Has anybody seen Dewey Cox?

Dewey Cox will be a household name by New Year’s Eve and a rockin’ costume for next Halloween.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story will ensure that posterity the way Austin Powers’ movies forever changed the way we look at secret agents on screen. Jake Kasdan’s movie parodies everything about another movie genre doing the same old thing too long, rubbing in dirt the noses of anyone still falling for the clichés.

The genre in question is the music legend biopic, recently celebrated for repetitiveness in Walk the Line and Ray. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Kasdan and co-writer Judd Apatow call that a dirty shame, creating a shamefully dirty spoof of every movie making the rise and fall of a superstar look the same.

Walk Hard doesn’t always hit the right notes but plucks enough to guarantee repeat viewings to memorize the catchphrases. When it’s good, the movie is kind of fun. When it’s being bad, it’s hilarious and not for the faint-hearted.    Each chapter of this absurdly fictional life is gonzo.

Reilly plays everything like an actor possessed. His Golden Globe nomination for best musical/comedy actor isn’t a fluke. When Dewey enters his Bob Dylan stage, singing an incomprehensible protest song like an orator on acid, a better title for the movie comes to mind: I’m Not All There.

Walk Hard opens Friday. Read the full review Thursday in Weekend.

Master debaters

There is always room for an inspiring movie like The Great Debaters, even when the movie doesn’t have room for everything it wishes to address.

Denzel Washington’s second directorial effort is a noble endeavor, a fact-based story of African-American college students in the 1930’s using eloquent expression to overcome Jim Crow inequality. They were members of the debate team at Wiley College, skillful enough to challenge America’s best white universities and succeed.

Washington also plays their mentor Melvin Tolson, whose opposition to oppression was colorblind. Tolson was also an advisor to Texas farmers and sharecroppers seeking to unionize. That didn’t please white folks with money; sharing the wealth smacked of Communism and integration.

Either topic could fill a 2-hour movie. Washington and screenwriter Robert Eisele cram both into The Great Debaters, along with three students who are biography candidates, a proud black father wrestling with racism, and a romantic triangle among colleagues. The result is a movie of too many good intentions.

The Great Debaters is co-produced by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films, and its integrity is unquestioned (except for changing Wiley’s landmark debate opponent from USC to Harvard). Winfrey has the money and clout to make as many of any kind of movie as she wishes. Postscripts revealing what happened to Tolson and his team suggest that so many worthwhile stories didn’t need to be told at once.

The Great Debaters opens Dec. 25. Unwrap the full review in your Christmas morning paper.

2007's top-10 films... almost

I won't make it that easy on you. That's how I roll.

But I spent much of the day getting my 10-best list for 2007 concocted. Still have The Savages on DVD and The Great Debaters on Monday (supposedly the first day of vacation) to see if they sneak in. Saw Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story last night and it won't make the list but, like the first Austin Powers, it's one I'll probably watch more than the top-10 picks and it'll make a better Halloween costume.

Did I ever tell you about my three wins in costume contests dressed like the International Man of Mystery? Remind me sometime.

Anyway, here's the intro for this year's list, or part of it. We're a bit ahead of schedule this year, disrupting down time, because Daly and Deggans -- the Gold Dust Twins -- had their thoughts together sooner. I love 'em for it in the long run. Our respective picks for our beats will run Dec. 21 in Floridian:

 

"I’m composing my list of 2007’s top-10 films and Javier Bardem’s psycho killer from No Country for Old Men keeps popping into my mind.

He blankly stares into my eyes, flips and catches a shiny coin then sinisterly whispers: “Call it.”

I know what happened when folks made the wrong choice in the movie.

The stakes aren’t nearly as high for me.

But choosing a No. 1 movie among the deepest roster of candidates in years comes down to a heads-or-tails proposition.

On one side of the coin is Joel and Ethan Coen’s deadly quiet immorality tale, No Country for Old Men. On the other is Sean Penn’s Into the Wild that emotionally affected me more than any film in years.

I should’ve known 2007 would end with a predicament like this."

The Golden Globes must "atone"

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced nominations this morning for the  65th annual Golden Globes. Not that these 90 or so writers you've never herd of, living high off the junket hog for overseas magazines you've never heard of, have their finger on your pulse, either.

Atonement, the year's obligatory British corset-and-crumpets, led all films with seven nominations including best dramatic film (the Globes divvy up prizes among dramas and comedy/musicals). Also nominated for best drama are No Country for Old Men, Michael Clayton, Eastern Promises, The Great Debaters, American Gangster and There Will be Blood.

In the comedy/musical category, Charlie Wilson's War rode Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts' personalities (which is what the HFPA is all about) with five nominations. The much more deserving Sweeney Todd garnered four nods including best c/m film. Juno and star Ellen Page also made a good shoing.

I've gotta rush to a screening of a best foreign language film nominee, Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. While I'm out, read all about the Globes movie nominations (I'm sure our TV critic Eric Deggans will address the television nominees on his blog, too).

Just a little off the top, Sweeney Todd

Blood literally greases the gears of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in the opening credits, fueling each cynically criminal turn that follows.

Red is practically the only primary color in director Tim Burton’s cadaverous palette, as he transforms Stephen Sondheim’s acclaimed Broadway musical about an 18th century serial killer into an intensely grim film. Sweeney Todd defiantly presents an operatic Grand Guignol unlike anything that ever qualified as a movie musical.

I say defiantly because Sondheim’s elliptical wordplay and dissonant melodies will turn off viewers preferring moon-spoon-June show tunes. Burton’s cooing attention to bloody spurts and splatters will have the squeamish peeking through their fingers. The movie exists in a constant state of dread, with characters either dastardly or dim enough to deserve the worst.

This is the kind of material that Burton embraces and people seldom write. His Goth sensibilities, memorably established in films like Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, are perfect for depicting Todd’s descent from tortured soul to demented killer, in a dank, dangerous London cityscape. Waiting years for him to feel ready to make this film was worth it.

Sweeney Todd opens Dec. 21. Read the full review a day earlier in Weekend.

Alpha (star) and Omega (man)

Will Smith may be the last man on earth in I Am Legend, but he won’t be alone in theaters.

The bankable star also won’t make any new fans with this ill-paced remake — the fourth movie version, if you’re counting — of Richard Matheson’s classic sci-fi novel. I Am Legend is technically superb with its evocation of post-apocalyptic Manhattan, but it wavers uncertainly between stale zombie shocks and moody character study.

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I felt disappointed.

Smith plays Lt. Col. Robert Neville, a virologist who is somehow immune to the species-killing effects of a cancer cure gone wrong. Smith’s fans expect — and get — suave courage and wisecracks.

At night, Neville and his trusty dog Sam barricade themselves — too securely for maximum tension — from rabid zombies who look like extras from 28 Days Later. One crackling sequence when Sam runs away and Neville’s search leads to a zombie hive provides what I Am Legend needs more of.

The monsters also need more personality. I Am Legend skips the best thing about an earlier, re-titled Matheson adaptation, 1971’s The Omega Man. In that version, Charlton Heston’s Neville was pursued by Anthony Zerbe’s albino creature leader, left, whose deviation from Matheson’s story was creepily interesting.

I Am Legend opens Friday. Read the full review Thursday in Weekend.

L.A. critics draw "Blood"

Los Angeles' critics announced their 2007 picks Sunday. They chose Paul Thomas Anderson's' There Will Be Blood as the year's top film.

I saw it the other day. While there was eventually blood, indeed, it flowed later than my interest. Daniel Day-Lewis was named best actor for his gonzo role as an turn-of-the-20th oil baron.

Good to see Marion Cotillard's astounding re-creation of Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose is getting some love, too.

Read Hollywood Reporter's take here.

One more reason to trust the Times

TODAY'S HOROSCOPE by Francis Drake (on page 7E)

Dec. 7, 2007
Born today? You're highly individualistic, one could say eccentric. You do things your own way; that's all there is to it. You have a vivid imagination and an intelligent mind. You work hard but you also need lots of time to play. You're a dreamer. The year ahead will focus strongly on partnerships and close friendships.

Birth date of: Noam Chomsky, linguist-political writer; Tom Waits, musician; Ellen Burstyn, actor.

(Personally, I prefer Johnny Bench, baseball Hall of Famer; Harry Chapin, musician; Eli Wallach, actor. That's doing it my way.)

Clearwater native offers a free movie

Just passing along this news release that crossed my computer today:

Clearwater, FL., December 6, 2007 – In an effort to tell the story of the 1970s Cambodian Holocaust, native Clearwater filmmaker, Steve McClure is holding a free screening of his film, Saturday, December 22nd at the Clearwater Cinema Cafe, 24085 US 19N, Clearwater, FL.  Doors open at 12:30pm with a full menu and bar available.  The screening begins immediately at 1pm. 

Rain Falls from Earth is a story of courage, a story of survival and a story of eventual triumph over the Communist regime that was responsible for the deaths of over 2 million people. The voices of many Cambodians are heard as they convey their thoughts, ideas and emotions—the very things they were forced to abandon in the “killing fields” of Cambodia. Narrated by Academy Award nominated actor, Sam Waterston, this film gives a voice to those whose lives were senselessly lost.

“We were very fortunate to have Sam lend his voice to the film”, says Writer/Director, Steve McClure, who has been working on the project for over seven years.  “It’s been quite an undertaking, but I’m very proud of the finished product.  I’m hoping the personal stories told in this film will help educate the public and raise awareness of the tragic events that happened just a short time ago.”

Steve McClure is a director/producer based in Denver, Colorado.  McClure attended the University of South Florida, obtaining a degree in Mass Communications.

Wedding crasher

Writer-director Noah Baumbach rattles through family skeletons with such verbal grace that the clatter sounds musical.

In 2005’s criminally overlooked The Squid and the Whale, Baumbach traced his own broken home life among literati whose flaws were self-forgiven while others’ weren’t. The infighting sounded so true that it almost wasn’t funny.

Baumbach delivers variations on the same theme in Margot at the Wedding, a caustic, bleakly comical work likely inspired by the late filmmaker John Cassavetes. Not Cassavetes’ family, which seems more normal than these folks, but his movies in which things left unsaid mean the most, and much of what is said can’t be taken at face value.

Baumbach and a strong cast get too close to all these characters for our comfort. Nicole Kidman is an affecting bundle of nerves; Margot never grasps how terribly she behaves to her autistic son and wallflower sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh), putting on a superior air at the slightest hint. Leigh’s mouse that eventually roars is a Spirit Award-nominated performance. Jack Black tones down the crazy just enough to make the grubby groom Malcolm a sympathetic jerk.

Cassavetes infuriated some viewers, and so will Baumbach’s movie. The two artists share a ragtag pseudo-cinema verite style that, mixed with lacerating dialogue, is often painful to watch. Yet the style inspires actors to such live wire performances that turning away is impossible.

Margot at the Wedding in select theaters opens Dec. 21. Read the full review a day earlier in Weekend.

The Grandfather, Francis Ford Coppola

I didn't tell Francis Ford Coppola how much I didn't like/understand/whatever his first movie in 10 years, Youth Without Youth. My bed isn't big enough to fit a horse's head.

But in 10 minutes on the phone today, I was impressed enough to give YWY a second chance. On cable. That someone else is paying for.

The interview is running soon in the monthly LifeTimes magazine. But here are a few conversation pieces that didn't fit:

On his stalled project Megalopolis, that after years of writing and 9/11 became One from the Heart (without the production costs). If you need that joke explained, you need to be browsing Stuck in the 80's:

"That was a project I created after sitting down and saying: ‘I’m going to write something that has everything. It’s going to have size and scale and be operatic and philosophical. It’ll be a story about Utopia, so when people see it they’ll be inspired the make the world like Utopia. I may have tried for too much. But who knows? Maybe in five years I’ll read it again and maybe I’ll see what I did wrong."

On anyone (like me) not really getting what he's doing with Youth About Youth: 

"The movies you choose to make of your own free will – not just because you need a job – are sort of like a Rorschach test about who you are. Even the movie I made of Dracula is a story of a timeless person caught in everlasting love.

"I don’t know why it happens that way. It just defines me, like the way people like a particular color or scent or food. Our choices and desires define who we are."

In other words: off the chain, in a Bergman/John Milius kind of way (told you that you were on the wrong blog):

"All human beings as 2-year-olds can paint beautiful pictures. But they sort of lose it. They start becoming insecure and losing contact with their gut. It’s sort of beaten out of you when you start going to school, or the first adult tells you no, you can’t do that.

“I find in my career that the things I got in trouble, even fired for doing when I was a 20-year-old screenwriter – the things that people said were too crazy -- are the scenes that I win lifetime achievement awards for now.”

Juno what I mean?

After a half-hour of Juno MacGuff’s improbably glib one-liners, you wonder when the teenager ever shut up long enough to become pregnant. She has comebacks and putdowns for all occasions, supremely overconfident with her life awareness yet masking the fact that she doesn’t have a clue what to do next.

The bun in Juno’s oven is an accidental gift from her best friend. The words in her mouth are courtesy of Diablo Cody, an astonishing new screenwriter who needs to learn when to rein her gift a bit. Juno is relentlessly clever, enough to be annoying for viewers preferring “reality” to wordplay.

But with so many quotable lines -- the juiciest delivered by rising star Ellen Page (Hard Candy) - Juno ranks with Lars and the Real Girl as 2007’s most original screenplays.

After the crudeness of Knocked Up and the fairy tale feel of Waitress, the pregnancy topic would seem to be played out. Teen sex comedies featuring unwanted insemination are certainly old hat. Juno uses a bit of each, adds the few-holds-barred approach of a new writer who doesn’t know what she can’t get away with, and becomes a special treat.

Juno is slated to open Dec. 25 in local theaters.

The Golden Compass points south

Just because an author writes three interconnected novels doesn’t mean they deserve to become a movie trilogy.

The Golden Compass is expected to be the first of a trio of films based on Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. In fact, it contains only enough material for half a movie, stretched to feature length. Just when the action kicks in and characters get interesting, Chris Weitz’s version ends, talky and abruptly.

Any good Part 1 leaves an audience wanting more.  The Golden Compass leaves us needing more; it plays like an extended preview trailer for coming attractions that may not come. New Line Cinema is wisely holding off sequel plans until it sees the box office returns, hedging its bet that Pullman’s readers can deliver Lord of the Rings-sized returns.

Perhaps they will, but a more thrilling introduction to Pullman’s dark fantasy world would certainly help.

Read the full review -- and a sidebar by Times religion writer Sherri Day on Pullman's bad image among Christians -- in Thursday's Weekend.

The horror... the horror

My favorite passage from the mental disintegration that is Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth goes something like this:

An old guy (Tim Roth) who became a young guy when lightning hit him wants to complete his life's work, tracing the origins of language to "the inarticulate moment of the beginning." he's doing this with a woman who's getting older faster than she should because she's acting like Linda Blair, spouting Sanskrit or something, and making him wiser.

The old/young guy has a doppleganger (also played by Roth, in Coppola's only bow to cohesion), who is telling him to stop grilling the chick about dead languages because she'll die early and he won't score again.

That's when the old/young guy says to... himself, I guess:

"One more regression and we'll reach the proto-language."

Right after that line, the film broke. The three critics attending sat still, thinking it was Coppola doing something demented again. Then we realized it was a genuine malfunction and one critic applauded for the break.

"You fool," I said. "We need only one more regression to reach the proto-language."

Some folks have no respect for science.

Youth Without Youth doesn't have a local opening date yet. Don't blink, or hold your breath. All that cockeyed searching for proto-language Coppola does and it turns out to be: "Yabba dabba doo."

Mr. Warmth (no, not me)

Had my annual professional checkup/job review the other day. I think it's terminal, lasting until I croak.

One line in the review caught my eye later, amid references to some good things accomplished in the past year. My editor wrote: "When Don Rickles wrote a book, Steve was the natural person to review it."

Wonder what she meant by that?

Actually, I take it as a compliment, since Rickles is one of my favorite star-crossings in a career o'plenty. Coincidentally, HBO premiered a very cool documentary last night titled Mr. Warmth, the acidly ironic nickname Rickles earned from Johnny Carson. Check it out to appreciate one of insult comedy's kings.

The first time I met Rickles was over the phone, doing a 1991 advance interview for his Ruth Eckerd Hall performance, fully five years before mouthing Mr. Potatohead in Toy Story jump-started his career. Lots of fun to talk to, and I crammed everything I could into our alloted time, explaining that I was a fan since seeing his early movies in my father's theaters. When I brought up Kelly's Heroes and X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, Rickles paused and said: "Jeez, Steve, you really do know my career." At that time, he really seemed to appreciate it.

An after-show meeting backstage was arranged. Rickles was still "on." He politely signed a photo for my Dad: "Hello Les, Steve's the best!, Love, Don Rickles." It's still framed in my parents' living room.

A couple years ago, Rickles returned to Ruth Eckerd Hall. He was famous again and I had this job. My buddy Bobby Rossi, Ruth Eckerd Hall's director of entertainment, asked if I'd handle the pre-show announcements, which would have me hanging around backstage for a while. Rickles hadn't arrived when I went onstage.

A few minutes later, I'm walking through the dressing rooms hallway and see Bobby sitting in a greeting room. He waves and motions me in the door. On the couch is Rickles, frailer than I remember, wearing a plush bathrobe over his tuxedo. As soon as I step inside he complains: "Oh, so people just walk into my dressing room? Who is this guy?"

Before Bobby answers, I say to the little bulldog: "I'm just saying hi to my friend Bobby Rossi." I stick out my hand and add: "And you are...?"

"I'M BOBBY ROSSI'S SON!," he bellows, grinning. And a temporary kinship among wiseacres is born.

We spent 10 minutes or so talking about comedy, some movie I saw that day, some he wanted to see that I had, and my Dad still displaying that 15-year-old photo. Rickles was gracious as anyone could be, especially when I mentioned that Princess Di formerly was a stand-up comedian. Then he met her.

"I've heard about you," Rickles says, pointing a stubby finger in her blushing face. "Say something funny."

Princess Di's response: "Ah..bah...ah."

Rickles: "Oh, I'm laughing already."

Then he grinned, hugged her, and waddled off to catch a few minutes of the opening act from the wings. That "Mr. Warmth" nickname isn't as ironic as it seems.