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The confluence of Halloween and writing about Jerry Seinfeld's C-movie made me flashback to an interview nine years ago with Godzilla at his retirement condo in Del Boca Vista (a Seinfeld sitcom reference), although the dateline was lost in the archives. It came on the eve of the release of that gawdawdful remake starring Matthew Broderick, who also co-stars with Seinfeld in Bee Movie. See how my twisted mind works? Enjoy!
What is the deal
with Bee Movie? It has bees, it is a movie, but it isn’t a B movie. More like a
C, which makes sense because people will see it, no matter what.
Then they’ll ask: "Gee, how can it be that a bee becomes a C?"
Not even Jerry Seinfeld can come up with a snappy play on words to answer that.
Bee Movie is Seinfeld’s first feature film and, like his eponymous sitcom, is all about nothing. The movie is colorfully animated but comically inert, an idea that Jerry, George and Kramer might concoct on the couch and Elaine would crush. Seinfeld is a master of television but movies aren’t his domain.
See Friday's Floridian for a full review that would make Newman smile.
There are one too many Academy Award winners acting in American Gangster, and the odd man out is Russell Crowe.
That’s not to dismiss his performance as a narcotics cop doggedly trailing a drug kingpin. The problem is that Crowe’s stature demands not only equal billing but equal time with Denzel Washington’s intense portrayal of the drug runner. This movie isn’t big enough for both of them, although director Ridley Scott certainly tries.
American Gangster is an ambitious attempt to re-create 1970s crime and cinema, telling the true story of Frank Lucas (Washington), who cornered New York’s heroin trade. Frank did it his way, dealing directly with Thailand suppliers rather than Mafia channels, so he could sell purer smack for cut-rate prices. Washington makes him a blend of Superfly and Michael Corleone in one striking package.
American Gangster could use a little more action, although a ballistic raid on a heroin den cooks, and a little less of Richie Roberts (Crowe), the cop on Frank's silky trail. It’s his story, too, although that isn’t clear until Scott condenses an interesting outcome to an epilogue, just when one Oscar winner is catching up to the other.
Martian Child pessimistically answers the question: Is there intelligent life in Hollywood?
Not if filmmakers consider stripping the truth from a true story and replacing it with schmaltz is smart.
Not if producers spend an estimated $27-million to make a movie in 2005, replace its unsatisfactory ending in 2006 and finally decide in 2007 to spend millions more releasing it. Martian Child isn’t worth their money or yours, or the wait.
It might’ve been, if director Menno Meyjes and two screenwriters stuck to David Gerrold’s reality of being a gay man adopting and adapting to an emotionally abused child – a double dose of relevant drama. The new father in Martian Child (played by John Cusack) is a clichéd widower seeking a new lady and the kid, now an orphan, isn’t sympathetic, only weird in his belief that he hails from Mars.
Martian Child isn’t compelling; it is the sequel to K-Pax that nobody wanted.
The rest will be published Thursday in Weekend. Read the review, skip the movie.
Just got back from the 15th annual Times Festival of Reading at USF-Bayboro, one of the reasons why I'm proud to work this joint. Had the pleasure of introducing former WWE heavyweight wrestling 
champion Chris Jericho, whose autobiography A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex is a breezy read about his rise from a Winnepeg wrestling fan to WWE fame.
The book ends as his first match for Vince McMahon's crew is beginning, so a sequel isn't a bad idea.
Of course, I had to ham-up my intro, delivering it like a ring announcer and charging up the crowd. Chris seemed pleasantly shocked by it, kidding that I should join the rest of his book tour, or just lead him into McDonald's when he wants a burger and fast service.
Chris is a delightful guy, and you should have seen how fans who attended his talk and lined up on a hyper-muggy day for autographs respond to him. Even better, how he responds back, never rushing anyone who wants to share their favorite mat memories, or pose for pictures. The guy is a pro in more ways than one.
He's also very funny. Chris has appeared on VH-1's Best Week Ever and Mad TV, among other shows. I'm impressed that he regularly works out his improv chops with the L.A. legends The Groundlings that spawned Will Ferrell among other comedy stars. He also wrote, directed and starred in a Spinal Tap homage with his rock band Fozzy that I need to find online.
Chris may be rejoining the WWE soon and McMahon's movie division that put Stone Cold Steve Austin in The Condemned and Kane in a couple of horror flicks should give him a chance in an action comedy.
Now I need to relax before tonight's Halloween party at Tom French and Kelley Benham's house. You know, for being such award-winning serious journalists, they're really a couple of kids when it comes to Halloween, with the best decorated home you could ever dream have nightmares about.
Princess Di and I have a team costume that I won't spoil. One hint: "I'm having an old friend for dinner."
Lars and the Real Girl is this year’s Little Miss Sunshine, a tiny independent film that is richer than a synopsis suggests, lingering more fondly than expected. With any luck, this movie will be the same kind of dark-horse contender for awards.
Like many of the best films, it is only playing at one theater: AMC Woodlands 20 in Oldsmar. With a little more luck, it'll expand in the next few weeks, as Little Miss Sunshine did.
While typing my review, there was a thriller titled Love Object coincidentally playing on TV. It is precisely what anyone expects from a movie about a lonely man and his inflatable sex doll: He is deranged, “she” seems to be possessed and anyone intruding upon their kinky relationship is dead meat.
It is everything
that Lars and the Real Girl isn’t, thankfully and sometimes miraculously.
Director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Nancy Oliver don’t aim for cheap thrills and smutty laughs. Some moviegoers at a recent screening obviously expected that, snickering at the sight of a latex woman with customized buxomness and ripe, ready lips. They shared the stunned reactions of characters on screen as chronically bashful Lars (Ryan Gosling) treated “Bianca” like, well, a real girl.
Then something remarkable gradually happened. Everyone is Lars’ Midwestern burg started doing the same thing, humoring the nicest guy in town through an obvious psychological crisis. I could sense the audience shifting to their point of view. By the end of Gillespie’s film, naughty laughter was transformed into a collective swoon for an adorably strange love story.
Lars and Bianca’s relationship remains platonic, keeping his psychosis sympathetic. But there is palpable tension in the possibility that Lars’ bizarre, fulfilling fantasy will be exposed, crushing his late-blooming spirit. He deserves to be happy. Don’t we all?
Read the rest of the review Friday on page 2B.
Those of you who pay attention know what my Dad and his movie theater influences mean to me. He is 87 today, and prouder of his surviving son than anyone would've guessed 50 years ago. At least that's what he says between Rachel Ray reruns.
Love you, pops (as the kids say these days). Thank you.
... but don't try these costumes at home. The Botox fee alone will leave you unable to pay your insurance bill. Maxim has a slideshow of the scariest celebrity faces. Enjoy!
http://www.maxim.com/StupidFun/Jocelynwildenstein/slideshow/7983/484.aspx
Help me out here. I'm asked by the Gasparilla Film Festival folks for suggestions about Florida-based films to show and discuss in a festival sidebar next spring.
We're pretty much set on the underrated, under-seen John Goodman flick Matinee, about a William Castle-style schlockmeister. 
I suggested Blood Feast, 1963's grandpa of gore set in Miami Beach. If you haven't seen it, it's the Citizen Kane of splatter flicks.
Susan Fernandez, a USF professor who co-wrote a great book about Florida films titled Sunshine in the Dark, thinks Cocoon would be a better choice.
You can help. Ring me here or persall@sptimes.com and honor a true Sunshine State classic.
Here's my best Clarence Darrow impersonation to defend Blood Feast to the other idea contributors. If we win, I'll tell you a good story about that flick:
Hi everyone. I have to politely defend Blood Feast. I think Susan underestimates the Florida look of BF, including South Beach before it was trendy but gaining new wealth, and the beach itself (albeit mostly at night) before condos.There's more I'm sure but I haven't seen BF in 3-4 years.
Then, there's the fact that BF is the first true splatter flick, five years before Romero or his long line of imitators, and a drive-in movie sensation of which no less than d-i movie critic Joe Bob Briggs eloquently spoke about a few years ago at the Sarasota Film Festival.
If it's good enough for Joe Bob, it's good enough for anybody.
There's also a shot at getting the director, Herschell Gordon Lewis, to add something. He's old but collaborating with a couple of local filmmakers in Tampa Bay's -- sorry -- active gore filmmaking market that will buy tickets.
And, as some folks know, I can tell a story about BF.
Just my two cents. Thanks for considering.
Steve
/////
You guys let me know what you think. Am I barking up the wrong dismembered limb?
And now Michael Douglas moves into the twilight period of modeling his father, Kirk. Not that the son’s age is as advanced as his father’s when Kirk started playing whimsical geezers. But with Kirk pushing 91, there isn’t much time left for Michael to acknowledge his face-sake legacy.
King of California
reminds me of Kirk’s last, muted hurrah in 1999’s Diamonds, when he played a former
boxer on an improbable treasure hunt. The old man’s son (Dan Aykroyd) thought
him crazy in that movie. Michael’s character Charlie in Mike Cahill’s film is
certifiably so, just released from a mental hospital and probably too soon.
Charlie allows Michael Douglas to appear grayer and shaggier than usual, his wild eyes looking beyond everything not leading to his own private El Dorado. While hospitalized, Charlie found a legend on the Internet about a 17th century Spanish explorer who buried a fortune. There’s gold in them there California hills, or maybe not.
Evan Rachel Wood (Across the Universe, Thirteen) plays Charlie’s daughter Miranda. Like Aykroyd in Diamonds she pities her father’s apparent delusion and loves him too much to not lend a hand. It is nice to see Wood playing a teenager without guile or vices for a change. “Nice” is the operative word for King of California.
Cahill’s movie also recalls the Disney movie Holes with its buried treasure angle and peculiar humor. Of course, that movie didn’t include brushes with swingers, a misguided detour Cahill employs to make this a more adult fantasy. An intrusive musical score filled with jangling dobros and an occasional Theramin riff cues your smiles. A light-hearted character study becomes a so-so caper flick and then something less.
The best reason to check out King of California is seeing Michael Douglas pulling out the crazy stops with his best performance since Wonder Boys.
Playing against type, he proves that beneath the jet set élan beats a gifted actor’s heart, but one requiring special material. Michael doesn’t do comedy well (The In-Laws remake, for example). Here, he unearths nuggets of amusement, making a showy role less obvious than it likely appeared on the page. You can almost hear Kirk saying “Good job, son,” then adding how he would’ve done it better.
King of California begins a very limited engagement Sunday at Tampa Theatre.
Got this news release from the Gasparilla Film Festival folks. Looks like they're already leaps ahead of last year, when the guy who played Atilla the Hun in Night at the Museum was the festival's top "celebrity."
Tampa, FL October 16th, 2007 Ms. Brittany Snow to accept the 'Rising Star' Award at Gasparilla Film Festival (Tampa Bay)
The Gasparilla Film Festival (Tampa Bay) is proud to announce that Ms. Brittany Snow has accepted an invitation to receive the Festival's 'Rising Star-Female' award at its Closing Night ceremonies slated for Sunday, March 2nd, 2008.
Ms. Snow, a Tampa native, is one of Hollywood's brightest rising stars, having featured in this summer's critically acclaimed movie, "Hairspray," alongside with John Travolta, Christopher Walken, and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Previously, she starred in the NBC series, "American Dreams," as well as having a recurring role on the long running daytime drama, "The Guiding Light," where she won Soap Opera Digest's 'Outstanding Child Actor' Award. Other film credits include "John Tucker Must Die" as well as the "The Pacifier," starring Vin Diesel.
Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio will reteam early next year on "Shutter Island," a Laeta Kalogridis-scripted adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel.Pic is coming together quickly as a co-production between Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures, with production starting in March. Paramount will supervise production and distribute domestically while Columbia is looking to distribute internationally.
The project will be a co-production between Phoenix Pictures, Scorsese's Sikelia and DiCaprio's Appian Way banners. Mike Medavoy, Arnold Messer, Brad Fischer and Scorsese will produce. Lehane, Kalogridis and Louis Phillips will be exec producers.
Drama is set in 1954, with DiCaprio in final talks to play U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, who is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding on the remote Shutter Island.
Scouting will begin shortly on the film, which most likely will shoot in Massachusetts, Connecticut or Nova Scotia.
Lehane's novel "Mystic River" was turned into a film by Clint Eastwood, and his "Gone Baby Gone" is the basis for the Ben Affleck-directed drama that opened this past weekend.
"Shutter Island" was originally optioned in 2003 by Columbia. The option lapsed and Lehane's Gersh reps resold it to Phoenix Pictures. The producer enlisted Kalogridis, the "Alexander" scribe who also wrote "Battle Angel" and "The Dive" for James Cameron. Phoenix and Kalogridis developed "Shutter Island" for about a year.
Scorsese and DiCaprio, who've now worked together on three films, were looking at several projects to do early next year, including an adaptation of "The Wolf of Wall Street." The "Shutter Island" script quickly drew both director and star, and a deal is expected to fall into place quickly.
I knew I was busier than usual this week (and last week) but had no idea that such a crowded slate of new releases is an industry record.
The smart folks at BoxOfficeMojo.com posted this information on its site (a great source I use all the time):
"30 Days of Night, The Comebacks, Gone Baby Gone, Rendition, Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour, The Ten Commandments (2007) and Things We Lost in the Fire open on the weekend of Oct. 19-21, tying the record for most movies debuting nationwide.
Additionally, Into the Wild expands nationwide (ed. note from only a handful of screens last week) for a total of eight movies reaching wide release, a new record for a single weekend.
Since 1982, there have been 20 weekends where six or more movies debuted in and/or expanded to wide release. Counting only debuts, there have been 11 weekends with six or more. Seven is the highest number of nationwide debuts in a single weekend. That's happened twice before since 1982: Dec. 16-18, 1983 and Dec. 22-25, 1995.
The Christmas season is more prone to gluts of new releases than other times of the year."
You can check the list of crowded weekends -- and click them to see what those movies were, by visiting this page at boxofficemojo.com
One of Hollywood's classiest old-school actors died Tuesday. Deborah Kerr, 86, passed away in her native England after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease.
Miss Kerr earned six Oscar nominations, most notably for playing against her graceful image in From Here to Eternity. Kerr was the military wife having a torrid affair with Burt Lancaster. Their clinch-and-kiss on a beach was the film's signature scene. Her most famous role that wasn't nominated was as the tragic lover in An Affair to Remember (which you might know better in its remade form, Sleepless in Seattle).
You can read the Associated Press obituary for Deborah Kerr here.
Here's a trailer to whet your appetite for Into the Wild, and test Daly's instructional skills about how to post one.
Watching the first half of Legally Blonde, the Broadway play on MTV, not the movie that plays everywhere.
Looks like the kind of thing I'd pay a hundred bucks to see in New York (two hundred if Dianne isn't shopping, which would be cheaper, if you know her sales sense).
Better than the movie, which I liked, although the actor playing Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon in the two LB movies, one that I don't blame you if you forget) looks like the lead in Hairspray will be her next gig.
It's the kind of hyperactive musical with a positive message for the audience it's pandering to that some studio (Paramount is likely with the MTV connection) or Disney (with its High School Musical lottery ticket) will turn into a movie. I want to see Stifler's mom reprising her as Elle's hairdresser, who has a show-stopper song about her Irish fetish and what it taught her about love -- and dancing without moving her arms.
Elle's progression through Harvard Law School was running late, so it'll wait. But clicking off TiVo and finding Nancy Grace's badgering face on the screen let me know what Elle's doing today.
The crucial question looming over Rendition doesn’t concern torture unless you’re terrified of tabloid games.
How the heck did
Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon become a temporary romantic item while
working in different parts of the world? “Gyllenspoon” never share a scene,
set, or supporting actor. Rendition is an international jigsaw puzzle like Babel, only with big
pieces.
In that comparative respect, Witherspoon is frantic Brad Pitt in Morocco and Gyllenhaal is that Japanese schoolgirl who doesn’t wear panties.
Excuse me for not taking Rendition as seriously as director Gavin Hood mistakenly believes. This isn’t a drama ripped from the headlines of due process denied to terrorism suspects. More like cut-and-pasted by a hysterical blogger skimming the daily news.
Rendition is
timid, which is one thing a movie about the terrorism era can’t afford to be.
Read the entire review Thursday in Weekend.
Maybe it was the high altitude or the endless praise for
Into the Wild at the Telluride Film Festival.
For whatever reason and contrary to his image, Sean Penn was in a good mood.
Joking and chain-smoking, the mercurial filmmaker-activist wasn’t fazed when his mic failed during an open-air panel in a downtown park.
Someone stuck in the 80’s broke the silence, yelling “Jeff Spicoli!” Penn responded with a resigned smile and projected his voice to be heard. A woman interrupted, complaining she couldn’t and the actor inside faked seduction: “Come closer.”
“I’d love to,” she cooed back, and Hollywood’s baddest boy blushed.
Those lighter moments relaxed Penn’s scowl as he spoke passionately about making Into the Wild, the true-life story of Chirstopher McCandless, a privileged college graduate who traded mainstream society for an ill-fated road trip. The movie opens locally this Friday.
You can check Thursday's Weekend for my thoughts on Into the Wild, and more about Penn's Telluride talk.
But here's one nugget that won't make the paper.
At one point, a filmmaker complained about selling her indie film to a distributor who wanted to trim a few frames here and there. Penn listened sympathetically then offered this advice:
"There's a little trick that I stumbled on with my first film, that works very well and I encourage you to use. Since (studios) understand money, you just make a brief call and remind them that a bullet only costs a quarter."
What a joker, I think.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a stout title for a movie to carry. Breaking it down effectively describes the tack of Ron Hansen’s novel, and now Andrew Dominik’s film.
Jesse James needs
no explanation: The most celebrated of all Wild West outlaws except perhaps
Billy the Kid.“Assassination,” rather than “murder” reflects
Jesse’s enormous fame that haunted him in his final days. “Coward” is the only way to describe Robert Ford
who, like the Hinckleys and Chapmans bloodying history, wouldn’t be noticed otherwise.
With Brad Pitt's charismatic portrayal of Jesse constantly upstaged by Casey Affleck's fidgety man-child Robert, Dominick's movie is fascinating for a long, long time -- 160 minutes, some unnecessary. Is Affleck on a roll with this and Gone Baby Gone, or what?
Dominik’s film is a grimy, elegant dirge for one era, and an allegory for others when someone covets someone else’s fame. The writer-director occasionally gets carried away with the importance of what he’s doing, as the running time suggests. The whereabouts of Jesse’s gang, scattered after their last heist, don’t deserve as much attention.
Yet it is hard to complain about those distractions when Dominik and award-worthy cinematographer Roger Deakins are on such an aesthetic roll. Rolling clouds, windblown wheat fields, and especially a dead-of-night train robbery using the headlight as key lighting, are gorgeous to behold.
Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven and Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller are obvious, maybe underestimating comparisons.
Read the rest of the review Thursday in Floridian.
Dennis Lehane isn’t just an author anymore; he is a movie marketing point.
Check the TV ads
for his latest adapted novel, Gone Baby Gone, opening Friday nationwide. Lehane
isn’t mentioned by name but “from the author of Mystic River” is the sort of
acknowledgement usually reserved for the Grishams and Clancys of his business.
The movie version of Gone Baby Gone is so thrilling that future Lehane adaptations should mention it – maybe even his name – in advertisements, too.
“That’s what I want,” the Eckerd College graduate recently joked from his Boston home, “I want to take up the first 30 seconds of every commercial, listing my credits.”
Lehane is
clearly enjoying his Hollywood flings, while less fortunate writers barely recognize their work on screen .Clint Eastwood turned Mystic River into an Academy Award winning film, faithful to the novel's blue collar Boston vibe. Except for the usual streamlining, the most
drastic change to Gone Baby Gone was removing two commas from the title. Unlike books, movie ads don’t require all that pesky
punctuation.
In Friday's column, Lehane talks about his latest project, The Given Day, about a Boston police strike and riot in 1919. It isn't like the tangled mysteries he's known for.
"Since I entered this world 15 years ago, my editor and agent knew I would follow a path that wasn’t clearly defined," Lehane said. "That aspect of my career is something I’ve tended like a garden.
"Everybody knew: This isn’t a guy who’ll write a book a year, and we’re not sure what kind of book is going to roll out of his laptop.
“But they know there won’t be aliens or UFOs in it.”
Read the rest Friday in Floridian.
I'm watching The Soup thanks to TiVo because my days don't include much live broadcasting. Joel McHale, a guy after my sarcastic heart, shows a clip from Rock of Love, the Bret Michaels flava of love that gives my Vizio herpes every time.
Anyway, the backstage Betty who got dumped is complaining about being so, and that she went through the trouble of tatooing BM's name on the back of her neck. Joel cracks a line that I wouldn't even try to print in a tabloid, that includes several 80's rock band lead singers including Kip Winger.
Dianne laughs but I can tell she doesn't know why. I often get that from her.
She doesn't know the band Winger was named for its lead singer. What do you expect from someone I had to take to see David Cassidy starring in Copacabana in Las Vegas, where he faked drinking whiskey on a fake balcony while singing Try a Little Tenderness with emotion that was even more bogus?
Anyway, I tell Princess Di that lots of bands have been named after the front folks: Van Halen (she nods), Bon Jovi (she sighs) and the Beatles (she pauses).
"Yeah, baby, John Lennon's real name was John Beatles."
Dianne mildly protests. Then she pauses again because she trusts me. Then she protests again because she's smart.
Our 15th anniversary is October 17. We'll try after work to grab dinner before a 7:30 screening. But I could have the night off and a Berns gift certificate and it wouldn't be as special as times like when I rename a Beatle, or do anything as weird, and Dianne smiles.
Today's triple feature was pretty well. Into the Wild is as moving as I remembered, The Darjeeling Limited is as strange as I expected and Elizabeth: The Golden Age went something like this:
Even a virgin queen needs a little action. That’s the idea behind Elizabeth: The Golden Age, a movie trying hard to be classy enough to avoid being classified as a sequel.
Cate Blanchett reprises her Oscar-nominated role as Elizabeth I, a spunky woman thrown onto the throne in 1998’s eponymous epic. There was fire in Blanchett’s belly as family intrigue that would’ve stumped the Corleones played out. Her Elizabeth wouldn’t be steered by men or considered less than their equal.
Years later, with her reign in peril and the Spanish Armada on its way, all Elizabeth thinks about is whether hunky pirate Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen in full smolder) likes her more than her handmaiden. A role previously played so formidably by Bette Davis, Glenda Jackson and Blanchett herself, is reduced to Molly Ringwald dreading the prom.
Of course, director Shekhar Kapur is too artistically enraptured to notice. There are too many glam-baroque costumes and sets to whirl his cameras around, too many ponderous reflections to pump up with pushy violins and thundering percussion.
But it always comes back to Elizabeth and her inability to get her groove on. She comes close whenever her power is challenged, signaled by her heaving bosom and a faint, ecstatic tremble. When the armada is defeated, Kapur stiffly poses the queen, bathed in ethereal light with those violins squealing. It could represent her deification in British history -- or maybe just a royally big “O.”
Red the full review Thursday in Weekend.
Been blog-negligent the past few days because of family and medical matters. Nothing drastic so far, but I'll say that the weekend's highlight was Dianne being told for the first time in her life that someone would "call the law" on her. I told her from experience that it isn't that big a deal.
We were in Port St. Joe. Where, you ask? Well, if you imagine that Florida is a crooked right arm, it's somewhere around the upper wrist. "Quieter than Kansas," one local described it, and like me she lived in the Sunflower State and knows that is pretty darn quiet. Port St. Joe is also the land that Central time forgot, since local lumber moguls bought their way into a exemption to remain in the Eastern time zone for railroad scheduling.
Great place for seafood, except this one restaurant called Half Shells in the Port St. Joe "business district" where the largest store is a Goodwill outlet. We walked in to find no other diners (always a bad sign) and a woman who turned out to be the owner watching the Learning Channel -- a futile exercise for her, all things considered.
The waitress didn't greet us but immediately launched into a long list of everything on the menu they didn't have. Another bad sign. When she returned she said: "So, are you going to stay and order, or what?" No courtesy, just a can-we-get-this-over-with attitude. We ordered the humongo shrimp platter (turns out they were out of those, too) and we settled for the jumbos and smoked fish spread, an iced tea and a Diet Coke.
Princess Di went to the restroom and I went to thinkin'. Nope, let's go. I told the waitress to cancel the order and we left our untouched drinks on the table. We're a half-block away when the owner/banshee screamed for buffalo meat: "I'M GONNA CALL THE LAW! YOU CAN'T ORDER AND LEAVE! I'M CALLIN' THE LAW!"
She wanted $2 for the drinks we never touched. I only had one single bill and she didn't look like someone who would be carrying change. While Dianne fished her purse for another, I told this anti-Paula Deen everything that wouldn't make us wish to stay, including the pubic hair Dianne found in the restroom sink. Nobody we told the story to later was surprised; Port St. Joe is a small town with big ears.
The only thing I regret is that I didn't think to ask for a receipt for the $2. She would've loved that.
So, the best way to get back into the real world is exactly what I'm doing this morning: Seeing my favorite movie of the year again --- Sean Penn's Into the Wild -- before doing the review it deserves. Then, as an extra gift to myself, seeing Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited right after. Add a screening of Elizabeth: The Golden Age tonight and I'll have plenty to blog about later, when I figure out how to spell "biopsy."
While I sit wondering why nobody noticed when I blogged about seeing the Bob Dylan bio I'm Not There a month ago, here are some thoughts on The Heartbreak Kid's remake:
I did a terrible disservice to Peter and Bobby Farrelly the other night, viewing an old VHS copy of 1972’s The Heartbreak Kid before seeing their remake.
That’s nothing
compared to the disservice those raunchy, rascally Farrelly brothers did to the
original film.
No, this won’t be an old-timers’ rant that they don’t make movies like they used to, and shouldn’t try. If any movie deserves – no, demands -- an update, it is Elaine May’s carbon-dated comedy, written by no less a dated talent than Neil Simon, that isn’t as funny now as when I was a teenager.
But that movie stood out from the pack in its time; a sly, sophisticated jab at the way love goes, especially in movies where wedding vows and “the end” had gone hand-in-hand too long. May’s The Heartbreak Kid had the audacity to pose a selfish jerk as a hero, by posing an even more self-centered woman as the siren luring him from his bride. Nobody won, least of all the bride.
Nothing about the remake is audacious since we’ve seen the Farrellys’ earlier work and every Knocked Up they’ve inspired. We’ve heard senior citizens talk dirty and we’ve seen sex played for pain. Even prosthetic genitalia doesn’t get the dialogue-drowning laughs anymore that There’s Something About Mary did nearly a decade ago by snagging “beans and franks” in a zipper.
But the key reason why the Farrellys’ Heartbreak Kid doesn’t work is nailed in an HBO making-of special I saw after screening their movie.
The filmmakers describe their star, Ben Stiller, as an easy guy to root for – which doesn’t match Charles Grodin’s deceitful social climber. Stiller describes his co-star Michelle Monaghan as “the most likable person,” which Cybill Shepherd may also be, but not when she played a spoiled debutante rummaging through boy toys.
Each character in the remake is nice, which has everything to do with box office appeal and nothing to do with The Heartbreak Kid. What’s the point of a remake, if you ignore the original’s point?
Read the full review in Friday's Floridian.
A few years ago, when Hollywood was on a Jane Austen kick and even her grocery list had a chance to be filmed, the pitch meetings must’ve sounded a lot like The Jane Austen Book Club.
Oh, the parallels
between Austen’s prose and luckless love lives, the grit of a woman willing in
patriarchal times to devise prim stereotypes and incredibly happy endings.
Producers liked that, along with Austen’s prescient knack for repeating them –
the first sequels or spinoffs, if you will.
The Jane Austen Book Club takes that swooning out of studio boardrooms and places it in Sacramento, where five women and one man they can’t believe is interested dissect the author’s oeuvre. The dude initially prefers science fiction. That he and two cads become better men after reading Persuasion in Robin Swicord’s movie feels like that fantasy genre.
We shouldn’t
pretend that The Jane Austen Book Club is for anyone except the author’s
devoted fans, and it greatly helps if they’re women. I’m neither, so my opinion
about its lackluster quality as a cinematic work isn’t likely to count. Fair
enough. But don’t say I’m not warning you.
Read the full review Thursday in Weekend.
Good Monday to you. Mine's fine since Dianne returned from her annual B&B weekend in St. Augustine with my mother-in-law, and brought gifts.
We love those Life is Good t-shirts and hats, especially if they have those goofy, angular dogs on them, because they look a little like Mojo. This time, Princess Di brought back a similar shirt with a twist that I need to wear to work: a Life is Crap shirt, with a sad swimmer being stalked by a shark. Absolutely hilarious.
My baby knows me better than anyone, that beneath the "surly, ranting iconoclast" that pop music guy Sean Daly so delicately described in a review of the Into the Wild soundtrack lies a sentimental marshmallow with a gooey nougat center. Unlike Alanis Morissette, P-Di knows the definition of irony.
Now I'm off to hopefully prove the shirt wrong, at a screening of The Jane Austen Book Club. Judging from the title and my aversion to corset-and-crumpet flicks, it'll be a stern test.
Update at 12:18 p.m.:
Just got back from the screening. Should've worn the shirt.
 Steve Persall is the movie critic for the St. Petersburg Times. He was conceived behind a drive-in movie theater his father operated and raised in projection booths and concession stands. He doesn't care how you did it up north.
E-mail Steve Persall: persall@sptimes.com. |
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