Consider Cinecultist gobsmacked and bowed to the juggernaut that is the summer blockbuster. Just when we think we've got the formula sorted ("Movie based on Disneyland ride = Extreme Stinker), Johnny Depp comes along to louse it all up. Pirate cliches be damned, Pirates of the Caribbean is a really fun summer picture filled with spot-on physical humor, charming repeating gags and likeable, over-the-top characters.
As J pointed out after the 133 minutes unspooled, this movie wants to be a lot of things for a lot of viewers. Fantasy. Action Adventure. CGI Zombie Pirates. Love Story. And while in his educated opinion he thought the film couldn't quite keep up with all of these elements, CC thought Pirates held it all together well. The film suffers from that very now delusion that it must winkwink about its genre for the story to seem fresh and while this can make the movie seem busy, it's also very funny. Can a genre movie be earnest these days? Jerry Bruckheimer tells us, hell no.
A word also about Keira Knightley versus Orlando Bloom. Keira has star quality, as evidenced by her ability to glow, tell jokes and sell that swashbuckling. She was just adorable in Bend It Like Beckham, and since then, she seems to be grown up, or maybe this is just an actress inhabiting a new role with new body language. Either way, we see good things for her in future roles. Orlando, despite his weirdo curly hair and wispy beard is a heavenly eyeful. But we haven't seen any of the verve, any of the intelligence that Depp or Knightly exude so easily. Will he be able to shed his handsomeness to do some acting that's genuine? We're not entirely sold. Yet. Until then, CC's happy to drool.
All the boffo B.O. (that's box office grosses for those not subscribing to Variety's odd little e-mail newsletter) that Pirates is sure to get this weekend is heartily deserved. Enjoy it with a side of irony and a very large Diet Coke.
Now, PCC wants to make it clear that once upon a time Bruce Willis, aka former Mr. Demi Moore, held the much coveted spot atop PCC's list of actors she despised. He beat out Nic Cage (with the exception of Raising Arizona), Russel '30 Odd Foot of Grunt' Crowe, Tom Selleck, Tom Arnold, Eddie Murphy, Val Kilmer, Tom Green and the newest member, Irish bad-boy wannabe Colin Farrell. Willis' reign as most-despised-actor didn't stem from a particular role, or any insulting public statement or interview PCC read. No, there was just something about Brucie that made PCC recoil.
But times have changed and PCC has decided to reevaluate Mr. Willis. What prompted this reappraisal, you might ask. Perhaps it was the unseasonably warm weather in usually mild Portland that caused PCC to rent something mindless, violent and full of dirty white tank tops. And it was with Die Hard (though not Die Hard 2, which was awful) that PCC carefully dusted off her reigning king of hated actors and moved him to a new, more positive, mental shelf. Though Brucie has not yet joined the ranks of Adrien B., Giovanni R., Daniel D.L. et al, he's slowly making his way up the ladder. For those of you not familiar with the former Mr. Moore, PCC has compiled a list of Willis' 5 best films, in chronological order.
Die Hard (1988). From the producer of the fantastic Lethal Weapon series (PCC is completey serious, she adores Weapons 1-4), Die Hard is your basic shoot-'em-up action flick that's actually suspenseful. Bruce plays NYPD cop John McClane who must save a building full of hostages from the maniacal 'European' terrorist Alan Rickman. Lots of blood, guts and Brucie running around in a dingy white tank top with C4 explosives, as well as the birthplace of the useful phrase 'yippee-ki-yay motherfucker!'
Pulp Fiction (1994) For those of you who've had your head in a hole for the past decade and missed Quentin Tarantino's follow-up to 1992's Reservoir Dogs, Bruce plays struggling pugillist Butch Coolidge who kills a man in a fixed fight and, true to his man o'action form, spends the rest of the movie trying to avoid various violent people and briefly reviving the cinematic career of the samurai sword in American film (until its triumphant return this winter with Tom C. in The Last Samurai).
Twelve Monkeys (1995). Sans hair and paired with wacko Brad Pitt, Willis is excellent in Terry 'Monty Python' Gilliam's futuristic plague thriller. The constant shifting between the 'past' and the 'present' can get a bit confusing, but if you watch carefully, everything makes a modicum of sense at the end.
The Sixth Sense (1999) Despite not being a huge fan of horror films- or Mr. Willis, for that matter- the first time she saw M. Night Shyamalan's film, PCC was actually quite impressed. If you haven't seen it (please refer to Pulp Fiction's head-in-a-hole bit), PCC won't ruin the ending for you, and will only say that Bruce gives a wonderful performance as child psychologist Malcom Crowe who finally takes Haley 'I see dead people' Osment seriously.
And finally, 2001's Bandits. Go ahead and laugh, but PCC loves this film. The cast is perfect: Bruce as a slick ladies' man/bank robber Joe Blake, Billy Bob Thorton (though is a last name really necessary here? how many other Billy Bobs do you know?) as his uber-phobic partner Terry Collins and Cate Blanchett as the woman they both love. There's enough action to satisfy Brucie's Die Hard contingent, but also lots of quirky humor, thanks in large part to the hilarious interactions between Bruce and Billy Bob. A satisfying ending, as well as being filmed in Portland, make Barry Levinson's film quite an enjoyable two hours.
A Question for the Ages: How come Johnny Depp can be so very great as a drunken, swashbuckling Keith Richards-esque pirate but seem so very dumb on Page Six?
"Out on the street, you never know what you're getting," Depp (right) tells next month's GQ, explaining his plans to supply his two children by singer Vanessa Paradis with quality pot untainted by PCP. "Suddenly two days later you're beating yourself in the head with a tennis racquet, wearing a towel, quoting Poe. You don't want that for your kid."
More of a review of the astonishingly excellent Pirates of the Caribbean to come.
Seeing as we covered the passing of Kate Hepburn and Gregory Peck, it seems sort of remiss for Cinecultist not mention the sad demise of two other moving picture institutions, Buddy Hackett and Buddy Ebsen. Fortunately, the better weekly paper in Seattle, the Stranger covered the ground for us in their usual irreverant but very smart way.
[via The Stranger]
It was so hot and so humid Monday night that CCC, taking advantage of a roomie at work, decided to strip to his skivvies and cool down with a cold beer and an icy blonde. C3 had bought Bunuel's Belle de Jour last summer, but didn't have a enough free time to watch it (yes, yes, life is a fast moving stream of soon forgotten moments). It must be said, firstly, that CCC did not find Belle de Jour, apparently one of cinema's erotic classics, remotely erotic. Secondly, CCC is not into sado-masochism (despite a desire to read Venus in Furs), so that may be the explanation for the non-sexual feelings towards the movie.
Deneuve, however, was quite brilliant. She manages to make a slight smile into a shriek of delight. Said smile usually occurs after someone has been a little rough with our oui French maiden, but the heart's desire cannot be governed by society. Deneuve's performance, along with a recent viewing of Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now, made CCC wax nostalgic on the good ol' days of yore when real celebrities would shed their clothes and take on interesting roles that maybe, just maybe, their target demographic of 18 to 49 year-olds might find a tad bit off-putting. The only other current example that I could think of where one or more major stars engaged in a sex scene that was most clearly about more than sex was the one between Halle Berry and the BBT in Monster's Ball. A quick glance here just seems to prove C3's point (Mulholland Drive does not count, because, admit it, you had no clue who the hell Naomi Watts or Laura "Torpedo Boobs" Harring were). Of course, this breaks out a whole new woeiscinema discussion about everything that's different now. Too bad CCC is too lazy and stupid to write about it. You, however, can feel free to write in the comments on sex scenes between one or more established celebrities that you feel compares, or a movie where an established celebrity took a role like Ms. Deneuve's in Belle de Jour.
Pop chanteuse, teeny bop actress and avowed brunette Mandy Moore is freaking everywhere these days. No matter where we turn we see her little pink mug peering out at us, probably because her new movie, How To Deal comes out on July 18. She's on the cover of Lucky this month (unusual for the magazine which usually only uses models as cover subjects not celebrities), offering makeover advice on TBS's Movie and a Makeover program, and talking about her movie on the television commericials.
The official website has a few giggle worthy features you might want to check out on a slow afternoon. Cinecultist took the personality test and found out that she's "the Real Dealer" which means "we've got great balance... but should remember to go extreme once in a while to keep in fresh." Fascinating. We left the Relationship Report Card quiz for CCC to complete as the officially attached Cinecultist staff member. The site also loops two songs from the soundtrack that conspicuously lacks any Mandy Moore songs, but includes Liz Phair's Why Can't I, a track CC's sort of been obsessed with lately herself.
But after all this hoopla, will CC go to see this movie about a young girl who doesn't believe in love until she meets that certain guy? Still up in the air. CC consumes quite a lot of teen programming (former roommates have said too much) and in a bout of masochism over the holidays this year watched a double feature of On the Line and Crossroads. And since we're sharing here, CC likes the cross-over actresses, as evidenced by the alarming number (ie. more than zero) of J.Lo cds in her music collection. But we're not sure we hear the siren call of MM just yet, though it is true that she's a far better actor than Shane West in the weepy teen melodrama A Walk to Remember. It's petty to say this but the big deterent on How To Deal is the alarming similarity between Mandy and her co-star's hair cuts. We're all for gender bending but that's just creepy. They're like mopeing, angst-y, horny identical twins. In our universe that's an ick, thankyouverymuch.
Cinecultist correspondents have been following with glee the firestorm of interest over at Gawker surrounding gawker stalker. This is a feature wherein readers (like CCC) send in strange and unusual celeb sittings and Liz Spiers publishes them. We love this because Cinecultist is particularly in tune to noticing the infamous on the streets of New York and since moving here has seens all sorts of interesting creatures in their natural habitat.
But the point that must be stressed is, the New York protocol is to not really look at the celebs too long or too obviously; we have to allow them to pretend that we haven't noticed them, so they'll continue to graze or fluff their feathers or whatnot. We preface with all this because this weekend, CC in an attempts to gawker stalk sort of ended up seeming like we were hitting on poor young Jesse Eisenberg. We'd recently watched Rodger Dodger on a recommendation from PCC, wherein Jesse plays a high school student being schooled in the ways of women and Elizabeth Berkeley by his uncle (Campbell Scott). And we must have looked a little too long at the 20 year old actor while we were walking up First Ave Sunday afternoon, because he gave us the "eyebrow raised--do I know you? should I know you? could I know you?" look. Oops.
The moral of the story: gawker stalk celebs at your own risk, they might think you're hitting on them when you are just pleased that you sort of recognize them.
Besides having perhaps the best rhyming name ever, Aki Kaurismäki, the bad boy of Finnish cinema, also makes superlative pictures. BAM is doing a series on his films starting this weekend ("Kaurasmäki Goes America", July 10-27) and if you've never seen at least one, Cinecultist urges you to head over to Brooklyn for a screening. Imagine the deadpan wit of Preston Sturges mixed with the social/class awareness of Ken Loach and you have a glimmer of the brilliant places that Kaurismäki's films takes you.
Last fall at the New York Film Festival, CC was excited to both see Kaurismäki's newest, The Man Without a Past, and to listen to him answer some pretentious New York film people's questions afterwards. Unfortunately, the director did not attend with his film, sending a letter instead which protested the US government's refusal to grant a visa to fellow director from Iran, Abbas Kiarostami. Wow, CC thought, a political activist and a great filmmaker. Later, CC heard from critic Dennis Dermondy of Paper mag that actually Kaurismäki had been too drunk/hung over to get on the plane to come to New York and sent this mocking letter instead. Hilarious.
The above picture is of the director accepting an award at the San Sebastian film festival. Be sure to check out at least one film with his muse actress, Kati Outinen, she's particularly wonderful out of his cast of regulars.
Here's what Cinecultist did this weekend: sat in the air conditioning. Some of the time it was at home, and some of that time was at the cineplex so you know it was a full three days. The recap goes a little like this:
Friday CC met up with I for another one of the Heroic Grace movies at Walter Reade, this time Wong Kar-Wai's (subtitled!) Ashes of Time. This lush picture has all the markings of an epic with its large (and at times confusing) but very talented cast, a mythical story of great loves and disasterous betrayals, some fighting with swords and vast vistas to be gobbled up by the camera. Despite loving it, CC didn't really understand it mostly because old Kar-Wai refuses to present his scenes in anything resembling chronological order. Brigitte Lin is particularly wonderful as the man/woman warrior and Maggie Cheung is heart-breakingly beautiful, even though she does little beyond stare off into the sea. Watching Ashes of Time on the big screen made CC so happy for repetory festivals/revivals because the experience would not have been anywhere near the same if we'd just rented this movie. The deserts and the mountain streams need a large format.
On Saturday, CC watched many crap movies on television (we're talking Three Musketeers with Oliver Platt, Kiefer Sutherland and Chris O'Donnell -- not pretty, folks) until we headed out to meet A and R to see Friday Night at the Quad. The Quad, though it plays the unusual arty movies, has the narrowest seats ever. And we mean ev-er. But despite the potential uncomfort, CC really loved this film. So quiet, it is practically a silent film, with an unexpected thread of whimsy, Friday Night follows a woman meeting a man during a traffic jam and going with him to a hotel room. But beyond this affair or the details of plot, Claire Denis appears to be capturing an impression or a mood that surrounds this night in Paris. It may sound high falluting or boring but every frame engages. And it's damn sexy.
After a browse through the Tompkins Square park greenmarket and a greasy brunch on Sunday, CC found herself drawn back to the art cinema this time Whale Rider. A Sundance audience fav, Niki Caro's feature follows a young Maori girl as she tries to draw her fractured tribe back together. With all the raves the movie's been getting, CC expected to lurve this movie but instead found it sort of slow and lackluster. Each individual scene and the performances have a quiet power but they don't propel the narrative forward. It lazes along rather than rushing to a destined conclusion. Though the scene with the whales did make the tiny hairs on CC's forearm stand up. Academy Awards for all those whales.
Yeah for summer days, controlled climates and the world of art cinema.