Cinema Hype

I’m supposed to be on a bit of a blog vacation this week–parents visiting, a bit of deadline-y nonsense coming up for something else–but there are just so many filmy things going on that I couldn’t help but stop in. It’s like how Jon Stewart goes away for a week and we, like, invade Canada or start holding So You Think You Can Dance tryouts on the White House lawn, or some such nonsense. Call me a workaholic (…right); I couldn’t stay away.

Here are a few fun links to news and notes, just to tide everybody over:

Super-fantastic images from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. I am undecided about the idea of Alice 2!, or whatever this sequelly thing is, but then, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Who, having seen these promo shots, is going to sit this one out?

So, you may have heard that Aaron Sorkin is writing a movie about Facebook, ostensibly as a continuation of his long-term love-hate relationship with the internet and the people who use it to talk about him. And now David Fincher’s in talks to direct. So are we talking Facebook: Suspense!, or will the entire internet be aging backwards?

Via comingsoon.net, a write-up of James Cameron’s new 3-D movie Avatar, which is supposedly the first made-for-3D movie to make proper use of new technology. Sounds amazing, and this from somebody who was sufficiently traumatized by Captain EO to hate 3D movies well into adulthood. (Note that this Avatar is NOT the same as the much-anticipated, much-debated adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender, directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Two, two, two Avatars at once!)

It appears that Scout Taylor-Compton has signed on to play Lita Ford in the upcoming Joan Jett/Lita Ford movie, The Runaways, along with Kristen Stewart as Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie; this is notable (to me) only in that Taylor-Compton will, in my mind, forever be Dean Forrester’s little sister Clara on Gilmore Girls. Remember? When Rory goes to Dean’s house to stalk him, pretends to be a Girl Scout, and makes Clara cry? Just me? Okay.

See you on the flip side, everybody. Have a good week.

Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Mia Wasikowska, Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network, Facebook, David Fincher, Avatar, James Cameron, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Last Airbender, M. Night Shyamalan, Scout Taylor-Compton, Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, The Runaways, Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, Lita Ford, Gilmore Girls

As Chuck Berry would say, it goes to show you never can tell—you quotation guessers are nothing if not unpredictable. After the snap that was Flight of the Navigator, I thought you’d have last week’s quotation pegged before I actually even posted it. Surely, I thought, every woman (and some men) born between 1975 and 1985 would be writing in, pulling hair, clawing to have the first guess. And then….nothing.

But let this be a lesson to you: never give up on the power of the internet and the people on it. Just as I was about to give up and make my “neener neener, I don’t have to write a prize cheer” post, reader Carrie chimed in with the correct answer! This quotation:

“‘I’m just trying to be honest. That’s what friends do.’
‘I guess that would explain why you have so many friends.’”

comes from Center Stage, everybody’s favorite drama-rama dance company movie from 2000. Congratulations, Carrie! Well played. Danced. Whatever.

As promised, your cheer:

You know the steps!
You know the song!
You know the quote!
You can’t go wrong!

Goooooo, Carrie! *backflips* *….grand jetes?*

Next quotation goes up later in the week.

Center Stage, movie quotes, movie quote game, Quotation Sensation

There was a time, awhile back, when Sandra Bullock swore off of romantic comedies. After 2002’s Two Weeks Notice, she broke up—so to speak—with the very genre that had made her career, essentially stating that romantic comedies had simply stopped being any good (to be fair, one might logically bring up Two Weeks’ Notice in that particular argument). Since then, she’s made several non-comic movies (notably Crash, which won Best Picture in 2004) and called it good.

Seven years later, she’s back: her new movie, The Proposal, is…you guessed it. A difficult Canadian book editor (redundant or oxymoron?) living in the States blackmails her assistant (Ryan Reynolds) into marrying her in order to stay in the country. Awkwardness ensues; I believe there’s a trip to Alaska involved. One assumes they fall in love.

So, what is this for Bullock? A comeback, so-called? An admission that sometimes being a dramatic actress is sort of boring, and that she’d rather be in something that makes her laugh, let alone the rest of us? Is she finally realizing that she had a good thing all along, and will now ditch the sexy bad boy for the true love that’s always been for her? Will Marvin Gaye or Al Greene play in the background while she runs to catch him at the airport? Maybe, and maybe not. Apparently she’s back in the romantic comedy business not to play the cute ingenue—she turns 45 this year—but to sink her teeth into something a little more fun: the chick that nobody really likes, but every actress really likes to play. Call her Miranda Priestley in the rough. (Full disclosure, because it’s my job to look this stuff up: Bullock has another romantic comedy due in September—All About Steve, in which she gets just a tad stalkery over a blind date (Bradley Cooper); her role there does seem plenty quirky, but let’s face it: she’s still the romantic lead. Old habits die hard.)

The question is whether she can pull off the switch. I have no doubt that she can pull off being cold and rude and all of the things her character is supposed to be, nor, obviously, do I question her chops when it comes to being awkward and likable. But can she have it both ways—make us hate her and make us love her (she’s the heroine, remember) at the same time? It’s a fine balance, and the result remains to be seen. If she makes it work, she might be poised for a whole new phase of her career, and the rest of us can only benefit from her success.

The Proposal, Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, romantic comedies

If you’re going to see the new dramedy Away We Go, it’s best to try and separate the movie from all of the other movies it inevitably brings to mind. It draws parallels from a whole slew of films from the last decade or so—Juno; Garden State; elements of the Wes Anderson movies; the list goes on and on—but it neatly sidesteps most of the pitfalls of the genre, due mostly to good casting and the light hand of director Sam Mendes.

Away We Go is basically a comedy, in both the modern and classical senses of the word: in the months before their first child is born, a young couple (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) travel North America in search of their ideal future lifestyle, and ponder the difficulties of adulthood along the way. External conflict is minimal; funny things happen; the entire cast of characters (spoiler alert!) doesn’t die at the end. But then, it’s a Mendes comedy—his first—which seems to mean that the comedy is almost incidental; he’s clearly in it, directorially, for the poignancy of people working out their lives, tinged with both sorrow and hope. (This is not to cast aspersions on Mendes’s sense of humor, but forgive me if his filmography does not say, to me, “great at parties.”) And so although it’s a very funny movie, the humor is rooted more in Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida’s script—the voice is occasionally Eggers in stereo—than in the visual style or the general feel of the movie. It’s a strange divide, the director keeping his hands off the comedy and simply moving the characters around, but it seems to work.

First, as Bert and Verona move around the continent, Mendes imparts a particular visual style, full of motion and travel and place. In nearly every scene, they’re moving horizontally: walking, standing still on a moving sidewalk, driving, flying. It’s basic—we get it, they’re in motion—but it’s more than these kinds of small movies often spring for. Also, Mendes seems determined to stare emotion in the face but not to overdo it. The movie is full of the kind of painfully earnest scenes that so often turn into pure cheese before our very eyes—but somehow, due to Mendes’s delicate direction, manage to stop just short. Several times, during particular scenes, I thought, “I think I’m supposed to hate this. I am definitely supposed to hate this. Why do I not hate this?” Maybe it’s the simplicity with which he treats these moments (no swelling music, no chases to the airport), or maybe it’s just that he, in all his filmic sobriety, doesn’t seem to think they’re cheesy; in any case, we are charmed into thinking they aren’t, either.

This is likely to be both a breakout role and more of the usual for Krasinski; his character, Bert, is like HBO Jim Halpert, so that he’s not so much acting differently as getting more time and space to do what he does really well. In the long run, Krasinski may well play variations on Jim Halpert for the rest of his career—either because that’s what he can do, or because that’s what everybody thinks he can do—but it may work out for him, simply because he comes up with so many ways to be a normal, funny guy. This movie shows off his physicality (also a factor in Leatherheads, the high point of which was Krasinski playing drunk) and the things he does with his voice, and the sheer joy he seems to get out of both of the above. Rudolph, a surprising choice for something so far from her previous job on SNL, occasionally interacts with the script in ways that are awkward or come off as explain-y, but is also generally good; her delivery of a particular story toward the end of the movie is probably more than enough to cover any weird moments earlier in the movie.

Both Krasinski and Rudolph have plenty of talent to work off of, as well; highlights include the 100% reliable Allison Janney as a woman with absolutely no filters and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a hilariously/infuriatingly liberal and self-righteous mother (on refusing to use a stroller: “I love my babies! Why would I want to push them away from me?”), and Melanie Lynskey and Chris Messina as a couple whose perfect life turns out to be perfectly melancholy. A whole host of experienced comedians come and go in supporting roles, as well; the only painful thing here is the realization that most of these people won’t actually be onscreen together.

If you’re thinking of seeing Away We Go—if the trailer hasn’t totally digusted you; if you like the cast; if you’re into small stories about regular people—then you’ll probably enjoy it. There’s certainly plenty to enjoy, and a particular sense of Mendes’s grown-up-ness, to boot. Maybe it’s just a natural progression.

Away We Go, John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Allison Janney, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Melanie Lynskey, Chris Messina, Sam Mendes

Another week, another quotation, another sensation…

The Rules

I will post a quotation from a movie. The first person to comment with the character, actor, and film that contains this quotation gets a special eyelash batting and a tailor-made Cinema Hype cheer, which might actually rhyme, even if it doesn’t make any sense.

The Deadline

If somebody guesses correctly, the prize cheer goes up as soon as possible. If nobody gets it right, I’m off the hook cheer-wise, and the next quotation is posted on Friday (…or not, like this week, but Friday is the norm) (Actually, this is proving to be the case less and less often. We’ll say I’ll shoot for sometime around the weekend. Friday, Sunday, Monday…something around there.)

The Quotation

“‘I’m just trying to be honest. That’s what friends do.’
‘I guess that would explain why you have so many friends.’”

Think you know the answer? Leave it in the comments.

Quotation Sensation, movie quote game, movie quotes

If you’re in charge of the soundtrack for 500 Days of Summer, you’d better make it good. Because, for one, the main characters meet in an elevator and talk about the Smiths (this is closely related to my own dream of meeting my perfect man at the public library, when we both want to read the only copy of The New Yorker; he compromises and takes Vanity Fair instead, because he’s nice). Plus, the female lead is Zooey Deschanel, who is no slouch, musically–she’s the “she” half of She & Him and also supports M. Ward on his own records. In a pinch, Deschanel could even call in her own fiance, the king of the heartfelt 21st-century hipster love song, Postal Service/Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard. I bet he could come up with a killer sountrack, stat.

I’m just saying: start with these ingredients, and people are going to expect something good. Here’s the track listing, with samples from Youtube (of varying visual quality, but they all sound fine), where available, for your listening pleasure:

1. A Story of Boy Meets Girl - Mychael Danna and Rob Simonsen
2. Us - Regina Spektor
3. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths
4. Bad Kids - Black Lips
5. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want - The Smiths
6. There Goes The Fear - Doves
7. You Make My Dreams - Hall & Oates
8. Sweet Disposition - The Temper Trap
9. Quelqu’un M’a Dit - Carla Bruni
10. Mushaboom - Feist
11. Hero - Regina Spektor
12. Bookends - Simon & Garfunkel
13. Vagabond - Wolfmother
14. She’s Got You High - Mumm-Ra
15. Here Comes Your Man - Meaghan Smith
16. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want - She & Him

It’s a good soundtrack–deliberately and pleasantly eclectic, roughly devided between rock, midtempo indie pop, and the kind of miscellaneous, familiar-ish older music that comes with cultural baggage intact. It’s not too studied in its indie-ness, but exposes a few lesser-known bands; it rocks out, but shouldn’t put too many people off; it’s a little bit retro, but in a good way. It’s good summer music. And, interestingly, it would be an excellent companion album to another strong summer soundtrack, Alexi Murdoch’s work on for Away We Go.

If nothing else, there’s that cover of “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” to look forward to.

Oh, and, uh, the movie. That, too.

500 Days of Summer, Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Joseph Gordon Levitt, summer movies, soundtracks, movie soundtracks, Mychael Danna and Rob Simonsen, Regina Spektor, The Smiths, Black Lips, Doves, Hall & Oates, The Temper Trap, Carla Bruni, Feist, Simon and Garfunkel, Wolfmother, Mumm-Ra, Meaghan Smith, She & Him, She and Him, M. Ward, Ben Gibbard, Death Cab for Cutie, The Postal Service, Alexi Murdoch, Away We Go

Warning: the following contains spoilers for Up.

At my screening of Up last week, I was taken by the all-around thoughtful and honest take on the death of a loved one. That’s something families can appreciate, I thought—kids, in particular, can probably benefit from some healthy discussion on the topic, and Pixar handled the whole thing with an admirably light touch. Interestingly, though, there’s one other character death in the movie that may be just as important, in a way, but is far less lovingly rendered and far less carefully dissected: the destruction of Charles Muntz. The bad guy.

At the climax of the movie, in the middle of a harrowing hand-to-hand fight scene, Muntz is knocked off of his zeppelin (don’t you hate it when that happens?), plummeting to his death. He probably deserves it, but that’s it—we don’t see what happens to him. There’s no redemption, no slap on the wrist, and no comment from the heroes about what’s happened. In my screening, a few people in the theater laughed.

Tell me, readers: what do you think about this? Has this always happened in kids’ movies? Or is it a shift away from the classic Scooby Doo-style “and I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for you kids!” incarceration scene, or even a grudging chance at redemption for the bad guys? What about villains that aren’t quite human, like in many vintage Disney films? Is it worse for, say, Ursula or Maleficent to bite the big one than it is for Jafar?

Inquiring minds want to know. Or at least consider.

Up, Charles Muntz, death, Pixar, The Little Mermaid, Litttle Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin, Scooby-Doo, Scooby Doo

“Ooh, look at John Krasinski. Who knew he could pull off the beard? Lookin’ good, Halpert.”

“He kind of looks like Dad at a young age.”

“We’re not going to talk about that, okay?”

“Okay.”

“So.”

“So.”

“Sam Mendes doing comedy. That’s healthy, right?”

“Something that doesn’t automatically make me want to bury myself alive? Sure. We’ll chalk that up for progress.”

“I wonder what a Sam Mendes funny mood looks like.”

“Probably like the American dream turning sour, only slower than usual.”

“That’s mean.”

“It’s not my fault. American Beauty AND Revolutionary Road?”

“Point taken.”

“Oh, wow. Written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida (his wife, a writer who surely gets tired of being known mostly as his wife) , you say?”

“That’s very…hip. Or, wait. Do hip people read Dave Eggers anymore, or is that over?”

“I don’t think the font is helping, either.”

“Very Wes Anderson.”

“A little derivative.”

“Borrowing other people’s pretentiousness. Awesome.”

“Does that make it bad?”

“It might make it annoying. But that’s not the same thing. It looks sweet.”

“It looks like Garden State redux.”

“I do like this song, though.”

“And aww, look, there’s Maggie Gyllenhaal.”

“And that chick from Sweet Home Alabama who had a baby! In a bar!”

“And Allison Janney, who is everything I want to be when I grow up.”

“Six feet of fabulous?”

“Exactly.”

“So it can’t be all bad.”

“I think it looks good.”

“Yes. Good. If you can wade through the one-third-life crisis fumes.”

“Yeah. That.”

“So I’ll meet you at the theater?”

“Wear your Dunder Mifflin t-shirt.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Away We Go, John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Sam Mendes, Sam Mendes comedy, Allison Janney, Melanie Lynskey, Sweet Home Alabama, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida, Jim Halpert, Dunder Mifflin, Wes Anderson

After a sad week of too-hard quotations, there’s nothing like a live-action Disney classic to bring the guesses out of the woodwork, right? We had a couple of correct submissions for this week’s quotation—time is of the essence when it comes to the era of The Wonderful World of Disney, apparently—but ultimately, reader Xerxes correct connected this quotation:

“‘I crashed into electrical towers, and my star charts were erased. I need the ones in your head to complete my mission.’
‘So you need ME and my INFERIOR brain to fly that thing?’
‘Correction, I need the SUPERIOR information in your INFERIOR brain to fly this… thing.’”

to the 1986 boy-and-his-spaceship adventure, The Flight of the Navigator. Congratulations, Xerxes! You didn’t happen to see this movie as a double feature with Song of the South, did you? (I did. Age six. Just call me the Attention Span Avenger.) Also, I don’t suppose you will always associate both the Beach Boys and Twisted Sister with this movie because of the “I Get Around” sequence and because of the older sister? (Again, just me?)

As promised, your cheer:

It’s Pee-Wee’s spaceship on your screen!
And Carrie Bradshaw has a scene!
You knew the lines, you quote machine,
We’ll never judge–go ahead and preen!

Wooooooo! Well played, X.

The next quotation goes up Friday, for your brain-wracking pleasure.

Flight of the Navigator, movie quote game, movie quotes, Sarah Jessica Parker, Paul Reubens, Song of the South, Beach Boys

If you’re already present on the internet—and if you’re not, you must be wired in via the Matrix, so congratulations on that—you may already know this: Star Trek has taken over the internet. Sure, there are other fandoms and other crazes circulating on, I guess, some tiny corner of the information superhighway (the corner owned by the Man, obviously), but currently, the Trekkies have pretty much staked their claim. This kind of upsurge in an already thriving fandom, of course, can only lead to a dark yet often hilarious corner of the human psyche.

And so today, I present Fun Star Trek Things I’ve Found on the Internet.

You’re welcome.

- This is only funny if you know that, on Heroes, Zachary Quinto (new Spock) plays a dude named Sylar. So now you know. And…you’re laughing, right?

- Top Ten Real-Life Star Trek Inventions

- Star Trek for breakfast! I don’t know. Shouldn’t the “live long and prosper” ones be whole wheat or something?

- Fans choose the best starter episodes for new Trekkie catch-up

- Star Trek recipes for your next themed dinner party!

- The thing you didn’t know you needed: Meerkat Star Trek officer dolls on Etsy. Looks like they’re sold out for now—well, sure—but that maybe she’s making more for all of your summer gifting needs.

Youtube is, of course, a special kind of repository for Trekkish fun, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up a few of the many, many Trek-themed videos out there. This doesn’t even scratch the surface, but hey, maybe you don’t really want to go beneath the surface, and with good reason.

This is amazing: Cribs, Spock-style, from an old G4 TV spot.

Awesome, disturbing, or both? And why? This must connect with some primal part of the brain. I don’t know.

Okay, not so much created by fandom as pointed out by fandom, but we’ve got Star Trek vs. Star Wars via Fanboys:

Side note: If I could alter Fabio, my VW Golf, to honk like a wookiee, I probably would. I’d probably use my horn more, too. A la my old Driver’s Ed teacher: “Daaaaaainjah, mah deah child. Dainjah!”

Hee, DJ Spock:

This could go on forever. Seriously. You think forty years of fandom plus a sudden and violent sci-fi revival isn’t going to generate some weird crap? Google is your friend here, but should you require more Trek-related (and, by way of warning, consistently NSFW, or possibly NSF lots of people) time-wasting fun, you might start with startrek_ontd. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. (Really. Consider yourself warned.)

Star Trek, fandom, Star Trek Youtube, Zachary Quinto, Heroes, William Shatner, Spock, Captain Kirk

When it comes down to it, Up is kind of controversial, as family movies go. It is, after all, mostly about an elderly gentleman whose wife has just passed away. And, yeah, there’s an eager little kid and a house buoyed by balloons and a trip to South America, but it’s hard to escape the Life Lesson mixed in with the fun: sometimes, moving on is hard. Wouldn’t kids–or, rather, people in general–rather chill with reanimated toys? Or talking bugs? What about a lost fish kid and his freaked-out fish dad? Yes. Yes, most of us probably would prefer to spend two hours with a cute but solitary robot than with a grieving old man. Up mostly makes it work anyway, but the results come across—pardon the pun—a bit on the heavy side.

The story of Carl Fredricksen–with his wife, Ellie, and without her–plays out in ways that are both unusually beautiful and surprisingly standard. The very best parts of the movie have no dialogue at all (perhaps this is something Pixar does unusually well, a la Wall-E?); small segments of the old man’s story are narrated almost entirely by Michael Giacchino’s excellent and sensitive score. But then, it’s also a standard crotchety-old-man-learns-to-live-via-obnoxious-whippersnapper story, which is where we get both the fun and a bit of the predictability. Although Carl learns to care for his stowaway, Russell, we never exactly see why, other than the fact that Carl would be a huge jerk if he didn’t let the kid in a little. Maybe Russell doesn’t need a ton of backstory–we see who he is immediately, with his almost-complete Wilderness Explorer sash and his eager-beaver attitude–but there’s no real, discrete moment of bonding for the two of them, so that the formula of the movie isn’t quite fulfilled in the characters.

This is not to say that Up isn’t touching, or fun, or appropriate for families, or anything else. It’s a bit more adult than some other Pixar movies, and it speaks gently but honestly about death, but it’s still a good time, including an adventure plot that you don’t see much of in the trailers. The Pixar crew continues to show off their smart sense of humor and impeccable comic timing in a way that should appeal to all ages—the non-human characters are especially good for comic relief. Furthermore, the scenes in the flying house are gorgeous and wonderfully creative, and likely to give more than one kid ideas (parents: keep an eye on your handy-dandy helium canisters!). Much of the story doesn’t actually take place in the house, but hey, the wilderness of South America ain’t bad either, as adventure settings go. Even the villain–voiced by Christopher Plummer, one of the only celebrity voices in the film–is fun in a vintage-y, mustache-twirling kind of way. So, despite the heavy subject matter, there’s plenty of fun to be had. It’s a balance: if you’re looking for a thoughtful movie that everybody in the family will like, Up should make everybody laugh (and maybe spark some conversation on the way home).

One final note: If you or anybody you know are afraid of dogs, you may want to skip this one; a vengeful (but articulate!) pack of guard dogs plays a pretty big role here, and seemed traumatic to a couple of kids in my screening.

Up, Pixar, Christopher Plummer, Michael Giacchino, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, animated movies, animated, movie reviews

Well, I had to win sometime, right? You readers have been on a roll lately, but I’ve been looking for the lines—the boundaries of “too hard” and “too easy”—and it looks like I found one. Check!

Nobody guessed that this quotation:

“‘What do you think, man? You think it makes me look tough?’
‘I think it makes you look different.’
‘What’d you mean, “different”?’
‘Well, you got a hole in your mouth.’”

…was from The Outsiders, the 1983 brat-pack take on S.E. Hinton’s classic 1967 gang novel. Who has two thumbs and doesn’t have to write a cheer this week? This girl!

So let’s move on, shall we?

The Rules

I will post a quotation from a movie. The first person to comment with the character, actor, and film that contains this quotation gets a special eyelash batting and a tailor-made Cinema Hype cheer, which might actually rhyme, even if it doesn’t make any sense.

The Deadline

If somebody guesses correctly, the prize cheer goes up as soon as possible. If nobody gets it right, I’m off the hook cheer-wise, and the next quotation is posted on Friday (…or not, like this week, but Friday is the norm) (Actually, this is proving to be the case less and less often. We’ll say I’ll shoot for sometime around the weekend. Friday, Sunday, Monday…something around there.)

The Quotation

“‘I crashed into electrical towers, and my star charts were erased. I need the ones in your head to complete my mission.’
‘So you need ME and my INFERIOR brain to fly that thing?’
‘Correction, I need the SUPERIOR information in your INFERIOR brain to fly this… thing.’”

Think you know the answer? Leave it in the comments.

Quotation Sensation, movie quote game, movie quotes, The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton, brat pack

You want to be an internet rock star, don’t you?

And maybe get the love of your life?

What if you could do both? FOX thinks you can: to promote their new post-high-school romantic comedy I Love You, Beth Cooper, they’re running a contest: make your own confessional video, upload it to their site, and see whether you end up in one of the TV spots they’ll be making. You might. In any case, Hayden Panettiere did it, and she’s a movie rock star OFF the internet! See? It worked for her! Confess your crush via internet video today!

(P.S. It’s less anonymous than Post Secret and less enormously public than . So there’s that.)

I Love You Beth Cooper, contests

The first trailers for the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movie are out, and…hmmm. Either Ritchie and Co. don’t get it, or the trailer guys want us to think they don’t.

It’s not that I have a problem with action movies, or with action comedies, or with literary characters being nudged in the action-ish direction*. Heaven knows I love a good horse-and-buggy chase as much as the next girl, and even Holmes’s boxing badassery comes straight out of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Anything Holmes should be a bit of a nail-biter—the man eventually gets pushed off a waterfall and then mysteriously re-animates, for goodness’ sake!

But it just seems like what we see here misses the point, a bit. Not that Robert Downey, Jr. can’t pull off thrilling heroics—see: Iron Man, etc.—but his particular skill set lines up with the role of Holmes in so many other brilliant ways that running and jumping out of (or into?) harm’s way doesn’t seem like the best use of his time. Turn up the sardonic dialogue! Let us see the deep-seated pain lingering behind the constant stream of sarcasm! Don’t they know him at ALL?

I think—I hope—that Ritchie and the writers know all of this. The dialogue we do hear is appropriately snarky; some of the details of the trailer (boxing, opium use, Watson) are straight-up Doyle canon. And so I’m tentatively calling this trailer a marketing ploy, an attempt to convince us that “you’ve never seen a Holmes like this before!” (when, in fact, we’ve all seen basically all possible Holmeses before in one pop culture context or another, but whatever). Ritchie’s rendition may have more thrills and spills than your average Victorian detective story—he does have a thing for a certain kind of lo-fi action—but I tentatively expect enough content sandwiched in to make it not just exciting, but good. Or maybe I’m just naive. Hope springs eternal, right? And if not, dude, I totally know Madonna and will sic her on you. Don’t think I won’t.

*Okay, I might have a problem with literary characters being nudged in the action-ish direction. It depends on the literary character and the degree to which light sabres are involved. What can I say? I’m a purist.

Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes trailer, Sherlock Holmes Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Watson, Guy Ritchie

Well, Night at the Museum 2 was the best Ben Stiller movie I’ve seen in awhile*. To be honest, I still haven’t seen the first Museum movie, so that puts our us on really good terms back in, what, Meet the Fockers? Dodgeball? This, though…this is fun, and strangely inspiring. This is the kind of movie that everybody can get into, and more or less for the same reasons.

The best thing about this movie is that it knows what the audience wants: if you’re going to make a movie about the Smithsonian coming to life—if you’re going to take on a setting that rich, detailed, and dear to people’s hearts—you’d better make sure you’re making good use of what’s there. If there’s heavy lifting, character-wise, there had also better be something awesome going on that can only happen when the Smithsonian’s collection comes to life, including a) a giant balloon dog tottering around, b) a giant squid chilling in Abe Lincoln’s reflecting pool, or c) a small army of Einstein bobbleheads instilling pi (to ten digits!) into an entire generation of children. Got it? They do. There’s always something happening—more than one thing, usually—and that’s the way it should be.

This is a family film, and by “family” they actually mean “family,” not “kids and their required chaperones who are considering ‘going to the bathroom’ and sneaking into Terminator Salvation instead.” In general, it doesn’t feel like content written for kids—in part because it wasn’t. Director Shawn Levy encouraged the cast to improvise, which they clearly did; edited together (the scripted, the improvised, and the could-go-either-way), the movie comes off much like a bunch of grown-up comedians just messing around, albeit cleanly. At the same time, it’s not cynical, or even very pop-culturized (with the exception of one Jonas Brothers cameo, on which history will look back in judgment), as kids’ movies can sometimes be. Instead, it offers a message that may seem more obvious to the kids in the audience than to the adults (and which the adults need to hear more anyway): do what you love. (Also, physical excercise.)

In making all of this happen, the enormous and enormously talented cast—a lot of places must have been a lot less funny when all of these people gathered to make the movie—is consistently great, and they’re great together, which contributes to the “everybody’s having a good time here!” vibe. The standouts would have to be Steve Coogan as the brave, British, and terrifically loyal Octavius (BFFs with Owen Wilson’s cowboy Jedediah Smith, obviously) and Bill Hader as the possibly-too-close-to-home General George A. Custer (”We’re Americans! We don’t plan; we do!”). Amy Adams is outnumbered in terms of gender and comic reputation, but persists in making a difficult and potentially obnoxious dialogue style seem charming, and may well inspire a generation of young Earhart fans.

So give it a shot. If you liked the first one, you’ll like this. If you’re a child, you’ll like this. If you’re a nerd, you’ll really like this. If you like things that are funny, you’ll like this. And if you don’t, well, maybe something less funny, nerdy, and endearing, there’s always Terminator.

* Possibly excluding Tropic Thunder, which is, I believe, sort of a different thing. On the other hand, I think I really did enjoy this more.

** FYI, the Smithsonian’s coverage of the movie is pretty great. Nice job, Smithsonian!

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