Burn After Reading

2008 return to form by the brothers Coen, those two Austinite filmmakers who've made a career of cinematic alchemy. I mean, I hated the book No Country for Old Men when I read it, but their adaptation to the screen was simply fantastic. Well, here they've done it again. This movie is, seriously, about a woman who sees an opportunity to make some money for four, count 'em, four plastic surgeries by extorting it out of an ex-CIA analyst. How could she extort him? Well, her and a co-worker got their hands on some "raw intelligence" that was found on the women's bathroom floor at the gym where they work. Problem is, it's not intelligence at all, in fact, it's part of the rough draft of the memoir a mid-level analyst is writing. Problem is, they just have a CD with some of it on it. He still has it all on his hard drive. In other words, they have nothing. Are you a Coen brothers fan? Do you like it when they tell a story of a couple idiots who inadvertently open up a Pandora's box of chaos? Did you like their movies like The Big Lebowski or Raising Arizona, for example? Then you are going to love this one. These two morons, played wonderfully by Francis McDormand and Brad Pitt, have smacked what they thought was an easy target but turns out to be a bee hive. They start a chain of event that just spins totally out of control by the end. And it's a fun thing to watch. The other great thing about this flick is all the subtle spoofing the Coen brothers lay on the political spy genre. Whether it's Patriot Games or the Bourne Identity or Enemy of the State or...well the list goes on and on doesn't it, the style is mocked perfectly here. The film begins with a shot of Earth from far off, it clicks in closer and closer like a computer program, until eventually coming in on the CIA headquarters in Langley. All the while, the music is haunting and ominous and little words are coming up on the screen with that old school computer sound beeping off with each letter. Then inside the headquarters the shot is of black leather dress shoes as they clop down a long empty hallway. And so on and so on. Their understanding of the vibe of this genre is spot on and it lends a humor to the movie it wouldn't otherwise have.
The language is pretty foul, the jokes sometimes crude and the very rare violence is graphic and intense, but if you know the Coen brothers and are expecting one of their movies you won't be suprised to see these elements. If you're not a fan of their work, or are a fan only of their more dramatic stuff like Miller's Crossing or No Country for Old Men, then you may not dig this one much. The only exception would be if you are someone who simply loves movies like Hunt for Red October and would totally dig on the spoof like James Bond fans loved Austin Powers.
It's a stupid comedy done by some brilliant actors and filmmakers and the results, I think, are totally worth watching.

Worth Watching (but maybe a little bit ME)

Clip o' the Week

Clip o the Week (a very different musical number indeed)

Clip o' the Week

Clip o' the Week

Kung Fu Panda

2008 flick by directors Mark Osborne and John Stevenson (who haven't done much else, outside of a few Spongebob episodes). Po is a good hearted, clumsy, accident prone, overweight panda living w/ his dad upstairs from the noodle shop they run together. Po is a HUGE fan of the furious five, a group of great kung fu artists who live in a temple on a mountain top above Po's village. They live in a very different place than Po, both physically and metaphysically. His life is very normal and he idolizes their life of excitement. His restlessness reaches it's peak when the master of the temple announces that he plans to chose the dragon warrior (aka, the best kung fu SOB there is). In reality the master is choosing this dragon warrior b/c a disgruntled ex-student(Tai Long) who thought he should be the dragon warrior is returning to bring vengeance and destruction to the temple and village and to steal the dragon scroll. In other words, they need a suitable opponent and fast. Well the master chooses Po when Po literally falls into the competition. Problem is, Po is as far from a kung fu master as it gets. Kung Fu Panda is a funny, uplifting story about an unlikely hero. It's not all that inventive and you know how it's going to turn out. But it seems to me the goal of a kid's flick is not to be inventive and surprising per se, but to be enjoyable and this one certainly is. The two leads are voiced by Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman. They are just wonderful and really seem to have comedic chemistry. Jack Black is hilarious as a supposed dragon warrior who looks more like the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons than he does Bruce Lee. And Dustin Hoffman's great as the yoda-esque elder sensei. The crude humor's at a minimum and the violence is pretty few and far between for a movie w/ the words Kung Fu in the title. If you have kids, they'll surely enjoy it and I'm guessing if you like good but easy comedy you'll enjoy every second too. It's not a classic, but it's definitely worth a watch.
S'Good

The Mist

2007 pairing of writer/director Frank Darabont and novelist Stephen King that tells the story of a small Maine town that's suddenly besieged by bloodthirsty monsters, who descend on the town via a strange mist following a storm. This is the third pairing of this creative duo and the results are at best disappointing. The movie seems thrown together, with none of the visuals gripping or characters engaging. It almost seemed like they just tossed the flick together last minute and you can see this most clearly in the visuals and the reliance on tired horror story devices. Aw, there's a cute kid caught up in it. There are horny teenagers who sneak off to make out and, surprise, it doesn't end well. Some of the people want to go out and face down the monsters. Some want to deny they exist at all. Others think it's the wrath of god and, don't be shocked now, the hero is the person/group that wants to think things out and take the 'rational' approach. It all feels very cliche and it didn't surprise me at all to learn that the visuals were done entirely by the A and B units from the TV show The Shield while they were on a brief break from the showfor a few days. That's how it felt, like a pre-formed group of professionals were poured into another mold for a few moments. For example (and it's a big one), everything that was computer generated looked computer generated. The CG, the angles, the layering, it all looked like something made for the Sci-Fi channel, in other words, rather than a Darabont and Kingfilm. And that was a big let down for me. The last two outings of these two were The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption. These movies are fantastic and their great precisely b/c they don't feel like they just plopped out of a cookie-cutter mold. They were great b/c they came across as heartfelt pieces of old school American cinema. Those movies, especially Shawshank, seem like classics, while this movie seems more at home in television re-release. One feels cinematic, while the other seems like TNT. I wanted to like this movie, but I just flat didn't. It never felt scary, never engaging and not worth your time.
Saturday Afternoon