Incendiary Lit

I can’t help it. I like Michael Cera. His innate awkwardness and comic timing is segueing nicely into a slightly smoother, awkwardness. But in a good way. Come on, he’s George Michael! Anyway, there’s a new movie coming out called Paper Hearts. It’s Michael Cera and his real life girlfriend Charlyne Yi in a romantic comedy. Though, from the trailer it seems to shy away from Get Over It territory and more into a bit of EdTV/tinged with Eternal Sunshine vibe. But, I could be reading way too much into the trailer.

Regardless of the movie entirely, there is a free contest. Details here. At Rotten Tomatoes. Wheeeeeeeee! Its to write a 140 character love poem (tweetable- and indeed submitted via twitter) and to follow the directions at Rotten Tomatoes. Michael and Charlyne will be picking their favorite, and a number of other winners. The grand prize is a trip to the Paper Hearts premiere. Woot. Free vacation! Here’s a trailer for the movie. Have fun.

OK, so Roland Emmerich is making the Foundation series. Yes, Isaac Asimov’s great, sweeping and complete arc of narrative is being remade by Roland Emmerich, recent creator of 10,000 BC and Independence Day, but also The Thirteenth Floor (A muuuuuch lesser known, but very enjoyable film). The problem with this is the hand of subtlety. I would drool at a Darren Aronfsky version of Foundation (<3 The Fountain). Please, Roland, defer to Aronofsky or at least hire him as a consultant. The Fountain’s aesthetics, and his narrative style is perfect for the fragmentation of the Foundation tale. The characters will inevitably change. People hate when actors change if the story doesn’t explain why this new chapter (so many years later) must be the next chapter, everyone will bitch and bitch about the change in actors. People love the familiar, and must really be worked away from it by compelling pathos and likeable charcters.

Again, I plead to those adapting a work I love: HIRE ME! I write and edit fast, and take notes well. Also, I have grandiose dreams of someday being a writer/director and a great deal of patience.

Read it here.

Although from the review’s tagline “a remembrance of how movies used to suck” tips the hat of the tone of his review, nothing sums up what he thinks of the movie better than an early simile “[Year One]’s like walking in the rain under an umbrella made of dog shit.” He does not like what he perceives as movie cliches, and isn’t shy about expressing that feeling of disgust. Check out his site, lots of hilarious and terribly honest reviews of movies fro the last decade(ish).

Please allow me to slip deep, deep into geekdom here, I apologize in advance.

Read this.

Now, anyone familiar with the series, or who’s hung out with me while drinking SoCo and Coke (not SoCo and lime,  that’s my “The Jungle” adaptation rant I believe) knows that Robotech is the perfect source material for an Odyssey of a movie/live action series. But that is only after skewering away the fatty material of the series. Here are a few things you two had better do, or I will be a sad sad panda:

1) Fix Minmei. And I mean that like they fixed Luna before we adopted her. I’ve had unfixed cats, and they act (and sound) like the Minmei of the series. She was loud, obnoxious, screechy, and friggan obnoxious. But she had some honest moments where the obnoxiousness dropped away, like when she found out that Rick was MIA during the reconnaissance mission with Lisa Ben and Max. Don’t ask for an episode number, though I could look it up on IMDB, man… I don’t know if I could stand sounding like an even bigger geek than I’m going to sound by writing a list of demands for a badly dubbed 80’s anime… but I grew up on that show, damnit. Minmei should be modelled, mainly after Miley Cyrus I think… though by the time the movie’s made she’d be too old, and more importantly, we’re toning down the annoying, so please get someone more normal who can act like a whiny little brat on command, but still remain a sincere human being when the devastating occurs… not just a brat who can’t act. That’s the character, not the actor you want.

2) Roy Fokker’s death. Holy crap was that traumatizing as a kid. That should be a keystone moment, end of the first act. It propels Rick into his military career, and ultimately into the arms of Lisa. The two couples (Roy and Claudia, and Rick and Lisa) are a sort of parallel that can be drawn, the military hero couple that makes for legends, and what more do you want for the future fate of humanity than legendmakers protecting you? But this point was about Roy Fokker. He was the big brother. He was pulled away by a war he thought he was fighting to make everyone back home proud. But once you’re in, you’re in, so even after he discovered that the war wasn’t something to make them especially proud (as Rick says in the pilot episode (hehe, pilot) “you’re proud of being a killer?!”), he couldn’t leave the army… He feels like, though what he did was right, that he abandoned Rick, and he’s constantly trying to make up for it with grand gestures… his racer repaired, getting Min Mei to see him, saving him on the destroyed Macross Island during the initial invasion. Wow, geek overload on this point. Roy’s a conflicted, important character that you should latch onto immediately, and like terribly, then be pained terribly by his death, then glad that Rick’s finally beginning to step into his shoes. Period. Got that guys?

3)  Get the ages right. Rick and Minmei and half the crew of the SDF One are kids. 15-16. Why? It was a training academy, and it was in the midst of a long-raging world war. Populations were devastated. The standard age of soldiers (18-45) would have been greatly depleted, and the spaceship was still years away from being “ready” though the technology still decades from making sense (at least)… so it only makes sense that for this new ship the children would go study to work… I think it’s important to keep that the same as the movie. Many things that happened, and really had to happen, are because of immaturity, rashness, and lack of foresight, especially in non-combat. This is because they’re really just kids, many away from their parents and on their own at a very young age.

4) The Dinginess factor. OK, sorry, I’m a Firefly fan. But that’s kind of how I see the Zentraedi ships. They don’t know how to repair their ships, they don’t clean (except one sweeps up broken glass from Rick’s Veritech I remember), and the humans, the perspective is tiny, so they’ll see allllll the dirt and grime that a quick swish with a mop or broom wouldn’t fix. Gritty and realistic (despite being grand and ominous) are the Zentraedi. And they’re also a tragic race, really, created for one purpose and they’ve found themselves with purpose (the Invid) but losing the resources to even defend themselves… Holy crap. Geek.

5) Is this just one movie or two? I could see the first saga spanning two, or even three movies easily, and since the majority of the scenes are either internal or CGI (in the spaceship or out of it) with some Macross stuff that could be shot on a soundstage, because that would be how Macross actually was (great 4th wall potential there, especially with Minmei’s acting career), an outdoor scene indoors, it could probably be shot for a very modest budget… keep the actors young (but be get friggan good actors, not just cute teenagers for once in an action movie) and the budget should spread well, right?

6) Minimize the storyline with Rick and Minmei in the ship. Keep the essentials, the shower, the rat, the miraculously airtight pilot jumpsuit and absurdly large tuna (maybe have some inconspicuous explanation in early exposition about genetically modified fish that help feed the base or something) but Minmei is inherently annoying, and I think that little storyline which brings them together should bearas little burden of screechy/childish annoyance in the first run through as possible. There should be those flashbacks later, and they should show the more annoying side of Minmei later on in the Rick/Lisa storyline.

7)  Hire me. As a consultant or ’staff writer’ or producer or something. Please.

Mr. Filthy. He tags his movie reviews with lines like Black Hawk Down: “War Porn” and Changing Lanes: “Ben Affleck Takes a Dump.” I don’t always agree with his movie ratings (though many times I do) but the many tangents are the art of his reviews. He has a rich cast surrounding him (especially great are visits with his wife Mrs. Filthy and barfly Harelip) and the more reviews you read the more you become acquainted with the sort of non-linear narrative which appears. Kinda. Mostly, the reviews are just hilarious. You can search the Filthy Archives by his taglines and the rating he gave them, which is nice because sometimes you’re just looking to read some good bad writing. Bad as in dirty or obscene, because he sure as shit is that. Here’s the opening paragraph of his review for Burn After Reading

“Man, Burn After Reading is not a good movie. Actually, it’s a fucking piece of shit. An artfully made piece of shit, for sure, but you know, when dealing with turds, it really doesn’t matter whether it was lovingly crafted by an artisan or it was pinched off by a fat slob scarfing frozen buffalo wings on a bender.”

So either check out the Filthy Archives or just go to the Filthy Critic which shows the newest review, and a right sidebar of links to his ten most recent reviews. Word.

That’s right, HBO is playing MST3K the Movie. That only leads me to believe that they’ve cleared up any rights issues with Universal over the lampooned movie This Island Earth starring Faith Domergue, who is the real young actress girlfriend of Howard Hughes in The Aviator. The movie’s a very cheesy sci-fi from 1955, and Mike, Tom Servo and Crow really lay into it with their peanut-gallery comments If you’ve never seen Mystery Science Theater 3000, watch the intro to the TV show (which began as a cable access show in good old Minnesota [YAY MINNESOTA!]) that I’ve posted at the bottom and listen to the theme song is the perfect explanation of the situation on the Sattelite of Love, with the iconic line “If you wonder how he eats and breathes, or other science facts / repeat to yourself ‘it’s just a show, I should really just relax.’”

I can pretty much quote this movie without it even playing, word for word. It’s THAT funny. When you see the movie and love it and want more, there’s always the TV show (some on DVD, some only through the intricate network of MST3K piraters who have labored in the wee hours of night for years to keep the episodes in circulation, in the good old days dubbing video cassettes lovingly taped from the weekly show, often for the cost of postage and the blank tape) and the hilarious new project of Mike Nelson’s RiffTrax, which skewers modern movies like Jurassic Park (with guest Riffer Weird Al), Casino Royale, Cloverfield, Harry Potter and more. And unlike MST3K, they’re strictly full length audio commentaries. So watch the MST3K movie on HBO (if you have digital cable, you can watch it On Demand) and then go check out RiffTrax. Here’s the pertinent MST3K intro, but also check out the earlier intro from when Joel was trapped on the Sattelite of Love and the origins of the show are revealed.

One of them is the sweet ass kick-back music of A Tribe Called Quest, Biz Markie, KRS-ONE, and my all-time favorite Wu-Tang song “Tearz”; and freakin Ben Kingsley. Slow down, Ghandi, you’re killin’ ‘em. Check out this trailer, looks like a young summer American (slightly) romantic comedrama done by Brits. Check out the trailer and decide for yourselves. If you want to learn more, click the big old promo picture.

I said it. And I’ll stand by it at least until the next Pixar movie comes out. One thing I’ve always loved about Pixar is the weight they place on the non-verbal in their animation. Like Remy from Ratatouille, WALL-E is a genuinely nice character who you root for immediately. His binocular-like eyes (/head) are so emotive, and the few sounds he utters carry more meaning than many movies’ entire script (see Beverly Hills Chihuahuah in the previews for said trite movie). The animation is absolutely amazing, usually looking clearer and more realistic than live action films (the humans being the large exception, if you pardon the pun). You don’t need to know anything about the storyline, it’s a love story between robots, and I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted to believe in the electricity of love more. This is a truly special film.

I didn’t want to write about M. Night Shyamalan’s newest movie, because I treasure his other movies so much. Except Signs. Not attached to that one for some reason. But The Village, Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, and even Lady in the Water are all good, or at least entertaining stories, and the heavy-handed “F-U” to film critics was still funny. But The Happening was… bad. I tried, and I tried to like it. I tried to let it sit for a few hours. Maybe it had some interesting subtle thing that I just needed to find, but no. (SPOILERS) It contains scenes of running from the wind (which is very much faster than human capabilities at about 13mph in short bursts) in a very (sadly) The Day After Tomorrow way. There is some nonsense about crowds when some crowds were still ok, despite the same wind blowing on them…  Zooey Deschanel reminds me very much of Anna Faris, goofy girls who are kind of pretty, but they’re just really kind of hammy. Like Madeline Kahn. Love her to death in campy movies like Blazing Saddles and Clue, but if you thrust her into a tense movie where you’re supposed to actually believe her struggles… bah. One thing really stuck out as being poor writing: heavy-handed foreshadowing of Mark Wahlberg’s character being so surprised that there was a terrorist attack in Central Park. That’s not entirely unbelievable. It is an American landmark where large groups congregate, and there isn’t that much security, yet Elliot was immediately intrigued by the fact that there was an attack in the park. I can appreciate the concept of the movie, the theme of scientific thought only being theories in so many areas, and that we may never really know why things happen. That ignorance in the face of nature is why God was invented by the ancestors of man. Or perhaps before that by some amoeba that had an electrical impulse, or maybe God was the cause of that electrical impulse, “And then there was light” and all that. The point is, it’s a point. However, the point of telling a story is showing us, with your God-like omniscience what the actual cause is in this little alternate film version of a world. And if you want to make a better movie than The Happening you’ll do that without being ridiculously inconsistent. The characters (except John *I Friggan Love* Leguizamo) were unlikable, the running and hiding was very, very reminiscent of War of the Worlds, which is sort of inevitable, but could have been handled better, and just the ridiculous inconsistency and sheer audacity to claim an airborne toxin picks and chooses who it affects despite close proximity. I tried to play the poor acting on a campy spin, much like Lady in the Water, but it’s completely just poor direction. It wasn’t supposed to be nearly as funny as it was, which is why I’ve ruled that although The Happening happened, I’m going to pretend it didn’t and still go see M. Night’s next movie and hope I don’t have to write him off like so many already have. Being the Writer, Producer and Director allows too much room to write something crappy, especially dialog. Just ask George Lucas. Everyone should have a good editor who resides outside of their own head and ego. I know I do.

Yeah, we’re a) poor, b) college students with an overload of classes c) food servers (which adds to the poor factor, and subtracts from time to go to movies) so we haven’t been able to go out to the movies much recently. But we did finally go to see Ironman, which was actually really good. Robert Downey Jr.’s a damn good actor, I gotta say. For more proof of this, anyone who hasn’t seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang should immediately put it on their Netflix/Blockbuster queue. (Val Kilmer as Gay Perry, the badass gay PI who always has a comeback, is just amazing) But yeah, one thing I really appreciated about Ironman was that it made you laugh without dumbing itself down, or cutting in on the big explosions and near-death experiences. But remember, this IS a comic book movie, so suspension of disbelief in some aspects is necessary. But unless you’re a tool, that shouldn’t be a problem, since movies are really only distractions from your own life, so loosen up and don’t overthink everything. Laugh when something tickles the back of your throat a little bit and you can feel the air in your lungs just begging to chuckle out. Hold your breath when he’s freefalling without power. Spend a couple hours outside of the world you’re familiar with. I understand that would much better apply to a movie like Pan’s Labyrinth or Mirrormask, but this is a un movie that everyone should be able to just loosen up and enjoy. Based on the 93% fresh rating the movie’s got over at RottenTomatoes.com, I assume most people are.

Put it on the top of your Netflix queue here.

What happens when you take a bunch of ultra sarcastic, sharply hilarious comedians around to a bunch of smaller venues usually used by local or indie bands? And film it. Well, you get trips to comic book store, to the ‘classic’ arcade, lots of eating and sitting in cars talking, and lots of fuckin’ funny. Patton Oswald is the kind of ringmaster of this comic circus, with Maria Bamford (Yay Minnesota!!!), Brian Posehn, and Zack Galifianakis, and a few other guests including Sarah Silverman and Doug Benson (Super High Me looks hilarious)

Random quote: “I wish there was a morning after pill for Denny’s Moons Over My Hammy.” -Zack Galifianakis.

If you like things like The Sarah Silverman Show, Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, or just generally funny stuff, and don’t get offended (what’s there to really be offended by stereotypes and hypotheticals anyway?) then this is for you. There is a LOT of swearing. Keep your under 13 kids away from this, definitely. But, everyone else should watch this and laugh and laugh and laugh. There’s enough stand up, and actually funny/interesting conversations tokeep you entertained throughout. I would love to hang out with/meet/whatever any of these inventive artists. Word. OK, enough ass-kicking. Put that shit on your Queue, and be very excited about it appearing in your mailbox. Though, the Rodney Kings of Comedy would have been a great name for this documentary/movie also. And there’s nothing like running around a crowded restaurant with a tray full of red meat thinking in your head “He ain’t gonna email you no mo’, email you no mo’, e, mail, you, no, mo-, o, o.”

It’s to hit theaters in 2009, but how sweet is that? An Arrested Development movie! I heart the Bluths so much. If anyone wonders what makes a good tv comedy look no further than Arrested Development
, seriously. So many multi-layered jokes, background gags never mentioned, running jokes, but the characters somehow, despite doing horrible, horrible things, keep you rooting for them. If there’s anyway I could get to a screening of this movie I would, quite possibly wet my pants. I said it. Wet my pants. Mitchell Hurwitz should be knighted by someone for it.

Is anyone else psyched about this? Where the Wild Things Are the movie! Plus, Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers, two of my ultimate favorite entertainers wrote this (Jonze is directing) and it’s in post-production now, but won’t be released until 2009. How sad.

More about it after the jump.
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