red bo!

check it:
red bull's showing some criterion love, using a jimmy cliff diddy from the harder they come for their new flugtag tv spots.

Big Girls Need Love Too

Despite the fact that both delve into explicitly sexual thematic content, Catherine Breillat's "A ma Souer!" ("Fat Girl") has very little in common with "Fatty Girl," rapper Ludacris' 2001 paean to badonkadonks. While the latter is laden with overtly sexual chitter-chatter that would make for awkward car rides to Sunday mass with my parents when I was riding in the back seat and too far away from the radio to change the station, I could always bank on the fact that they at least wouldn't always be able to decipher Luda's many euphemisms for tush and bush. A ma Souer! leaves far less to the imagination.

This movie is basically about literally the worst m'er'effing family vacation in the history of western civilization. The main character is thirteen year old, Anais, who spends her vacation getting crapped on by the world and drowning her sorrows in man-sized servings of ice cream. She spends a large portion of the movie doggy paddling in a lonely swimming pool in a one-piece that's regrettably two sizes too small, and role playing make-out scenarios with the diving board. Her parents are distant, if well meaning, and her sister is a burgeoning ho-fo-sho. You breathe a sigh of relief for her towards the end of the movie when the family packs up the Volvo and heads home, but somehow things manage to get even worse from there.

If you're like me, you'll go into this movie thinking back fondly on your favorite donks and the electric energy and moral dubiousness of early Ludacris. But you'll leave with a tummy too full of raisinettes and a hollow feeling in your wiener. And isn't that really the mark of good filmmaking? In a word, no.

everybody really dies

skateboarding, murder, subway restaurants. a dangerous combination, but gus van sant has carefully thrown them all together in his latest film, paranoid park.

van sant really gets busy on this one. the music would make you look cool if you played it at a party and the images are sam perkins smooth. it just has a really new vibe to it. watching this movie 15 years from now, you'll curl a little smile and say to yourself, 'wow this is so 2008', and then you'll clone yourself and make it wash your dishes.

as you probably know by now, the lead is a no-name actor (as is most of the cast, which was mostly picked off of myspacebook) gabe nevins. kinda fun fact: the 16 year old nevins never read the script and learned his lines on the spot. every now and then, nevins reminded me of the incessant nose scratcher in dazed and confused in the worst way possible.

last thing worth noting is that there's a shower scene that is so ill, i'm sure someone's going to put it up on youtube.

and a happy new year

to celebrate mr. bardem's doubleyew last sunday, the TCP swivels its poorly-disciplined attention over to the land of spain with the spirit of the beehive. while the movie's title will make as little sense after watching it as it does right now, what you will take away is how incredibly naive you were as a kid.

following the precocious antics of ana (above, entranced) as she blindly tries to locate and hang out with frankenstein, beehive is not some kind of reverse sixth sense. there are moments in this movie that make you 'rewind that' like dennis quaid in the vantage point trailer. one wtf moment involves a prank that ana's twin sister, isabel, pulls that PLAYS YOU. another involves kids playing with a bonfire like it's the neighbor's sprinkler.

throughout the film, ana is almost run over by a train, nearly falls into a well, and is thisclose to being shot. it's also worth noting that beehive's use of frankenstein is one of the better movie-within-a-movie moments this side of home "filthy animal" alone.

oh and happy leap year day.

charlatan kane

in 2005, i went to a tribeca film festival screening of a doc about director and good friend of iron mike tyson, james toback. once the lights came back on, they did a little q&a with the director that no one really cared about, but then mr. toback came out, looking heavy and with a cane, to a thunderous applause. at one point someone asked him what his favorite movie is, to which he said without a blink, "f for fake".

it's impossible to prepare your brain for this movie. orson welles has made something here that ushered in mtv breakneck editing, wes anderson credits, and everything that guy ritchie has made. you will notice this.

the opening credits consists of shots of a long-legged woman in a thank-you-lord fitting dress walking through the streets of what looks like paris, interspliced with the have-mercy expressions of male bystanders. from there it goes in a completely different direction, but you don't mind.

there's also the most amazing awkward silence standoff between two people interviewed individually. and i'm pretty sure a monkey beats off on this guy's shoulder at one point. could just be me...

i'm still alive

staying in newish release mode, i finally brought myself to see sean penn's into the wild. there was a lot of hype around this one, so i tried my darndest to level expectations. although not "life changing", it's a risky movie with a wring-your-damn-neck message (careers are for the weak! you are slaves to your money!) that manages not to fall flat on its face.

emile hirsch as the well-read wanderlust channels a young leo dicap in his hey. the likeness though is merely looks-wise. whenever hirsch opens his mouth his voice never sounds like you would expect it to. characters are entranced by his above-it-all worldview, almost instantly.
mr. penn makes his presence felt: characters break the 4th wall and love interests have zits.
but the star here is eddie vedder, who created original songs specifically for the film. low-fi and twangy, pearl jam's mastermind has created a work of music that encapsulates the one-with-nature feel penn has painted with his camera.

wait, scratch that, the real star is this old man towards the end of the film who will steal your heart and make you call your dad.

you can't handle the troof

Seeing as how awards season is just beyond the horizon, I deemed it necessary to take a break from The Criterion Collection and instead focus on some current films that have recently hit theaters with plenty of buzz (noooo, not Bee Movie).

First on the list, the Georgey Clooney driven vehicle, Michael Clayton, in which Clooney plays the "janitor" of a swanky corporate NYC law firm whose job it is to clean up the firm's messiest fiascos. This movie is hard-hitting from the first frame and is perfectly edited as the pacing is right on point and the movie runs just shy of 2 hours. Michael Clayton keeps the audience interested and entertained throughout as first-time director Tony Gilroy brings the same type of energy as seen in the bourne trilogy, of which he is the scribe. Clooney delivers a stellar performance, taking an otherwise generic legal thriller and raising it up a few notches. Tilda Swinton kills it despite her short time on the screen, and she effectively made me want to slap the sh*t out of her character, Karen Crowder, who is chief legal counsel for a corrupt agrichemical giant. Despite the obvious villains in the movie, the strong plot, with its share of twists and turns, is cemented by solid acting performances and a promising directorial debut.

***Bonus thought: Did the Michael Clayton poster bite from the Man Who Fell to Earth?