Clash of the Trailer.

I'm a big fan of 1981's "Clash of the Titans", I grew up on its strange combination of legendary actors playing gods (talk about a not so subtle comparison) and the divine work of Ray Harryhausen.
So naturally I'm very excited about this new version, I have my reservations of course, which with the trailer have become a ton.
Why the hell does CGI have to come and mess with my childhood memories? The wonderful thing about Medusa in the original was that she looked as if she was made during the glory days of the Greek! This shiny snake looks like Angelina Jolie in "Beowulf".
And as much as I love watching Sam Worthington in a skirt, why is he forced to act like a "300" extra? And what's with the ominous rock song used in the trailer?
And what the hell is wrong with that tagline? "Titans will clash"????? Really? Is that the best a multimillion dollar marketing team can come up with?
The silly redundant tagline could've worked if they'd gone straight to the release date afterwards, but no, they had to establish the movie's name...
Let us hope the movie is at least campy.

Whatever Works ***

Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson
Ed Begley Jr., Henry Cavill, Christopher Evan Welch, Olek Krupa

Some find Woody Allen's kind of filmmaking to be exasperating and annoying; stuck in the "neurotic, snobbishly humble Jew" part for times immemorial, he's what you can call an acquired taste.
Same goes for Larry David, who with his arrogantly neurotic comedy has become one of the most polarizing figures in entertainment history.
What happens then when you put these two together? Even more, what happens when the egregious David takes on the "Woody Allen role" in a movie?
You would have expected a clashing of egos (and it feels like that for the first awkward half hour), but before soon the two have managed to make something imperfectly perfect out of Boris Yellnikoff: the suicidal physicist at the center of "Whatever Works".
While Allen's male leads usually fear the world, Boris plain hates it. He goes on calling children "inchworms" and delivers complicated insults that boggle instead of offending.
The man even hates sex.
He manages to live because he seems to enjoy finding more reasons why he shouldn't be alive and his theory is that instead of looking for meaning you should just go with whatever works.
One night going home he encounters the waifish Melodie St. Ann Celestine (Woods), a Southern girl who just arrived to New Yok City, who asks him for something to eat and a place to stay the night.
She ends up staying a month and marrying Boris.
Their marriage however isn't born out of romantic movie love, Boris himself says he wants to attempt a "Pygmalion", while Melodie seems pleased with the notion that she's married to a genius.
She begins to talk, act and think different, "you have ideas of your own?" he asks in disbelief.
"Just a couple" she answers with the Southern modesty she was raised on.
Things start getting complicated when her parents arrive looking for her. Marietta (Clarkson), her mother, is a church going conservative who wanted her daughter to marry someone like George Bush.
Her father John (Begley Jr.) is the kind of man for whom a rifle is as sacred as his Bible. The two of them will be transfixed by New York City in unexpected ways and it's through them that the movie achieves a most positive, almost hopeful, note.
Allen doesn't take advantage of them to exalt the transforming power of his beloved city, instead he turns them into lovely fablesque creations that need to be so corny because "sometimes a cliché is finally the best way to make one's point."
This is by no means an attempt at realism, but a film made by someone who just doesn't have the heart to be too cruel.
You will find vintage Allen; some of the dialogues are hilariously cerebral beyond words and the performances are magnificent.
Even David who comes off as someone you're dying to hate at the beginning, grows a sort of Allen heart through which he exposes his vulnerabilities.
He often addresses the audience, in a move that not always works like it should, trying to explain his tragic views on life and at one point rightfully asks us "why do you wanna hear all this?".
Ironically, it's with this self examination that the movie steers us towards Melodie, Marietta and John, who become the most fascinating characters.
Clarkson is a scene stealer, bringing her earthy sexiness and effortless sophistication to someone that might've been played like a parody and Begley does wonders as Allen tries to explore with him the one issue he's never been able to tackle accurately in his movies.
Then there's Wood who selfconsciously starts playing Melodie like a typical bimbo, only to turn her into a fascinating young woman at odds with what she believes, what she believed and what she believes she believes.
With her, Allen makes the crazy marriage seem like the most normal thing in the world, "I don't like normal, healthy men, I like you" she says (which might remind you of Audrey Hepburn in "Breakfast at Tiffany's") and she means it.
And once she understands that each of us must make the best out of what we get,she channels Mariel Hemingway in "Manhattan" and delivers a lovely statement that makes us see that for all the theories we make about love; whether they be physical, chemical, spiritual or mental, the truth is it's still the greatest mystery in the universe.
Boris might not get it, Allen might not get it, Melodie herself might not know what she's talking about, but with her the movie turns its bitter outlook upside down and delivers the refreshingly hopeful plunges into the dark Allen has always been so good at.
Because hey, it just ain't Allen if it doesn't break your heart.

Crush of the Week.

Duh I know...

I Want More!

...the season when I finally start loving it and now it's gone!

Disgrace **

Director: Steve Jacobs
Cast: John Malkovich, Jessica Haines
Antoinette Engels, Eriq Ebuoaney, Fiona Press

Like its leading character, "Disgrace" likes to think it works on different, supreme levels when it's usually just hiding its nature behind a facade.
Malkovich stars as David Lurie, a literature professor in Cape Town University, who starts an affair with one of his students (Engels).
He's discovered and forced to resign after he refuses to indulge the school's board with public humiliation (he does tell her from the start that he's willing to take the affair as far as he wishes).
The problem, which might go undetected by some, is that he's white, she's not and it's post apartheid South Africa.
After this he goes visit his daughter Lucy (Haines), she lives in a farm in the middle of nowhere with her dogs, a rifle-that's never been used-and Petrus (the magnificent Ebuoaney) a black man who bought some land from her property and has started to build a house.
David feels that this place isn't safe for his daughter and his notions become reality when one day they are attacked by three men who do unspeakable things to them.
After this event the movie turns into a facile attempt to try and rationalize Africa, the apartheid and the personal sins of the characters.
The problem is that director Jacobs never really knows where to draw the line between what is symbolic and what is not.
But really, you can't blame a movie that from the very start uses Lord Byron as a premonition (or is it an excuse?) of what will come to happen later on.
When describing Lucifer, Lurie tells his students that the poet described him as a creature who "doesn't rely on principles but on impulse and the source of his impulses is dark to him".
Therefore he becomes "a thing" who "lives among us, but is not one of us". With this poetic reading the movie tries to justify itself.
It also tries to impose upon us a moral dilemma as Lucy refuses to seek justice for what happened to her and the screenplay begins to compare it with what her father did with his student.
But how is consensual sex between two adults-despite the ethical student/teacher problem-any similar to brutal rape?
The movie tries to explain us this relation by pointing out how whites and blacks in Africa lived under different codes of morality. As if crimes can be justified by anthropology.
Perhaps they can be understood if one chooses to judge each culture by their own ideologies, but then what does this say of how we should perceive these characters?
Haines gives a very good performance even when she must convey someone who comes off looking irrational most of the time. The actress gives her the dignity necessary to make her undertake an unnecessary burden (is she atoning for the sins of her father or of the entire white race?) and she's good enough to avoid falling into the clichés that come included by making her character a lesbian (subjecting to the sexual will of men gives the plot forced gender role questioning).
The movie has good intentions, even when it tries too hard to be as cerebral as it is emotionally engaging and Malkovich gives one of his greatest performances as the sleazy, but deeply human, Lurie, but the truth is none of the characters seem to understand each other's choices, in the very same way the audience won't understand the movie's.

Oh man!

I'm like the only person left in the world that still likes Gwyneth Paltrow.
So you can imagine my joy upon finding out that she's been cast to star alongside Nicole Kidman in "The Danish Girl" (she's replacing Charlize Theron).
She will play wife to Kidman's pre-op transsexual in what already was one of my most awaited upcoming movies.
Can you imagine both Gwyn and Nic back in the Oscar game?
The movie sounds baity as fuck, with the director, the plot and with these two on board it's just set to be something remarkable.
I'm already salivating while I think of what they will wear to the 2012 Oscars when they both are nominated for this movie...
Ok a man can dream right?
Read the whole casting story here.

Zombieland **

Director: Ruben Fleischer
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin

After zombies have taken all over the world, human survivor Columbus (Eisenberg) is trying to reach his hometown to see if he has a family to get back to.
Not out of any special connection, but because it's the normal thing to do, as he explains in a self deprecating narration.
On the way there he encounters Tallahassee (Harrelson) a Twinkie (as in Hostess pastries) loving redneck with a special talent for killing zombies and tough sisters Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin) with whom he forms an unlikely family.
They stick together, only after learning to trust each other of course, and Columbus gives up his original plan in order to help the sisters get to Pacific Playland, an amusement park in California that reminds them of better times.
Forget the fact that these people think a rollercoaster ride is a priority, what matters here is that the filmmakers chose this over more "important" things.
It's clear from the start that this isn't a movie a la "28 Days" and its intention isn't to use zombies as a parable for anything else. What "Zombieland" tries is to push the genre forward and trying to emulate the wonderful "Shaun of the Dead", the filmmakers end up delivering something that works more like a buddy/road movie with a pinch of zombie parody.
Never scary enough to get the most out of the genre, the movie usually relies on the zombies as means to justify its need to utter pop culture references (Harrelson's micro rendering of "Deliverance" is delightful!) and exploit the likability of the actors.
Breslin can do no bad and even when she's holding a machine gun she manages to look adorable and age appropriate, while Eisenberg brings his "I am not Michael Cera but I act and look like him" qualities to a place where you can actually identify with his too self conscious deprecating.
The movie has its moments, in fact it has one of the most memorable cameos in any zombie movie ever, which despite its hilarious finale sadly feels like it lasts too little.
But most of the time it movies around aimlessly, like a zombie...
"Zombieland" is an exaltation of everything that is geek, from cult movie references to shameful confessions about virginity it's all a fantasy for people like Eisenberg's character.
Because of this it has franchise possibilities; if this one's about the geek getting the girl, there can be a million more about how he overcomes obstacles he can be bullied for.
But for all its heart it can't help itself from making the audience expect for it to end with geek waking up from a crazy dream with a familiar wet spot on his underpants.