In theaters Friday: Bobby, Déjŕ vu, The Fountain, Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny
New on DVD: Ice Age: The Meltdown, An Inconvenient Truth, Scoop, You, Me and Dupree
Is it just me, or is the Tenacious D movie about seven years too late? Let’s see, create a cult-hit comedy “band” on a short-lived HBO series in 1997. Check. Release a decent-selling debut album in 2001. Check. Wait five years to put out a movie that looks like it was filmed in about a week? Um, check? I don’t get it. Maybe it’s just that the trailer, which is so unfunny it hurts, but Jack Black is starting to embarrass me more than he entertains me. Jack, I love you man, but Michel Gondry better rescue you with Be Kind Rewind or else your “Pick of Destiny” is going to be hosting the Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards year-after-year of and starring in School of Rock parts 2, 3, 4 and 5.
I’m hoping Bobby really pulls through and is a great movie. I have a soft-spot for sweeping “I have a dream” dramas about the Kennedys and all the wasted potential of the ‘60s, and that weepy tale director Emilio Estevez tells in every interview about still wearing the same suit he’s had since 1992. I checked, and yes, ’92 was the year The Mighty Ducks landed. It’s all good, Emilio. No really, pleats are still cool.
This past weekend I saw Casino Royale and Fast Food Nation. The latter works only as a companion to the book, and is just about the best ammunition for a bibliophile to make the argument that “the book is always better than the movie” that I’ve ever seen. Whereas the book is a stalwart investigative piece and an intellectual history of fast food in America, how it has changed our industries, our politics and our people, the movie aims much lower, seemingly at high school kids who don’t think twice about ordering double cheese every day. Too much of author Eric Schlosser’s revealing research is shoe-horned into shallow conversations and forced circumstances. One particular scene of college students—with Avril Lavigne—who scheme to teach a local meatpacking plant a lesson (and thus change the world!) is particularly cringe-worthy. Needless to say, this scene has nothing to do with the book.
Greg Kinnear does an admirable job in one of the lead roles as a chief marketer for Mickey’s Restaurant having second thoughts about his profession. But his character disappears about halfway through the film. Some of the cameos are really well done, though. Kris Kristofferson’s rancher is an honest-to-goodness hero, the kind of guy you hope America’s heartland is filled with, right up to the brim. And Bruce Willis is spot on as a free-market double talker able to defend feces in hamburger meat by saying that Americans today are just overly sensitive about germs. In some small ways he is right, but he’s not right for the right reasons (think: Aaron Eckhart in Thank You For Smoking). It’s all a selfish money grab and if the illegal immigrant workers don’t like it or a diner gets food poisoning, so what? It ain’t illegal. I guess Schlosser’s point, and to a lesser, tangential extent director Richard Linklater’s, is that there has to be a level of morality that supersedes what’s written into law. Just because it’s technically legal for a certain amount of fecal matter to be pounded into ground beef does not mean a company should neglect to do everything it can to eliminate it altogether. So read the book first, then if want to supersize that, check out the movie.
Pierce Brosnan’s last three Bond pictures were awful, and also pretty ridiculous. I mean, an invisible car? Come on! Denise Richards, a scientist? No way! But I really enjoyed Casino Royale. It worked at a side-winding pace much more akin to the Sean Connery and early Roger Moore movies. It pulls you in slowly, and if you stay with it, the payoff is grand. Newcomer Daniel Craig gives an edgy, daring performance. He reminds me more of Timothy Dalton’s Bond of the late ‘80s than any of the others. His humor is more muted than Moore’s, but he is just as smooth and brutal as Bond should be. Fans of Texas Hold ‘Em should also watch this one too. Bond enters into a high stakes game of poker with a banker-to-the-terrorist-stars, and tries to take him for everything he’s got. Leaving the theater, Courtney, who had never seen a James Bond movie before, didn’t even know he was a British spy and enjoyed the movie a lot more than I thought she would, asked me if there were any more. “More James Bond movies?” I countered. Yeah, about 20 more, I thought. But that wasn’t the right answer. So I just said, “Not like that, there aren’t.”
The good news is that pre-production is underway for Craig’s next romp as Bond, which is slated for a 2008 release. The one thing I missed from this movie was Q, Bond’s quick-witted gadget pimp. John Cleese last played the role, but he’s getting too old and if they reinstate the character, I’d nominate either Dr. House himself Hugh Laurie or comedian Eddie Izzard to drop some high-tech knowledge on 007. Now that Craig is here to stay, who would you like to see play Q or for that matter, a Bond girl? Leave your comments below.
Looks like Peter Jackson is refusing to direct a film version of Rings prequel The Hobbit over, you guessed it, money. Read Jackson’s side of the story here. I’m not surprised. The Rings movies were such a huge gamble and an even bigger hit, that there must be some squabbling over finances. But it doesn’t bother me at all that Peter Jackson will not be returning to The Shire. As I’ve blogged before, Robert Rodriguez would be perfect for it.
Here’s an unsubstantiated rumor for you to chew. Quentin Tarantino may be considering a return to the screen as an actor in Takashi Miike’s western Django. Read about it here.
A few weeks ago I posted the teaser trailer for Smokin’ Aces, out January 26. See the whole shebang right here.
And finally, this should be good news for fans of the American version of The Office. Rainn Wilson, who plays nerdy suck-up Dwight Schrute is set to make his big screen screenwriting and acting debut in, get this, Bonzai Shadowhands. The movie is about an over-the-hill ninja and will be directed by Jason Reitman of Thank You For Smoking.
