VideoReport #221

Volume CCXXI- How I Met Your Mothra

For the Week of 11/10/09

Videoport thinks that fully 47% of you are wonderful. But you all may have a free movie every day. Because we at Videoport believe that everyone should have the same rights. To a free movie. And other things…

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests Graveyard Shift (in Horror). The lovely Mrs. Elsa S. Customer and I have been catching up on our crappy horror movies lately. Why do I mention that in connection with this Maine-set 80s Stephen King adaptation? Umm… This one has sort of a legendary reputation of wretchedness which had kept me away for a long time, which is weird, because I actively seek out bad horror movies in my free time. Well, we decided it was about time and there were some admittedly minor points of interest: the ever-welcome Brad Dourif* is on hand, hamming it up with customary glee as a psychotic Vietnam vet/ exterminator, it was actually (unlike most King adaptations) filmed in Maine (Bangor, Brewer, and Harmony, to be exact), and, well, that was it, really. The story of an ancient, run-down textile mill that is basically OSHA’s worst nightmare, dilapidated and swarming with rats!  Rats!!  They’re actually pretty cute, but there’s a big, rubbery, blubbery thing down in the bowels of the place that keeps killing off sweaty workers (which no one seems to notice, even though there are only about twenty people in the town). There’s an evil boss (Stephen Macht’s Maine accent is easily the most fascinating thing in the film), some completely-unmotivated character turns, and, um…yeah, it sucks, although perhaps slightly less (maybe 12%) than advertised, but still… yeah, it’s terrible.

*Editor’s note: Brad Dourif’s career is really strange. He started off like gangbusters, with an Oscar nomination for playing Billy Bibbitt in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and then, after exactly one high-profile lead (in John Huston’s fascinating, underrated Wise Blood- available in Videoport’s Criterion section), he has worked tirelessly, and almost exclusively, playing over-the-top weirdos, bug-eyed psychos, and, well, cuckoos in low-budget genre films.  And, unlike some actors who fall to that sort of role because that’s the true level of their talent, Dourif is always great.  Look at (mostly awful) movies like Exorcist III, Dune, Critters 4, Color of Night, Alien Resurrection, even the Chuckie movies, (and that episode of the ‘X Files’ he was in)- he never phones it in, is always in there, giving it all he’s got.  And more often than not, he’s the best thing in the movie. (Even when he took a role in the biggest hit trilogy of all time, The Lord of the Rings, he was playing a squirmy weirdo… and knocking it out of the park.)  His acclaim playing a slightly less-repellant guy than usual on ‘Deadwood’ hasn’t stopped him from accepting work in upcoming films titled things like Death and Cremation and Junkyard Dog.  Great actor, deliberately odd career.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests The Terminator (in Action). The now-legendary 1984 sci-fi action flick that cemented the reputation of director-writer James Cameron and transformed a hunk of affectless Austrian meat into a bankable movie star, The Terminator is built on compellingly simple narrative tension.  For heroine Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), it’s a nightmare scenario: you’re going about your everyday business, just trying to make ends meet and maybe go on a date, and suddenly you are pursued by a murderous entity (Arnold Schwarzenegger) whose only reason for existence is to destroy you. The film’s special effects reflect the low budget, and in this case, they just plain work.  Let’s face it, even state-of-the-art effects from 1984 would look dated to our eyes; where Cameron relies upon low-tech, on-set effects, the film runs smoothly without jerking the viewer out of the film. (Admittedly, there are also attempts at high-tech effects here, and those look just as silly to a modern eye as you’d expect.)  Much of the film’s dialogue, grown stale with repetition over the years, is refreshingly in context.  Man, who knew “I’ll be back” could be so funny?

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests State and Main (in Comedy). In a break from his usual heist-and-hostility routine, David Mamet brings us a movie about movies: temperamental talents, deeply hidden secrets, and the panic of production delays.  The premise: the entire cast and crew of Hollywood production The Old Mill has been booted out of the small New England town where they’re filming. As the frantic director tries to hustle another town’s mayor into signing on as their new location, the clock is ticking away.  And time is money, people.  Writer-director David Mamet’s dialogue is pointed, clever, witty, and utterly despicable.  With its quick, smart humor and characters running the range from “wretchedly angst-ridden” to “utterly vile,” State and Main feels like an Aaron Sorkin show set in Hell.  William H. Macy plays director Walt Price with whiplash virtuosity, slipping effortlessly between unctuous gladhanding and vicious rants.  Philip Seymour Hoffman turns in another masterful performance as the first-time screenwriter improvising like mad despite his almost total lack of confidence; Hoffman takes the sad-sack role and transcends it.  Alec Baldwin delivers here one of his nastiest comic roles as the big-name movie star with a loathsome yen for underaged girls.  And here’s a sneaky little in-joke: the small-town mayor (perfectly played by Charles Durning) is named George Bailey — a poke at Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.  As Mamet no doubt knows, Capra’s view of small-town life was far from the whitewashed sentimentality we celebrate in the film today.  It’s a Wonderful Life gave us a glimpse of village life’s underbelly, and State and Main would like to pick up when Capra left off, plunging farther into the ghastly depths than Capra ever dreamed.  With its vicious wit, its depravities, and its rapid-fire plot complications, State and Main is a screwball comedy of the darkest shade.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong (in Comedy). Reviewing a standup comedy special is usually pretty dull. I mean, apart from ‘boy this sure was funny’, there’s not a lot of places to go usually.  So here are some random thought’s about this new one from hipster darling/hobbit Oswalt.  He is very adept at mining laughs from seemingly absurd analogies which, upon immediate reflection, make a great deal of sense (comparing George W. Bush to sodomy demons, for example; you’ll just have to see it).  He is remarkable at donning very specific comic personae; not that he’s an impressionist, he’s just very in control of his instrument/voice, and the comic effects he wants to elicit; (see his impression of himself as a fat[ter] guy and that of a startlingly well-drawn Southern bartender).  He’s got some nice, Carlin-esque takes on ’serious’ issues (specifically religion in this one) where, like Carlin, he spins a very funny argument (in this case how religion came into being) which is hilarious, insightful, and makes enormous sense all at the same time.  Oh, and this is really, really funny.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Andy suggests Escape From the Planet of the Apes.   If you’re looking for the excellent sci fi classic Planet of the Apes, you’ll find it in the Sci Fi/Fantasy section.   You also find the pretty good first sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Tim Burton’s dull remake in Sci Fi/ Fantasy. But when you’re done with those, I suggest you turn your attention to the Family section and check out the second, third, and fourth sequels for some fun, G-rated, if pretty violent, Apes action.   The third film, Escape From the Planet of the Apes, is by far the best of these.   The plot involves the apes from the first film traveling back in time to our ‘present day’ (1976) or so and trying not to mess up the future while sticking up for ape rights or something.  It’s all in fun, in the same vein as Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  You can tell the producers were trying to save money by shooting on location instead of building futuristic sets.   Budget problems don’t prevent Escape from being an entertaining sci fi adventure, but with the fourth (Conquest of the Planet of the Apes*) and fifth (Battle for the Planet of the Apes) films in the series, there is a noticeable step down in production value. (Still…free rental folks.)

*Editor’s note: Andy’s very right about the later films, but Conquest, which shows how the apes first rebelled against their human masters with zombie invasion-like single-mindedness really creeped me out as a kid. Creep out your kid today!

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Dennis suggests sending in your movie or TV reviews (or movie essays, best-of lists, etc) to us at the VideoReport! (So we can fill this review space with actual, you know, reviews and stuff.) Just drop them off at the store, send them to denmn@hotmail.com, or our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones or our Facebook page “Videoport Jones”! And, aw heck, while you’re on the intra-nets, why not stop in at our movie blog www.videoportjones.wordpress.com!

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Delicatessen (in Foreign Language).  Vividly textured, richly ambiguous, and darkly comic, Delicatessen opens in a ramshackle tenement hazily located in a French town in some unspecified dystopian future.  Food is scarce, yet the butcher shop occupying the building’s first floor never seems to feel the pinch too badly. I think you see where this is going… but the new tenant does not.  His name is Louison (played by oddly charming rubber-faced actor Dominique Pinon), he’s a former circus performer, and he delights the neighborhood children with his clowning antics, which are cartoonishly impressive.  Indeed, Delicatessen has a cartoonish quality that meshes weirdly but successfully with its grubby, dark setting and its gruesome premise.  This is the first feature film of co-directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who also co-directed the great City of Lost Children.  Jeunet is now perhaps best known as the director of Amélie, and it’s easy to see Amélie as the indirect descendant of the grotesqueries of Delicatessen. Both films immerse themselves in a whimsically embroidered narrative built around the laborious quirks of its characters, and does so with an aplomb that magically weaves a potentially overwrought, incoherent mess into a beautifully balanced composition of humor, compassion, sorrow, and wonder.

New Releases this week at Videoport: UP (it’s the new Pixar animated film, about an old man who floats his home with a mess o’ balloons; if you watch it, it will thrill you, move you, and make you happy- so you should watch it), The Ugly Truth (Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl are a mismatched couple who may, or may not, overcome their differences and fall in love; I’m on pins and needles myself), The Merry Gentleman (Michael Keaton directs himself and No Country for Old Men’s Kelly Macdonald in this tale of a troubled young woman who falls in love with a troubled hit man, who may, by definition, be more troubled than she), Ink (dark, upsetting fairy tale film about the war between good and evil that takes place when we’re asleep; compared favorably to Dark City by more than one reviewer…), The Accidental Husband (a disgruntled firefighter, angry at the advice guru whom he believes caused his girlfriend to leave him, somehow (the details are a little unclear) convinces said guru that they were secretly married, even though she’s all engaged and stuff; convoluted comedy comes to us from director Griffin Dunne and stars Uma Thurman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Colin Firth), Lake Tahoe (from the renting-like-hotcake Film Movement series comes this indie dramedy about a hapless teenager who turns to help from a wide variety of eccentric characters when he accidentally wrecks the family car), Hurt (creepy horror thriller about a single mom who moves into the salvage yard home owned by a crazy uncle, finds a seemingly-adorable orphaned child, and then…well, I’m not tellin’),

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Pageant (fifty gay men battle for the right to be crowned Miss Gay America in this documentary), Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart (documentary follows the titular musician as he makes a tour of Africa), The Thing (From Another World) (the Howard Hawks original alien from space classic finally gets a DVD release; trivia time: although Hawks’ longtime editor Christian Nyby is credited as the film’s director, it’s pretty widely accepted that Hawks himself actually directed the film but allowed pal Nyby to take the credit), Eddie Izzard: Live from Wembley (British comic [and now sought-after character actor] Izzard is as quick on his feet and free-from as Robin Williams, only Izzard is still funny and doesn’t make you want to just slap him as hard as you can so he’ll finally shut up), Where God Left His Shoes (John Leguizamo tries to tone down his undeniable innate creepiness in this heartwarming story of a homeless dad trying to get a job on Christmas Eve so his family will qualify for an apartment), The Achievers: The Story of Lebowski Fans (documentary reveals the story behind the birth of Lebowski-Fest, a growing gang of guys turning the Cohen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski into a cult film by dressing up as The Dude and drinking White Russians), The Chaser (sleazy-looking Korean thriller about a dirty cop-turned-pimp who discovers that his hookers are being killed off by a serial killer), The Bunker (Anthony Hopkins is Hitler! In this movie, of course…), My First DVD (new to Videoport’s kids section comes this program designed to introduce your little angel to the wonderful world of DVDs; lesson one: DON’T TOUCH THE SHINY SIDE OF A DVD EVER!!!!!; lesson two: DON’T LET A CHILD TOUCH A DVD, ESPECIALLY THE SHINY SIDE!!!! IT’S CALLED PARENTING!!!!!).

YOU WILL GO TO THIS!

Former Videoporter/local filmmaker/cool guy Allen Baldwin’s newest film Up Up Down Down will have its first test screening at the Nickelodeon theater (right around the corner) on Thursday, December 3rd at 7pm and 915pm! Come and see the latest film from Allen’s Strongpaw Productions (you can see his great first film Twelve Steps Outside in Videoport’s Feature Drama section)! C’mon!

Justin Ellis (of the Press Herald) and I on the week’s new releases (11/3/09)

We’re back in business baby! This week’s new releases on DVD finally give Videoport Jones and I a reason to do the Snoopy Dance for the first time in a long time. Not only do we get to breakdown remakes, talk food choices and bash my devotion to 80s pop culture, but Will Ferrell makes a triumphant comeback! That’s something we can all be happy about.

You’re Welcome: A Final Night with George W. Bush

Videoport Jones: “Now this is more like it. After a string of subpar film outings that, frankly, were trying the patience of even his staunchest supporters (being you and me, Justin), Will Ferrell busts out with this, a filmed record of his one-man Broadway show, and all the ‘Semi-Pros,’ ‘Land of the Losts’ and ‘Blades of Glorys’ are washed away in a tide of welcome, teary-eyed belly laughs. Ferrell as Bush was one

I...am...the balls.

of SNL’s characters for the ages, a nigh-perfect comedic storm of actor, impression, satire, and just all-around lunatic weirdness that was utterly bananas while capturing the essence of its subject. Ferrell’s narrow-eyed, blinky, malaprop-prone, blusterous Bush was sorely missed after Ferrell left SNL (sorry Will Forte, but your Bush sucked out loud), and now he has treated us to an entire evening’s worth of his best parting shots at our worst president. Is it trenchant, insightful political satire? Well, that’s not really the point, although I maintain that a comedic portrayal as lunatically-inspired as this one can get to the heart of its subject with as much insight as any laboriously-footnoted biography. Plus, this is just simply one of the funniest things I’ve seen all year; and at 115 minutes, it handily defies the notion that Ferrell’s impression is only suited for a five minute sketch. Ferrell wrote it for himself, thus reaffirming my notion that he should only appear in things he’s written; he blends fact with loony, manic fancy, spinning his monlogue out into the absurdist stratosphere before snatching it back with some surprising moments of real emotion. Will Ferrell is back.”

Justin: “Oh thank the MAKER! He has emerged from the wilderness, and we’ll welcome him with open arms. I remember when he originally kicked off this show on Broadway and people ate it up. (Let’s also not forget he was, indeed, nominated for a Tony Award.) You could argue that this is just another turn on the madcap man-boy that Ferrell always plays, but in this case it works so, so well. The reason his George W. Bush was funny was because it was over the top. Heck, it took a rocket sled and boomed past being just a simple impression. Ferrell took all the small mannerisms and tweaked the former president’s tone just a bit and what he ended up with was hilarious. In the same way Darrell Hammond’s take has become short-hand for a Clinton impression, so has Ferrell’s Bush. If you’re looking for all the best bits of Ferrell, just nailing the impression, you’ll get it here as we get flight suit hero Bush, brush-cutting cowboy Bush and of course, confident commander-in-chief Bush. We get the snickering laugh, the nicknames, the odd anecdotes and plenty more. If you weren’t a fan of Ferrell as Bush then this is not for you. But if, like me and Jonesy, you thought it was comedy gold, then you can’t pass this one up. I’m happy to recommend a Will Ferrell movie again.”

GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra

VPJ: “I’d like to start off this review by stating that when a movie’s credits begin with the phrase “in association with HASBRO”, you know it’s gonna be quality. Yup, it’s the second week with a toy-based mega action blockbuster hitting the Videoport shelves in a row. I think we’ve done something wrong. And are being punished. (A sidebar: which genre is the most hellish on us viewers?: the ‘based on video game movie’ (‘Street Fighter,’ ‘Doom,’ ‘Super Mario Brothers,’ ‘Mortal Kombat,’ etc), the ‘based on a board game’ movie (‘Clue,’ ‘The Mutant Chronicles,’ the upcoming ‘Candyland’ film – god, I wish I were joking), the ‘based on a Disney theme park ride’ movie (‘Tower of Terror,’ ‘The Haunted Mansion,’ and don’t get me started in the interminable ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ franchise), the ‘based on a TV series movie (a list too depressing to go into here), or this, the ‘based on a toy line’ movie? Man, I sort of liked ‘Clue,’ so it can’t be that category, but…wow, “big, dumb, loud, dumb, and dumb” pretty much sums up both ‘Transformers 2′ and this thing. There are actors in it, and they are all, without exception, awful (even the talented among the cast, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Jonathan Pryce come off like they’ve just been whammed with a ball peen hammer before filming). There is “action” in it, but said “action” is ossified into numb lethargy through judicious applications of CGI and limp direction. There is, like in Transformers, a George Lucas-style idea of humor which necessitates minstrelly black guy comic relief (surprise! it’s a Wayans!) and winking in-jokes that would be funny to, um, who? I know I’m overanalyzing a completely inconsequential film, but, hell, if I has to watch this dispiriting mess, then I’m gonna take out my frustrations. On all of you. Sorry.”

JE: “Well at least you didn’t pay money to see it in a theater. I am indeed, a sucker, and some might say powerless, to childhood nostalgia. How else can I explain seeing both this and ‘Transformers 2′ in theaters this past summer? I’m a masochist. I don’t know what to say about this movie to give a sense of how truly, powerfully, irredeemably bad this movie is. There was a moment, a window of possibility, where I thought this movie could work by not taking itself seriously and providing ridiculous amounts of action porn. Not the best attraction for a movie, but not too high of a bar to reach for. But no, they couldn’t even manage that. The action is an incomprehensible miasma of CGI, jump cuts and noise. And when you can’t hang your hat on the action, you start to notice all the other glaring flaws. More than anything what disappoints me about this movie is that unlike Transformers, GI Joe could have been a successful 80s-powered update. The premise is simple: a US special forces/counter-terrorism team fights bad guys to save the day. And oh yeah, ninjas are involved. This should have been a home run and instead its a mess. Seriously, think about it. How many countless TV shows and other movies have you seen dealing with the same premise that worked just fine? I don’t know if it was a horrendous script, tinkering from Hasbro, studio-think or just a combination of all these things that contributed to this mess. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it hurt a bit as a child of the 80s to watch this.”

The Taking of Pelham 123

VPJ: “Let’s just get a few things out of the way before the review proper: firstly, let’s just stop all this ‘the remake is better than the original’ jabber right in its tracks. Director Tony Scott (more about that guy later) and a lot of reviewers are taking potshots at the 1974 original, which is great. Matthau. Robert Shaw. Gritty, unglamorous pre-beautification NYC locations. Shaw’s final scene. Great final line. It’s a good movie. Rent that one. As for this one – it’s…fine. Directed by Ridley Scott’s vastly-less talented little brother (check out this roll call of flashy mediocrity: ‘Deja Vu,’ ‘Domino,’ ‘Spy Game,’ ‘Enemy of the State,’ ‘The Fan,’ ‘Days of Thunder,’ and, of course, ‘Top Gun’), this remake, about a hijacked subway car, employs all of the flashy, superficial tricks in his glossy arsenal. And I mean all of them. This might be the spazziest film in recent memory, catering to the attention span of, I guess, Red Bull/meth addicts. Whip pan! Slow motion! Fast motion! Smash cut! Just…slow…down, buddy, we’re trying to watch a movie. As to the movie itself, it’s the Denzel vs. Travolta show, of course, and their battle of wills is…fine. Denzel, playing the conflicted subway controller, shows that he’s, well, still Denzel. He’s good in it, as usual, although he was better in the similar, but better, ‘Inside Man.’ As for Travolta, he’s fine. I mean, he’s very, very boring, as he has been for about fifteen years, but he’s hamming it up with all his might. It’s not convincing, but, well, at least he’s, um, loud? There’s the collection of good character actors (Michael Rispoli, John Turturro, Luis Guzman) that you can afford when you’re making a big-budget, slightly above average action blockbuster. It’s fine. Watch the original.”

JE: “Let me echo my esteemed colleague’s words: ‘Watch The Original.’ It’s really that simple. Now, I should admit that I am a big, big fan of the gritty NYC movies of the 70s. Something about the look, feel and ambition of the filmmakers, not to mention the great characters, makes for great cinema. I’m talking about ‘The French Connection,’ “Serpico,’ and the original ‘The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three” to name a few. What makes the original so great, aside from the grimy, claustrophobic backdrop of New York at the time, is the strong characters like Matthau and Shaw, but also great bit parts from character guys you’d recognize like Martin Balsam and Lee Wallace. It’s the story of an every-day subway controller who gets sucked into this tense hostage negotiation. It’s the everyman in wrong place/wrong time. With the update/remake, its harder to buy from The Denzel, mostly because, well, he’s Denzel. Like you say Jonesy, he’s good and reliable (like a classic car), but that doesn’t always make him the best for the job. And as for Travolta, well, good for him for still getting work. Do yourself a favor and rent the original, then rent this remake. While there’s nothing wrong with it, you’ll get a glimpse at what they were trying for…and how they fell short.”

Food, Inc.

VPJ: “I’m a vegetarian. I try not to be one of those vegetarians, though. You know the ones: strident, self-righteous, lecture-y. The ones that hurt the cause of vegetarianism every time they open their mouths. That being said, it’s easier to keep your opinions to yourself when there are people making documentaries like this one, about the megacorporations who control virtually all of the food production in the world. Their methods are about what you’d expect (driving small farmers and entrepreneurs out of business with amoral capitalistic glee), but it’s the meat production stuff that…man. I won’t go into it (I don’t want to be one of those), but this movie will make you angry, queasy, and really, really upset. That’s entertainment!”

JE: “Dammit Jonesy, I thought we had an unwritten agreement we wouldn’t talk about your…condition. Yes Maine, it’s true, I, the bacon-loving crown-prince of carnivores, am good friends with a…vegetarian. We can achieve peace in our time. That said, I like to think of myself as an enlightened meat-lover, who realizes the bad, reprehensible and otherwise icky things that get done in the name of getting a Black Angus ‘55 oz Lost Mesa HE-MAN steak slab!’ (Apologies to Mr. Patton Oswalt) I say this because I feel like flicks like this and books like ‘Fast Food Nation’ (but not the movie.) make meat-eaters developer a sort of Catholic-esque guilt about loving the meat. Those feelings aside, if you are someone (like me) who likes learning about where products come from, how industries work and the ways all these things impact you, then check out this movie. Michael Pollan, who appears in this flick, is no stranger to the workings of the food industry and all things eating-related, and I think he makes a more compelling storyteller than say, oh, I don’t know, Michael Moore. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go have a debate with my sandwich over whether I’m going to eat it.”

Lemon Tree

VPJ: “A symbolic drama about a resolute Palestinian widow who tries to keep her new neighbor, an Israeli defense minister, from having the titular beloved tree cut down. It’s exactly the sort of heartfelt, allegorical drama that makes me feel sad and powerless as a would-be artist. We can write all of the humanistic, lovely little films and stories in the world addressing that world’s biggest, most insoluble problems with insight, sensitivity, and love of our fellow man, and some jackass with an exploding vest or a cruise missile renders it all irrelevant and pitifully silly. Maybe I’m just having a bad day…”

JE: “Come on old chum, turn that frown upside down! But you have stumbled on the dirty little secret of good art my friend: even when it conveys a powerful message, it can live in a vacuum, and ultimately effect very little. And that’s a little disheartening. Whether it’s poverty and civil war in Africa or the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the best movie in the world can only do so much. In this case the story clearly serves as an allegory for the whole conflict around the West Bank. But when that story is brought to life with such rich characters and told in such a moving way, the story becomes something else all together. Ironic, eh? A movie conveys such a strong, poignant message, and yet how much can it actually change? So, uh, hey, wasn’t ‘Clue’ an awesome movie?”

Finally, Videoport brings you the following movies without comment: “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” “Aliens In the Attic,” “Command Performance” (with Dolph Lundgren!), “The Answer Man,” “The Tournament,” and, of course, “Sand Serpents.”

PARTING SHOTS!
- Will Ferrell’s George W. Bush: Funny, unfunny or overrated?
- Why won’t Justin learn his nostalgia for 80s pop culture is hurting him?
- What’s the best remake you’ve seen lately?

VideoReport #220

Volume CCXX- November Rain

For the Week of 11/3/09

Videoport gives you a free rental every, single day. You’re welcome…

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Ed the Renter continues his perilous A-Z journey through Videoport’s Incredibly Strange section. Hold on tight:

Alien Prey- A couple of lesbians get attacked by a carnivorous alien. What more needs to be said! Rent now!

The Adventures of Barry Mackenzie- Pretty good especially if you thought Crocodile Dundee needed more comedy and crossdressers.

The Alarmist- Not very impressive but begs the question “who decided the best way to advertise this disc was with a picture of Stanley Tucci tied to a chair with David Arquette leering over him”? Hey, if the phrase “Stanley Tucci in bondage” is your thing, go for it.

The Anarchist’s Cookbook- This could have been much better but fell into the whole “rebelling isn’t really such a good thing” mold- boring.

Andy Warhol’s Trash- Yeah that pretty much sums up all those films for me. I hate Warhol, never understood his appeal, and pretty much hold him responsible for ruining modern art. But if you’re feeling pretentious certainly check these out.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests you take ACTION, and rent a free CLASSIC today! (Apologies for the shameless pandering, and the bad wordplay, but the deadline looms, and the inches must be filled. If you want to avoid such unpleasantness in the future, send in your own movie reviews, movie lists, or anything else movie related to us at denmn@hotmail.com, our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones, or our Facebook page “Videoport Jones”. SO take ACTION today and…oh, forget it…)

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> B.S. Eliot suggests Local Hero (in Comedy). As I waited for the frigid arms of Death to cradle me into the Infinite Slumber, I popped in Local Hero, hoping that the main menu screen would have some peaceful music that I could die to. Guess what? Totally shafted? Turns out it’s one of those old-ass DVDs that not only doesn’t have peaceful main menu music, but also it just starts playing the movie after a couple minutes, whether you like it or you don’t like it. Indignantly, I hurled the empty bottle of Aleve at the television and took a haul off my Bud Light/Clamato beverage. Paralyzed by laziness, I was forced to watch Local Hero. However, 111 minutes later (allegedly, according to the back of the case), this tale of strange and subtle charms had restored my will to live, my hunger for adventure, my sex drive, and, most importantly, my devotion to Gorgon, the disembodied voice that commands me to steal alcoholic Clamato beverages from 7/11. I give this film a B+.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Anime Ed suggests these selections from Videoport’s collection of Japanese animation:

Shigurui- This is the best anime I have seen in long time. Very dark samurai drama, concentrating on the madness and violence of the life instead of the whole honor and bushido thing. Highly recommended!! Banzai!

Hell Girl- Man the Japanese sure love revenge. This series is all about that and the price paid for exacting it. A little repetitive at first but pays off towards the end. Hell Girl’s so cute when she dispatches folks to purgatory, I just want to hug her! Banzai!!

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Dennis suggests that you don’t allow your little darlings to handle DVD until they learn that you never, EVER touch the shiny side of the disc with your adorable, jam-smeared fingers. Maybe when they’re ready to head off to college…

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, No More Mistress Nice Mommy suggests ‘Leverage’ (in Mystery/Thriller). If you’re anything like me, you have literally stayed awake all night, thrown into adrenalin-fueled insomnia with thoughts of revenge. You don’t want anyone to get hurt and you can’t get caught, but someone needs to get ruined. You’re an average, hard-working, dirt-poor American like me; you’ve had a boss who screams at you no matter how hard you work, an ex- who tries to brainwash your child, or maybe you’ve even been physically hurt by someone. I feel your pain. This is the show for you. Three men and two awesome women (all former “loaners”) form a multimillion dollar, philanthropy-type operation that specializes in getting back at really bad guys who totally victimize really super nice people like you and me (who are totally innocent!!) Suspend your disbelief for 42 delightful, campy minutes an episode with this very satisfying show. A great cast and ‘Mission Impossible’- type action make up for the preposterous storylines. I guarantee this show will entertain you and take your mind off all the bad people for a while.

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Twin Falls Idaho. If ever an indie film had all the false hallmarks of being an exploitative mess, Twin Falls Idaho is it. The film opens in a hotel of Lynchian dim seediness where two shy, faltering conjoined twins receive a visit from a zany young prostitute named Penny. The film soon introduces a substory with an ambiguous doctor (played with ironic distance by Patrick Bachau, veteran of many vampy and vampirific Eurotrash roles*), and its turning point is a misunderstanding at a Halloween party. This sounds like a voyeuristic peepshow or a maudlin mockery… but instead Twin Falls Idaho manages to be a tender character study, a solemn, sweet tale about love and interdependence and loneliness. It’s a mournful little story with some gently touching performances. Mark and Michael Polish, writer and writer-director brothers, also star as Blake and Francis Falls, and they convey their closeness with a (quite literally) quiet intimacy: the two murmur confidingly to each other as if they have, indeed, spent a lifetime only inches apart. Michele Hicks is brash and gentle by turns, a convincing portrait of a hard-bitten young hooker struggling between self-interest and compassion. And Lesley Ann Warren** turns in another of her remarkable small supporting roles here, wrestling with a really unlikeable part and giving it her all. The whole film is a very successful oddity. It’s tentative and slow, almost peaceful in its startling way — a meditative and lovely study that pushes the audience to consider an experience completely outside the scope of most daily lives and simultaneously makes us realize how very alike we are in our desires and our limitations.

*Editor’s Note: Such as his suavely villainous turn in one of my all-time favorite movies Choose Me.

**Editor’s Other Note: Also from the cult classic Choose Me!

New Releases this week at Videoport: GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra (for the second week in a row, we get a big budget action flick based on a line of toys! We are clearly being punished for something!), Lemon Tree (metaphorical drama about a Palestinian widow trying to keep her new neighbor, an Israeli defense minister , from having the titular item cut down), The Taking of Pelham 123 (John Travolta and Denzel Washington team up with soulless action-meister Tony Scott to remake the 1974 thriller about the hijacking of the titular New York City subway train; this one is fine, but please ignore the dismissive comments made by the dingbat Scott about the original- that one’s better), Will Ferrell: You’re Welcome America- A Final Night With George W. Bush (filmed version of Ferrell’s one man Broadway show as the former, um, president, I guess you’d have to call him; this is absolutely hilarious, by the way), Food, Inc. (as a vegetarian, I try not to be all self-righteous about eating meat; it’s easier when someone makes as harrowing a documentary about the unspeakably horrifying methods corporate food producers use to get that yummy meat to the table; was that a little snotty? Sorry), Aliens in the Attic (some adorable little moppets have to fight off the aliens invading their beach house; starring former SNL pals Tim Meadows and Kevin Nealon, and at least two tweens named Ashley), I Love You, Beth Cooper (hen the nerdy high school valedictorian proclaims his love for the most popular girl in school, she shows up at his house and gives him the best night of his life in this teen comedy undoubtedly written by a lonely one-time valedictorian), The Answer Man (Jeff Daniels plays a reclusive self-help author who finds out that real life is a little more complicated than he’d thought when he meets troubled single mom Lauren Graham), Command Performance (Dolph Lundgren is back! He punches a bunch o’guys! What else do you need to know!), Sand Serpents (the guy from Iron Eagle fighting, well, serpents, that live in the sand, I guess), Fears of the Dark (check Videoport’s Foreign Language section for this new, animated anthology film where sic of the creepiest dudes in cartooning work together to give you the heebie-jeebs), The Tournament (overqualified actors Ving Rhames and Robert Carlyle lend their seemingly-currently-unvalued talents to this direct-to-DVD action flick about an assassin tournament where assassins try to assassinate each other), ‘Monty Python’s Almost the Truth’ (comprehensive documentary where all the surviving Pythons dish on how they became the funniest human beings in the history of the universe).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: The Dead (absolutely lovely; John Huston’s final film saw him directing daughter Anjelica and doing justice to James Joyce’s short story, which I maintain is the single most beautiful thing ever written by anyone, ever), The English Surgeon (documentary about the titular doctor, working at an underfunded Ukraine hospital, and the wrenching decisions and compromises he must make on a daily basis), Black Devil Doll (where do you find a willfully-offensive horror comedy about the spirit of a black militant who comes back in the body of a murderous, horny ventriloquist dummy? Why in Videoport’s Incredibly Strange section, of course!), Strip Nude for Your Killer (the all-time worst advice? Perhaps, but see for yourself when you rent this 1975 Italian sleaze- and murder- and boob-fest, starring the queen of same, the sluttily-lovely Edwige Fenech), ‘Private Century’ (filmmaker Jan Sikl spellbindingly edits together forty years of home movies from ordinary people in order to tell the modern history of Czechoslovakia through their eyes), Unmistaken Child (documentary follows a young Buddhist monk who embarks on a years-long journey to find the child who he believes is the reincarnation of his beloved teacher; touching and all, but, since that child’s parents might not believe in spooky ghost nonsense, also kind of creepy, no?), Paraiso Travel (a seductive young woman with dreams of riches in New York City and the puppylovestruck young man who’s devoted to her attempt to travel illegally from their home in Colombia to America in this one), The Hellbenders (this 1967 Spaghetti Western starring Joseph Cotten is beloved of Quentin Tarantino, so you are gonna watch it; also, check out the informative documentary The Spaghetti West to find out what that whole deal was all about), ‘Edge of Darkness’ (when his nuclear activist daughter is killed, a straightlaced British father is forced to confront his country’s nuclear policies in the 80s in this British miniseries), Earth 2100 (speculative [translated: terrifying] documentary posits how our current glutinous habits could mean all human life is doomed in the next century, unless people make some small, manageable personal sacrifices; oh crap…), Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox (documentary about the story behind the liquid soap with all of the utterly bananas and borderline creepy sayings on the bottle), Red Cliff and Red Cliff 2 (how did Videoport get a hold of two precious copies of legendary action director John Woo’s [The Killer, Hard Boiled] massive, epic historical drama? You don’t know…you don’t wanna know…), IP Man (Donnie Yen and Simon Yam star in this martial arts biopic about the first teacher of Wing Chun [and Bruce Lee's teacher]), Shinjuku Incident (the new Jackie Chan movie! A violent tale of illegal Chinese immigrants, the Yakuza, and, one presumes, a lot of kicking).

BUY THINGS!

All right, we’ve held off until November, but it’s time to kick the holiday shopping frenzy into overdrive for the year. Here, then are the iron-clad reasons why you should shop at Videoport this year, instead of throwing your money to some giant, local-economy crippling, employee-exploiting, crappy customer service-having corporate behemoth:

1. You get something for yourself for buying something for someone else: for every movie you buy from Videoport, you get a free rental on your Videoport account! So, buy one movie for a loved one and you get one free rental for yourself. Buy two, get two. You get the idea…

1a. Of course, Videoport, in addition to all of the movies for sale right here in the store, can order any movie, boxed set, or TV show currently in print. It’ll take about a week.

2. Videoport has gift certificates: yup, for the big movie renter on your list, give the gift of rentals! And, make sure to tell the lucky stiff that Videoport gift certificate rentals are good with Videoport’s daily specials! That means, essentially, that you’re giving twice as many movie rentals as it seems! You’re twice as good a friend/lover/obligated co-worker! (Our ‘three rentals for ten bucks’ gift certificate makes a perfect Secret Santa gift that says “I had to get you something”!

Check out the VideoReport (and more) online!

You can read back issues of the VideoReport, leave comments, read the weekly new release review column by Videoport Jones and Justin Ellis (of the Portland Press Herald), and pretty much any weird movie article, link, or list we can come up with in our spare time. Just type in www.videoportjones.wordpress.com to your computer-type device and join in the fun.

Park for free at Videoport!

1. Parking meters are silly and inactive after 6pm Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday.

2. The parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour parking after 5pm Monday-Friday and all day on weekends.

3. Videoport takes part in the Park & Shop program (because we’re so super), which means you can just pull in to any downtown parking garage (including the courthouse garage, about a minute away) and we’ll get you a free hour of parking. Again, you’re welcome…

Videoport on ‘Willard Beach’!

Yup, Videoport is the seeting for this episode of the popular, and hilarious, new web series ‘Willard Beach’!

 

Check it out here!

Justin Ellis of the Press Herald and I on the Week’s New Releases (10.27.09)

Maybe we should just call this the Autumn of Disillusionment. First it’s our favorite actors, now it’s one of our favorite directors. If that weren’t enough we’re beginning the slide into mediocrity that is holiday movie season. What are Videoport Jones and I to do? Our jobs of course. Which is to say, make fun of the new DVD releases.* (*Which I should note was regrettably missed last week when I was out. “Transformers – Revenge of the Fallen,” consider yourself lucky.)

Whatever Works

Videoport Jones: “I’d like to preface this review by announcing that I am not enjoying this. ‘Annie Hall.’ ‘Love & Death.’ ‘Manhattan.’ ‘Take the Money and Run.’ ‘Hannah and Her Sisters.’ ‘Sleeper.’ ‘Broadway Danny Rose.’ ‘Bullets Over Broadway.’ ‘Even Everyone Says I Love You.’ These are great movies, personal favorites, and the foundation for the rapidly-eroding bulwark of good will I’ve erected around Woody Allen against the increasingly-incontrovertible waves of criticism that have greeted virtually every movie he’s made for, oh, twenty years or so. I was momentarily roused from my slough of despondent fallen hero worship when I heard that ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ comedy god Larry David was cast as the latest Woody simulacrum in this one (he seems a better fit than Kenneth Branagh, Will Ferrell, or, gods help us, Jason Biggs). But, having now seen it, well, that’s over. David’s a funny guy, and his signature brand of misanthropic grumpiness seems, on paper, a good fit for Allen’s late-career grouchy comic pessimism, but, and here’s where I’m not having any fun – Woody Allen has absolutely lost it. He has lost it on several levels. To wit: 1. He has no idea how people talk anymore. People don’t talk like this, and Woody thinks that they do. It’s a stilted, uptown mirror to Kevin Smith’s overwritten dialogue and, like Smith’s, it only works when it’s, well, funny. This is just hollow. 2. He is out of ideas and he is repeating himself in almost every way. David plays an aging, sarcastic guy who thinks that life is pointless, that people are stupid and cruel, and that death is coming for him any second now, and who meets up with a young, beautiful, not particularly bright girl (played, with chattering charmlessness here, by Evan Rachel Wood) who, although uncouth, is refreshingly innocent, guileless, and improbably into older curmudgeons. Sound familiar? Couple that with some fetishistic New York snobbery, and a gaggle of overqualified actors joining the ‘I got to play an underwritten supporting role in a Woody Allen movie’ club, and, well, you’ve got this unfunny, derivative, tired, and altogether depressing film. The word ‘tarnish’ keeps coming to mind.”

Justin: “Here we go once again, another installment of “What Happened to You” theater. I think I’m maybe a little more forgiving of Woody than you, in that I think some of the more recent movies, like ‘Celebrity’ and ‘Small Time Crooks’ had enjoyable moments and showed glimpses of Woody transitioning into a filmmaker who lives in a weird sort of an amplified world of New York or L.A. I’d be more forgiving of him if it felt like these comedies were supposed to live on in a hyper-reality making fun of our own. I say this, because one of my favorite Woody Allen movies is a strange one: ‘What’s Up Tiger Lily,’ which is strange, surreal and funny. ANYWAY, all of this is to say he’s just off on an island now, and he’s probably too far gone to come back. The grumpy, frumpy-yet-charming older man character has been run into the ground Woody, we know this because you created the standard. Maybe it’s time to put down the camera and try producing? But since we know that’s not going to happen, perhaps we can ship him off to an island with other actors and directors who have outlived their creativity. It’s be like the island of misfit toys, but George Lucas would be there, and Eddie Murphy…”

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

VPJ: “Wait – ‘Dawn of the Dinosaurs’? But this is the third movie about an approaching, well ice age, and that’s when the dinosaurs died out in favor of our wisecrackin’, celebrity-voiced mammal ancestors…shouldn’t this be called ‘Dusk of the Dinosaurs’? Anyone? Well, this second sequel in the middling animated series, nonsensical title and all, is here, with Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Ray Romano, and others getting paid. I have literally nothing more to add, except to say that Pixar’s ‘Up’ comes out on November 10th.”

JE: “Oh Jonesy, ye of little faith. Leave your anthropology book at home and turn off your brain for this family-friend laff riot! In this installment our heroes stumble upon a hidden world where the dinosaurs, still exist! Sorry…I don’t know what overcame me there. I feel ill. I’m not gonna pretend to know about the ‘Ice Age’ franchise, because I look at it and it makes me think of ‘The Land Before Time’ franchise, which, then just makes me angry. They are – with the exception of a few mammals and dinos – the same. Only ‘Land’ came first. I suppose I could say what I always do at times like this, that we’re just not the target demo here, but that feels hollow. Let’s wrap this up with the usual disclaimer: If you’ve got kids and are looking for something to entertain them and want to grab a 90 minute nap or watch a ball game on a separate TV, then this is your bet. If you’re one of those parents who wants to, you know, actually spend time with their kids watching movies, then, not so much.”

Nothing Like the Holidays

VPJ: “Well, the first shot in the yearly Christmas movie wars has been fired across our bow. Every year, the same deal: grab a bunch of suspiciously-dissimilar-looking celebrities to play a mildly dysfunctional family, give everyone a little backstory/conflict that can be wrapped up with a new boyfriend/girlfriend or a few hugs, throw in a wacky uncle and, jingle bells! You’ve got yourself an easily-digestible, completely forgettable would-be holiday favorite. (Am I being too harsh? Go ahead and tell me one memorable detail from ‘The Family Stone,’ ‘Surviving Christmas,’ ‘Four Christmases,’ ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas,’ ‘Christmas with the Kranks,’ ‘Deck the Halls,’ or ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night.’ I can wait…) This one at least can boast some ethnic flavor, with reliable Latino actors like John Leguizamo, Elizabeth Pena, Freddy Rodriguez, and the ever-welcome Luis Guzman (and, for some reason, Debra Messing) doing time in the tinsel. It may be ordinary, predictable, and bland, but…well…yeah…”

JE: “I think the bad Christmas movie is the worst racket of all, worse than Halloween scare flicks or anything that is marketed with the phrase ‘This Valentine’s Day…’ I may be repeating myself when I say this, but, do studios make this junk because they think people expect it? I get the idea since the holidays are a time when people need a break from family events, shopping or other madness, but do we really need stuff like this? It seems like every December I’ll try to go to the movies and it’s a choice between bad holiday comedies, Oscar contenders looking for an early lead and the occasional sneaky good drama or sci-fi flick. Maybe we should blame Chevy Chase and ‘Christmas Vacation,’ or ‘A Christmas Story’ for becoming templates. We get it, families can be crazy and holidays can make for stressful and hilarious results, but if you’re going through all that in real life, would you want to go see that in a movie, and a bad one at that? John Leguizamo’s got a badgering, obnoxious brother, so do I, Hahahahaha! Luis Guzman drinks to cope with the embarrassments of family, so do I! Hahahahahaha. Come on now Hollywood.”

Il Divo

VPJ: “Giulio Andreotti has been elected Prime Minister of Italy seven times since 1946. He’s been named ’senator for life,’ and is still active politically today at age 90. He’s also been accused of having ties to the Mafia, the Freemasons (and the P2/Vatican Bank scandal), and the kidnapping and murder of political rival (and former Italian Prime Minister) Aldo Moro. Sounds like an ideal figure for a biopic, doesn’t he? Well, some intrepid Italian filmmakers have made one about the still-living Adreotti, and, since they haven’t been murdered (yet), maybe that means the old man’s power is finally fading. ‘Il Divo’ is a fascinating, if confusing (if you’re not well versed in 20th century Italian history), and often funny look at a political monster (his nicknames include “the Sphinx,” “the Hunchback,” “the Black Pope,” and, of course, “Beelzebub”) who, while always at the center of the most outrageous scandal, controversy, and conspiracy theory, has never been pinned down.”

JE: “To think we get worried about governors who disappear to South America with mistresses and vice presidents who accidentally shoot friends. You’ve got to admit they do some things better in Italy, this time making Democracy menacing and sexy all at the same time. The reason people like Andreotti make compelling characters in film is probably the same as what gets them in power, charisma and cunning. History’s littered with guys like that, a little too connected to shady events, yet so coated in Teflon they’ve skated past all problems. As you point out the fact that the filmmakers are still alive is either a testament to Andreotti’s waining power or his sense of humor. While not a documentary, ‘Il Divo’ provides a glimpse into what it’s like to be infamous. Even if you don’t know about Italian history just sit back and enjoy the story.”

Orphan

VPJ: “A nice, wealthy couple decide to adopt a lonely, orphaned girl from a disadvantaged country. Feel good story of the year? Not hardly, when the girl has creepy doll eyes, a vaguely Middle European accent and dresses like a temperance crusader. Yup, it’s time for middle class white America to be afraid of foreigners and poor people again according to this crappy, manipulative ‘evil child’ thriller. Starring the very talented Peter Sarsgaard (‘The Center of the World,’ ‘Shattered Glass,’ ‘The Dying Gaul’) who deserves much, much better, and Vera Farmiga (‘The Departed’) who’s just about where she should be.”

JE: “I’ve never understood the appeal of the ‘creepy kid’ genre and I hope I’m not alone. I mean as a culture we’re supposed to like kids, right? Like them enough to have them and ensure the continuation of the species. Is that it? Directors/screenwriters think they’re being clever by messing with people’s perceptions of children as wholesome and innocent? Doesn’t matter if it’s ‘The Omen,’ ‘Problem Child,’ or this, that’s messed up man. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s wrong, and it’s even worse if it’s executed poorly and cheaply, as is done here. Don’t power-lock the doors of the Ford Childmover just yet parents, just skip this flick. And remember, adoption, still okay 9 out of 10 times. Unless your child is the chosen one.”

Battlestar Galactica – The Plan

VPJ: “‘Battlestar Galactica’ is back! And people are…kind of happy, and pretty confused! This tag end to the acclaimed sci fi series revival takes us back to the beginning of the show and reveals the whole, you know, “kill all the humans” plot from the Cylon perspective. I haven’t really gotten into BSG in a big way yet; it seems fine, but I still have childhood cheese burns from the daffy original, and from what I gather from the Galacticans at Videoport, there’s a certain secondhand feel to this movie (I understand that some of your favorite characters don’t appear). So…could nerd riots be far off?”

JE: “RIOT! FRAKKIN’ RIOT! OK, we all know I’m a big nerd for Battlestar. I may or may not have non-costume BSG related clothing in my wardrobe (WHAT? A guy can’t have a T-Shirt? is that a crime?). So I’ll take anything they feed me when it comes to this story since they’ve earned my fanaticism through compelling stories, great characters and a mind-melting plot. That said, I’m not sure how I feel about this one. I remember sitting down to watch the finale of the show, only to see commercials for this and instantly think ‘oh no.’ Once a story’s done you have to worry about any additions. While the potential is there to make the whole thing better, it feels like the potential is double to make the whole enterprise worse. But I’m a big sucker, so I will most likely buy this, chew it over and wait to watch the spin-off series ‘Caprica.’ Yes that’s right folks, the lesson as always is I am indeed a sucker.”

Parting Shots:

- Is it time to drop Woody Allen off on the Island of Misfit Toys?
- What’s your recipe for a GOOD holiday flick?
- Seriously, who likes creepy kid thriller movies?

VideoReport #219

Volume CCXIX- Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, Spooky Scary…

For the Week of 10/27/09

Videoport wishes you a spooky, scary, and renty Halloween. Oh, by the way, LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU! Bwaa ha haaaa…gotcha!

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Ed the Renter kicks off this Halloweenie edition of the VideoReport with some obscure, quick-hitter horror movie suggestions (you can find them all in the Horror section. Duh):

Phantasm- Absolutely the best “who the ef knows what is happening” horror movie ever. Gets points in my book for the great cheesy scene where the heroes are attacked by a giant bug.

Pin- Very creepy. Good movie no one has ever sen.

Pumpkinhead- Come on, this is the perfect Halloween movie. Lance Henriksen rules!!

Rojo Sangre- The great Paul Naschy gets a tour de force in this one. Best opening line ever!

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Arsenic and Old Lace (in Mystery/Thriller, but it’s a Classic, so you can rent it for free on Tuesday!). Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant), confirmed bachelor and outspoken author of anti-marriage books and essays, has succumbed to the charms of the girl next door (Priscilla Lane) and gotten himself hitched — on Halloween, no less! Now he just has to share the happy news with the dotty old aunts and uncle who raised him, and then he and the blushing bride can take off for their honeymoon. But you’ve seen enough screwball comedies to know: it’s never that simple. Mortimer’s departure is delayed, and his marital bliss postponed, when he learns that his sweet little aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) have been poisoning their unfortunate gentleman lodgers in a campaign to end the suffering of lonely old bachelors. Things go from bad to worse when more of Mortimer’s long-lost family shows up; meanwhile, his unwitting bride anxiously awaits him. It’s old-fashioned screwballery brought to you by Frank Capra, who puts some slapstick-y fillips on the original stage play. Cary Grant takes advantage of the hilarity, discarding his usual urbane gloss in favor of over-the-top takes and unabashed mugging; Hull and Adair balance this beautifully, radiating a calm and contented benevolence over the whole macabre mess. It’s a romp of dark comedy and goofy suspense.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests that you check out these cool scary flicks in the Foreign Language section if you’re feeling adventurous (and if the Horror section has been decimated by the less adventurous) this Halloween season.  Anatomy (gory thriller starring Run Lola Run’s Franka Potente as a spunky med student uncovering bloody secrets in her medical school), The Orphanage (genuinely terrifying and moving Spanish haunted house thriller), The Devil’s Backbone (another gem of atmospheric horror from Spain), Pulse, Shutter, Ringu, Ringu 2, One Missed Call, Evil Dead Trap, Dark Water, The Grudge (all really scary Japanese films, most of which were apallingly remade into American crapfests), They Came Back (moody French film about loved ones coming back from the dead…different), Nosferatu (Werner Herzog’s remake of the silent German vampire classic), Tesis (really intense thriller about a grad student who uncovers some really unpleasant things while investigating the urban legend of snuff films), Cronos (weird vampire flick from Guillermo Del Toro, director of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone), Vampyr (Carl Dreyer’s 1932 adaptation of the classic vampire novel by Sheridan le Fanu)…branch out horror fans- the rest of the world’s a very scary place.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Donnie Darko. It’s October, 1988, and Donnie Darko is counting down the days until Halloween. Why? The movie unravels that mystery, sort of, but the journey to that half-answer is tortuous, intriguing, and disturbing on several levels. Despite writer-director Richard Kelly’s intent, for many viewers, the story ends up as a meta-mystery: is Donnie receiving supernatural messages about a doomsday event, or is he slipping dangerously out of touch with reality? Is this a film about extra-natural events, about a young man’s existential crisis, or about a descent into madness? Either way, the film is tragic, complexly compassionate, and sweetly elegiac, with a sorrowful empathy not only for Donnie’s plight, but also for supporting characters which a lesser film would treat as two-dimensional villains or clueless chumps. Jake Gyllenhall, starring as Donnie, is an inspired piece of casting. He’s completely believable as a clever but troubled teenager. Gyllenhaal’s Donnie is vaguely threatening, a complicated mess of confusion and yearning, hulking around in a man-sized body. He manages to meld seemingly opposing characteristics in every moment of film. He’s gloomy and dark, but with bright bursts of cheer and charm breaking across his face like sun breaking through stormclouds, and even displays moments of delightful childlike innocence. This is Kelly’s first film, and its scope and scale are almost impossibly ambitious; without Gyllenhaal’s talent and ability to underplay, you could cut that “almost” and leave it at “impossible.” (Though both DVD versions are fine, I prefer the original theatrical release; the director’s cut is 20 minutes longer, with a more cluttered narrative and less Echo and The Bunnymen.)

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” teaches us about hope and about humility. Every year, Linus waits for the Great Pumpkin, and every year, Linus is disappointed. Yet he persists: he tries to sustain the wavering hope that this year something transcendent will visit him, will validate his years of sacrifice and trust. “Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to. I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.” He’s the Fox Mulder of the Peanuts gang: he wants to believe. I love you, Linus, even though you’re the sad puppet of a fundamentalist gourd-based religious faction.

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, April suggests Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (in Horror). Bette Davis got the Oscar nomination for her role of Baby Jane in this awesome creepfest but it’s Joan Crawford who really makes the movie great. Yeah, yeah, Davis is all crazy psycho dressed like a creepy doll but I just keep thinking how terrifying it is to be the wheelchair-bound sane sister. If you’re looking for a great movie to watch on Halloween that isn’t all gore and guts and actually has real thrills in it, you can’t go wrong with Baby Jane.

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Ginger Snaps (in Horror). Breaking away from the stultifying mass of formulaic teenage-horror films, Ginger Snaps is a darkly subversive werewolf movie with a vicious sense of humor and an unapologetic frankness about youthful hungers. It tells the story of the Fitzgerald sisters (Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle), two disaffected teenagers who radiate stagey, shallow morbidity. Even their longstanding death pact bores them silly. Their mother (played with pitch-perfect determined cheer by Mimi Rogers) watches them with hysterically-repressed anxiety, hoping that her daughters will grow up into perfectly normal darlings. Spoiler alert: they won’t. The film cleverly uses lycanthropy as a complex metaphor for the many transformations that come with puberty — not only the bodily metamorphosis, the shapeshifting and hairiness and bleeding, but also the unrelenting insistence of the body’s appetites. Perkins and Isabelle handle their roles with the aplomb of accomplished actors; they manage to earn our empathy without betraying the deeply bitter and unpleasant characters of Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald, who (with the ardor of bored teenagers everywhere) would rather die than be average.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (Galactica junkies rejoice! Thought the series has ended, and thus your lives have no meaning, this posthumous BG movie promises to sate your cravings, at least for a little while…), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (part three of the animated film series with the prehistoric animals with the celebrity voices and all; it’ll hold us until Up comes out on Novemebr 10th!), Orphan (Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga learn the lesson that adopting needy children from other countries leads to horror and death. Has anyone told Brangelina? Sarsgaard’s a good actor, at least), Whatever Works (‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’’s Larry David is the latest talented actor to be swallowed up as Woody Allen’s comic mouthpiece in the Woodman’s most recent, largely-forgettable exercise in creative petering-out), Nothing Like the Holidays (yup, it’s time for the year’s crop of Christmas movies to begin; this one’s can boast a wealth of Latino Hollywood talent, with John Leguizamo, Elizabeth Pena, Freddy Rodriguez, and the ever-welcome Luiz Guzman, oh, and Debra Messing, for some reason), ‘Life After People’- season 1 (the History Channel speculates on what the world is gonna be like after all of us pesky humans disappear with the help of experts, spooky narration, and lots of CGI buildings going SMASH!; seriously, this sort of thing is like crack to me), Into Temptation (Jeremy Sisto and Kristin Chenoweth star as, respectively, a priest and a prostitute in this dark drama; also starring ‘The Office’’s Kevin [Brian Baumgartner], which is irrelevant, but I like Kevin), Il Divo (brilliant, darkly-comic biopic about Giulio Andreotti, the longtime Italian politician whose reputed connections to the Mafia, the Freemasons, and a whole lot o’ murders [including, possibly, that of his political rival, Prime Minister Aldo Moro] haven’t prevented him from being named ‘Senator for life’), Stan Helsing (get it? Yeah, it’s another labored, unfunny movie spoof from some of the people responsible for the Scary Movie franchise), Afterwards (direct-to-DVD thriller about a lawyer who meets a spooky guy who claims he can predict when someone is about to die; the only reason you should conceivably care- said spooky guy is played by a slumming John Malkovich).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure (yay! Disney continues to plunder its own animation legacy with another direct-to-DVD sequel! Our standards are getting lower as we speak!), Z (Costa-Gavras’ superlative political thriller about right-wing Greek fascists trying to overthrow the country’s democratically-elected government [like they do], gets the deluxe, Criterion treatment), Death in the Garden (from legendary surrealist director Luis Bunuel comes this belated DVD release of his 1956 tale of a diverse group of people forced to flee into a South American rainforest due to a local revolution), Perestroika (an acclaimed astrophysicist returns to his native Russia after decades in exile, only to find the new, post-Communist Moscow as confusing as ever; cult movie fans- this was directed by the guy who made Liquid Sky!), ‘Trial and Retribution’- season 3 (more of the British crime series currently setting rental records in Videoport’s Mystery/Thriller section), You Weren’t There: A History of Chicago Punk 1977-1984 (documentary includes great footage of seminal Windy City punk bands like Effigies, Naked Raygun, Strike Under, Articles of Faith and others), I Can See You (just in time for Halloween, this surreal, low budget horror film follows some yuppies in the woods, with things going about as wrong as they possibly can…), Lioness (documentary about a group of American female soldiers who, in the [current] Iraq war, became the first group of female soldiers to fight in direct ground combat), Tucker’s Crossing and The Bigfoot Diaries (two low budget horror films from New Hampshire director Jamie Sharps whose very nice ladyfriend brought them to us for you all to rent), Roxy Music: More Than This (the Brian/Bryans [Eno and Ferry]’s legendary band gets their own retrospective documentary), I Am Because We Are (this documentary, about the wrenching fate of the million plus orphans in Malawi dealing with AIDS, and, well, being orphans was written by Madona, of all people, and features Desmond Tutu and others; thus ensuring that the names ‘Madonna’ and Desmond Tutu’ would be forever linked in the most unlikely pairing of all time), Summer Storm (from 40s-50s master of melodrama, director Douglas Sirk [All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind] comes this typically-lush adaptation of a Chekhov play), Refresh, Neverland, Everyday is Saturday, and Wild Stallions (four new sports documentaries about people who strap wood to their feet and hurt themselves), Marigold (middling American actress Ali Larter plays a middling American actress who gets stranded in India and gets involved in a lavish Bollywood movie), ‘The Guardian’- season 1 (before people liked Simon Baker in ‘The Mentalist’, they were sort of indifferent to him in this series about a shamed lawyer forced to be nice).

Dennis presents one sentence reviews of the only movies that ever actually scared me: (SPOILERS, baby):

The Blair Witch Project: He’s in the corner! He’s in the corner!

Angel Heart: That little bastard at the end gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about him to this day.

Jacob’s Ladder: Stupid ending aside, this is as close to one of my nightmares as I ever hope to see on a DVD.

Halloween: The first, the original, still the best…the most masterful use of foreground/background in film history, and that sparse piano theme is not what you want to hear if you’re home alone.

Jaws: Can anyone ever be at peace in the ocean anymore?

Candyman: Something about the combination of icy camerawork, Phillip Glass’ moody score, Tony Todd’s imposing, soulful presence, and climbing in that hole in the wall with the Candyman’s face painted on it!!!

Session 9: Just plain well-crafted spook stuff with a great setting.

The Last Broadcast: Pre Blair Witch-style low budget flim about the Jersey Devil has some good, scary ideas…and a really stupid ending.

The Baby’s Room: Part of the Spanish ‘Six Films to Die For’ series, this one’s just plain creepy.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: That boat ride sequence is perhaps the most intense thing I’ve seen in my life; they show this to kids?

Carrie: Two words: Shock. Ending.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): Best last scene of a horror movie ever caps off a great ratcheting up of the tension throughout.

Don’t Look Now: Two films in a row featuring Donald Sutherland and a serious W.T.F!!!!! ending.

Onibaba: Utterly creepy throughout, culminating in some all-time freaky imagery.

The Vanishing: The Dutch original’s ending- wheeeeaaaaughhhhh.

Signs: So sue me- before it gets lame, there are some serious scares (The newsreader saying, “The following footage may disturb you”…yup, it did.)

The Mothman Prophecies: Not a good movie, but the whole “Chap.Stik” thing is undeniably creepy.

Alien: Duh.

Aliens: The whole motion detector scene.

Eraserhead: The world has ceased to make sense, and I can’t wake up.

The Exorcist: Tubular Bells still does it for me.

Check us out online at www.videoportjones.wordpress.com!

I run down the week’s new releases (Justin’s on hiatus) for 10/20/09

Justin’s indisposed this week, on top secret Portland Press Herald business. He’ll be back next week to give me some sorely-needed backup. Oh, and if you’re looking for Justin and my column in the PPH’s GO section this week (or any week hereafter apparently), you can go on ahead and stop now. Oh, well, back to the internet ghetto…

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: “Some thoughts which occurred whilst watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:

1. I actually watched Transformers 2. I believe I should be afforded some credit and/or sympathy for this.

2. Why did they make that one weedy little robot, the one with the spray tan and the pubescent facial hair? Oh, wait, that’s Shaia LaBeouf. Apologies.

3. Well, at least they got the other robot right; pretty, lifelike, and it moves and talks almost like a real human. Oh wait, that’s Megan Fox. Apologies. (A sidebar: in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Ms. Fox played a vapid, waxily-pretty starlet whom the other characters actively posit may be secretly mentally-challenged. Watching her in this movie, I found myself wondering that the actual Ms. Fox may be mentally-challenged. She’s worse at pointing and yelling in front of a green screen than the kids in The Goonies).

4. Oh Rainn Wilson, I just feel bad for you, dude. This is not a wise step in your attempt to prove yourself a viable movie actor.

5. While I resisted the urge to do so (mostly), I think you can lay on the fast forward button on your remote whenever there are just humans on the screen. Not that the twenty or so scenes where LaBeouf and Fox decide whether to break up aren’t riveting. Seriously, someone out there should do an all “robot smash” edit online.

6. The film seems to have appropriated George Lucas’ sense of humor, right down to thinking that a minstrel-show, comic relief Jar Jar Binks-esque transformer is a must.

7. The “robot smash” portions of the film are as exciting as watching your roommate play “MechWarrior” on his PS2. (Studios: you can put that quote on the DVD box for free if you like).

8. When a film begins with the credit, “in association with HASBRO”, you know it’s gonna be quality.

9. Speaking of #8, could this be the best film ever made from a line of toys? (Again, feel free to use that quote to promote the film…) I can think of Bratz, the My Little Pony movie, and maybe the Care Bears film. Definitely it’s in the top two anyway.

10. Further delving into #8, which genre is the most hellish on us viewers: the ‘based on video game movie’ (Street Fighter, Doom, Super Mario Brothers, Mortal Kombat, etc), the ‘based on a board game’ movie (Clue, The Mutant Chronicles, the upcoming Candyland film [god, I wish I were joking], etc), the ‘based on a Disney theme park ride’ movie (Tower of Terror, The Haunted Mansion, and don’t get me started in the interminable Pirates of the Caribbean franchise), the ‘based on a TV series movie (a list too depressing to go into here), or this, the ‘based on a toy line’ movie? Man, I sort of liked Clue, so it can’t be that category, but…

11. Does no one know the difference between a fun, exciting brainless action blockbuster and a lame, limply-directed commercial product anymore?

12. If I were getting paid, I’d be demanding hazard pay right now. As it is, I’m going to pour myself a beer and watch some Kurosawa before I’m too stupid to finish this article…”

Blood: The Last Vampire: “This live-action remake of an anime flick about a sweet-looking teenaged girl who’s actually a centuries-old half vampire vampire killer has so much unconvincing, sword-spilled gore, they should’ve called it “CGI Blood : The Last Vampire.” HAHAHAA, get it! Anybody? Well, that’s about all I’ve got for this one, a barely-released, entirely blah would-be action movie. It’s got a pretty Asian girl (in the requisite fetishistic schoolgirl uniform), not a name actor in sight, and performances worthy of the average video game cut scene. Oh, and lots and lots of that really unconvincing computer blood . Check out the original anime; it’s actually not bad.”

Cheri: “Michelle Pfeiffer reteams with her erstwhile Dangerous Liasons director Stephen Frears for another saucy period piece. This one, while perhaps fifty percent less saucy than its predecessor, is still most worthwhile, with the enduringly-lovely Ms. Pfeiffer portraying an aging courtesan in an adaptation of Colette’s typically-subtly and melancholy novel. Let’s talk about Michelle Pfeiffer for a moment, shall we. Pegged early on as just another (achingly beautiful) face, she revealed herself a capable actress, able to infuse her (inevitably) gorgeous characters with a surprising soulfulness in films like The Fabulous Baker Boys, Married to the Mob, The Age of Innocence, and my guilty pleasure Tequila Sunrise. Then after wedding the once-ubiquitous TV creator David E. Kelley, she toned down her career for a while. It’s nice to have her back, and here, playing a woman, long invested in performance, who faces the inevitable loss of her feminine charms, and therefore power, she brings an added dimension to the film. And Frears is one of the under-the-radar directors that people don’t realize is responsible for some of their favorite films (I heartily recommend The Hit, My Beautiful Laundrette, Prick Up Your Ears, The Grifters, High Fidelity, Dirty Pretty Things, and The Queen). Worth a rental, especially on date night.”

Wrong Turn 3: Left for : “In lieu of beating the crap out of this direct-to-DVD, star-less second sequel to a horror movie that wasn’t any good to begin with, here’s a list of some recent releases from the last month that I really liked: Away We Go, Drag Me to Hell, Infestation, Anvil!: The Story of Anvil, Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation, The friend Experience, Observe and Report, and O’Horten. See- just because the studios toss us a lackluster new release week doesn’t mean there’s not a wide, varied backlog of stuff on the Videoport shelves to hold you over ’til next time. Oh, by the way, Wrong Turn 3 sucks.”

Saturday Night Live: The Best of Amy Poehler: “I love SNL, for all it’s undeniable ups and downs, but I always felt that she was a little above the show. A founding member of the brilliant improv and sketch troupe the Upright Citizens Brigade, and star of the on-its-way-to-the-top sitcom ‘Parks and Recreation’, the pixieish, crazy-eyed Poehler is like a tiny, fearless comic force of nature. As for her best of- it’s funny, of course, because she’s in it, but you should really see her in her element with the UCB. Check out her stellar, bananas work in the first two seasons of their Comedy Central sketch show and, especially, their stage show ASSSSCAT, where her particular brand of lunatic genius really shines. And she’s also my girlfriend.”

VideoReport #218

Volume CCXVIII- Godzilla vs. Balki

For the Week of 10/20/09

Videoport will give you a free movie every single day…and there’s nothin’ you can do about it!

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests The Limey (in Mystery/Thriller). A most unusual thriller, Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey turns the classic revenge narrative on its side, holds it up, and lets us see the light shine through. It’s an odd piece, and an affecting one. Despite an excellent supporting cast, including marvelous performances from Luis Guzman and Lesley Anne Warren, Terence Stamp carries the film on his slim shoulders; he plays Wilson, an aging British thief. During one of his many sojourns in jail, his daughter Jenny grew up and moved to California, where she cavorted with a much older (and much richer) music producer, Valentine (played with old-school SoCal ease and skeeze by Peter Fonda). Now she’s dead. When he’s released, Wilson heads straight to L.A. to get the real story. He’s rough and gruff, full of colorful Cockney slang, and all alone in an absurdly foreign culture. He’s also dangerously smart — about people and about criminal enterprises. The discontinuity of the editing and sound give the whole story a dreamy, dazed feeling, letting us experience Wilson’s own sense of disorientation — in L.A., in the free world outside of prison, and in a world that was home to the daughter he loved but never really had time to know. The film loops between states: it’s static and pensive and dreamily unwinding into emptiness, and suddenly it’s whip-fast and viciously sharp… and back again. Suitably enough for a film about aging 1960s icons, the narrative in The Limey plays like a warped old LP, spinning around on its axis and warbling its wavering song into the air.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> April suggests a James Whale marathon! (In Classics). Who’s James Whale you ask? Why, only the director of such films as: Frankenstein (1931), the classic tale of horror starring Boris Karloff as the monster and Colin Clive as the doctor who says, “Now I know what it feels like to be God!” The Old Dark House (1932)- a creepy mansion is inhabited by the Femm family, who might be the first “crazy-family-that-terrorizes-wayward travelers”.  Starring Karloff as the butler, Charles Laughton, and Gloria Stuart (the elderly Rose in Titanic). The Invisible Man (1933). Claude Rains is the mad scientist who finds a way to become invisible only to be driven mad in the process. Also with the lovely Gloria Stuart. “The whole world’s my hiding place.” The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Karloff returns as the monster, Clive returns as the doctor, and Elsa Lanchester joins the fun as the Bride. Fun fact: the tagline, “The monster demands a mate is the name of one of my bands! (myspace.com/themonsterdemandsamate). If you like these, you might want to check out Gods and Monsters with Ian McKellen as James Whale during his final days.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests immersing yourself in the utterly insane world of Beat Takeshi/Takeshi Kitano. Born Takeshi Kitano (he uses the stage name Beat Takeshi when he acts), this diminutive, stone-faced Japanese actor/director started out, rather improbably, as a very popular TV comedian (you can see him

Comedy god.

in dubbed reruns as the host of that insane Japanese game show where smiling contestants dressed in fat suits get thrown around inside giant pinball machines and the like), before stepping up to star in and direct some of the most enigmatic, violent, deadpan comic, and mysteriously affecting gangster movies ever made. His signature character is a menacingly silent, impeccably dressed, loner who undertakes some vague Yakuza task with an odd combination of playful humor and hairtrigger, shocking violence, all performed with a nearly unmoving, craggy-skinned, beady-eyed mask of a face. His task completed, more often than you’d think he might commit suicide. I highly recommend checking out his bafflingly-resonant work in Violent Cop, Boiling Point (which is utterly out of its mind), Sonatine (my favorite), Getting Any? (a comedy?!), Fireworks, Kikujiro (where he plays essentially his same gangster character, but in a sort-of-heartwarming buddy movie with a cute little kid), and Brother (his one, mostly successful, foray into America). For a change of pace, you can also check out his turn as the legendary blind swordsman in his remake of the Zatoichi series. And don’t miss him acting all evil and stuff in the mind-blowingly shocking cult classic Battle Royale. A complete original.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Out of Sight (in Feature Drama). Steven Soderbergh seems almost like two separate entities: the highbrow arty type specializing in pensive, static, experimental genre-breakers (Solaris, The Limey, Bubble), and the Hollywood player who cranks out commercial but strikingly well-executed crowdpleasers (Erin Brockovich, the Ocean’s franchise). Out of Sight, starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in a story adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel, falls into the second category. It’s a sharp heist story with a little flash and plenty of backbone: it even nabbed two Oscar nominations, for Best Adapted Screenplay and Editing. When you see the movie, you’ll see how very well-deserved those were, and how both the writing and the editing contribute to the movie’s offbeat pace. It should be a bog-standard crime thriller, but it ain’t. Soderbergh invests it with interest and playfulness without ever being precious or pretentious. I won’t tell you much about the story, except that it’s tight and well-crafted, as Leonard’s stories are. Clooney plays Jack Foley, a career criminal with (of course) a waggish twinkle; Lopez is the no-nonsense U.S. Marshall with whom he collides. The two of them are electric on-screen, whether they are zinging dialogue back and forth like tennis stars or filling the silence with energy. To have two magnetic stars with great chemistry is a gift, but a whole cast of magnetic characters is near-miraculous. Listen to this: Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Dennis Farina, Albert Brooks, Catherine Keener, Luis Guzman, Michael Keaton. It’s a rare Hollywood heist movie that gives you this much to enjoy.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Andy suggests ‘Star Trek: The Animated Series”. It’s never too early (or too late, for that matter) to geek your kids up. Start by introducing them to this delightful antique cartoon, featuring the real, action-packed voices of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, George Takei, James Doohan, and Nichelle Nichols. It’s just like the original, live-action Star Trek, but with crappier special effects and lots of talking cats. Seriously, like real aliens would so closely resemble Earth cats. It’s fun!

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Dennis suggests you fill up this space, not with, well, this filler, but with a movie or TV review of your own. That’s right, gang, the VideoReport is the place for everyone in the Videoport community to share their love (or hate) of their favorite (or least-) films or shows with the rest of us. Yup, we give you the freedom to ram your opinions down our throats on a weekly basis! Just bring your reviews into the store, or send them to us at denmn@hotmail.com or our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones and, unless it’s just a string of ill-spelled profanities and personal attacks against us, we’ll run it!

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Don’t Look Now (in Mystery/Thriller). Even if you haven’t seen it, you’ve heard about it: Don’t Look Now is one of the great 1970s not-horror movies. Nicholas Roeg’s meditative masterpiece of suspense follows Laura and John Baxter (Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland) on a working trip to Venice; John has taken on a restoration project there, hoping that the distraction of travel will help them over the worst of their grief from their young daughter’s recent death. I describe it as a a “not-horror” film because the subject is not fear, but dread — the creeping, bottomless dismay of grief, of loss, of the unrelenting reality of mortality. Despite their emotional friction and John’s haunting premonitions, the Baxters sporadically try to inject humor, beauty, and passion into their days, but keep drawing back again into anxiety and grief… with good reason, as it turns out.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (GIANT ROBOTS GO SMASH! SMASHHHHHH!!!!!), Blood: The Last Vampire (live action version of the horror/action anime features vampires, lots of CGI blood, and an ass-kicking, sweet-faced Asian girl in a schoolgirl uniform with huge ninja swords; something for every fetish!), Cheri (Michelle Pfeiffer reteams with her Dangerous Liasons director Stephen Frears for another saucy period piece), ‘The L Word: The Final Season’ (that’s season six, in case you were wondering, of this sapphic soap; someone please give Pam Grier a sexy new role immediately!), ‘Saturday Night Live: The Best of Amy Poehler’ (unremitting wackiness from the crazy-eyed comedy pixie goddess [and my girlfriend] Amy Poehler), Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (yay! Another direct-to-DVD horror sequel! Remember: rural people are cannibals!), National Lampoon: Endless Bummer (get it? It’s a play on words! Clever! There was once a magazine that employed the likes of Michael O’Donoghue, Doug Kenney, Anne Beatts, and was responsible for movies like Animal House; let’s remember those times…).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Fados (another dazzling, dance-centric film from director Carlos Saura, this completes his musical trilogy [after Flamenco and Tango, both available in Videoport's Foreign Language section, of course] with its depiction of the titular Portuguese dance), The Elephant King (Ellen Burstyn sends her momma’s boy son over to Thailand to retrieve his wilder sibling, confident that he will not be seduced by the exotic Thai lifestyle and/or a gorgeous native bartender lady; wait, he was? Crap!), Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story (fact-based miniseries about the social titular social reformer, a man often referred to as ‘the greatest Canadian of all time’; me, I’d say Rick Moranis, but…), Her Name is Sabine (from the Film Movement series comes this documentary by actress Sandrine Bonnaire about her autistic sister), Short Films by Mira Nair (like the title says, it’s a collection of short films by the director of Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding, and The Namesake), ‘Loveless’ (new Japanese animated series hits the Videoport anime section, this time it’s about a boy living in a land where people have animal ears and tails, which they only lose when they have sex; I love Japan!).

Check out our movie blog at www.videoportjones.wordpress.com!

Check us out on Facebook, too! Type in either “Videoport” or “Videoport Jones”!

Want some free movies at Videoport? Here are about a million ways…

1. Rent a bunch of movies. Every time you hit your next hundred rentals, we give you two free ones.

2. Rent a movie any day of the week. If you check page one of this here newsletter here, you’ll see that there’s a different special every day of the week where you get a free movie. You literally cannot come into Videoport without getting a free rental. Yeah…

3. Buy a movie. For every single movie you buy at Videoport, we give you a free rental. Now if that’s not the perfect cue to start whipping readers into a holiday buying frenzy, then I don’t know what is: this holiday season, when you’re spending all your hard-earned cash on a gang of glutinous, insatiable greed monsters (I mean your loved ones, of course), why not get a little something for yourself out of the deal? Videoport has a great selection of new and previously-viewed DVDs for sale right in the store and we can also order literally anything that’s currently in print. And, for every movie you buy from us, we give you, yourself (not them) a free rental that you can use any time.

4. Trade in your old DVDs. Got some movies or TV series that you don’t want cluttering up your shelves anymore? Bring them in to Videoport and we’ll turn them into free rentals on your Videoport account. It’s that simple!

5. Spend some money. Videoport has two different savings plans which, essentially, give you free money just for renting with us. Seriously. Put $20 onto your Videoport account and we’ll turn that twenty into $25 worth of rental credit. Pay $30 and we’ll give you $40 worth of rental credit. That’s five or ten free bucks worth of renting cash, if my math is right.

Park for free at Videoport!

Here’s how: 1. Parking meters are turned off after 6pm, Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday. 2. The parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour parking after 5pm on weekdays and all day on the weekends. 3. Videoport participates in the Park & Shop program, which means we can get you a free hour of parking at any downtown Portland parking garage (including the courthouse garage which is, literally, a two minute walk away). Just bring us your parking stub, and we’ll give you one of our magic stickers!

Justin Ellis (of the Portland Press Herald) and I run down the week’s new stuff (10/13/09)

You know it’s an off week for new releases when Will Ferrell is in the dog house, and yet, here we are. The legendary ‘SNL-er’ is in very real danger of slipping into Mike Meyers comedy limbo. Fortunately Videoport Jones and I can take solace in a few solid horror flicks, one from Sam Raimi and another from local boy Kyle Rankin.

Land of the Lost

"Wait, there's no script? No, none at all?"

Videoport Jones: “Hey Justin, remember last week when we were talking about a former ‘SNL’ superstar who seems to have lost his way? Well, while Will Ferrell is nowhere close to the edge of the Eddie Murphy ‘I just feel sorry for him’ phase of his career, it’s films like this, a completely-unnecessary movie version of the truly awful 70‘s kids show, which are going to wear out his cinematic welcome if he’s not more cautious. Now, while it’s not an immutable law of the universe that a movie remake of a television show is going to be a sad, soul-sucking experience for all involved, well, I’m trying to think of an example where it wasn’t. Umm…nope. It is an immutable law of the universe; perhaps only the abyss of horror that is ‘movies based on video games’ has a worse track record. Anyway, ‘Land of the Lost’ is about as weak as you might expect – terrible script (‘How many bodily fluids can we douse Will Ferrell in?’ Quite a few as it turns out.), jokes that don’t pay off and adequate but uninspired cartoony special effects. It’s exactly the sort of half-baked premise and execution that serves Will Ferrell the worst. I love Ferrell; his unique brand of humor, equal parts satirical macho posturing, vacant-eyed panic, with just a smidge of pathos, all enlivened by an improvisational gonzo vibe, can be absolutely a force of nature (as in ‘Talladega Nights,’ ‘Old School,’ and, of course, ‘Anchorman’). However, that same comic force can turn, when left to carry an underwritten, slackly-directed project like, say, ‘Blades of Glory,’ ‘Semi Pro,’ or, well, this movie, into an unseemly spectacle of shrill mugging that is pretty off-putting. In this movie, the strategy seems to have been, ‘Will will save us,’ and, while he certainly gives it his all, this is the sort of career choice that’s edging him closer to Murphytown. Ferrell, teamed up here with a similarly-wasted Danny McBride (another funny guy left to flounder around) and a love interest who brings absolutely nothing to the table, tries hard to keep this one afloat, but he’s chosen a very leaky ship.”

Justin: “Let’s call it the law of diminishing Ferrells. I’m a very, very big Ferrell fan and ‘Anchorman’ is in my top 10, possibly top 5 movies of all time. No debate. Having said that, I still think his schtick can be very one-note at times. It’s the man-child thing over and over, from Ron Burgundy to Ricky Bobby to Jackie Moon to Brennan Huff and now Dr. Rich Marshall, adventurer. We get it, he’s a grown man who sometimes doesn’t act that way. What makes that schtick work is a good script, a good premise/setting and great surrounding players. You give him all of that and just let the improv fly. ‘Land of the Lost’ is just a big question mark when you consider those factors. I like McBride and Anna Friel (still crushing on her a little from ‘Pushing Daisies’), but it seems like they’re not stranded in this place out of space and time, but in a bad movie. Bad effort, bad concept (the TV remake/update), and it’s a recipe for bad outcomes. I think there may come a day when a TV update or remake can win (come ON ‘Mama’s Family!’), but the track record is pretty bad here. I think Will needs to be put on notice and fast cause he is sliding into a bad place. Maybe another John C. Reilly team-up or ensemble role is in order. While Will Ferrell will never slide into oblivion, he could wind up in that weird comedy limbo where Mike Meyers now lives.”

Drag Me to Hell

Well, it HAS been a while since I messed some stuff up...

VPJ: “Director Sam Raimi is one of those guys, like Peter Jackson, who film geeks like me can claim as one of our own. See, we nerds worshiped Raimi way back when, when we saw his first film ‘The Evil Dead’ and proclaimed him our geek god. Made for a pittance against long odds, ‘The Evil Dead’ revealed Raimi to be a born filmmaker – energetic, original, and ghoulishly-inventive. And so, when Raimi was finally given the keys to a mega-budgeted tentpole franchise like the Spider-man series, we were vindicated; our scruffy little genre film hero was being recognized by the masses, and Sam, true to his gifts and our hopes, turned in two and a half (the third movie got away from him) fun, profitable, and exhilarating superhero movies that we could all be proud of. Still, those of us who were there at the start, who talked the man up at patience-trying, date-torpedoing, length to whomever we could corner, longed for Raimi to get back to his roots, to get down and dirty again in the horror flick trenches. And now our wishes have come true:

Now, this is what I would do to Bruce Campbell...

‘Drag Me to Hell’ is everything we could’ve hoped for (unless he had brought Bruce Campbell back in the lead). Hilariously over-the-top, wittily manipulative, soaked in gooey gore (don’t let the PG-13 rating worry you) and running at full speed from start to finish, this movie is obviously the work of a guy out to have fun again, and to make his audience squirm, shriek, laugh, and repeat. Have I forgotten to mention what the film’s about? Doesn’t matter – if you can’t appreciate this one, you have no business calling yourself a horror fan.”

JE: “Testify brother Jones, testify! Yes, before he was the man that brought Spidey to the world, Sam Raimi was a guy who made twisted, weird (and at times gory) stuff that had an odd humor to it. He was the guy who introduced us to Bruce ‘The Chin’ Campbell. Watching ‘The Evil Dead’ is like having your eyes open (pried open by demons maybe) to a whole new world. It’s like watching baseball being played for the first time (maybe baseball played with chainsaws). How someone can make a movie that is ridiculously over-the-top yet still frightening and suspenseful is beyond me. And you know I am not the world’s biggest horror fan, but I love me some Evil Dead franchise. To this day one of the best experiences of my life was seeing Bruce Campbell talk after a screening of the movie during college. Epic. So now Sam’s back to what he does best, telling simple tales of things gone horribly, gorily, hilariously wrong. In the case of ‘Drag Me to Hell,’ it revolves around messing with gypsies. And as a buddy who saw this movie said to me, it reinforces one of life’s simple rules: ‘Don’t mess with gypsies.’”

Infestation

VPJ: “Speaking of fun, throwback horror, this new film from Portland native (and former Project

Local boy makes good (movie).

Greenlight victim, I mean winner) Kyle Rankin (longtime partner Efram Potelle is still on board, but as special effects supervisor this time), made me think of cheesy 80s monster semi-classics like ‘Tremors’ or ‘Arachnophobia.’ And that’s a good thing. Chris Marquette (‘Fanboys’) brings his Paul Rudd/John Cusack-lite comic timing to the lead character, a slacker-y loser who finds himself inexplicably fighting for the future of the human race when yucky alien bug-things start spinning cocoons and mutating the hell out of everybody. It’s pretty fun, with the ever-welcome Kyle and Efram pal Ray Wise doing his ever-welcome comic turn as the kid’s gung-ho dad, and nicely-gooey gross-out effects, along with some decent performances. Obviously shot on a budget, ‘Infestation’ is nonetheless a welcome addition to the cheesy monster comedy genre.”

JE: “I’m sensing a theme here. No, not horror flicks or Jonesy’s love of gore (I know, I know, we’ve talked about it), but horror films that don’t take themselves too seriously. We touched on it before with ‘Trick ‘r Treat,’ the tongue-in-cheek revival of the horror anthology that was decidedly not heavy-handed. With so many horror movies going after a hard ‘R’ rating and playing a weird arms-race for violent or disturbing plots (that don’t always make sense or for good storytelling), it’s nice to see some people step back. Big

And Ray Wise...just because.

scary bugs? OK. Done. You know what you’re getting there. Also, I’ve said it many times, but you have to credit people (be it in TV or movies) who know exactly what they do, what they’re capable of and do just that. If you’re doing a budget horror film and you’ve got a suspenseful but slightly goofy premise, then run with it. Why would you take yourself seriously. Give some credit to the local-boy done good for the effort and for scoring Ray Wise. That’s a win in my book.”

Adoration

VPJ: “Another icy, thought-provoking drama from Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan, this one about a high school student who, as a writing exercise, reveals that his father was a suicide bomber. Or was he? I ain’t tellin’, because, as with much of Egoyan’s films, much of the pleasure comes from the slow reveal, and what the reveal, well, reveals about the connections among the characters. Egoyan’s a tough case for me, one of those obviously-talented directors whose ambition I admire, but whose films leave me cold. Apart from the wrenching ‘The Sweet Hereafter’ (which is the one Egoyan film most people might know), his movies seem to come from, and remain in, a singularly personal space from which he doesn’t seem interested if they ever escape. I can respect that sort of artistic integrity, but it doesn’t necessarily make for great viewing. Another lonely, cold puzzle for the adventurous.”

JE: “So cold, detached dramas are not good enough for you Jonesy? I thought I knew you man. But when you do step back and look at Egoyan’s films you do see something of a pattern of misdirection, ambiguity, secrets and, well, pain. That was certainly the case with ‘The Sweet Hereafter,’ as well as ‘Ararat,’ and ‘Where the Truth Lies,’ where you as the viewer are not sure what’s going on, but you’re not entirely sure the characters are either. I happen to like mysteries, particularly those that unfold with some time trickery by the filmmaker. Egoyan’s films may be a bit dense at times, but typically worth watching if you want a puzzle that ultimately may not come together for you as a viewer. This is not an altogether bad thing, they’re just not exactly dissatisfying, but not necessarily gratifying. Really have to watch to make up your mind.”

The Proposal

VPJ: “Looking back, I recognize that I often give the fans of the high-concept romantic comedy short shrift; I crack a few jokes at the expense of your Matthew McConaugheys, your Jennifer Anistons, or whichever of the blonde Jessica’s is making goo-goo eyes at each other that week, make a dismissive remark that no boy should be expected to watch this, and move on. I apologize, but, really, what is there to say at this point about this sort of movie? The set up: Sandra Bullock is a high-powered executive who’s all mean and stuff to her underling, especially hunky, younger assistant Ryan Reynolds. Unfortunately for her, she’s also Canadian (not that it’s unfortunate to be Canadian, but you’ll see), and she’s going to get deported unless she takes an American husband! If only she had a pretty underling just rattling around who she could make a marriage of convenience to! I mean, it’s not just me, right? I have nothing against a high concept movie, nor anything against the romantic comedy per se; I just expect a little extra effort for my trouble, and ‘The Proposal’ is content to simply serve up a lukewarm slice of premise pie. I sort of like Reynolds; his deceptively-bland good looks hide a nice, mildly-edgy comic persona (he was pretty good in ‘Adventureland’), and Bullock is as spunky and cute as ever (although her playing ‘hard-nosed’ is about as convincing as a puppy with a spiked collar), but there is absolutely no romantic chemistry between them, and the movie tries to distract us from that disastrous fact with shrill, silly busyness. ‘The Proposal’ is serviceable, if your standards are that low, I guess. Sorry to be dismissive, but movies like this make themselves so easy to dismiss.”

JE: “Didn’t Renee  Zellweger just do a movie like this? Or Reese Witherspoon? Or any number of Hollywood’s off-the-shelf romantic comedy pixies? What the heck has the world come to my man? We’re running out of words to describe these efforts or how they make us feel. It feels exhausting just to berate it at this point. But I’m glad you enumerate the reasons why these type of flicks don’t move the meter for us. We’re not just in this to bash chick flicks, it’s not that we’re out of the target demo, it’s not that we’re movie snobs (Have I mentioned how much I like ‘Smokey and the Bandit?). No. It’s just bad movie making. If we’re calling Will Ferrell in ‘Land of the Lost’ bad, then we’ve got no choice but to call this one out too. The worst part is that I really dig Ryan Reynolds, he’s on the verge of entering my man-crush club house. A funny guy who is at ease in any kind of comedy, lightens up any scene he’s in, and, for the ladies, not too bad to look at. But he’s gotta lose points for this. And Bullock? It’s time for her to rejuvenate the career with some TV work and leave the silver screen behind. As for the romantic comedy dilemma, I think we need to convene a podcast where we break down chick flicks in a style that is equal parts John Madden and Tom Servo. America demands no less.”

VideoReport #217

Volume CCXVII- Employ All Monsters!

For the Week of 10/13/09

Videoport gives you a free movie every, single, everlovin’ day of the week. And, since we get in about thirty new movies per week, you’ll never run out of things to watch. (I mean, you could watch thirty movies a week, I suppose. In fact, we challenge you to watch thirty movies a week.)

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>>April suggests Sleepaway Camp (in Horror). Halloween is just a few weeks away! Time to watch some bad 80s slasher flicks! Let’s start with Sleepaway Camp. Someone’s killing the campers in this predictable yet fun low budget film set in…wait for it…a summer camp! Could it be Angela, the non-verbal survivor of a boating accident? Or is it her cousin? The answer is fairly obvious, but wait! There’s a twist ending! Did you see that one coming?! I kinda did. Enjoy!

>>>Dennis suggests Quarantine (in Horror). A disclaimer: if you’re one of those people who whine about “that Blair Witch style movie”, then you can skip this one. Go on back to your nice, clean, soulless horror films where you can really see the torture porn all close up like. Anyway, Quarantine (a remake of a Spanish horror flick called REC, which I plan to check out soon), is, yes, a “Blair Witch style horror movie”, in that the action is seen, and only seen through the lens of someone holding a video camera (in this case a TV news team). So, yeah, that means things are sometimes unclear, that sometimes, things are happening right outside of the camera’s (and your) field of vision, until it’s RIGHT UP IN YOUR FACE! The tale of a ditsy female TV reporter and her sturdy cameraman who, while doing a fluff piece on LA firemen, ride along on a call to a downtown apartment building where, well, they’re not sure. It seems like an old woman is ill, and maybe someone’s been attacked, and…well, then things happen. I suppose I should be more circumspect, but, well, the title of the movie is Quarantine after all, so I guess I’m free to spill the fact that there’s some sort of virus turning the residents of the building into frothing, vicious killers. And it’s contagious. Yikes. Soon, our media darlings, and the motley crew trapped with them, are dodging the infected, trying to figure out what’s going on (and why the building has been hermetically sealed by the authorities with them inside), and attempting to not get eaten. It’s all nicely tense, and the viewfinder-only gimmick is great at building dread and excitement; like most good horror movies, Quarantine gets great mileage out of suggestion, out of the things that aren’t seen in glorious, bland, gut-chomping Hostel-vision, but are glimpsed in the shadows. Sure, it requires a little more work from you as a viewer, but, well, it’s not like the movie’s asking you to mine coal or anything. (And as to the ever-present question in such movies, “Why do they keep filming everything when they’re fighting for their lives?”, well, I have two answers: one- shut up. If they didn’t their wouldn’t be a movie, so just get over it and enjoy. Two (and here Quarantine provides a sensible answer), the reporters, once they realize that the government is prepared to sacrifice them all in order to contain the nastiness, is mightily pissed off, and therefore motivated to get the story out). A nice, effective horror surprise, with some great shocks, nobody doing anything annoyingly stupid, and even some decent performances (reporter-lady actually gets better as things get nastier, there’s some nice, economical character work from Greg Germann, Columbus Short, Jay Hernandez, Rade Serbedzija, and, adding formidable presence to a role as thankless as Willian Alland’s largely-unseen reporter in Citizen Kane, ‘The Practice’’s Steve James as our eye behind the camera (we get a peek at his face once or twice when things get reaaly bad).

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Beat The Devil (in Classics). John Huston’s oft-critiqued noir comedy centers around a mismatched group of thieves and cheats relaxing in a small Italian port town and spinning their crooked plans to lay claim to a fortune in uranium. The script (by Truman Capote and John Huston) was re-written on the fly, Huston adding changes day by day and distributing them to the cast — and what a cast! Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Gina Lollabrigida, Jennifer Jones, Robert Morley wisecrack their way through this winking genre-jumper with no real coherence but with charming ease and wit. The movie is often described as a mess, but that’s half the point: in stark contrast to the heavily plotted noirs of the previous decade, Beat the Devil is a meandering, unfocussed scramble of dreams and schemes. In this way, the plotlessness makes a clever comment on the film’s narrative. These would-be thieves never seem to do much, despite their ambitions and their bursts of hectic activity. They’re just killing time, and killing it as extravagantly as circumstances allow, in a pleasant-enough oceanside town, waiting for something to happen.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Insomnia (in Foreign Language). It’s hardly surprising that police detective Jonas Engstöm suffers from insomnia. He’s a seedy cop with a sordid past, and he’s unable to sleep thanks to the constant daylight north of the Arctic Circle, where he’s been dispatched to solve a prominent and puzzling murder case. Puzzling? The murder, intent on leaving no trace of his identity, even washes his victim’s hair. Shudder! Despite this lurid touch, the film maintains a measured distance and balance, never tipping over into thriller-movie clichés. Insomnia is a police procedural turned inside out. Though we get the details of the investigation, the essence of the film is its cool, tense repression. It’s quite literally hazy, foggy, atmospheric: the landscape is shrouded with fog, suffused with unending sunlight that, paradoxically, obscures our vision.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests filling this space with a movie or TV review of your own! The VideoReport is Videoport’s weekly journal of movie reviews, information about Videoport’s daily deals and new releases/new arrivals, and basically anything we think is remotely movie-related and/or funny. We welcome such things from Videoport’s staff, customers, passers-by, well-wishers, and kooks off the street who want to tell the world why Ernest Borgnine is the sexiest thing in pants, so if you fit into any of those categories, why not send us your submissions at denmn@hotmail.com, our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones, of just drop them off at the store. (We’re also on Facebook, under ‘Videoport Jones’). The VideoReport- where Portland’s elite meet to flap their gums about movies!

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests Heaven Can Wait (in Feature Drama). L.A. Rams back-up quarterback Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty) has a couple of problems: he hasn’t had a chance to start a game, and — oh, yeah — he’s dead. Except he’s not dead, or he shouldn’t be; the agents of the afterlife have made a mistake. “Anybody can make a mistake,” Joe says, reasonably enough. “Just put me back and we’ll forget the whole thing.” But it’s not that simple, and Joe is meanwhile stashed in the recently deceased body of corporate magnate Leo Farnsworth. It sounds silly, and it is, which helps make this a heartwarming and fundamentally optimistic story. Heaven Can Wait is a light comedy elevated by the efforts and talent of everyone involved. Because directors Beatty and Buck Henry rely very little on spectral special effects, Heaven Can Wait has dated better than many ’70s fantasy films, giving it a whiff of the great screwball comedies of the ’40s. That’s a legacy it deserves: it’s a remake of 1943’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Warren Beatty is at his best: easy-going, maybe even a little simple-minded, but with a wide-eyed earnest quality that explains why Beatty was such a favorite of the Hollywood laaaaaadies for all those years. As the heavenly overseer Mr, Jordan, James Mason is perfect: elegant, restrained, but with great warmth and an avuncular twinkle. Dyan Cannon plays Farnsworth’s silly, vicious dipsomaniac wife, who’s conniving and canoodling with her husband’s live-in toady (Charles Grodin in a filmstealing performance).

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Dennis suggests reminding kids (and the less-then-conscientious) about DVD handling protocol. 1. Never touch the shiny side of a disc. 2. Never leave a DVD out of its protective case when it’s not actually being played; this leads to shiny-side disc touching. 3. See rules 1 and 2 as much as necessary. DVDs are delicate, but, with proper handling, they will last forever. Why am I putting this tutorial in the space usually reserved for childrens movies; oh, no reason…

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Videoport’s Regan’s Got Something to Say…  When I went to see Adventureland (now in Videoport’s Comedy section) in the theater, I hear to my right, “Was Michael Cera not available?”, and then again, during Zombieland…”Brum-yum-do-da. Michael Cera superior- jam-crunk.” HEY!! They are both fine young men with talents all their own! AND!…Jesse Eisenberg was on the scene before Michel Cera! He was an awkward teen in Roger Dodger (2002, in Videoport’s Feature Drama section)! So suck it haters!

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Oldboy (in Assorted Asian Exploitation). The beginning swoops in on us out of nowhere: when me meet Oh Dea-su (Min-sik Choi), he seems a sillyminded salaryman, a drunkard and a fool, an irresponsible father and an indifferent husband, but he is no worse than many silly, sad people. In the film’s opening, Dae-su is inexplicably abducted by an unknown person, and held in captivity… for fifteen years. When he’s finally released, the almost magically transformed Dae-su is intent upon revenge. Director Chan-wook Park brings us a tale that echoes the long tradition of vengeance tragedies, bringing that dramatic form forcefully into a modern setting. Buried in its dizzyingly grand fight sequences is a mediation on the compulsion to seek vengeance, and on the utter futility of it. At first glance, Oldboy seems to exult in glamorizing violence, and it is at times excruciating to watch. The film seethes with stylized violence that is horrifically potent, but also weirdly beautiful. One fight scene in particular is as stunningly graceful as any ballet, and as guttingly sorrowful as any diva singing her dying aria. It’s a tragedy, it’s a delicate dance of violence and harrowing grief, it’s filled with pain and tenderness and confusion and pure human heartbreak of the most naked kind. It’s beautiful.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Land of the Lost (Will Ferrell is still funny. This movie, a remake of the ultra-cheesy 70s kids’ show- not so much…), Drag Me to Hell (legendary geek horror god Sam Raimi goes back to his grimy horror flick roots with this completely fun tale of a young woman who crosses the wrong old, scary gypsy woman), The Proposal (Sandra Bullock is a Canadian meanie who bullies her prettyboy assistant, Ryan Reynolds, into marrying her so she can stay and be mean in the good ol’ USA in this, dare I say it, formulaic romantic comedy), Adoration (from Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan comes another of his patented icy, sad, dramas, this one about a teenager who makes up a story about his father being a suicide bomber. Or dies he?), Infestation (from Portland’s heroes, Kyle Rankin and Efram Potelle comes this icky-fun monster comedy about some creepy bug-things trying to take over the world, costarring the always-delicious Ray Wise!; Videoport loves Kyle and Efram!), ‘Legend of the Seeker’- season 1 (Aussie sword-and-sorcery series comes to Videoport’s Fantasy/Sci Fi section; costarring the guy who played the gyro pilot in The Road Warrior!), Every Little Step (documentary about struggling dancers hoping to make the cast of a revival of A Chorus Line on Broadway, which is about a group of struggling dancers hoping to make the cast of a musical called A Chorus Line…or did I just blow your mind!!!), Katt Williams: Pimpadelic (the popular standup comic brings his inimitable brand of pimp-based hilarity to you in this new DVD), American Violet (furiously fact-based film about an innocent Black mom who gets caught up in a police drug sweep, loses her kids, and decides to get very litigious about the whole thing; good cast includes Alfre Woodard, Will Patton, Michael O’Keefe, and Tim Blake Nelson), Adoration (Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan [The Sweet Hereafter] brings you another of his icy, challenging dramas with this story of a teenager who makes up a story of his father being a suicide bomber for French class- or does he?), ‘The National Parks’ (America’s favorite documentarian Ken Burns [of 'Baseball', 'The Civil War', and 'Jazz' fame] is back with this massive series about, well, our national parks, I suppose), Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong (hilarious new standup from the pudgy hipster comedy darlin’).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Warren Miller’s Children of Winter (ski porn from the master of same), Love of Siam (Thai drama about two young boys whose friendship is shaken by a fmaily tragedy), Emmanuel’s Gift (Oprah herself narrates this inspirational documentary about a young man from Ghana, born disabled, who seeks to overturn his country’s ignorance about the disabled; many, many of you have requested we get this one over the years), ‘Flashpoint’- season 1 (action series about those wacky guys on your local SWAT team), Madonna: Celebration (the complete music video collection from music’s biggest exhibitionist), Throg (low-budget sword and sorcery comedy is currently riding a rating of 1.7 out of 10 on IMDb.com; you’ll find it in the Incredibly Strange section), Brittown (documentary about a motorcycle fanatic, for all you motorcycle fanatics out there; oh, and as a favor, could you motorcycle fanatics out there try and keep the noise down?), and Videoport brings you three, count ‘em three typically wacko satirical early films from Yugoslavian wildman Dusan Makevejev (Sweet Movie, WR: Mysteries of the Organism, The Coca Cola Kid): look in Videoport’s Criterion section for his Man Is Not a Bird, Love Affair: or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator, and Innocence Unprotected.

Get Some Free Money at Videoport!

Videoport’s got two ways for you to turn your rental dollar into, well, a bigger rental dollar. Here’s the scoop: we’ll give you five free dollars worth of rental credit on your Videoport account when you pay twenty bucks. And, we’ll give you forty dollars worth of rental credit for your thirty dollar investment. So, depending on how you look at it, that’s either a 20% or 25% discount on Videoport’s already lowest-anywhere rental rates, of five or ten free bucks. Yup, we’re pretty great…

Park for Free at Videoport!

Here’s how: 1. Parking meters are turned off after 6pm, Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday. 2. The parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour parking after 5pm on weekdays and all day on the weekends. 3. Videoport participates in the Park & Shop program, which means we can get you a free hour of parking at any downtown Portland parking garage (including the courthouse garage which is, literally, a two minute walk away). Just bring us your parking stub, and we’ll give you one of our magic stickers! 4. Walk, skateboard, ride your bike: it’ll save a tree, or three gallons of water, or…well, I’m not sure how that works, really…

Check out our movie blog at www.videoportjones.wordpress.com!

Justin Ellis of the Press Herald and I run down the week’s new releases (10/6/09)

What do you do when your heroes start to lose their luster? In this week’s rundown of new DVD releases Videoport Jones and I have to come to grips with our own expectations of former comedy icons Harold Ramis and Eddie Murphy. We also deal with Nia Vardalos and whether she is a scourge to film-watching men everywhere.

Year One

Oh, crap! Critics!

Videoport Jones: “I had high hopes for this one, and why wouldn’t I? I think both Jack Black and Michael Cera are funny guys. The script was co-written by a couple of writers from ‘The Office.’ It’s got supporting parts from surefire funny folks like David Cross, Oliver Platt, Paul Rudd, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Hank Azaria, and Bill Hader. And it was also co-written, and directed by, Harold Ramis, who, in addition to being a really charming and funny guy, has, if you check out his resume, had a hand in some of my all-time personal comedy favorites. ‘Caddyshack?’ ‘Meatballs?’ ‘Ghostbusters?’ ‘Stripes?’ ‘Animal House?’ ‘Back to School?’ ‘Groundhog Day?’ I cannot overstate how important this guy has been to the development of my own sense of humor. (‘Gee, thanks,’ I can hear some of you say). Well, I gotta say this knockabout comedy, about a hapless pair of bumbling cavemen who stumble into some of the Bible’s most popular set pieces, is a big letdown. And I am bummed out. Shooting for a ‘Life of Brian’ level hilarity, ‘Year One’ ends up delivering ‘Wholly Moses-level laughs’ (look that one up on IMDB.com – yeah, ouch). Actually, I compared it to Mel Brook’s ‘History of the World – Part 1′ as I was watching it; lazy script going for easy laughs redeemed, when it is, by some inspired,

My ideal uncle.

loony performance bits from funny actors, but ultimately a flabby disappointment. In the movie’s defense, and to make myself feel better, I will say that Black and Cera make a funny team, with Jables’ trademark comic bluster blending nicely with Cera’s trademark time-released underplaying, and Cross is especially funny as a predictably-untrustworthy Cain. (Those who babble on about ‘being tired of Jack Black and Michael Cera’s schticks’ are just white noise to me; the guys are funny and good at what they do. So sue them.) Still and all, a mildly-disappointing timewaster. The commentary with the two stars and the ever-affable and warm Ramis is more enjoyable.”

Justin: “Way to bring us all down to earth compadre. Do you feel a little personally wounded by a Ramis misfire? Do you need some time to compose yourself? Should I come over with a six-pack of PBR and some Oreos? I’ll do it buddy. It’s not easy seeing your heroes take a bit of a tumble, and that’s the case here. You joke that Ramis played a part in developing your humor, but I would lay good odds that he’s had a role in EVERYONE around our generation’s sense of humor. I defy you to not name at least ONE Ramis flick you like America. Do it. As for ‘Year One,’ this is shades of what we talked about last week: the parts not adding up to the whole. I absolutely LOVE Cera and Black, but for me, this has a knock-it-out-of-the-park comedy support staff. Rudd, Cross, Azaria AND Hader? Gold. While I see your comparison to ‘History of The World Part 1,’ I think Brooks almost always plays for the hard schtick over a solid script, so maybe not the best comparison. (Also, I love ‘History of the World’ more than anything. The FIRST Brooks movie I saw as a kid. Changed me. I could sing you ‘The Inquisition’ right now.) Maybe Ramis is getting a little long in the tooth, maybe the historic comedy is a tough sell, or maybe this one is just a miss. We’ll put it near the back of a long list of hits from the man that gave us ‘Caddyshack.’”

Anvil!: The Story of Anvil

VPJ: “Anvil is (are?) a Canadian heavy metal band, hailed by some as the ‘demi-gods of Canadian metal,’ which is perhaps the most unintentionally-poignant phrase I’ve ever heard. Fronted by two guys in their fifties who’ve been together and rocking the Provinces since they were 14, Anvil have never hit the big time, and this documentary follows the lifelong pals as they regroup after a calamitous European tour, begin their 13th album, and ponder the uncertain future in store for their lifelong dream of rock superstardom. If it sounds like ‘This Is Spinal Tap’, well then you’ve heard every other reviewer in the world say, ‘they’re like a real-life Spinal Tap!’ Sorry, but the comparison is pretty hard to shake; the two leaders of Anvil (named Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow and, weirdly enough, Robb Reiner), have a distinctly Nigel Tufnel/David St. Hubbins chemistry, combining the aging has-been/never-was self-importance with a genuine, comically-touching love for what they do, and for each other. Anvil may not be a great band (in fact, after seeing the film, I’m fairly certain they are not), but you’ve got to admire Lips and Robb as they work menial jobs, take care of their families, cope with one career disappointment after another (the gig at the Transylvanian metal festival is particularly painful), and yet keep plugging away, living their adolescent dream even in the face of, well, overwhelming reality.”

JE: “Great, great movie to watch, even if you’re not a big metal fan, or for that matter, Canadian Metal fan. (Who is really?) You’re right that the Spinal Tap comparisons are unavoidable (thought I’d throw in lazy for some reviewers. Present company excluded, of course.) What sets Anvil apart is that the reality of it makes it more compelling and somehow funnier. You know Spinal Tap is playing for laughs, but Anvil isn’t. ‘Sex Farm Woman’ is good writing while ‘Metal on Metal’ is sublime. As bad as you may feel about laughing about someone’s misfortune or lot in life, it doesn’t matter. Funny is funny. The bizarre, thrown-together European tour, the creation of a new album, the rejection of that album, the inevitable fights between Lips and Robb, it all makes for an impossible and funny trip. You root for them even though you know the prospects are never good and the door to success closed a long time ago. If I was a hack I might say something like ‘a triumph of the human spirit,’ but in some ways it is. Despite all their problems and times they’ve been punched in the face, they endure because they really, really love metal music, and yes, each other. In some ways the movie makes you grateful for the marginal victories after seeing these guys excitement over just being asked to play the same songs they’ve been playing for 30 years. You’ll like this one.”

Trick ‘r Treat

VPJ: “It’s October – the time of year when the leaves turn, the wind blows, and the studios cram a year’s worth of horror releases into the weeks before Halloween, hoping that the spooky holiday vibe (and perhaps its attendant sugar rush) will make us all a little more receptive to their mediocre scare flicks. ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ gets points, however, for not taking itself terribly seriously, for having a few actual actors in the cast (Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin, and the ever-crotchety Brian Cox), and for reviving the ol’ horror anthology genre with its ‘Creepshow’-esque EC Comics style. There’s some black comedy, some imaginative twists, some witty gore, and a ghoulish little bagheaded dude who’s a nice, little piece of monster design sure to give you the heebie-jeebs and make you chuckle at the same time. An entertaining little Halloween doodle.”

JE: “Horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously? Hmmm, interesting. Not so interesting, this movie was supposed to come out several years ago but was pushed back and now got shot straight to the DVD aisle. So use that information as you would. But you are right about welcoming back the old horror anthology angle, which you would think is appealing to studios with less than stellar writing talent and audiences with less than 100 percent attention spans. But enough of my venting. I was never a horror fan, as we’ve talked about before, but I did enjoy ‘Tales from the Crypt’ and also liked the ‘Creepshow’ flicks, partially because they were sort of ‘pop horror,’ that was supposes to scare you as they wink at the camera. Sometimes stories work better if they let you in on the joke, and in the case of cheap scares like ‘Trick ‘r Treat,’ it can’t be a bad thing.”

Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation

VPJ: “My pick for the most purely entertaining release of the week – if your definition of ‘entertaining’ is ’sleazy, sexy, violent, and with an Australian accent.’ Which mine is. This documentary chronicling the rise of the Australian exploitation film industry is a hoot, with hard-to-believe clips from the saucy Aussie flicks of the 70s and 80s interspersed with interviews from celebrity fans of the genre (unsurprisingly, Quentin Tarantino loved ‘em), and the stars and creators themselves. You get the lowdown on flicks like ‘Mad Max,’ ‘Roadgames,’ ‘Barry McKenzie Holds His Own,’ ‘The Cars That Ate Paris,’ and about a hundred other, known only Down Under, exploitation masterpieces (‘The Naked Bunyip’ comes to mind), all served up with a cheeky sense of humor and all the explosions, fast cars, and Aussies without cossies you could ever want. Tons of fun.”

JE: “You just used the phrase ‘Aussies without cossies.’ I have no idea what that means, and I’m frightened. But I am NOT frightened by sex, violence and explosions. In fact, when they make the documentary on my life, make sure they use that title. And get Robert Evans to produce. ANYWAY, I was unaware that put together these movies constituted a genre of sorts, I always just figured the Aussies had their own weird sensibilities and neuroses that needed to be worked out on film. I don’t think I would be off base in saying that part of the reasons for the explosion of ‘Ozploitation’ is the same as blaxploitation or any underground genre that burns fast and bright: they did it because they could. It was because there was a feeling (and some looseness in restrictions and guidelines) that seemed to give people a green light to go crazy on screen. If you look at it from a documentary or anthropological standpoint it can be fascinating. Oh, I’m sorry, I got too REAL for a second there. ‘Splosions! ‘Sex! Uh…’Sviolence! There you go.”

Imagine That

VPJ: “I actually tried to watch this movie. I was trying to avoid the by now de rigeur and lazy Eddie Murphy bashing that passes for film criticism whenever Eddie’s name comes up, but, well, I didn’t get all that far into this one (where his daughter’s imaginary world is real, or some such). It wasn’t just that the movie was bad (what little I saw of it), it’s more that I find it genuinely painful to watch Eddie do this sort of thing. (I’d say ‘lower himself,’ but that term just doesn’t apply to the star of ‘Norbit’, et al anymore.) See, I grew up when Eddie Murphy first emerged as the funniest man on the planet; it was safe to say that, for a period in the 80s, Eddie Murphy was, deservedly, the biggest star in the world, and the funniest (some youthful homophobia aside), but now, like former co-funniest man in the world Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy is synonymous with ’shameless cash grab’ (although, when he feels like it, Martin will actually try once in a while). And we have, according to IMDb.com, these upcoming Murphy vehicles to look forward to: ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man,’ ‘Fantasy Island,’ ‘Untitled Bret Ratner Project’ (noooo!), and, of course, ‘Beverly Hills Cop 4.’ Sigh. Man, Eddie just makes me sad.”

JE: “Wow. You just brought the room down hard. Any time the phrase ‘Untitled Bret Ratner Project’ is used it’s cause for self-immolation. I feel like we could dedicate a whole blog or maybe a podcast dissecting Eddie Murphy’s movies and his career trajectory. In a way he’s kind of Tyson-esque in that he’s a shadow of his former self. Just like Tyson he was ferocious, talented and unlike anything seen before during the 80s. But now, what is he? He’s gone far beyond the natural reflex of making family movies that many celebrities have. We’ve discussed it many times, but it make sense actors would want to make movies their kids can watch. But Eddie has long since crossed the line. It’s like watching someone actively trying to burn their legacy to the ground. I mean, ‘Norbit,’ really? Really? Every time I watch ‘Coming to America,’ (hands down one of his best movies), I feel like I’m watching two different men. Is it possible Eddie Murphy died during the mid-90s and he’s been replaced by a less-talented but similar looking member of the Murphy family? Can we get Charlie Murphy to confirm this?”

My Life In Ruins

VPJ: “If there are two words more guaranteed to repel potential male movie viewers than ‘Nia Vardalos,’ then I don’t know them. ‘Traveling Pants,’ maybe. Anyway, the star of the equally never watched by a male human ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ dips back into the retsina bottle in this tale of a shrill, would-be adorable single gal looking for love in the Greek Isles. (SPOILER AHEAD! She finds it.) You are legally required to purchase this for your mom for Christmas.”

JE: “I’m sorry I just dozed off. What was that? ‘My Big Fat Life in Ruins,’ sounds like a…zzz. See, it happened again. You ever wonder if some movies are specifically made to be toxic to males of the species? I understand there are ‘chick flicks,’ and romantic comedies that may not appeal to a guy, but they don’t actively repel them like a magnet. If I had to I could sit down and watch ‘Sex in the City’ or something starring Amy Adams or Gabrielle Union looking for love. But this and its predecessor seem like studio-made kryptonite to guys. Keep it away or we’ll turn green and die. Also, while I’m fired up, she couldn’t even be bothered to stay off the Greek thing? Isn’t that just lazy? I mean I get it, you’re proud of your Greek heritage, but let up already! Great, now I’m shaking I’m so angry. Fire up one of those Ozploitation flicks stat Jonesy…”

PARTING SHOTS!

- Name a Harold Ramis movie that influenced your life or sense of humor.
- Seriously, do we need to devote a blog or podcast to breaking down what happened to Eddie Murphy?
- Guy kryptonite: what flicks are bound to turn you away fellas?

VideoReport #216

Volume CCXVI- Big Mothra’s House

For the Week of 10/6/09

Videoport gives you a free rental every day. Redbox machines are painted with dolphin blood. Your choice.

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests Cube (in Horror). Oh, whatever, scoffers. Cube is a high-concept puzzle-piece with a pretty silly premise: a group of strangers awake inside a — duh duh DUH — cube, with no memory of how they got there and no idea how to escape. It turns out that the cube is a series of cells through which they can climb, but each cell holds clues to their possible escape, as well as a deadly secret… and the cube as a whole has a mighty big secret, too. After I saw the film, an acquaintance pointed out its obvious existentialist nuances, and I had a big “Well, duh!” moment; I was so busy feeling superior to the film that I completely failed to notice the deeper message of its story. Don’t be dumb like me.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Andy suggests Spiderman 2 (in Action). It’s funny how movies age, don’t you think? Spiderman 2 came out in 2004, but the superhero genre has changed so much that, if it were released in theaters today, it might get laughed off the screen. Back in ‘04, I was convinced that it was the greatest superhero movie ever made. And maybe I was right. But, compared to the darker, heavier themes of 2008’s The Dark Knight and Iron Man, the Spiderman movies seem lightweight and cartoonish, like candy-colored coming-of-age teen flicks (the presence of Kirsten Dunst doesn’t help). Yes, the superhero/comic book movie has come a long way in a short time. But I still love Spiderman 2 for its own greatness. The action scenes are well-written and acted. Kirsten Dunst’s acting seems amateurish compared to the rest of the cast, but she doesn’t distract too much, and James Franco, Alfred Molina, Tobey Maguire, and Dylan Baker more than make up for her.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>>Dennis suggests ‘The Office’- season 5 (in Comedy). Not that I need to convince anyone to watch this show, but I’d like to make my pitch for the new season anyway. In fact, I think this might be the best season yet. Yeah, I said it. I think what’s most impressive to me is the way the show has avoided the show-killer traps that its plot seems to dictate; Jim and Pam are happy, and it’s not a drag, the show’s humor hasn’t broadened into self-parody, and it hasn’t succumbed to guest star-itis (the one exception being the bizarrely-intrusive movie, a May-late, late December romance starring Jack Black and Cloris Leachman that Jim, Pam, and Andy watch in one episode). In fact, this season’s boldest, most fruitful stroke was in utilizing a surprising guest star to brilliant dramatic effect, with ‘The Wire’’s Idris Elba coming in as Michael’s new, no-nonsense boss. Elba is great, of course, and he changes the dynamic of the show in a really daring way; as Dwight says, with typically Shrutian sarcasm, “Oh no, the new boss doesn’t think Jim’s adorable!”. Elba’s slow burn staredown’s of the various shenanigans that pass for a normal work day at Dunder-Mifflin are equal parts hilarious and terrifying. Throw in that those usual shenanigans are as solid gold as ever, that Steve Carrel’s Michael Scott remains one of the most touchingly-ridiculous characters in TV history, and that each of the office’s supporting players continue to refine and reveal their characters in fine form and I cannot get enough of this show- it just keeps getting better.

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests Gross Pointe Blank (in Comedy). Every time I see another stupid trailer for another stupid movie starring John Cusack, I heave a heavy sigh and plan to spend an evening watching one of the great films in his resume. Okay, so I don’t always follow through with these plans; with his recent output, I would spend every single night watching Say Anything, High Fidelity, and Gross Pointe Blank. (2012? Identity? Serendipity? America’s for-goodness-sake Sweethearts? Must Love Dogs? You know who loves dogs? Cusack’s agent, ‘cuz these movies are dogs, amirite? *tap tap tap* Is this thing on?) Uh. Aaaaaaanyway.  Despite Cusack’s often-questionable choices, I wholeheartedly endorse Gross Pointe Blank, the story of an affectless hitman at his 10-year reunion, a silly high-concept starting point that successfully mixes rom-com and action flick into one delicious parcel, with a hefty dose of musical cool to boot.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Blood Simple (in Mystery/Thriller). This 1985 directorial debut of Joel and Ethan Coen showcases their distinctive visual style, a style that was the focus of many reviewers. Indeed, the single biggest criticism of the film upon release was that it privileged style over substance, but those reviewers weren’t paying attention to the subtleties, the deep-down noiriness of the story. The scenario, without spoilers: a sleazy bar owner hires an even-sleazier PI to shadow his wife. Oh, and to murder her. When events get messy, as events will when you’re hiring cheap and unskilled murderers, two innocent people get pulled into the mess, and flounder around trying to flail their way out again. Except, well, these innocent people are guilty of plenty. That’s a crucial distinction; guilt draws them into the murderous muddle, and guilt motivates every choice they make as they struggle along the nightmarish course of their trap. This was an early taste of the Coens’ gift for narrative: from moment to moment, you can see how a more-or-less innocent person could make each horrible choice, but the individual choices and moments add up to a dreadful sum.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>>Dennis suggests that it is neither cute, wise nor considerate to allow children (or the inconsiderate) to put our DVDs in the player. DVDs are delicate. Children, our future though they may be, are weird, uncoordinated, and lack respect for other peoples’ property. They also often have really sticky hands and are attracted to shiny things. Please handle the DVDs yourself. That is all.

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Elsa S. Customer suggests The Remains of the Day (in Feature Drama). It seems like a simple story: Stevens (Anthony Hopkins), a very proper British butler, is taking a brief vacation and motoring across the countryside to visit Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson), formerly his colleague in service at the great house to which Stevens has devotes his life. But it takes some bravado to make a movie of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day; the novel relies upon the first-person account of Stevens, a very proper British butler, told with agonizing restraint and great narrative unreliability. Stevens simply does not see the things he does not wish to see. How to convey this willful obliviousness on film, where everything is slapped up on the screen for the audience to see firsthand? This richly textured Merchant-Ivory production manages to pull it off. The result is pensive, quietly sorrowful, and reticent, but silently eloquent as well. When so many movies trumpet their plots and their morals in deafening brays, it’s refreshing to see a film that keeps its secrets. The Remains of the Day trusts us to hear what isn’t said.

>>>For Sunday, April suggests Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (in Incredibly Strange). Because on the one hand, it’s Debbie (sorry, it’s Deborah now) Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas in a B-movie about a GIANT SHARK fighting a GIANT OCTOPUS! Who wouldn’t love that? On the other hand, it’s Debbie Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas in a B-movie. The acting is awful (except for Vic Chao, who’s acceptable) and NOT ENOUGH GIANT SHARK AND OCTOPUS! I mean, come on! If you’re gonna have CGI creatures attacking ships and planes, you might as well feature them heavily, which director Ace Hannah fails to do. Sorry Ace, your sci-fi mumbo jumbo dialogue just made me sleepy. So if you’re sucked in like I was by the cover, do yourself a favor- go right to the fights and skip the rest.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Year One (Jack Black and Michael Cera play two bumbling cave-dudes who stumble into the middle of pretty much every Biblical event in pre-history in this knockabout comedy from director Harold Ramis), Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation (utterly bonkers, completely entertaining documentary about the kooky, sleazy, nudie, action-y birth of the Australian exploitation film industry; you’ll come away with about a dozen titles you’ll want to badger Videoport’s owner Bill into getting- and we encourage that), My Life in Ruins (the star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding returns as yet another annoyingly-spunky single gal looking for love, this time, shockingly, in Greece), Imagine That (Eddie Murphy is back, doing the family-friendly thing for a wheelbarrow full of cash; I guess it’s wrong to judge him for this continued behavior, but he’s making me very sad), Anvil!: The Story of Anvil (much-anticipated documentary about the titular Canadian heavy metal band has been described by every movie reviewer ever as ‘a real-life Spinal Tap’, and by me as really, really good), Everlasting Moments (Scandinavian drama about a turn of the century young woman whose life changes when she wins a camera in a lottery), ‘Trial & Retribution’- seasons 1 and 2 (the first two seasons of this long-running British cop series joins the swelling ranks of BBC mystery shows in Videoport’s Mystery/Thriller section), Assassination of a High School President (nerdy high school reporter teams up with the hot girl of his dreams to determine who stole the SAT exams, and, presumably, kills that guy; Bruce Willis is in this one as well), Trick ‘r Treat (horror anthology owes a lot of its appeal to its Creepshow-esque vibe, and the rest to slumming real actors Anna Paquin, Dylan Baker, and the ever-irascible Brian Cox), ‘Nip/Tuck’- season 5, Part 2 (more of the bizarre antics of the sleaziest plastic surgeons in the world), ‘Bones’- season 4 (‘Angel’’s David Boreanaz and that cute lady are back doing CSI-type things to, well, bones, I guess).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Pollyana (Hayley Mills stars in this 1960 kids movie about the girl who is so damned chipper you want to smack her one), Coco Chanel (Shirley MacLaine stars as the legendary fashion designer looking back on her life and her pretty, pretty things), Where the Heart Is (Videoport brings you this 1990 Dabney Coleman comedy about a mean real estate developer trying to teach his spoiled kids a lesson; why did we do this? Well, we move in mysterious ways…), Marlene (1984 documentary by actor Maximilian Schell about the legendary star Marlene Dietrich is as fascinating for the facts of the actress’ life as it is for the reluctance she shows in revealing them), Munyurangabo (this moving Film Movement release, about an orphan of the Rwandan genocide on a quest for justice, is destined to be referred to in about twelve thousand incorrect, mangled ways by the customers and staff).

Stuff You Wanna Know About Videoport:

1. Videoport is awesome.

2. Videoport gives you a free rental every single day. Check out the front page of this here newsletter for the too-good-to-be-true details.

3. Videoport will get you free parking at any downtown parking garage. If you don’t wanna pay for a metered space, then just pull into a garage and bring us your parking stub; we’ll get you a free hour of parking. (And remember- parking meters are turned off after 6pm, Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday, and the parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour parking after 5pm on weekdays and all day on the weekend.

4. See fact #1. Yeah. That’s right…

5. Videoport’s clerks/employees/drones/film geeks all, surprise!, love movies, and have, collectively, seen just about every movie ever made. Plus, they can, for the most part, talk about movies in complete sentences and everything. Even the foreign employee. So, if you’re stuck about what to rent, or want a carefully reasoned review of something you’re on the fence about, just ask us. We promise to respect your choice, not judge you, and then find you something waaay better.

5a. Since (as per fact #2) you get a free movie every day and (as per fact #5) we love to recommend movies, why not take a chance with your free rental? Say you come in on a Tuesday, which is ‘Tough and Triassic Tuesday’, meaning you get a free film from Videoport’s voluminous action or classics sections with a paid rental. Why not throw caution to the wind and ask your favorite (we know you have a favorite) Videoport drone to find you a free one? We’ve seen ‘em all, we like the right ones, and we’ll steer you in the right direction. Life’s short- take a chance, man…

6. Videoport will give you free money, see if we won’t. You can front-load your Videoport rental account with rental credit, and we give you more credit than you pay for (if not deserve). Put down $20 on your account, and we give you $25 worth of credit. Pay $30 on your account and we’ll give you a whopping $40 worth of rental credit. And credit’s good for both rentals and any pesky extra day fees- that’s either a 20 or 25% discount on our already ridiculously-low prices. Your welcome.

7. NEVER TOUCH THE SHINY SIDE OF A DVD OR LEAVE A DVD OUT OF ITS PROTECTIVE CASE WHEN NOT BEING PLAYED. Not really a Videoport fact, this needed to be said nonetheless.

8. Trade in your old DVDs for free rentals. If you’ve got a Videoport rental account and feel like unloading some of those DVDs you don’t watch anymore (Encino Man? What was I thinking?), Videoport’ll give you free rentals for ‘em.

9. Locally owned, independent, and kickin’ ass!

10. The best selection of movies anywhere, all right here in Portland, Maine, baby…

11. Videoport’s weekly newsletter, The VideoReport, (which you’re reading right now, duh) always accepts movie reviews and other movie-related submissions for publication from any customer, staff member, or idle passer-by of Videoport. Bring your submissions by the store, or, if you’re feeling all technological and stuff, send them to us at denmn@hotmail.com, our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones, or our Facebook page (just type in “Videoport Jones”).

12. Our weekly newsletter (The VideoReport, again, duh) is online as well at our movie blog. Look us up at www.videoportjones.wordpress.com for back issues, assorted movie reviews and articles and more!

13. Also, check out our reviews of the week’s new releases in the “GO” section of the Portland Press Herald, where our resident movie review smarty-pants Videoport Jones goes toe-to-toe with the Press Herald’s reviewer, reporter, and columnist extraordinaire Justin Ellis.

14. There is no fact #14.

15. There’s a drop box outside at the entrance to the parking lot (on the corner of Pearl and Newbury streets), for your movie returnamentary needs.

16. Videoport gives you a free movie rental for every single movie you purchase from us. We’ve got a lot of movies in stock, both new and previously-viewed, for sale, and we can special order anything that’s currently in print.

17. We’ve got the dirtiest movie in the world. You know the one…

18. All kids movies are just a dollar. Awww….

19. You can extend any rental, just by paying us slightly more money!

20. See fact #1. Yah, we thought so…

Justin Ellis of the Press Herald and I run down the week’s new releases (9/29/09)

Funny how each week’s new DVD releases take Videoport Jones and I to places we didn’t expect. This week it’s thoughts of relationships, love, con men, animated monsters and the disappearance of Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston. Don’t worry, we’re just as surprised as you.

Away We Go

Videoport Jones: “This autobiographical film, from a script by married screenwriters (and indie hipster darlings) Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, had me worried going in. I really wanted to like it; I like Eggers’ writing and am rooting for costar John Krasinski to break out as a legitimate movie star (and not as just everybody’s favorite TV cool guy Jim Halpert), but, from the previews, I was concerned that it was going to be too indie-cute, while the fact that it was directed by the usually heavy-handed Sam Mendes (‘American Beauty,’ ‘Revolutionary Road’) seemed at odds with its seemingly-breezy aspirations. Well, judge a movie by its previews at your own peril- this is one of the most happy surprises of the year. As a pleasantly-aimless couple in their early thirties who discover that they’re preggers and go on a trip trying to decide where to relocate, Krasinski and former ‘SNL’ funny gal Maya Rudolph are the most touchingly-believable couple in a long while. Eggers and Vida created a couple without, some might say, any real problems (they have enough money, they have the freedom to move essentially anywhere they want, and family and friends who love them) and imbued their dilemma with a real sense of weight. They feel, and are, largely rootless, lacking the stable, mortgage-y lives of their parents and, happy enough, they nonetheless

Didn't think I could act, did you?

occasionally wonder, as Rudolph’s character does at one point, “Are we f***-ups?” (It’s a question, and a sentiment, I can relate to). And, as embodied by Krasinski and Rudolph (who’s a revelation here as the sturdy, sensible foil to Krasinski’s goofball), these two create a layered, believable, and utterly winning couple who convince us, and themselves, that they are worthy of our sympathy as they meet up with a colorful collection of friends and relatives who, in their own singular ways, provide different s of couple and parenthood for our protagonists to react to, often with Jim Halpert-esque pan disbelief. Like the similarly-structured ‘Flirting With Disaster,’ the couple’s picaresque journey allows for some ‘crazy’ encounters with some very talented guest stars, but ‘Away We Go’ edges its characters more towards the sadness underneath: Allison Janney and Jim Gaffigan as boorish borderline crazies, Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara as Krasinski’s too-flighty parents, Carmen Ejogo as Rudolph’s luminously-sane sister, Paul Schneider as Krasinski’s sad brother with a family crisis, and Melanie Lynskey and Chris Messina, heartbreaking as a happy couple with a sad secret, and an hilarious turn by Maggie Gyllenhall and Josh Hamilton as the ultimate New Agers. Through it all, Rudolph and Krasinski are a wonder: touchingly-vulnerable, funny, and real. Which is how I’d describe the movie as well.”

Justin: “Never trust previews and reviews Jonesy. If you were to believe some of the reviews they’d have you think Krasinski and Rudolph were unlikable and the story unbelievable. This film is unlike anything I have seen in a very long time. Watching it felt like some wonderful mix of great cinematopgraphy, compelling characters and a unique plot. In other words, it was what a good movie should be. But more than that, it felt like you were watching two friends trying to make an honest life decision and what it all means. You touch on a good point with Rudoplh’s line about being ‘f***-ups.’ I think anyone in our generation can completely and totally relate to that feeling, as well as the listlessness that goes along with it. You DO reach a point where you look around and wonder what is going on in your life. ‘Away We Go’ could easily hit you over the head with themes on family, love and belonging (and I’m sure some say it does), but instead it just sweeps you up and takes you along for the ride (literally.) This movie was one of the few times in recent memory where I had NO idea where things were going with the story. And that made it so much more enjoyable. Krasinski and Rudoplh were amazing, with such great chemistry that their portrayal of the couple seemed effortless. But also, as you point out, this movie is filled-out with great performances from the ensemble, providing vignettes of various parts of family life that alternates between hilarious and heartbreaking, all the while feeling realistic. (And I am ALWAYS happy when Allison Janney and Jim Gaffigan get work. And they are hilarious here) Also as an Eggers fan (did I mention I got to INTERVIEW him once!), I was rooting for this film. Watching it I was surprised at how much it was like seeing an Eggers story come to life. See this movie.”

The Brothers Bloom

VPJ: “In his high school neo-noir ‘Brick,’ director Rian Johnson proved himself a prankish stylist, wedding the hard-boiled detective genre to a teenaged milieu to audaciously-fun effect. In his new film, ‘The Brothers Bloom,’ he’s playing film style mash-up again, this time tackling the venerable conman genre with a quirky, Wes Anderson-like comic detachment. Well, it’s hard to successfully copy the delicately-whimsical tragicomic style of Anderson’s best films like ‘Bottle Rocket,’ ‘Rushmore,’ and ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ (even Anderson himself has failed at doing so twice in a row now), and ‘The Brothers Bloom,’ while not a failure by any means, never takes off. Like a balloon with too much to carry, it sort of bounces along, struggling to be delightful. Undeniably-talented actors Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo play the titular conmen, orphaned brothers who’ve made their way through the world for decades thanks to the irresistible lure of Ruffalo’s elaborate fictions, and aided by the alluring bait of Brody’s seductively-sensitive playacting. They’re fun to watch as they scoot around the world in pursuit of the next score, and things look promising when they set their sights on a zany, enthusiastic, klutzy heiress with more money than God (she keeps a stable of identical Ferrari’s in waiting) played by the lovely and spirited Rachel Weisz. The film also has a nice, deliberatley-ambiguous approach to time period in the decor and wardrobe. It’s just that, as the film goes along, the style starts to weigh the picture down in a way that it didn’t in ‘Brick.’ There’s a reason that ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,’ ‘The Sting,’ and ‘The Lady Eve’ weren’t directed by Wes Anderson (or Rian Johnson, for that matter) – the con man flick and the quirky indie fairy tale don’t match up well. About half way through, ‘The Brothers Bloom’ goes kinda flat. Still and all, a pleasant enough chance to watch these three always-interesting actors do their stuff.”

JE: “But I have to wonder if the chance to watch three decent actors is enough incentive? Is it enough to give it a pass just because we like the pieces but are ambivalent about the whole? Especially when it comes to the delicate are of the Con movie? I love, and I mean REALLY love, a good con man or a heist flick (though Steven Soderbergh tried hard to torpedo the whole thing with ‘Oceans’ sequels.), and they have to juggle a lot of parts. The grifter(s) has to be charming, not annoying, the target has to be plausible, and the locales, settings and other trappings have to be fabulous beyond anyone’s imagination. And while ‘The Brothers Bloom’ may have those elements, it appears they weigh down the whole show. Which is sad, because Johnson is a smart, creative guy who clearly likes to take chances. I’d say this one gets a pass if you’re curious about Johnson as a director and where his career is going. Otherwise, if you’re in the mood for a con-man flick might I suggest ‘To Catch a Thief,’ ‘How to Steal a Million,’ or either versions of ‘The Thomas Crown Affair.’”

The Girlfriend Experience

VPJ: “There is no big-time Hollywood director who takes as many chances, to greater artistic reward, than Steven Soderbergh. From the ‘Oceans’ films to the no-budget experimentation of ‘Bubble,’ from the improv-heavy doodle that was ‘Full Frontal’ to the epic, five-hour ‘Che,’ the guy is gutsy, prolific, and has talent practically out of that big, big brain of his. So why not make a low-budget, shot-on-digital character study of a high class call starring a porn star in her non-porn acting debut? Why not indeed, my good man. Sasha Grey stars as the titular prostitute who offers the titular service (wherein she creates the fantasy for her customers that she is more than just a hired, well, hand), all the while trying to make a relationship work with her own boyfriend and she carries the picture with icy aplomb. Can she act? Umm, I genuinely don’t know; Soderbergh, capturing Grey’s character through a ‘The Limey’ – like use of adept flashbacks, flashforwards, and editing, employs his star with tightly-controlled economy. It’s a good strategy, which he employed to similar effect in ‘Bubble,’ to get the most out of a nonprofessional (or perhaps limited) actor (I maintain that Mickey Rourke was similarly-used in ‘The Wrestler’), and Grey is just fine in the central role, the astute casting of one kind of professional to play another granting the film another level of intrigue. We watch her go through her days, act her parts, and prepare for the next move; she’s a sleek, sexy shark who rarely reveals much, but remains a compelling cypher. Another in the fascinating film essays from the ever-ambitious Soderbergh.”

JE: “And here I am tossing around Soderbergh’s name in a bad way. You have to admit the latter ‘Oceans’ movies were not his finest, but on balance he’s one of the more interesting and gutsy filmmakers today. Not to mention versitile. I’m waiting for him to tackle a buddy cop flick, or even better, team up with Jason Stathem. Best of both words right there! As for ‘Girlfriend,’ one would hope this doesn’t go down as simply being ‘that Soderbergh movie with a star,’ because it could be much more. A meditation on longing, happiness, wealth and , perhaps? That’s not to say this bit of stunt casting is not intriguing in all sorts of meta ways. Also, it could make for awkward couples conversations as wives/girlfriends ask if their man is familiar with Grey’s, ahem, body of work. Sorry, could not resist the pun.”

Shrink

VPJ: “Remember when the world couldn’t get enough Kevin Spacey? Seriously, after ‘The Usual Suspects,’ ‘Seven,’ ‘American Beauty,’ etc, it seemed like ol’ Kev would be the biggest star in the word. Well, while he hasn’t gotten any less talented, the enthusiasm has petered out. On that subject, have you heard of this film? No? Well, it did go to the theaters, so we’re not in direct-to-DVD hell just yet, but this story, about a grieving shrink self-medicating with lots and lots of weed, didn’t do anything to take the Spacey train back on the road to the A-list. Did I see it you ask? Well, I was going to, but, you know…”

JE: “Let me help you out here. Three words: ‘Beyond The Sea.’ Did you see that movie? That was a freight train of indulgence as the Spaceman wrote, directed, acted and sang in the Bobby Darin bio-pic. It’s an alluring target, as a good bio-pic can be the stuff of legends. Instead it just landed with a loud, slightly croony thud. And when was the last time he was seen? ‘Recount?’ OK, fair enough. But that was an HBO movie, so again, not exactly breaking the box office. I’m a big fan of Spacey, not just because of the movies you mention, but one of his first performances I saw was Glengarry Glen Ross.’ Great performance and one of my all-time favorite movies. So he’ll be back some day and we’ll be waiting. Just don’t ask me if ‘Shrink is that return to form.”

Management

VPJ: “Jennifer Aniston, in her ongoing attempts to prove herself a viable movie star, has made some smart moves. She chose some interesting indie projects (‘Friends With Money,’ ‘The Good ‘) which brought her some critical cred, and, even in her more mainstream fare, she’s teamed up with some more interesting leading men than a less-adventurous mega TV star might (Paul Rudd in ‘The Object of My Affection,’ Jay Mohr in ‘Picture Perfect’), and now she’s doing the right thing again, co-starring with talented character actor goofball Steve Zahn. Unfortunately, as with Rudd and Mohr, the results aren’t everything you could hope for. Things start out okay, with her lonely art saleswoman being wooed/stalked by the oddball slacker caretaker of the motel she gets stuck at, but things get ironed out to a nice, bland smoothness before too long. Woody Harrelson shows up, trying to crazy things awake, but this one’s a pleasant rental for an unadventurous night, nothing more.

JE: “Wow. What can I really add to that. Pretty much spells it out. This feels like another case of ‘liking the individual parts.’ I dig Steve Zahn (a fellow Minnesotan who’s solid in everything) and I have no malice towards Aniston as an actress (though don’t get me started on her public dating woes. It bothers me.). A quick aside: why isn’t Zahn a bigger star? Is he a deliberate character guy, or does he not have the chops for a leading role? I think he does, but I’m biased. Since I feel more strongly about Zahn this could warrant a rental. As for Aniston’s attempts at leading lady-dom, she’s still got work to do. Sadly enough, I think she’d do better to build a resume of enemble or supporting roles, which frankly, I think she is better suited for. Maybe we can book Aniston on the same comeback express as Spacey.”

Monsters vs. Aliens

VPJ: “It ain’t Pixar, but this big budget animated comedy about the titular smackdown is diverting enough, employing as it does essentially every funny person in the world. Let’s see, you’ve got (deep breath) – Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Rainn Wilson, Stephen Colbert, Paul Rudd, Jeffrey Tambor, Ed Helms, John Krasinski…man, it’s like they cast the voices in this thing in a concerted effort to get me to watch it. It worked. And it was fine. When does ‘Up’ come out, though?”

JE: “True enough. I feel like the whole ‘celebrities in cartoons’ is a trend that has not reached its peak yet. When putting together an animated feature the voice talent is pretty crucial, so it’s no surprise that producers would go after name talent. On the other hand, when you stack the deck like this it feels like a blatant push to draw in a bigger crowd than you would normally attract. Say, parents, want a movie to take the kiddies to? Well how about this one? You like Seth Rogen, Dr. House and Dwight Schrute, right? GOLD! While I may normally ding you for your devotion to Pixar, in this situation I’ll refrain as I too am anxiously awaiting ‘Up.’”

How I Met Your Mother – Season 4

VPJ: “Now that everyone in the world loves Neil Patrick Harris (very funny hosting the Emmy’s, my man), they should all go back and check out this well-above-average sitcom where he plays TVs ultimate horndog wingman. His Barney is a , catchphrase-spouting cliche, and NPH makes you love every minute he’s on screen. Add in the invaluable assistance of cuddly-hilarious married sidekicks Allyson Hannigan and Jason Segal, and you’ve got yourself a genuinely-pleasing winner. Oh, and the two main characters are serviceable as well.”

JE: “I am all for continuing the era of the NPH Renaissance. I feel like in the hands of anyone else the character Barney would have an off-the-shelf, formulaic sitcom character feel to him. Instead he just pushes it over the top and sells it hard (WHAT-UP!). But seriously, if you’re feeling a sitcom-sized hole in your life and are in the market for a funny show staring pretty people, this is it. I could watch it for NPH and Segal alone (points to the producers for making his character from Minnesota AND including an episode this season about the Vikings.). In fairness the other two leads are funny and likable. Though it should be slightly worrying to the producers that the character the show is centered on (the guy looking for, you know, the ‘Mother.’), is not considered as entertaining as some of the other players.”

Parting Shots:

- Are the characters in “Away We Go” relatable? If not does that hurt the movie?
- Sasha Grey in “The friend Experience.” Stunt casting or ultimate realism?
- Casting call! What would you cast NPH in next?

VideoReport #215

Volume CCXV- Zombiepocalypse Now
For the Week of 9/29/09
Videoport is an oasis of great films, low prices, and friendly service, and it’s all right here in your own backyard.  (If you live in Portland, of course.  If you are reading this in, say, Tucson, well, move here, I guess.)

Middle Aisle Monday.  (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)
>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests ‘Monk’ (in Mystery/Thriller).   While I was sick in bed this week, [your editor/my husband] brought me daily discs of Monk, the cheerful USA series, to pass the time. Tony Shalhoub stars as Adrian Monk, “the defective detective” whose debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorders keep him off active duty on the police force. These same obsessive drives allow him to solve seemingly impossible cases; he notices tiny circumstantial details no one else sees. I’ll be honest: I had remembered the show as formulaic… and it is. But boy oh boy, that formula works. The show is predictably paced, with all its puzzle pieces recurring week after week, but it’s well-crafted and diverting. Shalhoub in particular is a pleasure to watch, bringing every ounce of his restrained talent to making Adrian Monk as endearing as he is irritating. The supporting cast work in concert to keep it peppy, John Turturro, Amy Sedaris, and Glenn Headley have recurring roles, and in the first two seasons alone, the guest stars include John Turturro, Betty Buckley, Rachel Dratch, Adam Arkin, Sarah Silverman, Gary Cole, Jane Lynch, Willie Nelson, and Shalboub’s wife, Brooke Adams. The show itself is a trifle, a lighthearted piece of mass-market entertainment, but all the performers are bringing their A-game. (One caveat: the jaw-droppingly bold product placements make me twitch, which actually adds a little meta-narrative sympathy with Monk’s own nervous tics. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what the producers had in mind.)
Tough and Triassic Tuesday.  (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)
>>> Dennis suggests getting ready for the blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite (view the awesome trailer at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190536/), by schooling yourself on some of the choicest examples of the blaxploitation era in Videoport’s Action section.  I heartily, and funkily, recommend:  Trick Baby, Truck Turner, The Mack, Superfly, Shaft, Shaft’s Big Score, Shaft in Africa, and, of course, all the Pam Grier you can get your hands on (Sheba Baby, Friday Foster, Coffy, Black Mama, White Mama and, the Pammiest Grier of them all, Foxy Brown).  Dig it.
Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

Money.

>>>Dennis suggests the new season of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ (in Comedy).  Everybody loves Neil Patrick Harris now.  And they should love Allyson Hannigan and Jason Segel.  And they should be moderately amused by the other two stars of the show.  Funny stuff.
Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)
>>> An Anonymous Videoport Customer* suggests Stupidity and Cosmos (in Documentary).  Oh No, it happened again.  You were minding your own business, huffing paint thinner in your garage, deciding to go visit your pal Skeeter ‘cause he just got a bunch of fireworks from that one Chinese guy down at the pier.  Next thing you know, you’re waking up in the drunk tank with burns all over your forearms and your ring finger is missing from the second knuckle.  The bad news is, you’re an idiot.  The good news is, I’m a doctor and I can help.  (I’m not a doctor.)  Our first step should be to determine the cause of your ailment.  I recommend that you watch the Canadian documentary Stupidity.  It will help you to understand the different varieties of idiocy, and how society will reward your behavior even as the laws of physics and the legal system punish it.  The narrator sounds remarkably like Donald Sutherland, but it isn’t him.  (Donald Sutherland is also not a doctor, so don’t let him touch your swimsuit area.)  The documentary features such examples of stupidity as Steve-O fans rioting after a show in Toronto, Muslim demonstrators putting a picture of Bert from Sesame Street sitting next to Osama Bin Laden on placards, and George W. Bush attempting to speak English.  OK, we’re making progress.  Now that we understand why you’re a dumbass, it’s time to decide on a treatment.  I feel that the best course of action is for me to prescribe a regimen of Cosmos.  Hosted by astronomer, author, cannabis enthusiast Carl Sagan, this series of science programs will give you a basic understanding of biology, astronomy, the history of science, and critical thought, and how gravity isn’t always your friend.  It will help you to develop valuable skills, such as deductive reasoning, using physics to your advantage, and how to read without it hurting.  (Carl Sagan is a doctor; feel free to let him fondle your junk.)  All right, we’re not out of the woods yet, but with this course of treatment, a better diet, regular exercise, and support from your loved ones, I’m confident we can beat this terrible affliction.  Remember, your children are vulnerable to stupidity as well, so be sure to have them vaccinated early with educational television and trips to the library.
*Editor’s note:  Whether this review, which was slipped into our drop box without a name on it, was intended to be anonymous, or whether its signature-less nature was the result of, well, stupidity, we at the VideoReport would like to remind you all out there in the Videoport community that we welcome your submissions, be they movie reviews, best of/worst of lists, movie essays, or, really, anything at all about movies.  Please send them to us at denmn@hotmail.com, our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones, our movie blog www.videoportjones.wordpress.com, or, you know, just pop them in the drop box without a name on them.  We love you.
Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).
>>>Karen Kustomer suggests Bedknobs and Broomsticks.  What do you get when you mix a British WWII movie, witchcraft, a touch of King Arthur, Disney animation madness, a love story, trippy special effects circa early 70s, a musical with dance numbers, three precocious Cockney kids, elements of Monty Python, a ratty black cat, and the Bayeaux tapestry? Why Bedknobs and Broomsticks of course! This weirdly engaging Disney movie was made in lieu of Mary Poppins while the rights to that book were being wrangled, and won the 1971 Oscar for Special Effects. The combination of live action, cartoon, and special effects used went on to make Mary Poppins a hit. I much prefer this movie, everything its just right. I loved it as a little girl in the movie theater, and every time I’ve seen it since then I’ve loved it. Show it to your kids, watch it yourself! A thousand movies in one! Seriously. And, oh yeah, Angela Lansbury? She’s got great legs.
Having a Wild Weekend.  (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)
>>>For Saturday, April suggests Grey Gardens (the film, In Feature/Drama).  Well, I have to hand it to Drew Barrymore, she steals the show the way only Hollywood royalty can. For a few minutes there I thought the real Little Edie was up there dancing and carrying on and I think the real Little Edie would have approved of the way she’s portrayed here.  Grey Gardens the film is a bit flashier than Grey Gardens the documentary. It’s gentler and less cluttered. They clearly wanted to show the history of the Beales through Little Edie’s eyes because it’s her version of events that we see. Her parents are the cause of all her troubles, or so she thinks. Father is rarely around except to dole out the allowances and bring Little Edie back home to Mother.  Mother on the other hand is unintentionally controlling and pathetic.  All she wants is to have someone around to care for her, her husband, her lover, or her daughter. She doesn’t really care who it is as long as she isn’t alone.   There’s lots of stuff here from the ladies past that I’d never known about so it does bring something new to the cult club of the Edies but I’m not sure if (as a film) it really works. I’d have liked to see more of Little Edie in New York and her rebellion against her family. We have Grey Gardens the documentary to show us their later life, it wasn’t as compelling to see that in the film, but If I were to give the film a rating I’d give it four stars. You really should watch it.
>>>For Sunday, Dennis suggests Sugar (in Feature Drama).  I’m a baseball fan.  Sure, my 300-day-a-year wearing of various Red Sox jerseys may have clued in some of the swifter of you to that fact, but I’ll just come out and admit it anyway.  I say this

The best movie of 2009.

because I’d like to stress that my baseball fanniness has precious little to do with my enthusiasm for this movie which is, sure, about a young Dominican guy who comes to America because he is a, well, baseball player.  Nope, this stunningly good little indie movie, starring the nonprofessional actor, and former semiprofessional baseballer Algenis Perez Soto in an utterly winning performance as the titular (that’s his nickname) pitcher, would be just as good if he were a top prospect in, I don’t know, math, or cooking, or even (shudder) soccer.  Directed by the duo who did the quite different but also quite good Half Nelson, Sugar is as perceptive and moving a character study as I’ve seen all year, and my pick for the year’s best film.  Knowing little English, and with not only his own hopes for making it in the American major leagues but the hopes of his entire family to escape from poverty, Sugar is plopped down right in the heartland when he gets assigned to a single-A team in Iowa.  As he tries to make his way in this strange new place, I felt almost unbearably anxious, wincing at risky play, bad game, or off-field encounter with the potential to go bad on the good-hearted but inexperienced Sugar.  As true and insightful an examination of the immigrant experience in America as it is a baseball movie , Sugar keeps you off balance, never quite going where you’re expecting, but always does right by its central character.  (If you’ve ever booed a baseball player [who wasn’t Alex Rodriguez], you’ll hate yourself as much as you hate the ‘fan’ who yells ‘Santos, you suck!’, at one point;  the gap in understanding, in basic humanity between that all-too-common jackass and the object of his ignorant derision is the clearest illustration of the dark side of American sports, and perhaps America, as you’ll see in a movie.)  So, when you ask the baseball-beshirtted goofus what he recommends, and he says that Sugar is the best film he’s seen in 2009, don’t just roll your eyes, you.  This isn’t just a great baseball movie, it’s a great, human movie.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Away We Go (‘The Office’’s John Krasinski and former ‘SNL’ funny lady Maya Rudolph star in this absoultely-charming comedy about an unmarried couple traveling around the country, looking for the perfect place to have their child), The Brothers Bloom (Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo are the titular conmen after loopy heiress Rachel Weisz’s millions in this oddball comic scam movie), The Girlfriend Experience (risk-happy director Steven Soderbergh teams up with porn star Sasha Grey to bring his tale of a high-priced call girl to life in this intriguing character study), Shrink (the title of this one perhaps describing the prospects of his leading man career, Kevin Spacey stars as the titular psychiatrist who’s self-medicating his grief with lots and lots o’weed), Mangement (the always-interesting Steve Zahn and the sometimes-above-average Jennifer Anniston pair up in this oddball romantic comedy), Lymelife (Alec Baldwin, Timothy Hutton, Cynthia Nixon, and a couple of Culkins examine family dysfunction, coming of age, and, well, Lyme disease in this indie drama), Monsters vs. Aliens (animated comedy about the titular creature smackdown features just about every funny person I personally love:  Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Hugh Laurie, Rainn Wilson, Ed Helms, Stephen Colbert, Paul Rudd, Jeffrey Tambor, and John Krasinski;  damn- I may actually have to watch this thing), ‘How I Met Your Mother’- season 4 (Neil Patrick Harris, Allyson Hannigan, and Jason Segel, playing the sidekicks, make this sitcom more than worth watching;  the two leads are…fine, as well), ‘Kings’- season 1 (Videoport brings you the first season of this oddball, alternate-reality series about an America ruled by royalty, starring ‘Deadwood’’s awesome Ian McShane), Princess (holy crap…this is a Danish, animated, hyper-violent thriller about a former missionary who goes on a psychotic rampage when his porn star sister dies, vowing to eradicate every scrap of porn she ever appeared in;  enjoy!).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Superman/Batman:  Public Enemies (animated DC Comics flick teams up the Dark Knight and the Big Boy Scout), ‘The Unit’- season 4 (the David Mamet-created, Videoport’s Samuel James-approved action series follows Robert Patrick, Dennis Haysbert, and the spooky-eyes Scott Foley as they do questionable things for the good of the good old USA), ‘Life on Mars’- season 1 (the American remake of the BBC cop series about a, well, cop who finds himself back in the groovy 1970s costars Harvey Keitel and Michael Imperioli), Love for Rent (a spunky Latina plays surrogate, deals with a shiftless green card husband, and dates a hunky doctor [‘The State’’s Ken Marino] in this indie dramedy), Frownland (upsetting character study of a truly abrasive human being has been hailed with good reviews [Roger Ebert liked it a lot], walkouts, and general hostility;  I shall definitely see it…), Treeless Mountain (painfully-touching drama about two adorable little Korean girls whose mother leaves them on their own to search for their absent father), Go Diego Go: Underwater Mystery and Go Diego Go:  Ready Set Go (new Diego for your little monsters), The Country Teacher (new film from the Film Movement series about a sweetly-closeted gay teacher stuck out in nowheresville, Czech Republic), The 48 Hour Film Project (two-disk collection of this year’s entries in the 48 Hour Film Project [where you have to make a short film in two days], including former Videoporter Allen Baldwin’s hilarious, ‘Flight of the Conchords’- esque ‘Stuff Is Wrong’), ‘Man Stroke Woman’- season 2 (second series of the rapid-fire British sketch comedy show starring, among others, the hilarious Nick Frost from ‘Spaced’, ‘Shaun of the Dead’, and ‘Hot Fuzz’).

Check us out on the inter-webs at
www.videoportjones.wordpress.com!

The Press Herald’s Justin Ellis and I run down the week’s New Releases (9/22/09)

When two mall security-related movies are released in the same year, one is bound to suffer, right? But did it have to be “Observe and Report”? In this week’s new releases, the old friends like the Emmy-winning “30 Rock” and Nathan “Captain Hammer/Reynolds” Fillion, and must once again come to grips with Matthew McConaughey.

Observe and Report

Good, wholesome fun...

Videoport Jones: “Boy, the marketing of this one is going to freak out some people. If you look at the trailers, this film looks like ‘Paul Blart 2,’ what with the wacky mall security guard hijinks, and the ogling of the the women and the beating up on skateboarders and all.

But this film really is another in the run of hostile, misanthropic, painfully funny character studies from writer/director Jody Hill, whose previous efforts “The Foot Fist Way” and the HBO series ‘Eastbound and Down’ have introduced an unique strain of the comedy of pain into the national entertainment landscape.  Like those works, this film follows a maladjusted, unjustifiably confident alpha male who is unable to comprehend the gap between his inflated self image and his actual worth.  Plus, he is really, really violent.

Seth Rogen really took a chance with this one, breaking away from his ‘rude-but-ultimately cuddly’ persona (which is still paying great dividends) to create a genuinely weird, off-putting, and often vile character that is in no way designed to evoke the audience’s sympathy. I mean, sure, his Ronny Barnhardt is clearly the product of some truly awful parenting, mental illness, and, perhaps, fetal alcohol poisoning, but that doesn’t make you want to hang out with him;  Rogen and Hill hop back and forth across the thin line of making you feel sorry for an overgrown, clearly unstable man-boy and realizing the guy’s a truly dangerous jerk.  “Observe and Report” is an extended, largely successful dark comic goof wherein Ronny’s personality disorders and self-delusions are contrasted with the traditional ‘heroic’ stuff that goes on in an action

I will punch Kevin James in the nuts.

comedy; (Hill makes potent use of the ironic juxtaposition of slow-motion music-backed action and ridiculousness).  As Rogen’s crewcutted Ronny struts, gut-first, through the mall he views as the ultimate battlefield of good vs. evil and continues to do the absolute awful-est thing possible as he courts/stalks the makeup girl of his dreams (a humorously reprehensible Anna Farris) and tries to track down the doughy flasher terrorizing the parking lot, his monomaniacal self-importance, existing alongside his obvious (to everyone but him) insignificance sketches the outline of a truly original, if very creepy, character. Comparisons to ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Punch-Drunk Love’ have been made, and I can see the resemblance.  Utterly unlike any ‘comedy’ released this year (and utterly unlike its studio-mandated marketing campaign), this one is an original, seemingly constructed to wig out the unwary. Cool.”

Justin: “This film seems to have created its own storm, thanks to a confluence of outside events, a risky script and an actor otherwise known for his goofy but lovable ways. America may have had its fill with Paul Blart, which is unfortunate, given this movie is better. (But then again outpatient surgery is better than Paul Blart. ZING!) It’s like having a bad experience at Outback Steakhouse and discovering a Ruth’s Chris across the street.

On the surface the similarities between these flicks seem glaring: loser mall cop with delusions of grandeur gets called on in a moment of need. So what happens when ‘Observe and Report’ is marketed as such, with one of Hollywood’s hot, top-drawing comedy stars? People walk out confused and maybe disturbed. You absolutely HAVE to know what you are getting into for a movie like this, otherwise you’ll hate it with a passion. I happen to like dark comedies with reprehensible characters (to a certain point of course. No one wants to root for a serial killer. Oh wait, ‘Dexter…’), and humor that delves into painful, ugly parts of life. It’s a relative to the kind of awkward humor you get with ‘The Office,’ the type that makes you laugh and cringe at the same time. Cleanse your mind of Blart and rent this.”

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

What? Take my shirt off? Well, if you all insist...

VPJ: “I…I’m a professional, I’m a professional. Sure, I don’t get paid and I don’t use my real name so no one knows it’s me, but still…sort of a professional… Here goes: Matthew McConaughey is an incorrigible bachelor who … nope.  I just can’t do it. C’mon, regroup here.  Let’s see … McConaughey’s not a bad actor, really – you liked him in ‘Dazed and Confused’ and ‘Lone Star.’ He was actually pretty badass in ‘Reign of Fire,’ and kind of funny in ‘Tropic Thunder.’  See?  You can do this, big guy … now – Matthew McConaughey plays Connor Mead, a committed bachelor who, on the night before his brother’s wedding…no, No, NO!  I cannot, I will not review this…thing!  God, wear more pastels, will you, McConaughey… I will not!!  AIIIIEEEE!!  ATTICA!  ATTICA!*
*Mrs. Videoport Jones reports that, subsequent to this, well, episode, Mr. Jones was put to bed with some hot soup and some cold PBR and is feeling much better.  In order to fulfill his obligations towards this film, IMDb.com explains that ‘Ghosts of Girlfriends Past’ is a ‘fusion of A Christmas Carol with the traditional romantic comedy.’  I think that’s all we need to know about that…”

JE: “JONESY! Speak to me! Damn you, McConaughey, you’ve taken another LIFE! Damn you and your easy smile, wavy locks and penchant for being shirtless! I’ll pick up the slack best I can here, but no promises. This is the latest in a long line of regrettable romantic comedies by Wooderson, following on the heels of ‘Failure to Launch,’ ‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,’  ‘The Wedding Planner’ and ‘Fool’s Gold,’ the inexplicable re-pairing of McConnughey and Kate Hudson. In ‘Ghosts,’ the

The laziest actor in Hollywood.

shirtless one stretches his abilities and plays a notorious cad who has never tied himself down in a relationship. The bad boy, he’s so saucy (if we say it enough you’ll believe it) that his libidinous ways finally catch up to him the night before his brother’s wedding. Then, Michael Douglas (of all people Gordon Gekko? Really?), acting as Jacob Marley, prepares him to be visited by…you guessed it! Ghosts of Girlfriends Past! You can see where this is going. The player learns his lesson, love conquers all, and, naturally, he takes off his shirt. I think we’re done here.”

30 Rock – Season 3

VPJ: “Remember when both this and the highly touted Aaron Sorkin ‘SNL’ show, ‘Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,’ were both coming out and the smart money was all on Sorkin?  Has anyone ever been wronger about anything?

‘Studio 60’ tanked, despite some good actors and Sorkin, perhaps modern TV’s best writer/creator (besides Joss Whedon, of course), largely because it treated the creation of a late night comedy television program with all the leaden self-importance of a Middle East peace summit while Tina Fey’s little show that could tosses the ‘show-within-a-show’ concept aside in favor of an almost literally-anything goes wackiness. It’s a good move, because all of those ‘Tina Fey’s gonna blow the lid off ‘SNL’ rumors were the least interesting part of the show; I did like the comparison of the dim prettyboy with the funny hair to Jimmy Fallon.   Well, ‘Studio 60’ is a largely forgotten fiasco, and ’30 Rock’ is still riding high, thanks to great, off-the-wall writing and a stunner of a cast, with Fey, Tracey Morgan, and the career-best work of Alec Baldwin as the greatest crazy TV boss ever.”

JE: “And to throw insult after injury, ‘30 Rock’ continues to rack up the Emmys. What else can we say about this show that we heart big time. Crush on Tina Fey aside, anytime you can get a weekly dose of Alex Baldwin, Tracey Morgan or Jack McBrayer is good with me. But together? Gold. Now the show went a little stunt-casting crazy this last season, but within the universe of the show they were able to pull off the handsome Jon Hamm show up as Liz Lemon’s love interest, Alan Alda revealed as Jack’s dad, Steve Martin as a wacky convict/business associate, and an inexplicable ‘Night Court’ reunion. Oh, also this season: Peter Dinklage, Paul Scheer, Steve Buscemi, Elaine Stritch, Jennifer Aniston, Salma Hayek, The Beastie Boys, Oprah, Elvis Costello…this could go on forever.”

O’Horten

VPJ: “Who’s up for a charming little Norwegian comic character study? Fine, more for me then. The story of a lean, pipe-smoking man of 68 (the nimbly-deadpan Baard Owe, looking like a Scandinavian Ian McKellen) who, forced into mandatory retirement from his job as a train engineer, finds himself ambling into one oddball predicament after another, all of which he endures with, perhaps, a slight twitch of his mustache, or a puff on his pipe.  He’s trapped by a small boy in a quiet apartment, left on a runway at a busy airport and taken driving by an old man who claims to be able to see with his eyes closed. It’s all very charming and funny, and it’d edge toward ‘quaint’ if not for the unshakable dignity of the main character and the fact that Norway seems just this far to the center of normal.  A weird little sleeper well worth a rental.”

JE: “Are you speaking another language, cause I have no idea what you just said. English? Baard Owe? Norway? There’s comedy in Norway? What are you talking about? Zingers aside, I’m a fan of subdued ‘fish out of water’ tales (opposed to the Renee Zellwegger is SO OUT OF PLACE in this tiny Minnesota town-type of tales). Also, if it isn’t painfully obvious, I know nothing of Norway outside of tales of Scandinavia that all children in Minnesota pick up on. I have a feeling this flick could become the latest case of a quirky foreign comedy that picks up steam through word of mouth. Think ‘Amelie’ or ‘The Full Monty.’ I may have to give it a shot.”

Castle – Season 1

VPJ: “A mystery writer is first a suspect, and then an ally of, the LA police in this ABC series. Yawn. But wait! Of course not ‘yawn!’ Not when the writer in question is played by Nathan Fillion. As all the cool kids (read: dorks) know, Fillion, after toiling in soaps and things like ‘2 Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place’ for years, finally caught the eye of one Joss Whedon, who cast him as Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, one of the most compelling characters in modern TV history, in ‘Firefly’, and its feature film sequel ‘Serenity.’ Then, after both of those bombed financially, Whedon thought he’d try and make Nathan even more of a cult figure by casting him as the villainous superhero Captain Hammer in his brilliant ‘Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog’ (which just won an Emmy, thank you very much). Well, now (after yet another quickly-canceled show ‘Drive’) Fillion brings his effortless charisma to, frankly, a mediocre show. But it’s still worth watching for him- wait…has this been canceled yet?”

JE: “Canceled by Columbus Day! Well, not yet. I have to admit that as much of a fan as I am of Captain Hammer (or Captain Reynolds, or Captain Tightpants), I did not watch ‘Castle.’ I dig Fillion, heck I even watched ‘2 Guys and a Girl’ for a while (of course it also featured Ryan Reynolds), but something about ‘Castle’ just screams ‘FORMULAIC’ to me. Maybe it’s the whole ‘one’s by the book, the other is a loose cannon’ or the ‘will they or won’t they’ charade. Throw in the fact that it’s another police show and it did not feel like something else to pile on to my DVR’s reservation list. But perhaps I am short-sighted. After all, I do heart Fillion, and I’ve been known to give lesser scripted plots a chance (I still haven’t forgiven ‘In Plain Sight.’)”

Also appearing on the shelves of Videoport this week, “Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death,” “The Mentalist – Season 1,” “Battle for Terra,” “Ugly Betty – Season 3″ and “The Haunted World of El Superbeasto.”

Parting Shots:

- Did “Observe and Report” suffer because of “Paul Blart: Mall Cop?”
- When will that McConaughey ever learn?
- Does “30 Rock” deserve the accolades it continues to rack up?

VideoReport #214: The Answers to the 4th Annual VideoReport Movie Trivia Quiz!

VideoReport #214- Videoport’s Got the Answers
1.In addition to directing the insightful, left-wing documentaries Wal-Mart: The High Cost of a Low Price, Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, and Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, Robert Greenwald’s resume can also boast the 1980 mega-flop Xanadu.
2. The wonderful indie baseball drama Sugar, about a young Dominican baseball prospect, gets the nod for accuracy from Pedro Martinez.
3. Although we suspect that Clint snuck a firearm somewhere on the cover for The Bridges of Madison County, Videoport’s Andy assures us that Mr. Eastwood is brandishing a gun only on the box art for: Gran Torino, High Plains Drifter, The Gauntlet, A Fistful of Dollars, Coogan’s Bluff, Dirty Harry, The Enforcer, The Dead Pool, Magnum Force, Bronco Billy, In the Line of Fire, Unforgiven, and  The Outlaw Josey Wales.  Any five’ll do.
4. Again, it’s Andy who spotted Jack Nicholson’s smiling choppers on the covers of:  Hells Angels on Wheels, The Shining, The King of Marvin Gardens, Something’s Gotta Give, As Good As It Gets, Man Trouble, The Bucket List, The Witches of Eastwick, Ironweed, Prizzi’s Honor, Goin’ South, and One Flew Over he Cuckoo’s Nest. You needed only five.
5. Steven Seagal can be seen, moving as little as humanly possible, in the direct-to-DVD flicks Out for a Kill and Out of Reach, while he must look wistfully back to the day when Out for Justice actually played in real movie theaters.
6. The general rule is: avoid any movie where Matthew McConaughey is either dressed in pastels or leaning on his co-star, as he is in Failure to Launch, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and we decided to accept him leaning on the tree, which does about as much acting as he did in Surfer, Dude.
7. The great character actor Stephen Tobolowsky’s insurance salesman Ned Ryerson referred to his nicknames ‘Needlenose Ned’ and ‘Ned the Head’ in Groundhog Day.
8. As far as directors who have remade their own, feature-length films, Videoport’s finest came up with Alfred Hitchcock (two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much), Michael Haneke (two versions of his Funny Games), George Sluizer (two versions of his The Vanishing, with the American remake being a huge mistake), while Videoport’s finest customers chimed in with Cecil B. DeMille (who did it twice,remaking his own The Ten Commandments and the unfortunately-titled The Squaw Man), and Tod Browning (who remade his film Outside the Law).
9. ‘Futurama’‘s wisecracking Bender Bending Rodriguez is, at various points in the series, said to be made up of 30% iron, 40% dolomite, 40% titanium and 40% zinc, with a 0.04% nickel impurity, perhaps as a result of the writers just making crap up as they went along.
10.  The excellently-spooky Mexican horror film The Devil’s Backbone takes its name from a slang term for the disease Spina Bifida.
11.  After a successful Broadway career brought her only a minor role in the film Thirteen Women, actress Peg Entwistle leaped to her death from the ‘H’ in the HOLLYWOODLAND (later HOLLYWOOD) sign.
12.  Molly Ringwald’s sassy friend in the John Hughes-penned Pretty in Pink (she was the one smoking in gym class), Alexa Kenin was beaten to death in her NYC apartment before the film was released.
13.  Actor Jon-Erik Hexum, star of the sci-fi series ‘Voyagers’ (available at Videoport, natch’) thought it was safe to point a prop gun loaded with blanks to his head and pull the trigger on the set of his show ‘Cover Up’.  It wasn’t.  Important safety tip.
14.  The excellent film Henry and June, about the tumultuous erotic relationship of novelists Henry Miller and Anais Nin and their spouses was the first film to receive the utterly superfluous NC-17 rating, which protects us all from boobs and wieners and the like.
15.  The Chaplin film Limelight won an Oscar for best original score in 1972, even though it had been released 20 years earlier.  It had not been eligible since it never played in an LA theater until then, owing to right-wing a-holes effectively banning Chaplin’s films for years.
16.  Poor Lon Chaney Jr., never to escape his famous father’s shadow, nonetheless played all four of the classic movie monsters (Frankenstein’s Monster, the Wolfman, Dracula, and the Mummy) on screen in his long career.
17.  IT IS NEVER OKAY TO TOUCH THE SHINY SIDE OF ONE OF OUR DVDS!
18.  IT IS NEVER OKAY TO LEAVE ONE OF OUR DVDS OUT OF ITS PROTECTIVE CASE WHEN IT IS NOT BEING PLAYED.
19. WHEN CLEANING ONE OF OUR DVDS (WHICH IS NEVER NECESSARY, REALLY, AS VIDEOPORT CLEANS EVERY, SINGLE DVD WE SEND OUT WITH YOU), YOU SHOULD USE D). A SOFT, CLEAN CLOTH OR ONE OF THE DVD CLEANING WIPES AVAILABLE FOR SALE AT VIDEOPORT!!!  C’MON!! (And, seriously, a wrong answer on either 17, 18, or 19 will cost you ten points for each wrong answer, and perhaps a few decades in purgatory).
20.  Legend has it that Buster Keaton suggested to disgraced silent comic Fatty Arbuckle that he change his name to Will B. Good, in order to get some work.
21.  That’s writer/director/actor Tony Stone who felt the need to show Viking verisimilitude by taking an on-camera poo in the loopy-but-still-interesting Severed Ways:  The Norse Discovery of America.  (Those who guessed John Waters- well, nice guess, but still wrong.  And Vincent Gallo in The Brown Bunny did not excrete on camera, but did, well, the other thing…)
22.  The ever-ambiguous Marlene Dietrich serenaded Cary Grant with the song ‘Hot Voodoo’ whilst wearing a gorilla suit in Blonde Venus.
23.  It’s in professional abomination Uwe Boll’s wretched Postal that all you Kids in the Hall fans finally get to see Dave Foley’s weenie.
24.  That’s perennial tough guy Yul Brynner all dolled up and lip-synching to ‘Mad About the Boy’ (to Roman Polanski, no less) in The Magic Christian.
25.  Catherine Deneuve, in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, spends the weekend with, among other things, her own craziness and a skinned, decomposing rabbit.
26.  In the utterly out-of-its-tiny-little-mind Possession, the lovely Isabelle Adjani does some unspeakable things with a tentacle-y thing, in lieu of husband Sam Neill.
27.  In Cecil B. DeMille’s biblical epic The Ten Commandments, the Paramount logo is replaced with an image of Mount Sinai.
28. Idaho’s House Concurrent Resolution Number 29 recognizes Jared and Jerusha Hess for their feature film Napoleon Dynamite, which (according to HCR No. 29) brought national attention to the state of Idaho, to Preston High School, and to Idaho’s leading export, Tater Tots.
Animated Homages:
29.  Pixar’s A Bug’s Life is Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai with lots o’ legs.
30.  Chicken Run combines Stalag 17 and the Great Escape.
31. The Lion King is, essentially, Hamlet on the veldt.
32.  A Shark’s Tale tries to be an underwater Godfather.
33.  In 1992’s Chaplin, Geraldine Chaplin played her own grandmother, Hannah.
34. Legendary rapscallion John Huston directed both his dad (Walter Huston-best supporting actor for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) and his daughter (Anjelica Huston- best supporting actress for Prizzi’s Honor).  But did they ever say thank you….
35. The Matrix and Dark City share more than a reality-bending premise: many of the same the buildings and sets were used for both films. Whoa — there is no spoon.
36.  One-time glamrocker David Bowie has had the privilege of playing Nikoli Tesla (in The Prestige), Andy Warhol (in Basquiat), and Pontius Pilate (in The Last Temptation of Christ).
37.  Since budget restrictions required actors to supply their own costumes, Jamie Lee Curtis spent an afternoon and a hundred dollars at J.C. Penney’s to outfit herself as terrified but levelheaded babysitter Laurie Strode in John Carpenter’s seminal horror film Halloween.
38.  TV’s House (Hugh Laurie) is clearly patterned after Sherlock Holmes:  a female patient in the first movie named Adler, an electric guitar instead of a violin, vicodin instead of cocaine, a best pal named Doctor Wilson/Watson, a nemesis named Morairty (the guy who shoots house at one point), his diagnostic skills and crabby demeanor, and even his apartment number in 221B.
39.  Malcolm McDowell suffered for his role as Alex in A Clockwork Orange: his cornea was scratched by the eye-spreading device during the Ludovico Process, he cracked his ribs, and nearly drowned when his breathing tube malfunctioned during the trough-torture scene.
40.  Upon receiving his 1954 Best Actor Academy Award, William Holden kept it short and sweet, saying only “Thank you,” before leaving the stage. Director Alfred Hitchcock beat him by 50%: after receiving an Honorary Academy Award, Hitch uttered merely, “Thanks.”
41.  In 1987s cult vampire film Near Dark, no one actually ever says the word ‘vampire’;  I guess it never came up.
42.  Lance Henriksen, Jeanette Goldstein, and Bill Paxton had teamed up as good guys in the previous year’s Aliens before getting the band back together, this time as Near Dark’s bloodsuckers…whatever those are called.
43.  That’s Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy as the older gentleman who stands up to the Joker at Bruce Wayne’s party;  apparently, the Senator’s just a big fan.
44.  Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore were roommates at Yale.  Hey Al, don’t bogart that jay…
April’s Disney Corner (45-50)
45.  “HAKUNA MATATA …it means no worries” – The Lion King
46. “Remember: Always let your conscience be your guide.” – Pinocchio
47. “A dream is a wish your heart makes” – Cinderella
48.  “The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.” – Mulan
49. “Ohana means family, family means nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten.” – Lilo & Stitch
50.  “Better read it first, for if one drinks much from a bottle marked “Poison“, it’s almost certain to disagree with one sooner or later.” – Alice In Wonderland
Regan’s John Hughes Memorial Quote-o-rama (51-64)
51.  That’s Mary Stuart Masterson as Watts in Some Kind of Wonderful (c)
52.  Bill Paxton as Chet in Weird Science (d)
53.  That’s Annie Potts as Iona in Pretty in Pink (b)
54.  Scott Coffey as Ray in Some Kind of Wonderful (c)
55.  This one comes from Pretty in Pink (b)
56.  That’s The Breakfast Club (a)
57.  Annie Potts being all saucy again in Pretty in Pink (b)
58.  Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink (b)
59.  Mary Stuart Masterson, again as the awesome Watts, in Some Kind of Wonderful (c)
60.  That can only be Paxton again, as Chet, in Weird Science (d)
61.  Spader!  In Pretty in Pink (b)
62.  The Breakfast Club (a)
63.  Watts, how I love you, still in Some Kind of Wonderful (c)
64.   That’s Portland’s pride, Judd Nelson as John Bender in The Breakfast Club (a)
65.  Pee Wee (he was hiding out in the adult section, ‘natch) is wearing a button claiming ‘Proud to be an American’.  Several people, when asked to describe one of his buttons, said ‘round’, which we chose to give credit to as a clever, technically correct answer (rather than, as some might, a pedantic, picayune stickler-type answer).
66.  There are three less-than-safety-conscious dancing girls dancing on the wings of the fighter plane at Videoport.
67.  The ancient-yet-futuristic TV lurking in the corner at Videoport (which would, no doubt, irradiate us all if it were ever plugged in) is a Philco Predicta.
68.  The Hulk gloves (given to Regan by her aunt Chocolate Covered Kimmy) say, among all the shouting and breaky noises, ‘Hulk smash!’, and ‘You’re making me angry!  You won’t like me when I’m angry!’
Andy-nalogies (69-71)
69.  Malcolm McDowell replaced Donald Pleasance in the role of Dr. Loomis in the remake of John Carpenter’s Halloween, while Selma Blair replaced the infinitely-cooler Adrienne Barbeau as the lighthouse deejay in the crappy remake of John Carpenter’s The Fog.
70.  Ball of Fire was remade as A Song Is Born as Hitchcock remade his own The Man Who Knew Too Much as, well, The Man Who Knew Too Much.
71.   In Goodfellas, the young Henry Hill was played by Christopher Serrone, while his grown-up version is Ray Liotta.  In The Reader, David Kross was Michael Berg as a youngster while Ralph Fiennes was Michael Berg the elder.
Videoport Scavenger Hunt (72-76)
72.  There’s, not surprisingly perhaps, a nun holding a chicken on the cover of Pedro Almodovar’s dark comedy Dark Habits.
73.  Criterion released the 1989 Apollo space mission documentary For All Mankind which, unsurprisingly, features an astronaut on the cover.
74.  Perhaps stretching the definition of ‘classic’, Videoport places the 1957 ‘green lizard man holding a lady’ sci fi flick 20 Million Miles to Earth in our Classics section.
75.  There’s a lady dancing with a boxy-looking robot in the Incredibly Strange section on the cover of The Strange Case of Senor Computer.  Videoport’s JackieO says it’s terrific.
76.  Those crazy hippies took over the government and modified the presidential seal with some joints and an electric guitar on the cover of Wild in the Streets.  You can find it in the Incredibly Strange section on a double feature disc with the equally-groovy Gasssss.
77.  The song ‘In Heaven’ (sung by the Lady Behind the Radiator) from the cult classic Eraserhead has been covered by the likes of DEVO, The Pixies, Bauhaus, and Miranda Sex Garden.
The Rage’s Foreign-y Title Funhouse (78-82)
78.  The Memory of a Killer was originally E. De Zaak Alzheimer
79.  Undercover Kitty was D. Minoes
80.  Death Proof was A. Boulevard de la Mort
81.  Let the Right One In was C. Criatura de la Noche
82.  The Vanishing was B. Spoorloos
The Rage’s Anagram Madness (83-92)
83.  COKED PUNK = KNOCKED UP
84.  WACKO ANGLO ROCKER = A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
85.  NEAREST TO A URINAL = NATIONAL TREASURE
86.  MACAQUE FOOLS NUT = QUANTUM OF SOLACE
87.  FORLORN COUNTY DEMON = NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
88.  DRESS GROOVIER = RESERVOIR DOGS
89.  URBAN LENDER = BLADE RUNNER
90.  THE HATED FROG = THE GODFATHER
91.  BUS GETS SHORTER = GHOSTBUSTERS (if you take out the extra ‘er’;  sorry gang, but points for all!)
92.  MAD SNIPER =SPIDERMAN
JackieO’s Movie Roundelay (93-101; someone wrote ‘These questions make me sad’, and we get that.  Try and follow this, though…)
The Clive Owen/Julia Roberts movie is Dupicity, which costarred the guy who wrote and directed The Station Agent, which starred Peter Dinklage, who had a funny monologue about dwarves in the movies in Living in Oblivion, which costarred Catherine Keener, who was born on the same day as Ed Asner, who recently voiced the main character in Up, which was cowritten by Thomas McCarthy, who, in addition to directing The Station Agent, also acts in the film Michael Clayton which was directed by the same guy who directed Duplicity.  See?  Easy as pie…
102.  In the tagline “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest twin of all?”, JackieO points out that the adjective ‘fairest’ is incorrect.  Since there are only two twins by definition, the comparative ‘fairer’ should be used instead of the superlative ‘fairest’. Don’t ever argue grammar with JackieO…
103.  Spalding Gray, in his younger days, costarred in the full-on, Zebedy Colt directed, The Farmer’s Daughters.  Think about that the next time you watch Swimming to Cambodia.

Well, as Dr. Ray Stantz said after he thought they’d just dispatched Zuul, “Well, that wasn’t such a chore, now was it?”  And, like in Ghostbusters, we’re getting shot a lot of dirty looks right now.  But hey, we hope you all had fun playing, googling like demons, and cursing our names and whatnot; for all it’s evil, the annual trivia contest is a chance for the movie loving folks at Videoport, on both sides of the counter, to share their love of movies, and Videoport, and have a good time.  Thank you all for playing, and for continuing to support Videoport, the best, damned movie store in the world.
And, to say thanks, everybody who entered will find two shiny free Videoport rentals on their account!  Boo-ya!
And a special boo-ya to our three winners who scored highest and proved that the quiz was child’s play for their huge, squishy brains:  Alex O, Ben W., and Peter B.- expect a call and get ready to pick out your choice of the new seasons of ’30 Rock’, ‘Rescue Me’, or ‘The Office’.  You’ve earned it guys!

Oh, this week’s new stuff:  Observe and Report, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Battle for Terra, ‘The Mentalist’- season 1, ‘Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles’- season 2, ‘The IT Crowd’- season 3, ‘Sanctuary’- season 1, Wagon Master, ‘Ugly Betty’- season 3, ’30 Rock’- season 3, Wallace and Gromit:  A Matter of Loaf and Death, Scooby Doo:  The Mystery Begins, Sugisball, Tulpan,  Adam Resurrected, Edges of Darkness, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, That Hamilton Woman, The Magic School Bus Catches a Wave, Rumba, Camille, Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?, O’Horten, and ‘Castle’- season 1.

The Portland Press Herald’s Justin Ellis and I Run Down the Week’s New Releases (9/15/09)

This week’s new DVD releases allow Videoport Jones and me to hit right from our wheelhouse: Comic book movies, blaxploitation revival, blacklisted screenwriters and terrible (and terribly funny) comedy. Fortunately he is a trained doctor and expert in such matters. I’m just along for the ride.

X Men Origins: Wolverine

Videoport Jones: “Okay everybody, strap yourselves in: this one’s gonna get nerdy. Although a DC Comics fanboy by trade, I’ve always has a soft spot for the X Men; maybe it’s the whole ‘mutants being persecuted as racism metaphor’ that got to me in my impressionable years, or maybe it was just Wolverine, the scrappy, feral, rageaholic Canadian scrapper with the metal skeleton and the healing factor (meaning he could have the crap kicked out of him without reservation before his claws put an end to the nonsense).

That being said, and the first two X Men movies being respectably-essayed by much more powerful fanboy Brian Singer, the onscreen Wolverine has never really done much for me. It’s not really Hugh Jackman’s fault – I like the big lug, and think the more strapping Aussies with a sense of humor and some musical theater chops we have kicking around, the better the world is, generally. It’s just that Hugh is, well, a big, amiable lug, and no amount of hair gel or cigar-chomping he does is gonna satisfy the comics nerd within who longed to see filmmakers realize the books’ Wolvie – a sawed-off little runt (he’s about 5′3″) with a bad attitude and a mysterious past.

And this new spinoff, which plucks the Canuck out of his super team (after the truly wretched, Brett Ratner-despoiled third film) and, essentially, explains the character’s convoluted backstory en route to making him another happy, well-adjusted super-dude, doesn’t make my inner dork squeal with delight, I can tell you. Hugh’s fine, if miscast as ever, but we’ve done the superhero origin thing to death, and all of the fan-pandering guest mutants in the world can’t make up for the fact that this is pretty standard stuff. A few fun action scenes, Liev Schreiber makes an entertaining Sabretooth, Hugh furrows his brow and has been working out, but, a year after the superhero movie bar was set so high by the likes of ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Iron Man,’ this one is, well, slightly above average.”

Justin: “I’m going to have to differ with you, take an alternate path, and arrive at the same conclusion. I heart Hugh Jackman, and I think as Wolverine, he’s been something of a success. I like the fact that he was a relatively unknown actor and we didn’t have to get around the whole ‘that’s X actor pretending to be Wolverine.” He does all the things we want Wolvie to do, be snarky, angst and filled with endless berserker rage.

This movie, however, was a joke. I cannot believe how many characters and Easter eggs they tried to shoehorn into this movie. Every other minute  is like a Marvel sight gag. Oh look! Emma Frost! Oh look! Scott Summers! Oh look, a little black girl with white hair! Come ON, Marvel, really? You know what that tells me, it says they had a weak script, little time to tinker and said ’screw it, we’re going Noah’s Ark on this thing’ and proceeded to jam it up with anyone remotely related to the X-Men universe.

That said, I have to say Taylor Kitsch (of ‘Friday Night Lights’) was pretty cool as Gambit, but again, wasted. (Though I did keep saying after the film, ‘Holy crap! Tim Riggins is a Mutie!’). The action makes this one serviceable, as well as the always reliable Schreiber. Also, funny performances from Ryan Reynolds as the Merc with a Mouth, or Deadpool. Which, of course is being spun off … annnnnd now my brain hurts again…”

Next Day Air

VPJ: “I find it hard to express how little I wanted to see this movie; it had a distinctly ‘Soul Plane’ / ‘Who’s Your Caddy?’ vibe emanating from it, and my only real emotion was anger at seeing that the talented Wood Harris (Avon Barksdale from ‘The Wire’) was going to be debased, perhaps by being forced to hang out with some Wayanses. Well, I’m a (semi-) pro, so I plunked myself down in front of this one and I gotta say- actually kind of a pleasant surprise.

J.D.! Carla! Help!!

While marketed as an ‘urban’ (read: ‘black’) stoner comedy (think ‘Half Baked,’ ‘How High,’ etc.), ‘Next Day Air’ reminded me of nothing so much as a ’70s blaxploitation movie, which I mean as a compliment. Like a blaxploitation flick, this movie’s criminal milieu is populated by some very talented ‘minority’ actors (someone had to point out to me that there is not one speaking role for a white person in the entire film) who take the opportunity afforded them to create some surprising shadings to their seemingly stereotypical characters. Those bringing more to the table than you might think include: the aforementioned Harris (somehow lending gravitas to a character as dangerous as, but about a third as smart as, Avon Barksdale), Mos Def (charismatic and funny as ever in a small role), Cisco Reyes (as a drug dealer with too-scared eyes), Donald Faison (a favorite of both my and Justin’s families [and pets] from ‘Scrubs’ who’s touchingly helpless as the hapless pothead delivery guy who starts the whole mess), and a guy I’d never heard of named Omari Hardwick, who, as a smooth, smart drug dealer looking to get out, has the screen presence to be a big star, if I’m any judge of such things.

Sure, they’re playing all variety of screw-ups and lowlifes but, as in those blaxploitation movies of yore, they take the roles the marketplace gives them and make something sort of impressive out of them. Add in some nicely assured direction (someone hipper than I will have to explain what a ‘Benny Boom’ is), and a surprisingly tight script which gets darker and more intense as things go on, and, well, I’m sort of impressed.”

JE: “Jonesy, I am impressed, my man! Oh, I’m sorry, I mean, my MAIN man! Ahem. You took your misgiving, the warning signals and your healthy skepticism and set them aside and had a little fun. Since we’re on the subject of blaxploitation, let me say that some of my favorite all-time movies include the legendary Bill Cosby/Sidney Portier team-ups of the 70s that include ‘Uptown Saturday Night,’ ‘Let’s Do it Again,’ and ‘A Piece of the Action.’ Those movies not only had these two heavyweights hamming it up and having a blast, but featured talent like Ruby Dee, Ozzie Davis, John Amos and James Earl Jones. What made these movies great was that aside from the cast and the plots, they were a laughing commentary on parts of life in the black community.

While I’m not going to say ‘How High’ or anything starring Bill Bellamy is on par with that, some of the current ‘urban’ cinema continues to carry that flag today. At the end of the day these are not scathing social commentaries, but light-hearted flicks. Plus, anytime you can throw Donald Faison, Mos Def and Avon Harris together is worth a viewing. Heck, anything with Donald Faison is worth a watch in my book.”

Stella: Live in Boston

VPJ: “Stella is/are Michael Showalter, David Wain, and Michael Ian Black, three erstwhile members of the brilliant sketch comedy troupe ‘The State’ (the entire run of which is finally available for rent at Videoport, natch,) and ‘Stella’ is the stage name for their loony, absurdist stage show. Dressed in identical suits, the three here, as in their short-lived Comedy Central series and legendary internet shorts, seem to the uninitiated to just be screwing around onstage. Once properly initiated, viewers still think they’re basically just screwing around on stage, but just sit back and enjoy it. David and the Michaels are a post-modern Marx Brothers, deconstructing standup comedy with absurdist wordplay, dadaist digression, and anti-comic hipness to create a completely winning, weird, and hilarious goofball entertainment. Sure, what I just said sounds like a big mouthful o’nothin’, but you try to explain what it is they do – it ain’t easy. But it is decidedly funny.”

JE: “Let me pose a question: Are the gang from ‘The State’ comedy snobs? I was listening to a podcast the other day and someone said they thought Showalter, Black and that crew were decidedly aloof and above other comedians. At first I thought the comment was ridiculous and showed a failure to ‘get’ what they do. But on second pass, I can see where the comment comes from. There is nothing typical about what they do. You’d be hard-pressed to find a punchline in a lot of what they do. In particular ‘Stella’ and ‘Wainy Days’ are not typical comedy, and, to take one point of view, can seem kind of mean. And now, as you roll off a thesaurus-worth of Scrabble words to describe Stella, I wonder if the criticism is right. And then I remember that these guys make me laugh, so the haters can take a flying leap. It is absurd, it is beyond absurd, what they do. Their humor has no predecessor, and without some sort of reference that can confuse people. I like it.”

Trumbo

VPJ: “Nifty little documentary about the legendarily shafted novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (‘Johnny Got His Gun,’ ‘Spartacus,’ ‘A Guy Named Joe,’ about 50 others) who, along with the rest of the so-called ‘Hollywood Ten’ (and hundreds of others) was blacklisted by right-wing jerks trying to use fear to force Americans to abandon their civil rights in the name of ’security’ (sound familiar?). Trumbo was a garrulous, cranky wit, and ‘Trumbo’ benefits from that, especially since it employs current stars/admirers (all in fine voice) to recite selections from the man’s scripts and letters including Brian Dennehy, Nathan Lane, Paul Giamatti, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, and others. If you are not frozen in rapt attention after Donald Sutherland finishes his climactic reading from ‘Johnny Got His Gun,’ well, then, I just don’t wanna know you.”

JE: “Little known fact: Trumbo’s daughter dated Steve Martin. I only know this because I recently re-listened to Martin’s autobiography. True fact. ANYHOO, if you are not particularly interested in Trumbo’s work, (and really, you should be – ‘Papillion,’ ‘Spartacus,’ ‘Roman Holiday,’ ‘The Brave One’ -  It’s likely you enjoy something he wrote, or some later adaptation of it), you should be interested in his story. I don’t know how anyone can’t be interested in the history of the so-called ‘Red Scare’ and the communist hunt by the House Un-American Activities Committee. We’re talking about the U.S. government essentially plucking people out, accusing them of something they cannot prove or disprove, and destroying lives. The phrase ‘Are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party?’ should be chilling even today. The thing about Trumbo is he didn’t disappear, and in fact, continued to rage on. Like a little history? Like classic movies? You should rent this. Now.”

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – Season 4

VPJ: “Boy, did it take me a while to warm up to this show; recommended ad nauseum to me by various people whose taste, upon viewing the first few episodes, I seriously began to doubt, I found this sitcom, about four friends (and, later, one father) who run a seedy bar in the City of Brotherly Love and Pelting Santa With Snowballs, pretty repellent. And it remains that. But, once I clued into the fact that these were intended to be the five worst human beings in a televisual world of unremitting cruelty and awfulness, well, that’s when then fun began. There’s a surprising amount of wit and comic invention underlying the misanthropic goings-on, and the performers, especially Charlie Day as the group’s resident punching bag, and, hilariously, Danny DeVito as the world’s worst dad, are energetic and funny. You’ll hate yourself, but you’ll laugh. A lot.”

JE: “That pretty much sums it up perfectly. They need that as a tagline. ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: You’ll hate yourself, but you’ll laugh. A lot.’ You are right about the fact that these are despicable, loathsome people. You are supposed to hate them in the way you are supposed to hate people like Tony Soprano. Of course they don’t make a habit of killing people. Well, not intentionally. No, instead they pretend to be handicapped, scam welfare, provide alcohol to minors and trade in misogyny. And it’s terrible. And terribly funny. The way I always see it is these people are the final extension, the peak, of what Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer were on ‘Seinfeld.’ Instead of the soup nazi or the close talker, we get things that are far, far worse. And inexplicable things like Green Man. I know it’s wrong, and I shudder to think what it says about me, but I love this show. Should I be seeking counseling?”

Deadgirl

VPJ: “Speaking of hating yourself, and misanthropy, Videoport brings in this controversial horror film about a couple of stoner layabouts who skip school and break into an abandoned asylum (like ya do), only to discover a naked, seemingly unkillable possible zombie (the unfortunate titular lass) chained to an exam table. Perhaps the most controversial horror flick of the year (amongst the few who’ve actually heard of it) – don’t say we don’t bring the weird.”

JE: “Stoners? Abandoned asylums? Naked zombie girls? “Uh…only at Videoport ladies and gentlemen!”

Finally, Jonesy shares his picks for this week, including “Easy Virtue.” Jonesy says “Adaptation of the Noel Coward play, starring Colin Firth. Your mom will love it.” Also on the shelves this week, plenty o’ TV to get you ready for the start of the new fall season: “The Big Bang Theory,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Private Practice” and “The IT Crowd.”

Parting Shots:
- Your thoughts on “Wolverine?” Was Jackman the problem? The script?
- Blaxploitation revival: Name another flick you think could fit in this ‘genre’
- Tell the truth, does watching ‘It’s Always Sunny’ make you hate yourself a bit?

VideoReport #213

Volume CCXIII- Godzilla in 60 Seconds

For the Week of 9/15/09

Videoport would like to remind you that you’ve got until 11pm on Sunday, September 20^th to bring in your entries in the 4^th Annual VideoReport Movie Trivia Quiz! We would also like to remind you that we give you a free movie every day. And that we have the best selection, prices and customer service in the history of the world. And that we like to brag a little bit.

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>>Dennis suggests Them (in Horror). France has become a decidedly-creepier place of late. A gang of Gallic directors have hopped on the extreme horror train in the past few years, exporting such gory shockers as High Tension (effectively-harrowing until the most infuriating cheat twist ending in recent memory), Inside (with the uber-and -ever- wiggy Beatrice Dalle terrorizing a very pregnant lady), Martyrs (perhaps the goriest, most disturbing movie since, well, ever), and others, maybe just to punish us for Euro Disney or Crocs. Them isn’t quite as gory as the rest of its Parisian pals, opting, instead, to ratchet up the suspense for most of the movie as a happy French couple renting a spooky villa somewhere in Romania find themselves under siege from some little-seen, shadowy figures with bad intentions. In a movie like this, a little effort goes a long way for me, and I appreciated that the couple was well-acted and relatively-likeable and that, confronted by an obviously-dangerous horror movie situation, they didn’t do anything too egregiously stupid (thus avoiding what Roger Ebert calls the ‘idiot plot’, where the movie would be over in fifteen minutes if everyone in it [and behind it] were not a complete idiot). There are some good scares, a nice sense of dread, and then, sadly, a ‘big reveal’ about two-thirds of the way through that deflates things pretty seriously, but it’s still a nice ride for someone looking for an above-average slice of foreign-y horror. (Oh, and take that ‘based on a true story’ claim at the beginning about as seriously as you should that of Fargo and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.)

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests you take ACTION on this CLASSIC idea (see what happens when no one gives me a Tuesday recommendation?): Send in your movie reviews, movie lists, movie essays, movie-related haiku and movie recipes (Crank cake?) to us here at the VideoReport. See, we put out one of these newsletters every week to provide the Videoport community the chance to spout off about their favorite/least favorite films and TV shows, share ideas and opinions, and just generally force their views down the throats of their fellow Videoport renters/employees/lovers. So, in order to prevent one or two (or, in this case, three) people from monopolizing the whole deal, please send your own brilliant reviews to us at denmn@hotmail.com, or our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones. Also, please check us out on Facebook (under ‘Videoport Jones’). And, hey, since we’re throwing web addresses around, you can read heaps of reviews, lists and articles at our blog www.videoportjones.wordpress.com.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>>Dennis suggests Stella- Live in Boston (in Comedy). (This, being a new release this week, isn’t eligible for the Wednesday ‘free comedy or foreign film special, but howsabout renting it along with the first disc of the TV series ‘Stella’, or any of these, highly-recommended, films directed by Stella-ites David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer, The Ten, and Role Models) or Michael Showalter (The Baxter) for a double feature? [Michael Ian Black also directed a movie called Wedding Daze but, well...]). Michael Showalter, David Wain, and MIchael Ian Black were members of the early-90s sketch comedy series ‘The State’ (which is hilarious, brilliant, and for rent right now in Videoport’s Incredibly Strange section) and, in addition to semi-prosperous acting and directing careers, have gotten together sporadically ever since in the form of an absurdist comic trio, plying their particular brand of comedy weirdness in a series of legendarily-loopy online ‘Stella’ short films, a short-lived Comedy Central sitcom, and onstage, and this performance, captured a few years ago in Boston. David and the two Michaels hit the stage in identical suits and, well, just basically dick around for about an hour…or so it seems! No, that’s really all it is. But in said dicking around, you’ve got three very funny guys playing around with dadaist Marx (Brothers)-ist wordplay, and an anti-comic deconstruction of standup comedy as an art form. So, like I said- dicking around. But very, very funny. The DVD also includes several episodes of the heretofore internet-only series ‘Wainy Days’ and ‘The Michael Showalter Showalter’.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Emily S. Customer suggests My Favorite Year (in Comedy). It’s 1954. Legendary Hollywood swashbuckler (and high-living philanderer, insatiable dipsomaniac, and all-around flamboyant gadabout) Alan Swann (Peter O’Toole, looking rough, ravaged, and deliciously salacious) agrees to appear on a popular variety show… on live TV. Uh-oh. Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker), a low-echelon writer, agrees to babysit the star until broadcast, keeping him out of trouble and, if possible, sober. What follows is a romp of epic proportions as Benjy scurries after the wild but ineffably charming antics of the notorious star. Peter O’Toole is in his element here, with all his graceful lechery and aplomb at his service.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>>Anime Ed suggests ‘Chowder’. Well this has ben a banner year for cartoons so far: Up, Waltz With Bashir, ‘The Venture Brothers’- season 3, ‘Shiguriu’, The list goes on and on. Also Disney is putting out its first traditional animated film in god knows how long, 9 by the guy who did Nightwatch which looks great, Wes Anderson is putting out The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Miyazaki’s new one Ponyo hits our shores. And did i mention Sita Sings the Blues? Holy crap! So in honor of all this greatness I recommend a new discovery for me-’Chowder’. This is what ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ was before it got high on itself, a truly entertaining family cartoon series that is too good for words. Very inventive, using all manner of techniques. It’s always fun and never disappoints. Watch with the little ones- a good time will be had by all. Banzai!

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Emily S. Customer suggests Breaking the Code (in Feature Drama). Derek Jacobi recreates his Tony-nominated turn as mathematician and cryptographer Alan Turing in this finely crafted TV biopic. A gifted cryptographer (Turing was instrumental in Allied cracking of the German Enigma Code during WWII), Turing was also a gay man at a time when homosexual contact was criminalized. Though many cinematic mathematicians are characterized as dusty old academics, Jacobi fully inhabits the role, bringing deep pathos and passion to Turing’s portrayal without ever tipping over into melodrama, though Turing’s life was rich in the dramatic events that melodrama thrives on. All in all, it’s a balanced, mournful piece, doling out in measured doses the tragedy of societally reinforced prejudice and balancing that with the delicious intensity of a gifted thinker perfectly engaged in his study. (It seems particularly fitting to honor Turing’s memory this week, with the recent news that Prime Minister Gordon Brown has issued an official apology for the government’s appalling treatment of Turing, who suffered under the homophobic mores and laws of his time. Those unfamiliar with Turing’s history may wish to avoid reading the official apology before seeing the film; Brown’s uncompromising language draws a clear line between homophobic persecution and a major event in Turing’s life.)

>>>For Sunday, Emily S. Customer suggests The Truman Show (in Comedy). “Reality TV” is one of the great misnomers of our time, describing a genre in which the players, the rules, the setting, and even the editing choices are as contrived as any fiction. The Truman Show takes the absurdity of reality programming as far as it will go. Truman (Jim Carrey) is an essentially kind, genial fellow who lives a life planned out down to its perfect, profitable details — though not by him. From birth, the unsuspecting Truman was raised in a simulacrum, a city-sized television studio where his life is the show, broadcast all day every day to a rapt audience. Christof (Ed Harris), the creator of “The Truman Show”*, has stage-directed literally every aspect of his daily life. At first, it seems a funny conceit, a trifle. But as The Truman Show unwinds, we start to see just how deep the artificiality of Truman’s life runs, how frantically the show’s agents (and they are everywhere) contrive to keep him contained and inhibited, and how cruel a deception they (and the happily viewing audience) are playing on their unwitting star. In this early dramatic role, Jim Carrey’s shows hints of the heartrendingly fine performance he would later deliver in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and he exhibits real grace as he balances Truman’s initial cheery contentment, his growing confusion and exhilaration, and the genuine heartbreak of his predicament.

*“The Truman Show” is The Truman Show’s show-within-a-show. Whew, that’s fun to write!

New Releases this week at Videoport: X Men Origins: Wolverine (Hugh Jackman reveals all the mysteries behind the Marvel Comics mutant- that should make him more interesting; plus, stuff blows up real good!), Stella: Live in Boston (see Wednesday’s review for the compelling reasons to rent this comedy DVD), Trumbo (stirring documentary about the legendary, blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter), Deadgirl (two stoner idiots find the titular corpse lady tied up in an old asylum and things get very distasteful in this year’s most controversial horror film [amongst those few who have heard of it]), ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’- season 4 (the queasily-hilarious adventures of the four worst human beings in the world continue), Grace (this horror movie features a vampire baby! VAMPIRE BABY!!), Mediate and Destroy (Buddhism and punk rock come together in this documentary about author Noah Levine), Nerdcore Rising (documentary about the titular musical genre which fuses hardcore rap with love of D&D, video games, Star Wars, etc.; and, yes, Weird Al does make an appearance…), Easy Virtue (film version of the Noel Coward play stars Jessica Biel and Colin Firth), Next Day Air (violent, pretty funny comedy about a stoner delivery guy ['Scrubs'' Donald Faison] and how him screwing up a delivery causes untold mayhem; also with ‘The Wire”s Wood Harris), ‘Crash’- season 1 (Dennis Hopper leads a big, diverse cast in this series spun off from the Oscar-winning film about racial tensions in LA), ‘Grey’s Anatomy’- season 5 (this medical series continues; sort of a poor man’s ‘E.R.’, which was sort of a poor man’s ‘St. Elsewhere’), ‘The Big Bang Theory’- season 2 (the ‘two nerds and the hot girl next door’ sitcom returns; people say it’s funny, so who am I to argue).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Silent Light (tragic, moving Mexican film about a pious husband and father powerless in the grip of an affair; from the director of Japon and Battle in Heaven), Nightwatching (the new film by Peter Greenaway [The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover] is a typically-mesmerizing and mind-bending experience, this time focusing on Rembrandt’s quest to depict an actual murderous conspiracy in his titular painting), Rembrandt’s J’Accuse (Greenaway’s companion documentary about Rembrandt’s painting, the issues behind it and his film, and the need for modern viewers to learn something about painting already!), Bodyboarding- Enough Said (fair enough…), Traveling With Yoshitomo Nara (documentary follows the titular Japanese artist, who likes to draw those kids with the spooky eyes), ‘The Beiderbecke Tapes’ (oddball British miniseries about a mild-mannered couple who get drawn into some seriously improbable shenanigans), Directed by John Ford (Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 documentary about his filmmaking idol, and Portland’s pride Ford, who proves an amusingly irascible subject), Bluegreen (locally-produced surf documentary featuring some great Maine bands on the soundtrack), Recycled Life (Edward James Olmos narrates this documentary, which will make you feel really, really bad, about the generations of families who have made a living on top of the most toxic landfill in the world), The Seven-Ups (the late Roy Scheider stars in this gritty, nasty 1973 New York cop thriller).

Videoport Gives Your Free Money!

It’s true. Videoport already has the lowest prices on the best movies, but we hate making any profit whatsoever, so we also have a couple of ways for you to stretch your entertainment dollar even further. (As long as you are entertained by movies, of course). Plan #1: Pay $20 on your Videoport account and we’ll give you $25 worth of rental credit. Sounds like five free bucks to me. Plan #2: Pay $30 on your Videoport account and you’ll get $40 worth of rental credit, which sounds suspiciously like ten free dollars. And, of course, your rental credit works just fine with our daily free movie specials and for any pesky extra day charges as well. I can honestly see no reason not to do this.

Videoport Gives You Free Parking!

Also true. Here’s how. 1. Parking meters are irrelevant after 6pm Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday. 2. The parking lot behind the building (entrance on the corner of Pearl and Newbury Streets) is open for free, one hour parking after 5pm Monday-Friday and all day on the weekends. 3. Videoport takes part in Portland’s Park & Shop program which will get you a free hour of parking at any of the downtown parking garages. Just bring your parking stub in and Videoport’ll give you one of our magic stickers!

Get Your Entries In for the Videoport Movie Trivia Contest!

The contest ends at 11pm on Sunday, September 20th! That’s only…holy cow, that’s only five days away! (Of course, you may be reading this sometime after the 15th, so…OH MY GOD TIME’S ALMOST UP!!! PANIC!!!) No, no, it’s okay…just put your thinking cap on, crack the Psychotronic Video Guide, and, let’s be honest here, fire up your fastest internet connection and get goin’. (Speaking of the intra-nets, you can find the contest online at www.videoportjones.wordpress.com). And remember gang…BIG PRIZES!!! The three people who get the most answers right get their choice of either of the new seasons of ‘30 Rock’, ‘Rescue Me’, and ‘The Office’! Damn! And everyone who enters gets two free rentals! Double damn!

Next Week: The answers to the quiz and all the winners!

The Press Herald’s Justin Ellis and I run down the week’s new releases (9/8/09)

In this week’s discussion of new release on DVD, Videoport Jones and I must ask ourselves the tough questions. Is Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” worth sitting through for almost five hours? Is our love of Amy Poehler blinding us to “Parks and Recreation” ’s flaws? Can you love Jason Statham too much?

“Che“

Videoport Jones: “You’ve gotta love Steven Soderbergh.  Bursting out of the gate with a surprise hit indie (back when ‘indie’ meant something) in ‘Sex, Lies, and Videotape,’ then nearly destroyed when his next three projects undeservedly tanked (check out ‘Kafka,’ ‘The Underneath,’ and the loony, indescribable ‘Schizopolis’), before ascending to irrevocable A-List status with Hollywood gold (‘Out of Sight,’ ‘Erin Brockovich,’ the whole ‘Oceans’ franchise), Soderbergh has steadfastly refused to play it safe, peppering his filmography with challenging, decidedly noncommercial films like ‘The Limey,’ ‘Full Frontal,’ ‘Bubble’ and now this:  a four-and-three-quarter hour, Spanish language biopic about a still-controversial, unabashedly anti-American (or, more accurately, anti-imperialist) Cuban guerilla leader.  Wikipedia’s entry on ‘indie cred’ should have his picture in it; in fact, I think I’ll go add that right now.  There.  Now onto the film.

‘Che’ (released on DVD in two more easily-digestible halves) follows Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s journey from political but respectable doctor in Batista-era Cuba, to guerilla fighter and revolutionary, to UN delegate for Castro’s new Cuban society, back to jungle revolutionary, trying to export the Cuban example to the rest of Latin America, and it is unfailingly gripping throughout, thanks equally to Soderbergh’s tightly-paced direction and, especially, Benicio del Toro’s never-less-than-magnetic lead performance.

As anyone who sells hipster t-shirts can tell you, Che Guevara is still an influential figure; his perceived purity of humanist revolution continues to resonate with would-be revolutionaries (with, of course, the money to buy t-shirts with his visage), and Soderbergh’s film, while unflinchingly depicting the guerilla (or ‘terrorist’ attacks), executions, and other undeniably-violent acts he engaged in in his quest for a socialist revolution, is unquestionably admiring of the man.  Educated, courageous, steadfast, and unwavering in his attempts to create a Latin American society free from the (historically-undeniable) predations of American-led capitalism (or imperialism, if you’d rather), del Toro’s Che is an admirably-uncompromising figure – a martyr to the ideal of ‘the people.’  In his self-sacrifice and unwillingness to give in, even to the political necessities called for by his compatriot Fidel Castro (played, with sly aplomb, by Demian Bichir), del Toro’s Che solidifies the image of the man as a true, and therefore doomed, revolutionary hero.  It’s ambitious, it’s daring, it’s sure to cause lots of juicy arguments…but it’s never, even at its daunting length, dull. Another fascinating, thought-provoking triumph from Soderbergh.”

Justin: “I’m going to take a bit of a sidebar on this flick and say this is not for everyone. Even you, my studious friend, would have to admit there are a number of roadblocks for casual audiences to watching this film. It’s almost five hours. It’s in Spanish. It pulls back the curtain of history, giving alternating glimpses at the struggles and alleged victories in a fight for freedom that a lot of Americans still don’t really understand. Hell, I love history and I’m not completely clear on all details of Guevara’s life.

Put all that together and you get for a movie that, frankly, is bound to jump OUT of your hands if you pick it up off the shelf.  Now, having said that, don’t discount this movie. Soderbergh is a meticulous storyteller and he clearly had a stark vision for this film that didn’t sugar coat or gloss over portions of Guevara’s life. His approach here feels like shades of Werner Herzog, instead of taking Klaus Kinski into the jungle he takes de Toro. If you are interested in Guevara’s life and times or Cuba’s volatile history, or if you’re a Soderbergh fan, you’ll want to rent this one.”

“Parks and Recreation“

VPJ: “Amy Poehler is my girlfriend.  My wife, whom I love more than anything on this earth, understands. She might just be indulging me because I’ve never met the berserkly-divine Amy, but that’s neither here nor there. So when I heard that

She got the crazy eyes.

the loony little goddess, and ‘SNL’ and ‘Upright Citizens Brigade’ veteran, had been cast as the lead in a faux-documentary sitcom from the creator of the (US version of) ‘The Office,’ I was, well, dippy with excitement.  And when I watched the show, where Amy plays the desperately-optimistic minor bureaucrat taking on the seemingly-insurmountable task of turning an abandoned building site into a town park, I was…slightly less dippy with excitement.

Like ‘The Office,’ the show is inhabited by a collection of improv-adept characters and trucks in uncomfortable faux pas, and, like ‘The Office,’ the first season didn’t quite find its tone right out of the gate; sometimes, the goings-on are more squirmy than funny, and the characterizations veer more towards caricature, with the heroine’s self-deluded quest for political clout playing as desperate and mean.  But think about the first season of ‘The Office’ – it’s the one season I don’t routinely re-watch, and it’s largely for the same reasons, as it took some time for the show’s writers and actors to refine and shade in the characters.  And that show has become an undeniable classic of American TV.

Will ‘Parks and Recreation?’ I think it will. Surrounding my girlfriend Amy Poehler, the show can boast some really promising comic actors, with the cute-as-a-bug Rashida Jones (as the show’s Jim Halpert figure, shooting the camera bemused looks at Amy’s antics), ‘Human Giant’s’ Aziz Ansari (hilariously weird as Amy’s impishly horndog officemate), and, surprisingly enough, talented indie actor Paul Schneider (from David Gordon Green’s ‘George Washington’ and ‘All the Real Girls’) showing some serious comic charisma as the twinklingly-competent city planner who decides to help Amy’s quixotic quest, at least partly for his own amusement. And (gradually, but surely, even by the end of this season) Amy’s Leslie Knope becomes, as Michael Scott did, a tragically touching comic figure as the series goes on. Her over-her-headedly ambitious would-be political role model is less a figure of fun and more an empathetic, if, sure, ridiculous heroine. I’m willing to give this one the time it needs.”

JE: “I’m really glad you said that. We share many common loves, and among them, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are only second to Joss Whedon. I felt we might have to have an uncomfortable chat about this show, which, as you said, is still very rough around the edges. To be completely honest, I’m not 100 percent sold on it just yet, not just because it hasn’t found its footing, but because I’m not sure if ‘The Office’ model has any more legs. But I’ll be damned if my love for Amy Poehler does not cloud that. Also feeding that cloud is my love for Aziz, who, if you don’t know him, you should. Shame on you. Also, let’s not forget to credit the funny Aubrey Plaza (seen this summer in ‘Funny People’ along with Aziz) as the apathetic office intern.

There is plenty of room to grow here and with a cast crackling with improv talent I think they could do fine. And as someone who has covered local government, let’s just say that there is plenty of uncharted territory there for comedy.”

“The Office” – Season 5

VPJ: “And speaking of … What more do you guys need to know about this show to make you rent it?  Ummm … well, it’s still hilarious, and often improbably moving.  Jim and Pam are still adorable (even their relationship troubles are endearing). Michael’s still incomparably Michael. I will say that season 5 throws some interesting, unexpected twists at you, the guest stars are most welcome (Idris Elba and Amy Ryan of ‘The Wire’), and the supporting gang gets some most welcome increased screen time (personal faves Andy, Oscar, and Stanley shine, especially).  I’v already bought mine, because I know I’ll rewatch it into oblivion, but Videoport’s got many rental copies for you. Just rent it already. You know you want to.”

JE: “We were talking about this just the other day and the thing that stands out to me is that the show is operating on all cylinders again, where the writing is unpredictable, the performances are hilarious and touching, and Steve Carell walks a shrinking tightrope between believability and ludicrousness as Michael Scott. This show is at its best when it grabs you and make you want to cringe and cover your eyes … but you can’t look away. I can’t think of many sitcoms that do that. This season gives us so many great parts, especially the menacing (and funny) Elba as well as the formation of ‘The Michael Scott Paper Company.’ If you didn’t watch, I’ll let you consider the quickest route to Videoport to find out what that last bit means.”

“Crank 2: High Voltage“

VPJ: “Umm … didn’t that guy die in the first movie? Like, plummeting from a helicopter whilst having a massive neural shutdown? I’m almost sure I recall that… Well, taking a page from the old movie serials, this nascent action franchise once again stars bullet-headed British torpedo Jason Statham, escaping from clearly-depicted certain death, as a guy who, this time, has a transplanted heart that needs regular electric shocks so he can stay alive and kick enough people in the face for things to turn out okay.  But I kid a guy who could cheerfully head butt me into next Tuesday. I like Statham – his charmingly-uncouth thug action hero is most welcome in the prettyboy-strewn hallways of action Hollywood, and reviving him, however ludicrously, for another go ‘round in this cheerily-stupid series, well … why not, I guess.”

What're ya' gonna do? The guy likes punchin'...

JE: “And now he’s BACK AND BETTER THAN EVAH! I think we can just both agree Statham is on a special list reserved for actors we’ll watch no matter what? I mean, I found myself watching a part of the original ‘Crank’ one night if only to see how he kicks the next guy in the face. Same goes with ‘The Transporter 2.’ I also think it’s good we both have given up on the whole ‘he needs to pull some respectable flicks on his resume’ argument. Just like a bar after Statham walks through, this guy’s career is littered with ridiculous (and cheesy) action movies. He seems to embody some weird sort of macho-charisma-face-kicking magic that captivates guys like us. In fact they should make “macho-charisma-face-kicking magic” a Vitamin Water flavor exclusively made for and marketed by Statham. And I would buy it.”

“Valentino: The Last Emperor“

VPJ: “As a guy whose daily uniform consists of a Red Sox jersey and some tatty Chuck Taylors, I am, perhaps the worst nightmare of the titular subject of this fashion documentary about that guy who makes all the pretty, pretty clothes. However, I am told this is as interesting as a clothing documentary can possibly be.”

JE: “Now be fair, old chum. I have seen you in a suit and you clean up nicely. Valentino  would be proud. Let me preface my words by saying this: I like clothes. I like suits. As Barney Stinson would say, I like ’suiting-up.’ No man did this better than the Italian fashion icon and designer who has been creating couture for more than 40 years.

This documentary, ostensibly about the life and times of Valentino, is a rare inside look into the man’s life, his creative thinking and changes to the world of fashion. I don’t think you have to be a fashion fiend to be interested in  watching an Italian iconoclast jet set and live the fab life, do you?”

Finally, also on the shelves of Videoport this week: Two new films from French masters: “A Girl Cut in Two” (from Claude Chabrol) and “Roman da Gare” (from Claude Lelouche), “Rescue Me” – Season 5, “Harpers Island,” “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” – Season 1, and a lot more.

Parting shots:

- South American politics? Subtitles? Four hours? Will you watch “Che?”
- Has ‘The Office’ finally eclipsed its British predecessor?
- What makes Jason Statham so watchable?

VideoReport #212

Volume CCXII- Godzilla in Love
For the Week of 8/25/09
Videoport reminds you that there’s still time to enter this year’s Movie Trivia Quiz!  You’ve got ‘til 9/21/09, and you get two free rentals just for playing!  Oh, and Videoport gives you a free rental every day, of course…

Middle Aisle Monday.  (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)
>>>Videoport customer Mitch suggests Basic Instinct (in Mystery/Thriller).  Michael Douglas seriously needs to watch out. Getting involved with Glenn Close introduces phrases like “bunny-boiler” into modern vocabulary; getting involved with Deborah Kara Unger gets him thrown into crazy Fincherland; and getting involved with Kim Basinger gets him framed and hunted down by Jack Bauer.  And here, getting involved with Sharon Stone does him no better.  As a Verhoeven take on Double Indemnity film noir/Vertigo psycho-thriller, you pretty much get what you would expect.  Lots of blood, sexuality, car chases, and general early-90s social confusion. In other words, classic sleaze that’s excusable in the name of guilty pleasure and entertainment; excusable in the way that Showgirls, well, wasn’t.
Tough and Triassic Tuesday.  (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)
>>> Videoport customer Mitch suggests Goin’ South (in Action).  Well, this is a weird film. Directed by and starring Jack Nicholson, this movie functions as a goofy showcase of pure Nicholson, though he sounds like he has a cold throughout the entire flick. The plot is happily misogynistic in the fashion of The Taming of the Shrew, and it’s a little hard to laugh at some of the scenes where he merrily torments his wife (especially in light of Chinatown and The Shining). Yet overall, fun is to be had. The creative cinematography and scene transitions make up for some clunky editing. And the supporting cast is outstanding, featuring a villainous team of Christopher Lloyd and John Belushi (!). The always-underrated Tracey Walter also puts in a strangely memorable performance.
Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)
>>>Former Videoporter Jeremy suggests Soul Men (in Comedy).  I wanna talk to you about Soul Men for a second.  Once you get over your crushing disappointment due to the fact that it isn’t the long-awaited sequel to 1986’s Soul Man starring C. Thomas Howell (I know, I know; it’s hard), and once you get past the idea of enduring more than your fair share of Grumpy Old Men-style Viagra jokes and foulmouthed bickering, you can take this otherwise low-rent comedy for what it is: the chance to bid farewell to a true comedy talent, a funny fellow you may not have spent a great deal of time with while he was among the living: Bernie Mac.  Mac had a great face, and an even better voice, both of which he used to enormously likable effect, even during those many occasions when he was boisterously suggesting that you routinely engage in sexual congress with your mother.  There are certain people that can get away with just about anything (Jack Nicholson and Norm Macdonald come to mind), and Bernie was in that camp for sure.  But unlike, say, Cedric the Alleged Entertainer, there was always an affecting sadness behind his jibes and goggle-eyed reactions, and here, in the role of Floyd, one half of a neglected backup duo for a recently deceased soul singer, he accepts a potentially hackneyed role and runs with the opportunity to display both his formidable comedy chops and his never adequately praised acting ability.  Mac is never just doing a gag; he’s an overly sensitive, short-tempered clown in a ridiculous situation, earnestly attempting to get out of it through the only means available to him: yelling and posturing, and more often than not simply undergoing a total nervous breakdown.  While a lesser comic might drag the tough black guy routine out to tiresome effect, Mac found more humor in vulnerability, in his inability to keep his emotions bottled up, be they insane outbursts of anger or even tears of frustration.  An improvised freakout in a dingy flophouse hallway after being violently ejected by his partner, Samuel L. Jackson, is the most hilariously apoplectic I’ve seen him onscreen.  It’s Mac to the nth degree, and it’s something to see.  And watch him near the end, wildly firing a gun after being informed that his concert has been cancelled due to an unlikely if often funny series of events.  It’s a scene most would have played for slapstick laughs, but there’s real hurt in those bigass eyes.  Jackson makes for a decent straight man, and the intriguingly incomprehensible Mike Epps has a fleeting but funny bit part near the beginning, but this is Mac’s show all the way, and, sadly, his swan song.  If you do decide to check out this undistinguished but thoroughly enjoyable comedy, be sure to watch the special features for some far too brief footage of Mac at the Apollo, taking the mic and entertaining the extras between takes while filming the final concert in the movie.  In an increasingly soulless business, Bernie Mac brought class and hard work back to the table, and while most celebrity deaths inspire more shock than any sort of real grief, I get so sad knowing that we don’t get to see any more of this guy.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)
>>> Videoport customer Mitch suggests Interview With the Vampire:  The Vampire Chronicles (in Horror).  Director Neil Jordan creates a captivating and spellbinding atmosphere; a vampire period piece that literally invites the 90s-era viewer in through the eyes of a modern reporter. Brad Pitt ably carries the film, though his performance feels too melodramatic at times. Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas, and Stephen Rea have a wicked time hamming it up. However, I get the feeling that the filmmakers were never sure exactly how much fun they wanted this film to be; a cloud of sadness overshadows the mythos, blood, and horror. Nevertheless, the occasional moments of black comedy (especially from a strangely mature Kirsten Dunst) are welcome, and the exhilarating ending scene is just about perfect.
Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).
>>>Dennis suggests taking your kids to see Hayao Miyazaki’s delightful Ponyo before it leaves theaters and you have to

Walt who?

wait for the DVD.  In the meantime, of course, you can rent Miyazaki’s equally-delightful Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro for free today.

Having a Wild Weekend.  (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)
>>>For Saturday, Videoport Customer Mitch suggests Requiem for a Dream (in Feature Drama).  And here we have the reason why you shouldn’t do drugs. Aronofsky wrenches out some excellent performances from his four leads (as well as some creepy supporting roles from Chris McDonald and Keith David), and edits with a rhythmic precision that starts out fast and builds, builds, and builds, until we, the audience, feel like we’re trapped in a deadly nightmare and can’t get out. The cinematography is enchanting, unflinching, and disturbing; it is unafraid of going down into the abyss, but it never feels gratuitous. You made the decision to follow the lives of these characters, and here they are. I could especially feel the pain of Ellen Burstyn’s character, whose hopes segue into hopeless delirium
>>>For Sunday, Dennis suggests Equinox (in the Criterion Collection).  Oh sweet, sweet Criterion Collection.  Sure we appreciate the steady stream of the classics of world cinema you routinely release to us (like this week’s massive, 3-disc edition of the Japanese WWII drama The Human Condition), but it’s the knuckleballs like this oddball no-budget 1970 horror thriller that keep us on our toes.  Made by a couple of enthusiastic amateurs (one of whom, Dennis Muren, went on to win Oscars all over the place for his special effects work in films like E.T., the Star Wars movies, and Jurassic Park), Equinox is awful, sure, but it’s got energy, some truly neat Harryhausen-esque stop-motion monsters, and a whole ‘evil book that opens a portal to hell’ gimmick that I’m sure a young Sam Raimi must have been aware of when he made The Evil Dead.  Plus the traditional Criterion heaping helping of special features (I especially appreciated the introduction by the late Forrest Ackerman), two full versions of the film, and an early performance by the future Herb Tarlek from ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’!

New Releases this week at Videoport: Crank 2 (umm…the guy didn’t die…even though he fell out of that helicopter…Oh, hell, who cares- Jason Statham kicks some more guys in the face), Che: The Argentine and Che: Guerilla (these make up Steven Soderbergh’s four hour-plus biopic about the Cuban guerilla leader and the face that launched a thousand t-shirts, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, starring the ever-magnetic Benicio Del Toro),
A Girl Cut in Two (from French master of suspense Claude Chabrol comes this story of a young weathergirl torn between the attentions of two guys who may not have her best interests at heart), Roman de Gare (Another new film from a French master, this twisty-turny thriller comes from Claude Lelouch, who loves to toy with you), Valentino: The Last Emperor (documentary about the legendary clothing designer;  Project Runway fans unite!), ‘The Office’- season 5 (if you don’t think this show is hilarious, well, then you are incorrect), ‘Fringe’- season 1 (an ‘X-Files’-y supernatural series hits the DVD; I hear it’s not bad…), ‘Parks and Recreation’- season 1 (the deliriously-talented little psycho Amy Poehler stars in this very funny series from the creators of ‘The Office’), Dance Flick (the Wayans family trots out another spoof, this time of, well, dance movies), ‘Harper’s Island- season 1 (this short-lived Agatha Christie-style horror series promised to kill off pretty much everyone, on by one), ‘Important Things With Demetri Martin’- season 1 (standup/sketch show from the up-and-coming comedian and star of the recent Taking Woodstock), Sleep Dealer (ambitious sci fi about a near future where governments have become [even more] fascistic and three people try to connect through some sort of Matrix-y thingy), Dakota Skye (indie drama about a girl who can always detect when people lie and her relationship with a dude who, seemingly, never does), ‘Worst Week’- season 1 (sitcom about a couple getting acquainted with their respective in-laws), ‘No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency’- season 1(quaint HBO series about a spunky African lady named Precious who solves crimes in Botswana), Dark Streets (musical melodrama about the owner of a 1930s nightclub who gets in over his head, in various ways), Sin Nombre (gripping drama about a Honduran teenager trying to make it into the US), Filth and Wisdom (Madonna writes and directs her first feature film about London flatmates engaging in various unsavory acts to get by;  probably worth a curiosity rent…), Fragments (after surviving a random shooting, a disparate group of people [including Forest Whitaker] start to hang out), The Human Condition (the Criterion Collection brings out this epic three-part WWII drama about a conscientious objector and his attempts to survive, and make sense of, war-torn Japan), ‘Supernatural’- season 4 (two hot guys continue to fight evil in the second ‘X-Files’-y series release this week), ‘Rescue Me’- season 5 (Dennis Leary is still a jerk, a drunk, and a fireman).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (a forgotten comedy starring Maggie Smith from 1973?  Why, yes, of course Videoport has it!), ‘Charlie and Lola’- volume 9 (the super-cute British animated kids show is back for more), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (finally on the DVD!), Goosebumps:  Attack of the Jack-O-Lanterns (kids horror series marches on), Kabei: Our Mother (touching Japanese drama of a courageous mother trying to keep her family together in the days leading up to WWII), Local Color (autobiographical film about a young would-be artist and his relationship with a crotchety old painter;  starring Armin Mueller-Stahl, Ron Perlman, Ray Liotta and Charles Durning), ‘Nana’ (anime series about two girls named Nana rooming together, pursuing their dreams, and then here come the tentacles…[I’m just guessing…]), The Toe Tactic (oddball fantasy combining live action and animation;  it’s no Cool World, though…), The Meteor Man (Robert Townsend tried his hand at a superhero comedy after the surprise success of Hollywood Shuffle; it did not become a franchise…), Lilith (Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg try to find love in an asylum in this 1964 tragic romance), Tess (Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles finally comes to DVD), One Day In September (DVD release of this gripping documentary about Israeli Olympic athletes being killed by some Palestinian jerks), Her Alibi (Videoport brings you this 80s comedy starring Tom Sellick and a supermodel;  we have our reasons…), An Unmarried Woman (Paul Mazursky’s 1978 feminist film starring the delightful Jill Clayburgh finally gets a DVD release), Third (enigmatic Polish drama about a yuppie couple who take a mysterious old man aboard their yacht;  is he a psycho?  A Mob boss?  God?  Just a smelly old guy?  Rent it and see), ‘People Like Us’- season 1 (BBC comedy series about an incompetent documentarian pestering people for a human interest show; find it in Videoport’s British Comedy section), Lion of the Desert (this massive, expensive, [legendarily unsuccessful] epic about a Libyan freedom fighter stars Anthony Quinn and Oliver Reed, and was bankrolled by Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi!).