Drag Me To Hell

I know, I'm lame. I have a huge list of movies to write up, and no time to do it. My dry spell doesn't end here, sadly. But I am going to link you to a GOOD review of "Drag Me To Hell" by Dana Stevens of Slate. In a million years, I would not have guessed that this was or could be a good movie. But Stevens likes it, and I like her taste, so now I'm intrigued. (Those of you who've spent some time on my blog know that I'm partial to horror movies.) Happy reading!

Star Trek Rocks

I'm so embarrassed that it's been so long since I posted. I've been extremely busy catching up after my month in Florida, my two fun-filled weeks of viral infections, gratis of pre-school, and one thing or another. And this, I'm also ashamed to say, will not be a long post. But I did want to express one movie-related thing here today, which is that the new Star Trek movie is great! I grew up on Star Trek, thanks to my cool older brother, Ted, who wasn't about to let me pick what went on the one T.V. in the house. So I watched, and loved it, and later went to Star Trek conventions and made Star Trek models with my brother, and played Star Trek (needless to say I never got to be Kirk) and...well, I was a big fan. It's not easy to win over die hard fans with re-makes. But J.J. Abrams, the director of this one, did a wonderful job--new enough, but connected enough to the old one. A nod to the backstory and mannerisms of some of the original characters, without making them caricatures. I immediately got on the ride--and stayed on it. I can't wait for the next one. Okay, that's my film thought for the day--hopefully more soon. Meanwhile, check it out, friends--and live long and prosper.

Greg Mottola and The Comeback

I got curious about Greg Mottola, the director of Adventureland, so I did a quick IMDB search on him (when I should have been doing “real” work). I discovered that he directed two episodes of The Comeback, Lisa Kudrow’s all-to-brief series on HBO.

It was a smart show that I thought had real potential and I was sorry to see it go. Occasionally, it shows up on HBO In Demand, so if you’re ever caught without something to watch, and you see it pop up—give it a shot.

The Comeback is the story of Valerie Cherish, a forty-something actress who’s fighting desperately to re-claim the adoration and status she enjoyed as a twenty-something hottie on what appears to have been a popular but dorky show (something along the lines of Threes Company. Ouch.)

At the start of the series, she lands her big chance—a small role on a new show, and a reality show documenting her “Comeback” (though like Nora Desmond, she laughs of the idea that she was ever gone). Valerie, with her feathered hair and seventies wardrobe, is every bit as awkward and self-conscious as Larry David, and what’s worse, she’s always smilingly trying to deflect the moments (and there are many) that show her in an un-fabulous light.

Other characters include her dorky but loyal husband, her bitchy step-daughter, who’s scornful of Valerie but loath to turn down a few moments in front of the camera and a shot at Nicole Richie-dom, a gay hairdresser who keeps Valerie’s hair in seventies fabulosity, and some snarky twenty-somethings (mainly writers on the show) who think being nice to her will diminish their coolness. Episode after episode, they try to humiliate her, and she gamely takes it all in, insisting on seeing it as peers teasing a peer.

You know, it wasn’t a perfect show. It was occasionally unwatchable in that I’m-so-uncomfortable-I-can’t-watch way that Curb Your Enthusiasm sometimes is. And it hadn’t quite found it’s pace—kind of like the first season of Seinfeld, in which the jokes are a little slow yet.

Seinfeld was given a chance to mature, though. I wish The Comeback had been given the same chance—and with directors like Mottola. I think we would have seen some great stuff.

Was James supposed to be played by Michael Cera?

This one's for Deborah, who asked if the part of James in Adventureland was possibly supposed to be played by Michael Cera (of Juno fame), i.e. was Eisenberg a substitute? Never occured to me until you mentioned it, but I did a Google search and found an interview with Greg Mottola, Adventureland's director, in which the interviewer raised the same question. (It's an especially relevant question because Mottola has directed Cera before....which I didn't know. I only know Cera from Juno.) Unless Mottola is doing some very diplomatic dancing here, it sounds like Eisenberg was meant to play the role. (Though I'm sure Cera would have been up to it.)

It’s hard to avoid some comparisons with Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg. Who would win in a cage match?
A cage match of awkwardness? Who’s the awkward king of America? Of young adult America?

Well, I knew of Jesse before I knew of Michael Cera, actually, because I had seen [Jesse’s] first film Roger Dodger when it came out because I was friends with Campbell Scott. I really liked him and I liked the movie, and that came out before I did Arrested Development. When I did Arrested Development, I was very excited because I was already a fan of Jason Bateman and Jeffrey Tambor and the whole cast, pretty much, and Michael was the only person I didn’t know, and he was the one who I was like, “I can’t believe this fifteen-year-old kid is the funniest person in the room.” It kind of blew my mind.

Michael is a very specific ... He’s unique. I mean, there’s no one like Michael Cera. He’s his own thing, and I feel the same way about Jesse. I mean, Jesse has a slightly more neurotic New York Jewish energy to him, but Jesse, I think, is a little more sexualized than Michael. Michael is so sweet that some of the stuff, some of the yearning in Adventureland I wanted to have something of a sexual component, and I think that felt better, that felt more correct with Jesse, although Jesse has a lot of the sincerity and sweetness. You know, I’m glad that there are two actors like that out in the world because there’s not a lot of young people who could have played parts like that, in either Superbad or this, so I’d say it’s a toss-up. I love them equally.

Adventureland

I didn’t really know what this movie was about. I just knew it had gotten some nice reviews, and that my friend Nancy, who has very trustworthy taste, had actually read them—and wanted to see it. (Apologies to Nancy for seeing it without her.)

In truth, I’m not very good at the what’s-it-about question—with regard to movies OR books. Generally I enjoy the ride, and then puzzle over what it all means, later. Sometimes I just savor a few seconds or minutes of them, over-and-over again, and forget about worrying over the big picture.

After I saw Doubt, for example, what kept coming back to me was not so much thoughts about the nature of doubt itself (though this was clearly the intention of the movie), but a 20 second or so scene in which the kids are learning to dance in the school gymnasium, and Amy Adams is sitting in a chair on the side, clapping awkwardly. She clapped the way my mom might clap if she were watching me do something I was enjoying, even though she’d never want to try it herself. There’s something so piercingly right and true about those moments. And I felt it again and again in that movie. Does the total movie add up to the greatness of those few moments here and there? I don’t know yet. I’m still enjoying the moments. Haven’t totally gotten to the big picture yet.

That’s sort of where I am with Adventureland right now, too.

It’s 1987. James Brennan, a nerdy but sweet kid with annoying hair (a shelf of bang-curls…were the eighties really that egregious?) is graduating from college and making his plans. He’s going to travel in Europe for the summer with his best friend, then go to journalism school at Columbia.

That’s the plan, at least, until graduation weekend, when his bitchy mom and passive-aggressive dad inform him that his dad’s been demoted and plans have changed. If he’s going to make it to journalism school, he’s going to have to kiss the summer in Europe goodbye and get a job to earn his keep in the fall.

This is one of those movies where the parents are kind of set up as oblivious assholes—the kind who don’t realize that fair’s fair and a deal’s a deal. (The kid only needs 200 bucks to make Europe happen, and it was his graduation gift, for God’s sake.) Other parents are similarly dim-witted or incapable of handling situations with their kids fairly. It reminded me of Peanuts, where we see Charlie Brown and his buddies tangling with painful kid issues (and a few existential ones), while the parents are notably absent or prattling nonsensically in the background.

At any rate, James gets home, only to discover that his nerdy intellectual resume doesn’t get him far. The only job he can get is at a kind of embarrassing local theme park, run by a husband and wife team, Bobby and Paulette (Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig), who met while Bobby was running the horse-racing game. The interview consists of him asking for the job. Five seconds later, he’s handed a “Games” t-shirt, because Bobby and Paulette proclaim him "definitely" a games guy, not a ride guy, and he’s good to go.

It’s at this point where we meet the freaks and geeks who will people his summer—and the next hour-and-a-half or so of our time. A friend of mine wanted to know if this was a movie about intellectual slackers. Not really. James and a few others are there because they simply can’t get jobs elsewhere and they need the money. Other vacillate between attractive enough but not distinguishable in any other way, or dim-witted, or stuck. It’s a pretty good cross-section of humanity, albeit one within a certain age-range.

And I suppose you could say it’s a growing up movie, which normally wouldn’t appeal to me, except that the lesson learned here is one I wish I’d learn at the tender age of 21: You can’t just avoid the people you fuck up with. I’m not sure I’m quoting that correctly, but I love it. Because we all fuck up, so if you start the avoiding game, you’re going to run out of people to hang with, or need a constant supply of new friends and lovers, on a pretty regular basis.

I’ll say it again, Oh, if I’d only learned this at 21. Or even 31.

There are some great performances here. Jesse Eisenberg (who was in The Squid and the Whale, though I don’t remember him). And Kristen Stewart, as Em, whose performance actually makes me want to see Twilight. Oh, and Martin Starr as Joel, James’s buddy. The coolest nerd you’ll ever encounter.

What’s it all about (Alfie)? I don’t know. I’m not really prepared to say yet. But I’m definitely still savoring its bits….the tube socks, the turquoise jewelry, the way James uses his line about wanting to be a travel writer in the same way that Charles Dickens was several times, knowing that, with the right audience, it makes him sound cool. The scene were Bobby goes after a thug with a baseball bat, and, a second later, goes back to tabulating his accounts.

I could go on.

Friday the 13th

(A still from the ending of the first Friday the 13th--the dream sequence that allows for the possibility of a sequel. Ha. Little did we know we'd be enjoying Jason's antics twenty years later.)

I trudged off to see this one rather guiltily. Guiltily because, let’s face it, I knew I was going to while away a few precious work hours, not to mention babysitter time, on a crap movie. I mean, Friday the 13th the original was a crap movie (though I loved it). The re-make was bound to be crap, too, no?

Well, it was, but…I still loved it.

It has what feels like three beginnings. It starts with a little montage from the very first story, just in case you don’t know the back-story (though they used different actors to depict it, rather than footage from the original…maybe they couldn’t buy the rights?)

Then it goes to what seems like the real, modern-day beginning—a bunch of hormonal kids go camping too close to the former site of Camp Crystal Lake. Predictably, they get slaughtered by our pal, Jason. But it happens so fast—they’re all dispatched within about ten minutes—that you’re left wondering how the hell they’re going to fill in the next hour or so of the movie.

On to part three. This is where the brother of one of the randy campers (I think his name was Clay) comes to town looking for his sister, Jenna. The locals are mum about goings on at Camp Crystal Lake, though one particularly odd one does allow that smart people know where not to go thereabouts.

Clay runs into some kids at the local gas station, while posting flyers of his missing sister. One of those kids, a snarky forgettable jerk, has a family cabin in the area. He’s brought a bunch of his buddies (all pretty annoying) and a sort-of girlfriend up to party/exercise their hormones for a few days.

Long story short, they all end up at the snarky guy’s house, getting slaughtered in one way or another. (I think there might be a few colorful dismemberings on the lake, but most take place in or around the house.)

There are a few attempts at Jason-psychology—a suggestion that he thinks Jenna looks like a younger version of his mother (killed in the end of the first Friday the 13th). I’m not averse to a little pop-serial-killer psychology…but in this case, it really didn’t go anywhere.

I really tried to remember some of the horrendous dialogue so I could repeat it for you here. But it’s been awhile now. (I really should have written some of it down.) The only line I think I’m remembering correctly is: “Your tits are spectacular!” (Fab, huh??)

The ending is sort of a nod to the ending of the first movie…but to tell you the truth, I’m not sure if it was supposed to be a dream (like the end of the first one) or real…Either way, I suspect Jason will live to kill on another day.

You know what I found myself utterly amused by, as I was walking out of this movie? I realized that the kids in this movie were SO obnoxious, I kind of found myself rooting for Jason.

Kill, Kill, Kill, Now, Now, Now.

Coming soon: Adventureland

I saw this last night and adored it. I'm on a deadline right now, so more to come, but for the moment just wanted to share one of my favorite lines: "You can't avoid everyone you've fucked up with."