shunn | Entries tagged with film

Reading this edition of "The Big Question" at Hitfix.com got me thinking about the first R-rated movie I ever saw. The film itself—a Michael Douglas thriller called The Star Chamber—was not so memorable, but the circumstances around my viewing of it are, in retrospect, amusing.

When I was growing up, the LDS Church strongly cautioned parents not to let their children see R-rated movies, so that was exactly the rule my parents established for us. I followed it, too, though not always happily.

I don't remember what it was about The Star Chamber that made me willing to break that rule. Since I was close to turning sixteen, it was probably just time for it to happen. My friend David, who was a little younger than I was, kind of wanted to see it too, so he asked his parents to take us. So, it was time plus opportunity, I suppose.

(I had seen R-rated movies already, but on video at friends' houses, not in an actual movie theater.)

We had to drive about ten miles north from Kaysville to Ogden to catch the movie. "I have only one condition for this," David's mother told me en route. She was an elementary school teacher, and in fact had already taught two of my sisters and was about to have a third start her class. She was a good Mormon woman, and my parents thought the world of her. "You can never, ever tell your parents I took you to an R-rated movie. Okay?"

I agreed, and getting away with something like that with the help of my sisters' grade-school teacher probably made the movie seem way cooler than it really was. Thank goodness for teachers.

This all happened thirty years ago, in August 1983. Interestingly, it was 1985 before my (sort of) hometown of Kaysville, Utah, ever saw an R-rated movie of its own. Kaysville had only one movie theater, the policy of which was to show nothing with a rating over PG (or maybe PG-13 by then).

It was huge news, then, when the theater decided to change its policy and show Beverly Hills Cop. The local Mormon congregations organized moms to come out and picket against the corruption of its child-safe, down-home entertainment venue.

Is it any wonder everyone seemed so fucked up at my 20-year high school reunion? I say that with all good humor.

Crossposted from Inhuman Swill

This is long overdue, but some folks over on Facebook asked me for a recap of the movies I saw last month at the SXSW Film Conference & Festival. But first, you might be asking, what was Bill doing at SXSW Film anyway?

Nothing mysterious. I attended the SXSW Interactive Festival for the first time in 2012. Though I had a great time there, I kept seeing posters for movies I wanted to see but couldn't because I didn't have a Film badge. So for 2013 I bought the Gold badge, which gives access to both Interactive and Film.

If I go again in 2014, I might just get the Film membership. I enjoyed it that much.

I didn't get to attend everything I wanted, but here's a rundown of the four feature films I did manage to see.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (dir. Joss Whedon)

Joss Whedon's black-and-white adaptation of the Shakespeare comedy, filmed in twelve days at his own house, was definitely one of the hot tickets of the festival. Featuring familiar faces from all over the Whedonverse, the adaptation is a lot of fun and often cleverly staged, though I found it pretty uneven on the whole. Not every actor gets a good handle on the language, though Amy Acker is wonderful in the lead role of Beatrice. The show-stealer, though, is Nathan Fillion as the bumbling Dogberry. Worth seeing, in particular for Whedon fans. Opens June 7.

(After the screening, Whedon and most of the cast held an hour-long Q&A. That was worth waiting in line right there.)

MUD (dir. Jeff Nichols)

My expectations for this, Jeff Nichols' third film, ran very high on the basis of his earlier movies, Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter, both of which I loved. I was not disappointed. This story of two teenaged boys in Arkansas who befriend a drifter on a remote river island is thrilling and harrowing, but is also a sweet and lyrically told coming-of-age story. It's no surprise that Matthew McConaughey is so good as the drifter Mud, but it is a surprise that Reese Witherspoon turns in such a gritty, unglamorous performance as Mud's love interest. (It's been a long time since she's had a role like this.) But despite supporting players like Sam Shepard, Sarah Paulson, Joe Don Baker, and Michael Shannon, the real stars are Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland as Ellis and Neckbone, the two boys who are caught up in events just beyond their understanding, both criminal and emotional. Nichols really has a way with actors, not to mention with landscapes. Opens April 26.

I predict this is going to be a big hit, and I also predict that audiences will love it so much that there will be an indie backlash against it later this year as the film where Jeff Nichols sold out. If that happens, ignore the backlash.

UPSTREAM COLOR (dir. Shane Carruth)

If you saw Shane Carruth's first film, 2004's twisty, tricky time-travel flick Primer, then you know pretty much what to expect from this, only his second feature. Upstream Color is told in the same compressed, elliptical style of collage, with great stretches that go by without dialog. It's the story of a woman putting her life back together after a traumatic brainwashing incident, and, like Primer, it adds up to both more and less than the sum of its parts. More, because the stunning visuals and editing create a powerful and hypnotical emotional effect. Less because, even more than the earlier film, Upstream Color leaves you feeling stupid, as if you've missed something important that was right in front of you, or maybe that Carruth only wants you to think was there. I would recommend seeing it, especially if you liked Primer, but know that it will probably frustrate you, and that it contains some truly horrific, hard-to-watch imagery of cruelty to pigs. Opened, like, last week.

HEY BARTENDER (dir. Douglas Tirola)

Hey Bartender is a feature documentary about the resurgence of cocktail culture in the past decade. It's probably best experienced at a theater that, in fact, serves cocktails—I saw it at the Slaughter Lane location of the Alamo Drafthouse—but will be equally enjoyable no matter where you can manage to see it. The film features interviews with many of the stars of the American cocktail scene but focuses on two bartenders in particular: Steve Schneider of Manhattan's ultra-successful Employees Only, and Steve Carpentieri of Dunville's in Westport, Connecticut, a bar that's suffering as the cocktail revolution passes it by. Both Steves come across as sweet, sympathetic guys you want to see succeed, and both face some extreme obstacles along the way. (Bonus points that the soundtrack is made up almost exclusively of Joe Jackson songs.) I can't find a release date anywhere, which is a shame, but I hope you'll at least be able see it at a festival or on demand sometime soon.

Both Steves were at the screening I attended, by the way, and Steve Schneider (a former Marine) created a special cocktail for everyone in the audience. I loved his story so much that I couldn't help giving him a hug after the screening. He seemed to take it in stride.

Crossposted from Inhuman Swill

Back in September, I took advantage of the chance to support a very worthy-seeming Kickstarter project—helping to fund the completion of a documentary called Mormon Movie.

The director, Xan Aranda, also made festival favorite Andrew Bird: Fever Year, but this new project is something more personal. Check out this preview reel to see what I mean:

The Kickstarter campaign is long done, but you can still help support Mormon Movie at The Hideout this weekend in Chicago. Just buy a ticket to their third "They Shoot Indies, Don't They? Dance Derby Fundraiser Spectacular" and show up to dance and win prizes. It all gets started Saturday, February 2, at 7:00 pm at The Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia. Tickets are just $10 in advance, $12 at the door.

I'd be there myself, except it's bowling night.

Crossposted from Inhuman Swill

UPDATE! After this blog entry was written, I emailed the text of it to John Hodgman on a whim. A few hours later, to my surprise, I received a response. His Honor told me he would endure my "gut punches" if I disagreed with him, but that I should not ask him to answer for Martin Amis.

Dear Judge John Hodgman:

I must take great exception to your summary judgment in a recent episode of the "Judge John Hodgman" podcast, to wit, that Shaun of the Dead is a comedy only and not a horror film.

Your Honor, this opinion is, if you'll permit me, patent hogwash. If we are to accept your definition of a horror film as one designed to provoke terror and dread in its audience and to help that audience confront and process their own existential fears as their on-screen proxies battle horrors from beyond the grave, then in what way does Shaun of the Dead not meet that definition? Yes, we may be laughing at the same time, and we may chuckle wryly here and there in recognition of nods to earlier classics in the zombie canon, but that in no way reduces our identification with Shaun, Ed, and the rest of our heroes, nor does it diminish our well-justified fears for their safety or our investment in their fates. Whatever yuks may be afoot, these characters are in very real peril, and we can't help experiencing that peril along with them. Shaun of the Dead clearly manages the feat of being effective comedy and horror both, at the same time.

I am weary to my bones of the tired assertion that a thing that is one thing cannot also be another thing, particularly when the one thing is seen as high art and the other as low. I recall years ago attending a lecture by literary enfant terrible Martin Amis at the NYU library. His New Yorker short story "The Janitor on Mars" had just been named by Locus Magazine as one of the year's top works of science fiction. During Q&A, a young woman asked Amis if the publication of that story meant that he was now a science fiction writer. Amis hemmed and hawed, eventually asserting that, while he had read and absorbed copious amounts of science fiction as a youth and certainly wasn't embarrassed by that fact, "The Janitor on Mars" merely deployed the tropes and language of science fiction to a higher literary end. It was not itself, he claimed, science fiction.

This, Your Honor, is so much mealy-mouthed rot. Something that quacks like a duck, though it may do so in an erudite, hipper-than-thou cadence with its bill raised snootily in the air, is nonetheless still a duck. There may be some "meta" purpose at work, but if we po-mo roughnecks have learned nothing else in the course of our rude existences, is it not that the very definition of "meta" is to be the thing being referenced? Have we failed to heed the lesson of the yin and the yang, which is that a thing can, nay, must embrace, embody, and give rise to its apparent opposite?

They in their towers of ivory glass may not like it, but I'm sure such an enlightened nerd as Your Honor must agree that science fiction can also be literature, that comedy can also be horror, and that from time to time even a judge can be wrong.

Yours humbly,
William Shunn
Science Fiction Writer

Crossposted from Inhuman Swill

Almost exactly five years ago, I called your attention here to a brouhaha in the small town of Kanab, Utah, over the adoption by the city council of a non-binding resolution defining the family as "one man, one woman" with a "full quiver" of children. A few months later, Laura and I visited Kanab (a town founded by Mormon polygamists), where we were pleased to see many businesses opposing the resolution with "Everyone Welcome Here!" stickers in their windows.

I wish I'd known sooner, but I've just learned that there's a documentary out about the whole controversy:

Natural Family Values

I can't vouch for the quality, not having seen it yet, but you can be sure I'm ordering a copy and will watch it with interest.

I note also that major funding for Natural Family Values was provided by the B.W. Bastian Foundation, an organization that supports issues of LGBT equality.

The B.W. Bastian in question is my former boss Bruce Bastian, co-founder of WordPerfect Corporation. I like what he's been doing with his fortune in the days since WordPerfect Ruled The Earth. Another documentary that Bastian produced is 8: The Mormon Proposition, which I watched recently. It's an investigation into how the LDS Church secretly led the successful effort to pass Proposition 8 in California, which outlawed gay marriage, and, more generally, into the hideous ways gays have been treated by the Church. It's an excellent film, and is available to stream from Netflix, but be sure to have a box of Kleenex and a punching bag handy when you watch it.

I want to say more about 8, but I'm still trying to calibrate the shotgun blast that post will be.

Current Location: Chicago, IL
Current Music: Alan Parsons w/Jeremy Parsons, "Mammagamma 04"

It's easy to see why Drafthouse Films (the new distribution arm of Austin's great Alamo Drafthouse theater chain) was able to snap up the rights to British TV vet Chris Morris's feature film debut, Four Lions. Probably no one else wanted to touch it. It's not a movie for everybody.

I saw Four Lions last night at a preview screening at Piper's Alley, and I thought it was the funniest movie I'd seen since, well, The Hangover. Like any number of other comedies, it's the story of a buffoonish group of losers determined to succeed at something they clearly have no talent for. What makes Four Lions different is that the something is jihad. Will you like it? That depends on how much taste you have for laughing at suicide bombings. (Mild spoilers may lie ahead.)

( Read more... )

Current Location: Chicago, IL
Current Music: Cornershop, "Brimful of Asha"

I think most people know me as a fairly laid-back guy in person, never getting too exercised or losing my cool, even when someone's being a jerk to me. If that's your opinion, then you've never worked in an office with me. Seriously. Ask the good, long-suffering people at BenefitsCheckUp or Sesame Workshop. (Actually, don't ask the people at Sesame Workshop. Most of the folks I used to work with there got the ax even before I did.)

If you talked to them, you'd find out that I could be a real bastard in the workplace. Some people at my last job were apparently afraid to talk to me when I thought they'd messed up, or at all. I made at least one producer at the Sesame Street website cry. Mind you, I'm not proud of this. No, wait, actually I am.

Over the past week or so, I've watched the recent film In the Loop three times on DVD. Besides its scathing, cynical view of the political process that lubricated our way into Iraq, I can't get enough of Malcolm Tucker, the angry, profane press secretary who never encountered a functionary he couldn't intimidate or a problem he couldn't spin his way out of. I want to be Malcolm Tucker, or at least be that articulate when I'm enraged.

Tucker, as played by Peter Capaldi, is also a character on the BBC comedy series The Thick of It. That's the source of the short video clip below (decidedly NSFW in its language), which pretty well sums up the Tucker philosophy.

I think you'll agree, there's a little bit of Malcolm Tucker in all of us.

( The sweary bits )

Current Location: Chicago, IL
Current Music: Herbie Hancock, "Rain Dance"

I've been a fan of Roger Ebert's writing (as opposed to his television presence) since I first ran across it on the web, which was probably not long after the Chicago Sun-Times starting publishing his film reviews online. Which was a long time ago. As much as his insightful criticism, it was droll, tossed-off observations like this one (from his new review of Happy Tears, emphasis mine) that won me over:

[Happy Tears] takes on an eerie resonance with the performance by Rip Torn as the aging father. He was recently in the news for being arrested, at age 78, for breaking into a bank while intoxicated and carrying a firearm.

To be sure, it was late at night, he had apparently forgotten he had the firearm, and after all, the bank looked a lot like his house. Nor is senility his problem. He is now in rehab and I wish him good fortune because he is a fine actor. Ann Landers used to write about the danger signals of alcoholism. His arrest in the bank surely would be one of them. Still, to stir up such a scandal at 78 is perhaps even a tiny accomplishment, when so many his age are no longer physically able to break into banks. [full review]

This is all by way of recommending not just his reviews and his blog, not just his continuous championing of liberalism and rational free thought, but also the new Esquire profile of Ebert, "The Essential Man," written by Chris Jones. I knew about his battles with cancer and his various surgeries, but had no idea of their extent or aftermath. Read it, and read also Ebert's own generous thoughts on the article.

I can't think of many writers so well-rounded as people, and so unendingly prolific, and that he continues to be so in the face of his health problems is not just an inspiration. It's a more than tiny accomplishment.

Current Location: Chicago, IL
Current Music: The Detroit Cobras, "Boss Lady"

I watched Paranormal Activity yesterday evening on DVD while waiting for Laura to get home from work. I found the movie deeply, thrillingly, and realistically frightening—not because I believe in ghosts or demons, but because it returned me to a time in my life when I did.

Between the ages of ten and sixteen or so, I experienced a few episodes of what I realize now must have been sleep paralysis. This occurs when the brain rouses from REM sleep but the body essentially remains asleep. You're fully awake and aware, but you can't move a muscle.

That's exactly what happened to me maybe half a dozen times that I remember. I would wake up in the darkness of my bedroom unable to move, terrified by the certain convinction that the Devil himself was holding me immobile, and that he was going to kill me. I would struggle to move for what seemed like an hour, to no avail. I would struggle to form words, to shout for help, also to no avail. I would struggle not to fall back to sleep, because I knew if I fell asleep I would die. I would silently pray to God for deliverance from my assailant, deliverance that only came when I did fall back into unwilling unconsciousness.

On one very memorable occasion, when I was an older teenager, this happened on a visit to my uncle's house in Los Angeles, while I was cocooned in sleeping bag on his living room floor. My father was in a sleeping bag not six feet away, but I couldn't make the tiniest peep to wake him up so he could save me.

I've never talked about this with anyone, so I know that any conclusions I drew about what was going on with these night episodes were completely mine. And the conclusion I drew was that I had somehow, through bad actions and thoughts, opened myself up to the power of evil. (It also did not help that an episode in Mormon mythology has Joseph Smith overwhelmed and held immobile by Satan while he prays to God to learn which church he should join. In a strange way, I convinced myself that Satan would not bother with me unless I had some fantastic destiny to fulfill. And that scared me too.)

The comforting thing I discovered many, many years later, after reading about sleep paralysis, is that my experience was normal for sufferers of this disorder. The paralysis is usually accompanied by panic and a sense of severe threat, and many, many people sense the illusion of a threatening presence during episodes. I'm far from the only person to wake up believing a demon or devil is holding them captive.

Which leads me back to Paranormal Activity. The movie is not about sleep paralysis, but it is about a demon haunting. The build-up of eerie events takes place slowly and with excruciating restraint, which resulted in me hugging my knees on the couch and at moments clambering backward in fright. I think it was probably much more effective playing in a darkened living room that it would have been in a movie theater, at least for me.

But as freaked out as the movie made me, it also left me feeling exhilarated. There was the joy of seeing skilled moviemaking play out, yes, but there was also the shivery return to an age when I truly believed I had brought demons into my home—tempered by the realization that at the end of the movie I could safely return to the reality in which demons are nothing more than a story for scaring gullible children (and adults).

Laura came home before the movie was over, and I gushingly enthused to her about how to the movie was affecting me. Then we went to bed, and I slept like a baby.

Current Location: Chicago, IL
Current Music: Hot Chip, "Slush"

There's a good chance that you've seen this already, but if you haven't and you care about good, clear storytelling and you have 70 minutes to kill, you must watch this epic deconstruction of The Phantom Menace.

Aside from the pointless serial-killer subplot (seriously—the narrator of the review is supposed to be a delusional serial killer), this is a brilliant and funny dissection of why the Star Wars prequels suck so hard. It crystallized for me many of my own unfocused thoughts about the films, and gave me ten times as many new reasons to hate the them. The sequence where the reviewer asks friends to describe specific Star Wars characters is alone worth the price of admission.

Because of the 10-minute limit on YouTube content, the review is broken up into seven parts. (Part 7 doesn't always seem to play in its original configuration. If you have that problem, try this version of Part 7 instead.) Here's Part 1 to whet your appetite:

I'm reminded of a couple of my own objections to The Phantom Menace (which I have not seen since its opening week in 1999). First, I was disappointed that Anakin as a child showed no sign of any of the dark character traits—cruelty, rage, craftiness, whatever—that would later turn him into Darth Vader. That, for me, meant I felt no tension in his interactions with the other characters, and it made his eventual seduction by the Dark Side seem kind of arbitrary.

Second, even if that had been in the script, I doubt the child actor who played Anakin could have conveyed it. That kid had no charisma or acting ability whatsoever. I think I remember Orson Scott Card saying somewhere around that time that they were trying to get the same actor to play Ender. Why? Because Card wanted the Ender's Game movie to suck too?

Anyway, I hope this same reviewer tackles the other two prequels someday. After the clusterfuck that was Attack of the Clones, I didn't even bother seeing the third movie. Still haven't.

Current Location: Chicago, IL
Current Music: Herbie Hancock, "Butterfly"

Having watched Valkyrie recently, I've been thinking about the intersection of art, commerce and religion. I know, that's probably not the kind of discussion the filmmakers intended to provoke, but here we are. Germany started it.

Every so often a big kerfluffle flares up in the media or the blogosphere about what famous entertainer is or isn't a Scientologist, and why. Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Isaac Hayes, Beck, Chick Corea, Edgar Winter, Chaka Khan, Mark Isham, Greta Van Susteren—we're supposed to avoid giving them money so we don't inadvertently support their reprehensible "church." Leonard Cohen, Paul Haggis, Jerry Seinfeld, Courtney Love, Gloria Gaynor—once were Scientologists, but now they're on the okay list. Neil Gaiman—wait, what's the controversy with him? I'm not supposed to read him because his relatives are Scientologists?

Frankly, keeping score like this is ridiculous.

As much as I dislike Scientology, discriminating against artists because of their private beliefs is a losing game. I hate the fact that there were Crusades, and a Spanish Inquisition, and institutional coverups of child sexual abuse, but that doesn't mean I'm going to deny myself the work of Catholic writers like Graham Greene or Tim Powers, or Catholic filmmakers like Kevin Smith. Will some of the money I pay for their stuff end up in Vatican coffers? Possibly, but I'm not naive enough to think that any of the money I give or receive is pure. We live in a pluralist society. We can't help the fact that our money is going to circulate through parts of the body politic that we don't like. The only judgment we can really make is how we respond to the art, how pure and universal and human it is, how ennobling or demeaning or thrilling or dull, how free from or full of agenda or polemic.

And let's face it, Scientology is no more ridiculous on the face of it than Catholicism or Zoroastrianism or Islam or Greek mythology. The claims of these other religions are just as extraordinary. The only difference is that the origins of the rest are shrouded in antiquity—as if mere age confers some kind of stature or holiness or untouchability. In historical terms, Mormonism is nearly as recent as Scientology, and in cosmological terms makes claims every bit as grand and silly, but how many of you Wheel of Time readers are going to boycott the new volume just because Brandon Sanderson wrote it?

The value of the work is in the work itself. If the work makes your life better or more pleasant, support it. Pay for it. It's that simple. Clint Eastwood's a libertarian who supported McCain? So what. I love his movies. Beck and Chick Corea give money to L. Ron Hubbard's successors? Big deal. I get a lot more pleasure from their records than from most Cruise or Travolta movies—hell, than from most Mel Gibson movies or Orson Scott Card novels these days—so I'm happy to give them my money. I, an atheist, have given money to causes devoted to overturning the Defense of Marriage Act in the United States, but that mere fact hardly makes my fiction superior to or more worthy of support than a Catholic like Gene Wolfe's.

As for Neil Gaiman, I'd be an awful hypocrite to avoid his books just because his father was a big muckity-muck in the Church of Scientology. I myself am a direct descendant of Edward Partridge, the first Mormon bishop. No, I avoid Gaiman's books because I simply don't care for them.

Artists, like most people, are more than just the religions they profess. So get down off your high horse and give the poor Scientologists a chance. The rich ones, too, if they're your thing.

Current Location: Chicago, IL
Current Music: Devo, "Jocko Homo"

So there's something of a meme on YouTube where people take that memorable scene of Hitler's meltdown in the German film Downfall and replace the subtitles. My favorite example of this used to be the one where Hitler rants about the changed ending of the Watchmen movie. That one's now been eclipsed by this more brilliant, pointed, and timely version:

Current Location: Chicago, IL
Current Music: Tori Sparks, "Tall Towers"

I love Google for its geeky in-jokes. If you haven't noticed this one before, search for "recursion" and see what the result page offers as a suggestion under Did you mean.

I'm also reminded of Inglourious Basterds, which I saw yesterday morning, in which one instance of the word "Merci" was translated in the subtitles as "Merci."

Current Location: Chicago, IL

As a fan of the band The Negro Problem, I was delighted to pick up the following throwaway tidbit from a New Yorker blog post by John Colapinto:

{Spike] Lee's next excursion into the question of race in America is his filmed version of "Passing Strange," the remarkable musical by [Negro Problem leader] Stew. I watched Lee shooting this production last June, in the Belasco Theatre in New York. The movie will be released, Lee tells me, in late August, at the IFC Center, in Manhattan. [full post]

I learn from Stew's website that it's also been picked up by PBS for a Great Performances airing in 2010, and possibly will have a theatrical run this fall.

Having missed the run of Passing Strange in New York, I'm glad there are going to be multiple opportunites to see it.

Current Location: Chicago, IL
Current Music: Everything but the Girl, "Wrong" (Todd Terry remix)

Early last week, Laura and I were lucky enough to win an invitation to a preview screening of the new comedy The Hangover, which opens today. Having been seeing the commercials for weeks already, I was looking forward to the screening. From the little I'd seen, the film looked right up my alley. Laura was more cautious going in, especially when our host Capone (of aintitcool.com) gleefully warned us we were about to see some disturbing images.

I won't beat around the bush. The Hangover may be the funniest movie I've seen in my life. Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but both Laura and I—and the rest of the audience—laughed so hard and loud that there was some dialogue we couldn't even hear. We hurt when we left the theater. I haven't laughed that hard at a movie since the first time I saw South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

The film is very cleverly written and structured. It follows a group of three men (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis) who have taken their soon-to-be-married friend (Justin Bartha) to Las Vegas for an extended bachelor party. The three men wake up in the morning in a trashed hotel suite rife with clues that something big happened the night before, but with no memory of what that was. Oh, yes, and the groom is missing.

The main thrust of the plot details the friends' attempt to reconstruct the night's events and figure out where they lost track of the groom. Along the way, they meet not just a bevy of colorful characters and assorted weirdness, but also a good deal of violence. I'm tempted to drop hints about my favorite scenes—like the taser bit that just keeps getting funnier and funnier and funnier, even when the trailers have spoiled the final punchline—but I will resist the temptation. Given the media blitz that's been going on for weeks, you already know some of those bits, but that's only scratching the surface. You should go in with as clean a slate as possible.

As cunning as the screenplay is, it's Cooper, Helms, and Galifianakis that really make the film work. They are more than just funny. They've been allowed to create characters that are, in many ways, unlikeable. Cooper's character is that friend we all have who is charming and smarmy but always manages to make you feel like a pussy. Helms's character is henpecked and packs a really deep streak of ugly anger. And Galifianakis—let's just say that it takes some time to see that at the heart of his fearlessly offputting performance is a very sweet, innocent guy. But despite their frequent bickering, they still hang together and act relentlessly, even with heartbreaking bravery, to track down their missing friend. By the end of the movie, we feel a startling love for all these flawed, determined men.

Oh, and did I mention how fucking funny they are? And how fucking wrong this movie is? (Any movie that can get away with slamming a baby into a car door is okay in my book.)

I will admit that the laughter is not non-stop. A few short stretches of The Hangover do lag, but that's more than made up for by the intensity of the best sequences. (And by best I also mean most of the sequences.) The female characters in the film get short shrift also. The three important female characters essentially fit the archetypes of Virgin, Bitch, and Whore, and as winsomely enthusiastic as Heather Graham's performance is as the Whore, she is woefully underused. Mike Tyson's extended cameo is funny also, but seems more like a stunt than an integrated part of the movie. And the Asian stereotype wears a little thin.

But those are minor quibbles. The script plays very fair with the premise, piling complication on complication, and even providing an answer to the question of why no one can remember the previous night. I can't imagine seeing a funnier movie this year, or having a better time. Go see The Hangover. See it this weekend, with a big, enthusiastic crowd. Stay for the closing credits. And then go see it again so you can catch the lines people were laughing too hard to hear.

Some video links:

The real Caesar's Palace

Tiger in the bathroom

Stu's song

Current Location: Chicago, IL
Current Music: Samuel Bates & The Loops, "My Diverse Thoughts Coming to a Close"

Remember when I was trying to track down screening locations for the new Mike Judge film, Idiocracy? Darel Jevens of the Chicago Sun-Times found one, liked the movie, and says this:

About 20 people were in the theater when I saw "Idiocracy." Just being able to track down the movie despite its stealthy release makes them more nimble-minded than every 26th century clod in the movie, as well as the Fox geniuses so certain that it couldn't be sold....

Chicago is one of only seven cities where "Idiocracy" can be seen. Fox execs are hoping you will skip it, so they can justify their certainty that it was doomed to failure and pat themselves on the back for burying it.

But you're too smart for that. [full article]

Too bad New York still doesn't seem to be one of the cities on the list. I'd kind of like to buy a ticket to a Chicago screening just to protest the movie's marketing.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Beck, "Loser"