Lots of interesting tidbits here. I knew the film was relatively low-budget by Hollywood standards, but I didn’t know it was only $2 million. Personally, I’d rather have 100 Winter’s Bones than one Avatar, but I’m not running a Hollywood studio…
Posts Tagged ‘Movies’
Interview with Winter’s Bone Director Debra Granik
Monday, January 31st, 2011Movie Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Written by Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright (based on the graphic novel by Bryan Lee O’Malley)
Directed by Edgar Wright
Starring Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Ellen Wong, Jason Schwartzman, Chris Evans, Brie Larson, Brandon Routh, Alison Pill, Mark Webber, Johnny Simmons, Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza
I saw Scott Pilgrim vs. The World recently, and enjoyed what I thought I would enjoy about it, and was slightly less annoyed than I thought I would be annoyed by.
The setup (for those of you who didn’t watch a single film in theaters for the first half of 2010; the trailers were pretty ubiquitous) is that schluby Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera, about which there shall be much more anon) splits time between sharing a tiny efficiency with his gay friend and playing bass with his band, Sex Bomb Omb, before he meets Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the girl of his dreams, and has to fight her seven evil exes to win her affections. Actually, Pilgrim doesn’t seem quite as schluby as the trailer makes him out to be, because he previously dated a hot girl named Envy (Brie Larson) who’s now a pop superstar, and when the movie opens, he’s just started dating a 17-year old Chinese schoolgirl “with the uniform and everything” (Ellen Wong). I should point out that his schoolgirl girlfriend is cute as a button, and looks absolutely nothing like Korean model Hwang Mi Hee in the following picture:
Scott Pilgrim's 17-year old Chinese schoolgirl girlfriend looks absolutely nothing like this
Hmmmm….where was I? Oh yeah. She looks nothing like that. Anyway, Pilgrim soon throws her over for Ramona, whose evil exes come out of the woodwork to fight him in flat-out-impossible video game battles in real life. All of it is good, over-the-top fun. If you’ve ever watched a Coyote-Roadrunner cartoon and gone “Hey, wait a minute, there’s no way he could have survived that long a drop,” well then, this movie isn’t for you. I’ve never read the graphic novel it’s based on, but I’m guessing it’s very true to it.
All the evil ex fights are filled with amusing and completely insane action. The best is probably the fight with Envy’s bassist (Brandon Routh), which is not only high on the splat-fu, but also combines the absurdity of veganism giving you supernatural powers with the even more amusing absurdity of Vegan Police stripping away those same powers (“Chicken isn’t vegan?”).
The movie has a lot going for it. Edgar Wright is a hell of a director. Hot Fuzz is one of the funniest (and most underrated) movies of the last ten years, and he’s a master at keeping the action moving along at a steady clip. That aesthetic serves him well in a movie designed for Generation Twitch, in which almost every aspect of the characters “real” life has been speed up and Nintendofied. Also, although I didn’t grow up Nintendo, I’ve played enough video games that the antirealism of it (when Pilgrim dispatches an evil ex, coins rain to the floor; when he gets in a particularly good blow, a voice announces “Combo!”) was amusing rather than annoying. And the acting is almost uniformly excellent. Except…except…
(sigh)
Except for the Michael Cera Problem.
There are many actors in Hollywood with a broad range of characters. Michael Cera is not one of them. While he was fine in Superbad, he wasn’t any better than McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) or the fat kid (Jonah Hill), and while he was also fine in Juno, he was probably the weakest link in an otherwise exceptionally strong cast. After watching both, I got the distinct impression that Cera’s range extended from teenage awkwardness to awkward teenageness. “Do you…want an actor…who can…pause………awkwardly?” He does the awkward pause thing even more frequently than Topher Grace does his “slight pause before the…eyerolling delivery” thing, and it’s considerably more annoying. There’s no reason he should have become this generation’s Hollywood go-to guy for male teenager leads over the likes of, say, Zombieland‘s Jesse Eisenberg, who looks a little bit like him. (Then again, since The Social Network is a serious Oscar contender and Scott Pilgrim wasn’t quite the hit the studio was hoping for, we all know who got the better end of that decision…)
In Juno he had a supporting role, but here he’s the center of the film. Fortunately, the nature of the film tends to accentuate his strengths and (generally) mask his weaknesses. You don’t notice his flatness of range nearly as much when everything around him is exploding. But he’s still the weakest actor here, except…
Except that his love interest, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is if anything even flatter. Maybe this was a conscious decision on Edgar’s part, given the source material and the film’s overriding aesthetic. Maybe Ramona’s anime-hair colors are suppose to indicate that she’s every bit as useless and ornamental as the Princess in Donkey Kong. She’s a goal with a backstory, not a person.
So, can you enjoy Scott Pilgrim vs. the World if the actors playing the two central characters aren’t that great? I did. Your mileage may vary.
If you can buy into the cartoonish nature of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, this is quite an enjoyable movie (though nowhere near as good as Hot Fuzz). If you’ve ever mastered the art of mashing six controller buttons at the same time to rip off an opponent’s head, this is the movie for you.
Winter’s Bone Gets Best Picture Oscar Nomination
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011Oscar nominations are out, and Winter’s Bone (which I reviewed here) is, as predicted and hoped, one of the ten Best Picture nominees. Also as predicted, Jennifer Lawrence received a Best Actress nomination, and John Hawkes received a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
And if you haven’t seen it already, by all means do. It’s an astonishingly good film and a very worthy nominee.
MegaPython vs. Gateroid
Saturday, January 15th, 2011So you find yourself thinking: I want to watch Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, but I’m afraid it may be too intellectually challenging to jump into right away. Is there perchance a stupider movie I can watch first?
Come January 20, the answer to your question will be: Yes, yes there is. Behold the wonder that is MegaPython vs. Gateroid.
Still not convinced? Hey, it stars Debbie Gibson AND Tiffany! (Granted, 15 years too late, but still…) And if that’s not enough, I have two words for you: cake wrestling.
It’s good to see the folks at The Asylum and the SyFy Channel maintaining the reputation they’ve worked so hard to earn…
(Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
Stanley Kubrick’s Iron Man
Wednesday, January 12th, 2011
Forbidden Planet’s Anne Francis Dies at 80
Monday, January 3rd, 2011Anne Francis dead at 80. So that’s both leads for Forbidden Planet gone in the past year. I may have to have a memorial viewing. (Fortunately Richard Anderson (AKA Oscar Goldman) is still alive.)
By the way, that Amazon link is for the Ultimate Collector’s Edition boxed set at a paltry $17.99, which is about half what I paid for it two years ago, and I think it includes everything in the two-disc 50th anniversary edition, plus the metal box AND the Robby the Robot action figure. At that price I may have to stock up for birthday and Christmas gifts…
I Question Whether “Stripping for Jesus” Actually Exists
Sunday, January 2nd, 2011I was discussing the movie career of Karen Black, probably most famous for Airport ’75 and Trilogy of Terror, when I came across the IMDB entry for Stripping for Jesus.
If you know anything about the viewing habits of me and my bad-movie-loving friends, you would think that a film called Stripping for Jesus would have, at the very least, been known to us. After all, we have seen Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. (We said to ourselves “With a title like that, how could they go wrong?” Sadly, we found out.) Especially since it ranks an abysmal 2.0 from users. And was theoretically written by Anne Heche (AKA “no, the attractive one”). So it seems like the sort of thing I would have stumbled over. (“Ouch!”)
As no reviews or footage of this film can be found anywhere on the internet, I must sadly assume that it does not exist. Unless someone can prove otherwise.
(By the way, despite my not having seen her in anything since Capricorn One, Karen Black has actually been in no less than 188 titles. Suck it Family Guy.)
National Film Registry Adds 25 More Films
Wednesday, December 29th, 2010The National Film Registry has announced this year’s selection of 25 important films worthy of preservation, and there are a lot of gems on the list:
- Airplane! (1980)
- All the President’s Men (1976)
- The Bargain (1914)
- Cry of Jazz (1959)
- Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967)
- The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
- The Exorcist (1973)
- The Front Page (1931)
- Grey Gardens (1976)
- I Am Joaquin (1969)
- It’s a Gift (1934)
- Let There Be Light (1946)
- Lonesome (1928)
- Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
- Malcolm X (1992)
- McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
- Newark Athlete (1891)
- Our Lady of the Sphere (1969)
- The Pink Panther (1964)
- Preservation of the Sign Language (1913)
- Saturday Night Fever (1977)
- Study of a River (1996)
- Tarantella (1940)
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)
- A Trip Down Market Street (1906)
Airplane!, The Exorcist, The Empire Strikes Back and The Pink Panther are all great films, arguably among the top 100 ever made. I believe it was K. W. Jeter who said that the student version of THX 1138 was much better than the theatrical release, so I’ve always been curious to see that. Strangely enough, I’m also curious about Saturday Night Fever, despite my loathing of disco, as many critics (the late Gene Siskel among them) consider it one of the great films of the 1970s, and National Review‘s John Derbyshire says it’s one of the best films about blue collar American life ever made. I also remember Dwight being impressed with Malcolm X, despite not having seen Malcolm I–IX.
Of course, a lot of these are notable only for being early examples of the form rather than gripping cinema, such as Newark Athlete:
Or A Trip Down Market Street:
Let There Be Light is John Huston’s pioneering documentary on the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following World War II:
And Our Lady of the Sphere is sort of like Terry Gilliam’s work on Monty Python, but not as interesting:
Then again, it was made in San Francisco in 1969, so there’s nothing about it that can’t be explained by the phrase “Dude, I was so high…”
They TRIED to Kill Him With a FORKLIFT!
Monday, December 27th, 2010Burglers break into a store with a forklift on Christmas Day to steal beer.
But honestly, I’m only linking to this story for two reasons: For the MST3K reference in the blog post title, and to include the pure awesomeness that is Forklift Driver Klaus. (Note: Don’t watch if you’re easily offended by completely over-the-top gore and violence. Skip the first minute if you don’t understand German; the rest is pretty much self-explanatory.)
(Hat tip: Fark.)