Movies

[kidcarter8]

I'd like to see John Hamm take a crack at Bond, but when you say "top," right now it is LEO, and when you say "best" it is LEO, but when you get to the short list there's Damon, Jolie, Depp, probably the tops.  If the name you are thinking of isn't on that list, sorry, kid, you're wrong.

lol

Lots of white there

[Lhoffman]

I could picture Hamm as Bond from the stylistic angle.   Don Draper has a bit of stiffness that wouldn't translate well to Bond, but how much of that is Draper and how much is Hamm?  Perhaps as Bond, that would come across as detached cool.

Loved the closing scene of Mad Men's opener.   Don's done a turn-around and begun to craft himself as legend in the financial press.

[jbottle]

Kid, I had Denzel in a subsequent list if you didn't see that, he's the only A-lister who's a black guy other than Tyler Perry who is a niche money printing machine, that guy stacks cash by knowing his audience.  Occasionally Martin Lawrence will don a fat suit, but he and Murphy aren't bankable as stars the way Denzel is.

[madupont]

I don't know who Anthony Lane is as a reviewer but it is insufficient on The Kids are Alright, because there is far more comedic material throughout that he doesn't admit to.  To him it is a serious movie. I was afraid it could be, when seeing the advertising snippets. But, thank god. it isn't. TKAA is a comedy of errors. Life turns out to be not what you think you are doing with it.

The reason for finding out who Dad is, before big sister goes away to school, is obvious.  If you want to get on with life, you like to have a role model. Ruffalo is it.  I keep telling friends that Italians from Northern Wisconsin are not like those from other places.  I know because I had one in my house as a conscientious objector at the end of the Vietnam War.   He was super intelligent and could not afford to be identified with the school in which he had been enrolled, and he was overly afraid of the draft since he had a missing kidney. Further education in his line of expertise was resolved the day he hitch-hiked into the city from the suburban countryside and was offered a tuition to the university in Jerusalem by the attorney who gave him a ride. He blew that by getting his  girlfriend pregnant.

The only reason, I tell you all this is because it better explains Mark Ruffalo's character, Paul, for what he is; which is about to be under-appreciated by the dyke who starts to remind you of Hillary Clinton.

Let's just say that thank god for us Julianne Moore decided she would make skin flicks of an intelligent kind quite early on and never got uptight about it. Paul has no trouble getting through to her at all, so we get to see his skin too.  Somehow, over the years, Ruffalo has managed to become younger than he used to me.   All of this is done in great humor.  You will find yourself wondering did Annette and Julianne, their characters rather, decide to get pregnant at the same time to be companions in pregnancy but then you remember the daughter is older than her brother, so it wasn't quite that cutsey.  They do a lot of overly cutsey things however for women who supposedly know what it is all about.

Now that I've spoiled your interest in this movie if you ever had any...consider this. Just look at it as a sex-education film light, for teenagers whom I have tried not to describe in unflattering terms; but, are not of big interest, if you made the mistake of supposing that they are meant to reveal how adolescents adapt to same sex marriage parents.
Ps. I am not going to see another Annette Bening movie until she puts her make-up back on.  It will be a sign that she is ready to take acting seriously  again. It is really not that hard to play the jealousy of infidelity that seriously. This film is beneath her range.

[kidcarter8]

Kid, I had Denzel in a subsequent list if you didn't see that, he's the only A-lister who's a black guy other than Tyler Perry who is a niche money printing machine, that guy stacks cash by knowing his audience.  Occasionally Martin Lawrence will don a fat suit, but he and Murphy aren't bankable as stars the way Denzel is.

My bad - didnt see it

Yes...........Denzel is my choice.

[jbottle]

I admit to maybe having white guy blinders at first, but dude makes money.  That science fiction film of his, made money, and it was a risk if you are telling him what to do, but there's an element of if doesn't matter, it had mixed reviews, he has an audience that pays and may be more bankable in a certain money frame than others, after that, you put it against "Shutter Island," and return on investment might be in his favor...

...I watched Fuqua's "Brooklyn's Finest," and as consistently good as Cheadle is in that movie, it had no heart, I was disappointed and my girl agreed, I was like, I want to be like "I see what he did there," and instead, I was in the position of "I seee what happened there," the script, unlike "Training Day," didn't have a real good "joke," or point, and a lot of talent wasted.  I was looking for irony somewhere, but it was an exercise in "policier," or whatever, I forgave the cliches, but I couldn't get over the fact that there was no "there there," but, fuck Denzel can do no wrong in my mind.

I mean, he went "Mad Max," and it floated on not much ads or ado, maybe it was good release timing, but the success felt more like a horror movie, straight bank.

[madupont]

Cheadle did his opener in: Devil in the Blue Dress (or, as they say in some parts of town: Devil with the Blue Dress on....), as Mouse.  I mean, he was Jive and if you called him on his look, he would just as soon pop you.  

His next best role was Hotel Ruanda where you could see him sweat induced by fear. No matter if they sprinkled it on him while putting a shampoo cape over his clothes (with excepion of stained armpits). The movie itself was induced by Maxine Waters  of California who insisted on taking him along with the ladies of the Black Caucus. She knew by now he could pay his own way but nevertheless can you believe that this week it is Maxine Waters who is getting "the Sherrod treatment" because her husband had $250,000 in stock !

Then there is another next in line for the treatment; because the radical eclectic right wing "iced-tea-with-strings-attached" machine only beats up on old colored ladies.

I have however seen Cheadle do roles that didn't pass gas.  He was brilliant in Talk to Me, as Petey Greene.    He was not so good as the detective in: Crash; but Ludacris was just fine and gave it some reality.

Denzel as long as he has a character to bounce around, Frank Lucas, is great, introducing many other Black actors to the White audience because I heard nary a word from the  likely audience although if you need one I could take a survey? And, American Gangster was recent ! (leaving the theater, following his performance as  some short little people mentioned how scary was that?, I barged in and said,"You ought to have seen him in -- Training day, where he is the undercover detective taking the younger neophyte cop out for a ride...."

Well, you know that I otherwise call this movie,"the one where he scare the s    out of Ethan Hawke".  To this day, I am wondering what Denzel said to him to put Ethan in the proper attitude.  

[madupont]

jbottle,
            " Casey Affleck has been hit a second sexual harassment charge by someone involved with a Joaquin Phoenix documentary he filmed. Cinematographer Magdalena Gorka alleges that while filming the documentary, Affleck climbed into bed with her and groped her while she was sleeping. She is suing for $2.25 million. Amanda White, a producer on the same documentary, filed a similar lawsuit last week."

Oh, lalaland and these 2 and a quarter million properties.

[kidcarter8]

This looks very good:

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3707110937/

Stars Abbie Cornish, but I see one of my faves, Miss Jena Malone, also appears.  Vanessa Hudgens as well.  (we'll assume she keeps her clothes on, but who knows?)

March 2011

[jbottle]

Pun there if you like, too, I guess.

[kidcarter8]

Just got from Netflix -

Bang The Drum Slowly, coupled with something called "The Battler"

TV movies, they were, at the dawn of Paul's career.

Of course the other version of 'Bang' starred DeNiro and that dude from Law and Order .........never recall the name.

(Michael Moriarty, that's it)

----

Good day all around, as I nabbed a widescreen copy of The Perfect Storm for $5 at K Mart (plus Racing Stripes for the kids)

[jbottle]

Kid, yeah, it's funny to see warren beatty and newman in those beefcake sort of melodramas like "Splendor in the Grass" and the one where Newman plays a young lawyer in Philly, they seem at ease in it and then you kind of see where everything explodes soon after.  Obviously, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was immediately, and I hate the phrase, but post-modern, and way, way, smart the way knowing movies now don't know shit, love that flick, and then a couple of years later you see Warren Beatty wandering around seemingly high on pot in "McCabe is Mrs. Miller" as if Altman had told him, yeah, your character is stoned Warren Beatty, start there, and pretend like you can't believe they are making a movie where you end up caring about a woman.  It really is extraordiary.

When Newman was Luke in "Cool Hand Luke" there was that same kind of charismatic pathos to the character, he even says as much at a point in the film, that they can't put their hope in him, which is just a fantastic moment, because he has been propping himself up and everybody else up for too long.

I don't know if they will ever be able to make a movie with the power of personality like Paul Newman (great, in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof") again, because you can't duplicate the DNA, the movies have only been around for a hundred years, and the future of film is bleak as far as I can tell, in terms of how talent is discovered, you are probably better of watching any STV with Val Kilmer in it than anyhing with CGI and Shiela Laboeuf.

[kidcarter8]

Who is the Newman of the young crew (25 and under)?  Interesting q.

[jbottle]

Well, Paul wasn't on Twitter, didn't have a cell phone for a long time, drank scotch, etc. 

Short answer, nobody, but then, I don't want to be in the position of "There are no stories to tell, anymore," because of course that's not true but if "Inception" is the answer, I don't have a Paul Newman for you, and even without the microchip their ain't one.

[madupont]

jbottle, The stories to tell apparently are the old stories.

I just saw one, The Last Station, and I'm beginning to like James McAvoy more and more as he matures. He has it in him to be a great actor with a long run.  Of course, this thing is full of them. Christopher Plummer used to be the youngish actor (of course, you knew I'd say this but actors are younger now(somehow)...  than they were...

Well, here he  is opposite Helen Mirren who was playing ahead of me for Greenaway, although theoretically she's ever so very much, oh, not that much younger than me.
This is the Tolstoy story, Plummer as Tolstoy; Mirren as Countess Sofiya Tolstoya,  Paul Giamatti  as Vladimir Bulgakov(not the writer,Mikhail Bulgakov)and, for a man whom I found a more than pleasant comedian Giamatti is now knocking himself out to be the Boris Karlov of our era, he makes as many films now in which he is villain, after villain, after villain.  This is one of them with food for thought to all who have been writing about films for the last three years to endure insult by "A Writer" lacking film literacy (not to mention literary astuteness, which he only gets if somebody does it for him).  This is a film produced by Andrei Konchalovski with money put up by Egoli Tusell; lab work in Germany, filmed in Russia.  Beautiful Russia, too. Lots and lots of Birch forests.(Reminds you of the Coen brothers doing, Miller's Crossing). Things that make you blink as to what you see in the distance.  Four Scythmen moving rhythmically together toward you, mowing down the grain; this should take forever.

McAvoy had the good sense to bring his wife with him to play Tolstoy's daughter, she is so fully immersed in the divided loyalties of daughters that she probably didn't worry too much about his love scenes with an Irish actress they brought with them by the name of Masha(make that Kerry Condon).  Mrs. McAvoy has a good Irish name too,Anne-Marie Duff.

This is probably the next best thing in movie history since Warren Beatty made "Reds". In Reed's history, it is slightly before Warren's material.  Who knew that a Shakespearean actor, Plummer, would absolutely be Tolstoy.  I've been hearing the pros and cons of this story all my life unaware that I was getting preferred party politics of each era that I was living through.

Now I'm going to have my cake and eat it with dulce delish and sleep on it.  The Last Station was released last year; I caught it On Demand tonight because television for weekends has been lousy.