- Just seven videos -- I thought it was going to be more than that. But slightly entertaining.
- After 'finding' Ray Winstone in The Proposition, I put a few more of his movies en queue.
In this he plays a retired criminal who is called back by the boss to do one more job. The insistent boss is played by Ben Kingsley. Perhaps a guest spot on the Sopranos gave him the taste but he plays it like Joe Pesci on ritalin.
So, maybe it's boring being Ben Kingsley where they expect you to underplay everything like Gandhi or Vice President Nance, and now you're gonna have fun in a different type of role. But rather than bounce from extreme to extreme, try cross-sticking. Play the sociopath criminal like you're doing Andrew Largeman and do the mahatma like you're Mr.
Blonde. To put things in the overacting scope of context, BK wasn't anywhere near as bad as Jack Nicholson in The Departed. And I'm sure Mr.
Kingsley has been waiting around for my advice to really give his acting a career a shot in the arm. Oh yeah, I liked the movie. Pretty good.
- Long before I saw 40-Year Old Virgin, all my instincts said that movie is gonna suck. Of course, I was completely wrong, thereby opening up my mind to the possiblity that other movies that look like they're gonna suck don't actually suck. Thus, The Ringer.
This movie did in fact suck.
- Wow. I don't want to give anything away, but the very last shot made me think of High Plains Drifter, with which it compares quite favorably.
- I had heard less than stellar things about this. But I really enjoyed it. Visually spectacular.
- Chris Rock left Chris Rock home and does Shrek's Donkey on Cheerios. Not bad. In general, still can't stand Schwimmer, but he actually fit a little.
- Colleen was basically clueless to all things Peanuts, which seems so odd to me. When I was a kid it was always the Peanuts Christmas Special or Halloween Special or whatever which was THE SEASONAL SPECIAL TO WATCH. So I thought this would be a good starting point.
Ages very well and social commentary abounds. Not so much about the hotbutton issues of 1969, but just the way people interact with other people. I may have to go revisit the entire Schultz oeuvre.
- Having my finger so firmly on the pulse of popular culture, I had really no clue who Dave Chappelle was. The only time I'd ever seen him before this was on a preview blurb at the Improv a couple years ago, and I was like, ehh. But I saw about twenty seconds of this flipping through cable one night and thought, "this looks interesting.
" The premise is Dave throws a big block party in Brooklyn and invites a few musical guests of some repute. Doesn't seem that exciting especially considering my complete lack of connect with hiphoppourri, but two things made this eminently enjoyable. 1) Dave exudes such humanity and grace that you just want to see him do anything.
2) Some of these folks are very talented, and the backing band, The Roots, is T-I-G-H-T. This genre may require further investigation. Coda: Just watched the bonus features.
Hey, I recognize that French accent from a different bonus features. No wonder this film is so good. It was directed by the same guy who did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Coda 2: (from the wikipedia entry on Roots drummer ?uestlove) "Thompson's father was Lee Andrews of Lee Andrews the Hearts, a 50s doo-wop group. His parents did not want to leave him with babysitters, so took him on tour with them.
He grew up in backstages of doo-wop shows, and began drumming at the age of two. By the age of seven, Thompson began drumming on stage at shows, and by 13, had become a musical director." Uh, yeah, I guess he's got a little bit of talent.
- Semifictional account of an American expat jazz musician who escaped to France in the fifties. (For all the abuse it gets, it's worth remembering that France treated great black _American_ musicians much better than America itself did.) The protagonist is a tenor in his sixties who walks and talks like a man aged well beyond his years.
When we meet him, he's already being fitted for a toetag. Three-act plays take a long time to really do right on screen, so wisely this one jumps us in at act two and a half. He is befriended by a man who loves his music so much that .
. well I'll let the filmmaker show you. The story details their friendship and the parallel act three of the axman's life.
So, given this much information, the movie could suck or rock. It rocks. It's beatifully filmed -- you know how you can always tell when a movie was made in the era 1983-1986 by the cinematography?
Well, that's just not the case here. It looked like the movie was made yesterday. The seemingly ageless Herbie Hancock helps unhook us from any temporal reference points, tho a late cameo by a famous American finally reminded me that, yes, this film was made twenty years ago.
In a casting coupe, the musicans were played by ...
musicians. In fact some of the greatest of the era -- HH, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams. And in the first five minutes of the film, I said to myself, "wow, they really must've worked hard to choreograph the lead actor's 'playing' with the beautiful sax solo overdubs.
" Or not. The dying, trying legend was played by ..
dying, trying legend Dexter Gordon, whose biggest acting gig before that was as uncredited musician in a jailhouse band in the 1955 film Unchained. (Dexter had been serving time at the location for heroin possession.) He was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor that year.
One can argue how much was actually acting, but he is absolutely great. Let's see who won that ..
Paul Newman for Color of Money?!?
What a j00k. He wasn't even one of the top two actors in that movie. Gordon, Hurt or Woods were MUCH more deserving that year.
Hurt was probaby, um, hurt by Marlee Matlin cannabalizing the Lesser God vote. Salvador is Oliver Stone's best film thanks to Woods and an underrated Jim Belushi. I remember 'rooting' for Newman at the time, even knowing it was an honorary award, but now I recant.
Anyway, Gordon is great. This movie is great. I'm great.
You're great. The capital letter after an apostrophe doesn't seem so great, though. Anyone?
And in a really weird piece of trivia that may only interest me, I learned fact-checking this: that while in European exile himself, Dexter Gordon spent some time in Denmark and befriended a white musician/tennis-pro. When the man had a son, Dexter became his godfather. The baby's name?
Lars Ulrich.
- Mechanical and uninspired.
- Unless I missed something, this is the highest rated cartoon on IMDB's .
And rightly so.
- Unwatchably trite.
- So, despite getting a dozen HBO channels, I don't really watch it that much (or any TV for that matter).
Never seen a completed episode of Entourage or Oz or even Curb Your Enthusiasm. And I've never even seen Ali G for a moment. At my friend 's house at Thanksgiving and he popped in a DVD of AliG/Borat.
"Eh," thought I, "this is kinda funny, but I don't see how it can be funny for an hour and a half straight." WRONG. Genius.
- I was a little slow watching this because I thought it was kind of a Raid on Entebbe remake or whatever. But the events in Munich were like a one-minute backdrop to start the film and set the plot running. On the surface, this is an enjoyable action film, but it's really about something else.
And if the message isn't obvious enough, SS holds up a big sign in the final shot. TheirSatanicMajestiesRequest:SgtPeppers:
- Orson Welles film about a war criminal hiding in smalltown Connecticut.
A mystery only in the Columbo sense where we know and he knows who did it, but the fun is watching the cat play with the mouse. Welles and Loretta Young were a little hammy, but Edward G. Robinson is Mr.
Cool.
Summary
-------
Extremely Exuberantly Recommended (5 stars)
Hard Candy
Highly Recommended (4.9 - 4.
4 stars)
Dave Chappelle's Block Party
'Round Midnight
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Spirited Away
Certainly Liked (4.3 - 3.7 stars)
Robots
Munich
The Stranger
A Boy Named Charlie Brown
Delightful Diversion (3.
6 - 3.3 stars)
Sexy Beast
OK (3.2 - 2.
7 stars)
Madagascar
Radiohead: Seven Commercials
Didn't Care For (2.7 stars - 2.0 stars)
The Ringer
Abhorred (less than 2.
0 stars)
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
Derailed