Category: Movies

As our planned Saturday excursion fell through, due to the ridiculously warm weather in Chicago (I don’t like or desire 50 degree days in February — they’re just plain ugly), I took the family and my nephews to see “Coraline” in 3D. We decided to go to the 4:00 show, just in case the flick was too intense for the kids under 10. It was a very good movie, although a seat closer to the middle of the theater would’ve been nicer, to take advantage of the 3D to the utmost. The show was a sellout, the place packed with families and young adults on dates. I still can’t get used to seeing movies in the daytime, even when the weather is miserable or I’m trapped in another city with nothing to do. But whatever. I know it’s a rather quaint notion that a matinee should make you feel guilty. It’s also old-fashioned to think that you should filter a child’s intake of movies to match their maturity level, as all the parents who bring their toddlers to slasher movies will attest. Such a fuddy-duddy I am!

But the trailers! Ah, me, if a kid (or any other sane person) can sit through the movie trailers on the big screen and not feel assaulted, then let him or her watch whatever’s playing. Zombie Nazi porn starring Paris Hilton, for all I care. If you can make it through the trailers relatively pain-free, your synapses have been fused to such a degree that you should be sent into space to fight for our species’ survival, like in “Alien II.” You can take it, you’re an interplanetary Marine.

We were shown one trailer on Saturday for a new animated movie called “9”. Presented by legendary Tim Burton and visionary filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov (which means I guess, that the film will have three endings, all unsatisfying, and all involving balletic explosion sequences), “9” is some post-apocalyptic thingie about a homunculus created by a scientst to carry on the human “spirit” in the desolate landscape. If you like your trailers to give you vertigo, then I’m sure you’ll love the movie. But the sound! The volume had to be cranked up to at least 80 decibels! My shirt was vibrating from the noise!

Sure, ol’ Grandpa Finn Garner does have his hearing problems, and he got them from, all together now kids……excessive noise!

But that excessive noise was experienced in punk bars and at Ramones concerts, places we all knew would be loud. By the ripe old age of 19, I had permanent damage and a ringtone in my ears that makes the world sound like bacon frying in a pan. It sucks, but I did it to myself.

On the other hand, one wouldn’t expect a movie trailer to leave one bleeding from one’s ears — perhaps one should just stick with the TV from now on.

The summer movie season relies heavily on fights, crashes and explosions. And sometimes those on the screen are more interesting than the ones in the box office rankings. But only by a little. I think there should be a name for the summer schadenfreude I feel when a big budget movie, starring vegetable-brained celebrities, written by desperate masochistic scribblers, directed by bombastic tinpot dictators, and marketed and distributed by human leeches, goes up in flames at the cineplex. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer and feel the script is the most important part of a movie, but when a $150 million project tanks, I feel as cozy warm as Winnie-the-Pooh.

“Sex and the City.” “Speed Racer.” “Get Smart.” “The Incredible Hulk.” Any of these will cost you money that could be better spent on three delicious beers, one expensive martini, or a pugwash from a crack ho. Where would you rather spend your hard earned $10?

Now, I’m not against whiz-bang flicks. I saw “Iron Man” a couple weeks ago and loved it. They got everything right in that flick.

Tonight the latest entry in the “Indiana Jones” series comes out, 17 years after the last. (Should there be a statute of limitations on a sequel, after which time there should be no implied connection with the originals?) Everyone’s getting all giggly about this one, but I could care less. There’s something repulsive about the idea of Harrison Ford doing this same old schtick again. With his graying, Alfalfa Schweitzer haircut, maybe a remake of “Deliverance” would be more appropriate. As he lunges across the hood of a speeding truck in the trailer (obligatory age joke), he looks like a pensioner at the early bird special diving across the buffet for the last piece of Jell-O.

Did you know the Indiana Jones fedora, bull whip and leather jacket are on display in the Smithsonian? What is there that is groundbreaking or historically important about a big-budget remake of 1940s pulp movies? I read Harrison Ford in the paper saying at Cannes that with this movie, he’d like to help the audience enjoy pure escapist entertainment again. Thanks, Harr, but I don’t think we’ve lost that skill. What’s next, ConAgra reassuring us that it’s okay to like French fries again? America, rest easy–some things you never lose.

And really, must we care that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg want to revisit this hollow idea? Must their perpetual pre-adolescence be the subject of so much attention? They’re skilled filmmakers, certainly, and have nothing else to prove. So quit proving that money trumps everything. Spielberg’s movies, especially the popular ones, always make me feel dirty, like someone’s been pushing all my buttons with fingers covered in coconut oil movie theater “butter”. The earlier Indy movies were only okay in my book. What finally turned me off was the beating heart ripped out of the man in “Temple of Doom.” Part of the charm of the old serials was their fakery, their hamminess. Spielberg, of course, makes everything in a film look beautiful and realistic. So, a beautifully photographed beating heart, or dozens of beautifully massacred soldiers (I don’t care if they are Nazis), or child slavery, or the Nazi chopped up in the propeller, leave me numb and nauseous.

Maybe it’s a generational thing. People ten years younger than me go bananas over Indy and Star Wars because the movies blew their 12-year-old minds. When I was a young teen, the best movies were the complex, experimental kind, not the one that ran the fastest. “MASH”, “Chinatown”, “Taxi Driver”, were all engaging. For escapist fun, our choices were “Cannonball Run,” “Smoky and the Bandit”, et al–movies starring TV actors, directed by journeymen hacks. Which is as it should be. To have someone with Spielberg’s talent remaking Indiana Jones is like Emeril making a meatloaf, or Philip Roth redoing Mike Hammer.

Quit it, just quit it. You’re ruining pop culture for me.

This household has been socked with a one-two punch of chest colds and winter ennui, so last night, the kids watched “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” eating carry-out Thai, and after they went to bed, my ever-lovin’ wife and I watched the Oscars. We were aided by the TIVO, of course, which let us fast-forward through all the musical numbers and the long walks to the microphone (which surprisingly add 19 minutes to the whole broadcast).

Why we’d bother to watch, I don’t know. We just don’t go out to the movies anymore unless a supervillain is endangering the earth somehow. I think the last best picture I saw in the theater might have been “Annie Hall.” And the faces and names get more obscure every year. But it pays to keep up with the pop culture, if only to be able to talk in short-hand about things.

Something I noticed last night, besides how absolutely fabulous a life in Hollywood must be (note to self: time to head west and sleep on an acquaintance’s couch for a year or two), was how many winners described their experience as “amazing.”

“This has just been an amazing experience.” At first I thought, how amazing have the past 15 seconds been since your name was announced? Were your legs asleep and you are glad to stretch them? But I quickly realized that the person was likely talking about the past few weeks since the nominations were announced. In light of that, the word “amazing” must mean:

It’s great you people have finally recognized me for the mega-talent I’ve been telling you I am.

It’s fun to get phone calls from people who want to hire me, and agents who want to steal me.

It’s enjoyable to get calls from old boyfriends who are looking for tickets to the red carpet, so I can tell them to eat shit and die.

It’s nice to get baskets and baskets of free swag from companies dumb enough to send it to me.

It certainly beats pretending to be glad that someone else won.

It’s amazing while the attention lasts, because most assuredly, it won’t.

You know how sometimes you go to a movie with someone who has a certain occupational specialty, and that person cannot enjoy the movie because of the huge gaffes spotted by his trained eye? The worst situation is going to a scifi flick with an engineer, who will happily show off his knowledge by telling you (and everyone within earshot) that X couldn’t have happened because it violated the scientific principles of Y and Z, and besides, the torque and stress on the lateral support couldn’t blah blah blah. This can happen when you bring a lawyer, a doctor, or even a fishmonger to the movies.

(Of course, one example of some gaffes that EVERYONE in the country should’ve gotten was that romantic presidential comedy Dave, starring Kevin Kline, in which the president (Kline) has a stroke and so the evil chief of staff recruits a doppelganger (also Kline, but more rakish and friendly) to fill in for him. And somehow, this faux president was able to pass legislation on his own, without any mention of Congress or the courts. Sort of a benign dictator, although still rakish and friendly, so I guess it was okay. What a steamer that was.)

But that’s a long way around the fact that I saw Spider-Man 3 last weekend, and spotted two ridiculous errors regarding Kirsten Dunst and her acting career. So, I guess I’m going to be one of those insufferable know-it-alls.

1. First, after a disastrous opening night, Mary Jane is replaced in her B’way musical the very next day. She even finds out by showing up at the theater to discover a new actress doing her number! Oh, the pathos! In reality, if this were a B’way show, Mary Jane would’ve had a solid contract that would’ve guaranteed her X number of performances if the show was being staged, and if she were replaced, she’d be paid a big severance penalty. Nobody’s ever heard of Actor’s Equity??

2. And during her performance in said musical, the camera zooms in on Mary Jane up the center aisle of the theater. Trouble is, there aren’t any center aisles in theaters, of any kind, movie or legit. Think about it. Those are where the good and expensive seats are. Additionally, I can’t remember a single NY theater I’ve ever been to that has had any kind of aisle at all, let alone a 12-foot-wide freeway down the middle (though I could be wrong on this point).

And on another subject: If the Sandman cries, like he does at the end of this movie, shouldn’t parts of his face wash off or something?

Other than that, 2 webs way up!