Cinema Hype

I just added a movie soundtrack to my iTunes.

I know what you’re going to ask: Away We Go, or (500) Days of Summer? If I were you, I’d think the same thing. An awful lot of people that like the same things I like are celebrating the summer of 2009 and the rise of the hipster romance by discovering Alexi Murdoch and rediscovering The Smiths, and with good reason. Good guess.

So I won’t be offended if you smirk a little when I tell you what I’m really bopping along to these days: Hairspray. Not even the original; the re-make. I love it, you guys. I’ve had “Without Love” and “You Can’t Stop the Beat” and (randomly) “Ladies’ Choice” for a long time; somehow, I thought that I didn’t need the whole thing. And oh, was I wrong. You think you don’t need Christopher Walken singing “You’re Timeless to Me,” but you do. You think Elijah Kelley on “Run and Tell That” isn’t totally necessary in your life, but you’re wrong. And by you, I mean me.

Movie soundtracks are like that, though. They’re eclectic; they’re just as likely to be riddled with bad (or at least not-great) songs as they are to be good to the last drop—as with (500) Days of Summer, where you can get Regina Spektor’s “Us” if you also want Hall and Oates’s “You Make My Dreams Come True” to spring up every time you use the Shuffle function. Or, if they’re tied immediately to the story (as in a musical), they can be extremely specific—good background for a fictional life, maybe, but not so much for a real one. Soundtracks, ironically, sometimes don’t make the best background music.

On the other hand, when they’re good, they can be great, and for many of the same reasons that they’re not great. They’re eclectic; they introduce us to artists we would never have heard otherwise. And they’re specific: they’re a little reminder, over and over again, of the time we went to see that movie, and we felt just the way the songs make us feel, and we liked it enough that we wanted to hear that experience over and over again.

So, readers, what’s your favorite movie soundtrack, and why?

movie soundtracks, (500) Days of Summer, 500 Days of Summer, Away We Go, Hairspray, Christopher Walken, Elijah Kelley, Hall and Oates, You Make My Dreams Come True, Regina Spektor, Us

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

Have you seen the trailer for the Adam Sandler/Seth Rogen movie Funny People?

It looks pretty good, if maybe a bit generic: an up-and-coming stand-up comedian (Rogen) befriends and is fostered by his own favorite veteran comedian (Sandler) , only to find out that his hero of dying of cancer. The cast is fun (I’m particularly taken by Eric Bana as the much-mocked Australian husband), and all indications point to a touching and uplifting ending to complement the obligatory raunchiness. Pure Judd Apatow.

The most interesting part of this trailer, though, isn’t even in the movie: it’s the card that reads “the third film from Judd Apatow, director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up.”

The reason they’re pointing this out is that Apatow’s name has, for better or for worse, become synonymous with a certain brand of comedy—raunchy geek humor, usually about boys (overgrown or otherwise), usually involving Rogen or Jonah Hill or both. Funny People is Apatow’s third time directing, but his seventh writing and fifteenth producing credit in the last five years (not including TV projects and awards shows). Some of the movies he’s produced have been good, and some of them have been bad, but they all came out in a short period of time and they all had his name on them; at this point, he seems to take the blame even for copycat movies that he didn’t even make. In this trailer, somebody is trying to indicate that this is one of the good Apatow movies. We’re not talking Step Brothers, here.

There’s always been speculation about whether Apatow’s success will last, at least at this kind of breakneck pace. The guy’s got to sleep sometime, right? At this point, it’s probably fair to say that, were he never to make another movie, his influence is here to stay—enough imitators have cropped up to make the Apatow-style comedy a mark of the times. But the fact that somebody felt the need to point out that Funny People isn’t “just another Apatow movie” isn’t totally toothless; while he’s clearly working hard and enjoying his own success (i.e. being famous and making more movies), there’s also a sense that being “just another Apatow movie” might be a bad thing. Are we getting sick of him? Should he have been more selective with the movies he put his name on? Or is he wise to associate himself with as many people and projects in Hollywood as possible?

Readers, what do you think?

Judd Apatow, Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Funny People, Jonah Hill, Eric Bana, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Step Brothers

Now here’s a question for the ages: Would you rather sit through an incredibly long movie, or pay to see the same incredibly long movie in two sittings? Movie studios seem to be discovering the benefit of the latter—approximately the same financial output for everything except marketing, and double the ticket sales—and it seems we may be seeing more two-part films soon. In an interview with the MTV Movies Blog, director Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) says that the Hobbit film will be split into two halves and released separately. Note the specificity of his language there: He doesn’t say The Hobbit will be two movies. He says it’ll be one movie split in half.

It’s not the only one. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has also been proclaimed too long, too detailed, and too important to viewers (not to mention studio execs) to be confined to one sitting, and will be released in two segments six months apart.

The split-film option is a risky one. One one hand, viewers (and probably filmmakers) love the little things: the details and the small moments of a favorite story committed to film. A filmmaker with twice as much time on his or her hands is, in theory, able to go twice as deep. Multiple-installment films are good for the fans, and may attract new fans along the way, what with their tendency to suck people in.

On the other hand, split movies drive some people crazy. Case in point: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End, which fit together as one very long and very convoluted narrative, but which pissed a lot of people off by throwing off their sense of “ending.” Maybe a known quantity—a movie where everybody knows what’s coming and at what point in the story the break occurs—lends itself better to splitting up, just because the audience doesn’t feel so abandoned. Or maybe it’s just drawing a familiar story out too long for the sake of making twice the profit.

Readers, what do you think? Two-in-one, or just…two?

The Hobbit, Guillermo del Toro, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, two-part movies, prequels, sequels

I’m not gonna lie: 2008 is looking like a banner year for summer movies. Whether you’re into explosions or brunch with the girlfriends (I personally like both), something should draw you to the theater before Labor Day. Just one question: where have all the original screenplays gone?

I can recite chronological release dates for three months’ worth of movies I can’t wait to see—and most of them are adaptations: Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Sex and the City, Get Smart, The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Mamma Mia!, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (shut up, you). Even family films are getting in on the action, with Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (the inevitable foray of the American Girls empire into feature films) and City of Ember. Unless you’re Pixar or M. Night Shyamalan (whose new movie The Happening seems to be generating some excitement, despite the downward spiral of his last three projects), originality isn’t the name of the game.

This isn’t entirely true, of course. Reading between the lines of Coming Attractions shows that there are plenty of original (in the sense of not being adaptations, anyway) movies coming out, especially summer comedies in the vein of You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and The Love Guru. It’s just that the adaptations are what’s exciting this year. They’re what’s getting all the buzz, which leaves everything else—the unknown and unvetted—looking kind of crappy. And maybe they aren’t; maybe they’re just under-marketed. Maybe they’re great. But it’s hard to tell, which goes to show that summer audiences are a tough crowd. If I’m feeling lukewarm about the unfamiliar, maybe these movies need just a little extra boost, or just get out of the kitchen and wait until fall.

What do you think, readers? Are there any non-adaptation movies you’re looking forward to this summer?

Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Sex and the City, Get Smart, The Dark Knight, X-Files, X-Files: I Want to Believe, The Incredible Hulk, Mamma Mia!, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, City of Ember, Pixar, Wall-E, WallE, M. Night Shyamalan, The Happening, Don’t Mess with the Zohan, The Love Guru, Love Guru, summer movies

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

We at CHHQ realize that today is not the best day to be talking about film. After all, Monday may be the first day of the work week, but to millions of people, it’s just Day 3 of the end of Harry Potter. (Or, to be more correct–since we’re spoiler-free and haven’t even started the thing anyway–the end of the Harry Potter series. Excuse us.)

But we have a very important question to ask. After all, the Harry Potter books aren’t the entirety of the universe; there are now five whole films to choose from. So, lest we distract anybody from their Potter headspace:

What is your favorite Harry Potter movie, and why?

If you’ve been to the theater lately, and you’re the kind of person who doesn’t miss the previews–not that anybody I know would miss the previews–you probably know that Pixar has a new movie coming out this month. Now, computer animation isn’t the novelty it once was–there’s Toy Story, but there’s also Shrek and Over the Hedge and Surf’s Up. They’re certainly not alone in their field. But there’s something about Pixar: they were the first, and their movies still feel like they operate on a higher plane than whatever the other studios put out. It’s a beautiful thing, a new Pixar movie.

Maybe I’m biased. Where I live, Pixar is Kind of A Big Deal–their campus inhabits a good-sized chunk of physical and psychic space in the town where I work. The stories about the perks and shenanigans of working there–ranging from confirmed true to total head-scratchers–could fill a small encyclopedia, and everybody, at some time, has eaten lunch at Semifreddi’s cafe, only to steal a peek through the green semi-opaque fence at the Pixar grounds (No lie: once, there seemed to be some kind of enormous picnic going on, and a helicopter landed in the middle. Clearly, I work in the wrong office.).

But I really do enjoy Pixar’s movies. My favorite, though it seems to have gone out of style, is Toy Story 2–consistently wittier than the original, and without the creepy villain kid. I’m also fond of The Incredibles, which cracks me up and makes me cry AND has Sarah Vowell, which can only be a good thing.

So, readers, tell me. They’ve been around awhile now, long enough to have a long-ish filmography. What’s your favorite Pixar film, and why?

I have never gotten along well with my local paper’s regular film critic. Mick LaSalleSan Francisco Chronicle has a fine background in media criticism, I’m sure, but he and I have a little bit we do, and it goes like this: I read his review. I see the movie. I come out of the movie thinking, “What movie did he see?” It’s a thing. You should see it. We’ve really perfected our timing, I think.

Recently, good old Mick called the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy the worst film series ever. Now, I take issue with that statement for a number of reasons. First of all, I think his arguments–chiefly “there’s too much plot; I can’t follow all these stories!”–are incorrect, but that’s not important. What I really mean to say is: Ever? Ever, EVER? Surely we can come up with something worse in the history of the motion pictures than Orlando Bloom cavorting around with flowy sleeves (which is worth the price of admission in itself, I say, but, again: not important). Do I need to bring up the Baby Geniuses sequel incident? What about the Beethoven series, with David Duchovny as the evil…dognapper, I believe?

So, readers, here’s what I want to know: if we’re knocking the Pirates movies out of consideration for the Reign of Suck (and I believe we are; correct me if I’m wrong in saying that Police Academy has a stronger claim to the throne), what should be considered the worst film series of all time?

(Also, he admits he doesn’t like Star Wars, which I believe cements our non-friendship.)

As usual, the rules: The first person to comment with the character, actor, and movie that contains that quote gets a special eyelash batting and a tailor-made Cinema Hype cheer, which might even rhyme.

“[Character X enters a room where Character Y is up late watching TV]
‘What’s this?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘I think the guy in the hat did something terrible.’
‘Like what?’
‘You’re so analytical! Sometimes you just have to let art… flow… over you.’

Let’s hear it! Who and what?

I think we all know the feeling. (Or, well, maybe it’s just me.) You’re sitting in the movie theater, and suddenly it hits you. “I know what’s going on here,” you say to the casting director in your head (just me, again?). “You wanted Brad Pitt for that role, didn’t you? And he turned you down. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” And there you are, watching, I don’t know, Hayden Christensen instead, and you’re pretty sure you’re not the only one missing Pitt.

It happens all the time–there are only a certain number of truly talented and/or truly famous actors out there, and they can’t all be in all of the movies all of the time. Famous people are busy and expensive, and studio execs like having their schedules and their budgets, and so we get Lara Flynn Boyle instead of Nicole Kidman. It happens.

Sometimes the substitution works out. We’re told that the role of Frank in Little Miss Sunshine, for example, was originally written with Bill Murray in mind. But can we really see Murray plugging along in the back of that van in the first place? Little Miss Sunshine would suddenly have become “that Bill Murray movie” instead of the real ensemble piece it was destined to become. Steve Carell turned out to be a heartbreaking and far less hackneyed choice. Kudos to the scheduling issues!

Much of the time, though, it’s just not the same, even if they try to get us not to notice. We at CH like to call these the Poor Man’s Awards:

Aidan Quinn, poor man’s Gabriel Byrne
Joey Lauren Adams, poor man’s Renee Zellweger*
Ellen Pompeo, poor man’s Renee Zellweger*
Jon Voight, poor man’s Nick Nolte
Jon Voight, poor man’s Christopher Walken
Edward Burns, poor man’s Edward Norton
Monica Potter, poor man’s Julia Roberts
Dermot Mulroney, poor man’s Patrick Dempsey
Eva Mendes, poor man’s Salma Hayek
Kathy Baker, poor man’s Sally Field
Stephen Baldwin, poor man’s Alec Baldwin
Billy Baldwin, poor man’s Stephen Baldwin
Elizabeth Banks, poor man’s Rachel McAdams

Now, we’re not saying that the “poor man’s” side of the list is bad, necessarily. Some of these people are fine actors with fine careers in their own rights (others…really are that bad, and we’re sort of sorry for pointing it out). It’s just that they’re less expensive, less busy, and less recognizable than the “rich man’s” side of the list. And sometimes, well, it shows.

So, readers, let’s hear it: who are your favorite or un-favorite B-list substitutes?

*We see that being Renee Zellweger’s less-expensive stand-in must have its perks, but two of them? Come on, Adams. You’re the Amy they’re Chasing! YOU CAN DO BETTER. Pompeo, well, we’re not so sure.

awards, actors

As usual, the rules: The first person to comment with the character, actor, and movie that contains that quote gets a special eyelash batting and a tailor-made Cinema Hype cheer, which might even rhyme.

Ready? Go:

“‘Did you read the latest draft, by the way?’
‘Oh, yeah. Yeah.’
‘And?’
‘It’s great. I mean there are so many improvements. It’s much tighter, just seems… I don’t know, more congealed or something.’
‘Mm-hmm. What about the new ending? Did you like that?’
‘Oh, yeah. New ending vastly superior to the old ending.’
‘There is no new ending. Page 750 on is exactly the same.’
‘Well… maybe it just seemed new because everything leading up to it was so different?’
‘Yeah, that must be it!’

Thanks to Kendra for her impressive guessing on Quotation Sensation #22–your impulses were good!

In fact, the origin of this quote:

“Bless us oh Lord for these thine gifts which we are about to recieve. And uh… ye Lord, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of no food, I shall fear no hunger. We want you to give us our day of daily bread. And to the republic for which it stands… by the powers vested in me, I pronounce us ready to eat. Amen. ”

comes from Whoopi Goldberg as Sister Mary Clarence in the original Sister Act.

Now for something new. As usual, the rules: The first person to comment with the character, actor, and movie that contains that quote gets a special eyelash batting and a tailor-made Cinema Hype cheer, which might even rhyme.

Ready? Go:

“‘Oh man, you made friends with ‘em. See, friendship is the booze they feed you. They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong.’
‘Well, it was fun.’
‘Because they make you feel cool, and hey, I met you. You are not cool.’”

Readers, I need help. (And yes, I “need help”–ha ha, right?–but that’s not what I mean. Focus for a minute here. Eyes on me.)

My question is: will The Host scar me, disdainer of all things horror, for life? I’ve been invited to see it this week. I know practically nothing about it, except that it’s a “monster” movie (which apparently is different from a horror movie) and that it was the highest-grossing film in South Korean history. According to Wikipedia, it has “elements of comedy and drama films.” All this sounds great, but what I really want to know is whether every sudden noise will send me running for cover afterwards. Will I wake up in the night, screaming for my mother (in Korean)?

Readers? Tell me what you think.

The Host, Korean film, horror, monster movies

As usual, the rules: The first person to comment with the character, actor, and movie that contains that quote gets a special eyelash batting and a tailor-made Cinema Hype cheer, which might even rhyme.

Ready? Go:

“Bless us oh Lord for these thine gifts which we are about to recieve. And uh… ye Lord, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of no food, I shall fear no hunger. We want you to give us our day of daily bread. And to the republic for which it stands… by the powers vested in me, I pronounce us ready to eat. Amen. “