Kevin's Digital Week 7 -A Genesis to Summer

• 
• 

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 31 December 2009 11:37

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-ray of the Week
(500) Days of Summer
(Fox)
Although debut director Marc Webb tries hard to make (500) Days of Summer as unwatchable as Away We Go, he’s blessed with much better actors in the leads, and consequently the movie doesn’t grate on the nerves. Rather, it gets by on the charm of Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who make an attractive couple worth rooting for even though they are doomed from the start. Deschanel and Gordon-Levitt compensate for the too-cutesy quirkiness that Webb and writers Michael Weber and Scott Neustadter cram their movie with, including an embarrassing song-and-dance number, unnecessary clips from The Graduate and a “clever” ending that should have been cut from the script’s first draft.

And jabs at the greeting-card industry are like shooting fish in a barrel. But the stars nearly make one forget all that’s wrong with (500) Days of Summer, which has been given a good though not stellar visual treatment on Blu-ray. Among the usual extras (commentary, deleted scenes, a music video, audition tapes), there’s a Blu-ray exclusive, a half-hour making-of featurette.

DVD of the Week
Genesis: The Movie Box 1981-2007
(Rhino)
The fifth and final indispensible Genesis boxed set—following three sets covering the band’s studio albums and a fourth comprising the live albums—contains DVDs of four concert tours, all featuring Phil Collins as the lead singer: 1981-2, 1983-4, 1986-7 and 1992.and The Mama Tour have never been released on DVD before, while Live at Wembley Stadium and The Way We Walk are re-releases. Although the video quality of the older films is not completely up to snuff, the audio has once again been remixed by Nick Davis into DTS 5.1 sound, which are as revelatory as those done for the other sets. In addition to the four concerts, the fifth disc contains a new edit of the band’s Behind the Music episode, which originally aired on VH-1 in 1999.

There are apparently no full concerts of the Peter Gabriel-led band to be released, which is a shame: still, at least until Collins began overdoing the shtick during 86-87’s Invisible Touch tour, Genesis was a formidable live band, and these concert flicks prove that. Bonuses include bonus Three Sides Live audio-only tracks and behind-the-scenes documentaries from The Mama Tour and Wembley.

Gilliam Greets Doctor Parnassus

• 
• 

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 29 December 2009 11:23

Written by Kevin Filipski

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Starring Heath Ledger, Colin Farrell, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits
The first 15 minutes of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus would make a fantastic short: crammed with director Terry Gilliam’s usual surfeit of dazzling imagery, the opening is so breathtaking in its casual sleight-of-hand—including references to Gilliam’s animation for Monty Python’s Flying Circus—that it can’t help but make the rest of Parnassus a let-down.

Gilliam’s latest jinxed production is the film Heath Ledger was working on when he died of an overdose. It was at first uncertain if Gilliam could go on with filming, since Ledger was playing a pivotal role as Tony, a cheating charity owner rescued from certain death by members of a traveling circus led by the immortal Dr. Parnassus, including his child-like 16-year-old daughter Valentina and two sidekicks, the lovestruck teenager Anton and the grumpy dwarf Percy.

Gilliam and co-writer Charles McKeown re-wrote sections of the script, plugging in actors Depp, Law and Farrell to play Ledger’s role without losing a beat. How? The contraption of the title serves as a gateway to the doctor’s vivid imagination, and whenever Tony enters it in each of three fantasy sequences, he “becomes” one of the other actors.

Gilliam plugs in amusing in-jokes as Tony sees himself in these scenes and notes unhappily that he looks different; but the poignancy over Ledger’s loss occurs more often when he is onscreen giving a racy, incisive and distinctly unmannered performance. (On the other hand, the trio of replacements labors hard to act like Ledger, and only Depp partially succeeds.)

Parnassus is truly a sight to behold: the eye-popping colors, sublimely silly juxtapositions of varied styles (similar to the stew that drove the Beatles’ animated feature Yellow Submarine) and witty visual jokes are typically Gilliam. What was once innovative and revelatory now seems stale, maybe because CGI effects can conjure anything, and the bluest sky and greenest grass that’s ever seen don’t make one shake one’s head in wonderment any more.

Unfortunately, Gilliam limits what his actors can do, since they are all at the service of his visual primacy. In addition to the frisky Ledger, Plummer nearly pulls off the miraculous feat of making us sympathize with the immortal Parnassus, and it’s only because Gilliam and McKeown’s script that he doesn’t register as a real human being. Still, Plummer’s immense charm comes through, especially during his deals with Mr. Nick (a k a Mephistopheles, whose Faustian bargain Parnassus accepted, played with little charisma by an unsinister Waits): you believe he could charm the devil himself, not the other way around. Plummer also looks the part of an elderly fool, like a regal King Lear turned into a mad Don Quixote.

I would also love to admire the camerawork of Nicola Pecorini, but when much of the movie is CGI, how does one figure out the cinematographer’s actual contribution?

Jeff Bridges Has a "Crazy Heart"

• 
• 

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 22 December 2009 23:52

Written by Maitland McDonagh / Miss FlickChick

Directed by Scott Cooper
Written by Scott Cooper, based on the novel by Thomas Cobb
With: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell

"I used to be somebody," sings ruined country-western legend Bad Blake (Bridges, looking uncannily like Kris Kristofferson), "but I used to be somebody else." Like all great C&W lyrics, those dozen words sum up a lifetime's worth of missteps, complications and rueful perspective gained just a little too late. 

Blake used to be a star, a natural-born tunesmith who turned out perfectly crafted songs about heartbreak, hard times and the beckoning road, and sang them with a hit-making mix of grit, warmth and "been there, done that" weariness. Now he's a bitter, barely functioning alcoholic, reduced to living out of his car and playing murkily lit bowling alleys and hole-in-the-wall bars because no one else will have him. Having systematically torpedoed every relationship he ever had, Blake lives on bitter pride and stews in the knowledge that he could write rings around every fresh-faced Nashville star worth a good Goddamn, including his onetime protégé, crossover country-pop star Tommy Sweet (Farrell); he wouldn’t accept a helping hand if it were wrapped around a jeroboam of bourbon.

And then fate tosses him a life raft in the form of a potentially stable relationship with small-time journalist Jean Craddock (Gyllenhaal), a single mother half his age whose bright-eyed little boy is a stinging reminder that Blake abandoned his own son years ago. But he's an old dog who isn't interested in learning new tricks. He can't even be bothered to write new songs, despite a lucrative and thoroughly respectful offer from Sweet.

It’s glib, lazy, critics' shorthand to call Crazy Heart Bridges' The Wrestler. It’s not even particularly accurate: Unlike Mickey Rourke, Bridges is no human road wreck in desperate need of career rehab: He’s logged more than 40 years of steady work in a notoriously fickle business without a single detour into tabloid hell. But the comparison is irresistible, because Crazy Heart is a low-budget, end-of-year release that came out of nowhere and threw Oscar handicappers into a tizzy by introducing dark horse into the best actor race.

Like The Wrestler, Crazy Heart is a middling movie powered by a stunning performance: Bridges powers through the show-biz clichés and finds the sad, proud, cussed essence of Bad Blake — his soul, if you will. And even the tacked-on kinda/sorta happy ending can’t diminish his accomplishment; stunning though Rourke's performance as Randy "The Ram" Robinson is, Bridges' flawless evocation of the slick delusions and ragged charm of a self-destructive has-been is more impressive still. Rourke, after all, has been there. Bridges, a Hollywood kid (his father was '50s TV star Lloyd Bridges) who earned his first Oscar nomination at 22 and is, at the age of 60, doing consistently better work than Robert De Niro, Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman, is faking it with such complete conviction that if you didn’t know who he was, you’d take him for the real thing.

Which is, of course, what acting is all about… oh, and did I mention that Bridges can sing? Not like a classically trained vocalist, but like the guy who could find the everyday poetry in those pitch-perfect pastiches by Stephen Bruton, T-Bone Burnett and alt-country rocker Ryan Bingham and sell it without breaking a sweat. The scene in which Bridges and Farrell effortlessly wrap an arena full of country-pop fans around their fingers with an "impromptu" duet on the Bad Blake standard "Seems Like Flying" stands on its own merits; it flawlessly captures the electric moment when an audience suddenly hears a song that was a hit before their mothers were born as though it were vividly, thrillingly new. When you know it was shot in less than 15 minutes before a pack of Toby Keith fans waiting for their idol to take the stage, well, you just about have to stand up and salute.

So, hell, put my name on the "Jeff Bridges deserves a damned Oscar" petition. Crazy Heart may not be a great movie, but without Bridges it would be a Hallmark Hall of Fame trifle.

For more by Maitland McDonagh: MissFlickChick.com