Cinema Hype

First order of business: What kind of world do we live in, that nobody catches a quotation from You’ve Got Mail? A sad one, that’s what kind! Grumble, grumble, grumble. Last week was Dabney Coleman explaining to Tom Hanks about Gillian and Nanny Maureen, speaker of the wise words, “Never marry a man who lies!”

Anyway. Moving on.

As usual, the rules: The first person to comment with the character, actor, and movie 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.

Ready?

“Relax, would you? We have seventy dollars and a pair of girls’ underpants. We’re safe as kittens. ”

Go!

Do I really need
a good reason to love what
The Rock is cooking?

I was trolling the deepest, darkest alleys of the film blog world when I saw a fun casting announcement: Dwayne Johnson, formerly known as The Rock, will appear in the upcoming remake of Escape From Witch Mountain. I should probably have strong feelings about this movie and any ill-conceived remaking that might take place. I know that my family watched it when I was little, and the nostalgia factor for early-1980s kids’ movies is strong in this one. But really? All I saw was, “The Rock will appear in blah blah blah. That’s because–brace yourself–I love The Rock.

I know that Dwayne Johnson makes a lot of bad movies. But. He used to be a professional wrestler! A really famous professional wrestler! His signature move was called “The People’s Elbow,” because nobody’s a populist like a scripted wrestler’s a populist. He was named after a geologic feature, and he spoke in the third person. (Confession: I nearly did an English thesis on the rhetoric of the WWF. Who doesn’t love wrestling speeches? I could go on and on.) And, the best part: he spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2000, while still wrestling full time! What is not to love here?

So, no. I cannot promise that I won’t see Escape from Witch Mountain, or The Game Plan, or anything else he does, because…he’s just my favorite well-spoken former wrestler with an inanimate object for a name, okay? You got a problem with that? Know your role! Don’t be a jabroni.

Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, Escape from Witch Mountain, WWF

Is it wrong to want to see Shoot ‘Em Up?

Is it bad to equate a movie with hours of senseless fictional violence, and be really excited?

Is it wrong to look forward to two hours of Clive Owen kicking booty and taking names, hotly?

Is it wrong to want Paul Giamatti to overcome his naturally nebbish tendencies and get to win for once?

Is it wrong to love a movie for being honest/self-consciously sarcastic in its titling?

Is it wrong to want a movie that’ll show us all how action movies are done, whether or not it’s named after New Hampshire?

If it’s wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Shoot ‘Em Up, Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Monica Bellucci, action movies, guilty pleasure

Let’s talk a little bit about The Dark Knight, the second installment in Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman. After Batman Begins, things around the Batman franchise are looking up: the story’s meaty, the cast is strong, and Nolan has a good eye for the onscreen image.

Now, The Dark Knight introduces Batgirl, which seems like a plum role for some starlet: from the hands of Alicia Silverstone, the pleather suit seems like it might gravitate towards, I don’t know, Hayden Panettiere? How about Kristen Bell? Do you see where I’m going with this?

Apparently “where I’m going with this” isn’t where the casting directors were going: the new face of Batgirl is Melinda McGraw, the all-purpose TV actor probably best known as Dana Scully’s ill-fated hippie sister on The X-Files. We’re not saying she’s a bad choice; we at CH admire the decision to cast someone unusual. We’re just surprised, okay?

So: Melinda McGraw. Neither a bat nor a girl, per se. Talk amongst yourselves.

The Dark Knight, Batman, Batgirl, Melinda McGraw, Christopher Nolan

1. Gene Kelly has been holding out on me! I’m a huge sucker for tap-dance movies, but apparently good old Gene isn’t so bad with them ballet skills, either.

2. Holy Prestigious Pedigree, Batman! Choreographed by Kelly, music and libretto by George and Ira Gershwin, directed by Vincente Minnelli. Now, if they’d only been able to find someone famous to take care of this stuff…

3. In Little Women, the sisters play a game where one girl starts a story and another has to end it. Does anybody get the feeling the same thing happened with An American in Paris? “Once upon a time, there was a standard musical with dialogue and songs and a plot.” “And then everything wrapped up with a 25-minute dance number. The end.”

4. Milo (”as in Venus de”) is my heroine. She’s the new Baroness Schrader!

5. Whatever happened to the hybrid tap/ballet musical? Come on, Neve Campbell. Pick up the pace. This is your chance!

As usual, the rules: The first person to comment with the character, actor, and movie 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.

This week’s not too hard. Have at it!

“‘Well, let me see, first there was your mother. Then there was Lorette, the ballet dancer…’
‘My nanny!’
‘She was the nanny?’
‘…Yeah.’
‘I forgot that. Ironic. Then there was the ice skater.’
‘Also my nanny.’
‘Really? That’s incredibly ironic….And then there was Sybil, the uh… it’s an A word…’
‘Astrologer!’
‘That’s it.’
‘Whose moon turned out to be in someone else’s house, as I recall.’
‘Just like Gillian.’
‘Gillian ran off with someone?’
‘The nanny!‘
‘Nanny Maureen?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, well, well. Gillian ran off with Nanny Maureen.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s amazingly ironic.’

For our next trick, the
entire cast will cover their
heads with panty hose.

This whole situation is getting a little alarming, isn’t it? The Information Super-Highway has failed us again! Come on, Al Gore! Is this what you wanted for us?! (Note: For big fun, click on that link and see what a scrawny young pup Al used to be. It’s like his high-school yearbook picture, or something. “Most Likely to Bore People Out of the Young Environmentalists’ Club.” Poor Al.)

It seems that Angelina Jolie will be CGI in Beowulf. Here’s the catch, though: she’ll be CGI…as herself. And so will everyone else. Robert Zemeckis is using his new toy, performance-capture animation, to make perfectly normal-looking people into soulless animated onscreen droids. It’s not so much the process that’s problematic here as it is the product: if you’ve seen the creepy humans in The Polar Express, you know what I mean.

Maybe it’s all intentional. Maybe Zemeckis is taking a beautiful cast and using technology to render everyone totally unnerving on purpose. It’s a statement, see? Technology makes us flat and weird, and not really like people at all! We are Scandinavian monsters, people, ravaging the tiny villages of Web 2.0! And it’s all the programmers’ fault.

At least, that’s what I’m going to believe until Zemeckis a) says otherwise, or b) gets bored and finds a new technology with which to freak us all out. Arthroscopic animation, anyone?

Beowulf, Beowulf movie, motion-capture animation, Angelina Jolie, Robert Zemeckis

When discussion arose the other day of Angelina Jolie terrorizing some poor Scandinavian village as Grendel’s mother in the upcoming Beowulf movie, we at CH felt a strange calm descend over headquarters. Sure, somebody had cast Jolie as Grendel’s mother, but only her voice, right? Surely Grendel’s mother, being, you know, a monster, would be CGI, and Jolie would lend her admittedly soothing/terrifying voice to the role. Right?

Wrong.

The strange calm has deserted us now that we know the truth: Angelina Jolie is Grendel’s mother, in the flesh; no masks, no crazy makeup. How “32-year-old knockout” translates to “murderous mother of adult monster-creature played by Crispin Glover” is unclear. Even more bizarre is why anybody decided they loved Jolie for her English accent. The world turns upside down, we say!

The Rumor Investigation Squad must go sit down for a while.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled movie-review programming to bring a special Curmudgeonly Theatre-Goer’s Report. For the record:

- Just because a movie is animated does not mean your child will sit still to watch it.

- If a movie is not animated and/or specifically aimed at your child’s age group, the likelihood of your child not driving an entire theater of people to drink goes down by 50 percent.

- Children have eyes and ears. They may not understand what’s going on, but they’re still watching.

- If your child doesn’t understand what’s going on, he or she will ask, and it’s not going to be via telepathy.

- The fact that your child is speaking a language other than English does not mean we cannot hear him or her.

- The fact that you are not shushing your child does not go unnoticed. At least look like you are making an effort, or we will make an effort for you. Any dirty looks you receive are on your own head.

- You had to buy your child a ticket to see this movie. Surely two hours of babysitting isn’t much more expensive?

- Some movie theaters offer showings specifically for people with small children. This is a good investment of your time and money. Trust us. Come back in ten years, and we’ll talk.

And now back to your regular film-review program. Thank you for your time.

Question: What is funnier than a self-serious pre-Arthurian almost-epic starring Ben Kingsley in a wig?

Answer: There is no answer. Nothing is funnier than a self-serious pre-Arthurian almost-epic starring Ben Kingsley in a wig. Which is a good thing for The Last Legion, which would be absolutely abysmal if it weren’t so hilarious in its badness.

The Last Legion, the story of a boy Caesar and his personal security detail, is the kind of movie that inspires nervous laughter: there aren’t many jokes, per se, but something about the swelling of the music, the deliberate posing of the obligatory hot Indian spy/warrior chick, and the use of the worlds “old man” to describe Ben Kingsley (shortly before he demonstrates his cat-like reflexes to indicate, subtly, that He Is Not Just Your Everyday Old Man) lead to snickering during the silent moments. It’s inevitable, much like Colin Firth’s Mel Gibson impression during the “let’s fight the good fight and maybe we’ll die! Woot!” speech. There’s just not much to be done.

The weird thing is that much of the acting in The Last Legion is pretty good. Colin Firth, who’s rapidly outgrowing his long “reedy and awkward, but sexy nonetheless” (aka Mr. Darcy in all his forms) stage, manages to be serious and even touching, even when the gravitas of the script and cinematography are basically falling down around him. He even makes the Braveheart motivational speech–potentially the comic climax of the movie–come across without a hitch or a giggle, which is no small feat, considering. Ben Kingsley is disappointing, but the movie’s child star (red alert!), Thomas Sangster, who’s just on the cusp of the long, dark night of the soul known as “adolescence,” is surprisingly good. (Note: You’ve probably seen him before, as he’s one of the two actors currently sharing the role of The Male Dakota Fanning. He shares that post with Freddie Highmore, the kid from Finding Neverland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Sangster is the one from Love Actually. Creepily enough, IMDB reveals that Highmore is 15 and Sangster 17, which can’t possibly be right.) Nearly all of the performers keep their chins up despite any hilarity unfolding around them. It’s impressive.

Worth seeing, especially if you’re planning an Excalibur viewing. I smell a box set!

The Last Legion, Colin Firth, Thomas Sangster, Roman empire, Ben Kingsley

Oscar and Felix,
meet priest Richard Gere and his
singing “buddy,” Gene.

Do you ever get that feeling where you look at your Netflix queue and wonder whether drunken elves took over your computer and shuffled everything around? We at CHHQ freely admit that our to-see list is fairly narrow: we’re all about the comedies, the romances, the comic romances, and the occasional documentary thrown in just for that extra touch of spice. We like dramas fine; it’s just that we sort of lack the initiative to watch them without someone else prodding us into it. So how is it that I currently have Primal Fear and An American in Paris staring each other down next to the DVD player? These are movies that don’t even speak the same language. They have different turf, and things get strange when they pass on the street. I’m keeping my eyes open for a red-envelope brawl, though I’m pretty sure I know which one’s going to be doing the “When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet” act.

It’s not exactly that I don’t want to watch Primal Fear. I do. My friend Sarah recommended it, and Sarah is my East-coast doppelganger, a person with whom I share a parallel life (if you can ignore the time difference). Sarah knows what I like, because it tends to be what she likes. So I know that, because of Sarah’s good faith and because of Edward Norton, it’s going to be a winner. But who can devote a brilliant summer day, or even a precious long evening, to priests and murder, or whatever it is? Maybe it’s the wrong time of year. I’m just thinking that I’m really more in the mood for Gene Kelly singing, and that I will probably always be more in the mood for Gene Kelly singing than I will for anything Richard Gere, ever. I’ll get there. It’s just going to take a little convincing.

Anyway, I’m going to go. I think I hear snapping.

If you’ve ever used the words “Whatever I feel like doing! GOSH!” or wanted to throttle someone (or multiple someones) who’ve done the same, you might want to go check out The Ten Most Obnoxiously Overquoted Movies. Now, the blogger in question might be a tad obnoxious himself (and you know he loved “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries”), but…he’s not wrong. There are only so many iterations of “Yeah, baby!” that are acceptable in the world, and I’m pretty sure Mike Myers used them all up.

But isn’t it a relief to see what isn’t on that list? How Star Wars is, apparently, still fair game, despite being one of the most-quoted, most-ripped-off movies of all time? How it’s pretty much always okay to compare a situation to a scene from The Godfather, even if you’re misquoting it, just like everyone else? I think we can all feel better now. After all, where would I be without When Harry Met Sally and “You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right”? Did Nora Ephron know that he was writing the most quotable film of all time? (Answer: Of course she did.) What about You’ve Got Mail, which is definitely in the sleeper-quotation category: it’s a film that is ridiculously, endlessly quotable, only I can never place the quotations until after I’ve used them. What about Notting Hill? And I’m not talking about Spike; I’m talking about, “They’re prescription, so I can see all the fishes properly.” You have no idea how often that quotation comes in handy. Don’t even get me started on, “It’s not Jane Austen; it’s not Henry James; but it’s…uh…gripping.” What about Twister, for heaven’s sake?

All I’m saying is that movie quotation can obviously get out of hand–nothing ruins a movie like careless imitation–but that a well-used movie quotation is nearly always appropriate, and that if we’re only staying away from ten movies, I call that a win. Find something good and use it well, my friends.

So, do you want to hear a wacky rumor? A rumor so weird that only Hollywood could make it up, and only Hollywood could make it true? Fine. It’s about Jurassic Park IV. It exists! Ha!

Oh, wait, no. That’s not the whole thing. Wanna hear the plot? How about….dinosaurs with guns?

Yep, turns out those little T-Rex arms are good for more than waving around uselessly; they’re apparently excellent for carrying guns and shooting people. I always knew the claws and teeth and EATING PEOPLE wasn’t nearly scary enough. All they really needed to seal the deal was a good firearm, and not opposable thumbs and a brain larger than a walnut, as previously thought.

Interesting.

Jurassic Park 4, movie rumors

I recently watched Kinky Boots on Netflix. I could tell it was a Miramax movie because it belonged to that strange subgenre that seems to be kept afloat solely by that one studio: the working-class-Northern-England-learns-about-the-Other movie, a la The Full Monty and Billy Elliott. Nonetheless, it was good. Really good. And best of all was Chiwetel Ejiofor, whom you’ve probably seen but never connected with a name, singing and dancing his heart out as drag queen Lola.

Which got me thinking about another subgenre: the drag queen movie. Today’s A-list males seem to steer clear of the dress-and-heels route, but there’s a healthy list of lesser-known or less of-the-moment actors who’ve seen fit to walk a mile in some pointy patent leather. So, readers, tell me: who are your favorite cinematic drag queens, and why?

Bonus question: Does Julie Andrews count?

Kinky Boots, drag queens, Julie Andrews, Chiwetel Ejiofor

As usual, the rules: The first person to comment with the character, actor, and movie 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.

“Why gamble with money when you can gamble with people’s lives? That was a joke. All right, I’ll tell you. I believe in the notion that people are innocent until proven guilty. I believe in that notion because I choose to believe in the basic goodness of people. I choose to believe that not all crimes are committed by bad people. And I try to understand that some very, very good people do some very bad things.”

What do you think?