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« Confab #38 | Main | Izi's Back! »

March 26, 2007

Flu Film Festival

Hey, you know that flu bug goin' around? That really nasty one that sneaks up behind you, smacks you upside the head with a baseball bat, and then goes after your family?

Yeah, so it took me out late Thursday.

As a result, I spent the vast majority of my weekend, well, asleep. Like, slept-for-33-out-of-72-hours kind of sleeping. Dead to the world, except when I'd wake up, slowly move my head around, and realize that I'd just slept far too much to get back to bed anytime soon. Ugh.

For these kinds of days - days when you're too flat on your back to do anything productive, but not dead enough to be unconscious - there's only one to do: stock up on chicken soup and OJ, and then load up the DVD player with some big-budget trash.

One trip to On 15th Video, and I was set. The flicks:

  • An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder!. This was pure pocket fluff, a valentine from Kevin Smith to his fans, and, by almost any barometer, pretty damn funny. I loved the first one ("An Evening With Kevin Smith"), and "Harder!" is basically the same format - Kevin Smith, on stage, taking questions from college-age audiences in thousand-person auditoriums. The questions are usually about filmmaking or Hollywood insider dirt; the answers are often profane, witty, and funny as hell. It's nearly four hours (!), and tided me over just fine, thankyouverymuch.
  • The Prestige. An incredibly well-made film about rival magicians in turn-of-the-century London, Prestige has the distinction of being a movie about something I'm interested in (magicians, London, turn of the century), starring people I rather like (Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, David Bowie) and made by a filmmaker I respect enormously (Christopher Nolan), yet being completely, totally, and utterly devoid of anything I can relate to. The (well-acted) characters in this film are vile, saying (well-written) vile things to one another as they do (well-choreographed) vile acts to one another against (beautifully photographed) Victorian London. Stick with Nolan's other films, like Batman Begins (also featuring Caine, Bale, et. al.).
  • Serendipity. There's not much to say about this one. Honest. Marnie and Gary came over on Saturday night, braving my proto-Ebola long enough to watch what is, by every account, a weepie chick flick. Know what? I love this movie. Marnie insists this makes me "a big girl" ... and I kinda don't care. At all. Not even a little bit.
  • (I'd even watch it if I wasn't sick. Thppppppt!)
  • Pirates Of The Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest. It's so hard to even know what to say about this. I wanted big-budget trash, I got Big-Budget Trash. There's not one single thing in this movie that is remotely believable, interesting, or engaging. At all. I felt my IQ drop while watching it. (In short, it was perfect.)
  • Miami Vice. Writer/director Michael Mann is one of my favorite filmmakers (see also: David Fincher), and, after making (the fantastic) Heat and The Insider, he returned to his roots by remaking his own TV show from the '80s. The picture is all vibe and style, but never congealed into anything worth paying attention to. Ah, well.

And that, dear readers, was my weekend. I hope you all did something a lot more fun, a lot more active, and a lot less bacteria-ridden.

(And seriously - if you want to take your brain off the hook and watch things go BOOM, Pirates is your film.)

Stay healthy, folks.

Posted by Gavin Shearer at March 26, 2007 8:46 PM. Posted to Entertainment.

Comments

Sorry to hear about the flu! I've been nursing a broken ankle since the middle of February, and was laid up for pretty darn close to a month. It wouldn't have been so bad except I needed surgery--seven short screws, one long screw, and plate later, here we are. At least they're made of titanium--so when they come out, I want 'em. I paid for 'em; I want 'em.

Loved the Prestige. Saw it three times in theatres and have watched it as many times since on DVD. Can't completely disagree on how vile all the characters are, but can't completely agree either. By the end of the movie I think one's perception of the principals has been completely turned around.

Spoiler warning...


On repeat viewings, Borden (at least the one who married and had a daughter) is quite sympathetic; he's really the one who gets screwed for most of the film, because it's *his* marriage and *his* daughter that are put in jeopardy by his brother's recklessness--first because of the relationship with Olivia and then because of his brother's obsession with figuring out how Angier does the trick ("You were right, I should have let him have his damn trick," his brother says as he's being led off to the gallows). He's also effectively blamed for something his brother did (tying the Langford double for the trick that killed Angier's wife), when he's the one who actually has some sympathy for Angier. It's a very clever performance on Bale's part; it becomes quite clear on repeated viewings which brother you're seeing in a given scene.

So, yes, Angier turns out to be a pretty nasty piece of work all told, and one of the Borden twins is definitely too much of a hotshot for his own good. The other one, on the other hand, really is just a pretty normal guy.

Thematically, it follows really well with Nolan's other work--the theatre basement where the "prestige materials" are kept is keeping very much in line with the basement in Memento where Jimmy Grantz's body is (cf. "Let's go down to the basement, you and me together, and I'll show you what you've become"), not to mention the Batcave. Leonard Shelby's obsession, Bruce Wayne's obsession, and Robert Angier's obsession are more or less of a piece and with very similar causes, but with varying circumstances and outcomes. Loss of family really is a motivating factor in Nolan's movies; and, of course, the ways with which he plays with structure and time are also consistently interesting.

I'd love Nolan to make a movie that had Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine AND Guy Pearce in it all at once... who knows? He clearly seems to like working with the same people (composer David Julyan, actors Cain, Bale, Mark Boone Junior, etc.).

Richard

Posted by: Richard Barrett Author Profile Page at March 27, 2007 7:00 AM

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