Oscars Live Blog — Part 1

• My dad’s fist reaction to hearing Hugh Jackman’s name: “How do they pick the people to host this?” Almost like, “If they’ve sunk this low, I should get my name in the hat.”
• Is Hugh Jackman allowed to make jokes about not being nominated? Doesn’t that require some sort of conceivable possibility of it ever occurring?
• Wow, this musical number is depressing me.
• Solid reference to Benjamin Button’s pubic hair. Did you know that nine people have found my blog by searching “pubic hair”? I’m not sure why that makes me proud, but it does.
• Hmm… standing ovation for the musical number? I don’t know if I support this. Although, these are some decent jokes from Van Helsing, I must say.
• I’m not digging the scaled-down style here. I want the red curtain, the sweeping vista of the crowd. This seems like 50 people in my high school auditorium.
• Penelope! One for one. I’m not one to notice these things, but that dress is really pretty. Not a bad speech–waxed a little purple about the “uniting” effect of the ceremony. It’s not like it’s a war-time olympiad or Joyeux Noel.
• MILK! Hmm… 1 for 2. This kind of scares me, because Milk is one of those movies that could really just end up winning every award it’s nominated for and jacking up my predictions… WAIT! AWESOME! A GAY MORMON!!!!!!!!…Holy cow. What a night. Later on, Hugh Jackman’s going to announce that he’s a Unitarian who has sex with plants.
• Simon Beaufoy wins. 2 for 3. Suck it, haters.
• Wall-E wins its default category. No surprise. 3 for 4.
• Ahh… Pixar misses out on the shortie. 3 for 5. Wait, why is Michael Scott accepting, and why is he doing a bad impression of a chinese person?

2009 Oscars Predictions

Ok, I want to get this up quick before the show starts. The tentative plan is to take elaborate notes of the ceremony and post them on here afterward, as sort of a pseudo-live blogging of the event. But first, let me use the gift of prophesy to kill the fun.

Best Actor in a Leading Role (Female):

• I don’t know why the Academy still insists on using the anachronistic term, actress, for this award. It seems like someone would have made a fuss about this by now.
• Kate Winslet is going to win, sort of deservedly. Her performance in “Revolutionary Road” was the best of year (apologies to Sally Hawkins and Meryl), but for whatever reason, the Academy decided to nominate Winslet for her other, far less interesting, and far less “leading” role in “The Reader.” Her turn as an illiterate, omni-naked pedophile-turned-Nazi war criminal certainly passes the controversy test for Oscars success, but I found it somewhat shallow. Perhaps intentionally, we never see her as anything other than an emotional catalyst for the film’s narrator; no depth arises out of the character’s own struggles. In “Revolutionary Road,” however, Winslet scalds. At once strong and fragile, her performance does justice to the unbelievably tragic plight of the mentally ill, mid-20th-century American woman. Oh well, at least the right person is being honored.
• Kate’s, Meryl’s, and Anne Hathaway’s nominations are deserved, and though I haven’t seen Frozen River, I’ve heard wonderful things about Melissa Leo’s performance. Angelina, though a fine actress, is out-classed this year. I would have liked to have seen her nomination go to the effervescent Sally Hawkins for “Happy-Go-Lucky.” She has all the charm of Audrey Hepburn, with none of the unapproachable sophistication. I challenge anyone to resist falling in love with her.

Best Actor in a Leading Role (Male):

• It’s no secret that this is a two-man race between Rourke and Penn. And when you’re dealing with two such near-perfect performances, you can either split hairs (Rourke benefited from life-imitating-art; Penn didn’t seem to react appropriately to grave situations–his boyfriend’s suicide seems to affect him for all of about two on-screen minutes.) or just go with personal preference. As I think Mickey Rourke is one of the most awesome, sexiest dudes ever, I’ve got to go with the Ram for my pick. Whether the Academy will agree will depend on how much of Penn’s recent momentum arrived with enough time to affect the voting.
• This category also suffers from some serious voter-incompetence issues. Richard Jenkins’s inclusion is great, but Brad Pitt, while a fine actor (and even a reasonable dark horse supporting actor nominee for his hilarious performance in “Burn After Reading”) is seriously out of his league. Frank Langella is a fantastic actor, but his Richard Nixon doesn’t pass my test for a leading role, as he’s consistently portrayed as only an observational phenomenon. I’d like to have seen one of their nominations go to Chiwetel Ejiofor, for his fiery performance in the overlooked Mamet project, “Redbelt.” Also snubbed were Clint Eastwood, doing the same old thing in “Gran Torino”, but doing it damn well, and the understated Michael Sheen as “Frost/Nixon’s” true lead and metaphysical glue.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Female):

• Here, the Academy’s Winslet mess-up opens the door for the very deserving Penelope Cruz to take home the golden boy for her deliciously exaggerated work in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”  Speaking of which, are there three sexier people on Earth than Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson, and an un-coiffed Javier Bardem? I don’t think there are, and kudos to Woody Allen for figuring that out.
• Look out for a possible upset by Viola Davis. If her few minutes in “Doubt” stick in everyone else’s heads as much as they’ve stuck in mine, she’s got a real shot.
• Yet another actor is nominated for something other than her best performance of the year. Amy Adams wasn’t bad in “Doubt,” but I much preferred her fearless, freewheeling character in “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day,” one of the most underrated films of ‘08. It’s almost magical the way she’s able to balance the role’s inner vulnerability.
• Two big snubs here: Debra Winger’s haunting portrayal of a fiercely angry woman in “Rachel Getting Married” and “The Visitor’s” unknown Hiam Abbass–definitely the sexiest Arab grandmother on screen.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Male):

• It’s a shame that Michael Shannon ran into the dead-gay-cowboy juggernaut. He really deserves more recognition for so adequately and harrowingly serving as the insane voice of reason in “Revolutionary Road.” But, no matter how much anyone else deserves it, this one’s been Heath’s for some time now. Don’t get me wrong, Ledger’s Joker is a brilliantly molded character, and his posthumous receipt of this award is far from unjust.
• Two unnominated actors deserve recognition for incredible performances as completely unpalatable characters. Toby Jones brought Karl Rove to hideous life in Oliver Stone’s “W.”, and Eddie Marsan brings darkness and gravitas to his role as a racist, psycho driving instructor, the essential, dark, contrasting undertone to Sally Hawkins in “Happy-Go-Lucky.” Speaking of which…

Original Screenplay:

• “Happy-Go-Lucky” is one of the finest crafted screenplays in years. Mike Leigh creates a beautiful character, whose flaws are evident, but endearing. He contrasts her adequately with sufficiently hard-boiled foils, and lets the characters dictate the direction and pace of the plot. Really well-done. Traditionally, this category is the Academy’s chance to recognize more quirky, otherwise under-recognized pictures, so my money’s with Leigh tonight.
• No complaints with the nominees for this category, although I can’t really understand the exclusion of “The Wrestler.”

Adapted Screenplay:

• I really don’t knwo who’ll win this one. I think the best of the bunch is Peter Morgan’s sharp, well-woven “Frost/Nixon,” but he loses points for adapting his own stage play. I’m expecting a Slumdog glut tonight, so I’ll give this one to Simon Beaufoy for his adaptation of the novel, “Q & A.”
• The most undeserved nomination of the night goes to Eric Roth for his emotionally stifled adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Roth won this award in 1995 for “Forrest Gump.” Since then, he’s been nominated twice without a win. He may bring it home again this year for the EXACT SAME DAMN SCREENPLAY that he used to win a decade ago. “You never know what’s coming at you,” Queenie tells young Benjamin. That’s right, and do you know why? Because life is like a ephin’ box of tasty-ass chocolates.

The Curious Face of Forrenjamin Gumpton

Best Picture:

• Is there any question that “Slumdog” will win this one? None of the other 2008 movies in its class (The Wrestler, Happy-Go-Lucky, The Dark Knight, Wall-E, etc.) are nominated. Benji Button won’t win, because the Academy doesn’t want me posting the above picture every day for the rest of my life. “Milk” is a great movie, but it’s no match for “Slumdog Millionaire” and its unstoppable PR tsunami. My favorite film of 2009 (and #59 on my all-time list) is also America’s favorite. It will win, and I’m glad.

Directing:

• Kind of a boring category this year–all the same nominees as Best Picture. Danny Boyle wins for Slumdog, and David Fincher sets his sights on 2010 with “Zodiac 2: Fourteen Hours of Me Turning Pages of Case Files on Camera.” I’ll wait for the director’s cut.

Other:

• Best Animated Film: “Wall-E”, in the conspicuous absence of “Waltz with Bashir,” wins handily.
• Art Direction: No clue, but I’ll go with the crappy, but sumptuous, Benji Button.
• Cinematography: I pick Benji to win, but “The Dark Knight” deserves it.
• Costume Design: Don’t period pieces always win this? I’ll go with “The Duchess.”
• Documentary: “Man on Wire” wins, and “Encounters at the End of the World” applauds quietly, even though it knows it’s the better movie.
• Documentary, Short Subject: Who the hell knows? I pick “Smile Pinki,” because if my name were Pinki, it would smile ALL THE TIME.
• Foreign Language Film: The shadiest category avoids more controversy by rewarding the best nominee: “Waltz with Bashir.” But seriously, what is wrong with our world when this category doesn’t include either “Let the Right One In” or “Gomorrah”? What do we have to do to get some vampires and mobsters up in this biotch?
• Film Editing: Slumdog should win this.
• Makeup: Benjamin Button will win for making Brad Pitt the sexiest ugly-old-man ever. “The Dark Knight” deserves it for using makeup to create the new Joker’s face–one of the most recognizable film images of the 21st century.
• Music (Score): Slumdog’s global grooves beat out the more traditional nominees.
• Music (Song): Another win for Slumdog. I’ll go with “Jai Ho,” because the Bollywood dance scene from the end of the movie rocks my socks and rolls my soul. Easily the most glaring snub of the year is the omission of Springsteen’s haunting paean to the demigod that is Mickey Rourke.
• Short Film (Animated): I’ve seen them all, except for “La Maison en Petits Cubes,” and I’m tempted to pick it, but I’ll go with “Presto,” because Pixar can do no wrong. Check out “This Way Up,” when you get a chance. It was seriously funny, in a frighteningly macabre way.
• Short Film (Live Action): I’ve seen none, but I’ll go with “Manon on the Asphalt,” because I like the title.
• Sound Editing/Sound Mixing: I don’t even know what the difference is, so I’ll pick the two best sounding movies (Slumdog and “The Dark Knight”) and give myself points for either category. What’s that? Well, this is my blog. That’s why. If you don’t like it, go read the Huffington Post.
• Visual Effects: “The Dark Knight” wins.

Whew, that took forever, and was probably WAY not worth the thirteen views it will get. Oh well. I’m ready for you, Wolverine. Prepare to be verbally eviscerated with my wit–sharper and more forceful than your claws, with 99% less harmful free radicals than Adamantium.

Old People: Not Ironically Cute

I have always been rather uncomfortable with the culture of “cute,” specifically with the way it has come to be applied to the elderly. Inexplicably, many people seem to have a bizarre compulsion to label the symptoms of bodily decay as somehow possessing some sort of ironic attractiveness. More often than not, it’s “cutest” when old people do something that would be more likely done by the young, like dancing or rapping. This is stupid. Old people don’t do things young people do because they have personal dignity and bones like packing peanuts.

Still, people insist on cooing over the elderly. For example, take the faux-blonde, night school graduate, empty-nesting divorcees, with stapled stomachs and drawn-on eyebrows, who work behind the desk at my grandma’s doctor’s office. Every time I take her there, they insist on speaking to my grandma the way they probably spoke to their grandchildren before their new husbands started creeping the grandkids out and their children stopped letting them visit.

Oh Mary, they wheeze out in high-pitched condescension through red, smeared lips, your outfit is so cute today. Have you not been using your walker? Oh Mary, you’re a stubborn one, aren’t you? The doctor wants you to use your walker so you don’t fall down and hurt yourself. Don’t you want to not fall down?.

I can always tell my grandma is nauseated. If she wasn’t so conditioned by a near-century of matronly submission, she’d probably punch one of them in the baby-maker.

It’s almost as if there’s an age at which people just assume everyone becomes feeble-minded and incompetent–an age at which the slightest regard for hygiene, fashion, fitness, or sexuality, suddenly becomes a novelty worthy of celebration. Commercial art, in its never-ending quest to exploit all human weakness, has not passed on the opportunity to cash in on the culture of cute.

The recent documentary, Young@Heart is an obvious example of the “have people pay to see old people do stuff” strategy.

OMG!!!!111!!!11!1111!1 Those old people are soooooooo cute.

This film by TV director, Stephen Walker, features the “Young at Heart Chorus”, a Massachusetts senior citizens’ choir. If old people’s singing doesn’t already satisfy your lust for cutesy, picture this: a choir of old people who only sing modern pop songs, from Coldplay to the Ramones. Once you’ve pictured that, you really don’t even have to watch the movie. That’s it. Old people singing Sonic Youth. That’s all.

Sure, there’s the obligatory meditation on mortality when choir members start to die (because they’re old), but it really only serves as a brief respite from a constant bombardment by reverse precocity. The whole movie seems like Walker is wadding up old people and hitting you in the face with them.

LOOK AT THEM! AREN’T THEY CUTE? THEY ARE OLD! YOU’RE NOT LOOKING! LOOK! LOOK! LOOK! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE LOOK! THEY’RE CUTE, DAMMIT!

The result is a 120 minute Viagra commercial with (arguably) better music. Thank goodness, for Mr. Walker’s sake, there are old people around for him to exploit. A low-budget documentary about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir wouldn’t be quite enough to earn his graduation to the big screen.

(Coming tomorrow, the discussion of Best Boy I promised for today, unless I think of something else)

Notice of Resurrection

The long-awaited and prophesied day has arrived–the day upon which all dead things shall be revivified and all old things renewed. And by all dead and old things, we mean this blog. Make all needful things ready.

In all seriousness, we sincerely apologize to all our fans Susan K. for being so negligent of our little piece of the online community. As some of you may know, the life of Chip Kincaid has been a turbulent one, involving sudden decisions to relocate across continents, experimentation in self-medication, and all sorts of exciting (though unmentionable) occurrences. But all that is behind us now, and we are ready to once again make our vital contribution to pseudo-intellectual film criticism.

In the spirit of delusional grandeur, we hereby announce the triumphant revival of WWM. Our legal department has also advised us to issue the following warning:

Attn: Uwe Boll, Nic Cage, Michael Bay, Miss Lohan, Benji Affleck, Kevin Costner, Paris Hilton, Alien Prince Xanadu aka Tom Cruise, Keanu, et al.

Oh ye perpetrators of cinematic crimes against humanity–ye who give birth to slimy, fetal reels of filth–be ye hereby warned. The authors of this site intend to expose the vulnerable truth of your uselessness. By reading this warning, you waive any rights to pursue redress for textual attacks, including slander, libel, and verbal evisceration. The long night of your tyrannic reign comes to an end, as a new dawn of accountability and intelligent critique emerges. May all cinephiles rejoice! Gird up your loins! The moviegoer lifestyle is vindicated!

Who knows what wonders await us all…

(Coming tomorrow: “Best Boy”, the story of a retarded cousin.)

The Zombie Log–Part III: The Art of Waiting

Our very own Chip Kincaid of WWM is appearing in his first feature film, playing the role of Christian, a post-apocalyptic survivor of a zombie holocaust, in “Day/Night,” written and directed by David Kearl and Scott Clarke. We’ve asked Chip to write a weekly insider’s report of the shoot. Check back each Monday random weekday on which I get around to it, over the next several weeks for updates. Click on the appropriate links to read the earlier installments:

Part I: The Curse of the Bat

Part II: Ah, the Sweet Smell of Burning Urine

If you ever have the chance to be in a film in which you wear the same costume in every scene you shoot (and I hope you do), there are a couple of things you shouldn’t do. You know that really awesome Beatles shirt that you wore to the hippie paint-throwing party, which ended up with really awesome colors splotched all over it–colors so awesome that you never washed it? I know you think it would look really cool as part of your costume and that it would be the perfect complement to your character’s laid-back attitude. But take my word for it–DON’T DO IT! Because the day will come when your shirt will get all offensively stanky, so stanky that its scent will resonate in your nostrils for hours after every shoot. And on that day, you will want to wash that shirt, which, of course, you cannot do, because it’s already in the movie with all the awesome hippie paint on it. Take my word for it and wash that damn shirt BEFORE you start shooting. You’ll thank me later.

So anyway, when you make a movie on a 1,500 dollar budget (You could make 60,000 Day/Nights for the cost of one You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.), involving unpaid friends and acquaintances, and not professional actors, it’s only natural that different participants harbor different understandings of the significance of the project. Some find it an entertaining diversion. Others find it something between a favor and a chore. I, on the other hand, see it as a crucial test–a high-stakes assessment of the viability of my personal ambitions.

I know that might seem a bit presumptuous of me, to base my auto-permission to pursue my own dreams on an exploratory endeavor that most would consider a mere learning experience. But really, my standards aren’t all that particularly high. The movie doesn’t have to be a worldwide sensation for me to feel validated as an actor. Basically, if I can watch this movie in the presence of others without feeling completely ashamed of my performance, I’ll be pleased. Still though, those modest intentions are enough to make this movie business a big deal to me.

Anyway, being the complete nerd about this movie that I am, I felt pretty lousy about being twenty minutes late to our shoot yesterday morning. Of course, at the same time, I knew that I’d be the first one there. Other than David, of course. Ah, David Kearl… that stalwart lad. That bastion of quiet dignity. Oh, and Susan too–a queen of unyielding support, and might I add, our most loyal reader at WWM. I and these two fantastic persons had the gift of 100+ minutes together before the rest of the cast showed up, with nothing to entertain us but our witty brains and an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger.

In this episode, Walker and Trivette are running a military-style boot camp for wayward young men, called Camp Justice. Camp Justice is just about the best name for a camp ever in the history of camps. (Quoth David: “Camp Justice is waaaayyy cooler than the lame-o camp across the lake, Camp Mercy.”) Walker and Trivette use their punching/kicking/general ownage skills to teach the delinquents at Camp Justice (one of whom just happens to be the yellow-eyed bully from A Christmas Story) a thing or two about truth, freedom, and the American way.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but I suppose when you’re waiting 100 minutes for your co-stars to show up (and one doesn’t even make it), and you’re watching Chuck roundhouse kick some dude in the eyebrow, you can’t help but start wishing Chuck were around to teach a lesson to all those who don’t appreciate the blessings of life and movie-making.

That is all.

Happy Linksday

• For this week’s B-Movie Bonanza, we present the opening scene from Zardoz. Zardoz is a giant, floating, stone head, and he rules over the people of a post-apocalyptic Earth. In this clip he gives some excellent advice, including “The penis is evil.” And yes, the man who fires the gun at the camera at the end is, in fact, Mr. Sean Connery.
• So Columbia has obtained the rights to a Smurfs movie. Amy Wilkinson suggests Ricky Gervais for the role of Gargamel (= Awesome). I’ll see it if they do it Donnie Darko-style.
• Here’s an interesting article from the LA Times about how the clogged release schedule, combined with weak box-office attendance, is making for unpredictable earnings. Hollywood, as an industry, has always been cooperative and not competitive. It seems like that may be changing, which hopefully will lead to greater discretion in greenlighting projects. In a competitive environment, maybe they spend 50 million less on something like Zohan.
• Hey, you want to start a comic-nerd riot? Try leaking a story that Captain America is going to appear in your new, lucky-it-even-got-made-after-the-first-one, Hulk movie. Then, just decide to leave that part out.
• I’m only linking to this because the article’s headline somehow references my three least-favorite things in the whole world.
• I may be wrong, but if I were making a Street Fighter movie, it wouldn’t focus on Chun Li. And it definitely wouldn’t do so at the expense of omitting both Ken and Ryu. Sheesh.
• This just in, Brokeback Mountain just got gayer!
• So, um… I think I found my calling in life…
• And for this week’s trailer theater we present Seth Rogen and James Franco in Pineapple Express. And if you, like me, fall in love with the song in this trailer, it’s M.I.A. performing “Paper Planes.”

For the Price of a Single Zohan

So I watched You Don’t Mess with the Zohan yesterday. It was about as good/as bad as I expected. Some parts were kind of funny, but there was about an hour in the middle of the movie that was just boring and dreadful. The gross-out jokes seemed a little over-the-top for the PG-13 rating, and the political “satire” was immature, ineffective, and non-threatening. My overall reaction was more just surprise that someone even thought it was worth it to spend a Hollywood budget to make such a lightweight, pointless movie.

That reaction got me thinking, and after a quick Google search, I found the estimated production costs for Zohan.

90,000,000 dollars.

NINETY MILLION DOLLARS.

That’s a 9 with 7 ZEROS after it.

I don’t think I can fully express how this makes me feel. Today I worked seven hours hopping bell at the local hotel. I made six dollars for each of those hours, plus tips. Each of those 42 dollars is precious to me, representing 1/42 of today’s addition to the barrier between me and starvation, homelessness, and poverty. When I find a single dollar tucked away and forgotten in a rear pants pocket, it is no small occasion. That one dollar has translatable value: it’s a can of Diet Dr. Pepper; it’s a Spicy Chicken Sandwich from Carl’s Jr.; it’s 1/5.5 of a matinée movie ticket or one RedBox rental.

In other words, I look at a dollar and i see an object of personal utility. Some dude looked at NINETY MILLION of those same dollars, and all he could see was… Zohan. Again, the movie was a completely forgettable, throwaway attempt at politicized gross-out humor. I doubt anyone in the world will ever name it as his or her favorite movie, and it will fade quickly into the mediocrity of the post-Wedding Singer era of Adam Sandler’s career (with the exceptions of Punch-Drunk Love, Spanglish, and to a lesser degree, Reign Over Me).

Now, I understand that the ninety million was an investment–a sound investment, probably, in the omnipubescence of middle-America. Even if the movie is a complete bomb, most, if not all, of the production costs will be recouped soon after the DVD release. Despite this, I thought it would be fun to follow the lead of my friend David Kearl’s Christmas post on Zooby News, and make a list of some of the things that could be bought with 90,000,000 dollars. Here we go:

1. 95,238,095 liters of Diet Dr. Pepper
2. 3,610,108 shares of Dr. Pepper stock
3. A brand new Lamborghini Murcielago for each of your 254 closest friends
4. 11,739,130 cubic centimeters of Gary Busey’s fecal matter
5. 4,092,769 baby toupees
6. 7,421 years of college at a public university
7. 1,855 complete college educations for underprivileged students
8. A lifetime of fresh water for 1,800,000 people who need it

OR: A single Zohan.

I love/hate this world of ours.

Reservations… Lots of Reservations

When you watch movies with friends, there is a delicate balance you have to maintain. In order to preserve sociability, your standard of “watchable” must be flexible enough to adjust itself to different groups. For example, if I only watched movies by myself, I doubt I’d have ever watched Transformers. As it is, I’ve seen it twice. There are few people I dislike more than Nic Cage and Jon Voight, but somehow, my family convinced me to watch both National Treasure movies in one day (ugh).

So when I ventured to the movie store with three female friends, I knew I wasn’t necessarily going to get to watch Rescue Dawn, which I’ve been meaning to see for over a year now. Not that I didn’t try:

“But it’s got Christian Bale in it!”

“Really?” (They look at the case.)

“Ew, gross, but he’s like skinny and dirty looking.” (Putting the case back on the shelf)

We ended up settling on No Reservations, which seemed like a decent compromise. Yeah, it’s a romcom, but it has a pretty solid cast, and I’ve seen and liked the German movie it’s based on, Bella Martha. All in all, I didn’t expect it to be great, but I figured it was safely in my watchable zone in the context of my company. After watching it, I’m not sure there is a watchable zone for this movie, unless you tend to gather socially with the catatonic or the criminally insane.

Before this poor excuse for a movie was over, I was hitting myself in the head with my cell phone.

Hard.

It hurt.

My stated excuse was that I was trying to erase it from my memory, which isn’t really unreasonable, as it was easily the worst movie I’ve seen in months. Really, though, I think I was just trying to feel something, even if it was pain. You see, No Reservations is completely void of real emotion and anything resembling a cathartic experience. The anti Ong-Bak, No Reservations fails to create a single memorably good moment, instead preferring to beat us over the head with obvious, disinteresting, pseudo-emotional blather.

The relationship between Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart vacillates between unbelievable and revolting, as for some reason, they are portrayed on multiple occasions swapping food between their mouths. Is that supposed to be sexy? I think it’s gross. None of the characters seem to change or develop in any sort of realistic character arc, which is partially because we NEVER HEAR THEM TALK. Every time you think some interesting dialogue is coming, the filmmakers instead opt to drown out the voices with the hideously repetitive score from Philip Glass. It probably happened ten times. The result is that the relationships that develop seem way to shallow and pointless to motivate the drastic character changes that happen without any sort of believable explanation. Even Abigail Breslin is a disappointment in this movie. By the third time Zeta-Jones walked in on her crying and holding on to a sentimental artifact of her deceased mother, I’d lost all sympathy, and that’s hard to do when you’re dealing with a RECENTLY ORPHANED CHILD. I seriously heard myself say, “Why don’t you stop crying already? I get it, you miss your dumb, dead mom.” That is what No Reservations does to people.

My final complaint, and perhaps the more important, is the sheer absurdity of the notion that Bella Martha needed to be remade. I understand the business behind it–Americans don’t pay to read subtitles. But come on, are we really so dumb and ethnocentric that we can’t enjoy something fresh and interesting without dumbing it down, commercializing it, and involving Aaron Eckhart of all soulless, revolting beasts?

After watching this movie, my intelligence was insulted, my filth-tolerance was at an all-time low, and my head hurt. But maybe that last one was partially my fault.

Happy Linksday!

• For this week’s B-Movie Bonanza, we present the “greatest fight scene ever” from the obviously amazingly awful movie, Undefeatable, which was made in Hong Kong but stars English-speaking actors. Just to give you an idea of how incredibly awefulsome (a new word I invented, meaning awful and awesome) this movie is, here is its plot synopsis from IMDB: ” Kristi Jones (Cynthia Rothrock) avenges her sister’s death at the hands of a crazed martial arts rapist.” The clip to follow is pretty violent, but also completely jaw-droppingly sweet.
• When I first heard of the upcoming fourth installment in the Beverly Hills Cop series, I said, “I thought Eddie Murphy’s career was over.” Turns out, I was right.
• Why don’t urban fires ever veer into the right areas?
• So when I read that Will Ferrell and Adam McKay were filming a remake of the hit 1970’s TV show, Land of the Lost, I had one of those crazy moments of intense, unexpected memory of the 90s remake of the series. A quick YouTube search didn’t disappoint:
• This very well could be the single most frightening list I’ve ever seen.
• Who messes with the Zohan? Turns out Robert Cabell does.
• Vikings vs. Aliens… FINALLY!
• And finally, we present this week’s Trailer Theater. How does the new Coen Brothers movie, Burn After Reading sound? Yes, please! Starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt? Yes, please! How about Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton? Yes, please! We’ll even throw in a little bit of John Malkovich and the dad from Juno. Enjoy.

The Zombie Log — Part II: Ah, the Sweet Smell of Burning Urine

Our very own Chip Kincaid of WWM is appearing in his first feature film, playing the role of Christian, a post-apocalyptic survivor of a zombie holocaust, in “Day/Night,” written and directed by David Kearl and Scott Clarke. We’ve asked Chip to write a weekly insider’s report of the shoot. Check back each Monday over the next several weeks for updates. You can read Part I here.

So Tuesday night, after a few last-minute plan changes, we went up to Rock Canyon Park to film a few campfire scenes for the movie. It was a gorgeous night for filming, and we had a great time, sitting around the fire, butchering our lines, and bathing in the warm glow of firelight and camaraderie. It was windy, so the smoke was swirling around in our faces, and we had to constantly feed pages of script into the fire to keep it bright enough to film, but all in all, things went as well as we could expect–that is, until the shoot was over.

There are a few ingredients needed to make a fire. You need your logs, tinder to burn first and fast, kindling to transfer the flame from the tinder to the logs, and an initial source of heat (matches, a lighter, flint, etc.). What you don’t often think of is that you also need some sort of intended method for putting out the fire when you’re done. We didn’t have any water, or any receptacles for carrying water if we could find it. We didn’t have a shovel or anything to get dirt to throw over the fire. It would have taken hours to hang around and wait for it to die down, even if we separated the logs. There really was only one option–only one source of enough moisture to calm the raging inferno: the acrid pools of waste-liquid curdling in our bladders.

If this piques your curiosity at all, you can conduct an experiment at home! Take some sort of deep pot, urinate into it, and place it on the stove. Turn the stove to high and ignore it for an hour or so. Your house will not smell good. And when you are done with that, try this one! Build a very big room, about the size of a large campsite. Make sure to include no useful light source brighter than the cloud-covered moon. Cover the floor with a snaggly carpet that resembles overgrown grass. Then have someone place your keys somewhere randomly in the room. I believe you will discover that trying to find those keys is not terribly fun. Especially if you’re constantly worried about stumbling into a piss-soaked fire ring.

Anyway, after a half-hour or so of combing the campsite, our cell-phones positioned inches away from the ground, providing the most paltry of search lights, we found my keys. A few handfuls of dirt completed the extinguishing of the pee-drenched logs, and we were on our way. Our clothes smelled awful and my car smelled awful, but the only scent that truly lingered in our nostrils was the sweet smell of scenes completed–the lurid, enticing aroma of realized artistic vision.

Or maybe that was just pee.

Part III: The Art of Waiting