The Snooze Button

Observed Seth Rogen in “Observe and Report” last night at a preview and am busy writing my report. Am not supposed to spill the beans on content until Friday, but if you like Kenny Powers, and to a lesser degree Fred Simmons, you’ll probably like Rogen’s Ronnie Barnhardt and his retarded antics.

I can, however, use this opportunity to comment on Metacritic, and not because it flouts the unspoken agreement against bean spilling before the opening. Worse, it assigns an overall ranking based on a limited number of reviews. Not only could this mislead the public, but probably influences other critics, no offense to fellow critics, unless you are the influenceable kind. Imagine you just saw the movie, and look on Metacritic to find a big 80 percent average score. You might take that to mean everyone else loves it, without noticing the score is only based on a few reviews (as of Wednesday April 8 anyway). Metacritic should change that policy and hold off on scores until it gets a number of reviews closer to the estimated total it’s going to include, depending on the movie. An average of four really doesn’t mean much.

Not to get all Ronnie and up in everyone else’s business or anything. Just saying.

Mugs and dames return to the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood April 2-19 for the annual Film Noir Festival, Deadline: Noir City. A notice of the event from the Egyptian popped up on my Gmail calendar yesterday, coincidently after a week I’d just spent re-watching my collection of the Fox Film Noir series. Most of them have an excellent commentary track by noir historian Eddie Muller, who will be at the festival. Muller’s film commentary is only rivaled in my opinion by Peter Bogdanovich. I try to buy every film each has done. If you’ve only experienced commentary tracks familiar in newer releases, stuff done by historians and film critics on older movies can tend to run like they are reading a prepared statement, which can be rather dry, especially when some of them concentrate exclusively on actor backgrounds. Some even sit there and describe what you are seeing on the screen, as if it were meant for a blind person. Muller talks about the movie, like you are re-watching it with a friend who knows a hell of a lot about what you are seeing. I’m sure it takes a lot of natural talent along with a lifetime of study to be able to sit there and ad lib for an hour and a half while making the commentary conversational and informative. Muller will be at the festival giving introductions to the films, which range from popular, well-known films to much rarer selections.

Victor Mature in Bruce Humberstone’s “I Wake Up Screaming”

This is not a follow-up to “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.” The timing is odd, but the newer one actually looks a little better.

The film is directed by Jody Hill, the man at least semi-responsible for Kenny Powers and Fred Simmons (he directed “The Foot Fist Way” and “Eastbound & Down”).

Observe and Report opens April 10.

Interesting potential feud over what’s neo about neo-neo-realism brewing soon. Stay tuned.

For those who landed here looking for Neo, check out allmovie.com.

God help me…

I rented “Australia.” It was on Blu-ray at the vid store and I couldn’t resist.

All I can say is… crikey.

I read a lot of reviews of this movie when it came out in theaters and can’t believe no one mentioned the tone, which is a throwback to American Westerns of the ’70s, with that faux rustic-symphony music you’d hear in a Broadway Western, and a similarly genial, light-hearted undercurrent running through most of dialogue. Cross that with “Legends of the Fall” and you have a good idea of what it’s like. Truly something for people who think Jay Leno is too controversial, and on too late anyway. Would have been much better with some tranquilizers. – W.M.

Saw “Two Lovers” today and was blown away by it. It’s by “The Yards” filmmaker James Gray and stars Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw and Isabella Rossellini. Full of ambiguity, deep character development and, as my companion noted, more tension than a dozen spring action movies. It’s about a guy (Phoenix) living with his parents in Brighton Beach, NY, who meets a couple of interesting women around the same time and tries to juggle them. There were a couple of question marks for me, like why two hot women would be interested in a guy who lives with his parents (not in the world I know) and the main character’s action that closes the film. The last was an uncertainty in keeping with the rest of the movie, however. Part of the point seemed to be that no matter how fascinating a figure the main character is, he’s human and not reducible or definable. The title made more sense thinking about it that way, the two lovers representing the duality and ambivalence everyone feels. Thinking of it that way might give the impression that “Two Lovers” is symbolic, but it is actually refreshingly wide open, if not to interpretation than at least to feeling. It’s extremely enjoyable without having to read into it and highly recommended just for the good story. I’m going to post a review on my other blog soon.

I liked this trailer more than the standard one all over the Web, since it contains more of the music from the film, which is good. Forgive the subtitles. – W.M.

My movie review blog simply keeps a record of film reviews I’ve recently published (when I bother to update the thing). It doesn’t really get many visitors, except for one review, of “Never Back Down,” which opened in theaters back in March of last year. That must be a really popular movie. I panned it, so probably I’m disappointing a lot of violence-loving fans, and not gaining a lot of regular visitors myself. Oh well, couldn’t they have cast a decent actress in the lead, and made the story somewhat interesting? (For those counting, the number two review in terms of visitors is “Rambo.”)

Here’s a clip – I mean an “awesome clip” – with Sean Faris and Cam Gigandet. 

You know you’re no longer in the driver’s seat of your career (or drunk at the wheel) when you’re the guy formerly known as Han Solo and your movie gets a lower critical average than the Jonas Brothers’.

Rob weighed in with his thoughts on Oscars present and past (and future).

…on your oscar takes … yeah, overall it was still kind of lame, though better than recent years.  it should be a simple, classy affair, i think.  should match the tuxes and dresses in tone.  fuck the attempts at humor and “entertainment” (song-and-dance numbers, etc.).  somebody like that Sid Ganis academy president guy should host it (which would be just saying welcome to the oscars and here is the presenter of the first award).  anyway, just show the damn movies.  like you said, that’s what the show is for — to promote them and get people out to the theaters. i would set it up like this:

the show should be only two hours long (9-11 east coast time). that leaves half an hour for commercials and one and half hours for the show.  allocating 10 minutes for welcome to the oscars and other transitional b.s.,  that leaves 80 minutes for the awards themselves.  here’s how i’d break it out.

i would have the following categories.  each category would have four (not five) nominees.  each nominee would get a video clip to promote their movie/performance/etc.  for some awards (best picture, actor, etc. ) they would mostly show clips of the movies or performance, like a trailer.  the others (director, cinematography, etc.) would be like mini-documentaries or dvd extras.

Feature film awards

Production

1. Best Picture …  two-minute clips x 4 = 8 minutes.

2. Best Director … one-minute clips x 4 = 4 minutes.

3. Best Original Script … 30-second clips x 4 = 2 minutes.

4. Best Adapted Script … 30-second clips x 4 = 2 minutes.

(+ 4 minutes for set up/transitions/award goes to = 20 minutes)

 Acting

1. Best Actor … one-minute clips x 4 = 4 minutes.

2. Best Actress … one-minute clips x 4 = 4 minutes.

3. Best Supporting Actor … 30-second clips x 4 = 2 minutes.

etc.

final thought: no acceptance speeches and no walking down the aisle to the stage.  the winners would just hug and kiss the people sitting around them if they want.

- Rob Morano

1. Last night’s Academy Awards ceremony was one of those times when the award ceremony far outstripped the material being awarded. Can anyone name a year with less deserving films all around?

2. The worst thing about the above comment is that you can’t really complain about any of the winners, which is a bummer.

3. The best thing is that it kept the ceremony relatively short and circumspect. Was not the year to bring down the house, but personally I’d prefer they put effort into classing it up every year rather than trying to find new ways to wow people. 

3. I hope that’s the last time I ever have to hear “Jai Ho” again. Ever.

4. Get a real emcee, for Christ’s sake. Unless you only want to appeal to middle-aged women and lovers of song-and-dance numbers, it’s not difficult to find someone good and relatively hip. Obvious is fine. I’d pick Conan O’Brien, although with ABC the broadcast partner that wouldn’t work. I don’t love Jimmy Kimmel, but he is the network’s late night guy. I just don’t get Hugh Jackman.

5. Hated the ode-to-the actor thing. More clips would have been better.

6. The above can’t be overstated. Every year the one glaring omission from the Academy Awards is the movies themselves, which are barely shown. Actors are only part of the pictures. Yes, the vast majority of the movie watching audience thinks in terms of stars, but the thing is whenever you are showing clips of movies you are showing stars. If these films aren’t worth taking a longer look at, why are they being celebrated?

- WM

Here’s an interesting take from The New Yorker.

February 23, 2009

Oscar in the Rearview Mirror

Every Oscar night has its W.T.F. moment, and tonight’s came when Liam Neeson opened the envelope for Best Foreign Film. The winner, the Japanese film “Departures,” directed by Yojiro Takita, has never been released in New York. Regent Releasing acquired it for distribution in early January and scheduled it for the summer (though I’d be surprised if, under the circumstances, it doesn’t come out much sooner). I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t say it’s unworthy of the honor; but there’s something wrong with a system in which an essentially unreleased film can qualify, let alone win.

In the main categories, there were no great upsets, though the touts and oddsmakers had picked Mickey Rourke for Best Actor. (I had expected Sean Penn to win: never bet against an actor playing a real-life hero.) The biggest surprise was the new format, in which a quintet of previous winners of the acting awards introduced the five nominees with fulsome, Hallmark-like tributes, when slightly longer clips from the nominated performances would have been more to the point. Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t review this when it came out but saw it the other day. It seemed like two different things going on, one funny and the other extremely pandering. If I had to guess this script was either hastily written or re-written after the success of “Juno,” because while some of it was genuinely amusing romantic comedy, the rest was blatantly trying too hard to be hip, without an interesting enough plot. It was kind of disappointing, because some of the dialogue was pretty smart, but the overarching story was as goofy as the one in “Beach Blanket Bingo.”