If you’ve read any of my posts thus far, you’ll be painfully aware of the fact that I am very much a Hollywood outsider. The industry, insofar as it can be called an industry rather than simply a loose agglomeration of assholes, makes as much sense to me as Memento after I slept through the first thirty minutes. As such, I’m never quite sure why certain people pop up on my screen time and again when they have, as far as I can see, no unique selling point or discernible talent.

In Who Are You and Why?, I’ll be dissecting various Hollywood characters from my own perspective of contented ignorance, and it is my hope that in doing so that I can make a case for or against their career in showbusiness as a justifiable means of employment. Up first is a figure whose pop-culture presence has confused and irritated me for some time.

Quick note about the rules: I’m not allowed to carry out even so much as a Google search on the “celebrity” in question prior to penning these pieces. Once I’ve thrown together a decent number of these quick shots I’ll index them as a Wikipediaesque catalogue of opinion and misinformation.

Click “Read more…” below for the rest of the article.

A brief and random handful of recently watched films, rated on a 0-4 star system.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me ***
(1992/David Lynch/2nd Viewing)

It always makes me laugh when someone associated with a film like Wolverine or Star Trek talks about how important it is to make the movie right “for the fans”. Please. For better or worse, those films are calculated efforts to draw gigantic summer blockbuster numbers. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was a challenging enough movie for me, and I’m a big fan of the show. I would assume this to be an absolute mindbender for the casual viewer. An effort “for the fans” if there ever was one.

Bad Day at Black Rock ***
(1955/John Sturges/1st Viewing)

Spencer Tracy plays a man visiting a southwestern U.S. village, where the townsfolk have a dark secret to hide. A short and fun action drama with an all-star cast.

Click “Read more…” below for the rest of the article.

I may be alone in this, but I have to admit that I wasn’t even aware of the existence of airbenders, let alone that there was only one remaining. That being the case, however, someone saw fit to fund and film a movie on the matter. Naturally, M. Night Shyamalan was the man brought in to direct, although the word is that he’ll be straying from his simple twist, ludicrous twist formula for this one.

Having carried out literally minutes of assiduous research (whatup, Wikipedia) into Airbender, I can tell you that it’s based on a Nickelodeon cartoon series whose protagonist is a young fellow named Aang who is somehow able to alter the weather using martial arts. If you’re as excited about the prospect of watching a kid making it drizzle with a roundhouse kick as I am, you’ll be glad to hear that this is expected to be the first part of an Airbender trilogy.

Click “Read more…” below for the images in question.

Michael Moore’s neverending quest to dissect flaws wherever he finds them continues this October 2 with the release of his new documentary-type cinematic offering. The official line is that the flick will work through both the “root causes of the economic meltdown” and the “corporate and political shenanigans” that caused it. Fascinating. The bearded one set out to whip up interest with a typically inflammatory statement:

“The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn’t have enough wealth, so they systematically set out to fleece the American people.”

As with all Moore movies, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it and fundamentally accept the premise of the argument. However, I’ll also find myself pitching popcorn at the screen when the whiny loudmouth blends a fact right into his opinion and pretends the two are one and the same. If there’s anything worse than someone who disagrees with you, it’s someone who shares your opinion but makes a crappy case for your side.

I really don’t know what to say about these clips. At this point Inglourious Basterds could be the most fun you can have with your trousers on, or a stinker of biblical proportions. I’m inclined to think it’ll be typical Tarantino-style fun, but it’s tough to judge from such short snippets of the movie. If the appropriate tone is established early on, these sort of scenes could work quite well. If not, I hate to think quite how awkward two hours of comic violence and ‘Allo ‘Allo-type accents will be.

Click “Read more…” below to see the clips in question.

This summer’s release of Whatever Works marks Woody Allen’s return to New York, where his most well-known and highly-regarded masterpieces take place. Since 2005, Allen has released four movies shot in Europe, and they came with a mixed bag of results.

The first three films from Allen’s European tour took place in London. For my money, and seemingly by general consensus, the best of these three was his 2005 release, Match Point. Match Point treads within many of the same territories as Crimes and Misdemeanors, my personal favorite Allen film, yet offers some interesting contrasts as well. Mainly, the writing doesn’t fit his younger characters as well and there is little humor. It does, however, do an excellent job of creating real suspense and is a solid entry into Allen’s library. Scoop and Cassandra’s Dream seem to be mailed-in efforts. The jokes seem like leftovers from his better films, the drama is not engaging, and the story lines are much less inspired versions of a topic that Allen has commonly visited.

Click “Read more…” below for the rest of this article.

After X-Men Origins: Wolverine it almost feels like a good thing that this year’s summer lineup isn’t nearly as loaded with superhero films as that of last year. The genre just needs to sit in the corner and think about what its done after that gaping pile of horse shit.

Anyways, the day after I saw the latest X-Men installment, the comic book-based movie American Splendor came in my Netflix envelope and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Looking back through the last decade or so, it can be seen that several of the best movies adapted from comic books actually fall out of the realm of superheroes or Frank Miller’s heightened reality. Here’s a half dozen of my favorites meeting this standard:

American Splendor
An interesting movie with a whole lot going on at once. Paul Giamatti plays comic book author Harvey Pekar, who occasionally appears in the movie himself as both a narrator and interview subject (this blends much more seamlessly than one would expect). Pekar wrote in a style that I commonly associate with Larry David on Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm, making points and jokes about situations that annoy him in every day life (the difficult co-worker, the slow person in front of you in line at the grocery store, etc.). It is an odd and witty little independent comedy filled with neat tricks and solid performances.

Click “Read more…” below for the rest of this piece.