« July 2012 | Main | September 2012 »
Above: artwork by Brandon Bird. You can buy it as a print or a lunchbox.
The Friday, Aug. 31 "Cort & Fatboy" podcast was one big weird free-associative brainstorming session, really. Clint Eastwood. Forever 21. Meat Twinkies. Batman. The Female Expendables. "Movie: The Movie." Also, I reviewed films largely by doing impressions of their stars today, which was kind of a departure. (This practice incurred the wrath of my pal Becky Ohlsen.)
Show-notes here.
Cort and Fatboy (Friday, Aug. 31, 2012)
Movie review in the Wednesday, Aug. 29 Oregonian....
The tone (and appeal) of "Lawless" is pretty well summed up by Tom Hardy's performance as Forrest Bondurant, leader of a trio of brothers who violently defend their moonshine business from corrupt cops in Prohibition-era Virginia.
Hardy's take on Forrest is alternately romantic, stoic, shy, funny and terrifying -- deeply eccentric and larger than life. He moves like a shuffling giant, half his lines seem to be variations on a grunted "Hrm," and when he speaks audibly, it's usually some bit of over-the-top country poetry along the lines of, "We got about as much sense as a bird flyin' in the sky." Often as not, this cornpone patois is followed by a sudden and graphic application of brass knuckles.
That's more or less how the movie succeeds -- as brawly, bloody, self-conscious folk myth.
Director John Hillcoat and screenwriter/musician Nick Cave (who previously collaborated on "The Proposition") adapt "The Wettest County in the World," Matt Bondurant's 2008 historical novel about his bootlegging ancestors. The filmmakers fill the screen with period grit, broadly sketched characters, and eruptions of pain. The folksy dialogue would feel overheated if the cast (which includes Shia LaBeouf, Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Dane DeHaan and Jason Clarke) weren't selling it with such conviction. Or -- in the case of Pearce's performance as a villainous, eyebrow-challenged, germaphobic fop -- selling it with so many vivid actorly tics.
The film's climax is a bit of a jumble, but by then Hillcoat has built his world so vibrantly, it hardly matters. And the hard-charging soundtrack -- featuring Cave, Warren Ellis, Ralph Stanley, Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson -- is an absolute blast.
_____
(115 min., rated R) Grade: B
'Lawless' (The Oregonian, Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012)
.... you may find it contains a single-page comic called "Ride of the Sabertooth Vampire" -- written and drawn by yours truly with colors by Bill Mudron. That is all.
I spent much of the Friday, Aug. 17 "Cort and Fatboy" podcast confusing Michael Shannon with Michael Sheen with Martin Sheen, to the great consternation of the hosts.
Also discussed:
Show-notes here.
Cort and Fatboy (Friday, Aug. 17, 2012)
During the Friday, Aug. 10 "Cort and Fatboy" podcast, we posited a triple-feature of "Red Dawn," "THX 1138" and "They Live"; feared the brass eagle on John Milius' desk; promoted a bunch of cool local screenings; and talked about the weird addiction/recovery stuff Tony Gilroy snuck into "The Bourne Legacy." Among other things.
Extensive show-notes here.
Cort and Fatboy (Friday, Aug. 10, 2012)
[ iTunes feed ]
True 1970s JPL nerds know polo shirts are for chumps
(And while we're fixing looks let's also give Gene Kranz's white vest to Mission Control Rockabilly Guy who by the way actually is a rockabily guy)
(Drawn during last night's Curiosity rover landing, a.k.a. the greatest interplanetary trick-shot of all time. Turns out Mohawk Guy and Rockabilly Guy are on Twitter, BTW.)
That was weird. A bona fide CBS News camera crew followed Adam Rosko and Jesse Graff of "Trek in the Park" into the "Cort and Fatboy" studios and filmed us interviewing them during the Friday, Aug. 3 podcast. A few seconds of that footage will be woven into a larger CBS report on "Trek in the Park," I'd imagine.
Also: I reviewed the "Total Recall" remake (or maybe I just made a bunch of comparisons) and also continued my long-standing practice of making up stuff about our show sponsors.
Finally: Listener "Glazed MacGuffin" sort of blew my mind last night by walking into our Bagdad screening of a 35 mm print of "Conan the Barbarian" with this poster-sized piece of C&F fan-art (pictured at right; click to enlarge).
Cort and Fatboy (Friday, Aug. 3, 2012) [ iTunes feed ]
Movie review in the Friday, Aug. 3 Oregonian....
Let's get the comparisons out of the way: Director Len Wiseman's remake of "Total Recall" lacks the gleefully hyperviolent personal stamp of Paul Verhoeven's 1990 original. But it's a fairly entertaining mashup of the looks of several other, better sci-fi movies, at least in its first half. And in the world's least surprising news, new lead Colin Farrell is a better actor than Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Verhoeven's minor '90s action classic was a vivid mix of odd talent. Verhoeven (fresh off "Robocop") brought his perverse sense of humor and unhinged love of hard-R cruelty. In lieu of acting chops, Schwarzenegger brought two or three iconic facial expressions. The late sci-fi novelist Philip K. Dick provided a trippy, reality-questioning starting point -- and it was very loosely adapted into a screenplay that somehow made it through the development process with its ambiguous ending intact, written by guys who'd worked on "Alien" and "Big Trouble in Little China." (Even people who parted ways with the project left their mark: David Cronenberg, at one point slated to direct, helped populate the story with irradiated mutants.) All this plus ridiculous closeups of decompressing heads on Mars.
Wiseman's PG-13 remake isn't as funny, or vivid, or splatter-tastic. It contains no mutants, inflating heads, trips to Mars, or freaky little psychic dudes named "Kuato" emerging from people's stomachs. But it does a decent job setting up an unsubtle dystopia.
In the new film -- set roughly a century from now -- chemical warfare has pushed the entire Earth's population into two jam-packed cities on opposite sides of the globe. One's a prosperous one-percenter metropolis run by a sneering jerk with a haircut (played by Bryan Cranston, who seems to think he's in a slightly campier movie than the other actors). The other is a colony of 99-percenters who commute to lousy jobs in the metropolis on a giant subway through the earth's core. I have no idea how this is in any way cost-effective, but as barn-broad metaphors go, it sort of works.
Among the 99-percenters is Doug Quaid (Colin Farrell), a bored blue-collar daydreamer working the assembly line at a robot factory. As in the 1990 original, in an attempt to feel less trivial, Quaid visits a company that implants false memories of a more-exciting life. * The procedure accidentally awakens genuine memories (or are they?) of his past as a real-life spy.
Chases, reality-questioning and underclass-liberation ensue. Kate Beckinsale plays a more aggressive variation on Sharon Stone's original role. Jessica Biel plays a less aggressive variation on Rachel Ticotin's original role.
Wiseman and production designer Patrick Tatopoulos are essentially skilled remix artists here -- and frankly, their extensive quotation of other, more original sci-fi visions using 21st-century special effects provides much of the film's pleasure. Wiseman may lack a bold singular vision, but he tries to make up for it with sheer density, effort and expense.
The colony's stacked multicultural dwellings shamelessly expand on ideas from "Blade Runner." The metropolis riffs on Fritz Lang, "THX 1138," Coruscant from the "Star Wars" prequels and the "Minority Report" traffic system. (The filmmakers even throw in J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek" lens-flares for good measure.) The future-tech includes an iPhone on every refrigerator and inside a couple of human hands. It's fun to drink it all in.
Unfortunately, although the filmmakers try for a more politically pointed variation on the 1990 story and Farrell is vastly better than Arnold at looking confused, I'm not sure they made a sharper or more entertaining movie.
The world-building first half and some early chases (particularly a leaping pursuit through the colony and an insanely elaborate magnetic-car chase) are spectacular. But by the time Cranston's machinations come fully into play, the film's endless chases and fights start blurring together into something that feels bloodlessly repetitive and a bit video-gamey.
(I also find it slightly depressing that Wiseman wanted to revisit the lived-in world of "Blade Runner," but he also wanted to give every single major player Replicant-level agility, fighting skills and pain thresholds. There's no drama without contrast, Len.)
Also, in addition to starting stronger than it ends, the film slightly whiffs its revisits of the original's best moments -- particularly when Wiseman tries to "pump up the adrenaline" in the scene where someone nearly talks Quaid into accepting that he's delusional. Bigger and noisier aren't always better -- especially when you don't have Kuato to fall back on.
_____
* BTW, I have to note that this movie -- even more than the original -- made me realize the essential flaw of "Total Recall"'s whole memory-implanting premise. Let's say a visit to Rekall gives you fond memories of being a super-spy or a superstar athlete. This might increase your self-confidence -- but in no way does it change your current circumstances. Wouldn't memories of a better life just make those current circumstances seem even worse by comparison? Doug Quaid would have walked out of Rekall with cool espionage-laden recollections ... right back into his crappy job at the robot factory. How would this make him feel anything but a profound sense of loss and long-term failure?
_____
(118 min., PG-13, multiple locations) Grade: B-minus
'Total Recall' (The Oregonian, Friday, Aug. 3, 2012)
