Colors

Jay Smooth and the Yankee Victory

Jay Smooth through the uprights

Jay Smooth's Polanski Commentary

Pandorum

This poster for Pandorum is so off-the-mark it's easy to imagine the designer had not seen the film or read the script. Or maybe the film was once a very different movie. Many reviews have commented on the dozen or so previous sci-fi movies being referenced here ~ Alien, The Matrix, THX 1138 ~ but it reminded me most of the Wizard of Oz set on a enormous colonizing vehicle somewhere in space in the 22nd century. Ben Foster is hunky Dorothy and Dennis Quaid the wizard. The acting is "incredible" and the edits are synaptic but it's a tantric experience. No release.

Gamer

Gamer tapped the same nerve as Inglourious Basterds but with less subtlety. I was actually surprised by quality of actors -- Gerard Butler, Michael C. Hall (Dexter), Krya Sedgwick -- in this film about a future world where cyberga...mers pay big buck...s to "puppetmaster" death row inmates through blood sports and sexcapades. The story is nonsense, blood flows freely but the cinematography is exceptional.

Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds is a masterpiece of cathartic brutality and exquisite, old Hollywood tension and menace. It's riveting and exhausting and Tarantino. Wonderful. Christoph Waltz is the star of the film, not Brad Pitt. As SS Col. Hans Landa, Waltz is chillingly unforgettable. It is his face, not Hitler's or Goebbels', that is seared in mind as the face of Nazism, albeit an opportunistic kind of Nazism. The set piece that opens the film could serve as a master class in studied control. His performance throughout the film is outstanding.

Taking Woodstock

Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock is strangely inert and uninvolving, mainly because the film's lead, Demitri Martin, is so wooden. The wonderful British character actor Imelda Staunton is the lone standout in this movie, as Martin's disappro...ving and controlling Jewish mother. It's beautifully filmed but it's not art. The psychedelic LSD trip is fun.

District 9

District 9 is a wildly ambitious sci-fi movie with a virtuoso performance by Sharlto Copley as an inept South African bureaucrat who is given the task of relocating about 2 million alien (as in space) refugees from a squalid containment camp to another.... After being exposed to some alien DNA, Copley becomes a whole other character and heads roll (literally). It's fierce and bloody and fun.

The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" takes the unique "battlefield" horrors of the war in Iraq and their effect on service men and turns the resulting madness both inward and outward with an intensity I've not felt in a film for quite a while. The film follows a trio of short-timers in a bomb squad as they move from one impossibly tense encounter with IEDs or suicide bombers to the next.

Orphan

The Orphan was disappointing, not just because the waif-from-hell storyline features the dumbest family in the history of demon children movies but also because a boom mike can be spotted in every other interior scene. How did this shite get released? Good lord! The kid, Isabelle Fuhrman, who's like 12 years old and a native of my hometown, is pretty creepy though. Her Russian accent is a little spotty. Don't ask.

Sunbeam Bread Commercial '50s

This commercial features shapeless though faceless female characters and a lumpy, buffoon of a father character that appears to be aping Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton, popular comedic actors of the day.

Moon

Duncan Jones's "Moon" borrows from "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Solaris" and "Silent Running" but does manage to offer up a unique vision of alienation and disconnectedness. Sam Rockwell gives a wonderful performance in this film about Sam Bell, a man counting down the days until he's relieved from duty on a desolate lunar mining station. Kevin Spacey voices Bell's computer companion, Gerty. It's captivating.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I'm not a Potterite.I have not read the whole of a single volume in the series. I engage the films as cultural phenomena even though they have been, consistently, quite magical.

To me, this story of a boy wizard is not only the tale of messianic identity and good v. evil, it also appears to be about connectedness in a fractured and threatening world. The orphaned Harry, the reputed Chosen One to lead the final battle against the dark forces, is a figure rooted in other British literary creations like David Copperfield and Tom Brown, but he is such an interesting figure to me. Harry is marked and detached, loved and cared for by a host of people, but essentially disconnected and alone, and lonely, in his quest to defeat "he whose name must not be spoken," a task he seems at once driven by and ambivalent toward. The emotional and psychological dimensions of his life take on richer dimensions in the latest, highly enjoyable film.

We're All in This Together PSA

I've seen this spot dozens of times now, in movie theaters, and am still torn. I understand the message, I think ~ Working together is better for everyone ~ but why stage it with the Down syndrome kids? It seems to be saying "the least among us will lead us." But what if we don't see Down syndrome children in that way? Doesn't this become patronizing? A similar spot that features a young Down syndrome woman as prom queen, see below, is even more problematic for me. I think it's based on a true story but it strikes me as cloying and condescending and treats the woman like a mascot or maybe an object of pity.

Bruno

I'm fairly sure that at some point most of the millions of people who will see Bruno will stop for a second and ask "Why am I laughing?" I laughed more to keep myself from leaving the theater than to share in whatever hilarity was transpiring on the screen. Norman Cousins promoted the therapeutic qualities of laughter. I actually felt depleted by this film, spiritually. Sacha Baron Cohen's heart might be in the right place in getting audiences to confront their issues with homosexuality but the gags seem inappropriate -- not just because of their crudeness -- but because they obscure the message. Maybe other folks will be delighted and enlightened by this film, I wasn't.

Jay Smooth's Reflection about Michael Jackson

Man's Best Friend

The tone of this commercials is less acerbic than other Folgers spots until the end. The mention of man's best friend at the end seems odd because the puppy bit at the top was so brief the context was lost and it seems a bit of slight against the wife.

Public Enemies

I can't remember the last time a film delivered the whole package ~ impeccable acting at all levels; smart, efficient directing; intelligent art design, a beautiful score, etc. Maybe Eastwood's "Changeling"? In any event, Michael Mann's "Public Enemies" delivers some fine action and two or three wonderful performances ~ Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, Marion Cottliard as his moll Billie Frechette and Billy Crudup as J. Edgar Hoover ~ and immaculate period art direction and a sumptuous score that plays heavily into the narrative but the film is too often over-modulated and frantic and, in that regard, unsatisfying. In fact, the quieter scenes between Depp and Cottliard are splendid. She really is quite an actress. The bloody gunfights, while somewhat artful, felt like homages to Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde and Sam Peckinpah's Wild Bunch. I will say the final reel is some of the best cops and robbers (literally) movie making since Brian DePalma's The Untouchables, but it wasn't enough to make this a great film.

In commemoration of the Stonewall Riots

Photos from Russell Bush's book "Affectionate Men: A Photographic History of a Century of Male Couples (1850s to 1950s), St. Martin's Press.

Away We Go

Sam Mendes doesn't direct a lot, but when he does the results are masterful. American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead, and Revolutionary Road were all so sharply envisioned and executed that in each instance I felt transported. I was transported by Mendes' latest film, too, but in a different way. I was not so much transported to another place, although that was accomplished. I was transported into a variety of different marital and parental realities.

Working from a script by neo-modernist author Dave Eggers and his wife, Vendela Vida, the film is a road trip with Verona (Maya Rudolph) and Bert (John Krasinski) , an unmarried couple anticipating the arrival of their first child.. They hit the road because Bert's thoughtlessly self-involved parents are moving to Belgium, even though Bert and Verona moved to be near them for the child's birth. Because they're in their 30s, Verona wonders if she and Bert are somehow underdeveloped, immature, not ready for parenthood They decide to visit friends and siblings to see how well they have done. The trip is often hilarious, but underneath the laughs are Verona's anxiety and Bert's perplexity and aching adoration of her, even though she refuses to marry him.

Both Krasinski and Rudolph are tremendous, but Rudolph's performance is especially wonderful.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an explosive war movie that is substantially more enjoyable because Ramon Rodriguez, left, and Glenn Morshower, below, are in it. Rodriguez absolutely pops off the screen as star Shia LaBeouf's new college roommate, Leo, who is a geek conspiracy theorist. Rodriguez is also appearing in the remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. I first noticed Rodriguez in The Wire; he played Omar Little's last squeeze. And Morshower is one of the more recognizable faces in film and on television, IMO. From 24 to Friday Night Lights, he exudes masculine respectability. Morshower plays General Morshower in the latest Transformers.

Reading movie posters

Well-designed movie posters often reflect
both the content and context of a film
and may go beyond simple promotion to become works of art.
Below are some of my favorites from past years.



The Truman Show (1998)

Even though I'm fascinated by photo mosaics in general,
the use of this technique for the poster of this film of a fabricated life
~ composed of controlled experiences ~ seemed especially appropriate.

Gallipoli (1981)

The meaning of this poster's striking image is not revealed
until the last frame which makes it even more intriguing
and elevates it to more than a promotional device.

The Color Purple (1985)

Though some said Spielberg's film was too sentimental,
the tone and, yes, the color of the movie and
Alice Walker's epistolary novel are captured
in this image of star Whoopi Goldberg.

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

The image of Mia Farrow superimposed over that of a pram
on a lonesome hilltop was sufficiently creepy to make audiences
who weren't familiar with Ira Levin's novel wonder
what the devil the film was about.
Speaking of which ...

The Exorcist (1973)

This image of the solitary hatted figure
under a streetlight was subtle and sophisticated.
Everything most modern posters for horror films aren't.

Last Days

My fascination with the last days dates back to Catholic school and what I call its message of vindication, which is roughly translated as a warning to earthly tormentors that "you just wait until Jesus comes back."


I call this painting "The Second Coming of the Angelic Aryan Nation."

Why are the heavenly host always Nordic? Where are the brothers?

Michelangelo's "The Last Judgment" is behind

the altar in the Sistine Chapel.
Who needs a sermon when this is staring out at you?

This is one of the more disturbing depictions of the rapture.

The souls of the faithful, robed in white,
are yanked out of crashing vehicles and airplanes.
I sense some serious anger issues in this painting.

This is stoner trippy and leads me to wonder, probably inappropriately:

Dude, why do angels have such big freakin' wings?

I call this one "Jesus Comes to Wall Street,"
but a more appropriate title might be "Wall Street Comes to Jesus."
It looks like the guy on the lower right has packed a bag. Insider information?

Knowing

I caught this Nicolas Cage film at the 2 buck cinema this weekend and was surprised by the movie's attempt to merge (not necessarily reconcile) the divergent opinions about the place of science and faith (read evolution and creation) in our lives. Cage plays an MIT physics professor and son of a minister, whose faith has been shaken not so much by science but by the loss of his wife and the mother of his doe-eyed son. It is the son, Caleb, who receives an odd letter out of a 50-year-old time capsule. Written by a spooky, stringy-haired schoolgirl, the letter is a string of numbers that Cage's character deciphers to discover it's not just a random series but information about catastrophes, natural and manmade. Yes, it's ridiculous but the ending to this mess can be viewed as both apocalyptic and redemptive. In any case, it's worth 2 bucks.