‘Memphis’ Comes to Movie Theaters — Special Event

Posted on March 22, 2011 at 9:43 pm

The Broadway smash hit, “Memphis,” Tony Award-winner for best musical, is coming to a movie theater near you. NCM Fathom and Broadway Worldwide are presenting an exclusive Broadway musical event in more than than 530 movie theaters for four nights only: Thursday, April 28; Saturday, April 30; and Tuesday, May 3 at 7:30 p.m., with a special matinee on Sunday, May 1 at 12:30 p.m. (all times are local). This is the first time a current Tony Award-winning Best Musical will be presented in movie theaters while concurrently running on Broadway. In addition to the electrifying musical, audiences will be treated to an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the musical that won four 2010 Tony Awards and continues to play to sold out houses on Broadway. “Memphis” was captured live in performance with the original Broadway cast for this special Fathom event presentation.

Tickets are available at participating theater box offices and online. For a complete list of theater locations, prices and additional information — including cast photos and other details —visit the NCM Fathom website (theaters and participants are subject to change).

“Memphis” takes place in the smoky halls and underground clubs of the segregated 50’s, where a young white DJ named Huey Calhoun (Chad Kimball) fell in love with everything he shouldn’t: rock and roll and an electrifying black singer (Montego Glover). It is an original story about the cultural revolution that erupted when his vision met her voice, and the music changed forever. Bursting off the stage with explosive dancing, irresistible songs and a thrilling tale of fame and forbidden love, this incredible journey is filled with laughter, soaring emotion and roof-raising rock ‘n’ roll.

This is the first time that audiences across the country will have the chance to see the Broadway cast of an award-winning musical while the show is still playing in New York. “Memphis’ will launch a U. S. national tour in Memphis, Tenn., in October 2011 at the Orpheum Theatre.

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Based on a play Musical

Yogi Bear

Posted on March 22, 2011 at 7:38 pm

Yogi Bear (voice of Dan Aykroyd) is genuinely perplexed by the suggestion that he might want to forage for food and catch fish with his paws. “Isn’t that kind of unsanitary?”

He may live in the woods, but for Yogi, star of the 1960’s series of cartoons from Hanna-Barbera, that does not mean his life has to be bereft of civilization. He has a best friend named Boo Boo with a natty bow tie (voice of Justin Timberlake!). His cave is equipped with a soda machine. He is never seen without his hat, collar, and tie. And he is a well-known aficionado of fine dining. His preferred cuisine is the contents of picnic baskets brought by visitors to Jellystone Park, the campground and nature preserve that is his home. He loves picnic baskets so much, he’s given them an extra syllable, to hold onto the word just a little longer. He calls them “pick-a-nic baskets,” and they are to him what the grail was to Galahad, the whale was to Ahab, and the Road Runner is to Wile E. Coyote.

But to the frustrated Ranger Smith (the always-likable Tom Cavanagh), Yogi’s antics make it impossible for him to have the nice, peaceful, orderly park he dreams of. “There’s no better place on earth,” he sighs, “except without him.” And Smith can’t figure out how to talk to the pretty nature nerd who has arrived to make a documentary about the talking bear in Jellystone Park (the always-adorable Anna Faris as Rachel).

Soon, though, Smith has a bigger problem. The Mayor (slimy Andrew Daly) and his aide (elfin Nathan Corddry) want rescue the city’s budget by privatizing the park and selling off the logging rights. Ranger Smith has just one week to get enough money from increased admissions to the park to save the day.

Yogi Bear began as one segment of the 1958 animated series “Huckleberry Hound.” He quickly eclipsed the other characters, who are all but forgotten (I don’t see “Pixie, Trixie, and Mr. Jinks: The Movie” coming to a multiplex any time soon), and soon became a headliner with his own series. Yogi’s adventures were filled with the same silly slapstick, but he had a special quality that endeared him to kids. They identified with his place midway between the animal world of the forest and Smith’s ultra-civilized world of a uniformed, rule-enforcing (but always-forgiving) grown-up.

Yogi often brags that he is “smarter than the average bear,” but he often outsmarts himself, allowing kids to feel that they are a step ahead of him. As often in comedy, especially for kids, a lot of the humor in cartoons comes from ineptitude and foolishness. Children, who are constantly surrounded by things they do not understand love to see characters who are even more confounded by the world around them. In this film, Yogi may be smart enough to design a flying contraption. But his efforts to persuade Ranger Smith that it is not intended for stealing picnic baskets fails when the Ranger points out that printed across its stern is “Baskitnabber 2000.”

Moments like these are classic Yogi, but it is still an uneven transition to a live-action feature film from the very simplified story-line and animation of a seven-minute hand-drawn cartoon. The running time, computer graphics, and 3D effects overwhelm the slightness of the material, especially when it departs from the core relationship of Yogi and Ranger Smith. The story drags in the middle, when the junior ranger (T.J. Miller), chafing because Ranger Smith won’t let him do anything but sort maps, agrees to sabotage the efforts to keep the park going in exchange for a promotion. Smith’s inept efforts to romance the pretty film-maker are weak and it hardly helps when Yogi offers his advice to Smith about, ahem, marking his territory.

These are what I call “lunchbox movies.” We’ve had a string of big-budget multiplex fodder featuring whatever character was on some studio executive’s second grade lunchbox (Garfield, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Inspector Gadget). They toss in some potty humor for the little kids and some boombox oldies to amuse the parents (Sir Mix-a-Lot will be cashing yet another royalty check). But Yogi and his pic-a-nic basket — and the kids and parents looking for a holiday treat — deserve better.

The Tourist

Posted on March 22, 2011 at 3:05 pm

Behind this forgettable trifle are some very talented people, all punching below their weight when they’re not just calling it in. The screenplay is by Julian Fellowes (“Gosford Park”), Christopher McQuarrie (“The Usual Suspects”), and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (“The Lives of Others”), based on the 2005 French film, “Anthony Zimmer.” Two of the biggest stars on the planet, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp do their best to put some sizzle in this would-be romantic thriller, but they are both poorly used and have no chemistry whatsoever. Venice is pretty, though.

Jolie is the veddy proper Elise Clifton-Ward, whose role in this film is somewhere between femme fatale (drawing the poor schlub who happens across her path into a world of intrigue and peril) and Girl from Ipanema — she spends a lot of time walking slowly while those she passes say, “Ahhhhhhh.”

Elise receives a note from Alexander Pearce, the man she loves and has not seen for two years, asking her to find a man on the train who resembles him to use as a decoy and distract the various Interpol teams that are trying to track him down. Enter the shlub, a math teacher from Wisconsin so (apparently) incapable of dishonesty that his very name is Frank. And yet, we see him tell a lie very early on. It’s a small one, perhaps understandable, but still….

Elise invites him to spend the night in her lavish hotel suite (on the sofa) and kisses him on the balcony, thus drawing the fire, and the attention, of Interpol and of someone even more bent on tracking Pearce down, the man he stole from. It’s a nice set-up, but the execution depends on three things that never happen: a witty script, a spark between the leading characters, and an understanding of tone. The script sags. Jolie and Depp are both poorly cast (she may be more of a serene and elegant mother earth in her real life these days but on screen she only comes alive when she is aggressive and a little wicked and Depp can do just about anything but act like an ordinary guy). And von Donnersmarck has no sense of humor or lightness to make the sillier aspects of the story endearing instead of annoying. This is yet another example of an American remake of a French film that just misses the fun, the romance, and the point.

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Action/Adventure Romance Thriller

Limitless

Posted on March 17, 2011 at 6:16 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving a drug, violence including disturbing images, sexuality and language
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Plot concerns a performance-enhancing superdrug,
Violence/ Scariness:	Some intense and graphic violence
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	March 18, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	July 18, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0051MKNV8

Most of us feel that there must be some way for us to unleash the best version of ourselves. Whole sections of bookstores, whole shelves of vitamins, dozens of infomercials, motivational speakers, and guides to personal growth, self-actualization, and personal and professional success are evidence of the powerful human sense that there must be some trick to getting us out of our own way. So, if someone offered you a pill that would do all that for you, you’d probably be tempted to give it a try.

That’s what happens to Eddie (Bradley Cooper) in this stylish thriller. He’s a guy who feels like a loser. He has yet to write a single word of the book he is supposed to be working on. His girlfriend (Abbie Cornish as Lindy) has dumped him. He lives in a dive and he is out of money and out of ideas. He has just about lost touch entirely with any notion of himself as a person in control, a person on track, a person with a sense of possibility. He runs into his former brother-in-law, who says he has moved on from selling street drugs to selling legal pharmaceuticals and offers him something new and special, a small, circular, clear little performance-enhancing pill. Eddie swallows it.

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It hits him like a combination of Ritalin, steroids, speed, and super-powerful ginkgo biloba. It hits him like spinach hits Popeye, if it grew his brain instead of his muscles. Suddenly, everything makes sense. Eddie has focus, confidence, motivation, clarity. The scales drop from his eyes. Everything makes sense to him, information, numbers, people. He can effortlessly access any information he has ever skimmed over, even if he was unaware of it at the time. He finishes writing his book in four days and it is a masterpiece. He can learn new languages almost instantly. He gets a haircut, cleans up his apartment, starts to work out. He gets Lindy back. He starts investing and the money pours in. A billionaire (Robert De Niro) makes him an offer.

But there’s a problem. Eddie becomes dependent on the drug. He keeps upping his dose and he starts to have black-outs. His ex-wife gives him a shattering glimpse of what it means to go cold turkey. The dealer has been murdered. Eddie has a stash, but no way to get more. Other people know about the drug and they desperately want him to get it for them. Can he out-think other out-thinkers?

Cooper has become one of Hollywood’s most appealing leading men and this movie, which he co-produced, plays to his strengths. If he is not exactly convincing as the pony-tailed mess at the beginning, he has all of the genuine movie star gloss to make the newer, better Eddie look, as Dolly used to sing, better than a body has a right to. Director Neil Burger keeps the movie amped up, making us feel a little wired as we watch. It’s fun to get inside the head of someone working at 500 percent capacity, seeing how he thinks through his options, trying to maintain control internally and externally, balancing the swings between extraordinary powers and terrifying dependence and vulnerability.

Even those of average intelligence to spot the problems Eddie overlooks — or the obvious solution it takes him the entire running time to figure out. But it is still a lot of stylish fun to see Bradley Cooper inhabit the fantasy — and deal with the fallout.

The Lincoln Lawyer

Posted on March 17, 2011 at 6:12 pm

That’s not Lincoln as in the rail-splitting President. It’s Lincoln as in car. Mick Haller (Matthew McConaughey) is a lawyer whose office is in his car, the better to maneuver between his court appearances and his clients. He’s a criminal defense attorney, and this is a nicely gritty portrayal of the criminal justice system. That means he has no illusions, either about his clients or about what we like to call the justice system. He has no illusions about happily ever after, either. He is mostly-amicably divorced from a prosecutor (the always-welcome Marisa Tomei), and shares custody of their daughter.

Mick rides around from court to court and client to client, driven by a former client working off his legal fees. He gets paid up front. He’s not above giving a kickback to a bail bondsman for a referral or giving a little sweetener to a clerk to get his case pushed to the head of the list. He’s used to dealing with, well, dealers and other low-lifes. So when he gets a chance to represent a murder suspect who is not only wealthy but claims to be innocent, this is a chance for Mick to do well by justice and himself.

But things are never so simple, and Mickey must find a way to both use and bend the rules after it appears that this case has complications that extend all the way back to a plea bargain he made on behalf of another murder suspect in a case with some disturbingly similar evidence.

McConaughey is well cast as Mick. He has the surface, slightly seedy charm of a trial lawyer. He easily conveys the struggle of someone with essential decency but a gift for shortcuts that makes him money but also makes him feel like he has to try harder. His scenes with Tomei bring out a warmth and essential decency that keeps us on Mick’s side as he tries to do the right thing.

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Based on a book Courtroom Crime Drama