41:00 to 50:15 -- I use the release of the "Venture Bros." Season 3 DVD as an excuse to geek out on the excellence of the show. (Here's a review I wrote of Season 1 for The DVD Journal back in the day.)
56:30 to 1:20:15 -- Good Lord, we spend well over 20 minutes defending the "Battlestar Galactica" finale against its legions of Internet haters. (And I shamelessly hawk the "KISS ME I'M GALEN" t-shirt I created on a dare.)
During the Friday, March 20 "Cort and Fatboy" broadcast, we talked about "Fanboys," "Duplicity" and "I Love You, Man" after nerding out on our favorite "Battlestar Galactica" moments. (I start turning up somewhere around 49:15.)
"Fanboys" kind of made me want to stop being one. I hate writing that, because I love the idea of this road-trip comedy. It's 1998, and a quintet of rabid Ohio "Star Wars" fans embark on a crazy heist scheme: Break into Skywalker Ranch and steal a workprint of "Episode I" so one of their number, who has cancer, can see the film before he dies. (This may qualify as a form of assisted suicide.)
This script has been floating around since before "Episode I" opened, and you can see that first-time screenwriter Ernest Cline and director Kyle Newman were shooting for a balance of affection for and satire of the world of obsessive Lucas fandom. The cast has chemistry, but the final film just frankly isn't very funny -- it's a string of weaksauce, ersatz-Kevin Smith horny-geek gags and cameos, flatly staged. It's also surprisingly tone-deaf to the actual nuances of fan interaction (e.g., fans love Harrison Ford, but don't loudly argue over whether he's the greatest actor of all time).
To be fair, the movie's a compromised product -- partially reshot by another director after its stars blew up, then edited and re-edited amid some very public geek-community protest. (There's an absolutely fascinating breakdown of the whole production fiacso in this KCRW podcast, starting at 13:17.) I love that fanboys fought for "Fanboys." Unfortunately, their passion was misplaced.
P.S. If you want to watch someone dealing with similar characters and ideas in a much more raw and honest (if far less cinematically polished) way, check out a short my pal Chris Hanel made years ago called "The Formula." It's about a bunch of serious geeks trying to make a "Star Wars" fan film -- and to my thinking it really sort of nails how fanboys see the world. ____
C; 90 minutes; rated PG-13 for pervasive crude and sexual material, language and drug content; playing in Portland at Living Room Theaters.
"Duplicity" is perfectly titled: There isn't a second of this smart, twisty, grown-up thriller in which someone isn't lying, cheating or stealing, often from someone they claim to love.
The story concerns two ex-spooks (Clive Owen, Julia Roberts) working in corporate espionage. Their clients: a pair of feuding New York CEOs (Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti) trying to pilfer and/or hide a top-secret new product. The MacGuffin hardly matters: Writer-director Tony Gilroy ("Michael Clayton") is more interested in playing with your head by withholding information. He starts the film with Owen and Roberts' first meeting, leaps ahead five years and fills in the missing time with slick, globe-trotting flashbacks that slowly reveal the particulars of a trust-challenged courtship and at least one long con.
Owen and Roberts -- both looking even cooler and thinner than usual -- re-stir their chemistry from 2004's "Closer." They're sharp movie stars, and they provide the sugar that helps Gilroy's narrative long con go down. The writer/director's technique can feel like complication for complication's sake, but stick with the story and the dramatic rewards are real -- or at least the punchline's pretty clever. _____
B;125 minutes; rated PG-13 for language and some sexual content.
'Duplicity' (The Oregonian, Friday, March 20, 2009)
Above: The line for "Battlestar at the Bagdad" as of 5:50 p.m. The show started at 10 p.m. The line extends way past the edge of the frame, and it was around the corner a half-hour later.
To be a fan of The Rock is to frequently suffer. The man has charisma to burn and the camera loves him like Tristan loves Isolde -- but to bask in his glow, you have to smell what he's cookin' in junk like "Doom,""Southland Tales" and now "Race to Witch Mountain." (I still hold out hope that one day he'll deliver on the promise of "The Rundown.")
To be fair, "Witch Mountain" is at least junk a 9-year-old might love. It revisits the ideas of the 1970s Disney cheese-classics about telekinetic alien kids on the lam on Earth. This time, the spooky 'tweens are picked up by a slumming cab driver (The Rock, sorry, Dwayne Johnson) and run afoul of black helicopters and a space-assassin in a robot costume straight out of "M.A.N.T.I.S."
The movie feels corporate-designed for a long life on the small screen, frankly -- The Rock more or less charms you through the worst of it, but the effects are cheap, the dialogue is about as challenging as a "Hannah Montana" episode, and the pace manages to be both brisk and numbing. In other words, it's totally on-par with typical Disney Sunday Movie fare (and, well, the original flicks). I'll bet it beats "Watchmen" this weekend. _____
C; 99 minutes; rated PG for sequences of action and violence, frightening and dangerous situations, and some thematic elements.
Friday, Feb. 27: I speculate that "Outlander" might actually be cool Viking-versus-alien fun as it opens (exclusively!) in Cornelius, Oregon. (If you've never heard of "Outlander," this will bring you up to speed.) I also finally realize we can just keep taping exclusively for the podcast version -- which means we start talking about ill-released coming-of-age movies built around "Star Wars" and Stevie Wonder on "Sesame Street." [ mp3 ] [ iTunes ]
Friday, Feb. 20: I find "Fired Up" far more entertaining than expected, even if I'm not sure who the movie is for, exactly. [ mp3 ] [ iTunes ]
