The Anti-Jan Wahl

Shipped on 08/15/06.

As cheerleading captain at her elite school, Britney (Hayden Panettiere) makes plans for her squad to earn a coveted spot in singing sensation Rihanna's upcoming video. But when her family moves across town to urban Crenshaw Heights, Britney's plans are quashed. Now, she must face off against her new school's squad captain, the catty Camille (Solange Knowles), if she's going to win a spot on the team -- and a chance to cheer in Rihanna's video.

Shipped on 07/25/06.

Flamboyant yet mysterious, writer Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who penned the elegant Breakfast at Tiffany's, was the toast of New York society. But he was also able to channel the grit and grime of what may be one of the most notorious murder cases in Kansas history with his novel In Cold Blood. In researching the crime, Capote found himself in a dance with the devil: the ringleader behind the killings (Clifton Collins Jr.). Special features include two commentary tracks, a documentary and behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Shipped on 08/01/06.

Rugby-playing quadriplegics compete for the Paralympic gold medal in this documentary about an amazing sport and the strong-willed athletes who play full-contact rugby using specially designed wheelchairs. The film follows the U.S. Quad Rugby Team as they compete in the 2002 World Championships and the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens. Winner of the 2005 Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

I finally watched The Godfather. After all the endless references by the media, by friends, by air - I finally watched the masterpiece that is The Godfather.

Honestly, it is sometimes difficult to appreciate older films because their craftsmanship are different from more recent films and I’m not just talking about mainstream blockbusters. In a sense, older filmmaking has a much better quality in its crafting than contemporary ones (see: Empire Strikes Back versus Attack of the Clones). So, within this framework, I was watching the Godfather in two senses: one as a general audience member and the other as film class student (because I’m neither a filmmaker or a film student, but I have taken ONE film class).

I’ve tried in the past to separate myself from those roles, but when an opus is presented to me like The Godfather, I can’t resist the urge to [pretend to] seek out the genius. And like in the past, this may have skewed my first viewing.

I’m not saying that I didn’t get caught up in the story, but with 3 hours of film, I was trying to make sense of reasoning behind scenes versus just losing myself. Was there a pacing issue - not necessarily with the scenes but with the plot?

Were the metaphors transparently veiled on purpose?

Nonetheless, the first viewing was a lot of fun and gripping for the most part. Brando truly was a genius in his complex portrayal of a complex man.

The film also did not glorify the mafia lifestyle. It did celebrate some great parts of Italian family culture. It also firmly defined integrity.

For whatever reason, I don’t necessarily watch movies just because Nicolas Cage is in them, but I do enjoy a lot of his movies. Most of the time, his performances are part of the reason why. In fact, he may be leading in the actor I’ve happened to rent the most during the netflix tenure (Matchstick Men, Adaptation, National Treasure, and Lord of War). Strangely, as I look at imdb.com right now, those are the 4 of the last 5 movies that have been released with him in them.

Lord of War is about gun-running/trafficking. I found it interesting politically, but emptier in other facets. Should it be watched? Sure, it can be entertaining and any sight of Bridget Moynahan is worth the price of admission. Yet, it reminded me of Blow in a not so positive way because Blow was much more stylish than Lord of War.

Nicolas Cage seems to be at his best when playing characters with everyday demeanors and over-the-top quirks. Those character pieces work for him - but his role in Lord of War, though attempted by the writers to be developed in a grayer sense, was just not as interesting as say, Memphis Raines (Gone in 60 Seconds) or Ray Waller (Matchstick Men).

I remember the trailer for Lord of War representing much more of a lighter mood, which for the most part was represented in the movie, but the content was serious - the message was serious. It was somewhat strange to see the treatment of the issues painted prettier, it seems, with a vibrantly loose soundtrack.

It’s not my favorite Nicolas Cage movie, but it’s worth a peak especially for conversation sake.

I’m a bit behind on my movie watching. I haven’t been in a theatre since watching Rent, and I’ve held on to Netflixes for months at a time to the detriment of my lagging queue. I finally found some time to watch a movie this week and had Red Eye in my mailbox. I admit that I knew exactly what this movie will be about just from the previews. It was clear from the previews that this man wanted her to do something while she was on the plane or else her dad gets it. It didn’t really matter what that something was going to be or how her dad was going to get it because it’s a hollywood movie and you knew that what something is and whatever would happen to her dad was never really going to happen. Ya gets? Hollywood Formula #399, the scrappy underdog fights her way to overcome the assailant.

So why rent it at all. Two words:

Rachel McAdams

She makes “The Notebook” worth watching past the overromanticized notions of Nicholas Sparks. (The guy is the AIDS-generation’s answer for Danielle Steele.)

She makes “Wedding Crashers” the feel-good movie of the year.

And she was loveably hateable in “Mean Girls”

So go rent Red Eye now, not for the movie but for Rachel!

I wouldn’t say I’m a pacifist, because I really don’t know what that is. And in the end, if I ever had a chance to kick the shit out of a.. rapist or a child molester, I’m not sure how much it wouldn’t take for me to partake. Well, I take that back. What I mean is that I don’t necessarily believe that violence is ever the answer, but I could see certain instances when it’s the only real option.

That said, I usually am not so big on War movies or any rah rah Patriot Act type of propoganda. I do think that there have been many great war-related movies that were great commentaries on society as well as being fine works of visual and aural art (like Full Metal Jacket). But, when The Great Raid was released to relatively little publicity I was instantly intrigued.

I think initially it was out of skepticism. Because it was about the greatest rescue mission in American military history and it involved American P.O.W.’s and it being an American film a huge red flag popped up in my socio-historical senses when I realized that the mission was taking place not only in the Philippines but was somehow related to the Bataan Death March.

Actually, I wasn’t sure if it was about the Bataan Death March because the commercials said nothing about it. I looked online and found little information. In fact, where the hell was the Philippines?

Anyway, the POWs in the movie are survivors of the Bataan Death March where many American and Filipino soldiers were killed and died from the roughness. The beginning of the movie gave a very quick overview of the Pacific front of the war mainly focusing on the Bataan Death March. This was done with archived military footage that was touching and heartbreaking at the same time.

Overall, I really enjoyed the movie though I felt the best parts came towards the midpoint and the second half of the movie. The film is a drama - not at all an action/adventure. This war movie isn’t about nations or any overarching politically focused message, but it is significantly about humanity and courage. It’s fitting, as they stated at the end, that most people felt that the raid never had any real impact on the outcome of the war, but for the people who took part it was passionately the greatest thing they could accomplish.

As with the subject matter, the Japanese SOLDIERS had no gray matter to them. They were pure evil. They gave the Filipino soldiers a lot of dignity as they showed that they were essential in the success of the mission.

I couldn’t help but cringe with some of the Filipino parts though because of either their lack of speaking roles and/or their lack of legitimate Filipino accents. The ones that did sound legit were proven to be legitmiate Filipino homeland actors (thanks IMDB.com). Seeing Filipinos in “heroic” roles in an American movie was somewhat emotional.

The actual raid was a visual treat. Earlier in the movie, they showed the actual plan of action that they would take and to see it all completed was fun to watch from a general tactical standpoint even though it wasn’t at all the most complex, but it obviously wasn’t meant to be that by the filmmakers. Again, the film was about the people involved - not so much the war or the soldiers in just a military sense.

I have to check the books to see what they mean as “Filipino Underground” and “Filipino Guerillas” as they referred to a collective of people who helped smuggle medicine into the camp and the Filipino soldiers, respectively. Were the Filipino Guerillas part of the US Army in the Pacific* or were both part of the Hukbalahap**? They talked about Bamboo telegrams. Who used those? This is even more interesting and poignant because if they were part of the US Armed Forces of the Pacific then those are the men who the U.S. government promised full veterans rights and subsequently revoked them a few years later. Even more, if they were part of the US Armed Forces, it is a bit insulting that they’re referred to only as Filipino soldiers when they were fighting under the US flag.

[Postscript research]
* USAFFE: United States Armed Forces Far East
- According to wikipedia.com, as resourced from various books, Pajota was part of the USAFFE so they were the soldiers who were promised benefits. Those in the film may have been given access to them (like US Citizenship), they may have not. These “guerillas” were “insurgents”.

** The Hukbalahap was the independent army led by the Communist Party of the Philippines. They fought against both Japanese and American forces because they wanted to liberate the country of imperialists. The leaders were Marxists: they wanted governmental and socio-economic reform because since the Spanish and American imperialism the wealth in the Philippines was tragically unequal. Most of the Huks were rural peasants. According to the historical post on wikipedia, the Huks almost stopped the raid, but allowed them to pass after some diplomacy between Pajota and some threats by Mucci.

Ibalik, one of our resident reviewers (who has yet to review anything here) will be at Sundace Film Festival this weekend. He’ll hopefully post reviews and pictures as they come. Exciting times.

Okay, I know they’re two different movies but I just have to group them together for a few reasons:
1. I knew coming in that they weren’t good movies.
2. I wanted to watch them for the girls — Penelope Cruz and Jessica Biel.
3. They’re action pornos.

First, you might be asking, “what’s an action porno?” An action porno is just like an regular porno — bom chi ka bom bom — no plot, lots of stimulating visuals and sounds, and much more gratutious action. This time though, the action isn’t the sex but rather the action is on the planes and flying in Stealth and the boats in the desert in Sahara. You get the gist, let’s move on.

Stealth has more gratuitous scenes — a hard core flick if you will. You get the close ups of the plane, the “money shot” of other planes getting blown up, planes moaning all around you in stereo surround. Plot-wise though — nothing. What you saw in the previews is what you get, cue hollywood ending and you just saved yourself a rental and two hours. Okay, you’ll miss nice ass shots of Jessica Biel in a beach scene, but I’m sure you can easily download that over the Internet.

Sahara would be the soft-core version. Plot is a little thicker and the gratuitous scenes are toned down, but you and I both saw the windsurfing through the desert in the previews. Yeah, really. Sure you get some overtones of genocide, and the story would have been better had it turned out that way. But they water it down (such a plot would take away from the action after all) and made the cause of the death of an ethnic group an unknown accident rather than a evil plan. In this movie, the previews didn’t tell the whole story but the rest of story didn’t really matter too much. In fact, with Stealth, they wanted to make an action porno and they did just that with no apologies. In Sahara, they tried to give some meat around the characters but I wish they just didn’t bother. It would have made for better porn. Keeping with the soft-core approach, no cool shots of Penelope Cruz in bikinis, only tanktops and tight clothes. Reminder to self: Rent Jamon, Jamon again.

There’s a beauty to zombie movies. I’m serious. There’s a beauty to them because though they are about the gore and gloom of the rising dead, they are the perfect contrast to the humans who surround them who are supposedly living. 28 Days Later showed this. Shaun of the Dead was basically about this.

Land of the Dead fell a bit short of this, and primarily it was because of the lack of any real power (or development) of the main characters in the movie. It’s a shame that of all the movies by George A. Romero, this was the one I saw first - or I mean at all.

Movies rarely scare me or leave any real lasting impression of doom or loss (except maybe documentaries exposing the injustices of our government now and throughout history), but zombie movies have a real sense of doom. This is because of the transition period - the few moments you have between the zombie infection and the complete zombie transformation. During those moments, the non-infected have to watch their loved ones die or prepare for their death and eventually have to kill in order to save them from succumbing completely to the “undead” disease. It’s really the most genuinely human moment in most horror movies. None of that emotion was in Land of the Dead.

Like most zombie movies, there is a comparison between the living and the undead and social commentary is entrenched in the theme. Yet, there’s just gore and bore in this movie like the 2000 Democratic Convention - not that the gore is all bad, but disappointingly empty.

If you want a very interesting zombie-fest, read The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman distributed by Image Comics. The trade paperbacks are up to vol. 3 or 4 and you can get those discounted at amazon.com and at dcbservice.com.

Also, if you didn’t watch the special features on 28 Days Later, rent it again and watch the “original” ending that is only shown through storyboards and a read-along. The filmmakers who already made a cross-genre zombie film would’ve added a whole other genre that might’ve ruined the essence of the movie. Check it out.