Category: External Movie DVDs (Page 55 of 74)

With 9 days ’til Christmas, a publicist sent to me…

December 16, 2007 / Will Harris

…Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause.

As much as it pains me to say this, honesty requires that I must: “Santa Clause 3” wasn’t as God-awful bad as I thought it was going to be…or, more specifically, it wasn’t as bad as the God-awful trailer for the film would’ve had me believe.

I mean, man, when I first saw that thing, my reactions were as follows:

* “The first film was legitimately enjoyable, the second one had its moments, but the funniest joke here appears to be the one in the title. The trailer is 100% laugh-free. David Krumholtz – formerly known as Bernard the Elf – should be sending his agent a solid gold Mercedes this Christmas for getting him ‘Numb3rs’ and keeping him far, far away from this picture.”

* “As Santa is my witness, the only highlights are the clips from the first two films. It’s really that unfunny. Example: a kid tells Jack Frost to ‘just chill,’and he howls, ‘I invented chill!’ Ughhhhhh.”

“Awful awful awful. Count on a solid opening weekend, but, God willing, word of mouth on the playground will kill the flick quickly after that. Even the under-10 set should have better taste than to accept this.”

And y’know what? I meant it. All of it. Every word. It was just that damned bad.

Having now subjected myself to a viewing of the film, however, I walked away from the experience far less horrified than I ever would’ve expected. Yes, there’s plenty of cheesy kid stuff in the flick, and if the inclusion of reindeer fart jokes isn’t enough to send most people with a modicum of taste running for the exits (or, in this case, the “eject” button on their DVD player), Martin Short’s hammy performance as Jack Frost will probably do the trick. If you can make it to the halfway point of the film, though, it falls back on the old “It’s A Wonderful Life” bit of seeing what the world would’ve been like if Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) had never put on the Santa suit but Jack Frost had instead. It’s a hackneyed Christmas plot device, but as a sci-fi geek who always enjoys a good alternate-universe tale, I still enjoyed it; it was also entertaining to watch Scott figure out how to get his old life back. Even Short earned a laugh when, after Jack’s plans have been foiled, he just kind of blinks and says, “Well, that didn’t work out like I’d hoped.” The best part of the film, though, was the surprise of finding Alan Arkin and Ann-Margret as Scott’s in-laws; I’m sure I’d known at some point that they were in the cast, but I’d totally forgotten it until they appeared on the screen. As ever, Arkin scores laughs, and Ann-Margret…well, she coasts by just by being herself.

I’m still of the opinion that only the first “Santa Clause” film is a must-see, but if my kid wants me to put this in at some future juncture, I probably won’t twitch…much.

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Doc of the Day: “Fired!”

November 20, 2007 / Will Harris

As a DVD, “Fired!” may be one of the funniest viewing experiences of the year. As an actual movie, however, it isn’t nearly as successful…but, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.

The story behind “Fired!” began when actress Annabelle Gurwitch was…you guessed it…fired. Fired by Woody Allen, to be precise, when he was in the process of prepping the cast for a play he was putting together and declared that Gurwitch looked “retarded” when she followed a particular stage direction. Having already told tons of her friends and family members that she was going to working with Allen, Gurwitch was decidedly wounded by this act, but instead of wallowing in her depression, she ended up in conversation with various folks who sympathetically shared their own stories of being fired. She soon realized that, as a performer, there was something that could be done with this material, and, voila, the “Fired!” stage show was born, where various performers would get up on stage and read the tales of various people’s experiences.

This documentary sprang forth from that show, but, unfortunately, it’s lost something in the translation. This is mostly because the flick trumpets appearances from Tim Allen, David Cross, Andy Dick, Jeff Garlin, Bob Odenkirk, Jeffrey Ross, Harry Shearer, Sarah Silverman, Ben Stein, Fred Willard, Illeana Douglas, and Anne Meara, then ends up feeling like it’s far more about Gurwitch herself. And, of course, it is about Gurwitch. Unfortunately, most of the other contributors just have funnier stories, which means we spent as much time waiting for them to come back as we do appreciating Gurwitch’s own humorous experiences as she struggles to find her way back from the abyss. Also, directors Chris Bradley and Kyle La Brache make the decision to chop up several of the stories being told at a performance of the stage show and come back to them periodically throughout the film for more of each story, which proves reeeeeeeally annoying.

So if I’ve got these complaints, why am I calling “Fired!” one of the funniest DVDs of 2007?

Well, like I said, the stories from the various contributors are pretty damned funny. Jeff Garlin talks about losing a stand-up gig because he couldn’t compete with the magician who opened for him, Fred Willard sits in a hot tub (with Harry Shearer loitering just outside the waterline) and recalls how he was dropped from a sitcom because he was honest and admitted that he wasn’t the guy who played Herb Tarlek on “WKRP in Cincinnati,” and Illeana Douglas concedes that she was once fired from a job as a coat check girl despite her years of experience in placing coats on hangers and then taking them off again. Andy Dick revisits the world of fast food and finds that he still can’t hack the pace, while Bob Odenkirk provides Gurwitch with a great it’s-not-you-it’s-us speech to show how you can be let down easy in situations like that.

Better still, however, are the outtakes from the film. David Cross talks about getting fired from a hardware store, numerous telemarketing jobs, and the Paul Simon Presidential campaign, but the best bit comes when he discusses how he was let go from a mail-room job in a law firm by a guy who was the perfect combination of Mr. Smithers and Mr. Burns. (“He said, ‘Just get out,’ and I said, ‘But I haven’t had a chance to take a dump in your desk yet!’ And, then, that was it; I knew I had no chance of coming back. ‘Oh, c’mon, guy, lighten up! That was a joke! Seriously, can I just work through the summer?'”) Paul Feig, co-creator of “Freaks and Geeks,” tells an awesome story about his experiences as a teenage Ronald McDonald, comedienne Hillary Carlip tells a dy-no-mite story about getting dumped from her gig as Jimmie “J.J.” Walker’s juggling instructor, Dana Gould talks about being let go from the Fred Savage sitcom, “Working,” Harry Shearer explains how he got fired from several radio stations, once for playing a Mel Torme record on an all-rock station (calling the experience “the sincerest form of ‘don’t do that again'”), and…oh, hell, pretty much every single story in the outtake section is hilarious.

Great concept, less than perfect execution, but given that your sides will hurt by the time you’re finished with the DVD, I guess the best description of “Fired!” is to call it an eventual success.

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Doc of the Day: “Brown is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream”

November 19, 2007 / Will Harris

Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an entire episode of “The George Lopez Show,” but after having watched this documentary, I think I’m gonna have to check it out; I don’t have any idea whether it’ll actually be funny or not, but just listening to the guy’s comments in “Brown is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream” makes me predisposed to liking him. (Mind you, I was already pretty much in that camp after I heard that he’d gotten into a physical altercation with Carlos Mencia over Mencia purportedly stealing some of his material, but, still, this really sealed the deal for me.)

“Brown is the New Green” focuses on Latinos as they’re perceived on the small screen, and while it probably won’t come as any surprise that they haven’t always had the best representatives on the American airwaves – for awhile, their big three were Jose Jiminez, Speedy Gonzales, and The Frito Bandito – it’s heartening to realize that they’re finally getting their due. Now, if you’re one of those folks who gets pissed off every time they reach a voicemail menu that says, “For English, press 1,” I’m sure you’re already seething mad at the mere thought of what this documentary discusses; in fact, some of you may have stopped reading altogether while you work out a diatribe for the comments section about how giving Latinos airtime to trumpet their culture is akin to setting Old Glory afire and watching her burn.

Well, hang onto your hat, muchacho, because you may be surprised to find that a lot of Latinos aren’t so remarkably different from John Smith, Average American.

For instance, when George Lopez was casting his TV show, many actors came in to audition and, when doing so, they’d put on a heavy Spanish accent. “George would say, ‘Brother, cool down, you don’t need to do that,'” said producer Bruce Helford, “and they’d say, ‘Oh, cool, thank you,’ and then they’d do it in perfect English, with no accent at all!” Lopez himself reveals that, while building the sets for his series, the network complained that the kitchen didn’t look like a Mexican kitchen. “They said, ‘There’s nothing here that indicates that a Mexican family lives here. There’s not a tortilla maker.’ I said, ‘My tortilla maker was my grandmother!'”

For the most part, the so-called “Latino audience” is something which, more often than not, the entertainment industry views as an advertising demographic rather than a group of individuals who are looking for their own brand of entertainment. There’s an ongoing battle between trying to portray real Latino life versus what producers think middle America can handle; one guy mentions how, from his experience, the average Latino family doesn’t always have a father present, but TV can’t hang with the idea of a fatherless family scenario, while Lopez speaks about how absolutely no-one in his family was supportive of his attempts to build an American TV career. The most interesting interview, at least for me, wasn’t with Lopez but, rather, with Bill Dana, the comedian who portrayed Jose Jimenez. He was hugely popular for many years, but he wasn’t actually Latino, and as the tide of public opinion turned, the popularity waned dramatically…like, to the point where, when he announced that he was retiring the character, he was stunned at the resulting cheers.

“Brown is the New Green” is another fine PBS production, providing an interesting, educational, and – ultimately – depressing look at how little love the Latino community gets on television. Sure, it’s nice that “Ugly Betty” is a success, but you can’t really call that a step forward when, in virtually the same breath, ABC canceled “The George Lopez Show” in favor of “Cavemen.” Still, when the doc ends with the revelation that Lopez earned $5 million from the show’s final season, $15 million from the series’ syndication deal, and $9 million from his stand-up shows that year, at least you can’t say that his chapter of the story hasn’t had a happy ending.

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Doc of the Day: “Married in America 2”

November 18, 2007 / Will Harris

Upfront admission: I’ve never seen the first “Married in America” film. Good thing, then, that director Michael Apted has taken it into account that some of those who might happen upon this sequel to his 2002 documentary might need to play a bit of catch-up.

In 2001, Apted – the British director who made a name for himself as a documentarian with the series of “Up” films – ventured forth to America, selected ten couples who were on the cusp of marriage and filmed the days leading up to their nuptials as well as the ceremonies themselves, asking them questions about their relationships, their feelings about marriage, and what they anticipate the future will hold for them. In 2006, he returned to the couples to see how things had been going since the last time he’d come ’round…and, no surprise here, things are decidedly different in most cases.

When selecting couples, Apted pointedly tried to highlight as many different social, economic, and cultural angles as possible, so as to cover the gamut of marital stories, and he certainly succeeded on that front; there’s a lesbian couple, a multiracial couple (the husband is African-American, the wife is white), a multicultural couple (the wife is Filipino, the husband is Jewish), a pair who’d each already been married several times before, a couple of yuppies, a couple from Alabama where the husband’s a Marine and the wife’s a Southern belle, a duo from NYC who were married immediately prior to 9/11, and so forth and so on. As a result, each story is different from the one which precedes it…and, yet, ultimately, it’s all about marriage, so you can’t help but find similarities as well. It’s a bit sad to see that Betty and Reggie are still living with Betty’s mom, with the house they’d planned to renovate for themselves still sitting a shambles, but they seem happy, so, hey, more power to them. Less happy with each other, however, are Carol & Chuck and Nadine & Frank; the latter are trying to keep it together for the sake of family, but the former only barely keep any ties with each other these days.

There’s no question that, whether you’ve seen the first film or not, “Married in America 2” is often an interesting viewing experience. Personally, however, I found myself occasionally indifferent to the goings-on…and, ultimately, I think it’s for the same reason that I got so bored with “Tell Me You Love Me” even though it was full of realistic-looking sex: I’m married. I am one of these people; I don’t need to watch their stories on television when I’m already living their lives. Yes, it’s interesting to see where they are five years after their marriage, but I watch TV and movies for escapism, and seeing how five years of marriage has brought a couple a house, a child, and a fair amount of bills is, to say the least, not much of an escape at all.

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Doc of the Day: “911 Mysteries – Part 1: Demolitions”

November 17, 2007 / Will Harris

Given that Oliver Stone’s “JFK” is one of my all-time favorite movies, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I’d enjoy a good conspiracy-theory documentary, but “911 Mysteries – Part 1: Demolitions” is more intriguing than the average…possibly because its subject is one that affected just about everyone who lived through it. I’m not trying to pretend that li’l ol’ me, sitting in Norfolk, VA, was in any way as traumatized by the experiences on September 11, 2001, as the people in New York City – that’d be ludicrous – but, man, I’ll never forget how I felt as I stood in the break room at Harris Publishing and watched the towers fall live on television. I’m not even going to begin to try to put into the words the sensation that went through me as I witnessed something so unexpected and of such tremendous magnitude unfolding before my eyes, but it was something I hope never to experience again. As it is, I’m already dreaded the day when my daughter, who’s 2 years old as of this writing, asks me about that day, because I have absolutely no fucking idea what I’m going to say.

With the first part of the “911 Mysteries” series (the additional two parts remain unproduced at present, as the filmmakers await the necessary funding to move forward), we’re presented with some very interesting premises; they may or may not be true, but for the open-minded viewer, they result in enough eyebrow raising to make you consider the possibility of their accuracy.

The main question posited during the film’s 90 minutes is this: how do you get a 10-second, 110-story pancake collapse of a major structure? The answer is…no-one has an answer. Or if they do, they’re not talking. But plenty of civilian construction folk have had the question posed to them, and most seem to mystified as to how it happened.

The film features footage of a gentleman who lost his life in the collapse of the Towers, filmed several months prior to 9/11, indicating that the buildings were structurally designed to withstand a hit from a 747 – the largest aircraft at the time the building were erected – without incident. So why did they collapse so rapidly after such a strike? And why weren’t the core structures of the buildings still intact even as the floors fell around them? Is it possible that there were additional goings-on within the Towers which resulted in their destruction…?

The best I’m going to say is “maybe,” but, like I said, this movie will definitely get you thinking. There are interviews with plenty of construction professionals who find the building’s state of collapse to be inexplicable based on the facts as presented by the mainstream media; the discussions about who stood to gain from the loss of files, facts, and figures which were housed within the Towers might feel a bit too paranoid, but when you hear witnesses describing the mysterious construction on the 34th floor a month or two before the attacks, which was significant enough that the below floors could feel the shaking from the work being done (yet when one guy sneaked up to see what they were working on, he found the floor to be completely empty), you do start wondering, “What was going on up there?” Is it possible that terrorists planned far enough in advance to weaken the structure of the building by way of a bomb within the heart of the building itself?

It’s thought-provoking stuff. If you’re a steadfast conservative Republican, you’re probably already wagging your finger and declaring it to be anti-American and unpatriotic, but if you’re like me and always wonder if the news you’re getting is really the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you owe it to yourself to at least give “911 Mysteries – Part 1: Demolitions” a look…whether you believe it or not.

Oh, and in closing, I really just have to ask this aloud: whose idea was it to use a blurb from Rosie O’Donnell as the front-cover quote? “Watch and decide for yourself,” she says. For one, it’s not a very good quote, and for another, what, is she really the best spokesperson they could get? I mean, I’m not familiar with David Ray Griffin, the author quoted on the back cover, but at least his statement – “Excellent. The best of the 9/11 movies.” – is an actual compliment. Rosie’s comment is just…nothing.