Wintertime Blues

For some reason, my family has the shittiest Christmases.

That is not to say the Christmases themselves are shitty. They are always great times with family and extended family. This time around, we had our Grandpa, and both sets of aunts and uncles on my dad's side...so it was a lot of fun.

But stuff always happens around Christmas beyond our control that are really shitty. One year Mom, Dad, Erin, and I were all deathly ill and barely had enough energy to open our presents. Another year my dad split his head open. Another year our toilet backed up and overflowed everywhere. Another year I fell on the monkey bars and was knocked out for several minutes. Another year one of my dogs got ripped open by a raccoon (literally...we could see her intestines and stuff), and we had to take her to the vet. Another year, I had the worst Christmas of all time when my beautiful sweetheart of a dog Sunny died a few days before the 25th (anyone who ever saw my 310 knows this story). Anyways, THIS year I've been pretty sick the entire time, without any sign of getting better. Also, strong winds have stirred up the ashes from the fires of the summer, riling up my asthma and making it quite difficult to breath much at all. It sucks. But it's not as bad as some past years have been. So I'll take what I get.

Anyways...movie time:

I saw two war movies recently, each of which was radically different from the other (though they both starred George Clooney, interestingly enough). "Three Kings" was a very well done movie taking place after the first Gulf War. Stellar performances from all (even Ice Cube), and a unique directing style from David O. Russell made it a really fun, engaging movie that I'm glad I finally got around to seeing.
On the other hand, "The Thin Red Line," was one of the most boring movies I've ever seen (yes, Will, I'm finally watching your movies). I saw "The New World" by Terrence Malick, and thought it was agonizingly slow too, but "The Thing Red Line" was even more so. I don't know how he managed to get such a stellar cast for this film, because his directing style is the type that is MADE to put one to sleep. Yawn...

I also saw Apatow's latest project, "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story." Parts of the film are hilarious, but much of it is sub-par compared to some his past comedic efforts. John C. Reilly makes much of the film funnier and more entertaining than it actually is, but the movie has some great cameos from the Apatow roster (more "Freaks and Geeks" kids...hooray!). The issue is that while many of the songs are super-catchy and well-written (I might just get the soundtrack for this film even if I only thought it was a so-so movie), the dialog is second rate and only used to stitch one musical skit to another. I also wish the movie had been more of a broader spoof of musical biopics, instead of such a straight-up spoof of "Walk the Line." I thought "Walk the Line" was a pretty darn good movie, so I'm not sure why it deserves spoofing. Still, "Walk Hard" is worth seeing for the scenes that take place in the 60s. The Bob Dylan spoofing and the uproarious Beatles sequence had me doubled over with laughter.

"Breach" was a very solid little movie, even if much of it felt like "textbook-style-good-filmmaking." Chris Cooper seems to pull out an Oscar-worthy performance every time he is in any movie. There is no way he'll get nominated for this one because the movie didn't get a heck of a lot of attention, but if there was any justice Cooper would have an entire shelf full of Oscars, since he knocks it out of the park every time. His performance here contained so many interesting intricate layers that he really became the character more so than most actors manage to do ONCE in any movie during their career. Nice job, Chris.

I also finally got around to seeing "Amelie," since after seeing Jeunet in person last year, I still hadn't seen his best-known movie. Frankly, I thought it was a delightful little film, but with many flaws. A lot of the characters Amelie "helped" out seemed to be for Jeunet amusing himself only, and not to serve the story. Also, a few storylines lacked a bit of clarity for me. In addition Amelie is supposed to be innocent and sweet, but I kept wanting to shout at her "get over yourself and grow a pair (figuratively)." And the constant "cute" close-ups of her face sort of creeped me out. Lastly, as much as I hate to say it, I find it difficult to like the French style of filmmaking. There are very few French movies I wind up liking with open arms. One of them I did like was Jeunet's own "Delicatessen," which I think was better than his "Amelie."

And if you have seen "Delicatessen," you should know it is a movie about cannibalism. And last night I saw another fun movie about cannibalism: Tim Burton's adaptation of "Sweeney Todd!" I actually thought most of the first hour of the movie was somewhat slow and boring, lacking that Tim Burton "panache" I was hoping for. But once Sweeney started slashing people, things got much more fun. Johnny Depp was good as he always is when working with Burton (or anyone really), but I actually think he might have been baaaarely upstaged by Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman.
Burton's strength always lies in style over substance, and I felt that was sort of the case with his version of Sweeney Todd. While it ranks as one of the better of his more recent movies, I still don't think it approaches "Edward Scissorhands" in terms of quality. Oddly though, I thought Depp's characterization of Sweeney Todd was very much a mish-mash of Edward Scissorhands and Captain Jack Sparrow, with a lot of dark, boiling, seething hatred mixed in for good measure.
Out of curiosity, today I found a version of the old Broadway play starring Angela Lansbury and George Hearn on youtube, and watched it through. I thought that (blasphemy!) Burton's version was far better, and that both Depp and Carter were better singers and actors than Hearn and Lansbury, respectively (which is surprising, because I've heard Depp has not had too much singing training). However it is very neat to see how little Burton changed from the original play; most of the dialog is identical. After watching the Broadway version of the play, I can much more appreciate much more how "Burtonized" the look and style of the film was, while still honoring the source material. Oddly enough, Burton's version is LESS cartoonish (performance-wise) than the play.

Also, I should write a bit about how I worked at the Jules Verne film festival, where I got to hang out and interview some cool peeps like Ray Bradbury, William Shatner, Tony Curtis, Patrick Stewart, Malcolm McDowell, Stan Lee, Buzz Aldrin, a cheetah (!), the cast of "Heroes," and the cast of "Blade Runner." But that's a long story that deserves to be told in person. It WAS very cool though...mixing it with Hollywood-types...wheeeee!!!

So...
"Swing your razor wiiiiide, Sweeney! Hold it to the skies!!!"