CulturePulp.

New comic in BIRTH. MOVIES. DEATH. -- ‘True Tales from the 1999 EPISODE I Line’

We have a 4-page comic in the December issue of BIRTH. MOVIES. DEATH.

In 1999, writer Sarah Sprague spent a month waiting in line for “The Phantom Menace” in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Devin at BMD approached me about illustrating her story as a comics memoir for a special “Star Wars”-themed double issue.

I conscripted Bill’s help on inks and colors. We had a blast getting to know Sarah and putting her script on the page.

You can order your copy of the magazine here. It’s jam-packed with Mondo Star Wars art and essays by Devin Faraci, Jenna Busch, Marc Bernardin, Russ Fischer, Scott Wampler, Rian Johnson and many others.

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Find Out What’s Inside The BIRTH. MOVIES. DEATH. STAR WARS Issue! (Nov. 30, 2015)

 

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Cycling with Molière'

 

In his book True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor, David Mamet writes about how he's seen actors adopt the neuroses of the characters they play -- because, as Mamet puts it, "our suggestibility knows no limits."

Director/co-writer Philippe Le Guay's comedy "Cycling with Molière" has some low-key fun with this observation.

The film introduces us to an actor named Gauthier (Lambert Wilson). Gauthier is the wealthy star of a "House"-like TV series, but he's looking to recapture some of his early theater cred. So he travels to Brittany's Île de Ré to try and lure an actor pal named Serge (Fabrice Luchini) out of retirement to perform with him in a stage version of Molière's "The Misanthrope."

The challenge is that Serge -- in a real-life "Misanthrope" move -- quit showbiz in disgust, and is now holed up in a crumbling house, having sworn off acting and most human contact. But soon they're rehearsing Molière in Serge's house in a sort of trial run. They also tangle with a free-spirited porn star (Laurie Bordesoules) and a blunt Italian divorcé (Maya Sansa).

In a not-terribly-shocking development, the visit starts to echo "The Misanthrope"'s comedy of manners. Luchini (Le Guay's frequent star, who also co-wrote and apparently inspired the idea for the film) imbues Serge with shades of Molière's misanthropic character Alceste. Meanwhile, Gauthier, the crowdpleasing company man, vaguely resembles Alceste's more politic pal Philinte. This adds an extra spark to Wilson and Luchini's dramatic readings -- particularly when they furiously rehearse arguments between Alceste and Philinte, then switch roles and continue the argument with a reversed dynamic. The rehearsal scenes are easily the best part of the film, a pas de deux between two seasoned performers, one slick, one surly, neither stupid.

The rest of the film is pleasant, but far less substantial. A few forays into slapstick are fairly lame -- this movie seems to think it's hilarious when people fall off their bicycles -- but the overcast off-season island setting has a melancholy loveliness, and a romantic subplot pads out the narrative well enough while underscoring the loose "Misanthrope" riff.
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(104 min., not rated, opens Friday, May 23 at Living Room Theaters) Grade: B

'Cycling with Molière' (The Oregonian, Friday, May 23, 2014)

10 Movies I'm Sort Of Looking Forward to Seeing This Summer, w/ Alternates.

The Oregonian asked me to send them a list of "summer movies" I'm excited to see. They added a few of them to their May 9 "Summer Movie Preview." Here's the full list I e-mailed them.

"Boyhood" -- From 2002-13, Richard Linklater would periodically re-assemble the same cast (including Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette) to film the story of a boy (Ellar Coltrane) coming of age from first grade through high school. Linklater put his chips on a child actor aging gracefully, and it worked: Early festival reviews are over-the-moon for the film, which checks in on Coltrane on various days of his life between ages 7 and 18.

"Guardians of the Galaxy" -- Marvel Studios' latest looks like "Mos Eisley Spaceport meets 'Firefly': The Movie." It co-stars a talking gun-toting raccoon whose best pal is a giant walking tree. And it's helmed by indie-geek director James Gunn, of "Slither" and "Super" fame. It looks utterly bananas and I can't wait to find out if it connects.

"The Double" -- I really enjoyed "Submarine," director (and British comedy treasure) Richard Ayoade's deadpan-comic 2010 feature debut. Now he's adapting Dostoyevsky's tale of an office milquetoast who meets and competes with his exact lookalike. Jesse Eisenberg plays both characters, backed by a cast that includes Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn and a murderer's row of smart British comic actors.

"Godzilla" -- Director Gareth Edwards had a $500,000 budget and a crew of five when he made his first film, the art-house creature flick "Monsters." His second film resurrects cinema's most famous giant firebreathing lizard with a $160 million budget, a crew of hundreds, an all-star international cast, and of course the ugly memory of the last time Hollywood tried to make its own big-budget "Godzilla" movie. No pressure! Early buzz suggests Edwards rose to the challenge.

"Jupiter Ascending" -- The Wachowskis refuse to stop making heady, loony, expensive sci-fi flicks, damn the box office. Their latest cinematic cliff-jump features Channing Tatum as a genetically modified assassin with wolf-ears who tells a janitor (Mila Kunis) that (a) Earth is actually just one piece of real estate in a larger interstellar land war and (b) she's actually the Queen of the Universe.

"The Trip to Italy" -- A sequel to "The Trip," with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon once again embarking on an all-expenses-paid odyssey of eating, arguing and comparing their Michael Caine impressions.

"Lucy" -- A Luc Besson Euro-action flick in which Scarlett Johansson accidentally ingests a drug that boosts her intelligence tenfold, essentially giving her psychic superpowers. It's the trashy fun version of "Transcendence," I hope, and I also hope Morgan Freeman is playing the same character in both movies.

"They Came Together" -- If you're part of the "Wet Hot American Summer" cult fanbase, you'll be happy to hear that co-writer/director David Wain is back -- and this time he's applying his gift for bizarre genre deconstruction to the Hollywood romantic comedy, with help from stars Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler.

"22 Jump Street" -- If you had told me before the release of "21 Jump Street" that Channing Tatum was a gifted comic actor, or that directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller could mine as much comedy as they did from this particular TV remake (and, later, from Legos), I wouldn't have believed you. So this particular sequel gets every benefit of the doubt.

"The Rover" -- "Animal Kingdom" writer/director David Michôd returns with an action drama about a desolate Australian near-future that's been described as "Mad Max" as it would actually play out (i.e., without the cool cars and stylish punks). Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson star.

ALTERNATES: "Edge of Tomorrow," "Life Itself," "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," "Hercules" (but only because I'll watch The Rock in anything, and frankly "excited" isn't really the word here, let's be honest, because it’s directed by Brett Ratner, but on the other hand it features The Rock wearing a lion's head as a hat), "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For" (FWIW, I wrote an explanatory breakdown of the book series for The O way back in 2005), "The Green Inferno," "The Boxtrolls," "Snowpiercer," "X-Men: Days of Future Past," and "How to Train Your Dragon 2"
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'18 movies our critics can't wait to see: Summer Movie Preview 2014' (The Oregonian, Friday, May 9, 2004)

BOY HOWDY PODCAST: 'The Star Wars Episode VII Spectacular'

Bill and Annie invited me back on the "Boy Howdy Podcast" (along with the delightful Conley Smith and Jimmy Presler) for a riotous multi-generational discussion of all things "Star Wars." From the show description:

This week we’re switching up formats a little bit as we ditch the "Geek Week In Review" for a 90-minute chat about "Episode VII," "The Clone Wars" and all things "Star Wars" with Mike Russell, Conley Smith and Jimmy Presler. Specifically, we talk about May the Fourth silliness, try to gush about "The Clone Wars" without spoiling Anne or Mike, the gender politics of marketing "Star Wars: Rebels," what we’d like to see happen in "Episode VII," and our favorite characters & elements of that galaxy far, far away.

But before that, we talk about seeing John Williams live and in concert, "Captain America," "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," the terrible writing in "Child of Light" (also: Anne’s pickiness regarding how limericks should be composed) and Bryan Fuller’s plans for "Hannibal."

Boy Howdy Podcast, Episode 124 – Star Wars Episode VII Spectacular (May 4, 2014) [ iTunes ]

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Winter's Tale'

Movie review in the Friday, Feb. 14 Oregonian....

The problem is that "Winter's Tale" wants to be a magical romance that leaves you feeling like the universe might be full of secret purpose, but the actual movie that was written and filmed is convoluted, over-narrated and deeply silly.

If you're going to title your film anywhere in the neighborhood of a Shakespeare play, even a "problem" Shakespeare play, you probably need to put a little extra shoulder into the screenwriting part of your job. Writer/director Akiva Goldsman -- adapting Mark Helprin's much-liked, much-vaster 1984 novel -- does not do this, though at least he starts things off with an intriguing story hook.

A man named Peter (Colin Farrell) is wandering around modern-day New York with memory issues. He finds mysterious items in a tiny attic space in the ceiling of Grand Central Station. We soon learn, in an epic flashback, that Peter has been the same age since 1916, when he was a thief chased around New York by a glaring gangster (Russell Crowe) and his bowler-hatted henchmen.

This is all fairly intriguing. But then, maybe 10 minutes into the movie, Peter is rescued from those henchmen by a blindingly white flying horse. [Exit, pursued by Crowe.]

And then that horse guides Peter to the home of the world's most ebullient young woman afflicted with late-stage consumption (Jessica Brown Findlay).

They meet cute (Peter's trying to rob her, she offers him some tea). And the movie starts sprinting down an increasingly corny, ridiculous road -- as everyone starts yammering about "destiny" and "miracles" and "light" and the forces of bowler-hatted evil being literal demons trying to "tip the scales" by robbing people of hope, or something.

There's nothing inherently wrong with trying to mashup "Somewhere in Time" and "Harry Potter," I suppose. And cinematographer Caleb Deschanel certainly makes it all look very pretty. But fantasy universes usually work best when they function according to a coherent set of ground rules. As adapted by Goldsman, "Winter's Tale" keeps piling on exposition that adds rule after rule after rule: Demons have to keep miracles from happening, specific miracles are assigned to specific people, demons have to get permission to travel, the stars in the sky are either departed souls or angel wings, stolen jewels can be used as holographic projectors, J.J. Abrams-style lens-flares have cosmic significance, the horse is actually a dog, and so on. It's all over-explained by actors who are frankly capable of better, though Crowe at least seems to be having fun (and anyone who can deliver the line "There'll be no miracles tonight, and her destiny is gettin' skewered!" with a straight face and an Irish brogue deserves something approaching respect).

Even worse, none of it seems to add up to anything significant. The process of Farrell figuring out his divine purpose finally gets so convoluted and schmaltzy, it feels less like "destiny" and more like "cruel cosmic joke," which is at odds with the romantic spiritual vibe Goldsman clearly hoped to achieve.

P.S. I highly recommend Drew McWeeny's lengthy decimation of the ridiculous theological underpinnings of "Winter's Tale" (a film he declares "the 'Batman and Robin' of magical realism") followed by his survey of cinematic "dream projects" gone horribly wrong.
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(118 min., PG-13 for violence and some sensuality) Grade: C-minus

'Winter's Tale' (The Oregonian, Friday, Feb. 14, 2014)

MOVIE REVIEW: '2 Autumns, 3 Winters'

Part of The Oregonian's team coverage of the Portland International Film Festival....

A fair amount of traumatic stuff happens in "2 Autumns, 3 Winters" -- muggings, relationship tests, suicidal depression, even the odd life-threatening medical crisis and melodramatic coincidence. But writer/director Sébastien Betbeder's French seriocomic romance still feels light (or emotionally distant, depending), thanks to the film's fusillade of stylistic tics.

Betbeder's tale of aging art-school grads (Vincent Macaigne, Maud Wyler) falling in love is told as a near-relentless collage of fourth-wall-breaking monologues -- "High Fidelity"-style -- and peppered with chapter breaks, dream sequences, and clips from other movies.

The constant talking-head interjections keep the film at a slight documentary remove from its heaviest material; I would rather have seen certain key moments instead of being told about those moments by characters standing in front of green screens. But the cast's lumpy charm still wins the film -- putting it more or less in the neighborhood of Cédric Klapisch's "Spanish Apartment"/"Russian Dolls" series, entertainment-wise.
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(France; 91 min.) Grade: B. Showtimes:

• 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 18, OMSI
• 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22, Whitsell

'2 Autumns, 3 Winters' (The Oregonian, Friday, Feb. 14, 2014) [ PIFF website listing ]

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Coffee in Berlin'

Part of The Oregonian's team coverage of the Portland International Film Festival....

Writer/director Jan Ole Gerster's first feature "Coffee in Berlin" (originally released in Germany as "Oh Boy") does a fair job riffing on the usual beats of the slacker indie.

An unemployed college dropout (Tom Schilling) with serious life-commitment issues wakes up in Berlin and drifts through a seriocomic day that includes a disappointed girlfriend, a psych eval, an even more disappointed father, a movie-set visit with a struggling actor pal, a wacky neighbor, a wounded actress and that hoariest of slacker-indie clichés, the truth-telling barfly -- among other loosely structured incidents that may or may not serve as a twentysomething's wake-up call.

Schilling's character is just enough of a vaguely unpleasant blank that he's a little hard to root for, frankly, but the whole enterprise still manages a low-key appeal, thanks in part to its attractive black-and-white cinematography.
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(Germany; 88 min.) Grade: B-minus. Showtimes:

• 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 14, OMSI
• 2:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 17, Cinemagic

'Coffee in Berlin' (The Oregonian, Friday, Feb. 14, 2014) [ PIFF website listing ]

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas'

Part of The Oregonian's team coverage of the Portland International Film Festival....

"Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas" -- the latest adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's 1811 novella -- starts as a tale of Robin Hood-style righteous anger and grimly, beautifully spins into something far more complicated.

A stubborn 16th-century horse-breeder (Mads Mikkelsen) takes a principled stand in a legal dispute against a young baron over the mistreatment of two horses. That dispute slowly escalates into violence, a full-blown peasant revolt and some pointed ethical questions.

Director/co-writer Arnaud de Pallières embraces odd storytelling rhythms, jumping past the expected period-revolution story beats and lingering on others. Combined with strong performances, the gorgeously overwhelming environment (the sounds of wind and flies are practically supporting characters), and at least one agonizingly long close-up, "Age of Uprising" unsettles as it raises troubling questions about the price, morality and flexibility of a "principled stand."
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(France; 122 min.) Grade: B-plus. Showtimes:

• 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, Cinema 21
• 8:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 10, Cinemagic

'Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas' (The Oregonian, Friday, Feb. 7, 2014) [ PIFF website listing ]

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Cairo Drive'

Part of The Oregonian's team coverage of the Portland International Film Festival....

With "Cairo Drive," documentarian Sherief Elkatsha finds an unusual route into the atmosphere before, during and after the Arab Spring protests at Tahrir Square -- by showing the revolt's effect on Cairo's chaotic pressure-cooker of a traffic system.

Elkatsha spends much of the doc embedded in cars, trucks, ambulances and buses -- interviewing drivers of varying skill and wealth as they attempt to navigate an exhausting, nearly anarchic system of wrong-way drivers, heedless pedestrians, coded horn-honks, arbitrary laws and outright bribery helping bring societal tensions to the boiling point. (And that's before the protests start and the police directing traffic around Tahrir Square are apparently replaced by citizen volunteers.) In Elkatsha's editing bay, the frustrations of traffic become a potent metaphor for a nation's much-larger frustrations.
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(Egypt; 77 min.) Grade: B-plus. Showtimes:

• 1 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9, World Trade Center Theater
• 9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 15, World Trade Center Theater

'Cairo Drive' (The Oregonian, Friday, Feb. 7, 2014) [ PIFF website listing ]

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Cycling with Molière'

Part of The Oregonian's team coverage of the Portland International Film Festival....

In True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor, David Mamet writes about how he's seen actors adopt the neuroses of characters they play because "our suggestibility knows no limits." Director/co-writer Philippe Le Guay's "Cycling with Molière" amusingly illustrates Mamet's observation.

A TV star (Lambert Wilson) travels to Brittany's Île de Ré to try and recruit an actor pal who quit showbiz in disgust (Fabrice Luchini). Wilson wants Luchini to perform with him in a stage version of "The Misanthrope." Soon they're rehearsing Molière in Luchini's crumbling house -- taking breaks to tangle with the odd local porn star or truth-telling divorcé. The visit echoes "The Misanthrope"'s bitter comedy of aristocratic manners more than a little.

The island setting is lovely and the few forays into slapstick are fairly lame, but Wilson and Luchini's dramatic tanglings are fun to watch -- particularly when they furiously rehearse arguments between Molière's angry Alceste and his more politic pal Philinte, then switch roles and reverse the dynamic.
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(France; 104 min.) Grade: B. Showtimes:

• 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7, Cinemagic
• 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 13, Fox Tower

'Cycling with Molière' (The Oregonian, Friday, Feb. 7, 2014) [ PIFF website listing ]