Kill Bill, Vol. 2 flotsam

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  • The book that Esteban Vihaio (Michael Parks) is reading in the whorehouse is titled The Carrucan's [some word I can't remember] by Jasmine Yuen. I assume it's a reference to second assistant camera operator Jasmine Yuen Carrucan and not an actual book.
  • I did a Google search for "black mamba gargantuan" to see if Elle (Daryl Hannah) really did find out about the black mamba from the Internet. Apparently she did, if slightly paraphrased. "Black mamba neurotoxic venom is one of nature's most efficient poisons, acting on the nervous system...the amounts delivered in a bite can be gargantuan: 100 to 400 milligrams, when 10 to 15 milligrams are fatal for a human being."
  • Loved Daryl Hannah's pantsuit.
  • Tarantino's voice dub for Pai Mei is his best acting job ever.

Jack

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I watched Something's Gotta Give over the weekend. Not the most profound of movies, but it's nearly always a pleasure to watch Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton work, and the movie has its charms as a broad comedy.
Is it possible that Jack is underrated? When I watch his early work, such as Five Easy Pieces, I think it may be so. If I were to make a list of five people I'd like to spend a weekend hanging out with, Jack would have to be on the list.
I was about to return the movie to Netflix when I decided on a whim to glance at the Special Features menu. Turns out Jack did a commentary for the movie. I brought it up to my computer and turned that commentary on to listen to in the background while I wrote, and two hours later I'd watched the entire movie over again. Jack's commentary is really good. I don't often have the patience to listen to commentaries all the way through, but this was worth it, not just to hear Jack talk about the rocket in his pocket after Amanda Peet jumps off of him in one scene clothed in merely a bra and panties, but also to hear his commentary on comedic acting. He's an astute student of acting and film, and his self-assurance, generosity, and sense of humor shine through. It's clear why he's the most popular actor in Hollywood.

Little Sundancers all growed up

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I'm starting to finally appreciate the mystique of the Sundance Film Festival, several months after finally popping my Park City cherry. So many of the movies screened at the festival are opening to wide acclaim. At the time, reading through the synopses in the program, it was difficult to ascertain the quality of the movies. Surely not all of the movies could live up to the surely biased write-ups by Sundance programmers?
Maybe they can. If critics are to be believed, the programmers chose a great lineup, and I hope to return again next year and catch more movies.
Some of the Sundance babies making waves:

  • The Return - Rave reviews; I'm going to see it this week. I missed a screening but Dave took my pass off my hands and gave it a thumbs up.

  • Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring - The trailer is serenity.

  • Super Size Me - winner of the Sundance Documentary award, this movie was shot by a guy who ate nothing but fast food from McDonalds for a month. Predictably, he gains a lot of weight and comments on the obesity epidemic in America. I'm interested in seeing it for the comedy. As a social gadfly, it's lacking. After all, what's surprising about the fact that he gained weight eating nothing but Big Macs? If there are Americans who still believe that fast food is healthy, they sure don't earn my sympathy.

  • The Corporation - the other Sundance doc that buzzed. Based on the book The Corporation : The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, this documentary examines that strange entity we know as the corporation as a person, putting it through diagnostic tests used to assess human personalities. Not surprisingly, corporations are found "self-interested, amoral, callous and deceitful." Having worked at a corporation for nearly seven years, the results don't surprise me, but I do think this realization has profound implications for our analysis of topics like offshoring. Our laws treat corporations as humans, and in doing so we may have granted them too much power, perhaps pointing to a future long predicted by science fiction writers like Gibson and depicted in anime movies set in the future, when corporations and not governments run the world. But that's a topic for another day.


Review: The Ladykillers

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Dave and I attended a screening of the Coen brothers remake of The Ladykillers earlier this week. I've not seen the original starring Alec Guinness though I've heard good things about it.
The original is described as a comedy of manners, and this remake retains that aspiration, but what surprised me is how unmannered most of the comedy was. The gang of robbers consists of a series of caricatures, most of which caused my eyes to roll. The most convincing performance might be by a painting of the late Mr. Munson. I'm still grasping for the subtle, offbeat humor of the early Coen brothers work, like Raising Arizona. Not that it's all bad. The whole is somewhat greater than the sum of the parts. Irma Hall and Tom Hanks capitalize on the occasional juicy line of dialogue from the Coen brothers, and when they do it's witty and wonderful.
But viewed as part of a creative continuum, this movie and their other recent genre efforts Intolerable Cruelty and The Man Who Wasn't There leave me pining for the 1984-1999 Coen brother vintages. They can cover these genres just fine, but their genius is most manifest in work that's uniquely their own. Even the sharpest knives can dull with age and misuse.

Review: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

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"How happy is the blamelss Vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot:
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned."
                                Alexander Pope

I enjoy a lot of movies, but rare is the movie that makes me think, "Ooh, I wish I had made that movie. I could have made that movie (if I were that clever and inspired)!" The last time I felt that was watching Lost in Translation.
I had that feeling tonight, about midway through a screening of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's some kind of brilliant! Charlie Kaufman proves yet again that he is the most creative lunatic of a screenwriter working today, and director Michel Gondry fulfills the promise he displayed in his music videos (which I love; you can catch them on this DVD from the very cool Director's Series) and his movie directorial debut Human Nature.
ESOTSM is the type of movie I'm ready to see again as soon as I walk out the theater. In this case, the second time through will be an attempt to detect all the clues I missed the first time around--it's a mind bender. It's also a clever comedy and a playful riff on the nature of love and memory. Gondry capitalizes on Kaufman's conceit that one can selectively erase memories to produce some of most humorous visual metaphors on film: as memories are erased, people and objects literally lose color and then fade away or disappear or crumble. Occasionally memories merge, leading to some visual juxtapositions that act as sight gags.
This is not the type of science fiction that stands up to heavy scrutiny, even if you are optimistic about the advances in neuroscience. The idea that one's memories can be selectively purged is merely the launching pad for a series of intriguing meditations. If all our worst memories of a former lover were erased, would we fall in love with that person again? Is attraction then fated and not merely the product of context and environment? If you knew how another person had successfully wooed a girl, could you borrow those strategies and also win her heart? Is forgetfulness truly bliss?
Only two minor quibbles. One is that Jim Carrey doesn't convey true heartbreak and longing in the same way that, say, John Cusack did in Say Anything. But he's by no means a weak link, the rest of the cast is uniformly strong, especially the gifted Kate Winslet. Secondly, I agree with Anthony Lane that the movie could have ended just a tad earlier, when it had just finished cycling back on itself like a Mobius strip.
Movies like this are expensive loves. First there's the movie ticket. Then I'll have to own the soundtrack. And the script. Of course, inevitably, I'll buy the DVD. I could have all memories of the movie erased from my mind, but I suspect I'd just end up stumbling in to see it again, and then I'd be sitting here writing to tell you, for the second time, that it's the first great movie of 2004.
P.S.: Michel Gondry also directed the video for Polyphonic Spree's "Light and Day/Reach for the Sun" from the ESOTSM soundtrack. Like the movie, it's bloody fun.
UPDATE: Look at all the 100's from the critics! Just one mediocre review thus far.

Mary Poppins, The Killer, and a Ferrari 360 Modena, oh my

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I posted seven DVDs for sale on Amazon.com Marketplace last night, and by this evening four of them had sold already, and for decent prices, too. Selling most books doesn't seem worthwhile considering the heavy price competition online, but DVDs retain their value like BMWs, and old Disney or Criterion DVDs that are out of print? They appreciate like Ferraris. Never, never unwrap a DVD until the day you're ready to watch it. That's the equivalent of driving the car off of the lot; the value drops off a cliff and lands on a ledge about 30 feet (read: 10 dollars) down.
The key is to anticipate the next format change (HD DVD, perhaps?) and sell off my entire DVD collection six months prior.

Early reviews of The Passion

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Early reviews of The Passion of the Christ are trickling in, and so far they're all over the map (what a surprise). American Sucker David Denby has been the harshest critic to date, while Roger Ebert gives it four stars and anoints it "the most violent film I have ever seen."
That 3-D, gold colored font used for the film title reminds me of the opening titling from The Lord of the Rings.

ROTK #2 all-time

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The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is now #2 all-time in worldwide box office behind the amazing anomaly that was Titanic which still nearly doubles it's closest competitor's worldwide gross. It appears that ROTK will be the second movie to crack the $1 billion mark. TTT is #5 all-time, and FOTR is #8. You can see how Peter Jackson can command a $20 million salary for King Kong.
The usual caveats apply: these figures don't adjust for inflated movie ticket prices, the increased number of screens around the world, etc., so the rankings are heavily weighted towards recent history.
UPDATE: Just saw in IMDb's studio briefing that ROTK broke the $1 billion mark this past weekend: "According to its distributor, New Line Cinema, the film's total stood at $1,005,380,412 through Sunday."

Review: Spellbound

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Spellbound.
Definition, please.
A documentary released in 2002 (yes, that long ago). It follows eight children as they vie to be the last cute kid standing (i.e. the last cute kid to screw up) in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Can you use it in a sentence, please?
Spellbound is funny, charming, touching, and suspenseful, though all those words are wholly inadequate because they're too damn easy to spell.
Can you use it in another sentence, please?
As the pool of competitors in Spellbound is whittled down from nine million to one, our sympathy for the vast, eclectic people of this nation (all linked by this odd manifestation of the American Dream) grows in inverse proportion.
Okay, one last definition. Please.
Spellbound. How I felt as I watched this documentary. Spellbound.
S-P-E-L-L-B-O-U-N-D.

Golden Globes

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It's too bad Salon doesn't blog about awards shows live. It would make watching said shows much more enjoyable. Salon's latest blog about the Golden Globes is pretty funny, but how does the author, who obsessed over all numberous actresses' flaunted, er, vaunted boobs, avoid making a pun on the word Golden Globes?
And just who is the Hollywood Foreign Press anyway, and how can you sign up?

Review: The Company

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A fictional movie, yet it feels like a documentary: its plot is held so lightly in the hand it seems to slip through one's hands like sand, yet by movie's end we have a panoramic understanding of life in Chicago's Joffrey Ballet. On the other hand, the movie's dialogue and editing make less of an attempt at assembling into a linear plot or tracing a discernible dramatic path than even the roughest of documentaries. The movie feels like a multi-layered composition, dozens of stories overlapping, criss-crossing, starting and ending mid-stream.
Most of the dancing is beautiful, filmed in a gauzy haze, and the sounds of the fabric and human bodies as they slide and bounce against the stage are a feast for the ears. Malcom McDowell is humorous as the upbeat company director who delegates and deflects with casual aplomb, and Neve Campbell is convincing as one of the star dancers dealing with the demands of being a world-class dancer. The most organic movie one will see in years; those who go to the theater to be man-handled may be disappointed.

About 200 Top Ten Lists

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A compilation of roughly 200 movie critic top ten lists for 2003.
If you assign 10 points for a #1 ranking down to 1 point for a #10 ranking on each list, the top ten movies of the year by points were:
1. Lost in Translation (785 points)
2. LOTR: Return of the King (667.5)
3. Mystic River (565)
4. American Splendor (552)
5. Finding Nemo (490)
6. In America (321.5)
7. Capturing the Friedmans (305.5)
8. Master & Commander (292)
9. 21 Grams (250)
10. Kill Bill: Volume 1 (217)
Those with a massive printer could print out this entire table with every movie that received a point, discovering, in the process, that even Old School made a few top ten lists.
The worst of 2003, using the same criteria:
1. Gigli
2. Cat in the Hat
3. Bad Boys II
4. Dreamcatcher
5. From Justin to Kelly
6. Beyond Borders
7. Charlie's Angels 2
8. Life of David Gale
9. Daredevil
10. Boat Trip

The 2004 movies I'm excited about

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The movies I'm eagerly awaiting in 2004, excerpted from my movies page:

  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Mar 19): The premise: what if there was a medical procedure by which you could erase your most painful memories, like a relationship gone bad? With a script from Charlie Kaufmann, and starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. Faux related website. Teaser trailer.

  • If Not Now (Spring?): Sequel to the wonderful Before Sunrise which starred Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. In this sequel from Richard Linklater, those two characters meet again, nine years later, while Ethan Hawke's character Jesse is on a book tour in France.

  • Kill Bill Vol. 2 (Feb 20): I will go out on a limb and predict that this is the one where she kills Bill.

  • The Passion of the Christ (Feb 25): Mel Gibson's controversial take on the last twelve hours of Christ's life.

  • Starsky and Hutch (Mar 5): It stars Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Snoop Doggy Dogg, which guarantees nothing other than my $9.00. Will either be glorious or gloriously bad.

  • The Ladykillers (Mar 26): There will come a day when we forsake Coen brothers movies that star Tom Hanks and feature a soundtrack produced by T-Bone Burnett, but it is not this year. View the trailer. This is a remake of the The Ladykillers starring Alec Guiness.

  • Innocence: Ghost in the Shell 2 (Spring 2004 in Japan): Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell was one of the most influential and brilliant anime movies ever made.

  • Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Summer): Cool retro look.

  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Jun 4): I'm not a rabid fan of the books, the first two of which failed to excite me. But I'm intrigued by the selection of Alfonso Cuaron as director, and fans of the series tell me the books improve as they go. Cuaron as director is a bold and admirable choice.

  • The Terminal (Jun 18): teams two unknowns named Spielberg and Hanks. And Catherine Zeta-Jones.

  • Spiderman 2 (July 2): Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) wrote the screenplay so the story should be stronger, and hopefully they'll fix the goofy special effects this time around.

  • King Arthur (July 2): Produced by Bruckheimer, helmed by Antoine Fuqua, so unlikely to be great. Odd romantic pairing of Clive Owen as King Arthur and Keira Knightley as Guinevere. However, it will be difficult to pass up an opportunity to gaze on Keira Knightley for a few hours to a Hans Zimmer score. View the trailer.

  • Anchorman (Jul 9): Will Ferrell is Anchorman.

  • The Village (Jul 30): M. Night Shyamalan's next movie. The trailer (available off the Flash-enabled site or here) seems to indicate another of his favored mystery plots. I'm always curious to see the surprise twist, but when I guess what's going to happen, as with Signs, it's not quite as fun.

  • The Life Aquatic (Fall): Let's examine the talent involved. Wes Anderson, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Henry Selick...good Lord.

  • The Incredibles (Nov 5): Pixar's next computer-animated tale. Let's draw a trend line based on all the past Pixar movies. Hmm. Apparently this movie should be really good.

  • Alexander (Nov): Oliver Stone's take on the original Great One will beat Baz Luhrmann's to the big screen. Stars Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great and Angelina Jolie as his mom(?!).

  • Ocean's Twelve (Dec 12): Soderbergh directs the followup to Ocean's Eleven, itself a wonderfully fun flick. This time, the heist(s) takes place in London, and Vincent Cassel joins the cast.

  • The Aviator (Dec 17): Leonardo DiCaprio continues to tackle famous historical figures by playing Howard Hughes in Martin Scorsese's next project.

  • Izô: Kaosu mataha fujôri no kijin (Winter?): Takashi Miike directing Takeshi Kitano?! In. I think the title means "Sweet Ass-Kicking Samurai Movie."


Preliminary favorites of 2003

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Of the movies I saw in 2003, which always seems to be fewer than I'd like but more than most people who aren't movie critics, my favorites were the following:

Other movies I enjoyed that are worth seeing for one reason or another:

My favorite books of 2003, from the disappointingly short list of books I managed to finish this past year:



REVIEW: The Cooler

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The Cooler is based around a clever premise: casinos hire coolers, men who can change the luck of others just by being present, to cool off gamblers on lucky streaks. Bernie (William Macy) is the favorite cooler of old-school casino boss Shelly (Alec Baldwin in one of his trademark intense asshole roles that is always so much fun to watch). Shelly also once busted Bernie's kneecap with a baseball hat, one of the more telling symptoms of a love-hate relationship with one's employer.
The events that set the movie in motion: Shelly's partners apply some heat in the form of a consultant played by Ron Livingston who wants Shelly to go "Disneyland" with his casino, the Shangri-La. Meanwhile, Bernie gets lucky with cocktail waitress Natalie and falls in love, and suddenly the cooler's luck reverses which is good for Bernie, bad for business. And then Bernie's son shows up out of the blue looking for money for him and his floozy girlfriend.
The movie treats Las Vegas with a smirk. Bernie's cooling powers are used in the service of a whimsical tale centered around mythical Vegas archetypes, from the ruthless casino boss to the cocktail waitress/whore with a heart of gold to this new type called the cooler. It offers no searing insights into humanity, just a few simple lessons on luck, life, and love. But it has a whole lot of fun doing so. It's the type of lesson you learn when the blackjack beats your pair of face cards with a 6-4-2-7-2 draw: luck can be a cruel mistress, but the drinks are free, the buffets are cheap, and the neon lights are flashing, so we're having fun, right?
3 out of 4 stars.