Spike Jonze's "Where The Wild Things Are" Looks Like A Beam Of Pure Magic And Love

Watch the trailer for Spike Jonze's "Where The Wild Things Are" and tell me you've ever seen a trailer that gives you more of a feeling of what eating warm and gooey cookies just out of the oven feels like. I mean, it made me feel like a kid on Christmas morning, which is I feeling I'm not actually familiar with, being Jewish. Watching this trailer made me immediately revert back to childhood feelings of wonder, awe, and excitement... movies don't do that much anymore, and trailers do so even more rarely. Also, the Wild Things are puppet costumes, with CG augmentation... but they're not just pure CG creations. That's what clearly gives them a more tactile feel in the trailer, what gives them more personality and character than another digital monster. I feel like after this and "The Dark Knight," perhaps filmmakers are finally turning back to the often more convincing yet nearly lost art of practical effects? That's a discussion for another blog post... this one is just about admiring the vision, creativity, inventiveness, and heart that is on display in the amazing trailer below. Enjoy.

Oscars 2009 Opinion Dump

So I'm just going to get this over with and move on with my life. I'm going to Pixar tomorrow, for goodness sake.

The Oscar show was bizarre this year, with Hugh Jackman pulling out his "song and dance man" shctick and turning an event that is already described as "the gay Super Bowl" 250% gayer, complete with a new sparkle-centric set and a "the musical is back!" medley led by Jackman and Beyonce, and featuring appearances from the "High School Musical" kids, all of it choreographed by Baz Luhrmann. At least Jackman's opening number featured references to the fact "The Dark Knight" richly deserved a best picture nod and that nobody bothered to see "The Reader," even though Kate Winslet won a best actress statue for her performance in the Nazi romance. 

"Slumdog Millionaire," a movie I do love for its jolts of life positivity and good feelingness that it injected into my person, swept most of the awards as it was vaulted into the annals of "overrated best picture winners," as the sweet yet slightly shallow fairy tale beat out better, richer, and more interesting films like "Milk" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." "Button" was a film I loved dearly, yet many people seem to have responded to coldly. It's not as good as director David Fincher's masterpiece, "Zodiac" (which was completely snubbed by the Academy last year,) but "Button" is a gorgeous, moody, and heartbreaking film about life, love, and mortality. Though Fincher and Van Sant deserved it more for their movies this year (and Christopher Nolan deserved it most,) it is pretty cool that we can all now say the phrase "Oscar Winning Director Danny Boyle." Now that the slightly demented mind behind "Trainspotting," "28 Days Later," and the totally on crack "A Life Less Ordinary" has won an Oscar, maybe it means the Academy is getting a bit younger and hipper. Or maybe the old voters who refuse to die just liked the story of young kids falling in love through the dramatic use of a game show and have not bothered to watch Boyle's previous work.

Sean Penn won a richly deserved Best Actor award for his work as Harvey Milk, beating comeback kid Mickey Rourke for his very good work in "The Wrestler." Mickey was great as Randy The Ram, giving a physical performance made the more poignant because of the troubled actor's own personal history; but Penn embodied Harvey in every way, showing his heroism, charisma, and flaws and shedding light onto an undertold story of an American civil rights hero. Rourke is terrific and nothing should be taken away for him for his performance... but Penn is nothing short of brilliant in "Milk," and the best actor category is one of the few that the Academy has gotten right two years in a row.  I was also glad to see Dustin Lance Black pick up "Milk's" other win, for best original screenplay.

Penelope Cruz's win for her electrifying work in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" was nice, especially since it was for her work in the first truly great Woody Allen movie in nearly a decade. Heath Ledger's posthumous win for his work as The Joker in "The Dark Knight" felt like the evening's most inevitable award, but it was also moving to see his family accept it for him... and it was richly deserved. Ledger was brilliant in the film, and the performance will be his enduring legacy. It was wonderful to see the endlessly imaginative Andrew Stanton take home another Oscar to Pixar's offices in Emeryville for "Wall*E," vindication for a kid's movie that was part art movie, part speculative science fiction, part satire, part love story, and part silent comedy.I agree with the criticism that the film doesn't completely work in its second half; but when you take risks that large, they are not always going to pay off. Thank god the Academy rewarded experimentation and ambition again, even if Pixar has won more than a few times (they continue to do the best work in their medium, so there is no reason for them to stop beating Dreamworks every year.) 

Staying on the subject of the robot that won America's heart, one of the night's true injustices was that Ben Burtt was shutout of the two sound awards. Burtt gave Wall*E (and the rest of the movie's menagerie of robots) his voice, and he used sound in brilliant, inventive, and inspiring ways. Stanton appeared at ComicCon nearly two years ago to preview the film, and he introduced Burtt, (who did the sound work for the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" movies,) as one of his most important collaborators, giving characters who do not speak a unique language of their own. Did Burtt deserve to win the sound awards? Not only that, but it could be argued that the man should have been nominated in another category as well... best performance by an actor in a leading role. 

Two Kings Of Meta Comedy Put Their Own Spin On A Giant Meta Moment

The audio recording of Christian Bale's freakout on the set of "Terminator: Who Still Cares" has become one of those spiraling out of control internet moments, leading to mass conversations about Batman's emotional stability and the meaning of privacy for celebrities in our over mediated age, remixes and animated parodies hitting the interwebs within hours of its leak, and more hits on TMZ than on the release date of the latest Paris Hilton sex tape. It's a cultural moment that has gained such steam that none other than meta-comics Stephen Colbert and Steve Martin have crafted their own parody of the entire fiasco on a recent "Colbert Report." Hopefully we can now all move on to some other national discussion... (did you dudes know we have a new president?) Here's the video:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Stephen Verbally Thrashes Steve Martin

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Paul McCartney Appearance

Funny Political Videos
More Funny Videos

Halloween Fail, Continued (UnFailed)

So I was driving home from work on Friday night and saw all the kids out enjoying Halloween and the adults out acting like kids and decided to quit moping and just go out and have fun. I ended up walking down to the big West Hollywood parade and went to two parties. I still had no real costume to speak of, so I had to improvise a bit with a very half assed and cheap Kenneth from "30 Rock" costume...

I was surprised how few Sarah Palins I ended up seeing. I saw less than five Palins, one of them a "sexy Palin" (who was, admittedly, pretty hot) and not even one drag Palin (mostly because the drag queens are usually far too clever to do a costume that a lot of other people already thought of and are ahead of the rest of us on the kitsch curve so must know that Palin's camp value is already played out, or something like that.) I did see a countless number of Jokers, unsurprisingly... but none were as good as Creed from "The Office" doing the "pencil trick" routine.

Must See Movies: "Synecdoche, New York" and "Let The Right One In"

I've been a bit down on 2008 as a year for quality film. Obviously, I loved "The Dark Knight" like it's my first child, and "Wall-E" holds a special place in my heart, despite its flaws. "Pineapple Express" will go down as one of the great cult stoner comedies, and might be the most enjoyable flick to come out of the Apatow laugh factory so far, while "In Bruges" was a small first feature with killer performances (that is not by any means a crappy "Pulp Fiction" ripoff that should have come out in the mid nineties, as the trailers seem to imply.) But the great movies have been few and far between in 2008 (a year I have personal issues with for other reasons, but we won't get into that here) and I've lately bemoaned the lack of good "indie" flicks and began to lose hope that I'd genuinely love enough movies this year to fill out an earnest top ten list before 2009 rolls around.
But this weekend turned out to be a pleasant surprise for adventurous film lovers everywhere, with two of the most unique films of the year from artists with very strong voices and points of view came out this weekend, restoring my ever renewable excitement for the medium all over again.

"Let The Right One In"

A shivery yet sweet adolescent vampire romance, "Let the Right One In" tells the unique tale of a lonely, picked upon Swedish boy who falls in love with the new girl in town... who just happens to drink blood and have an aversion to the daylight. This movie is haunting, mysterious, earnest and deeply felt while not ever sacrificing the chills and gore that make for a great fright flick. The whole thing is just gorgeously crafted by Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson, who displays consummate control of his craft in telling this strange and strangely moving little fairy tale. It's also really darkly funny in a lot of ways. A must see for anyone who loves horror flicks. Check it out before its ruined by the planned American remake (which is set to be directed by Matt Reeves, who helmed "Cloverfield," which I liked quite a bit, but still.)

"Synecdoche, New York."

A lovely, confounding, sad, funny, epic, dense, self indulgent, messy, ambitious, heartbreaking, honest, and deeply personal directorial debut from Charlie Kaufman, the singular artist behind the screenplays for (in order of increasing genius,) "Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation," and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." "Synecdoche" tells the story of a self loathing playwright (is there any other kind?) played by (probably the best actor working today) Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is dumped by his aritst wife (Catherine Keener, at her sharpest and most bitterly sarcastic,) and wins a "genius grant" that starts him on an obsessive quest to create a massive theater piece that obsessively recreates his life to the very smallest details. Eventually, the play has grown to include plays within plays within plays, and cities within cities within cities, and lives within lives within lives, and so on and on and on in a self reflexive maze that becomes dizzying to unravel. Kaufman bares his soul and puts all his pet obsessions and themes- artistic and personal identity, fear of death, narrative puzzles, the meaning of life, romantic failure, and many more-- on the line with this hugely ambitious film. One of the most amazing things about the "Synecdoche" is that it's the work of a fist time director... with a relatively small $20 million budget, Kaufman impresses with his confident work with the camera and (more importantly) with the great cast of actors he has assembled (this movie has a huge group of great parts for some of the best film actresses working today, including Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson, Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and the always wonderful and under appreciated Dianne Wiest, who is brilliant and heartbreaking here.) The movie's hero sometimes gets lost in his own wanderings, but the film really doesn't... it may sometimes feel like it's a bit offtrack, but I'm pretty sure Kaufman knew exactly where he was going with every little scene and choice, no matter how strange or disconnected it may seem on first viewing. This is a challenging yet engrossing film that's been knocking around in my head since I first saw it, and it's ultimately about something really simple and real. I'll let the more eloquent film critic Manohla Dargis of The New York Times express it better than I could have with this quote:
Despite its slippery way with time and space and narrative and Mr. Kaufman’s controlled grasp of the medium, “Synecdoche, New York” is as much a cry from the heart as it is an assertion of creative consciousness. It’s extravagantly conceptual but also tethered to the here and now, which is why, for all its flights of fancy, worlds within worlds and agonies upon agonies, it comes down hard for living in the world with real, breathing, embracing bodies pressed against other bodies. To be here now, alive in the world as it is rather than as we imagine it to be, seems a terribly simple idea, yet it’s also the only idea worth the fuss, the anxiety of influence and all the messy rest, a lesson hard won for Caden. Life is a dream, but only for sleepers.
"Synecdoche, New York" may be a little too self indulgent at times, it may go down a few plot dead ends that seem unsatisfying at first, it may not make perfect sense no matter how much you think about all the ideas in Kaufman's breathtaking directorial debut... but like the work of Fellinni, Allen, Lynch, and other major film artists that Kaufman is clearly influenced by with "Synecdoche, New York," it's true in a way that easier to digest movies Hollywood movies aren't. See it, then see it with me when I go to see it again.
It's also probably a pretty cool movie to watch while stoned.

Holy Obama, Batman!

This is too perfect. I thought "The Dark Knight" was the best Batman stuff ever put on film, then I saw this prescient debate scene. I always thought Penguin was more like Cheney than McCain, but this makes sense.

I'm voting Batman 08.

The Night Is Darkest Before Dawn: "The Dark Knight's" Full On Cultural Moment

"The Dark Knight" has already grossed over $222 million in six days. It has smashed every record in the books. Biggest opening weekend ever. Fastest movie to $200 million. Biggest first five days in release ever. Biggest six days in release ever. It nearly broke the record for biggest single Wednesday gross of all time, missing "Men In Black II's" mark of $18,599,621 by a mere few hundred thousand dollars. And "MIBII" opened on a Wednesday, while "Dark Knight" has been out for almost a week.

The weekday grosses are out of control... $24 million on a Monday, another $20 million on Tuesday, and just over $18 million on a Wednesday. Any of these marks are great OPENING DAY numbers.

IMAX screenings in both New York and LA are sold out solid through the week and weekend, and might not be available for about two weeks. People are still lining up around the block for their fix of the movie, and it's currently rated as the number one movie of all time as rated by IMDB users.

Batman, ladies and gentlemen, is officially "bigger than Jesus."

"The Dark Knight" is experiencing a full on cultural moment that no film has enjoyed since at least "The Passion." That movie made a ton of money and got everyone talking and debating, but as many people were talking about the film to criticize its supposedly stereotypical depiction of Jews, over reliance on violence, and writer/ director/ former superstar Mel Gibson's bizarre behavior as people who actually liked and were moved by the film. "Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace" (why didn't we realize how bad it was going to be based on the fucking title nine years ago,) was the only thing the media could talk about before its release, and if 9/11 had happened the same weekend that "Star Wars" had come out, it still probably would have been given less coverage due to Jedi hype. But then the movie sucked, and everyone still saw it and talked about it, but "Dark Knight" will probably surpass that movie's gross in a week or two. No, you have to look back to "Titanic" and "Jurassic Park" for movies that really got audience's blood pumping and talking. Everywhere I go, people are buzzing about Batman.

I haven't seen the country so behind a movie in a long while. And a truly dark and disturbing one at that. I felt like this kind of thing was dead, now that there are so many screens showing the same movie ("Dark Knight" played on a record number of screens, yet tickets were still scarce everyhwhere this past weekend,) and so many people are buying their tickets online (myself included.) So what's the deal behind this amazing cultural moment?

THE HEATH FACTOR
Clearly, Heath Ledger's tragic death before the movie's release created more interest in the film, and tons of free media coverage, than the studio ever expected. And the fact that people have been talking about his work as The Joker and buzzing about a possible (and richly deserved) posthumous Oscar nomination drove curiosity through the roof. The fact that his last film was a big mainstream movie as well helped a lot... if "Brokeback Mountain" had been Ledger's final film, it's not as if middle America would have lined up to see him play a gay cowboy. But Heath's remarkable performance isn't enough to explain the film's unrelenting success. There's more to "Dark Knight's" appeal than morbid curiosity.

EVERYONE LOVES BATMAN
My geeky friends and I are not the only people who love Batman. Everyone loves The Caped Crusader. He's arguably the most popular super hero in existence... Spidey has always been huge, and who doesn't know Superman, but Batsy might, at this point, be the best known and loved hero of them all. But why didn't "Begins" make more when it came out, you ask?

BATMAN BEGINS REDEEMED THE CHARACTER
Love of Batman fails to explain why "Dark Knight" did three times the business that "Batman Begins" did three summers ago during its opening weekend. The problem was, pre "Begins," Batman movies had fallen on hard times. "Batman and Robin," Joel Schumacher's abortion of the franchise, is considered by many to be one of the worst movies of all time (in a hilariously bad way... Ahnuld's Mr. Freeze is unbelievable to behold, making him possibly the second most memorable big screen Bat-baddie... just for all the wrong reasons.) So even though "Batman Begins" made less than "Dark Knight" has already grossed in just six days, it was a well liked movie, and people who didn't see it in theaters saw it on DVD, getting them pumped and primed for the next one. I think that non film people were a bit confused and put off by the series relaunch, and still had bad taste in their mouths from "B and R." Only the true fan boys understood that Nolan was attempting to redeem the character and franchise.

PLAYING THE JOKER CARD
Even subtracting the Ledger factor, Joker vs Batman might be the most well known villain/ hero standoff in the history of the genre. Bringing The Joker in to the second film was a total master stroke, especially when Nolan teased the audience with the reveal that he would appear in "Dark Knight..." in the very last scene of "Begins." Because there is nothing more iconic than a clown facing off against a Bat. Or something.



CHRISTIAN BALE
Lost in all the praise that Heath is receiving is Christian Bale's improved performance as Batman/ Bruce Wayne after his already excellent turn in "Begins." People loved his Batman, and everyone was pumped to see him in the role again.

THE VIRAL MARKETING
Another stroke of genius from the studio... for anyone who cared to go down the rabbit hole, WB put out an excellent viral campaign that implied The Joker was effing with everyone on the Internet, sending fanboys into a frenzy that infected other, non geeks who just like Batman. That's why they call it "viral," I guess.

IT'S A GREAT FUCKING MOVIE, DAWG
"DK" is unequivocally fucking great. The movie is epic, dark, legitimately terrifying, intelligent, and fucking kick ass. Every time I've seen it (two and a half and counting,) the movie plays the audience like a fiddle, the tension rising at the scary sections, the nervous laughter filled the theater with all of the Joker's scary/ funny antics, and people cheered at the end (and many teared up a bit, including, ahem, myself.) People are talking about the movie after they see it. They're discussing its themes, ideas, moments that disturbed them, and yeah, the awesome scene where Batman on a motorcycle faces down the Joker in a truck. It's the most ambitious summer blockbuster ever made, and it goes way beyond the type of fun yet disposable entertainment we usually get when the weather gets hot. This is a honest to God great movie, with Batman at the center of it.

This is a legitimately exciting time to be a fan of Batman and movies in general. I'm going to stop writing now, because I want to get out of here and jump in line to see it again, talk about it more, and just be part of this undeniable cultural phenomenon.

James Cameron is probably feeling a little nervous right now about the Caped Crusader catching a certain ship in the next few months.

The Dark Effing Knight

Remember me? Honestly, I don't either. I'm about to move into my own pad, so hopefully then I will start to blog again, with life updates galore and all the pop cultural insight the world (or two people who read it and have long since given up) has come to expect from this here blog.

But I can't move on in my life without giving "The Dark Knight" its due.

The latest Batman movie had the biggest opening of all time this past weekend, and it richly deserves every cent it makes. This is a movie created by filmmakers who really understand the Batman mythos, and who take it as seriously as it deserves to be taken.

It's also an amazing crime epic, a thoughtful film on terrorism and life in post 9/11 America, a psychological and philosophical study on human nature, a dark and disturbing look at madness, and kick ass Batman movie where the Caped Crusader rides a bad ass motorcycle and glides from skyscraper to skyscraper.

Heath Ledger's Joker will go down as one of the great screen villains of all time. If he doesn't take home a posthumous Oscar for his unhinged and unnerving performance, I just might give up. His Joker is, as many reviews have pointed out "a force of nature" that descends upon Batman's Gotham and makes it go crazy as he runs his own experiments in human psychology and forces all the characters into impossible ethical choices.

But Aaron Eckhart's tragic performance as doomed DA Harvey Dent is equally strong, though maybe not as in your (forgive the expression) face. His story is actually the film's true through line, as Joker doesn't have a backstory or real arc (which is totally appropriate for the character and works brilliantly.)

Gary Oldman, as cop ally Jim Gordon, is astoundingly good as well, giving a speech that will break your heart and give you chills at an important moment. And what else can be said about Michael Caine, who takes the role of Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred, to places nobody thought possible.

And then there's Bale, who plays Batman/ Bruce Wayne with more intensity than any actor before him. This is the movie all fans of Batman have been waiting for for a very, very long time.

"The Dark Knight" is the best movie of the year so far by leaps and bounds, and it's the best super hero movie ever made by a mile. It's a dark, heartbreaking, and brooding epic, and it makes other so called "dark" super hero movies look laughable. People die in this movie, and character's lives are ruined. This is a movie where none of the main characters come out unscathed by the film's events, and there is no happy or triumphant ending like the other films in this genre always have. But there is Batman at the end, so there is hope.

The final moments of the film are so powerful that I teared up and had chills running up and down my spine both times I've seen it. This is great cinema, without the caveat that it's "a great comic book movie" or a "great super hero movie" or even "a great action movie." No, this is a great movie, period. And as such, I may have new favorite movie of all time.

As The Joker says in his mindblowing first scene, "How about a magic trick?" This whole movie is a magic trick of the highest order, and director Christopher Nolan deserves to be elevated to the elite status of God among geeks after his work on this, I'll just go ahead and say it, masterpiece.

Let The Summer Movie Shenanigans Begin!

All I need to say about summer movies, I've said before in a previous post from two years ago.

Tis the season for big dumb summer blockbusters, and 2008 promises to be a good one when it comes to that type of movie. "Iron Man" hits screens everywhere today, launching Hollywood's assault on our senses and wallets, in a season that will include a new Indiana Jones movie, a new vision of the Joker in a sequel to an excellent Batman flick, a Kung Fu fighting Panda, stoners on the run from killers in what is sure to be another Apatow hit, and a little Pixar robot that could just be the biggest hit of them all. And maybe some of these big dumb summer blockbusters might not be so dumb after all... the reviews for "Iron Man" are pretty incredible, and great buzz is building for a lot of the biggest blockbusters of the season, some of which are made by real filmmakers and not just Michael Bay hacks... king of Hollywood Steven Spielberg, Chris Nolan, indie darling David Gordon Green, and "Finding Nemo's" Andrew Stanton all have big movies coming out this summer.

Maybe this will be the summer that the little kid in all of us have been dreaming about. Or maybe we'll just get to see a few buildings blow up real good.

Either way, pass me the popcorn.