James Franco on Fresh Air – totally funny, charming and cool. Not what I was expecting.
November 24, 2008
November 16, 2008
Saturday Night Live
I am a life-long Saturday Night Live fan. I have been watching with varying degrees of fan-boy intensity since I was in junior high. I have an internal alarm clock that is permanently set to go off at 11:30 PM on Saturday nights. I’ve read all those behind-the-scenes books. I began watching during the Carvey/Hartman/Lovitz era, and while I was too young and dumb to get most of the political stuff, there was always something that would crack me up. I’m sure part of it was some sort of rebellion – laughing at things my parents would find distasteful (Steve Martin’s Penis Beauty Cream anyone?), which has probably been part of SNL’s lifeblood over the years. I stuck with the show as my beloved cast members left and found employment in dubious films and sitcoms, and new guys rolled in. I know people a little younger than me usually think the Sandler/Farley/Spade years were a hoot, but I got tired of those guys pretty fast, and found that Janeane Garofalo’s after-the-fact bitching reflected my own opinions about that cast. But I stuck with it, and would defend the show to the “Saturday Night Dead” criers (real original guys) over the years. But I think all that has changed.
This is a long-winded way of me getting around to saying that I might be ready to leave SNL behind. It makes me sad to even type it, like I’m putting down Old Yeller or something. But the show and I seem to have outgrown each other. SNL has jumped on the Cartoon Network bandwagon of “random = funny”, and while I think a little of that can be effective, that seems to be their only trick nowadays. The sketches are now all incredibly self-conscious, and every other one seems to end in some sort of joke about how they don’t know how to end the sketch. Ha ha! Way to deflect criticism by acknowledging it head-on! Whoa, check out that guy dancing in a too-tight leotard! He doesn’t have the body to pull that off! Ha ha!
And is there a less diverse show on television? They just hired four new people – all white. Have they ever had an Asian regular? I don’t think so. And all these years and casts – only one gay castmate (Terry Sweeney, if you’re keeping track at home)? Certainly, they’ve never had any idea what to do with their black comedians, who usually are more successful after the show. From where I’m sitting, they need some new life on the program, but Lorne Michaels seems to be staunchly against any sort of tampering with the format and feel of the show.
Look, I know writing good sketches on a weekly basis is tough. And maybe it’s just that I’m getting old, and SNL is keeping pace with the youngsters – the same youngsters who apparently love Family Guy, a show that I find has a similar laughs-per-minute quotient to genocide. Maybe I’m turning into the old guy who came into my theater last week and yelled at me for not showing Red Skelton movies. “In my day there were no talking meatballs,” I’ll soon be mumbling. But for whatever reason, lately, when my internal alarm clock goes off, I’ve found myself hitting the snooze button. You have no idea how sad this makes me. “Hold still boy. Good boy…” *blam!*
October 3, 2008
Kelly Link free download!
Kelly Link, the author of my favorite short story, Stone Animals, is offering most of her first collection of stories as a free download. This includes Stone Animals, which is a long short story that almost defies explanation, but is perfect for this time of the year. She has a new book out too that you can pick up if you like the free stuff.
September 23, 2008
2008 Films Ranked (so far)
The Fall
Dark Knight
In Bruges
Paranoid Park
Iron Man
Wall-E
The Wackness
Kung Fu Panda
Son of Rambow
American Teen
Teeth
The Visitor
The Counterfeiters
Cloverfield
21
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D
Stop-Loss
Spiderwick Chronicles
Speed Racer
Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who
Rambo
House Bunny
Bank Job
X-Files: I Want to Believe
Tropic Thunder
Forbidden Kingdom
Indiana Jones 4
Mongol
Be Kind Rewind
Hellboy II
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
The Strangers
Brideshead Revisited
Hamlet 2
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
The Band’s Visit
Burn After Reading
Hancock
Death Race
Married Life
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Wanted
Incredible Hulk
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins
Righteous Kill
Young @ Heart
Get Smart
10,000 BC
The Happening
Before the Rains
Semi-Pro
Jumper
Sex and the City
Mummy 3
August 4, 2008
June 19, 2008
Oh, so hey…
The Bad Splice is no longer going to be a movie review only blog. In fact, there may not be movie reviews at all. I’ve decided I don’t really like writing them. So I guess this will be a more ordinary, self-centered blog. Starting with the post below…
Notes from the R.E.M./Modest Mouse/The National concert
1) People with lawnchairs will inevitably come late and squeeze into the space right in front of you on the lawn. They will be very tall and wearing even taller hats. These people are douchey and you should not feel bad about loudly disparaging their character and/or lineage. Feel free to call them “Gigantors” and throw Mike and Ikes at the backs of their heads.
2) The men’s room never has a line. The women’s room always has a serpentine queue of poor ladies hopping on their toes. This will eventually result in a revolt where one woman decides she can’t wait, and goes into the men’s room. This act of urinary liberation will spread through the line, and soon the men’s room will become unisex, like Ally McBeal’s, or whatever.
3) I hope the ladies enjoyed the contact high from the voluminous amounts of marijuana being smoked in the stalls. I suppose I should have realized that there is probably some crossover between the Dave Matthews/Jack Johnson crowd and R.E.M. fans, despite the fact that DM and JJ make me want to smash windows with my head, like some crazy lady in The Happening.
4) Don’t go see The Happening. I know this is not related, but I’m serious. If you do go see The Happening, take your sarcastic robot buddies and enjoy the worst performances of Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel’s careers.
5) The Mann Music Center expects you to pay $8 for a Miller Lite, rather than paying you that much to take that swill off their hands. Oh, and you might expect a nine dollar “cheesesteak basket” to come with fries, or perhaps a basket. You would be mistaken.
6) The National was great. Pitchfork loves them, which makes me a little wary, and the singer dances pretty spastically (like the guy from Midnight Oil), but they have a really appealing variety of songs, and I would have liked them to play a bit more.
7) Modest Mouse has two drummers (awesome!) and they use a glockenspiel on one song (double awesome!!). They have a lot of energy, and I like most of their older albums, but their live sound is awfully consistent from one song to the next, and 45 minutes is sort of a long time to hear a bunch of songs with the same tempo and rhythms.
8 ) People loooove The One I Love. I don’t really get it myself. It’s a nasty little, repetitious song, with a classic f.u. ending. I don’t dislike it or anything, but it’s certainly not the R.E.M. song that’s going to make me scream at the top of my lungs and demand to have Michael Stipe’s babies. (That would be Electrolite, which they played too…)
9) Eddie Vedder sang Begin the Begin during R.E.M.’s encore. I don’t dig Eddie that much, but it was still pretty cool, and no one threw batteries at him or anything. Nice job, Philly!
10) Johnny Marr from The Smiths played along with the band on Fall on Me, which is one of Michael Stipe’s and my favorite songs.
11) The night ended with Man on the Moon, a song I used to love, but have burnt out on over the years. But hearing it tonight, with the (maybe?) full moon rising overhead and a nice chill in the air for a June night, all seemed right in the world. Hey baby. Are you having fun?
May 1, 2008
Iron Man
Spoiler level: Moderately low
What was the last big-budget summer movie made you laugh out loud repeatedly? And (not so fast, Disco Spidey…) with it, not at it? For me, it was the first Pirates of the Caribbean – you know, the good one. In between the exploding of ships and the discovering of sunken treasure was some really sharply written-and-acted interplay between the characters, primarily due to a memorably strange and funny performance from one-time bad boy Johnny Depp. That movie, of course, elevated him onto the household-name tier of celebrity that he had been circling for years.
Meet the new Depp. Robert Downey Jr., for years relegated to appearances in courtrooms and gossip pages, gets another crack at leading man status with Iron Man, and absolutely knocks it out of the park. This is some old-school star-making stuff and I suspect this will shoot him to the top of every casting agent’s want list.
If you’re a fan of Downey’s endlessly witty buddy-cop flick Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (and you should be), you won’t be surprised at his way with a quip – this guy could probably make a reading of The Book of Revelations sound off-the-cuff and breezy. What is surprising is just how far his approach manages to elevate the typically moribund genre of superhero movie into something unexpected – fun.
Downey is Tony Stark, wunderkind weapons designer and the playboy billionaire head of his own company. He’s gotten rich off inventing new ways to kill the enemy, and if the idea of “enemy” is a little fuzzily defined, well, that’s someone else’s problem. When we first meet him, he is on a trip to Afghanistan to promote his latest killing machine. He is alternately intimidating and charming, and the U.S. soldiers he is riding with are not quite sure what to make of him. Neither are we, for that matter. He’s quick with a joke or to light up your smoke and all that, but his offhanded amorality is tough to disguise.
It doesn’t help when we see him in flashbacks back at his beyond-opulent mansion. Stark is such a playa, that he has an elaborate system set up for getting rid of his one-night stands, involving his long-suffering but faithful assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Neither he nor his business partner, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges with an awful beard), seem to pay too much attention to the real-world effects their weapons are having. They are safely insulated in their own world of private jets and sportscars.
While in Afghanistan, though, Stark is kidnapped by terrorists, held at gunpoint (with guns from his company), and forced to build them a powerful weapon. Instead, he uses their supplies to create a high-tech suit of armor that helps him escape. In the process, he sees how his own weapons are being used to oppress innocent people in these towns, who are regularly mown down by gunfire when they get in the way, and this inspires his transformation into Iron Man.
Because Iron Man, like most of these comic book movies, is about transformation. Physical transformation, of course, into a larger-than-life, high-tech contraption, but also a transformation of the soul. Tony Stark, like Bruce Wayne, has a revelation, and discovers there’s more to life than mere conspicuous consumption. He resolves to use this empire he has built to save people rather than enslave and kill them. This is a reliably effective story arc, because we get to ooh and aah over all the amazing gadgetry (and even the sportscars and jets), while feeling like this wealth is being put to good use, something we don’t often get to feel in the real world.
In a meta kind of way, the transformation theme applies to Downey too, which is something the movie also seems aware of. Heretofore, it’s been almost impossible to separate Downey the actor from Downey the eternal relapser. He’s always been a smooth talker, dating back to the first time I remember seeing him, on SNL and in 1986’s Back to School. His innate charm even served him well in his various court appearances, as he pleaded for mercy in a seemingly never-ending string of drug busts and incarceration. In casting him, Iron Man’s director acknowledges the strikes in Downey’s past, and almost encourages us to put what we know of his troubled history into Stark’s backstory. This is a gamble, but it pays off surprisingly well; the birth of Iron Man is also the re-birth of Downey onto the A-list.
Downey is assisted by a great supporting cast; those Dinners for Five must have made Favreau some good friends. Paltrow, particularly, comes off really well. So often cast in chilly roles that match her pale visage, she gets to be funny and real here, and makes a part that could very easily have been a thankless one into a great supporting turn. Paltrow actually lights up the screen whenever she appears, something I don’t think I’ve ever said before. Terrence Howard plays Stark’s military commander friend, and, unfortunately, talented as Howard is, there’s not enough here to help him flesh out the role; he gets almost nothing to do but shake his head at Stark’s craziness. And then there’s Bridges, being especially un-Dude-like. He gets a lot of expensive scenery to chew on, and he goes to town.
It all works well, at least until the climax, where the special effects take over, and the performances are put on the back burner; I guess you have to throw the kids a bone now and then. But mostly, this is a surprisingly adult action movie, with complex themes and real performances. This is easily the best comic book movie since Batman Begins, and a great start to the summer movie season.
April 24, 2008
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Spoiler level: Moderate
A sort of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure on shrooms (wait, is that redundant…?), Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (H&K2) is the most hilariously demented road movie since Pee-wee went looking for that basement in the Alamo. H&K2 takes a satirical swipe at the current state of America that is no less effective for being so broad; this may be the smartest T&A movie ever made.
Picking up almost immediately where its predecessor left off, H&K2 finds our still-White Castle-stuffed heroes preparing to fly to Amsterdam so Harold (John Cho) can be reunited with the lovely Maria. Kumar (Kal Penn), not able to wait the eight hours until their plane reaches the pot capital of the world, smuggles a “smokeless bong” onto the plane and lights up in the airplane restroom. An elderly white woman, already unnerved by the color of Kumar’s skin, sees him with the contraption and yells “terrorist!!”, leading to Harold and Kumar being arrested by air marshals and sent back to the U.S. These airport/plane scenes are ingenious – a tricky blend of real laughs and uncomfortable subject matter. The audience with whom I saw the movie laughed long and hard, and it’s easy to forget that the filmmakers are walking a very precarious line.
The dark laughs don’t let up as the boys are interrogated by Rob Corddry’s incredibly racist and idiotic government agent Ron Fox. “Al Qaeda and North Korea working together,” he says, shaking his head. Fox’s interrogation technique, seemingly informed by bad TV shows, consists mainly of throwing ashtrays and hurling racial slurs. He’s like a real-life grown-up Eric Cartman, and Corddry is terrific in the role, bringing his aggressive dumb-guy schtick from The Daily Show and fleshing out a memorable character. He takes what could easily have been a one-note parody of Tommy Lee Jones’ Fugitive character and makes it his own.
Harold and Kumar are quickly dispatched to Guantanamo Bay, but I suspect that was primarily because the writers came up with the funny title and needed a way to justify it. They are barely at the prison for a few minutes before they are afforded a chance to escape. This will be a disappointment to those who were hoping for more prison humor; five minutes was plenty for me. After hopping a raft with some friendly Cubans escapees, Harold and Kumar arrive in the United States with no money and no identification, and here’s where their trek through Bizarre America begins.
I don’t want to spoil any more of the story, but H&K2 gets a lot of comedic mileage out of people who are not whom they initially appear to be. On the run from Agent Fox, they make their way through the South in an attempt to get to Texas, where Harold hopes a friend with connections can clear their name, and Kumar hopes to break up the wedding of said friend, who is marrying his ex-girlfriend. The filmmakers treat the South the same way they treat race throughout the movie – poking fun at the usual cliches and throwing in a surprising turn now and then.
Most of the reason these movies work so well is the dynamic between Cho and Penn. In order for this world-gone-crazy story to work, you need to have solid, believable characters at the core, and Harold and Kumar seem like genuine best friends, alternately exasperated by and enamored of each other. They are terrific stand-ins for the audience, even if they are maybe a little more irresponsible than we can afford to be. Their relationship is the stuff of standard comedic duos, with Kumar as the adventurous troublemaker and Harold as the straight man who must clean up the messes. Penn has some real acting chops, as he demonstrated in Mira Nair’s The Namesake, and Cho is an immensely likable screen presence, who will soon be seen as the new Sulu in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek reboot. These two elevate the material in a way that, say, Ashton Kutcher would be unable to.
The other reason these movie work is the filmmakers’ fearless determination to “go for it.” An early scene with maybe the most, uh, explosive climax ever committed to mainstream film lets us know they aren’t going to pull any punches. There’s a “bottomless” party and a visit to a whorehouse that really push the boundaries of the R rating. Plus, Neil Patrick Harris is back in all his shroom-eatin’, drunk drivin’ glory. It’s all in tasteless fun, and infused with a bit of sweetness that is de rigeur for comedies in this Age of Apatow. Perhaps most daring of all, H&K2 manage to do what Bush hasn’t been able to in seven years in office – make the President into a great guy.
This is the rare comedy packed with so many funny ideas and situations, it almost feels a little overstuffed. Just as you begin to tire of a particular setup, the movie flits on to the next one. It’s the smartest dumb guy movie since Bill and Ted’s heyday, and the funniest film I’ve seen so far this year.
April 17, 2008
The Forbidden Kingdom
Spoiler level: Moderately low
I’ve been humming that NeverEnding Story song for days now. It won’t go away. Oh Limahl! You and your crazy hair sure know how to write a catchy song! And I can pinpoint the exact moment it started too. Ten minutes into The Forbidden Kingdom, Jason, a somewhat dorky, martial arts movie-obsessed teen (Sky High’s Michael Angarano) is getting the stuffing beat out of him by the most vicious bully this side of Drillbit Taylor’s psychotic teens. This bully has just shot an elderly Chinese man and used an unfortunate ethnic slur, so you know he’s gonna get his sometime in the last reel. Jason, holding an ancient Chinese staff, is suddenly magically transported off the roof… and that’s when the blippy synths from the 1984 movie wormed their way into my consciousness and have yet to leave.
Because, regardless of the movie the ads are trying to sell you, The Forbidden Kingdom is a movie for kids. It’s The NeverEnding Story with a martial arts theme, and it’s about to become your ten-year old nephew’s favorite movie. It’s got magic, time-travel, endearingly dodgy special effects, a pretty girl, and the first-ever pairing of martial arts legends Jackie Chan and Jet Li. It’s an absolute home run for kids (the PG-13 rating is inexplicable to me); your enjoyment level will depend on your tolerance and/or secret love of the cheesy elements on display here. A working knowledge of 1985’s cult hit Berry Gordon’s The Last Dragon is a good start.
Actually, Forbidden Kingdom is a sort of mash-up of various 80s favorites, as if the writer had a fever dream after watching too many Saturday afternoon TV matinees. Jason, after toppling off the roof, wakes up in a different place and time (hello Time Bandits!) – in this case, an ancient China where everyone speaks pretty decent English. He is told the legend of the Monkey King (Li), a prankster who is a master of martial arts and magic. The Monkey King is tricked by an evil warlord, turned to stone, and needs the staff that Jason possesses to return to power. Jason, then, is schooled in kung-fu by the wise (and comically drunk) Lu Yan (Chan) in a series of Karate Kid-ish montages. He is also assisted by the lovely/fierce Sparrow (Yifei Liu) and the mysterious Silent Monk (Li again), who actually has plenty to say.
These four journey to the Temple of the Five Elements, where they will face off against the warlord’s army. They trek through seemingly endless deserts, and lush forests. They fight off baddies as Jason falls on his butt a lot. There is much jovial bickering between Chan and Li and googly eyes between Angarano and Liu along the way. Obviously, the story is fairly formulaic stuff.
The Forbidden Kingdom has a secret weapon, though – the amazing fight choreography by Woo-ping Yuen. Yuen has been directing action for 35 years, and has gained fame in the U.S. recently for being the choreographer behind The Matrix, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and the Kill Bill movies, among others. He doesn’t disappoint here either; the fight scenes are plentiful and creative. This is the first American-made film that Chan hasn’t choreographed himself, but he is in good hands with Yuen; he hasn’t seemed this energetic in years. And Li, supposedly retired from martial arts epics, still looks great and has fun with his dual roles. These are two very charismatic men, and it really is a kick to see them occupying the same screen.
I can’t help but be curious about the marketing, though. This is undeniably Jason’s story; the Chan and Li characters are supporting roles. The action is primarily seen through Jason’s eyes, and Angarano is in nearly every scene. So, it’s puzzling that the television ads I’ve seen go to great lengths to avoid showing him at all. Even one of the trailers downplays the time-travel aspects as much as possible, while playing up the Chan/Li fighting. Obviously, I understand that the two action legends are a much bigger draw than the kid from Sky High and Snow Angels. But there seems to be a concentrated effort to misrepresent the movie they have actually produced. I think there is a danger that the action fans they are so aggressively courting will be disappointed with the NeverEnding Story aspects of the film, and the real target audience won’t realize it’s a movie made primarily for them.
Basically, The Forbidden Kingdom is a perfectly fine April movie, a kind of placeholder while Hollywood wheels in the big guns. In another two weeks, we’ll all be getting THX headaches from three months of $200 million summer movies; The Forbidden Kingdom is a little simpler, a little more easygoing. For young people, it will be a great introduction to the work of Chan and Li, and hopefully some will be inspired to follow it up with their more classic movies. For those of us who already enjoy their films, it’s nice to see them having a good time and playing off each other’s energy. And even if there is a bit of the ol’ switcheroo going on with the marketing, well, who can’t use a bit of magic and fantasy in their lives? Let your inner ten year-old enjoy him/herself a little. Dream a dream. And what you see will…be… Ahhh! Curse you Limahl!!!
