Etheral Contraband: ‘In Bed’ and ‘Better Than Sex’

The titles. The promotional posters. They elicit expectation, hinting promise of the pleasures of the pure mechanics of sex, if only at a grade below pornography. Something mildly erotic, but safe enough to avoid wandering behind the black curtain to retrieve. Things still left to the imagination, to some extent, in these films that boil down to two strangers hooking up for casual sex. Evident from the viewer reviews and commentary, it successfully drew in audiences.

A Netflix viewer who wrote a review of the Australian production, Better Than Sex suggested that the film captures an “evolution in relationships”, perhaps supporting that tow-line observation that younger generations have scoffed traditional commitment, existing in a comfortable limbo between physical satisfaction and the avoidance of emotional attachment. But this is nothing new, really. And, despite the so-called sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s, and probably even the 1980s, casual sex has once again become taboo. And, what to say about a non-pornographic movie that focuses on it entirely? American films, brimming with political correctness, have taught us that a happy ending means not only acceptance of commitment, but also monogamy, and more specifically with an extremely compatible lover.

Better Than Sex and its Chilean counterpart, In Bed, confront this re-established taboo of casual, consensual sex, doing so in a manner that fuses pure mechanics with intelligent discussion, one free of timidity and self-conscious giggling. In a way, they are generational films. The young couples of these films, both somewhere in their late 20s or early 30s, approach casual sex without guilt. In Bed begins just after two strangers who met when one offered to drive the other home after a party have had sex in a cheap motel. We are party to the grunts and heavy breathing and hints of naked, writhing strangers. That Bruno (Gonzalo Valenzuela) doesn’t know the name of the girl he just slept with (played by actress Blanca Lewin) doesn’t bother Daniella. She is amused by it rather than angered or ashamed. Names just pervert the anonymity and that is what the couples of both films initially seems so desperate to avoid–that messiness. There’s that age old fear of getting hurt. But, like many films where characters share an isolated setting for a significant duration (i.e. The Breakfast Club, Never on Tuesday, Tape), those connections are inevitable, invoking their delusional defenses by impersonalizing their time together. “It’s just fucking,” near-strangers Josh (David Wenham) and Cinthia (Susie Porter) half-heartedly assure themselves as the two grow closer in Better Than Sex.

Better Than Sex is far more light-hearted of the two movies, a trait typical of most Australian comedies and light drama. For one thing, John and Cinthia cite immediately recognizable, but minor, flaws in one another when they first consider the idea of asking the other to have sex with them (it’s done almost that blatantly), but they are remarkably compatible, even to the chagrin critics who argued that the film lacks enough conflict among characters to make it interesting. Both Better Than Sex and In Bed are, to an extent, centered around the pure mechanics of pleasure, but not entirely in an erotic sense. Better Than Sex is set almost entirely in Cin’s apartment. Meanwhile, Bruno and Danielle never abandon the small hotel room in In Bed. These characters exist in a temporary isolation, and in their private world, they carry on freely.

With the exception of minor conflict between Josh and Cin which actually results from the introduction of one of Cin’s flirty friends, there’s is a best-case scenario: two unimposing people who immediately click. And their temporarily private world doesn’t permit much to disturb their harmony. There’s even a cab driver who plays the contingent matchmaker when the characters shy away from each other or get hot-headed. Having spent several days together, the dogging question is what happens when nature photographer Josh moves to London as intended? (Obviously for these types of scenarios to occur, the characters can’t have a full-time day job). Spliced into the narrative is he-said/she-said styled commentary on everything from sex to relationships to observations about the opposite sex. The bold shots, generic clothing, and amusing passing commentary (director Jonathan Teplitzky’s experience was primarily in commercials and music videos) give it a vicarious, mid-90s date movie feel (it was actually released in 2000), adding to the non-confrontational approach. In the end, the movie is reduced to what might be described as mere open conversation about sex, and what comes before and after it.

Director Matias Bize’s In Bed is a little different, its setting more confining, its atmosphere a little darker. The film carries on with a certain bitter honesty and intensity, though equally with some exhaustion and repetition as well. Just as Josh intends to be in town only a few days longer after he meets Cinthia, Bruno will soon be leaving to get his PhD in Belgium while his companion, Daniella, is just days away from her wedding to man who had been abusive towards her in the past. When the grunts and the writhing periodically subside, they drift along in honest, intimate conversation and almost entirely without self-consciousness, carrying on in a way they may not with other people in their lives they share a close relationship with. This almost-entirely private isolation (their cell phones and wallet photos are the outside world’s sole intrusion) is conducive to that willful, unselfconscious exposure, once it’s out there. Revealing themselves once they realize the futility and absurdity of trying to fight it. Presumably out of obligation to protect this person whom he shares not only physical intimacy, but eventually, emotional intimacy as well, Bruno asks Daniella to consider leaving with him.

In Bed, which has been compared to Richard Linkater’s Before Sunrise quite often, is somewhat like a film installation piece, where the viewer serves as the first-person observer (in closer quarters than we typically think of ourselves as movie-goers entering the film’s world) to both the mundane and the exciting. Personal histories, expectations and general complexities are mixed with random anecdotes and passing commentary. The waning excitement and eroticism makes the situation feel so much more real – that people placed in a similar setting, confined to each other in a hotel room with little to separate them than maybe locking oneself in the bathroom, might get bored of the situation and tired of their mate. In which case, if the sex is a good enough distraction, then it is a situation that becomes purely erotic once again.

In Bed doesn’t rely on the fairytale resolution. Josh and Cin were singles with little obligation – she was a dressmaker with an apartment, and he seemed bound for a semi-nomadic lifestyle as a freelance photographer. While they feared the implications of the connections they form when their private world ceases existing, there was in reality, little to keep the two apart. Their happy ending in such an innocuous universe was almost a given. Bruno and Danielle, however, are bound by the realities of their public world, much as the happy ending seems possible at some point in the temporary, shared private world. “You were the break before the rest of my life. And I was the adventure before your trip,” Daniella poignantly concludes. The film avoids the need to resolve everything so neatly, and though the conversation may have been an intimate one, at least at times, between Bruno and Danielle, their imminent separation both provoked it and renders its importance fleeting. In the end, it was casual sex with somewhat interesting, but mostly distracting conversation. A release that was not purely physical.

But, to the vicarious viewer wanting to lose themselves in the affairs of Josh and Cin, and Bruno and Danielle, they certainly serve the purpose, depending on the degree of restraint into the fictional retreat he seeks.

The Never Ending Story – Terminator: Salvation

It’s a little heartbreaking when a wonderful, low-budget film is traded for big budget superficiality. When it becomes labeled…(gasp!)… a franchise and bottom-line intentions become clear: this is meant to be a profitable venture. Already starting the transformation with the second film, Judgment Day cost over $100 million to produce in 1991, making it one of the most expensive films of its day (and also one of the highest grossing).

While it’s been six years since the last Terminator film, Terminator Salvation, like The Sarah Connor Chronicles, breaches the lineage as part of a next generation franchise far more than T3: Rise of the Machines. Neither of the film’s originators, James Cameron and William Wisher, were involved. For Salvation, the shift to next gen mode means stylistic obligations such as international casting and plenty of pretty faces, standard battle sequences, and annoyingly referential dialogue. It is, like most every big-budget action movie these days, organized around flashiness. Another revivalist summer blockbuster was guilty of this: Star Trek.

As the first of the Terminator films to be set in the post-Holocaust world that Sarah Connor envisioned, most of the grainy, bleak film looks modeled upon military-themed video games. Immediately thrusting viewers into the action, the opening sequences are riddled with dust-filled clouds and off-screen shouting. As the seemingly hopeless war against the machines continues, Terminator Salvation takes place just before resistance fighter Kyle Reese meets John Connor. Unfortunately, in the chronology of time traveling tales, there’s always the potential for plot holes. The most egregious occurred as early as the first film. There, Kyle Reese of 2029 wants to “meet the Legend” and selflessly volunteers for the kamikaze mission to be transported to 1984 to save Sarah Connor from assassination by a terminator. In that time, Kyle Reese fathers John Connor, the fearless resistance leader who was, paradoxically, his mentor back in the future. Terminator: Salvation, set in 2018, shows the adult John Connor continuously listening to the tapes his mother recorded before he was born, relaying what she’d learned from Reese in the hopes that she can better prepare him, the future warrior. The mentor and the apprentice reversed roles in a way.

But, the life of the future warrior doesn’t seem like one to be desired. John Connor is constantly forced to be on guard against potential assaults not only against himself, but those intended to protect him. While Kyle Reese indirectly protects John Connor’s life, he must now return the favor, because doing so ensures that all prior events still occur, namely protecting Sarah Connor, which suggests that the past is always occurring. If so, then there is always a possibility of altering them, and consequently, anything in the time line that follows. Eventually, the Hunter-Killers flying into the frame will have a “Same Shit Different Day” slapped to the back of it. (Did someone say Wayan’s brother genre parody?!).

Though, we’ve come this far with the Terminator, it seems that in fifteen years, four films, and a television series, Skynet is the ever-relentless foe. (And I distinctly remember even personally assisting in the mission to bring down the machines and save man kind). In both keeping with the concerns for big budget action film aesthetics and the “next-gen” mode for continuing the story, earlier villains were perverted, this being the film that revealed the origins of the Terminator revealed in the 1984 film: a mechanized skeleton hidden by flesh ala Blade Runner (even waxing philosophical in an almost identical finale). The design that eventually became the Terminator shown in the first film is introduced more discreetly here, although his physique is far more exaggerated.

In every iteration, Skynet seems to develop something more powerful than the last (how do so many remain unscathed in the Salvation battles?!). The T-1000 of Judgment Day seemed impossible to defeat, were it not for that one little chemical weakness. But in the end, not Kyle Reese’s pivotal transportation to the past, nor the infiltration of Cyberdyne Systems in the second film (disregard the pointlessness of the third film) had done much to alter Doomsday or even quell the wrath of the Machines during its aftermath. Perhaps, that’s to be expected when movies become big budget franchises – they need that lingering variable to justify sequels. Look at the Halloween series. Not even getting beheaded and set on fire stopped Michael Meyers from returning to bother his victims. The same is likely true of the Machines. Now, as a next generation action movie (though not a next generation breach in the narrative since it offers nothing new), John Connor and Kyle Reese’s future appears to be saddled with dull consistency, especially when the writers take such small leaps in the chronology.

Welsh actor Christian Bale, Hollywood’s Glory Boy, took the reigns as this year’s John Connor, having worked with director McG in the Dark Knight. Although viral exposure of being a real prick on the set may have generated early publicity for the movie, it was a far more compelling alternative to his routinely grizzly-voiced character. Perhaps its the limitations of the story, but Bale’s “hero” feels very obligatory and all other secondary characters, with the exception of Anton Yelchin who apparently received high accolades for a rather lively performance as the young and cocky Kyle Reese, are intentionally restrained. Sam Worthington’s character, Marcus Wright, is derivative to the point of trying to mimick Rutger Hauer’s role in Blade Runner. Bryce Dallas Howard has a small role as Connor’s non-existent pregnant wife. Common as the fellow soldier not conflicted by moral questions. And B-movie regular Michael Ironside is largely ineffectual as the resistance fighter working with John Connor to infiltrate Skynet.

Salvation didn’t seem to generate many positive reviews, whether by film critics or film viewers, and part of that might be out of expectations borne out of loyalties to the earlier films (I’ll include myself among this group). Given the unusual Thursday release, Terminator: Salvation was almost immediately knocked from the Number One box office spot by Night at the Museum II. Now that we have followed the characters this far into the future, what we have glimpsed of the whereabouts of John Connor and Kyle Reese doesn’t feel very significant in the end.

With a Hall Pass in Hand: American Teen

American Teen was immediately criticized as it began generating attention at Sundance in 2008. The original promotional material featured the five teenagers at the heart of Nanette Burstein’s documentary in poses and costume nearly identical to those in the Breakfast Club. The previews even pre-defined their roles: The Geek, The Princess, The Jock, The Hearthrob and The Rebel, arousing suspicions that this reduced these people’s stories to palatable, packaged frames, symbolic of a disingenuous adult view of teenage life.

Generally, film-goers tend to hold documentarians to a level of scrutiny that assumes them to be objective observers of their subject. This is not a pure documentary in that sense, and in fact it might be better described as a pop documentary. The filmmaker’s placement does shape environment, and in all stages of production, there are deliberate choices of what to focus on. And for Burstein, it is the concept of the modern American teenager.

Early on, there were criticisms about lacking authenticity in a different regard. Namely, the noticeable lack of variety in the town’s residents, making a film who’s sociological importance could only be generalized to middle-class white American suburbia. In American Teen, there is only one non-white high school school student featured. And every other seemingly “taboo” subject from homosexuality to promiscuous sex to divorce is muted. The sprinkling of teenage drama in the briskly edited montage that made up the trailers suggested a “documentary” that sanitized taboo realities, only to fill the gap with sexier sensationalism.

These are valid critiques of flaws that are present, but not to any degree that should make the film dismissive in what it shows. Overall, American Teen, released to DVD in December 2008, provides genuine insight as it highlights five students in their senior year of high school in the small, Midwestern suburb of Warsaw, Indiana.

Among them is Colin, “The Jock,” a varsity basketball player who, amidst a slumping season for the team, is desperate for an athletic scholarship to pay for college. His father, a former Warsaw basketball player that now seems to make an unusual living performing as an Elvis impersonator at parties in chain hotels, makes it clear to his son that, while they live “comfortably,” they can’t afford to pay for his college tuition. He unilaterally decides for his son an alternative option of military enlistment.

Meghan is “The Princess,” one of the least likable among the five teens. It’s not because she is one of the popular kids steeped in privilege (she drives a Mercedes), but because she had a reputation for her merciless vengeance against anyone who dared to steal her thunder, prompting certainty that she was in for quite the rude awakening when life continuing in those high school walls suddenly became irrelevant to those that left. However, the origins of her bitchy behavior may not be surprising, especially giving the cold relationship with her father. Engaged in the ritual obsession of college admissions like Colin, she fear being ostracized by her family if she weren’t able to make Notre Dame, where her father and siblings attended.

Jake is “The Geek.” He has a mouth full of wire, a face full of acne, and is woefully awkward. Inspired by the idealized world of video games, he constantly imagines an opportunity to reinvent himself and, throughout most of the film, strives to find a girl that can make him happy. We don’t really know much about him outside of this. He is by far the most self-conscious of the five kids, and high school for him seems like a quiet nightmare that can be traced back to being a small kid frequently ridiculed in middle school for his size. (In appearances and interviews to follow the film’s release, it’s surprising to see what a handsome transformation he’s undergone – though he is still admittedly awkward (as he says in the afterword).

But it is Hannah, the outgoing “Rebel” who is desperate to escape the confines of her sleepy hometown where she lives with her grandmother and is occasionally visited by her father.These are the kind of kids who flee to cities they deem cultural Meccas. Hoping to go to film school and work in the industry thereafter, she applies to school in San Francisco, much to the chagrin of her parents, who think her too young and impressionable to make that kind of leap in independence so far from home. While attractive Mitch Reinholt was featured most prominently in a lot of the promotional materials after Sundance, Hannah actually turned out to be the most interesting, if not the most entertaining, as she exudes a hook of personality and emotion that we don’t see in the other characters to a similar extent. The outcome of her tale is perhaps the most alluring.

Mitch, “The Hearthrob” ironically isn’t in the film that much until the second half, probably having been necessary to be the fifth that would complete the group replica of their Breakfast Club counterparts, which becomes pretty obvious when, other than being linked to Colin as a basketball teammate and romantically linked to Hannah, there is little we ever learn about Mitch.

Ignore the fact that, if you’re of that age, that what you’re about to watch is a film about teenagers and remember that you too were one once. Given the extreme homogeneity of modern America, the experiences these teenagers share for that year during their lives, that critical rites of passage as they prepare to leave institutional comforts for either more institutional comfort, or something else entirely, is universal to most other American suburbs, and for the last couple of decades. Dealing with relationships, authority, idealism, escapism, popularity and so forth certainly isn’t anything new.

Moreover, these five kids may assume themselves to be alone in their struggles, but if The Breakfast Club (a title which will undoubtedly always be invoked in comparison) has taught us anything, it is that this is simply not so. In particular, the most apparent common underpinning is an extreme self-consciousness. That personal worth must always be demonstrated, and that ultimate value must always be defended.Jake was the obvious example. But Mitch was another, his relationship with Hannah, who belonged to a different social faction, almost perfectly mirrored Andy and Blaine’s relationship in Pretty in Pink. Meghan’s severe attitude was traced to her need for control, her determination to uphold a carefully guarded front. Hannah was aware of her peers’ self-consciousness and professed to avoid it. And even Colin, in the attempt to become the rising basketball star, feared the possibility of failure.

The teenager is quite an interesting specimen, and American Teen dissects some of the contextual underpinnings that makes adolescence so frustrating. Adolescence is a crossroads; that transitional point between childhood (protection) and adulthood (awareness) and high school is like an incubator. Aside from its roles as an educational institution, it was designed with no rubric regarding the customs and rituals that developed within its walls. But that’s what it has become (with these things very much commercially-driven), a somewhat independent environment where social and personal and political forces really develop and play out, and often times in competition of how others rationalize and synthesize those things.

As Hannah correctly observes, “We’ve spent four years here. It’s all we know.” Maybe it’s a kind of reality on a practice-level. With a couple hundred people or so.

Imagine That! Rumors of a Mighty Boosh Movie

Okay dear anglophiles… yes, the Muvika! blog is reserved for posts about movies. But, rumors of The Mighty Boosh finally making it to the big screen in the next two years, gives license to discuss the television show here… even if the status of the movie at this point is unclear to the point of making it little more than a vague rumor.

It’s not just any show, which is why I’ll take this stretch of liberty. The Mighty Boosh is one of the funniest and most original British sitcoms in the BBC catalog in at least the last five years. And, that’s a tough claim to attempt to defend, considering that the competition these days include the wonderfully written League of Gentlemen, Spaced, Black Books, Peep Show, the inter-related Garth Merenghi’s Dark Place and IT Crowd, and even the redundant sketch comedy of Little Britain and Catherine Tate.  But, while every one of these shows (and others I haven’t mentioned) puts nearly every bit of American sitcoms of the last decade to utter shame–except for the intermittent genius in shows like Seinfeld, Arrested Development, and 30 Rock–few have attained more than cult status among American television consumers (unless introduced to wider audiences redressed as a tame American version of its more daring British source). These are the brilliant secrets that, until they ever achieve that transition into a region code suitable for DVD players in the United States, must often be enjoyed in fragmented bootlegs. To that I’ll say thank goodness for YouTube… but, damn the copyright police!

At least in the realm of network television, BBC offerings expose the limitations of American sitcoms. The BBC sitcoms aren’t “daring” just because the British allow fewer restrictions on language and sexual content. But that most American sitcoms, bound by the hollow FCC restrictions on language, indulge sexual innuendo to an overly compensatory extreme.  Maybe a writer for American television can get away with slipping in the words “dog penis” more than twice, but this is basically what has come to embody the definition of “risque.” Despite the supposed history of more daring content in American television in the last twenty or thirty years (especially anything with Bea Arthur attached), the bulk of American sitcoms today are predictable and watered down, an observation was recently made in an episode of 30 Rock. (Imagine being subject to hours of episodes of The Big Bang Theory). By contrast, the BBC has nurtured shows that experimented with the traditional notions of sitcom construction. League of Gentlemen completely destroyed the paradigm in terms of consistency of characters throughout the life of a series, and, along with Little Britain and Catherine Tate dedicated a significant part of the budget to costume and effects. Even the more familiar Extras, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant following the success of their previous sitcom, The Office, offered criticism of its own industry’s obsession with celebrity and spectacle–albeit in a sort of defeatist soapbox manner.

The brilliance of modern British sitcom has been injected into the American lineup in another form: Americanized versions. The most obvious example is The Office, although in Americanizing the show, the emphasis has shifted to its comedic ploy of heightened awareness and awkward situations taken to an extreme, while omitting the social and political commentary regarding the drudgery of the office life. HBO recently bought the BBC comedy Little Britain, pumping money into the show and now having it filmed live on location. Most recently,  NBC was to have an American version of The IT Crowd, but thankfully the project was scrapped before a pilot even aired, although the Independent Film Channel (IFC) had talked about picking up the project. And in November of 2008, MTV2 discussed the development of  a Boosh spin-off.

The Mighty Boosh originated from the stand-up performances of Noel Felding and Julian Barratt. Before the irreverent adventures of the Zooniverse aired on television for three series (British sitcoms typically run shorter terms than do American ones and are referred to as “series” rather than “seasons”) beginning in 2004, it was performed as a live stage show (and still is, touring in festivals in Europe), and later, as a BBC radio program. Described as a surrealist comedy and increasingly more so as it reached a third series, the show was something obviously targeted for younger, hipper audiences. Most of the episodes retained that theatrical look to it, especially in fantasy scenes which depended more on costume, color and lighting for effect.

More accurately, The Mighty Boosh is a surreal musical comedy. Like Cheech & Chong did in their stand-up and later, in their movies, the Boosh cast (and primarily, Barratt and Felding) wrote and performed an array of hilarious and relevant new wave tracks to highlight their situations, with the duo establishing a trademark for crimping.

At least for American viewers not really yet exposed to revolutions occurring in British sitcoms, this violated the assumption of most British sitcoms being very dated and mildly funny shows surrounding proper English folk, something influenced by the handful of shows like Are You Being Served and Keeping Up Appearances which continue to run on PBS, the poor Yanks outlet of the cultural products (outside of films) coming from the Motherland.

BBC’s uniqueness, too, is the luxury of situational comedy whereas the American sitcom settings tend to be very limiting, centering around the interactions and relationships of family and close-knit friends, the primary setting typically being someone’s home. Originally, The Mighty Boosh took place in a zoo (the Zooniverse) where the ambitious traditionalist, Howard Moon (Barratt) and his charmingly dim-witted Mod friend, Vince Noir (Felding) worked as zoo keepers. And it was usually Howard envisioning himself the revered hero of every occasion that got them both in trouble. Secondary characters include Dixon Bainbridge (originally the IT Crowd’s Richard Ayoade), Bob Fossil, the wry shaman Naboo (played by Noel’s brother Michael, who was the inspiration for the show’s name), his faithful gorilla companion, Bollo, and the Hitcher, a regular, rhyming semi-nemesis. As the series aged, the setting changed to Howard and Vince sharing a flat with Naboo and Bollo in second season, and then, steered into the really surreal with Howard and Vince working in Naboo’s second-hand shop.

BBC Films has expressed their interest in producing a Boosh movie, but there has never been a firm date set because the order of projects for the Boosh team at this point is unclear. They intend to tour the live stage show (which has been solidly booked in venues around Eastern Europe for the last few months), but afterwards, expect to take a break and then resume with either a fourt series or the film. Whatever the next move, nothing is likely to be ready by 2010. Get started catching up on the episodes, my fellow Americans.

*Thanks to J. Rushton & Co. for introducing me to the show.

March of the Indie Kids: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist generated buzzing interest prior to its theatrical release in early October. But, as a film where most all of the positive reviews could offer little more than descriptions as a “sweet little movie,” it’s destined for cult status upon DVD release.

The failure to make much of an impression isn’t all that surprising. Adapted from Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s pop novel, the anti-climatic plot centers on a handful of bland, interconnected teenage indie music fans who spend a Friday night traversing Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Village to fend off obnoxious ex’s, flesh out potential new relationships, track down a missing drunk friend, and find clues to a secret show hosted by their favorite band. All of it is very reminiscent of young, night-out vignette relationship comedies like 200 Cigarettes and Detroit Rock City. But where Nick & Norah lures admirers with innocent charm, it becomes persistently (and annoyingly) unimposing. This is “indie” personified.

With playful lettering doting about the opening credits, or the casting of Michael Cera as the leading character, Nick, or filling the soundtrack with popular indie bands, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist might elicit expectations that this is something obsessed with being quirky like Juno or willing to trump substance entirely for the sake of novelty like Napoleon Dynamite. Aside from Nick’s unique mode of transportation – one of the last functioning Hugos, a queer-core band called The Jerk Offs, and a running gag involving chewing gum, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist gives its characters and settings a genuine and sincere focus, but to the extent that it becomes about as “slice of life” as you can get… well, except for Norah’s family ties to the music industry.

The movie begins with the typical exaggerated teenage dramas. Heartbroken Nick (portrayed in Michael Cera’s typical soft-spoken, down-to-earth manner) takes the day off from school to busy himself with making a mix CD for the insensitive Tris (Alexis Denzia, who makes a more believable as a Romanian Olympic gymnast than a high school student), the girl who broke up with him on his birthday. His friends, with whom he plays in The Jerk Offs, encourage their depressed mate to get out of the house and join them for the gig they’re playing in the city (curiously, they’re headlining for Bishop Allen).

Elsewhere at a posh private school, Tris tells a gaggle of gossipy classmates that she’s glad she and Nick finally broke up as she tosses into the trash yet another mix CD he’d given her. It’s the typical situation of the decent guy temporarily clouded by the insincere girl. Norah (Kat Dennings) rescues the CD from the trash, as she’s done before. She’s Tris’s classmate and also her opposite. She doesn’t know Nick, but she’s a fan of his mix CDs, noting that he doesn’t just carefully select a playlist, but creates the artwork for the sleeve, too. Obviously, Tris just never “got it”.

Nick and Norah: innocuously adorable smart kids with a musical kinship who are clearly perfect for each other.

The young cast of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist are are unsupervised, vintage-clad, self-conscious, occassionally profound, and randomly adventurous. And they share a Friday night we’ve all had at that age: vague plans with friends and no particular need to remain stationary. Hell, the aimless wandering and haphazzard interaction still occurs for the unsettled drinking-age crowd living in the city. And for the curiously nomadic, the possibilities are endless in New York City. Though, it’s funny how much gas these particular friends blow driving all over Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Village, or how they always manage to find a parking space right in front of their destination.

But, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist deserves praise for reviving a seemingly dead sub-genre of teen films: music as a quintissential role in youth socialization (not to sound so academic about it). This is a sub-genre distinct from the urban teen movies that have emerged in the last ten years, as the vicarious thrill of breakdancing showdowns or the epic drum cadence take on music in a more concrete, rather than abstract political and expressive form or, more simply, that understanding of “better living through music.”

Early on, it was rock n’ roll (American Grafitti, I Wanna Hold Your Hand) that embodied the youngster’s principals, ambitions and rebellion and, for most teen films (exceptions being movies like House Party), it has been variations of rock n’ roll ever since (Quadrophenia, American Pop, Suburbia, Empire Records, 200 Cigarettes). Indie music is the latest epoch of rock music (derivative as it is), one guided by a new generation of music-makers and fans quite different from the cigarettes-and-leather generations before them. It may seem tamer by comparison, but indie music embraces themes of the inward and emotional, the sentiment (even Juno did the same, with it’s Moldy Peaches/Kimya Dawson-filled soundtrack). Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist’s own playlist includes the likes of the more well-known: Band of Horses, Ratatat, We Are Scientists, Tapes N’ Tapes, The Ravonettes, Vampire Weekend, Modest Mouse, and Bishop Allen, who also make a cameo appearance, among others.

Indie, in its somber form, shares a devotion to the internal with the last major epoch of rock: Grunge (although only to some extent, since Grunge itself still had ties to the politics of punk). But, where indie does avoid indulging quirky novelty, it seems to remain so dreadfully subtle. The marching feet fade into whimpers.

Emotional Rescue: Fearless

In 1990, an Emory graduate and DC-metro native named Chris McCandless donated his entire savings to OXFAM, gave away his belongings, burned in car in a field out West, and eventually kept less contact with his family before ceasing communication altogether. In that time, he had traveled up and down the Western United States by foot, by boat, hitchhiking, motivated by a neo-Walden (maybe more neo-Rousseau) desire to experience life as the most purest form of Man in a world that seemed to him riddled with absurd baggage that had corrupted Man’s most basic civility.

It had been done before, even long after Thoreau penned Walden. A trend of young men from well-off families who had backgrounds similar to McCandless: intelligent, good students, accomplished atheletes. Chris’s parents owned a business and lived in the suburbs. These modern day adventurers would eventually resign to the wildnerness, and it was often a failure to really prepare for it that lead to early deaths. McCandless, at the age of 24, died only two years after resolving to indulge this indefinite primitive experiment, surviving 112 days in the Alaskan wildnerness until he was poisoned by a variety of plant he’d eaten. His story was retold in Jon Krakauer’s article for a 1993 issue of Outside, “Death of an Innocent,” before being turned into Into the Wild, a book that included Krakauer’s own experiences in the wilderness, and most recently, adapted for film by director Sean Penn.

Critical reactions to McCandless’s story and those of his predecessors tend to miss the point of their voluntary transformation: it was an act of escape. By contrast, any willingness to accept these absurdities otherwise, were baffling to them; something like Fight Club, but without an excessive (and violent) catharsis. The simplest example of this point is when McCandless wanted to raft down the Colorado River and was told, he’d first have to get a permit. Before he was issued anything, however, he’d have to put his name on a waiting list. Reservations for requested permits already filled the next twelve years. McCandless, in stunned disbelief asks, “12 years – to paddle down a river?!”

But, McCandless and his fellow escapists also had to go to great lengths to satisfy their separation from the world they’d view as alienating and corrupt, wandering far into the fringes of the last bits of siolated, American wilderness. McCandless made that journey nearly 20 years ago.

One of the characters in Charles Williams’ suspense 1962 novel, Dead Calm, later adapted twice for film (the first being an unfinished Orson Welles picture), suggests that there is no idyllic setting to retreat to anymore. The young painter who wants to go to Polypenisia to live like Gaugin once did won’t find what he’s looking for, this particular character reasoned. “In the first place, there’s no escape from our so-called civilization anymore; the twenties century is something we’re locked into and there’s no way we can get out; when we got to Papeete we’d probably find the same jukeboxes, the same headlines, the same cocktail parties, the same jet service from here to there, the same Bomb, and the same exhorations to embrace the finer life by buying something.”

If trivialities conquer the universe, the only escape then, is within yourself, something Tyler Durden most poignantly demonstrated in Fight Club; his philosophy simply being “just let go”. In 1993, director Peter Weir’s Fearless was released. It was more of what might be thought of as an independent drama by today’s standards, one devling into philosophical debate rather than typical hum-drum narrative. More importantly, it offers a different view of escapism in the modern, 20th century-saturated world.

Adapted from Rafael Yglesias’s novel, it stars Jeff Bridges as Max Klein, a plane crash survivor. This is how the movie immediately begins and we see Klein, deftly nervous about flying while his colleague assures him that everything will be just fine. Klein appears dazed amidst the wreckage, but looks to help others who were aboard the plane. His behavior seems almost matter-of-fact, and instead of notifying his wife and son of his survival, he instead checks into a hotel and visits an old friend before police come knocking on his door, having finally found him. But in those few days since the wreck, he had entered a strange new plane of invincibility. And in his disappearance, a sort of escape. He became invisible to his world and sort of wandered through it like a living ghost, no longer burdened or afraid of anything. (In one scene he closes his eyes while driving on the interstate and allows the car to veer as it may while he presses the accelerator to the floor). The film does an amazing job of taking demonstrating that abstract for the viewer, to see the world as Klein does before and after the crash.

While he manages to transcend the limitations of his previous life, it’s something that his wife and others around him don’t seem to understand. And the local news crews that constantly hound him, parade him as the 6 o’clock headline hero. John Turtorro plays Bill Perlman, a psychiatrist hired by the airline to console the survivors, but the ones he can’t seem to connect with are Max and the seriously depressed Carla Rodrigo (Rosie Perez, earning a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for this role), who blames herself for her infant’s death when the plane crashed. Max, who views most everyone around him reacting to the crash (the lawyer, the media, Carla’s husband, etc.) as selfish and instead, he befriends Carla and helps her with her emotional recovery, trying to reveal to her the same change he had undergone: that she has to start letting go. Her child’s death isn’t something she can change, nor should she blame herself for.

As Max and Carla become closer friends, he draws further away from his wife, Laura (Isabella Rossellini) who doesn’t understand the lasting personality change in her husband, and further becomes frustrated when he tells her that she didn’t really understand what he had gone through when they crashed, nor that she ever could. How could he go back to what he had escaped, or what would it take for her to reach that unbound reality, too, especially where it took drastic means to transform Klein.

(The video clip above is a fan video montage using scenes from Fearless. Song: “Excess” by Tricky.)

Pressed Against the Looking Glass: Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading arrived in theaters this month with tremendous skepticism. Could Joel and Ethan Coen follow with another film to match their 2007 Best Picture adaptation, No Country for Old Men? One review immediately suggested that the writing and directing team made their first mistake by reverting back to their “default” genre: comedy.

The Coen brothers didn’t fail audiences with reversion to a comfortable genre, one in which, with their trademark fashioning of humorously idiosyncratic settings and characters has already proven successful. Were critics going to suggest that, because of the strength of No Country For Old Men, the Coen brothers should basically make the same movie again. That is… until of course, getting backlash from critics that they’re being redundant? (The brothers alternated between penning the scripts for this and No Country. This is their first original screenplay since their 1990 film, Miller’s Crossing).

More specifically, the Coen brothers return to write and direct a black comedy. And it’s always been a suitable genre, considering their choice of subjects – the persistent theme of Karma’s watchful eye. Although, comedies or not, it is common in most all of their films. In fact, Burn After Reading is like a funny take on Stanley Kubrick’s classic noir, The Killing (and maybe the draw on classic noir was a conscious one, given the retro style of the promotional materials). There is a dramatic shortage of redeeming characters on screen, and since this is a mainstream American production, their fate is pretty clear.

Set in Washington, DC (some of the movie was filmed in New York, and most in Brooklyn Heights, although there are several apparent scenes shot around the Georgetown University neighborhood), the film opens with the demotion of a high-strung, aging CIA Agent (John Malkovich, for whom the part was initially written for) who struggles to resist the fact that basically, in both professional and personal life, he is now irrelevant. His wife (played emotionally elusively by Tilda Swinton), impatient with her husband’s transition to shiftless layabout, weighs divorce. Her lawyer suggests that, while the two should try to reconcile, a picture of his future financial prospects should be a relevant factor in the ultimate decision. Crass as it may sound, marriage seems like a mere necessity for security, considering she’s having an affair with their friend’s husband (George Clooney) who himself is a hobbiest of womanizing.

The bone to pick about the movie is really execution. The initial unraveling of the tale begins with what feels like a disconnected vignette, that for a little too long, remains unexplained in its relevance to the rest of this narrative playing out among the vile, upper class narcissists (although we find no class exception to anyone’s self-involvement).

So begins a scene in which a dim-witted, self-conscious fitness gym employee (Frances McDormand, Joel Coen’s wife) is being consulted by a doctor about various nip-and-tuck procedures to hide some of her aging body. It is, she claims, necessary to her job and her ticket out of the single life. Denied by her insurance company coverage for cosmetic surgery, her silver lining comes along when her dufus Hardbodies coworker (Brad Pitt, perhaps in his loosest form for a change) thinks a CD discovered at the gym has some valuable top secret information. And after a little digging, they figure out who it belongs to and so begins a blackmail scheme that was trouble from the start. Despite the initial disconnect between the stories, eventually linked by the discovery of that CD, it is clear that the first part was just much too serious. This pair of idiotic, scheming Hardbodies coworkers are just the kind of odd-ball comic relief the audience needs. It’s this kind of idiocy and assumptions, fueled by unrelenting personal desire, that feeds comedies like these (see Guy Ritchies gangster follies, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch).

But of course, the Coen Brothers, even in comedy, never offer pure cartoonish humor. There is violence and there are body counts. And this is no different, and to a more graphic extent this time around. These handful of characters are eventually confined to a narrower playground, and once they are, their interaction becomes a concentration of self-destruction that barely poses much lasting impact on the rest of the world when all is said and done, which makes things in the end seem even more alienated because, the self-involvement lasts beyond just these characters that seek our attention. The more disturbing feeling, however, springs from a sense that the nihilism is far from fiction.

Burn After Reading is a sharp look at stupidity. Despite some initial poor reviews, Coen brother fans shouldn’t be too disappointed with the results. It is probably not likely to gain the cult following of their earlier comedies like Raising Arizona, O! Brother Where Art Thou? or The Big Lebowski, but it’s probably also not likely to fall into complete obscurity like Intolerable Cruelty).

Closing this review with a nugget of trivia: the contraption that Clooney’s character builds in his basement was inspired by both an invention of a key grip and something out of the Museum of Sex in New York City.

Infantania: Baby Mama

(Warning: this post contains spoilers).

On the Internet Movie Databse, one commentato’r’s review title suggests that Baby Mama (2008 ) is the perfect Anti-Apatow movie. That’s not quite an accurate description. Even at the end of Knocked Up, once-reluctant parents drive off with baby at their side, ready to welcome the challenges and pleasures of parenthood (and cue the music!)

But, the difference between the two movies is that in Baby Mama, it’s there from the start. Tina Fey plays Kate Holbrook. A 37 year-old, single, corporate success who tries desperately to obey the slowing tick of her biological clock. She’s succumbed to an obsession where everything reminds her of babies. But, she learns that her physiology may prevent her from getting pregnant, and this leads to alternatives like in vitro fertilization, sperm donors, and adoption before finally settling on a surrogate mother service run by a women (Sigourney Weaver) who can’t seem to stop having babies.

Assured that the service’s screening process is rigorous enough to find the perfect surrogate mother in every way, Kate instead finds herself contractually bound to a clean version of Philly’s answer to white trash. Fellow Saturday Night Live veteran Amy Poehler plays Angie Ostrowiski, the ostentatious candidate, although as the female co-star of a moralistic semi-drama, she’s obligated to be less crude, and eventually more aware that her idiotic common law husband, Carl, played by Dax Shepard. When Angie breaks up with Carl, she winds up moving in with paranoid and prim future mom, Kate, making the new roommates the female odd couple.

Eventually, the two have to learn to adjust to each other, despite Kate’s attempts to quickly reform irresponsible Angie to her liking such as forcing her to purge her poor eating habits. Although, Angie too, tries to get Kate to simply ease her own conservative stubbornness, for example, by taking her clubbing. Aww… they’re just like sisters!

With their increasing compatibility, Kate Holbrook might finally get what she desires most – the joy of raising a child. But of course, viewers should be raising their too-good-to-be-true flags even in a Rob Reiner-esque Perfect White World like this. Something is going to go wrong.

In a scheme hatched by Carl, he and Angie pretend that she’ pregnant in order to collect on checks. But karma comes back to bite them, and Angie is in for a big surprise herself.

Oh yeah… more babies!

The criticisms of this film have a common thread among them – casting the “envelop-pushing” Fey and Poehler in the leading roles attached an expectation that Baby Mama would be a display of similarly outrageous satire. It wasn’t. In fact this movie seemed more suitable for the likes of Cameron Diaz and Kate Hudson.

Saturday Night Live writer, Michael McCullers, steered painstakingly towards conventional romantic comedy and even coalesces on moral grounds. To begin with, Angie and Carl are, with few exceptions, innocuously trashy. And of course, everyone finds redemption in… you guessed it… parenthood. Sure Kate may have jumped into bed with the charming neighborhood juice bar owner (Greg Kinnear) on the first date, but it’s okay, because not only will she eventually discover she is, at last, pregnant(!), and of course, there’s hint that it’s going to be legitimated with a ring. Her love interest too, a former corporate lawyer, is father to a 12 year old he visits on the weekend. Meanwhile, Angie and Carl will be forced towards the path of at least some responsibility when Angie learns that in fact, she’s pregnant too. And the doorman to Kate’s luxury apartment building (the token black character here), who once explaining the meaning of “Baby Mama,” drawing on his own experience of having two, also eventually embraces perfect parenting. It is not surprising then to end the movie like Ron Howard’s saccharine and pastel perfect Parenthood ending, where it’s babies abound.

Honestly, are women just getting pregnant from the water?

Even Judd Apatow’s version of the rites of passage tolerated certain perpetual parental doubt and fear and above all, limited it’s baby count. Apatow isn’t really an opposite extreme, but if anything, it drains the overzealous realities of Baby Mama.

Now to go finish my copy of Alternadad.

Strange New World – Wristcutters: A Love Story

“Miracles only happen when they don’t matter.”

The hook of Wristcutters: A Love Story, adapted from Etgar Keret’s short story, “Kneller’s Happy Campers” is most certainly its premise. A contribution to the surrealistic road trip genre, it centers on an entirely different afterlife. The place where people exist after they “off themselves.” Our main character, somewhat, is Zia (Patrick Fugit). He was once a happy man, until somehow the relationship with his beautiful blond girlfriend, Desiree ended. And that’s when Zia decides to kill himself.

Welcome to this strange kind of post-suicidal universe, it looks to have been shot along the desert-lined highways out West, it looks as though these are perfectly regular locations, but given the coloring (often bleached or grayed) and appearance of the surroundings, there is something hopelessly depressing. Allowed closer inspection, it is clearly a depleted version of the world they’d once known. (Says the lead character, Zia: “I thought about suicide again, but I’m afraid I’ll just wind up someplace worse than this.”) Buildings are mostly junked abandons. People (who’s method of suicide is sometimes apparent) can’t even smile. The female companion on this roadtrip, Mikal is on a mission to find the “leaders” and explain that her arrival was an accident: “Are you joking? Do you guys like it here? Who the hell likes being stuck in a place where you can’t even smile? It’s hot as balls, everybody’s an asshole. I just wanna go home. ” There’s elements of the former world as well, such as the enforcement of vandalism laws. Or having to get a job and pay rent. It’s also kind of futuristic (in that post-apocalyptic sense) and this universe even has it’s charms and magic, so it’s not completely undesirable. People are reminded of suicide here, their own and others, but do they ever regret it? The characters simple seem so matter-of-fact about it’s occurrence.

When Zia runs into a familiar face (don’t it just seem like everyone is committing suicide after a while… time to revive Big Fun!), he learns that Desiree, distraught over her boyfriend’s death, killed herself too, and that she is somewhere to be found in his world now. He solicits the companionship of his friend, Eugene (Shea Whigham, a Florida doing a good job playing a Russian), a guy who’s whole immediately family wound up there with him, and Eugene, who has the car, agrees to embark “Eastish” in search of this girl. He is somewhat his wisdom, somewhat his source of confusion, especially with Eugene’s philosophies tied to his nature of trying to always be the Man’s man.

As the road trip genre obligates, they’re journey intersects with a lot of strange characters and one more for the trip: Mikhal (Shannyn Sossamon), the one who claims she got there by accident and is hitchhiking her way around in search of the leaders to explain that it was a mistake, something that might convince the reader they’re about to head into something more like liabilities as a result of typos (Brazil). Croatian writer and director Goran Dukic, who’s film credits mostly include shorts, did a lot of adding to Keret’s short story. Like the black hole in the car, for example, to emphasize the surrealism of the after-life, though larger ambitions were restricted by the shooting budget and an inflexible 30-day shooting schedule at 17 locations. And while Dukic was working with several well known actors, including Will Arnett who seems like he’d be totally out of his expected element if this weren’t black comedy, Patrick Fugit, John Hawkes, and Tom Waits, it’s funny to hear what inspired his cast selection: he really thought they were good in movies that pretty much everyone has seen. And Tom Waits? “I’d been listening to him since I was a little kid.” Which might hint that they worked for incredibly little money to appear in this movie, which seems inevitable for a movie with such intense low-budget quirk.

Thankfully, despite that low-budget quirk, it’s spared the typical “quirky indie” paint with childish block lettering and bold colors and excessive irony. Instead, Wristcutters is fairly steady black comedy (fairly stead because there’s this weird experiment involving Will Arnett’s guru-type character) that brings it closer to surreal road trip movies (a mishmash of activity and points of focus) and it even has a happy ending. Add to that a soundtrack dominated by rock singers who had committed suicide at one time, and the modern gypsy-punk of Golgol Bordello (the lead singer of which, Eugene Hutz, is modeled upon for the character, Eugene), the movie rarely seeks convention and for that reason, can take it’s viewers just about anyone it wants in this strange new world.

Weedsploitation With A Body Count: Pineapple Express

The movie, it seemed, to generate nearly as much attention as the latest Batman installment during the summer Blockbuster season, was the 2008 stoner comedy, Pineapple Express. Although this week it’s changed: Tropic Thunder appropriately bumped Batman from the number one box office rankings. The writing team of course includes Judd Apatow (who also produces), Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg–with a script actually being shopped seven years ago–and this gave director David Gordon Green a chance to move from his typically solemn, low-budget indie films to one of the pinnacles of the mainstream summer movie fare: outrageous idiocy.

The Apatow-Rogen movies are a niche that, as Rogen once put, was meant to center around characters that were more like people like them: imperfect. And, in the case of Superbad, for example, it cheered for the socially awkward and turned the well-meaning loser into a desirable hero. Rogen’s declaration of purpose came as an appropriate reaction to the lumping of both his films and shows like Beverley Hills: 90210 into similar genres. “No part of me watched 90210 and thought, ‘Yeah! that’s what my life is like!’ It seemed like a different planet. I mean, I like shitty movies as much as the next guy, I’m not a snob, but things like that had no guys like us in it – that was the point.” Unfortunately, it has also created a world in which these heroes have very little variation. Seth Rogen’s characters — usually the leading character — is always Seth Rogen the same way Hugh Grant is always the same Hugh Grant and Adam Sandler is always the same Adam Sandler in pretty much every role they appear. And, when it wasn’t Rogen playing these main characters, guys like Michael Cera and Jonah Hill were playing those limited-dimension characters: misunderstood nice guys. And it’s always guys at the forefront who become reluctantly intertwined in the outrageous epic, which would make it interesting should someone decide to take this further and give females the leading role. The misunderstood nice guy is one thing to root for, but the hapless girl (and not in the creepy Welcome to the Dollhouse sense of it, either)?

Rogen plays moppish, easy-going process server Dale Denton. And, abandoning his typical clean-cut and straight-laced characters of late, James Franco, plays his eternally stoned and happy-go-lucky dealer, Saul Silver, who offers to Dale, the most potent and extremely rare marijuana ever known: Pineapple Express. Says Saul of the wonder weed: “It’s like, if you took that Blue Oyster shit I gave you last week, and then that crazy Afghan Kush I had that one time.. and they had a baby. And then meanwhile, that crazy Northern Lights shit I had, and that Red Espresso Snowflake shit I had, made a baby. And by some crazy miracle, those two babies met, and fucked… this would be it!” While actually a meteorological term, the title phrase refers to an abandoned experiment by the US military in 1937 to study the effects of marijuana. Unhappy with the results at the underground lab out West, an irate commander picks up the phone to notify his superiors that marijuana has been ruled… “Illegal!”

While attempting to serve papers to the last person on his list that same evening, he witnesses an execution-style murder involving a powerful “drug lord” (the maliciousness of the term mitigated by the sense that Jones comes off more like an indifferent California billionaire type), a crooked cop (Rosie Perez), and possibly a rival drug dealer. He may been able to flee the scene without anyone ever knowing Dale was there. But, panicked, he tosses his weed out the window, throws the car in gear, and takes considerable time even pulling away from the curb, ramming the cars in front and behind him. While the executioner pair see the car abscond into the night before they could make out who was driving, it is the rare Pineapple Express that is the scent the hounds follow.

For some reason, freaked-out Dale can only think of going back to Saul and, in explaining what he saw, Saul makes the connection that not only is Dale in deep shit, but so is he. Not many degrees of separation from drug lord Ted Jones, Saul is the only one privileged by his own supplier to sell Pineapple Express. Already busying themselves with trying to rid the Asian competition (which includes a cameo by stand-up comedian, Bobby Lee, who should’ve been given a more substantial part), Ted Jones and the policewoman now have to deal with getting rid of Dale and Saul.

Thus, the chase begins…

Other stoner comedy teams who are inadvertently implicated in chases with either cops (Cheech & Chong’s Up In Smoke and Nice Dreams) or drug dealers (Half Baked) exist in a setting of cartoonish violence. Pineapple Express, on the other hand, attempts to fuse its situational comedy (with a zillion great one-liners) with true action elements (especially with a 3 minute fight scene between Dale, Saul and Red (Danny McBride) that is likely to get an MTV Video Awards “Best Fight” nomination), and this is evident from the promotional poster itself with the trio of stoners and dealers (the one in the neckbrace being the impenetrable Red, who is Saul’s supplier) looking dubious but well armed. Most assuredly: this is weedsploitation comedy with a body count.

With a movie that struggles to get off the ground in the beginning (reminding the sober audience just how painfully boring and juvenile a 5-minute conversation between sufficiently stoned friends can be), it manages to keep a satisfying pace throughout until the epic finale, when the drive to be the grand action film showdown trumps — with plenty of blood, guts and snot — to the point of being overdone, if not just short on enough material to accommodate the time alloted. The writing team also consumed itself with mockery of the Buddy genre, equipped with an abundance of pretty blunt gay jokes (Red to Saul and Dale: “I want to be inside you, homes!”) that culminates into a reflexive recapping by the ailing heroes in a diner.

Ignoring the flaws, Rogen, Goldberg, Apatow score an expected hit riddled with hilarious idiotic characters and crude comedy (even Ed Beagly, Jr. gets to let loose as the short-fused father of Dale’s teenage girlfriend), enough to get even the more skeptical viewer rolling in the floor especially for the sheer odd choice of dialog like Red admitting that he shaved his armpits in order to be more aerodynamic in a fight, or the fueding henchman (perhaps the best secondary character is Craig Robinson’s 80s throwback, Matheson) who mourns the lost of his partner’s ferociousness. He knows this… he’s “Seen’t it!” And as Rogen and Franco reunite, they portray characters very reminiscent (but much more happy-go-lucky) of the McKinley High School students Ken Miller and Daniel Desario — The Freaks — in Appatow’s (and other’s) 1990 television dramedy, Freaks & Geeks. If Rogen’s character were as pleasantly distracted as Saul (Dale has some annoying moments because he’s too level-headed about some things), they’d be a duo worth matching other purely outrageous weedsploitation comedies like Cheech & Chong and the guys from Half Baked. And in that event, maybe a duo worthy of episodic adventure.

How Much the Burden: Stop-Loss

Perhaps it’s first worth noting that 2008’s Stop-Loss, which although timely (and passed quietly), is directed by a woman: Boys Don’t Cry director, Kimberly Peirce (who co-wrote with Mark Richard). Immediately, in that post-9/11 mentality when it comes to Hollywood addressing warfare (although, technically, as a Bad Robot production, it’s not a mainstream picture), the opinions polarize as “with us” or “against us”.

‘Stop-Loss’ follows decorated US Army Seargent Brandon King (Ryan Phillipe) who goes AWOL after being stop-lossed (meaning military service is indefinitely extended by the contracted term by the authority of an executive decision from Bush) for another 15-month tour in Iraq. The film is no doubt clear in its position on the invasion of Iraq, and as King describes, he enlisted in the military in the hopes of protecting his country, but fighting on the front lines in Iraq, realizes that it has become an unnecessary quagmire fueled by the simple desire for retaliation of 9/11. This, furthered, by the teeth-grinding level of frustration that those in Washington who administer the war, are so far from removed to even properly consider the realities of not just foreign policy decisions, but more specifically the life of the solider, even beyond the subject of stop-loss. That beyond simply the honor and pride of military service, those in combat also wrestle with the consequences of death and injury, of bureacracy, of family and friendship, mental illness, and obviously much more.

King returns home to small-town Texas with two of the troops he served with in Iraq. One of them — Steve (Channing Tatum) — is certain that a military career is inevitably his destiny, although he fails to consider the impact on his finacee, Michelle (played by Australian native, Abby Cornish) who is certain she is not strong enough for the accompanying destiny of being a military wife. “I can’t go another year without touching his face,” she admits to King. Tommy (Joseph Gordon Levitt), perhaps the most cocky of the squad, soon turns juvenile mistakes into bigger detriment, risking his marriage and career of military service. And, a survivor of the ambush they faced in Iraq before shipping back, Rico (Victor Rasuk), is now a blinded and scarred amputee recovering in Walter Reed Hospital.

Most simply but quite loudly, Stop-Loss asks how much of a burden one person should be asked to carry. There is the habit to unquestionably grant the title of “Hero” to anyone who has served in the military, and whether or not this is appropriate, by doing so, we attach a requirement that they carry the burdens, no matter how many there are to bare. In Stop-Loss, Brandon King’s reluctance to return to Iraq is largely because, due to his rank, he has seen many of his troops killed in battle, and does not want to be responsible for the deaths of any more. “I’m tired of the killing,” he explains. That he would have to give up another 15 months of his life living in the battle zone is the least of his worries. Though this is another “War is Hell” theme, Kings’s concern is much greater and done with at least some level of honesty in that, he doesn’t express the regrets the death of the Iraqi’s, but of his own men. It is a very real dissection of the US soldier. Why must he be expected to shoulder such an incredible burden just because he wears a military uniform? This is perhaps the most reticent question of ‘Stop-Loss’ and one that we rarely consider because discussion of Iraq is almost never viewed in human terms on any level. None of it made real enough for the considerations and discussions of people who experience this only through the filters so many miles and coasts away.

The Kid Stays in the Picture: Son of Rambow

Dweebcentric apologizes in advance for any lack of coherence in this post… I’m trying to post very old drafts and write them while getting distracted at a conference…

The English (along with the Australians) are Masters of the feel-good comedy, keen to tolerable amounts of family-palatable material and evasive of the over-compensatory crudeness relied on by American filmmakers. The opening sequence of Son of Rambow (2007)–which marks a change in the typically grim selections of distributor Paramount’s Vantage Films–follows pre-teen misfit Lee Carter (played remarkably naturally by Will Poulter) racing down the roads of his early 1980s English countryside neighborhood with a backpack containing freshly recorded bootlegs of First Blood (1982). The accompanying music and comical additives (Carter throws something over a hedge at a man standing on a ladder in his yard) might entice American audiences into that Rob Reiner-esque conditioning of near-impeccable adolescence input near-impeccable families and near-impeccable suburban homes. You could almost see adorable Mason Gamble peddling his training wheels-supported bike and loud, rattling red wagon attachment in the beginning of Dennis the Menace (1993). But then the English suddenly remind us, as Lee Carter films his bootleg in the dark theater with a cigarette in his free hand, that these are, to a certain extent (well… it is still a world established by the imagination of filmmakers and production hogs), real kids. They neither need look perfect nor behave perfectly. The carefully cut previews hint at their epic adventures that eventually consume the whole town and if the circumstances are right, the empathetic viewer.

At the center of writer/director Garth Jennings‘ Son of Rambow (look for connections to the Spaced (1999) crew) are the mismatched pairing of eventual friends. At one extreme is Lee Carter (Will Poulter) who shares a his estranged step-father’s lavish home attached to a nursing home with his obnoxious, materialistic older brother Lawrence. Carter is witty, cynical and best of all, daring, all of which may be natural consequences of indulging a childhood with minimal parental supervision. And, it’s quite different from his newfound friend, Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), the typically awkward, bashful and imaginative loner, alienated from the other schoolchildren because of his strict religious upbringing. For some reason, the English and the Irish can’t seem to avoid this impetus in tales of unlikely young friends. Previous examples being ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ in which a soccer enthusaist’s placement on an official girl’s team was frowned upon by her overprotective parents, who worried of its impact on their Hindi identity. Will and Lee embody that kind of loveable young mischief in making their movie, and in a sense it is an epic unfolding as the boys (but mostly Will, who becomes a sort of celebrity) recruit and pique the interest of other students in their school–though tarnishing Lee’s original vision for their movie–and the fact that his mother (Jessica Hynes, who plays roommate Daisy in Spaced) and the curious instigator/parental ally Brother Joshua (Neil Dudgeon) interfere are quite unreasonable. ’Son of Rambow’ is a celebration of harmless, unrestrained adolescence, something that seems to have gotten lost in American films; their subjects seem to lack any kind of real authenticity. They are portrayed in extremes – either impecably wholesome, incredibly dumb, or, purely apathetic (and I’d like to take issue with Gus Van Sant’s recent slew of teen-themed movies at some point in this blog) In a review of the 1987 film, The Monster Squad, Missy, of RetroJunk.com begins the introduction by correctly noting that it had what kids movies aren’t allowed to have these days… cursing, political incorrectness, smoking, and Scary German Guys. ‘Son of Rambow’ manages to maintain the authenticity, even in Will, who’s mother seemed to suggest that childhood is a moral fray that one must eventually abandon. How frustrating to believe that this abandon is necessary for a wholesome life. Audiences seemed to revel in the most delight when the young characters were fully permitted to be exactly that – children.