Extract

Posted on September 3, 2009 at 6:40 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language, sexual references and some drug use
Profanity:	Very strong and explicit language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, characters smoke marijuana
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic violence, character injured, character dies
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	September 4, 2009

The fans who have been waiting for a new workplace comedy as wickedly on target as Mike Judge’s cult classic “Office Space” will have to keep waiting. Judge’s new film has no red stapler, no TPS reports coversheet problems, and most of all, it has no flair.

This time, Judge has us on the side of the boss. He is Joel (Jason Bateman), who owns a small manufacturing company that makes flavor extracts. His life is flavorless, get it?

Joel has an office with a window that looks down on the assembly line that conveys the little bottles to the boxes and the forklift. And he has to deal with petty and incompetent employees. But no matter where we are on our own corporate totem poles, it is always going to be more difficult for the audience to identify with the guy who gets to tell everyone what to do before he goes home to his big house and his big bank account.

And it turns out that this movie is less about the workplace than it is another weak frustrated married life comedy. On one hand, this is a good thing because the workplace plot line, involving an industrial accident than unmans one of the workers (Clifton Collins, Jr., you can do better than this) and a scheming temp (ditto Mila Kunis) is neither interesting nor original. On the other hand, it is not a good thing because neither is the marital plot line. Joel is frustrated. His friend (Ben Affleck, bearded) advises Joel to entrap his wife into an affair, thus giving himself carte blanche to do the same. This was briefly popular back the days of, what was that again, oh yes, “Love, American Style.” There is a reason that show is no longer on the air. And it’s the same reason this movie should immediately move to the 99 cent bin and stay there.

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Comedy Movies -- format

All About Steve

Posted on September 3, 2009 at 6:00 pm

Somewhere deep inside this movie, like the little tiny pea in the bed of the princess, is an idea that could have been an interesting movie. Unfortunately, as with that bed of the princess, it is smothered in 20 mattresses of awful and 20 more mattresses of just plain dumb. Warning: the screenplay is by Kim Barker, who was also responsible for the execrable “License to Wed.” Two strikes and Barker should be out for good.

Sandra Bullock produced, so she is responsible for both Barker and casting herself in the lead role, plays Mary Magdalene Horowitz, a cruciverbalist (constructor of crossword puzzles) who has gone way past endearingly quirky and well into the land of the annoying oddball. It could be kind of goofily charming that she wears the same red boots all the time. It could be sort of intriguing that she has some of that Adam-style social dyslexia. But instead she is the kind of person who recites endless random arcana and then, when told to be quiet, lists several entirely audible synonyms for silence. As happens so often in this movie, she gets the letter but not the spirit of what people are saying to her.

So, when she sees Bradley Cooper (the title Steve), a news station cameraman, she immediately jumps on him, which he quickly realizes is too good to be true. He scrapes her off like gum off the bottom of his shoe, and she then commits career suicide and follows him to a series of increasingly un-funny news stories he is covering. Even the always-welcome appearances of top character actors like Beth Grant (glammed up for once), Thomas Haden Church (as a cliched self-centered television correspondent), Ken Jeong (relatively calm for once), D.J. Qualls (bringing class to a barely-written role), and the delightful Katy Mixon (doing more than I would have thought humanly possible as a cliched hick) cannot breathe any life into this soggy story. The best that can be said about Cooper is that he escapes unscathed, a tribute to his true talent and star power.

Bullock is producer, too, and once again she seems to gravitate toward roles that run contrary to conventions of romantic comedy, and I respect that. She likes to play characters who are socially clumsy (“Miss Congeniality”) or incapable in relationships (“Forces of Nature”) and she does not always go for the happily ever after pairing off at the end of the movie. But here the story spirals past edgy into disturbing, with comic references to an infant’s deformity (and the idiocy of the public response) and an accident involving deaf children. While the film is making fun of the media circus about the rescue, it commits the same crime it is satirizing in its treatment of one of the children. The problem with this movie is not the cluelessness of Bullock’s character; it is the cluelessness of the script.

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It Might Get Loud

Posted on September 3, 2009 at 3:50 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for mild thematic elements, brief language and smoking
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	September 4, 2009

It goes to 11.

Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) has made a documentary featuring three generations of guitar gods: Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2), and Jack White (The White Stripes). But it is not about the musicians. It is about guitars, and passion, and hearing, and sticking it to the man, and art, and music, and the sublime that brings all of those things together. It is a joyous yowl from the depths of existence that soars to the ears of the celestial choirs, where it makes them pause and smile and, if such a thing is possible for angels, envy the humans who get to make such sounds and even those of us who get to listen to them.

We spend time with each of these musicians. The archival clips are surprising and delightful and it is pure pleasure to see these men return to places and instruments that are especially meaningful to them and to listen in as they talk to each other and demonstrate their comments with riffs and techniques. They say that successful musical performers fall into three categories: rock star, performance artist, and musician. These three men are above all musicians. At times they seem to embody music itself, with aural imperatives mortals can only gasp at. Their utter commitment is moving and inspiring. Rock on.

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Documentary Movies -- format Music

Wiseguy

Posted on August 27, 2009 at 8:00 am

“Wiseguy” was a tough, smart 1980’s television series about a cop (Ken Wahl) who goes deep undercover, starting with 18 months in prison to establish his criminal credentials. In this first season, just out on DVD, he infiltrates the organization of a volatile crime boss played by Ray Sharkey. The second season co-starred a very young Kevin Spacey. Warning: the producers of the DVD set did not secure the original music rights, so the soundtrack does not include “Knights in White Satin” and some of the other striking songs that gave extra power to the original broadcast. But it is still a sharp crime drama with excellent performances. I hope the second season is released. It featured a mesmerizing performance from a very young Kevin Spacey.

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Crime Drama Television

Angels in Movies and Television: Before 1970

Posted on August 26, 2009 at 3:59 pm

Ellen Leventry’s list of post-1990 angels on movies and television got me thinking about some of my favorites from the old days. Hard to believe that performers from Jack Benny to Cary Grant to Donald Duck have taken on an angelic role. Angels have appeared in comedies, dramas, cartoons, television series, and even in musicals. They are usually in the story to guide the main character, but quite often they end up learning something, too.

1. Claude Rains and Edward Everett Horton in Here Comes Mr. Jordan. This was the first version of a story later remade with Warren Beatty in “Heaven Can Wait” and Chris Rock in “Down to Earth.” Robert Montgomery (father of “Bewitched’s” Elizabeth Montgomery) plays a boxer whose soul is prematurely taken by an apprentice angel (Horton). Mr. Jordan (Rains), the supervising angel, has to help find a new body for the boxer’s soul. This gentle comedy has a sweetness and kindness that makes it touching as well as entertaining.

2. Clifton Webb in “For Heaven’s Sake.” The impeccable (if slightly fussy) Webb plays an angel who is sent to earth on an important task. There is a special place in heaven for the souls of babies waiting to be born, and two of them are getting anxious. Their prospective parents are postponing parenthood because they are too wrapped up in themselves. Webb appears as a rancher and another kind of angel — a theatrical backer — to get them to change their minds. It is fun to see the ultra-urbane Webb trying to look like a cowpoke and the story is charming.

3. The invisible (except to a little girl) baseball players in Angels in the Outfield. The 1994 remake has its pleasures, but I still prefer the 1951 original with Paul Douglas as the temperamental manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Janet Leigh as the reporter who befriends him after a little girl from an orphanage announces that she sees angels on the baseball diamond. Douglas is wonderfully appealing as he tries to learn to control his temper and finds himself falling for Leigh.

4. Henry Travers in It’s a Wonderful Life. Probably the most-loved angel in the history of movies is Clarence, who has a very unconventional way of helping George Bailey (James Stewart) — by showing him what life would have been like if he had not been born. Travers has just the right warmth and twinkle to make us believe that every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings.

5. Cary Grant in The Bishop’s Wife. The handsomest angel in movie history is Grant’s Dudley, who arrives at Christmas to guide a clergyman (David Niven) who has neglected his family and his faith and become too caught up in the effort to build a cathedral. The most touching moments come from the look in Dudley’s eyes as he understands that even heaven does not match the pleasures of home and family.

6. Gordon MacRae in Carousel. A carnival barker who is desperate for money to care for his pregnant wife dies in a failed robbery attempt. He is sent back to earth to help his teenage daughter, now graduating from high school, to let her know she will never walk alone.

7. Henry Jones in “The Twilight Zone” episode “Mr. Bevis.” Even angels make mistakes. And in this charming episode of the Rod Serling classic television show, Orson Bean plays a lovable loser whose guardian angel (Jones) offers to turn him into a “normal” upright citizen with a responsible job and a solid credit rating. But once Bevis becomes “normal,” he isn’t Bevis anymore, and he and the angel learn that the only way to be happy is to be yourself.

8. Jack Benny in “The Horn Blows at Midnight.” Benny loved to make jokes about this film and considered it a low point of his career. But it is actually a lot of fun. Benny plays a trumpet-player who dreams that he is the angel Athanael, who has been ordered to blow his horn at midnight to signal the end of the earth. Two fallen angels try to steal it from him so they can continue to experience earthly pleasures. The story is softened a bit from the studio-added dream structure, but it still manages some sharp observations and endearing characters. The celestially beautiful Alexis Smith makes a fine angelic companion as well.

9. Donald Duck in “Donald’s Better Self.” Even the irascible Disney duck can be persuaded to listen to what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” In this animated short Donald is a schoolboy who is tempted by the devil to skip school and try smoking but is rescued by the angel, who has not only a shining (and waterproof) halo but a righteous punch.

10. Conrad Veidt in “The Passing of the Third Floor Back.” Awkwardly filmed but still very moving, this film is based on the story by Jerome K. Jerome of a stranger who changes the lives of the residents of a boarding house. Veidt often played bad guys, but here he truly shines as a character whose quiet dignity and courteous kindness bring warmth, self-respect, and inspiration to the other tenants.