labeled as a second draft from July 1977, and at the time, the film's title was Anarchy in the U.K. -- Ebert says he proposed Who Killed Bambi? shortly afterward.

I found the script to be rather dated -- you'd know instantly it was written in the late 1960s or 1970s. The style reminds me of Terry Southern on a bad day. It's all very contrived and artificial, but that might have worked with the Sex Pistols. Of course, many of the women are described in the script as being "very busty," which is right in line for a Russ Meyer film. I'd love to compare this screenplay to Up Against It, the unproduced Beatles script from playwright Joe Orton.

The Who Killed Bambi? production fell apart shortly after shooting began, and there seems to be no definitive answer as to why. I can't imagine how a finished film would have looked and sounded, but frankly, I think I'm happier that Ebert pursued a career in film criticism instead. I'm also happy he's been blogging these bits of film history that would otherwise be lost.

Watch This: The Return of Wikus from 'District 9'

Jette Kernion — 2010-04-20T12:35:00+00:00

Who can forget the neurotic charms of Wikus van de Merwe, the main character played by Sharlto Copley in Neill Blomkamp's science-fiction film District 9? Apparently Copley isn't quite ready to put the character away, and that's just fine with me. Copley reprised his role as the South African bureaucrat for a short video that was screened during the South African Music Awards (aka the SAMAs) last weekend. In the video, Wikus considers himself one of South Africa's new movie stars -- he's more like the Wikus from the beginning of District 9 than the end, if you understand me -- and has decided that he should find another star to co-present one of the SAMAs with him. He picks Charlize Theron, who also hails from South Africa, but is not exactly easy for him to track down.

Many of us here in the U.S. may have missed the SAMAs, but thanks to Funny or Die, we can still watch this amusing little film, which Funny or Die has titled Wikus and Charlize. In fact, we even get an extra bit after the credits that wasn't in the original video when it was supposedly broadcast live during the award ceremony. (I say "supposedly" because I can't find a news article confirming that the video was part of the awards -- I have to trust Funny or Die on this one.) It's probably only funny if you saw District 9, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, go rent it, watch it, and then come back and see the video. It's embedded after the jump.

Warning: The following video contains a bit of R-rated language and may not be safe for work.

Wikus and Charlize - watch more funny videos

Watch This: Tarantino vs. Coen Brothers

Jette Kernion — 2010-04-12T17:14:00+00:00

Mash-ups have become extremely common these days -- seems like every day someone is posting or sending me a link to a new one, often involving trailers and allegedly side-splitting. The mash-up I saw today, however, grabbed me and took me for a wild ride through the films of Quentin Tarantino and Joel and Ethan Coen. If you've got seven minutes to spare, I've embedded the "Tarantino vs. Coen Brothers" video after the jump for you to enjoy. And if you like these directors, you'll enjoy it.

What do these two filmmaking teams have in common, anyway? Brad Pitt may not be the only actor who was in films directed by Tarantino and the Coens (Inglourious Basterds and Burn After Reading); Steve Buscemi shares that credit too. But Leandro Copperfield, who assembled this video, found a lot of similarities: explosions, meltdowns, impromptu dances ... and gunfire. Lots and lots of gunfire. I don't need to tell you this isn't a kids' movie.

Copperfield noted on his YouTube page that "In 13 days I watched again almost all movies of filmmakers (Quentin Tarantino & Joel and Ethan Coen), I selected more than 500 scenes, and had hard work editing." He also used some great songs to link the two filmmaking teams together. Anton Chigurh's actions blend very well with "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" from the Kill Bill soundtrack.

I especially liked this video because I've seen all the movies clipped ... except one ( not saying which), and even then I've seen most of that film in clips here and there. So I could recognize almost every single shot, and that doesn't happen too often. However, even if you haven't seen all of Quentin Tarantino or the Coen brothers' films, this is crazy fun to watch.

Copperfield says he's going to do Scorsese vs. Kubrick next. I can't wait.

Warning: This is NSFW; it includes violence and foul language.

B-Side's 'Festival Genius' Lands at IFP; Film Geeks Applaud

Jette Kernion — 2010-04-09T15:02:00+00:00

If you are a frequent film fest-goer, you've probably used B-Side's "Festival Genius" to help create your schedules at one time or another. A number of large and small festivals have incorporated the application into their websites, such as Sundance 2010 and Austin's Fantastic Fest. Festival Genius not only works as a scheduler but lets participants rate films, so after a fest ended, B-Side and the fest organizers could see which films were popular and well-regarded that year.

B-Side closed up shop earlier this year when it ran out of funds. A lot of us starting wringing our hands and worrying how we'd get through the next festival or two. Fortunately, a deal has been struck and Festival Genius will still be around. Slated, a New York-based media and entertainment company, has bought all B-Side's intellectual property, including Festival Genius. B-Side founder Chris Hyams will become Slated's Chief Operating Officer.

Slated is licensing Festival Genius to Independent Filmmaker Project, aka IFP, which (among other things) publishes Filmmaker magazine and hosts the annual Gotham awards. Some B-Side employees who were laid off when the Austin company closed will become IFP staff devoted to Festival Genius. It sounds like IFP will start charging fests a "nominal" amount to use the application (which B-Side had offered at no cost), but that hasn't stopped a number of former B-Side festival partners from already committing to use Festival Genius at their next fest, including Sundance. This will add a significant new aspect to IFP, which is already planning ways to incorporate aspects of IFP membership with Festival Genius.

Welcome back, Festival Genius!

Cinematical Seven: An Ode to Accountants

Jette Kernion — 2010-04-06T22:48:00+00:00

I spent the weekend creating and updating enough financial spreadsheets to make my eyes cross. It's tax time, and this week, my favorite person is the accountant who will make sense of all these numbers and hopefully do magical yet legal things with them that will prevent me from having to write too ginormous a check to the IRS. I know I'm not the only one who's thinking happy thoughts about tax accountants and the nobility of their profession right now. As Max Bialystock says in The Producers (1968), the word "count" is in their title.

I remember watching The Producers as a teenager and thinking that I wanted to be anything in a life rather than an accountant. One of my favorite scenes in movies ever is that scene at the Lincoln Center fountain: "You think you're not in prison now? Living in a gray little room, going to a gray little job, leading a gray little life?" "I spend my life counting other people's money. People I'm smarter than. Better than." Some of that rubbed off at the time. Decades later, however, sitting here in my gray little house (actually it's yellow and green), I have nothing but respect for people whose genius with numbers makes my life easier.

Hollywood has shown us a variety of accountants, tax men and number-crunchers through the years. Some are mousy creatures whose lives will change drastically. Some are bad guys, determined to drive our heroes into bankruptcy. A few are just plain nice folks. Most tend to be men -- I'm a little sorry I can't find more female accountant characters, and researching this has made me determined to see the Japanese film A Taxing Woman. Here are seven of the most memorable -- if not always likeable -- bookkeepers, accountants and IRS officials in film.

Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), The Producers

The first and best accountant I ever saw on film, as I mentioned earlier, was Wilder's character in The Producers. He's a caricature at first, but slowly breaks out of his shell with help from failed Broadway producer Max Bialystock. Bialystock lures him into a fraudulent scheme after learning that a producer could theoretically make more money with a flop than with a hit. The movie is practically an extended duet between Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel, which is untoppable. I know, because the remake didn't even come close, although it did contain a nice little musical number about accountants.

Louis Tully (Rick Moranis), Ghostbusters

Tully isn't as meek as Leo Bloom, but he's just as socially awkward. He throws parties during which he explains how various aspects of his hosting are saving him money on his taxes. He can't take a hint, no matter how unsubtle, from Dana (Sigourney Weaver). And he's always locking himself out of his apartment. It's a nice apartment so I assume he must be pretty good at his job, but I can't imagine having this guy do my books.

The Pirates of the "The Crimson Permanent Assurance," Monty Python's Meaning of Life

This is more of a sight gag than actual characters who are accountants, but it's such a great gag that I feel I must include it here. The Terry Gilliam sketch about an accounting firm that suddenly takes on pirate-ish characteristics is presented as a "short feature" before the main action of the movie starts, although it does creep back in briefly later in the film. I do love the green-visored clerks "rowing" back and forth with their adding machines at the beginning. And they sing a wonderful "Accountancy Shanty" too -- I've embedded the video below.

Wilbur G. Henderson (Charles Lane), You Can't Take It With You

When I picture the stereotype of a tax assessor or IRS agent, he looks and sounds a lot like Charles Lane. The actor had a very long career of playing often-unpleasant accountants, tax collectors, lawyers and various bureaucratic busybodies. In You Can't Take It With You, he plays the IRS agent who discovers that the patriarch of the family, played by Lionel Barrymore, has never bothered to pay any taxes. Lane had a wonderful talent for going ballistic during such scenes, which is evident in this movie.

Loretta Castorini (Cher), Moonstruck

Loretta is more of a bookkeeper than a tax accountant, but I love the scenes where she goes from client to client, organizing their paperwork and enjoying their company. Around the time this movie came out, my mom worked in a similar way as a bookkeeper, except she went from doctor's office to doctor's office, which is not really as colorful. Still, there's a soft spot in my heart for women who get your finances and your life in order. I actually prefer the way Loretta looks and dresses before her big makeover, but isn't that true for so many Cinderella stories?

Murray Blum (Charles Grodin), Dave

Here we are with a second Ivan Reitman film -- the filmmaker must like accountant characters. Unlike Tully, though, I'd absolutely hire Murray Blum for my taxes. He isn't in the movie for long, but the scene in which Dave (posing as the President) brings in Murray to help him balance the federal budget is absolutely wonderful. If only life were like this. Grodin also plays an accountant in Midnight Run, who is a little more nervous -- he should be, he stole Mob money -- but just as resourceful.

Henry Sherman (Danny Glover), The Royal Tenenbaums

I saved this last slot for a "nice" accountant, someone sympathetic and not too much of a stereotype, and it was a three-way battle that also included Will Ferrell in Stranger Than Fiction and Michael Caine in Hannah and Her Sisters. But Danny Glover won out. Perhaps it's because he's the sanest, most conventional character in a movie full of very odd people. Perhaps it's because I love his natty, slightly nerdy outfits. My parents have done a fair amount of bookkeeping and accounting in their lives and they're not spindly social freaks, or cowards who resort to childhood blankets for comfort, or hatchet-faced meanies. I like accountant characters like that, and Henry Sherman is one of the best.

Would You Let Someone Make a Movie in Your Home?

Jette Kernion — 2010-03-26T15:02:00+00:00

Austin's independent filmmaking scene means that most people here know someone who let a movie or TV production shoot in their home or neighborhood. I know someone whose condo was used in an episode of Friday Night Lights. The photo on the right is from Slackerwood reporter Debbie Cerda's living room ... but she doesn't keep her home looking like this. It's a dressed set for the movie Red White & Blue, which premiered at SXSW earlier this month. Debbie had a lot of fun while 20 cast and crew members took over her Austin house for a couple of days, and has no regrets about loaning out her home.

Other people are not so happy to have location shooting occur in their neighborhood. I've been reading the LiveJournal for author Poppy Z. Brite, who lives in the Central City neighborhood in New Orleans, where HBO has been shooting David Simon's TV series Treme. Brite wrote that she found the big production crew to be "extremely obnoxious" and put up a sign in front of her yard asking that her house not be filmed. She cites a Times-Picayune article about the Treme crew, and while some New Orleanians have enjoyed using their homes for shooting the TV series, one story disturbed me as much as Brite. Apparently about a year ago, the Treme crew wanted to re-create a post-Katrina atmosphere and placed ruined refrigerators all down a street in Uptown New Orleans. That's an iconic image that many of us find difficult to look at, even years later, and seeing it on a street where I lived would have really upset me personally. I would hope that film production crews would be more tactful as a rule.

I have to say, I'd be reluctant to let a film crew shoot in my house ... maybe if it were an indie filmmaker I knew, or if it were for a very limited time. We don't have a large house, and there's no way we would not be disrupted, which is a problem for people who work part-time or full-time from home. I'd probably be fine with filming in my neighborhood as long as I could get in and out of the area during the week. How would you react if a film or TV crew wanted to shoot in your house or on your block? Does it make a difference whether it's a low-budget film or a full-fledged production crew?

Cinematical Seven: Critics as Movie Characters

Jette Kernion — 2010-03-25T22:32:00+00:00

I was all prepared to write about mythical creatures today as a tie-in with How to Train Your Dragon, but over on Twitter, it appeared that filmmaker Kevin Smith was fighting dragons of his own: demon film critics who did not support his latest film, Cop Out. I'd have written off Smith's Tuesday night tweets as him having a bad day, like we all do occasionally, and using social media to spread it around. But a number of writers paid more attention to the details than I would have, and were considerably annoyed by Smith's allegations: that we write scathing reviews to get attention, and that we are biased because we often see films for free at press screenings. Furthermore, on the same day everyone was a-twitter (sorry) about Smith, the long-running TV show At the Movies was canceled. A sad day for film criticism, indeed.

All this news reminded me that some of my favorite characters in film are critics. They often get the wittiest and nastiest dialogue, and most of them are pompously elitist. You'd think that we were all members of a vast internet Algonquin Round Table. Terrible things often happen to them as a result, but since we're supposed to hate critics, that's all right. Critics like this are as rare in real life as the unicorns and dragons I originally considered writing about, but they are lots of fun to watch onscreen. Here are seven of my favorites. (Before you all ask me where Jay Sherman is, let me point out that these are all characters in movies, and no one has adapted The Critic for the big screen ... yet.)

Anton Ego, Ratatouille

Since I have an Anton Ego doll on my desk, glaring at me whenever I look his way, this would be the obvious choice. Ego is a restaurant critic, but I suspect director Brad Bird knew film critics would find it easy to draw a parallel. Ego, voiced by Peter O'Toole, has reached the point where he won't even swallow food he doesn't like, and he appears to derive no joy at all from his job or any part of his life. And yet, when he does encounter food that he actually enjoys ... well, let me just say this: Sometimes after a long January and February spent watching movies that Hollywood dumped into theaters because they weren't good enough to release at any other time of year, by the time I get to SXSW in March, I understand Anton Ego perfectly.

Speed and Tyrone, "Sneaking In the Movies," Hollywood Shuffle

All that stuff I said about critics being witty and elitist? That doesn't apply in this spoof of At the Movies, part of Robert Townsend's very funny film Hollywood Shuffle. Speed (Townsend) and Tyrone (Jimmy Woodard) have to keep their voices down in the movie theater where they're discussing movies because they don't usually pay admission to see films. And they don't use thumbs up and thumbs down ... when they don't like something, it gets the finger. Judge for yourself in the following clip.

Watch more Funny or Die videos on AOL Video

Lester Bangs, Almost Famous

Lester Bangs may be more of a journalist than a rock critic -- it's hard to say. He's really functioning primarily as a mentor in Almost Famous, helping out teenage William Miller (Patrick Fugit), who wants nothing more than to write about music for Rolling Stone. Still, there's something enviable about his character. Possibly this has a lot to do with the character's being portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who can be convincingly laid-back, cool, smart, mentor-ish ... and likable all at the same time. Bangs advises his protege to be "honest and unmerciful" when writing, which sounds to me like a good critic's advice.

Addison DeWitt, All About Eve

I've often wished that I could utter some of the witticisms that theatre critic Addison DeWitt says in All About Eve ... and instantly, please, at just the perfect time. Unfortunately, my brain just doesn't work that way, and when I do think of things like that, they always come across as being too hurtful. I don't have his thick skin. George Sanders made a career of playing these types of characters, but DeWitt, who uses his column and his eavesdropping skills to get what he wants, is the very best. Along the same lines, I also like Monty Woolley as Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner (Nathan Lane was wonderful too as the same character in a 2000 TV production), and Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker in Laura.

Dorothy Parker, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle

And then there's the real-life woman who actually spontaneously said the kinds of things that clever screenwriters penned for Addison DeWitt. Although I do love Dorothy Parker's short stories, somehow I have always thought of her as a critic first. Possibly this is because the first things I read of hers were her theater reviews, especially loving the time she substituted for Robert Benchley in 1931; I spent my college film-critic career hoping to equal her review of A.A. Milne's play Give Me Yesterday. Thank goodness I'm over that now. I do believe this film is Jennifer Jason Leigh's finest hour as she brings Mrs. Parker to life, and in fact all the writer and critic characters are superbly portrayed (except Charles MacArthur ... Matthew Broderick was far too recognizable).

Noah Sapperstein, Hamlet 2

Hamlet 2 was what critics might politely call a "wildly uneven" film, containing sidesplitting scenes side-by-side with gags that lay in a sad puddle and died. I did love the barely-teenage drama critic, though, who was far more of a knowing professional than Steve Coogan's high-school drama teacher. It is Noah's advice that helps make the production of Hamlet 2 the thing of -- um, not beauty, more like insanity -- that it is. Apparently this is Shea Pepe's only movie role, which is too bad ... I hope he didn't pursue a career in film criticism.

Harry Farber, Lady in the Water

Harry Farber is my least favorite character on this list, and but I feel I can't not include such a spitefully written stereotype of a film critic, although he is well played by Bob Balaban. It's as though this character and his ultimate fate provided therapy for Lady in the Water writer-director M. Night Shyamalan, whose previous films, The Village and Signs, did not receive favorable critical reception. Farber is an unpleasant pompous ass -- he doesn't even get wittiness to temper his universal pessimism -- and he ends up causing serious problems for the film's characters. I've never met a critic who spoke in movie-isms and Hollywood stereotypes as much as Farber does.

SXSW Review: Cold Weather

Jette Kernion — 2010-03-25T18:25:00+00:00

Portland, Oregon during the gray and rainy season is an ideal place to set a mystery story, adding a touch of monochromatic noir to the landscape. But the mystery in Cold Weather shares screen time with an exploration of different types of relationships, as writer/director Aaron Katz has done in his previous features, Quiet City and Dance Party USA. The combination results in a charming low-key film spiked with a touch of suspense.

Doug (Cris Lankenau) has just moved back to Portland after leaving college, where he had studied forensic science. He's not interested in a career at the moment, and ends up with a job at the local ice factory. In his spare time, he hangs out with his sister Gail (Trieste Kelly Dunn) and reads old detective stories. His ex-girlfriend Rachel (Robyn Rikoon) shows up in town for a short trip, but doesn't show up for a date with Doug's coworker Carlos (Raul Castillo) and appears to have vanished. Doug and Gail team up, with help from Carlos to figure out where (and who) Rachel really is.

Doug may be fond of Sherlock Holmes and E.W. Hornung's Raffles stories, but he and his sister Gail are a sleuthing team in the same tradition as the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew -- young people using the library and other simple tools in the best way they know how. Despite Doug's forensic science classes, there's nothing CSI-ish here. The stakes here are a little higher than you find in teen-detective stories, however, and Nancy would never have ... well, you'll see.

It's the character interaction that carries the movie -- the way Doug and Gail get along, and the additions of their friends, potential dates and exes. Cold Weather takes its time to unspool both plot and character development -- don't expect a fast-paced thriller. I especially liked one scene in which Doug persuades his sister to play hookey from work to go whale-watching on a turbulent day. The movie has a quirky sense of humor, too, as in the scene where Doug decides he needs a Sherlock Holmesian pipe. The ending feels a bit sudden until you realize that it's given you everything you need.

To be honest, it took a few scenes for me to realize that Doug and Gail were brother and sister and not a couple, even though the first scene in the film is a dinner with their parents. Perhaps this is because they get along so well -- they may bicker occasionally but are generally very comfortable together. I'm not used to this type of sibling relationship in movies or in real life -- a movie about my sister and I solving a mystery wouldn't be nearly so laid-back, it would be a wacky Hollywood comedy starring Tina Fey and Sandra Bullock.

The plot of Cold Weather takes a little while to get going (I'll avoid the obvious "warm up" jokes here) but fortunately the characters are interesting enough to hold your attention while waiting for the mystery to unfold -- Doug's forensic science background and the shots of him reading Raffles provides clues a detective story will reveal itself eventually. Cold Weather isn't a big splashy thriller, it's a miniature in shades of gray, with some hidden surprises in the corners of the landscape that reward patient viewers.