Any Other Business: Part XLIV

As the title suggests, so forth.

“What a shocking cheap hat!”

Deja vu, all over again. Two years on from ‘Beast from the East’, as we suffer thru a month of storms every weekend, once again if you walk into Dundrum Town Centre and mooch through Penneys or M&S you will find woolly hats and rugged scarves and thermal gloves being shovelled out at the door at knockdown prices. You will find shorts, bikinis, polo shirts, and sun-hats as the new in thing to wear. The clothes on sale in our shops have, somehow, as always, changed seasons well in advance of the actual weather. We have just had the coldest days of the winter and are expecting more of the foulest and yet the clothes offered as just in at this moment will be unwearable until June. I need an economist to explain to me how this makes sense – do people really buy their wardrobes that far in advance? – doesn’t anybody suddenly need a new scarf or a heavier hat in February or March when it snows after the shops have shifted seasons? – do the shops not take a commercial beating selling clothes that won’t be needed for another five months? What’s going on, in short, and why does this happen season after season? In the meantime I shall be pulling on a trapper hat much like the one pictured above, bought at an outrageous discount last week at H&M.

The Gibraltar Gambit

Previously I’ve suspected there was a recurring Google Calendar alert somewhere in the Spanish civil service. This reminded them to enrage Michael Howard into threatening to cable out the entire Mediterranean fleet by periodically asking for Gibraltar back. Now it seems the Greeks are getting in on the act, if the return of the Elgin marbles really has been tacked onto proposals for trade talk tactics between Britain and the remaining members of the EU. Where might this all end? Yield Rockall? There are so many grievances that so many countries have with the lonely island that the list could get truly absurd. Mind you would it really be any more absurd than the American list topped by “– and agree to have all your chickens dumped in chlorine like they’ve been to a low-rent swimming pool”?

A bold artistic decision to ensure the future of the show … that cancels the future of the show

I feel like this is a corollary to the previous series of entries on attempts to make mucho money by terrible artistic decisions that ended up making predictably terrible art and then hysterically nada money. It appears Hulu have absolutely no plans whatsoever to continue their revival of Veronica Mars. Critics lauded the bold artistic decision creator Rob Thomas considered necessary to ensure the future of the show, but die-hard fans excoriated that bold artistic decision, which they saw as simply dynamiting Veronica Mars. And as the die-hard fans were the only reason a cancelled Zeros network show had such a curious afterlife in the first place this was a move that backfired spectacularly; quelle surprise but the brickbats of the fans matters more to Hulu than the garlands of the critics. I will probably never bother with the Hulu season because I don’t want to see the final five minutes. (And I had been intrigued to see JK Simmons, who was so good in Thomas’ unseen show Party Down, enter the world of Neptune.) I don’t check out of this universe lightly; I have both of the Veronica Mars novels and all three seasons on DVD. When I had to introduce Elliot Harris to Veronica Mars from scratch, before catching the Veronica Mars movie in the one cinema in Dublin showing it, I sent him six clips I thought would give him a flavour of the show and act as a ‘Previously on Veronica Mars…’  I told him if he only watched one that Logan’s ‘Epic Love’ speech to Veronica was by far the most important one. Rob Thomas’ justification for throwing that speech, that dynamic in the morgue bin was that for the show to continue as a noir mystery Veronica had to be a lone wolf. Well… offhand the existence of The Thin Man and Moonlighting suggests otherwise. Maybe simply have Logan appear from time to time, as the service permits, as in the novels. Anything but blow him to blazes so that the show can continue in limited runs whenever Thomas and Kristen Bell can fit it in their schedules. If nobody is left who wants to see the show then your damn schedules could be free enough to accommodate a network season but it doesn’t matter.

Starbucks doubles down in Dundrum

To return to Dundrum Town Centre and the laws of economics puzzling me, how the devil is Starbucks returning to its previous haunt by the Mill Pond? This was the smaller of their two Dundrum Town Centre establishments, and shared its space with Mao. After some mysterious happening an eternal refurbishment unsurprisingly led to the departure of both Starbucks and Mao and a dizzying array of temporary tenants (bean bags, arcade games, net cafe, Italian furniture) before now Starbucks has returned, to take just not its old slot, but Mao’s slot too!

iZombie, oDear

After two years or so of a break since finishing season 2 of iZombie I found myself utterly lost when attempting to start season 3 and so went back to the pilot and re-watched the show, enjoying it greatly. And then, as I finally made my way into new episodes, a sinking feeling started to take hold. Season 3 of iZombie is not all that great… There are several threads one could point to that unravelled the fabric of the show: the utter idiocy of the Peyton/Blaine/Ravi storyline, the utter idiocy of Major’s hooking up with a clearly unhinged Chaos Killer groupie, the utter idiocy of Ravi spilling the entire secret history of the zombie plague to a reporter unawares. All revolved around characters behaving like complete morons at odds with their previous actions on the show. The wider conspiracies surrounding the activities of Fillmore Graves and Zombie Truthers never quite exerted the magnetic pull of the Max Rager machinations of the previous season, and this less satisfying arc tended to swamp the case of the week mysteries which themselves became more hit and miss.

Mitt Romney: Profile in Courage

How unexpected. A year and a half ago I was remembering the 2012 election duel between Obama and Romney because of College Humour’s ‘Gangnam Style’ parody video ‘Mitt Romney Style’. At the time I referred to the robotic Romney, who surprised Obama in the first debate by having had a Reagan upgrade to the operating software;  beginning with a perfectly executed joke that left Obama so stunned that he staggered thru that entire debate punch-drunk. I had seen Romney’s sons appear on Conan O’Brien’s TBS show and had mused that George Romney’s charisma had skipped a generation. Of late, however, the interviews Romney has been giving to the Atlantic‘s McKay Coppins suggests a looser more devil-may-care character has emerged in the last job he will ever have. Eighteen months ago I mused that everyone had been glad that the RNC intimated to Romney that he should stop seeking to run again in 2016, but what people wouldn’t give now to have had Romney rather than Trump as the GOP candidate in 2016. And now it seems Romney, at eight years distance from his run when it was obligatory to demonise him, is revealing what he might have been like as a President in a crisis – voting his conscience though the heavens fall.

Six Years, what a surprise

Previous milestones on this blog have been marked by features on Michael Fassbender and a vainglorious, if requested, list (plays to see before you die). But as today marks exactly six years since Talking Movies kicked off in earnest on Tuesday September 1^st 2009 with a review of (500) Days of Summer I’ve rummaged thru the archives for some lists covering the various aspects of the blog’s expanded cultural brief.

Top 6 Films

There’s been a lot of films given a write-up and a star rating hereabouts. So many films. Some fell in my estimation on re-watching, others steadily increased in my esteem, and many stayed exactly as they were.

 

Here are my favourites of the films I’ve reviewed over the past six years:

 

Inception

X-Men: First Class

Shame

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Skyfall

Mud

 

And that’s a selection from this list…

Iron Man, Indiana Jones 4, Wolverine, (500) Days of Summer, Creation, Pandorum, Love Happens, The Goods, Fantastic Mr Fox, Jennifer’s Body, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Bright Star, Glorious 39, The Box, Youth in Revolt, A Single Man, Whip It!, The Bad Lieutenant, Eclipse, Inception, The Runaways, The Hole 3-D, Buried, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Let Me In, The Way Back, Never Let Me Go, Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3-D, Win Win, X-Men: First Class, The Beaver, A Better Life, Project Nim, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Glee: The 3-D Concert Movie, The Art of Getting By, Troll Hunter, Drive, Demons Never Die, The Ides of March, In Time, Justice, Breaking Dawn: Part I, The Big Year, Shame, The Darkest Hour 3-D, The Descendants, Man on a Ledge, Martha Marcy May Marlene, A Dangerous Method, The Woman in Black, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance 3-D, Margaret, This Means War, Stella Days, Act of Valour, The Hunger Games, Titanic 3-D, The Cabin in the Woods, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Lockout, Albert Nobbs, Damsels in Distress, Prometheus, Red Tails, Red Lights, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter 3-D, Ice Age 4, Killer Joe, Magic Mike, The Dark Knight Rises, The Expendables 2, My Brothers, The Watch, Lawless, The Sweeney, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Liberal Arts, Sinister, Hit and Run, Ruby Sparks, On the Road, Stitches, Skyfall, The Sapphires, Gambit, Seven Psychopaths, Lincoln, Men at Lunch – Lon sa Speir, Warm Bodies, A Good Day to Die Hard, Safe Haven, Arbitrage, Stoker, Robot and Frank, Parker, Side Effects, Iron Man 3, 21 and Over, Dead Man Down, Mud, The Moth Diaries, Populaire, Behind the Candelabra, Man of Steel 3-D, The East, The Internship, The Frozen Ground, The Wolverine, The Heat, RED 2, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Diana, Blue Jasmine, How I Live Now, Thanks for Sharing, Escape Plan, Like Father, Like Son, Ender’s Game, Philomena, The Counsellor, Catching Fire, Black Nativity, Delivery Man, 12 Years a Slave, Devil’s Due, Inside Llewyn Davis, Mr Peabody & Sherman 3-D, Dallas Buyers Club, The Monuments Men, Bastards, The Stag, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Calvary, Magic Magic, Tracks, Hill Street, X-Men: Days of Future Past 3-D, Benny & Jolene, The Fault in Our Stars, 3 Days to Kill, Boyhood, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 3-D, SuperMensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon, God’s Pocket, Hector and the Search for Happiness, The Expendables 3, What If, Sin City 2, Let’s Be Cops, The Guest, A Most Wanted Man, Wish I Was Here, Noble, Maps to the Stars, Life After Beth, Gone Girl, Northern Soul, The Babadook, Interstellar, The Drop, Mockingjay – Part I, Electricity, Birdman, Taken 3, Wild, Testament of Youth, A Most Violent Year, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Son of a Gun, Patrick’s Day, Selma, It Follows, Paper Souls, Home 3-D, While We’re Young, John Wick, A Little Chaos, The Good Lie, Let Us Prey, The Legend of Barney Thomson, Hitman: Agent 47.

Top 6 Film Features

There’s been a lot of film features, from me obsessing over ignored inflation at the box-office and omnipresent CGI on the screen to the twaddle of Oscar ceremonies and thoroughly bogus critical narratives of New Hollywood.

 

Here are my favourite film features from the last six years:

 

A Proof – Keanu Can Act

Snyder’s Sensibility

What the Hell is … Method Acting?

Terrence Malick’s Upas Tree

5 Reasons to love Tom at the Farm

A Million Ways to Screw up a Western

 

Top 6 TV Features

There’s been quite a bit of musing about TV here, usually in short-form howls about The Blacklist or other such popcorn irritants, but sometimes in longer format, like two disquisitions on Laurence Fishburne’s stint in CSI.

 

Here are my favourite TV features from the last six years:

 

TARDIS: Time And Relative Dimensions In Smartness

Double Exposure: Cutter’s Way/House M.D.

Medium’s Realism    

2ThirteenB Baker Street, Princeton

Funny Bones

An Arrow of a different colour

 

Top 6 Plays

Since I decided to start reviewing plays in summer 2010 there’s been a steady stream of reviews from the Dublin Theatre Festival and regular productions at the Gate, the Abbey, the Olympia, the Gaiety, and Smock Alley.

 

Here are my favourites of the plays I’ve reviewed over the last six years:

 

John Gabriel Borkman

The Silver Tassie

Pygmalion

Juno and the Paycock

The Select: The Sun Also Rises

A Whistle in the Dark

 

And that’s a selection from this list:

Death of a Salesman, Arcadia, Phaedra, John Gabriel Borkman, Enron, The Silver Tassie, The Field, The Cripple of Inishmaan, Attempts on Her Life, Pygmalion, Translations, Hay Fever, Juno and the Paycock, Peer Gynt, Slattery’s Sago Saga, Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorer, Big Maggie, Hamlet, Improbable Frequency, Alice in Funderland, Glengarry Glen Ross, Travesties, The House, The Plough and the Stars, The Lark, Dubliners, The Select: The Sun Also Rises, A Whistle in the Dark, Conversations on a Homecoming, The Talk of the Town, King Lear, Major Barbara, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, The Critic, Desire Under the Elms, Neutral Hero, Macbeth, A Skull in Connemara, The Vortex, An Ideal Husband, Twelfth Night, Aristocrats, Ballyturk, Heartbreak House, The Actor’s Lament, Our Few and Evil Days, Bailegangaire, Spinning, She Stoops to Conquer, The Walworth Farce, The Caretaker, The Man in Two Pieces, Hedda Gabler, The Gigli Concert, A Month in the Country, The Shadow of a Gunman, The Importance of Being Earnest, Bob & Judy, By the Bog of Cats.

 

Top 6 Colour Pieces

It must be admitted that I’ve written fewer colour pieces for the blog than I would have liked, but I’ve greatly enjoyed the occasional adventures of Hollywood insider Micawber-Mycroft; a homage to PG Wodehouse’s Mr Mulliner.

 

Here are my favourite colour pieces from the last six years:

 

How to Watch 300

Mark Pellegrino gets ambitious

Great Production Disasters of Our Time: Apocalypse Now

Micawber-Mycroft explains nervous action directing

Alfred & Bane: Brothers in Arms

Kristen Bell, Book and Candle

 

Six years, my brain hurts a lot…

Don’t Mess With Veronica Mars

The second novel in the Veronica Mars mystery series has been published, and creator Rob Thomas and star Kristen Bell are talking about reviving the TV show for an 8 episode run in the vein of True Detective. What better time to fondly remember one of the last decade’s best shows? Here’s a teaser for my HeadStuff piece on Veronica Mars.

Logan: I thought our story was epic, you know? You and me.

Veronica: Epic how?

Logan: Spanning years and continents. Lives ruined, blood shed. Epic! But summer’s almost here. And we won’t see each other at all. Then you’ll leave town, and it’s over.

Veronica: Logan…

Logan: I’m sorry. About last summer. If I could do it over…

Veronica: C’mon… Ruined lives? Blood shed? You really think a relationship should be that hard?

Logan: No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.

It may seem odd to talk about Veronica Mars as a romantic show, but there’s a reason the ‘epic love’ scene was reprised in the 2014 movie; the show could be swooningly romantic, as evidenced by the giddy crane-work when Veronica kissed Logan for the first time in season 1. That was also one of the most shocking moments of season 1, not only because it felt like Veronica was betraying her dead best friend Lily by moving in on her boyfriend, but also because the pilot had introduced Logan with Veronica’s caustic voiceover: “Every school needs its psychotic jackass. Logan Echolls is ours”. Veronica’s on-off romance with Logan was not unlike Rory Gilmore’s with the equally charismatic but erratic Jess. There were nicer boys than Jason Dohring’s movie-star scion Logan, like Teddy Dunn’s Duncan Kane and Max Greenfield’s rookie cop Leo, but Leo’s fate was the voiceover gag; “It’s the old story. Girl meets boy. Girl uses boy. Girl likes boy. Boy finds out, girl gets what she deserves”; while Duncan’s entanglement with the ill-fated Meg saw Veronica nobly sacrifice her own relationship with Duncan to help him and his baby daughter evade the FBI and the Manning family, sadly pinning to her mirror a note saying ‘True love stories never end’. Season 3’s ‘nice boyfriend’ Chris Lowell’s Piz was the nicest boyfriend of all, and, in incredibly revealing commentary on the season 3 finale, Thomas noted that when Logan extravagantly apologises to a bruised Piz for beating him up earlier over a leaked sex-tape, Piz looks totally defeated; because he knows that Veronica, well-intentioned but ruthless, is the kind of girl who will only ever end up with the kind of guy who, repeatedly, has beaten people to a bloody pulp with his bare hands for hurting her.

Click here to read the full article on how Veronica Mars handled female friendship, a father-daughter detective agency, and how the sunny setting belied a dark heart of noir cynicism.

Veronica Mars in Dundrum and Dundrum Only

I was doubtful that it would even get a cinema release here, but come Friday Veronica Mars will open exclusively in Movies at Dundrum, and the premiere’s already sold out.

Veronica Mars ran from 2004 to 2007 but now, just like Firefly, it has risen from the ashes of unjust cancellation on TV to sneak into cinemas to continue its story. Kristen Bell has never quite found the equal of her iconic role as the teen detective, and creator Rob Thomas’ 90210 reboot never quite hit the heights he’s capable of, so it’s nice to see them reunited for more sleuthing. And, owing to the movie’s small budget being raised by fans on Kickstarter, there’s no question of dumbing things down for a cinema audience unaware of who the beloved characters are – indeed some websites have hailed this as a first: a movie made for the fans because they’re the people who paid for it.

And for that reason Veronica Mars: FBI has been deemed non-canonical by Thomas, because it made it too hard to reunite the cast. So instead rising legal eagle Veronica returns from NYC to sunny and class-ridden Neptune, CA to attend her high school reunion. Present and correct are loyal friends Mac (Tina Majorino) and Wallace (Percy Daggs III), 09er nemesis Madison (Amanda Noret) and frenemy Dick (Ryan Hansen). Dad Keith (Enrico Colantoni) remains a sage, warning against the obvious peril of insipid college boyfriend Piz (Chris Lowell) being replaced in her affections by roguish high school ex Logan (Jason Dohring), who is once again accused of murder and so asking for V’s help. Just when she thought she was out, they pull her back in…

Thomas as good as hinted in commentary on season 3’s finale that Piz couldn’t win in the long run against Logan, so here’s hoping that, come Friday, we see the sparks of ‘epic love’ spanning ‘decades and continents’ fire up.

2014: Hopes

The Monuments Men

George Clooney stars, co-writes with Grant Heslov again, and directs what seems like a promising mash-up of The Train and Ocean’s 11, arriving sometime in February. Somewhat based on fact, a crack team of art experts and soldiers are assembled in the dying months of WWII to try and rescue priceless works of art from wanton destruction at the hands of nihilistic Nazis. The team includes regular Clooney cohort Matt Damon and the great Cate Blanchett, alongside the undoubtedly scene-stealing comedic duo of Bill Murray and John Goodman, and oddly Jean Dujardin. Can Clooney pull off a more serious art heist from Nazis caper? Fingers crossed he can.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson returns in March, apparently in thrall to Lubitsch and Lang. Edward Norton did so well in Moonrise Kingdom that he’s invited back alongside Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, and Owen Wilson. Newcomers are Ralph Fiennes, Saoirse Ronan, Jude Law, Mathieu Amalric, and F Murray Abraham. Fiennes is the legendary concierge of the titular hotel in inter-war Europe, where any gathering storms are ignored in favour of absurd murder plots, art thefts and family squabbles gone mad, as Fiennes gives his lobby-boy protégé an education in dealing with the upper classes which he’ll never forget; if they escape a sticky end long enough to remember.

Veronica Mars

AW YEAH!! It was cancelled in 2007 but Kristen Bell’s iconic teen detective snoops again as creator Rob Thomas sends NYC legal eagle Veronica back to sunny Neptune to attend her high school reunion. Present and correct are friends Mac (Tina Majorino) and Wallace (Percy Daggs III), nemesis Madison (Amanda Noret), and frenemy Dick (Ryan Hansen). Dad Keith (Enrico Colantoni) remains a sage, warning against the obvious peril of insipid boyfriend Piz (Chris Lowell) being replaced in her affections by roguish ex Logan (Jason Dohring), who is once again accused of murder and asking for V’s help. Please let the sparks of ‘epic love’ spanning ‘decades and continents’ rekindle!

Frank

Lenny Abrahamson is the opposite of a Talking Movies favourite, but he’s teamed up with the favourite di tutti favourites Michael Fassbender. Thankfully Abrahamson’s miserabilist tendencies and agonising inertness have been put to one side for this rock-star comedy co-written by journalist Jon Ronson, a man with a verified eye for the absurd having written The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Psychopath Test. The original script loosely based on a cult English comic musician follows wannabe musician Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), who discovers he’s bitten off more than he can chew when he joins a pop band led by the enigmatic Frank (Fassbender) and his scary girlfriend Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Literally everything I loved most about the original disappeared with the time-jump. So the major attraction of April’s sequel isn’t Robert Redford as a shady new SHIELD director, but Revenge’s icy heroine Emily VanCamp as the mysterious Agent 13. Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow regrettably take the place of Tommy Lee Jones and Hayley Atwell in support, but Anthony Mackie as sidekick Falcon is a major boon. The real worry is that directors Joe and Anthony Russo (You, Me and Dupree, yes, that’s right, that’s their resume) will be intimidated by their budget into endless CGI action and precious little else.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

I’m excited and nostalgic, because May 23^rd sees the arrival of the X-3 we deserved, but never got. Bryan Singer returns to the franchise he launched for one of Claremont/Byrne’s most famous storylines. In a dystopian future, where mutantkind has been decimated by the Sentinels of Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage),Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) Wolverine (Hugh Jackman – this is a movie, not a comic, it’s all got to be about Wolverine!) is sent back into the past by Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) to alter history by rapprochement of their younger selves (James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender). Jennifer Lawrence co-stars, with every X-Men actor!

22 Jump Street
A proper summer blockbuster release date of June 13^th for this sequel recognises the hilarious success of the absurd original. Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) (or was it the other way round?) go undercover in college to crack another drug ring, and once again their fantastic bromance starts to crack under the strain. The original’s unwieldy team of writers and directors are back, as are Ice Cube, Nick Offerman, Rob Riggle and Dave Franco. Amber Stevens and Wyatt Russell are the college kids, but sadly Brie Larson is absent. Jonah Hill appears in full goth gear, which seems to suggest that the absurdity levels remain healthy.

The Trip to Italy

It’s not clear yet if we’ll get this as an abridged film or just be treated to the full version as 6 episodes on BBC 2. In either case Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon reunite to play heightened versions of themselves as they bicker their way around restaurants in Italy for the purposes of writing magazine reviews. 2010’s endearing roving sitcom The Trip, with its competitive Michael Caine impersonations was a joy, and director Michael Winterbottom takes the show on tour here. And no better man for the job, as this originated with their duelling Al Pacinos at the end of his A Cock and Bull Story.

Magic in the Moonlight
Woody Allen’s latest should hit our screens around September. This time round the cottage industry is giving us a period romantic comedy, set in the south of France, which takes place in the 1920s and 1930s. The cast is as usual intimidating: Emma Stone, Colin Firth, Marcia Gay Harden, the imperious Eileen Atkins (one of the few actresses capable of domineering over Judi Dench), and Jacki Weaver. Will F Scott and his ilk make an appearance? Who knows! There are no details, just stills of open-top cars, drop waists, and cloche hats so this could be a close cousin of Sweet & Lowdown or Midnight in Paris.

Gone Girl

The start of October sees the great David Fincher return, with his first film in three years, and it’s another adaptation of a wildly successful crime novel. Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy (Rosamund Pike) are seemingly the perfect couple, but when she disappears suddenly on their 5^th wedding anniversary, Nick becomes the prime suspect as he discovers his wife told friends she was scared of him. Could he have killed her? Or is the truth far more twisted? Gillian Flynn has adapted her own work, and, incredibly, penned an entirely new third act to keep everyone guessing. The unusually colourful supporting cast includes Neil Patrick Harris and Patrick Fugit.

The Interview
The pitch is that an attractive talk show host and his producer unwittingly get caught up in an international assassination plot. So far so blah, if that was say Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson directed by Shawn Levy, except that the host is actually James Franco, the producer is Seth Rogen, the interview is in North Korea, and the awesome Lizzy Caplan is the rogue femme fatale CIA agent who drags them into all sorts of mischief. And it’s written and directed by Rogen and Evan Goldberg who distinguished themselves with 2013’s best comedy This is The End. This is very likely to mop up the non-Gone Girl audience.

Interstellar

Christopher Nolan tries to redeem himself after TDKR with a small personal project, taking the same release date as The Prestige did. Well, small, in that the WB needed Paramount to stump up some cash for it, and personal, in that Spielberg spent years developing it; albeit with the assistance of Jonathan Nolan. Scientists attempt to observe a wormhole into another dimension, and that’s about all we know, other than vague speculations about ecological crises. Matthew McConaughey 2.0 stars alongside Anne Hathaway, Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, John Lithgow, Jessica Chastain, and, yes, Michael Caine – who is now as essential a part of the signature as Bill Murray for Wes Anderson.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part I

Jennifer Lawrence goes for third biggest hit at the North American box office for the third year in a row with her latest turn as rebel heroine Katniss Everdeen on November 21^st. Having survived the Quarter Quell and the destruction of her District, she discovers President Snow has Peeta hostage, and that the rebellion has a leader, President Coin (Julianne Moore), ready to embark on a full-scale bloody war of rebellion against the Capitol. Recount writer (and Buffy shmuck) Danny Strong is the new screenwriter, and Elementary star Natalie Dormer joins the cast, but director Francis Lawrence remains in situ, with his considered visual style.

Hit and Run

Punk’d provocateur Dax Shepard co-directs and also co-writes and stars in a hybrid of action and rom-com as a goodhearted ex-con who riskily drives girlfriend Kristen Bell to Los Angeles.

Annie (Bell) is a teacher in a terrible community college issued with an ultimatum by her boss (Kristen Chenoweth) – do a job interview in L.A. for the chance to create a course based on her unique approach to conflict resolution or lose her job. Annie decides to go, but it involves a parting of the ways with her boyfriend Charlie (Shepard), who is in witness protection after testifying against some L.A. bank-robbers and can’t go back there without endangering himself and Annie too. So of course he goes. Much to the chagrin of his case marshal (Tom Arnold), Annie’s controlling ex-boyfriend (Michael Rosenbaum), and, eventually and inevitably, the gang he testified against (Bradley Cooper, Ryan Hansen and Joy Bryant). But will Annie be able to forgive Charlie for the awful secret he has kept from her about his past life?

Some films possess a mysterious quality that makes you want to like them, and this is one of them. You are rooting for this film to work, and it so nearly takes flight that you end up feeling bad at its consistent failure to soar. Tom Arnold blusters for all he’s worth as a hopelessly inept federal marshal but while his slapstick scenes of vehicular mayhem have all the necessary elements they never catch full comedic fire. The cast is ultimately the best thing about this movie. Smallville fans will enjoy seeing Lex Luthor sporting hair but still acting like an entitled bully, while Veronica Mars fans will enjoy seeing Bell and her old 09er nemesis Hansen clash. Bell will never find as a good a role as Veronica but she carries this movie effectively with her real-life boyfriend Shepard.

The car-chases are the selling points of this movie but these are car-chases shot on a shoe-string budget with hand-held cameras, and while the three chases are good they’re not brilliant. Indeed nearly everything is good but not brilliant. Bradley Cooper has a standout scene with an irresponsible dog-owner that is memorable but quite questionable. Definitively not good are the endless complaining and explaining conversations between Annie and Charlie. These are meant to create a crossover hit by appealing to women, but they’re inferior to the very similar emotional confrontations that punctuate the gory carnage on Supernatural, and they make it increasingly difficult to care about annoying Annie. Indeed the funniest moment comes at the end of the film when her character is undercut with an absurdist cameo by Sean Hayes from Will & Grace.

It’s hard to dismiss a film so many talented actors volunteered to work for scale on but Shepard’s script has noble intentions yet just can’t achieve its own ambitions.

2/5

Kristen Bell, Book and Candle

INT.HOLLYWOOD OFFICE-DAY

CHRISTIAN BALE and KRISTEN BELL sit in the waiting room of their agent’s office. The celebrated Delaney, agent to a galaxy of stars, well, some, is in a meeting with fellow agent Montgomery Moncrieff Micawber-Mycroft, and his terrifying secretary Janine has banished his two clients from her office to the outermost reaches of the Delaney establishment; a room entirely devoid of potted plants. Bale and Bell sit on opposite sides of the room with a large candle on the desk in between them. Bale is idly flipping thru a screenplay. Bell is slowly reading a bound book.

BALE: (sighs, putting down screenplay, glances at Bell) What is that thing? A new Paul Thomas Anderson script?

BELL: (looks up) What? No. It’s a, it’s the book for a new musical on Broadway.

BALE: You can sing?

BELL: (puts down the book, offended) Yes I can sing!

BALE: I didn’t know.

BELL: Did you not watch Veronica Mars?

BALE: No!

BELL: What about solidarity between stable-mates?

BALE: Oh, come on. Did you watch Reign of Fire?

BELL: Yes!

BALE: Oh… My apologies.

BELL: I sang Blondie in a karaoke scene. (sings) “One way or another I’m gonna find you, I’m gonna gonna gonna gonna getcha, one way or another”.

BALE: Okay, you can sing. That’s a pretty good song to use on a detective show.

BELL: It really is, isn’t it? That’s what we thought when we decided to freaking use it, you Welsh moron.

BALE: Hey! I was about to be nice!

BELL: Oh yeah? How?

BALE: Maybe you might to take a look at this. (tosses his script to her)

BELL: (she flips thru the first few pages). Ugh! An Abba musical.

BALE: You don’t like Abba?

BELL: I love Abba. I hate that musical. It’s so badly written it’s not funny. I’ve been in Reefer Madness. I’ve done Sondheim. I want something that’s at that level.

BALE: Picky picky.

BELL: Well, not all of us can recover from choices like Reign of Fire…

BALE: HEY! I apologised for that already!

JANINE enters from the door on the right.

JANINE: Sorry to keep you waiting, but Mr Delaney will be about another 10 minutes.

BALE: (groans) AWWWWW… Fine, whatever. Can I get a coffee?

JANINE: I’m afraid we’re not allowed to give you coffee anymore Mr Bale after the incident regarding the espresso…

BALE: THAT WAS A TOTALLY LEGITIMATE COMPLAINT ON MY PART!!!

(Janine stares at Bale for 30 seconds without saying a word, during which time he becomes slightly cowed, and then she lights the candle on the desk.)

BELL: What’s the candle for?

JANINE: It makes people calm.

BELL: I’ve never seen it there before.

JANINE: You’ve never had to wait with Mr Bale before.

BALE: I wanted a triple espresso and I got a double espresso. Anyone would freak!

BELL: (ignoring him) What’s the hold-up with Delaney?

JANINE: Mr Delany is in a meeting with Mr Micawber-Mycroft.

BELL: Who?

JANINE: When the time comes to know who he is, he will find you.

Janine walks back into her office. Bell stares after her, nonplussed.

BELL: Well that was fairly Yoda like… (looks over at Bale and sees multiple scripts flying up in the air) What are you doing?

BALE: (rooting around in his bag) I’m trying to find a decent screenplay.

BELL: Ha! Join the club.

BALE: I’m serious! That’s what I’m doing here. Delaney keeps sending me crap.

BELL: And again, join the club.

BALE: I mean look at this! (brandishes screenplay) It’s a raunchy comedy about some guy who breaks up with some girl and goes to Hawaii to forget her, but, wait for it, she’s gone there too, with her new boyfriend. Hilarity freaking ensues. What am I supposed to do with that?

BELL: Mug for laughs?

BALE: I’m not good at broad comedy. Or you know comedy comedy.

BELL: Comedy comedy?

BALE: I can do comedy when it’s relief in a dramatic setting, I can do comedy when it’s black and part of a role, but I can’t do comedy when that’s all there is. Underneath, I need to be more. In a comedy there’s nothing under the role.

BELL: Whatever. I’ll see your holiday comedy and raise you a pointless role as the love interest in some dumb Terminator reboot. Like I want to stand around beside John Connor and some other guy, pouting concernedly while stuff blows up…

BALE: Delaney sent you a Terminator movie?!

BELL: Have it if you like. (she tosses the script to him)

BALE: (flicks thru the first few pages) Ooh, nice! If I took John Connor I wouldn’t be the lead, strictly speaking, but I’d be the name if I could convince them to cast an unknown in the other part. That way it wouldn’t be my fault if it tanked, but I could claim I was the draw if it worked; and then BOOM – another franchise.

BELL: I thought you just wrapped on The Dark Knight, don’t you want something different?

BALE: I don’t want to do this all my life, no one would.

BELL: What, make franchise movies?

BALE:  Be Batman. I need a new franchise so I can make small films like Harsh Times.

BELL: I didn’t see that.

BALE: No one did. That’s why I need to make franchises. What else have you got?

BELL: Um, (rummages in her bag) I’ve got some truly boring love interest part with almost nothing to do except stand around and look concerned in a really long and painfully dull Michael Mann script about some 1930s bank-robber. I’ve got some absolutely whack-job script about some guy who pretends to be a priest during the Rape of Nanking and then starts to save girls from prostitution.

BALE: Doesn’t sound too whack-job…

BELL: The story’s not whack-job. But like, what the hell does Delaney want me to read it for? All the female parts are Chinese. I could maybe have played the lead Chinese prostitute in 1950 with awful make-up, but I wouldn’t want to do it even if I could somehow still get away with it now in 2007. It would be like you breaking out the boot polish to play Othello. And finally I have an actual good script. It’s a bit clichéd, about some underdog boxer who overcomes adversity, but the 4 main parts are all pretty juicy. The girlfriend is a good role but… it’s set in Boston and I can’t even do Mayor Quimby. What have you got?

BALE: (rummages in his bag) Playing second fiddle to some girl in Rome in a rom-com, this script is actually even worse than the Abba comedy. Oh, also, some raunchy comedy about a guy and a girl who might break up so they go Hawaii to reconnect, even worse than the other couples in Hawaii script I got. Also some bizarre movie about some chick who goes to a strip-club and thru a lot of backstabbing becomes the star stripper who sings. It’s weird. It’s like this campy PG-13 version of Showgirls.

BELL: There’s an oxymoron…

BALE: It’s truly terrible, but at least it stands out. There’s this other script which might as well just be 20 pages of set-up and then 80 blank pages with the words ‘Hilarity Ensues’ where the page numbers ought to be. Some girl finds that some girl she hated in high school is going to be her sister-in-law. I actually fell asleep reading it. And there was a truly diabolical script I didn’t get past 30 pages of where a woman chains her husband to a toilet just before his young squeeze arrives and then they get burgled. Chained to a toilet! Why in God’s name would I want to do that part?

BELL: Why is Delaney sending you so many godawful rom-coms?

BALE: I don’t know! That’s why I’m here. Maybe he thinks I need something different, light, but I need a franchise! And what’s with your scripts? Minor turns behind male leads?!

BELL: I mean is this how people think of Kristen Bell and Christian Bale?

BALE: (leans forward, stunned) Say that again.

BELL: (quizzically) Kristen Bell and Christian Bale.

BALE: Mumble it like Delaney does, when he’s trying to hide his cluelessness.

BELL: Kristen Bell and Christian Bale…

(The penny drops for both of them simultaneously. Delaney has been mixing up their scripts for quite a while because of their soundalike names.)

BALE: (screams in fury) DELANEY!

BELL: (howls in anguish) DELANEY!

Janine pokes her head around the door.

JANINE: Oh God, what’s he done now?

Fanboys Vs Paul

At what point on the homage-o-meter does a film become so dependent for its laughs on just referencing other films that it simply ceases to exist in its own right?

I’m posing this question because I quite recently watched both Paul and Fanboys which are so referentially dependent that taking away that crutch of familiarity would cripple both. Paul would be less hobbled than Fanboys, because it’s operating on a higher level of comedic sureness, but the two films share the same basic DNA – nerds go on a road trip and things get very silly, with copious references to late 1970s/early 1980s pop culture, and Seth Rogen even appearing in both movies. There is obviously a huge difference in budgets between the two films, evident in looking at the star wattage of the casts. Sam Huntington, Jay Baruchel, Dan Fogler, and Kristen Bell for Fanboys weigh in substantially lighter than Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jason Bateman, and Kristen Wiig for Paul. But that’s not that clinching, throwing money at bad jokes doesn’t make them funny.

Huntington is a gifted comedian who was a sublime Jimmy Olsen, Jay Baruchel is a reliable comedic presence, and Kristen Bell rarely gets to be as awesome in film as she was as Veronica Mars but she’s always got that charisma in reserve. Dan Fogler, however, sums up the problem with Fanboys. I’ve been mystified by Fogler’s rise because I don’t think he’s particularly funny in Balls of Fury, Good Luck Chuck, or Fanboys. Indeed the only time I’ve been impressed by him was in Love Happens where in a straighter role than usual he was quite good, even damn good in one serious scene. Fanboys sees him purvey his usual brand of crude, physical humour (constant dry humping) and he puts so much obvious energy and commitment into his performance you actually feel bad singling him out as a synecdoche of the film’s failings.

Fanboys is a film where the script constantly falls back on crudity and slapstick and asks its performers to mug like hell to hide the shortcomings of the material. It is intermittently amusing, but, with some exceptions, those laughs come from references to the Star Wars film, or from the efforts of cameoing stars whose presence are the only reason jokes work – think Carrie Fisher saying “I know” when someone says “I love you”, or William Shatner boasting “I’m William Shatner, I can score anything”. Even Rogen’s dual roles only work because of the sublime moment where as a Trekkie his beloved Kirk statue is destroyed and he cradles it shouting “KHAAAAAAAAAAN!” Take away the famous actors in tiny roles, and you’re left with a deeply suspect attempt to graft an emotionally manipulative arc about a dying friend’s last wishes onto raucous road trip comedy.

Paul by contrast has a far less weighty arc that works much better. It just wants Pegg to get a girlfriend and Frost to finish writing his novel as the transformative result of encounter with runaway alien Paul. It’s a funnier film than Fanboys because, though Paul’s dialogue is crude and the Kristen Wiig sub-plot is foul-mouthed and oddly mean-spirited, there is still more comedic gold left when you sift away the referential gags. Those references to Lucas, Spielberg, Zemeckis and Landis are hysterically funny, not least the moment when our heroes walk into the Roadhouse to find the band playing the Cantina music. But they are equalled by the absurdity of Jason Bateman’s character name, and the peerless Kristen Wiig’s crestfallen reaction to Pegg telling her she ‘should go’, meaning to visit the UK, but she takes it as meaning to just go away.

Paul is better than Fanboys but, while it’s hilarious to see Paul offering Spielberg advice on the phone on creating E.T., does Paul just feature too many referential gags versus original gags compared to the previous two Pegg/Frost movies directed, and crucially co-written, by Edgar Wright? Sigourney Weaver’s appearance saw me start a mental timer until the line ‘Get away from her you bitch!’ was referenced, and of course it was. Are Pegg and Frost compensating for the loss of Wright’s flair for visual absurdity by gripping ever more tightly their pop culture talismans? If, by some miracle, you could find a viewer entirely unfamiliar with cinema and pop culture from 1974 onwards would they still find Paul, and especially Fanboys, funny at all? Or would they merely look baffled and say ‘I don’t get it, what’s meant to be so funny about that line?’ Obviously though such an ideal viewer is impossible as Lucas and Spielberg colonised the popular imagination in a manner most film-makers can only dream of.

Still, it must be asked at what point doffing the cap to Lucas and Spielberg becomes a despairing admittance of defeat at ever conjuring up something equal to their magic?

Who the Hell is … Kevin Durand?

In this, the first of a series of occasional features, I’m going to celebrate a character actor who I always cheer when I see hove into view.

Kevin Durand is a Canadian stand-up comedian turned actor who has been consistently thwarted by his own physique. Durand first came to my attention as Joshua in season 2 of James Cameron’s Dark Angel. Joshua was the original genetic experiment by the shadowy genetic scientist Sandeman who founded military program Manticore to create super-soldiers after putting a bit too much canine DNA in the mix for Joshua. Buried under layers of prosthetics and make-up Durand gave a fine performance as the hulking dog-faced man, mixing humour with tragic nobility, that helped raised the show’s game considerably after its misfiring first run. After this turn though Durand’s great height, 6’6″, started to get in the way of his natural comedic talents. In a world of leading ladies like Kristen Bell (5’1″), Hayden Panettiere (5’1″), and Ellen Page (5’1″), you can see how it might be just a bit of a problem in getting leading man roles in romantic comedies…

He floated through half of America’s TV shows in one-shot guest roles, notably as a terrifying psychopath in a very chilling episode of The Dead Zone, before a far bigger role in season 4 of LOST as the psychopathic leader of the mercenaries dispatched to the island to kidnap Ben, and then returned as a slightly more rounded version of the same villain in the frankly ridiculous parallel universe used as filler for season 6 of LOST. This of course led to a higher profile and an appearance in Wolverine followed, as the Blob. Sadly no one either noticed or could win the argument over relative star billings that Durand rather than the miscast Liev Schreiber was the natural choice to play Wolverine’s half-brother Sabretooth. His role as the Blob though was perhaps the best use anyone had made of his uniquely endearing mix of comedic timing and imposing physique since Dark Angel. It was certainly more rounded than his thugs in 3:10 to Yuma, Smokin’ Aces, The Butterfly Effect, or his vengeful archangel in Supernatural knock-off Legion. Thankfully, and probably courtesy of his Yuma gang-leader Russell Crowe, he’s essaying a rare good guy role in Robin Hood next month, he is of course playing Little John…

Can Durand overcome his own physique and escape from the pigeonhole of one-note psychos or insanely script-specific good guy parts? Here’s hoping that Robin Hood marks the beginning of more varied and high-profile roles for the man who should be the next Donald Sutherland, sharing as they do an ungainly height, a goofy grin, and a flair for playing villainy, comedy and pathos equally well. Oh, and did I mention he’s Canadian too?