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Out in Theaters: TAMMY

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Begin Again played with alcoholism; Tammy’s the kind of movie that’s alcoholic. The whole thing seems inebriated, like it was shot with a camera in one hand and a shot of booze in the other. Never mind that Susan Sarandon spends the film chugging whiskey and brews, or that Melissa McCarthy can’t seem to make it a mile without blowing something up. People you watched in movies back in the ‘80s and ‘90s keep popping up in random places as if you stepped into a bizarro Hollywood career rehab. Hey guys, wanna fit Dan Aykroyd in this movie? What about Gary Cole? Sure. Screw it.

Watching old people make whoopee isn’t fun for anyone. Neither is diabetes. Tammy has a lot of both, usually at the same time. There’s a lot of amusement mixed in with things you’d rather not think about: unemployment, aging, prison. If you want to watch someone crash a jet-ski, you might as well watch America’s Funniest Home Videos and skip Ben Falcone’s hour-and-a-half long road-trip comedy.

I went into Tammy expecting fat jokes and toilet humor. There are a lot of both, but they’re not as bad as you’d think. McCarthy turns a lot of nothing into something. The film opens with her crashing into a CGI deer. Nothing’s funny about it, but the film draws it out for a minute. She recovers: after getting fired from her job at KFC-esque “Topperjacks,” where everyone dresses like a rodeo clown in parachute jumpsuits, she throws a tantrum. As a glorified loser she plays up the moment, throwing burgers and insults. She heads home to find her husband (Nat Faxon) eating a romantic dinner with the next door neighbor (Toni Colette). You don’t want to feel bad for her, but she turns up the embarrassment. It’s sweaty comedy: she has to burn a lot of calories to get any laughs, but damn it does she try hard.

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At first you don’t know what to think about Susan Sarandon as McCarthy’s drunken grandma. Sarandon’s made her career playing a mom—it’s difficult to imagine her suffering as a Grandma. When she heads out to road-trip to Niagara Falls with McCarthy and pulls out the liquor, you can still see the youth in her smile. Along the way they keep getting into crazier situations: jet-ski’s get Viking burials at an all-Lesbian 4th of July party, cars get blown up, the two end up in jail. At one point McCarthy holds up a Topperjacks with a paper bag on her head and a rolled up bag covering a finger gun—all this just to bail Sarandon out. The two go back—hostile paper bags on heads—to return the money.

Awkward romance finds itself in this film too. Sarandon hooks up with the aforementioned Gary Cole in the back of a car while McCarthy and Cole’s son (Mark Duplass) sit on the trunk. They move to a hotel room and McCarthy’s left to sleep outside. Amidst the old people fornicating, Duplass’s character falls for McCarthy’s wacky charm and somehow a relationship develops. This is awkward on many levels, and doesn’t really make any sense. McCarthy’s Tammy has absolutely nothing going for her, so why would Duplass’ character have any interest at all?

As much as it struggles with itself, Tammy is brutally honest. Though there’s a lot of heavy topics packed in, the film knows how to turn the discomfort into candid comedy. Kathy Bates and Sandra Oh play a lesbian couple with a passion for explosions. They make light of their struggle as a same-sex couple, and it’s genuinely funny even in its seriousness. Bates brings a lot to her role and delivers some touching moments. Sarandon’s alcoholism breeds some comedy within the sadness too.

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Hidden in all the fat jokes and potty humor is a vulnerable McCarthy, who knows how to take it and when to give it out. Though there are a lot of dumb jokes you’d expect from an Adam McKay/Will Ferrell produced comedy, there are some gems too. Her robbery antics at the Topperjacks struggling to jump over the counter and stealing hot pies gets a giggle. Her dance to “Thrift Shop” collects a grin. McCarthy puts the belly in belly laugh.

Wickedly funny at points, there’s a lot of internal strife—you know where Tammy wants to go but it takes the long way there. Despite its simplicity, McCarthy and Sarandon are quirky and fun, though far from smart. Who figured Sarandon would have any sort of comic timing? They’re not the first pair you’d want to road trip with, but at least they’re something to laugh at. If anything, Tammy is a reminder that no matter how bad life gets, it can always get a lot worse. 

C

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Out in Theaters: BEGIN AGAIN

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Begin Again is the type of movie that comes with a set of instructions: Pre-heat oven to 400°. Mix divorce, heartbreak, success, failure and teen angst in a bowl while stirring in heavy doses of music. Cook for 104 minutes or until golden brown. Your film is now done and ready to enjoy!

What you see is what you get. Alcoholism is communicated via bottle: whiskey on the table and a beer in the fridge. You don’t get to witness any of the debilitation or struggle that comes with it. An empty drink is supposed to fill the gap. This is like journeying through South America and filming the mosquito bites. Or, you know, casting Maroon 5 lead singer Adam Levine as a pop star and covering all the tattoos.

Director/Writer John Carney is a good enough cook to blend his ingredients just right without getting into the complicated stuff. He knows when to flip the dish and what to stuff it with, and sometimes he’ll throw in a dash of spice to give it a kick. It may not turn out perfect, but he’s put enough love and time into it to make a good meal out of it.

Luckily for Carney, it’s hard to screw anything up when your main dish is a 5« serving of Mark Ruffalo. No, he’s not doing any detective work in Begin Again, save maybe gumshoeing his way into our hearts. Ruffalo is simply ‘Dan,’ a music producer who started his own record label from scratch alongside Saul (Mos Def)—Carney doesn’t bother to give any of his characters a last name. As good music gave way to pop and a divorce with his wife took its toll, Dan found the bottle and never took his lips from it. After an outburst in front of some high-profile customers, Saul cans Dan, who tries to take some paintings and employees with him. “This isn’t Jerry McGuire!” Saul says.

Actually, it kind of is. A beleaguered and stressed agent gets fired and starts over with a new philosophy and a new client. This time it’s Greta (Keira Knightley), a British singer-songwriter whose boyfriend Dave (Adam Levine) gets caught up in his newfound fame and cheats on her, leaving her alone in New York City. She’s got a meek voice and some strong lyrics, but it takes a drunken Ruffalo to notice her talents. He tells her he’ll use his connections to get her a record deal. Soon they’re recording an entire album on New York streets with a full band provided by Cee Lo Green, Julliard and some random kids Ruffalo finds in an alleyway.

Ruffalo sets the beat. He’s endearing, keenly funny and he’s got one of those smiles that make you smile back. Carney’s given him something to do with his hands as he’s always got some booze tightly grasped. Mark’s drunk is a jolly one, more tipsy than dizzy. He’s the type who’ll wake up in a dumpster and giggle about it then start drinking again. It makes you wonder if he’s even acting. Ruffalo toes the line and he’s having fun with it. He’s the main source of comedy. You can’t help but want to grab a beer with him.  But, his sober side shows a hidden tenderness, a latent passion. Hailee Steinfeld is strong as Ruffalo’s neglected daughter, and their father-daughter relationship makes for good moments.

Knightley’s the kick. She’s got a shy voice but a strong personality: she’s always wearing a confusing amount of fabric, which seems to fit the layers of depth she’s getting at in her role. Ruffalo and Knightley spend a night together in New York, dancing and sharing music on a CD player like old friends. Their relationship is so fun that you hope Carney doesn’t ruin it with romance. Her smart performance and Carney’s shrewd writing keep you guessing. Surprisingly, she’s even able to bring out the best from first-time film actor Adam Levine. In a fantastic break-up scene, Levine plays a song he’s written on the road. Knightley can tell it’s not for her; she slaps him across the face. When he smashes his glass of wine, Knightley’s the one that’s shattering.

Maroon 5’s head man is a strange case as he isn’t really acting so much as pretending. A pop star in real life, it’s difficult to look past Adam and see the ‘Dave.’ Carney gives him enough that he isn’t reaching: he’s calling upon real experience. Though he keeps up with the cast, it’s hard not to wonder why he was chosen for the role. You wouldn’t cast Peyton Manning in a football movie and call him Jim. Carney’s pushing suspension of belief too far.

Overall, it’s hard not to like what Carney’s cooked up here, though at times it gets uppity. There’s a lot of “it’s all about the music man!” thrown around, when the music is nothing you haven’t heard before. Instead of the songs, it’s the quirks—touches of comedy, theg dynamic between Ruffalo and Knightley, genuine performances from the whole cast—that get you tapping your feet right along with it.

With music and New York serving as backdrops, Begin Again is touching, funny and lively enough to merit a taste. Imaginative and different, it challenges what you would normally expect from a rom-com. Carney doesn’t overcook it, and there’s spice enough to defy expectations. I left the theater full. Maybe even a little too full.

B+

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Out in Theaters: TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

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Einstein said that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

You have to be insane to be a Minnesota Timberwolves fan. Heading into tonight’s NBA Draft, I was resolved for the worst, because you can expect nothing more from one of the worst professional franchises in sport, an organization that’s run like a penny-saving ma’ and pa’ store with Enron savvy.

This is a team that’s drafted a guy they vowed not to draft because they hadn’t planned for a scenario where they wouldn’t get the guy they wanted. This is a team that puts players they don’t want into a so-called “S Box.” This is a team that drafted a 21 year old player who turned out to be 26 years old. This is a team run by Flip Saunders, a GM/Owner who hired himself as coach and wrote down his draft pick on a sheet of paper like Kevin Costner in Draft Day. And yet, here I was thinking we could get it right this time around.

We ended up getting Zach LaVine, a Point Guard from UCLA who didn’t start this year and seems to have all the qualities that would make one good at being a gazelle, and none of the talent that lends to being an actually good basketball player. He responded to being drafted by banging his head on the table and saying “Fuck me,” then proceeded to call Minnesota a “great city.” This guy’s a gem.

Somehow, I expected something better from Transformers: Age of Extinction—something sane. Maybe because Director Michael Bay’s on his fourth installation in the franchise, maybe because Mark Wahlberg is starring in it, maybe because the girl that plays Wahlberg’s daughter, Nicola Peltz, is super hot. Instead, Bay’s two and a half hour robokkake elicits the same response as Zach LaVine: “fuck me.”

In Transformers: Age of Extinction, Bay spends his seemingly endless time pouring salt on the barren wounds left by Transformers 1, 2 and 3, but this time it’s with a smirksome eff you to the audience. Everything is turnt up past 11 in this $165 million film: the jean shorts shorter; the sweat sweatier; the muscles more rippling; the cars more decadent; and worst of all, the Transformers are souped up. Dinosaur. Transformers.

Thankfully, we don’t have to struggle through another Sam Witwicky slog because Shia LaBeouf and his head-sack are nowhere to be seen. This time, we’ve got Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) as a ripped inventor whose inventions don’t work. He fixes up neighbors’ old trash for cash and builds malfunctioning robots that explode and combust, like a guard dog that couldn’t guard Zach LaVine.

He’s also an overprotective father of a gorgeous 17-year old (don’t worry I checked: she’s actually 19!) because he knocked up his wife when he was 17 and doesn’t want the same problems to befall his soon-to-be-graduated daughter. Turns out she’s hooking up with an incredibly handsome Irishman behind his back, Shane (Jack Raynor), who races cars for Red Bull. T.J. Miller (HBO’s Silicon Valley) is Wahlberg’s comic relief buddy who quickly gets burnt to a literal crisp and displayed on-screen as a carbonated trophy for a traumatic twenty seconds.

When Wahlberg finds an old rickety truck and discovers that it’s Autobot leader Optimus Prime in disguise (gasp!), the story starts to unfurl. The good Transformers who fought to save the world in Transformers 3: Revenge of the Bots are almost extinct as the government—headed by evil agent Harold Attinger (a bearded Kelsey Grammer)—tries to kill them all. Now there’s only five left.

In the mind-numbing two hours of battling and running and slow-moing and close-upping that follow, Wahlberg and friends team up with Optimus and his crew (notably John Goodman voicing a fat cigar-smoking Transformer and Ken Watanabe as a super-offensive NinjaBot) to ride some dinosaur Transformers and fight Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, a bomb called “The Seed,” a Transformer whose face is a huge gun, and some mechabot thing called Galvatron. None of this shit made any sense to me either.

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Granted, visually, this film is probably the most gorgeous thing that’s ever graced a silver screen. To his credit, Bay has perfected the Transformer graphics to the point that now he’s just playing with it like an infant with a toy chest of action figurines. Explosions boom in IMAX 3D. The cars, planes, alien ships and Transformers glimmer and shriek as they come apart and fit back together. The gun-head Transformer and the DinoBots are definitely the craziest, most preposterously incredible creations Bay has ever come up with. Bugattis and Ferraris flip and twist into robots. It’s astronomically cool.

Despite the glorious IMAX 3D monster that Bay’s created to top the box office charts for months, this flick reeks of #2. He’s trolling us now: Victoria Secret ads are blown up, US Banks are crushed under a Transformer’s boot, and Wahlberg stops in the middle of all the chaos to drink a Bud Light. There was even a quick intro before the movie where everyone involved just talked about how awesome Michael Bay is. Really, Age of Extinction is one big commercial, and the product placement made it seem like Transformers had accidentally wandered into a GQ photo-shoot and just decided to blow everything up.

Optimus Prime is awesome as usual, but there’s just so much crazy and absurd stuff happening to really get anything more than a headache. Plot points are brought up then completely dropped, like when Optimus is said to need repairing and then just magically repairs himself. Close-ups of actors were too jarring in 3D, and Bay too often forces the shots in. Though Tucci and Grammer are outstanding in their villain roles, it’s problematic when you find yourself hoping the good guys lose.

Though Mark Wahlberg is great at playing Mark Wahlberg, anything involving him, Peltz and Raynor is utter garbage. We’re subjected to almost three hours of “you can’t date boys until you’re 18” discourse that never ends. Peltz’s outfits get increasingly tighter, so much so that they look—as the country-folk say—painted on. Luckily she’s really hot, which distracts from how utterly annoying the overprotective Dad shtick gets. Otherwise, my main complaint comes with hotty racer Raynor: why couldn’t he be fat and nerdy and play League of Legends? Why do these guys always have to be way too good-looking?

Age of Extinction is just too long. It’s arduous work just watching because so many things are crammed in. This film could have been an hour long, and it might’ve been fantastic. Too often it dragged out unnecessary plot and confusing battles. There’s a Jaw-like wait just to see the DinoBots. Wahlberg amps up the Wahlberg, and seems to be made out of the same stuff as the Transformers.

At the end of the night, you wonder how you ever expected anything more. History repeats itself and so does Transformers, ad nauseam. One has to wonder if Flip’s “S Box” stands for “Shit Box.” If so, cram Age of Extinction in an S Box and never let it out.

D

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Out in Theaters: BLENDED

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You know you’re in trouble when people laugh at your production company sequence before the movie even starts. Alas, that’s where we’re at with Happy Madison and Adam Sandler. It’s the same tired schmaltz and shtick and spiel that it’s always been.

Blended employs the same combo we’ve seen too many times before: Drew Barrymore as a cute ditzy blonde, Sandler as the weird funny guy with a hard edge and a soft side. What spark they once had has gone stale. It’s like they’re really stuck in the 50 First Dates love-trap: now they’re trying to find something, anything that works. This combo used to be nougat. Now it just smells like nutsack.

Lauren’s (Barrymore) divorced with two little boys. Their characters revolve around typical boyhood challenges: the older one masturbates to pictures of his babysitter crudely taped to Playboys; the younger one sucks at baseball and his Dad (a douchey Joel McHale) never wants to play catch. Lauren organizes closets for “Closet Queens” with her friend Jen (Wendi McLendon-Covey, who seems to have taken acting lessons from the Grandma in The Room), who’s dating Dick from Dick’s Sporting Goods. Yeah, that Dick.

Jim (Sandler) manages a Dick’s alongside Shaquille O’Neal. His wife died of cancer (the film could’ve gone by the title 50 First Dead Mom Jokes), leaving him to struggle with three daughters: Hilary, Espn (named after his favorite TV network!) and Lou. Espn’s got Haley Joel Osment’s sixth sense when it comes to mommy: she saves a seat at the table for momma, she talks to her in her bedroom. Hilary (“Larry”) is a tomboy teen that daddy won’t let come out of her shell. Lou is a cute little girl who says “butthole.”

Jim takes Lauren on a date to Hooters, which goes swimmingly: she spits out hot buffalo shrimp and spills French onion soup all over herself, he drinks her beer. They end up hating each other. Let’s cut to the chase: afraid of being bad parents, they both get their hands on tickets “TO AFRICA!!!” without knowing that the other family’s going along with them. Typical shenanigans and bonding and romantic tension ensues. Do I have to say it? This premise is fucking terrible.

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“Is everyone ready to see the real Africa?” an African guy asks as they get off the plane. Blended leaves it at that. Sandler’s Africa never goes as far as to mention what part of Africa they’re in, or who these people are. Instead, we’re led to believe that the entire continent is filled with singing and dancing sweaty black folk surrounded by an endless safari of crocodiles, lions and elephants. The fact that Sandler so often uses “Africans” as entertainment and fodder for bad humor is downright offensive. Terry Crews leads an acapella group that follows Sandler and his crew around everywhere while singing stupid shit. Everyone is there to serve the rich white folk that have ventured their way into this “wilderness.” Sandler’s Africa is nothing but cheap accents and cheaper African garb.

But cheapest of all are the jokes, and gosh darn is there slapstick. Grandma’s crash into things on ATVs, Sandler falls into a vat of Dodo urine, Barrymore’s profession is mined for lesbian jokes, Adam tries to out-fart an elephant, the “Africans” say goofy African things, Barrymore catches her kid masturbating…the list goes on. You’d think they would’ve gotten tired of all these crap jokes: Blended is just 50 First Dates Does Africa.

Blended then tries to take on gender identity, in the most basic way possible. Sandler has difficulty as a father of three girls, while Barrymore just can’t figure out how to raise her two sons. Their simple solution: pops can buy the porn while momma buys the tampons. Throughout, there’s the assumption that men and women find figuring out the opposite sex impossible. Sandler doesn’t want to let his daughters out of their tomboy casing, but his girls just want to dress up and look pretty. Barrymore’s boys want to be good at sports and the older one is constantly horny. Screenwriters Clare Sera and Ivan Menchell don’t know what to do with their characters, so they resort to the same conclusion every dimwit always seems to come to: boys have penises and girls have vaginas.

Sandler’s Rotten Tomatoes page is more verdant than a fresh can of Green Giant. You’ve gotta go down a long ways until you can find anything worthwhile. Grown Ups 2? Why is this a thing? That’s My Boy? Try again. Just Go With It? I’ll go without, thanks. Grown Ups? Groan. Jack and Jill? Fuck no.

What’s happened to Sandler is truly a disaster. Trust me; I’ve seen The Wedding Singer at least thirty times. It’s classic Adam: quirky, brooding, clever, timeless slapstick. Happy Madison is the same way. Back then he could afford to gamble, to put himself out there. Now his ruminating, dark comedy shtick just comes off as sad: all that’s left is a depressive sack that can’t cope with getting old, fat and tired while watching his kids grow up. His well ran dry somewhere in between Grandma’s Boy and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and he’s been scraping at brick since then.

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Funny People (directed by Judd Apatow) was Sandler’s last great movie: a movie about comedians that’s not funny and doesn’t try to be. There, we saw Sandler’s dark side: George Simmons, a lonely, lost, scared comedian who’s afraid to be a nobody and even more afraid to be famous. Sandler’s Simmons wasn’t funny. His stuff was sad. But his vulnerability came out. Funny People was fitting because we saw Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill—new blood, the hot kids in town challenging him for his thrown—right next to Sandler. The truth is, they were funnier. Sandler didn’t need anyone to tell him that because he saw it up close: no one wants to see a 47-year old guy do a little boy voice anymore.

One has to wonder where the self-reflective Sandler went. Maybe he’s too afraid to be vulnerable, or he’s still clinging to the glory days. Really, the same should be said for Drew Barrymore too. They’ve earned each other. Blended was the appropriate title for this place in their careers: at this point, everything seems to mix together into nothingness.

I’ve been racking my brain trying to find out why Blended was even made, and who it was made for. Really, who is the demographic here? It boggles the mind. Maybe this one will go over well in old folks’ homes and at the zoo. Anyone older than 12 can’t possibly like this stuff, right? I would tell you not to go see this film, but you don’t need me to tell you that: Sandler’s name already did the work for me.

Can you still call yourself a comedian if people are laughing at you?

D

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Out in Theaters: NEIGHBORS

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I invited my good friend Matt to see Neighbors with me on Tuesday. Matt, was my fraternity’s president last year. I figured if there was anyone to watch this movie with, it’d be him. We’ve lived in the fraternity together long enough to see the pitfalls and the benefits of a lifestyle predicated on brotherly love and often times poisoned by alcohol. But, more than beer bongs and beer pong, Matt and I have come to learn that the stereotype associated with fraternity living is misplaced and disillusioned.

Total Frat Move and the bullshit that pervades today’s society are just facades: guys with small units and smaller brains trying to emulate a lifestyle that was only realistic in the ‘70s. Fraternity living is about the bond that’s shared between boys as they become men and the values and experiences that join them together. Guys who call themselves “frat” aren’t fraternal: they’re idiots. The folks who made Neighbors rely heavily upon the latter. They probably never stepped into a fraternity house in college.

Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne (Bridesmaids) are the Radners, new parents of a young daughter Stella, live in a small cul-de-sac close to a local college. They take bad parenting to the next level: Rogen smokes weed at work, they have sex in front of their baby, and they try to take Stella to her first rave. Yet, they’re completely upset when Delta Psi Beta, a group of new-age frat bros, moves in next door. Had the casting director chosen Katherine Heigl instead, this might just be a Knocked Up sequel

DFB, led by the incessantly frustrating Zac Efron and the brother who got the bad alleles, Dave Franco, are Cro-Magnons who stumbled upon a Brazzers account instead of fire. DPsiB might as well stand for Douchebags & Pretty Boys. Their composite is riddled with guys named Scoonie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, whose “enormous penis” is cashed in for at least 20 jokes), Garf, Thumbsucker, Assjuice, Jizzface and Balldrop.

Their fraternity’s values bog down to how much one can smoke and drink without dying. Efron’s goal is to live up to past Delta Psi’s. Fun cameos from Lonely Island, Workaholics and Jake Johnson show famous Delta Psi’s who “invented” such fratty traditions as beer pong, the toga party and the boot & rally. Like any fraternity member, Efron wants to craft his own legend and put his name up on the wall.

In order to fraternize with the new neighbors, the Radners head over to party with the bros. Rogen does a ton of mushrooms, Byrne straps a baby monitor to her belt and hits the dance floor. Efron entertains them in an attempt to get them on his good side. When Rogen betrays him and calls the frat on the cops for being too loud the next night, Efron makes things personal.

Neighbors relies on the ridiculous situations that emerge when frat is pitted against innocent local middle-aged family. Efron and his crew rip the airbags out of their car, Rogen and Byrne try to start a hazing scandal. Rogen and Byrne flood the frat’s basement, Efron and his crew start a dildo fundraiser disguised as a bake sale to raise money to fix the damage. It turns into Neigh-Bros. The film feels longer than an hour and a half. Through all that, I didn’t even get to witness a beer-bong or shotgun. Disappointing.

Somewhere in the middle, Rogen’s hilarious wisecracks and the frat’s shenanigans go from raucous to atrocious. Director Nicholas Stoller, a Harvard grad who knows better, flushes the comedic toilet and clogs it with dick humor, offensive fraternity stereotypes and puke-worthy gross-out moments. They turn hazing into a joke, rape into a punch-line. At one point, Byrne spews milk from her veiny breasts. Delta Psi rips a guys’ pubes off. Then, the Radner baby fits a condom in her mouth and their doctor jokes that the baby has HIV. No laughs. The only thing that threatened to come out of my mouth was stomach acid.

Rogen makes raunchy paunchy. He’s by far the best part of this movie and the only redeeming factor that kept it from disaster. His chubby physique is pasted everywhere in this film, but sadly he doesn’t have enough weight to carry it by himself; too often he’s reduced to using his heft as a punchline like Vince Vaughn uses his height. We see him bent over his wife, or modeling in front of an Abercrombie. His ass is everywhere. He’s funniest smoking a joint and cracking wise with his buddies, but we don’t get to see nearly enough of that.

The male form has taken on a new comedic identity, seemingly since Jason Segel flopped his good-looking member out in Stoller’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. But it’s hard to rationalize that the same person who made Five-Year Engagement, Get Him to The Greek and the aforementioned, made this poo-poo platter of unfunny, homoerotic, gross-out dick comedy. Somewhere along the way, he lost track of who he was. It’s just hard to believe someone this hilarious could make something as laughable as a Tyler Perry movie. I was half-expecting Adam Sandler to play the baby. Maybe that would’ve been funny.

Nevertheless, Rogen and Byrne have great chemistry, and his charm even helps humanize the atrociously bad Efron, who hasn’t gotten any better since That Awkward Moment. Cool cameos from comedians like Lisa Kudrow, Jason Mantzoukas (The League), and Natasha Leggero help the shit float, and there are some great laughs in here—notably Franco 3D-printing his penis and the frat’s careful airbag placement.

By the end, it was too traumatizing to enjoy. Normally one for gross-out raunch, this caught me off guard. Maybe it hit too close to home. Or maybe rape and hazing and dick jokes and projectile breast-milk are about as funny as domestic violence. I’ve seen one too many penises in my day. I’m on penis overload. No homo.

At the end, Rogen turns to Byrne and tells her, “things have changed… I like old people shit now.” And maybe that’s my problem. Rogen’s outgrown this dreck, and so have I. Give me a good book to read or some Game of Thrones. A younger, more impressionable Chris might have loved Neighbors, but I’m turning 20 in four days and this stuff just isn’t as funny anymore. As much as hazing and rape and ragers and alcohol addiction and guys nicknamed Spoonfeeder might be realities in the Greek world, they’re far from what fraternities stand for, and they’re way too personal issues to be remotely funny. Neighbors crosses the line into scary territory. If you’re trying to live vicariously through assholes, go ahead and read Total Frat Move.

I’ve got enough fraternity experiences to write two books. None of them resemble what I saw Tuesday night. Hell, my fraternity chapter was shut down in ’04 for being the most dangerous in the country. They had nothing on DFB. Matt gives Neighbors two stars out of five. I have to agree with him.

C-

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Documentary Dossier: JODOROWSKY’S DUNE

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Four critics were sitting in AMC’s Pacific Place Theater 7 when I walked in. It was instantly noticeable: a strange, syncopated rhythm of staticky beat-box. Kind of like the sound you hear when you rim the audio jack on a speaker system with your finger. The crackling and buzzing grew worse as we sat, until it was operating at about four beats per second. More critics walked into the cramped space, all to the same static, electronic concerto. Louder and louder it grew until even thoughts became inaudible. Then it stopped, and Jodorowsky’s Dune began.

 

Alejandro Jodorowsky is what results when lunacy is inbred with sadistic perversion. He’s an acid trip embodied. His ideas are just as wild. As you watch him throw his thoughts around, you can’t figure out if he disgusts you or thrills you. He’s reminiscent of the old homeless folk you run into on a public bus, the type that’s dying to tell you his crackpot theory: Jesus Christ is building a golden city in the sewer and George W. Bush killed Franz Ferdinand.

The French-Chilean director is teethy. A spritely 85 years old, his blindingly white grin is huge. His choppers spread from his mouth like a horse’s smile. His hair flops around as he gesticulates wildly, describing his imaginations and mental illusions. His “r’s” roll off his tongue with the weight of bowling barrels. But those bright pearly whites draw you in.

Jodorowsky’s Dune is about this man’s failed journey to create Dune, a film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel of the same title. Early on, Jodorowsky tells us, “I never read Dune.” The film is more a face-to-face conversation than it ever is documentary. Jodorowsky and the crew he assembled to make Dune, as well as a clan of historians and filmmakers, sit in front of the camera to recount how Dune was never made. At one point, a cat wanders into the scene. He picks it up and just keeps going.

“What is the goal of life? It’s to create yourself a soul. For me, movies are an art, more than industry. And it’s the search of the human soul, as painting, as literature, as poetry.” Jodorowsky walks us through the history, about half the time in English, the rest in Spanish. He tells us he wanted to create a movie that causes an experience equivalent to that of an LSD trip. In Dune, he wanted to create a prophet.

He pulls a massive book—the size of two phonebooks—from his shelves: Dune is written in big white font on the cover, overlaying a drawing of a zebra-striped purple and yellow spaceship. Contained within this monumental bible are all the scenes, concept art, scripts, storyboards that were never brought to life. Drive’s director, Nicolas Winding Refn, explains how Jodorowsky once showed him the book. “I’m the only guy who ever saw Jodorowsky’s Dune… Let me tell you something. It is awesome.”

Jodorowsky’s goal is to rape our minds, he says, and slowly, he inseminates you. What starts out as a lunatic’s ranting soon becomes an exploration into the soul’s deepest crevasses. Brave director Richard Stanley tells us that Dune’s the greatest movie never made, and we have a hard time believing him. Then, we see Dune.

A design by H.R. Giger for Jodorowsky’s Dune that was incorporated in Alien. 

Just as he somehow recruited famous artists Pink Floyd, H.R. Giger, Michel Seydoux, Orson Welles, Salvador Dali (who requested $100,000 a minute), Chris Foss, Jean Giraud, and even forced his own son to do years of martial arts to star in the film, he sucks you into his cosmos. What begins as an impossible dream becomes an insatiable reverie. Jodorowsky becomes the drug, the hallucinogen that pulls you into his world-bending soulscape. He’s Alfonso Cuaron with Jules Verne’s imagination and Hitler’s ambition.

Somehow, he fits all the pieces together, and then everything falls apart. As written, Dune would have been 14 hours, it would have cost millions, and no one wanted to finance it. We weren’t ready. We weren’t equipped. We weren’t worthy.

Hollywood told Alejandro he couldn’t join in the fun. You can’t play with us, Hollywood said. Little did they know, he built the playground. The woodchips and tree scrap they were rolling around on? His design; his team of artists and writers and producers went on to work in the industry, infecting the film world with Alejandro. Movies like Alien, Blade Runner, The Matrix, any sci-fi or blockbuster film, they’ve all been influenced by Jodorowsky’s failed dream.

Jodorowsky—this insane old perverted Spaniard dripping with crazy—pulls the world as we know it apart and then forces it back together with his hands, like an accordionist rending the world with every note. Dune was some sort of calamity, a virtual reality, a rift in time, a temporal split of magnanimous proportions. Jodorowsky broke the universe into two when he set about making his film; we’re just living in the reality where we got Star Wars instead.

So the playground carries on, not with him but within him. Somehow, he became the prophet he set out to make. Shine us with your light Alejandro. How glorious it is!

When Jodorowsky’s Dune ended, it was as if my mind was set free. Not so much as a spiritual or metaphysical awakening, just an awakening to the mind and soul. I couldn’t stop thinking. Jodorowsky had convinced me just like everyone else who clung to this doomed project. His charm, his conviction and passion, somehow it opened my eyes to the world. I began to rethink everything. Maybe that static beat-box had a purpose. Maybe that was Alejandro’s way of communicating to us, of implanting that initial seed, of reaching through space and time. Maybe that was an alternate universe Jodorowsky trying to connect. “Hello? You can hear me?”

Jodorowsky raped my mind. And I loved it. Yeah. Or maybe that’s just the Stockholm Syndrome talking.

A

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Out in Theaters: DRAFT DAY

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“Draft Day”
Directed by Ivan Reitman
Starring Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner, Chadwick Boseman, Frank Langella, Sean Combs
Sports, Drama
120 Mins
PG-13

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Every year, one sports movie comes out of nowhere to become a classic. Last year, that honor belonged to Ron Howard’s Rush. This year, that honor might belong to Draft Day.

 

Rarely do I find myself enjoying Chris Berman’s blowhard baritone. Yet, something about hearing his voice as shots of the NFL Draft at Radio City in New York fly by made my heart beat. Draft Day, a propaganda film of the most subtle kind, calls upon an inner craving for America’s greatest sport in a time of absence: football.

Kevin Costner is back to star in another sports movie, this time as Sonny Weaver Jr., the Cleveland Browns’ general manager and chief decision-maker. Cleveland hasn’t been good at football, well, seemingly ever. With a top-10 draft pick and a chance to change the franchise forever, pressure mounts for Costner and his girlfriend Jennifer Garner, the team’s Salary Cap Manager who’s pregnant with his baby and salary cap knowledge.

Shit’s hitting the fan for Costner, who must decide between three players: the ‘local legacy,’ the ‘star QB’ and the ‘hardworking heart kid.’ Things start off pretty rough: he trades away three 1st round draft picks to get the 1st overall pick. Players rage over the decision, coaches applaud, Twitter explodes and the team’s owner (Frank Langella) tells Costner his job’s on the line.

Of course, there are other problems going on here too. Costner’s not ready to be a dad as his father just passed away, his secretary’s on vacation, and he just can’t figure out what to do with that top button on his dress shirt. To non-football fans, there’s enough fluff (a ticking clock, beautiful people and a decent romance) to make it worthwhile. Don’t get me wrong though: this movie is 100% football.

Aerials of football stadiums across the nation (notably CenturyLink Field in Seattle) fly you right into the action—there’s no better way to set the stage than a team’s home stadium and screaming fans. Coaches and General Managers cuss each other out over salary cap numbers, draft picks, and young football players with two first names.

Whether it’s incredibly real football highlights of young players concussing each other at game-speed or real-life talking heads going at it (the aforementioned Chris Berman, Mel Kiper, Jon Gruden and Deion Sanders to name a few), everything looks, smells, feels, tastes and sounds real. Filmed at the actual 2013 NFL Draft and on location at the Browns’ headquarters, NFL’s got its ‘authentic’ stamp all over it. Even NFL star running back Arian Foster shows up to act. Draft Day gets adrenaline flowing like Opening Day.

Only, watching Draft Day is like working your ass off all preseason only to tear your ACL stretching before the first game of the year—well, except for the excruciating pain part. There’s so much football that you’re left with a massive pair of blue balls once you realize that there’s no actual football in it. It’s more offseason than regular season: it’s a two-hour foreplay session with Kate Upton. Hey, at the end of the day you’re still hooking up with Kate Upton.

Draft Day wants you to lust after it—the fame, the flair, the football. Stadiums and team buildings are gorgeous, the actors are all handsome, New York’s lights shine off of players’ bleach-white teeth. It’s The Blind Side from the hind side, Jerry Maguire if Tom Cruise could sext.

Seriously, everyone’s in this movie. Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner, Chadwick Boseman (Jackie Robinson in last year’s decent 42), Frank Langella, Denis Leary and P.Diddy/Sean Combs/Diddy Combs even pulls a Jay-Z to act as the potential number one draft pick’s slimy agent.

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Costner looks like Brett Favre and plays like Andrew Luck. He wields a football like a NYPD Chief brandishes a .45 caliber pistol. His grizzled look that didn’t work in 3 Days To Kill works well in the confines of a football compound, his cool demeanor amplifying as time begins to run out while rumors and numbers fly all around him. Costner’s calm in the huddle, a flawed but passionate quarterback leading his team through the tunnel. He makes random decisions on the fly, tosses draft picks around like hot cakes and lays his balls on the table at every moment. He’s so jittery and reckless you figure he might be high on painkillers: he’s Whim Irsay.

On the other side of the spectrum acting spectrum we find Garner, who seems completely out of place and out-matched by her peers. Garner’s repeated attempts at realistic football-speak end up sounding more like she’s reading factoids off the back of a Wheaties box. She brings the movie down.

Chadwick Boseman’s role is notable here. As Ohio State Linebacker Vontae Mack (the aforementioned ‘hardworking heart kid’), he’s thrilling. His manner is completely changed from 42, he’s much more light-hearted and clever. His relationship with Costner is almost father-son, calling on him for help when he needs it and throwing a tantrum when he doesn’t get what he wants. Boseman might be the best in this movie.

As the clock hits zero, Draft Day will likely go down as the year’s best sports movie. Though non-football fans might find it a hard pill to swallow, the elements of a great story are there in spades. For football fans, this film will be like watching the Food Channel on a diet. Draft Day always plays more like fantasy football than real football. It might be more addicting.

Another Sunday’s come and gone without pigskin. How many weeks till football?

B+

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Out in Theaters: ERNEST & CÉLESTINE

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , , 1 Comment

“Ernest & Célestine” 
Directed by Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Benjamin Renner

Starring Lambert Wilson, Pauline Brunner, Dominique Maurin, Anne-Marie Loop

Animated 

81 Mins 
PG

 

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 We all remember the stories our parents or grandparents told us when we were little. They’d tuck us in, put us to bed. But we wouldn’t sleep; we’d just shuffle and whine. Naturally! Who could blame us? Who could possibly fall asleep without a story? “Tell me a story. Just one. Please?” we’d beg. “Oh fine,” they’d say. “One story.”

Ernest & Célestine is a tale you never want to stop; a true love story, a lasting fable. And, just like any good story, it starts with a rhyme. An elegant rhyme that flows just as beautifully as the film itself: Qu’est-ce que tu dessines, Célestine? What are you drawing, Celestine? Among a throng of curious young mice, she’s sketching a bear and a mouse playing together. 

Blasphemy! they say. Bears and mice can never mix! It’s just not done!

The mice live in a charming, buzzing, underground city in constant terror of the bears overhead. Children are told stories about “the Big Bad Bear,” who eats young mice by the thousand, while above-ground, bears set up traps to keep the scurrying rodents from infesting their homes and eating their food. Each side fears the other, terrified of their differences and blinded by prejudice and history.

Célestine is an orphan mouse. She’s an artist: a painter, a dreamer. Her sketchbook is filled with reverie and pure daydreams. Ernest is the same way, a multi-talented musician and actor. They’re impassioned by the arts but society tells them that they have to be something else: Ernest is born to be a lawyer, Célestine a dentist. As such, they’re reclusive outcasts misunderstood for their divergence. These mice and bears might not be so dissimilar after all.

He’s big and bumbling, she’s small and fragile. Where he’s obnoxious and grumbling, she’s intelligent and crafty. Together, they complement each other perfectly. Their friendship starts as bizarrely as you would expect a mouse-and-bear companionship to spark: he tries to eat her. Once they realize they can help each other out, they form an unusual bond. Things work out well at first, until Célestine brings Ernest underground.

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Nominated for Best Animated Feature at the latest Academy Awards, this film puts Frozen to shame. Ernest & Célestine is a cute, bubbly animated film that explores social norms with a youthful innocence. What happens when we choose to follow our dreams, and not what society tells us to do? With cunning precision, directors Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Benjamin Renner paint a masterful canvas, full of beautiful images and even more stunning characters.

Visually, it’s splendidly simple. All the colors are faded like any old storybook’s pages might be: light red’s and maroons, worn yellows, soft greens, dull golds and browns. Scenes swirl together like a painter’s strokes. Ernest and Célestine’s rambunctious adventures pepper it with impasto. There’s texture everywhere here. Grainy at times, smooth and watert others. The artists’ wet brush strokes are emotional Haboku, a watercolor of feeling.

Vibrant amusement pushes this film at an astonishingly refreshing pace. The filmmakers involved have a glint in their eye, a skip in their step as they joyfully weave this elegant narrative. With comedy and goofy silliness to be found everywhere, it’s hard not to smile and laugh along with this peculiar couple as they rebel against their rash societies. Mice bench press mouse traps, bears and mice combine to do some terrible policing and a bear family runs a candy shop Ponzi scheme.

The illustrators weren’t the only artists in this picture. Voice work from Lambert Wilson (Ernest) and Pauline Brunner (Célestine) is charming, sweet and lighthearted. Like great storytellers, they bring the characters to life, delivering a masterful trance that rushes back a fuzzy nostalgic sensation. You could only dream to be tucked in by these two as they read a bedtime story and put you softly to sleep. They certainly make the experience a spirited fantasy.

Even the villains are fun in their exaggerated wickedness. Célestine’s orphan headmaster La Grise (Anne-Marie Loop), an old fat rat with two enormous front teeth, delights in frightening the children with her stories of the Big Bad Bear. With a raspy voice and a nasty wrath, she spits out her words until one of her incisors goes with them. Hilarity ensues: she rages on incoherently as the children break out into a massive pillow fight.

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And the music. Ah, the music. Glockenspiel, cello, xylophone, piano, clarinet, even tuba. All flow together like the paint that animates Ernest and Célestine. Floating about like a flower in spring or snow in winter, the soundtrack fills the film with life and heart. Yours beats along with it.

Ernest & Célestine is the same story that never goes away: bears and mice can’t interact. Well, why not? It’s just not… normal. And, as always, there’s so much more to this story than just a bear and a mouse. Ernest & Célestine strikes at oppression, bigotry and misunderstanding. Just as in any fable, there’s an underlying narrative, a story hidden in plain sight. France—the land of fables—delivers another refreshing one for the ages with deep morals to boot. This is my favorite film I’ve seen all year, and I don’t think that will change for a good while.

When your eyes water at the end, you’ll be wishing for a youth lost long ago. Why can’t everything be as candidly simple as this? Célestine asks Ernest: Et après celle-la, on en racontera d’autres des histoires, Ernest? After this one, are we going to tell more stories Ernest? Plein d’autres, Célestine. Plein d’autres. Plenty more, Célestine. Plenty more.

Wrapped up under those covers, way back when, your eyes close shut.

“Well, what story do you want to hear?”

“How about Ernest & Célestine? Tell me that one.”

A+

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Talking with Zeek Earl of PROSPECT

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After premiering at SXSW 2014 in the Narrative Shorts Competition, Directors Chris Caldwell and Zeek Earl have been generating a lot of buzz around this mysterious story and the possibilities for a new series. Following it’s online release on Vimeo yesterday, Prospect has garnered a lot of attention from filmmakers and fans alike and the reaction is near-unanimous: it’s definitely good enough to merit a feature.

 

Prospect takes concepts from various sci-fi: within you can find some Star Wars, a fistful of Gravity, even a touch of Elysium. While the lush green landscape might seem friendly, the goings-on within are anything but. Prospect imbues the film’s scenic indie beauty with an ominous threat, a mystery. There’s something out there that we can’t touch. This is a new frontier, a place full of mystery and madness.

The 13-minute short, which feels more like a preview of something greater to come, follows a father-daughter combination living on an unidentified foreign planet. They seek a mysterious “Orolack,” a goopy gook that perhaps hides some terrific power. Certainly, it has some greater value, but that isn’t what they’re here for. Something deeper spurs them onwards: a dream of a better life back home, who knows? They’re spatial forager, but bigger monsters are on the hunt.

The story is mysterious and just oblique enough to engender a curious inquisitiveness. Earl and Caldwell have created a short story that’s vividly complex. The truth behind everything is hidden beneath a layer of cosmic dust. It’s got that Jumanji feel to it: you’ve come across a strange story in the attic—your curiosity urges you to open it despite an ominous feeling of imminent danger.

“This is not our world. We are aliens here,” says the father. Prospect aims at humanity’s underlying fear, the hidden: where are we welcomed, if not here? What is our home? It may look friendly, but Prospect‘s visuals instill serene discomfort. Floating dust particles create a sense of rift, like this world was torn apart long ago. Maybe an alien race once lived here. Something terrible happened in this forsaken place: ravaged, all that is left is an element whose power is unknown, and the people who risk their lives to discover it. There is something here we have yet to see that needs salvaging; something in the depths and core of this landscape that tremors, leaving behind a world broken and decomposed.

Complete with a forested space-planet, cool space suits and a Cthulu monster, Prospect is absolutely worth the watch. There is much more than meets the eye with Prospect. So believes Director Zeek Earl, who has great passion for the project and even bigger dreams to achieve: a potential feature that might come of it. Read on to learn more about the local director’s genre exploration, filming on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, and the endless possibilities Prospect has to offer.

Q: The main thing about Prospect is the fact that it takes place on this “alien” world that we don’t know too much about. There’s this distance between us and them, there’s this strange existence on this planet. How much do you think it was an exploration of the beyond, and how much do you think it was an exploration of our own planet, of our own humanity and interaction?

ZE: I think you’re going the right places. It’s definitely an exploration of humanity. We’re playing around a lot with genre, in a certain aspect. To me, it’s really a Western… My personal definition of a Western is—or at least Western’s I like—there are environments where the absolute extreme ends of humanity end up, and why they’re there is really interesting to me. You have these really hostile environments that people go to for all sorts of reasons. So, in Prospect we obviously have the “prospectors:” people going there to get rich, who are willing to make that risk. But there are all sorts of people in that environment: they’re there for religious reasons, they’re escaping. That’s something that we’re excited to explore, perhaps with a feature version.

Q: A lot of people see Prospect as a Sci-Fi but I didn’t see it as fiction as much as it was an interpretation of reality.

ZE: Yeah. What we associate with Science Fiction now, or in general, are sort of big concepts. “In the future it’s going to be like this.” But our movie, I wouldn’t even necessarily say it is in the future. It’s in a different kind of world altogether.

Q: What kind of moral or ethical questions do you think that raises?

ZE: [Laughs] I mean it’s a short film, so you only get to do so much! I always feel limited. I feel like we started and let’s just think, it could get a lot more interesting. I think the essential crux is that there’s this girl who’s been dragged to this planet by her father, and at a certain point he’s taken out of the picture. Where we kind of get to in the short film is that she’s put in the driver’s seat. She’s in the position where she’s now making the decisions. She decides to go for the gold, and kill this guy, but where does that get her? We just start to tease at that. Again, hopefully in a larger film we can do a lot more.

Q: Why did you choose a girl, choose to have that father-daughter relationship? Obviously that’s been trending a lot currently, with stories like Divergent and the Hunger Games, just an exploration of the feminine side and their handle of social structure and loss. Why do you think you went that direction?

ZE: For us it goes back to the Western angle of it. It creates some more interesting situations, to have a young girl in this crazy environment. A lot of it is hard… [Laughs] It’s hard because there’s this whole feature thing that we’re trying to make too… I guess in a larger world—we only get to tease at it in the short—she’s an unusual character there. You generally have these rough, violent characters, so when they interact with her you can have these surprising things happen because she’s not the norm in that environment.

Q: You talked about these violent characters. One thing that I really liked is the antagonist in this, the kinda “Cthulu” character that you guys had—

ZE: [Laughs] Interesting that you mention that.

Q: What was the process behind creating the design and who this character was?

ZE: Yeah, his backstory. It’s a short film—[laughs] it’s the third time I said that! I just need to own it, it is what it is! [Laughs] We wanted to create this character that had been on the planet for a really long time. You don’t know why. Perhaps he’s not struck it rich as he hoped to, perhaps he got stranded there, perhaps he lost a partner or something. He’s been there too long and he’s turned to desperation. A lot of where our design nods were coming from is that his suit is less fresh; it’s been slowly eaten away by the environment. He has a much more complicated filter system because he’s had to alter it and do all these other things to it. Again, none of this is explicitly in the movie, it’s kind of queued in the production design. We wanted to create this more desperate character. He has that filter, he has a different air system. He’s sick, he’s not well. He’s trying to get off this planet and trying to get rich like everyone else.

Q: I actually thought he might have been the best acted of the group. He did a really good job with the suit and in general giving off that really ominous feeling.

ZE: [Laughs] It was a big endeavor to make that suit, for sure.

Q: Really?

ZE: Yeah! There’s not a huge film industry in Seattle, so we got lucky to run into a guy with some really amazing production design experience. I would say that, [laughs] possibly more production design was put into that suit than everything else combined. It probably wasn’t wise even, but we just got carried away, it kept getting more fun and we had more ideas and we got more of this built-out world. It took months and months. The father and daughter, they have space helmets that we bought off Ebay. They’re high-altitude Chinese flight helmets. But, the prospector’s helmets, and everything else is all custom-made. So, you know, we were making molds for his helmet pieces, he has this one “power arm” as we called it—the arm was like an accordion type apparatus—that was all hand-sewn. It took ridiculous time and effort but the two guys who were making it—Matt Acosta and Nick Van Strander—just went all out.

Q: That’s definitely what I’m most excited about if you guys do get to make a feature, to see all the different space-suits for all the different “Sectors” or atmospheres that come together and make this world a different place. You talked about production. $28,000: was that spent mostly on the costumes, was it spent on cameras?

ZE: Pretty much, it all went into production design and production support when we were actually shooting. My producer Chris and I, we run Shep Films which is a commercial company here in Seattle, so we actually have access to all the technical tools for the most part. Cameras and stuff were things that we already had invested in as part of our commercial business. Really, all of that money went into buying materials to make everything, we had to pay location fees, we were putting up transportation and housing and feeding our crew—which ranged from 18 to 25 people for four-five days. It’s funny, things pop up all the time. For example we only budgeted so much for radios, so we got these cheap radios that you get from REI or something, but then we tested them and they worked terribly in the forest. It was really important that our crew be able to communicate over distances in the forest, so then we had to rent these nice radios. Just little things that you don’t anticipate really add up.

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First-time actress Callie Harlow plays a rogue Prospector seeking wealth alongside her father on a far-off planet.

Q: What was the biggest challenge? You said you didn’t have much experience in After Effects, or at least making the dust particle effect we see in the movie. Was that the toughest thing or was it more the production itself?

ZE: When I think through making the film, it’s definitely a matter of what stage you’re in. We had really big challenges with production design: making little things, running out of time, running out of money. But then we completed that, so then we went to production. And that challenge was hugely logistical. Getting all these people organized and getting on set, managing time and everything. The weather was an obstacle, so we had to coordinate with all the weather patterns. We did all natural lighting, so that was challenging. And, as you pointed out in post-production, it was very tough to do this dust stuff. It was a very different type of challenge. It involved me sitting down, weeks on end, by myself, in front of a computer, not freaking out in the forest in a matter of hours. We edited in Premiere, color graded in Resolve and the dust and stuff were made in After Effects.

Q: You shot on Blackmagic Cameras. What did you like about that camera, what didn’t you like?

ZE: I really like the camera. We didn’t have the bones to shoot on Alexa, which is my favorite camera. But the Blackmagic is a good second: it has really great dynamic range, a really great texture. They’re crazy cheap for what they deliver. The cost difference between a Blackmagic and higher end cameras is just incredible. We jumped on them right away. I like the color profile better than the RED cameras, which are extremely more expensive. I prefer to shoot on Blackmagic than on a RED.

The challenge with Blackmagic: it has a pretty tight sensor, which turned out OK in the forest because you can generally just keep backing up as much as you need to. In the tent scenes, which were really tight, I felt like we weren’t in complete control of those. Now they make something called a Speed Booster—which we have, but it didn’t exist back then for this model—that widens the whole angle, makes it more similar to a 35mm perspective. That’s really awesome but we didn’t have that back then.

Q: When did you film this?

ZE: Uhh… [Laughs] April of last year. A long time ago!

Q: Well there you can get a perspective of how long it takes to make even a film this short.

ZE: Yeah, interestingly our first short film that we made actually took like two weeks to make and cost like no money. It’s totally based on the type of film you’re making. It’s interesting seeing the comments on the film. There are a lot of people saying, “Why did you make this film? Why did you take so long to make this film?” and they’re right. You can definitely make cool stuff for less money and less time, and we’re hoping to do that with a feature. But we are really trying to do something original with the production and design.

Q: How tough was it to film on the Peninsula?

ZE: The funny thing about filming in the rain forest was that it was supposed to rain the entire time we were there, and instead ended up being freakishly sunny. We had planned for rain including building custom rain gear for all the equipment. With the crazy weather change we decided to film at dawn and dusk instead… so the challenged turned from escaping the wet to having to get up really early. It was a lot of driving and long days, but it was such an incredibly beautiful place to hang out in we didn’t mind at all.

Q: What do you feel you learned the most from this project, going forward?

ZE: Oh man. For us, this was so much bigger than anything we had ever done. It involved so many more people, so much more planning. I can’t believe how much we burnt on every single facet. Assembling a crew, approaching production, approaching post-production, the whole thing just really showed us new stuff on every single level. I can’t even plant it. It was so across the board, we feel much more confident about making a film now than we did a year ago.

Q: What advice can you give to somebody who may be looking to make a short or a feature, who maybe has some lofty goals but doesn’t have money, or the time, or maybe the ambition? What would you say?

ZE: Well the ambition, I can’t do anything about. [Laughs] You’ve got to have the ambition. When you’re making a film, you have to have a tremendous amount of drive and perseverance. It’s not a casual endeavor. Our first short film, which really launched our career, was made for practically nothing. It’s called In The Pines and it was us just hiking around. We had one actress, and we hiked around in the woods for a couple of days. We built a concept around our limitations. We didn’t have money. We had a camera that could do limited things. We had this idea and it was a simple idea and we were able to execute it with practically nothing.

I’ve never been to film school, but you can’t just “Dream Big.” [Laughs] That might be the antithesis of what your goals should be for the future, but don’t dream big. You’ve got to figure out what you can do, and then do that really well within those limitations. People will admire what you can do with those limitations.

Another little bit of advice, the internet has been hugely important to our career. Our first short being a “Picked By Staff” on Vimeo really opened up a world of opportunities for us. Film festivals have been awesome and great but where we really see things happening now is online. Find your audience, find your niche, and make something for that niche. They’ll buoy you up.

Q: You’ve raised a lot of money on Kickstarter, would you like to stay grassroots, raising money online or are you looking forward to working with a budget maybe more studio-financed?

ZE: Both? We built up with Kickstarter, one of the bigger things that we got from it were the volunteers, the people who offered their services, time and connections that were even more valuable. I don’t think we could, very easily at all, raise the money for a feature on Kickstarter. We actually met with some people from the company down at SXSW. What they suggested to do was raise part of the money online, maybe for one element of production. We want to stay in control of our films, and the types of films that we want to make, we can make them very inexpensively from an industry perspective. We want to make a movie on our own terms, and make it in Washington.

Be sure to check out Prospect and other projects from Zeek Earl at ShepFilms.com, and don’t forget to catch the short online. 

http://vimeo.com/90049558

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Out in Theaters: DIVERGENT

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , , , ,

“Divergent” 
Directed Neil Burger 
Starring Shailene Woodley, Miles Teller, Kate Winslet, Jai Courtney, Theo James
Science-Fiction, Action
139 Mins
PG-13

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Watching Divergent is like trying to figure out what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. You’re thrust a grab-bag of emotions ranging from awe to complete disbelief. Who made this thing? What terrible atrocity happened to these people? Why didn’t the technology work? Where the hell did everything go wrong? Did this really happen?

Divergent is the rare oddity where the trailer is more exciting than the movie ever gets. Director Neil Burger’s (Limitless) latest big-screen project is trapped in Act One purgatory. Somehow he never manages to make it to Act Two (forget about Act Three), while only fitting ten minutes of action into a nearly three-hour movie. Simultaneously the slowest and most pointless flick this year, it never seems to start or end.  At 139 minutes in run-time, it’s about 130 minutes too long. Divergent takes longer to reach a climax than… well, you get it.

The film, based on Veronica Roth’s novel of the same, stars Shailene Woodley in her first foray into high-budget Hollywood film. Miles Teller, Jai Courtney, Theo James and Kate Winslet (!?) join her. Stealing elements from Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games and similar teen-fiction titles, Divergent gets old fast.

Based in a worn-down Chicago (somehow the last place on Earth), a “utopian” society is divided into five separate factions: Abnegation, for the selfless; Amity, for the peaceful; Candor, for the honest; Dauntless, for the brave; and Erudite, for the knowledgeable. Every year, 16-year olds must go through testing to determine which faction they should join. Of course, there’s a problem with this: sometimes kids can show competency in the characteristics of several factions, hence the eponymous “Divergent.”

 “Abnegation” dresses like they’re in a prison camp, while their social responsibility is to feed the homeless—dubbed “Factionless”—and avoid all forms of comfort, including looking in the mirror—oh, how selfless! Since they’re considered the most altruistic, they also run the government… I won’t venture a joke at that one, it’s not even worth it.

“Dauntless” are gymnasts who spend their days sprinting everywhere, jumping on rooftops and giggling their asses off. They’re Chicago’s “police,” charged with defending the citizens and keeping order. Of course, they’re also the most diverse group. Let’s put it this way: you won’t see a black kid in Erudite. They look like the United Colors of Benetton teamed up with Nike to help the under-privileged. Supposedly, their fitness makes them fearless. Instead, they just look delirious.

Woodley, a Divergent, decides to join Dauntless, which is right about when this film loses all impetus. Similar to the Hunger Games, in order to join the faction, she has to beat out her competition by proving herself in various activities.This quickly turns Divergent into a futuristic Summer Camp for the fit and beautiful, complete with a ropes course; Capture the LED-Flag; team-building exercises; zip-lines through Chicago; and, you guessed it, Tag. I’m surprised they chose not to fit in a friendship bracelet workshop or a round of Duck Duck Grey Duck. Burger spends two full hours trying to entertain you by showing teens doing things you barely enjoyed doing yourself when you were younger. “Look how much fun they’re all having!”

To prove their mettle and fearlessness, Woodley and her pledge class of giddy recruits have to jump onto a train, then subsequently jump off. At one point, they compete in a five-minute paintball fight. They’re told to get tattoos to show their badassery. These feats of strength continue for about an hour and forty-five minutes. A love-story is also interspersed throughout, as camp-instructor Theo James and Woodley must overcome various obstacles in order to finally make out.

The only real conflict in this film involves whether Woodley will get kicked out of camp. We’re constantly submitted to idiotic recitations of the same bullshit, over and over. Again and again, she’s told: “You’re dauntless, so act dauntless or get kicked out.” My question: why would anyone choose to be part of this group of tattooed douchebags? I’d much rather live on the street, being fed by horribly clothed government workers than spend my days getting harassed by tatted-up jocks in leather windbreakers.

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Her final initiation ritual before ultimately becoming one of these idiots involves submitting herself to some sort of virtual reality fear-machine where her fearlessness is tested. Phobias that she must overcome include sexual assault by James, death by killer crow, murdering her family, and drowning in a sealed glass case. She’s able to conquer these fears by telling herself “This isn’t real.” I wish.

Around two hours in, things finally ramp up. The last fifteen minutes are actually decent, dragged along by great acting from Woodley and the ever-spectacular Miles Teller. Everyone else slows them down, notably James, Jai Courtney, and Kate Winslet, who is in this movie for no apparent reason. She’s terrible.

Ultimately, Divergent is Hunger Games without the stakes, Twilight without the romance, Harry Potter without the magic. The Disney Channel-level acting and plot cramps you up like Hunger Pangs; this isn’t Katniss, it’s cat piss.

In the end, you leave Divergent telling yourself that this was just a dream; maybe you ate some bad shellfish and hallucinated the whole thing. You tell yourself, “this isn’t real,” hoping against all hope that it isn’t. Maybe Flight 370 never even existed. This is all a figment of your imagination, a cruel joke. Yeah, this week was just a wild nightmare. You click your heels together three times. This isn’t real… This isn’t real… This isn’t real…

Screams snap you out of it. You’re sitting next to a pre-pubescent girl’s volleyball team from the local middle school—they shriek every time Miles Teller is on-screen. Now it’s clear who this movie was made for, except this film calls for a different brand of ‘spike.’ You’ll have to down a few drinks to make it through this one.

D-

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