The Bounty Hunter

Posted on July 13, 2010 at 8:00 am

Jennifer Aniston is a beautiful and talented woman, but this film had me thinking some very mean thoughts about her, thoughts like, “She is too old for this kind of movie” and “Probably not a good idea to make a movie that seems like a lesser version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, best known for documenting her real-life husband falling in love with his co-star.”

If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen this movie: battling exes squabble as he (Milo the bounty hunter played by Gerard Butler) tries to take her (Nic the journalist played by Aniston) to jail while she tries to persuade him that she’s working on an important and very dangerous story. Will they get shot at? Will there be chases? Will there be a romantic interlude interrupted by a mis-communication? You don’t even have to see the trailer to have seen this movie. You already know everything that’s going to happen.

Aniston is too old for this movie. Butler looks pudgy-faced and uncomfortable. Despite rumors of an off-screen romance, there are no sparks between them and we never get any sense of what brought them together or any relationship between what we are told about their issues and any aspect of their behavior toward each other or anyone else. This is one of those films where if anyone behaved in a rational manner, the whole thing would have been over in 20 minutes.

It does have a good chase scene at the beginning and a couple of briefly interesting goons (Milo owes some gambling debts). But it lets us down repeatedly by wasting the time and talents of the fabulous Christine Baranski (as Nic’s glamorous mother), SNL’s Jason Sudeikis as Nic’s co-worker, and Carol Kane (with a new set of teeth) and Adam LeFevre as bed-and-breakfast owners. It is supposed to be heartwarming and humorous that Nic’s mother has some boundary issues when it comes to Nic’s romantic life. It’s just icky. It’s supposed to be funny that her co-worker keeps trying to persuade her to get romantic with him. It’s just icky — until he is mistaken for Milo and gets beat up by the goons, when it becomes not just icky but ooky. It’s even supposed to be funny that Nic tases Milo. Nope. This falls into that category of movie that exists to be perpetually playing on airplanes — because when the pilot interrupts to tell you to look out the window you won’t miss anything.

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Tell Us Your Story — Life in a Day Project 7-24-10

Posted on July 12, 2010 at 8:53 pm

Take your camera out on July 24 and make a movie about your life — your work, your family, your friends, your home, your passion, your fear, your inspiration, your challenges, your music, your cooking, what you think is beautiful, what you think is sad, what makes you happy, what makes you proud, what makes you laugh. Two of the greatest film-makers in the world, Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”) and Ridley Scott (“Blade Runner” and “Gladiator”) are going to take all of those movies and make them into one big movie snapshot of life on earth on that one day.
Google, which is sponsoring this project, said in its press release:

Kevin Macdonald, the Oscar-winning director of films such as The Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void and One Day in September, will then edit the most compelling footage into a feature documentary film, to be executive-produced by Ridley Scott, the director behind films like Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Thelma & Louise, Blade Runner and Robin Hood. LG Electronics is supporting “Life in a Day” as a key part of its long-standing “Life’s Good” campaign and to support the creation of quality online content that can be shared and enjoyed by all.

The film will premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and if your footage makes it into the final cut, you’ll be credited as a co-director and may be one of 20 contributors selected to attend the premiere.

Want to take part? Here’s what to do.

1. Visit the “Life in a Day” channel and learn more about the project. Be sure to read through the steps you need to take to participate and the guidelines for creating your video(s). Also check out some of the sample videos for inspirational ideas.

2. On July 24, capture your day on camera.

3. Upload your footage to the “Life in a Day” channel any time before July 31.

Regardless of whether your footage makes it into the final film, your video(s) will live on on the “Life in a Day” channel as a time capsule that will tell future generations what it was like to be alive on July 24, 2010

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Why ‘The Last Airbender’ Will Be Considered a Classic in 30 Years

Posted on July 12, 2010 at 6:53 pm

What did you love when you were 12?

Tribute: Harvey Pekar

Posted on July 12, 2010 at 3:25 pm

Harvey Pekar died today at age 70. He was a writer best known as the subject of a superb biographical film, “American Splendor.”

Pekar was an exceptional man who struggled with challenges that made it difficult for him to get along with people. But he managed to turn those struggles into art, working with comic artists to create biographical graphic novels that were filled with tragicomic takes on life’s difficulties, from standing in line at the grocery store behind someone who is taking forever to coping with cancer. The same unfiltered quality that made him unable to manage social pleasantries gave his stories a candor and directness that turned his daily life into poetry and his bleakest moments into inspiration for his readers.

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Who Inspired Lucas and Spielberg?

Posted on July 11, 2010 at 1:53 pm

Two of the greatest story-tellers of the 20th century say that they both learned how to tell a story from the illustrations of Norman Rockwell. George Lucas (“Star Wars”) and Steven Spielberg (“Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Jurassic Park,” “Jaws”), close friends and sometime collaborators (the Indiana Jones movies) both collect the work of America’s foremost illustrator because they love the way he packs an entire story into just one frame.

For the first time, their collections are being made available to the public at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum in Washington D.C. until January 2, 2011 in an exhibit called Telling Stories. In a movie accompanying the exhibit, the film-makers talk about how as children they scrutinized every detail of the pictures to understand the story behind each one and how that inspired their visual styles. Spielberg talks about two paintings in particular that continue to inspire him — one of an author at his typewriter dreaming up a story about Daniel Boone and one of a boy holding on for dear life to the end of a high dive board, peering down at the endless space below. He says the first inspires him to tell stories and the second is how he feels every single time just before he signs on to do another film.

Rockwell has been taken for granted, marginalized, and dismissed as corny by those who think that art has to be anguished and the era of representation is over. But shows like this one are recognizing that he deserves to be seen as an artist of the first rank in ability and importance. He is not unaware of despair, squalor, and pain. Indeed, it is all there in his pictures, if you look. But his images are aspirational, inspiring us to live up to the values and dreams of our forefathers and, when we fail and fail again, to start over.

The Smithsonian has an online slide show of the highlights of the exhibit. And visitors to Stockbridge, Massachusetts should be sure to visit the Norman Rockwell Museum. The images are always powerful, but the chance to see the brushstrokes and the work that went into all of the preliminary sketches will deepen your appreciation for Rockwell as an illustrator and an artist of the first rank. I highly recommend his autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator: Norman Rockwell, the DVD NORMAN ROCKWELL: An American Portrait, and the catalog of the show, Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. But most of all, I recommend seeing Rockwell’s pictures, masterful in technique and in spirit.

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