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The Friday, Sept. 30 "Cort and Fatboy" podcast goes to some strange places. My recent Skyped guest appearance at a Christian college leads to a long discussion of faith (and the losing of it). Also: "The Book of Mormon." Netflix. VHS memories. Fatboy's MAX-train adventures. Cort's daughter's Jim Carrey impression. And my nerdy excitement over a "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" revival screening at the Laurelhurst Theater.
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Cort and Fatboy (Friday, Sept. 30, 2011) [ iTunes ]
Man! Adrian Wallace made a "Sabertooth Vampire" animated .gif. Thanks, Adrian!
During the Friday, Sept. 23 "Cort and Fatboy" podcast, we talked about old video games, what makes drama "good," the past-due date for spoilers, the merchandising of the Sabertooth Vampire, and "Moneyball." Among other things.
You'll find show-notes in the comments under the podcast post.
Also! Our "Midnight Movie Commentaries" now have their own iTunes feed.
(BONUS READING: Swedish listener Anno Superstar points me in the direction of some "Cort and Fatboy" fan-fiction, featuring an appearance by little S-Vamp. Oh dear.)
Cort and Fatboy (Friday, Sept. 23, 2011)
Movie review in the Friday, Sept. 23 Oregonian....
In 2006, a three-month-old bottlenose dolphin was caught in the ropes of a crab trap off the Florida coast. Rescued by a SeaWorld team and named "Winter," she ended up losing her tail due to her injuries -- but learned to swim with side-to-side movements of her stump that risked damaging her spine.
So a team of prosthetics experts volunteered to spend years designing an innovative artificial tail for the dolphin. Winter became an inspirational touchstone for amputees, spurred real technical innovations in prosthetic science, and became a major tourist attraction at Florida's Clearwater Marine Aquarium.
The real story is a nice little feat of uplift and engineering. Which is why it's a mild shame that "Dolphin Tale" director Charles Martin Smith and his screenwriters have chosen to lard the true-life saga up with a bunch of easily digested imaginary detail straight out of the bland Hollywood feel-good recipe mix.
For example: The filmmakers aim the story straight at their target audience by making the main character a fictional gloomy little kid (Nathan Gamble) who bonds "E.T."-style with Winter (who plays herself rather nicely). They change the names of the major real-life players and throw in several crises (a hurricane! A stubborn teacher! A skeptical mom! A depressed vet! Aquarium funding problems! An out-of-control RC helicopter! A mischievous pelican!) that feel earnest, but also TV-movie-manufactured.
They also gloss over details involving the fascinating real-life prosthetics experts, including Kevin Carroll and Dr. Dan Strzempka (merged into a single fellow named "Dr. Cameron McCarthy" and played with charm by Morgan Freeman). For example, Carroll and Strzempka worked with a big team, and Carroll has designed prosthetics for other animals. In the film, the fictional kid just recruits the doc and drags him to the aquarium. If I were one of the real people involved in Winter's life, I'd be slightly hosed that they punted so much of the credit to a child who doesn't exist.
"Dolphin Tale" is inoffensive enough -- little kids will probably dig it -- and I'm not suggesting that family-friendly docudramas should tightly conform to real life. But when they do embellish, they should distill the story into something more compelling, rather than watering it down with pleasant-but-utterly-forgettable inspirational boilerplate.
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(113 min., rated PG) Grade: C
'Dolphin Tale' (The Oregonian, Friday, Sept. 23, 2011)
During the Friday, Sept. 16 "Cort & Fatboy" podcast, we talked about one of the year's best movies, "Drive."
Also: Germs. Sign-twirlers. "Heat." And Muppets.
(Pictured: "Drive" fan-art by Phil Noto.)
Cort and Fatboy (Friday, Sept. 16, 2011)
The Friday, Sept. 9 "Cort & Fatboy" podcast was sort of gloriously awkward. It features special guest Becky Ohlsen; reviews of "Contagion," "Attack the Block," "Warrior" and "The Last Circus"; free-associative discussions of trolls and soul-chins; and occasional stammering, among many other things.
Show-notes in the comments.
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Cort and Fatboy (Friday, Sept. 9, 2011)
Movie review in the Friday, Sept. 9 Oregonian....
"Attack the Block" is a terrific midnight movie of the future -- a tough, funny, fast-moving and tightly constructed John Carpenter riff in which a bickering group fights a pack of space monsters in and around a single location.
But despite the self-conscious Carpenter echoes (right down to the minimalist synth score), writer/director Joe Cornish makes one major storytelling decision that leaves "Block" feeling surprisingly fresh: His heroes are the criminal-punk kids who almost always bite it in the first scene in any other creature feature -- allowing for some electrifying, comical and stereotype-busting variations on the usual formula.
The film starts with a mugging -- a gang of young South London kids led by Moses (John Boyega) rob a nurse (Jodie Whittaker) at knifepoint. Almost immediately, an alien crash-lands nearby, the explosion ignored amid the Guy Fawkes Day fireworks. Nearly as immediately, the gang decides to kill it and sell the carcass to the tabloids.
They don't count on a swarm of the dead alien's pals crash-landing shortly thereafter -- chasing our teen-and-younger antiheroes into the public-housing block they call home and maybe even forcing the ne'er-do-wells to confront their responsibility to the community.
Cornish makes a feature debut here that's almost as stunning as when his pal (and executive producer) Edgar Wright invaded the cineplex with "Shaun of the Dead." Cornish earns suspense, using the geography of the housing block like John McTiernan used Nakatomi Plaza in "Die Hard." (And, again, with wry variations; bickering heroes are always trying to reach a secure safe haven in these sorts of flicks, but in "Attack the Block," that safe haven is a hyper-secure penthouse full of weed.)
He also gets across-the-board great performances out of the mostly-teen ensemble cast (especially Boyega), injects a bit of social commentary, and rocks his low budget with careful shooting. The monsters here are hilariously, self-consciously fake -- looking like nothing so much as ink-black Muppets with glowing fangs -- but Cornish's self-assurance somehow makes the fakery feel awesome and all that's needed, as if Hollywood's average pixel-rich alien menace were a needless waste of money.
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(88 min.; rated R for creature violence, drug content and pervasive language; playing in Portland at Regal Lloyd Center) Grade: B-plus
'Attack the Block' (The Oregonian, Friday, Sept. 9, 2011)
