"Hoop Dreams" director returns with "The Interrupters"

Before I get into that, I don't tune in for many awards shows beyond a bit of the Golden Globes and most of the Oscars, but the Critics Choice Movie Awards, airing tonight on VH1, has gotten one of its kudos exactly right.

Quentin Tarantino, who has been making extraordinary use of music in his movies for many years, will be receiving the very appropriately named Music+Film Award. Though there are many examples of how his ear for music has enhanced his movies, the one that is permanently burned on my brain is that refrain of "putting out the fire with gasoline" from David Bowie's "Cat People" as Shoshanna is plotting the ultimate revenge in "Inglorious Basterds." Priceless.

If they could tell me exactly when that might happen, I'd tune in, but since that won't be happening, I can't imagine I will. In other news, however, the director of "Hoop Dreams," Steve James, is back with a new documentary, "The Interrupters," which is premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this year.

To put it as hokely (yes, I fully realize that isn't even terribly close to a word) as possible, "Hoop Dreams" was really a formative movie for me in that at the time I really was kind of ignorant about the power of documentary filmmaking. I can still remember watching Siskel & Ebert's rapturous review of "Hoop Dreams," and then loving the movie just as much as they did myself.

Since then (1994), James has made several more films, none of which, I'm ashamed to admit, I have seen, but coincidentally, "At the Death House Door," which he co-directed with Peter Gilbert, is being screened this Sunday at 1:30 p.m. in the Social Hall of St. Joseph Catholic Church here in downtown Macon. Yeah, I'll turn out for that.

And finally getting to the point, "The Interrupters," a collaboration with journalist and author Alex Kotlowitz, examines the lives three of the titular individuals who intervene in situations to try and prevent violence in Chicago. Like "Hoop Dreams," this should be a fairly harrowing journey with three people who used to live lives of crime themselves. Over the course of a year, it focuses on three specific situations that need some serious defusing.

Here below are the trailer and poster for the flick which, since I'm not going to Sundance (though I am hopefully returning as a guest of the Atlanta Film Festival 365 - bully), I'll eventually get to watch from Netflix's impressive doco library. And with that, I'm off to work. Peace out.

For Wednesday, a cache of fun clips

First off, and to segue right into the videos, a hearty huzzah to the Golden Globes for recognizing that "The Walking Dead" was easily one of the best TV dramas of 2010.

The word unique is thrown around way too loosely, and I'm probably as guilty of that as anyone, but it certainly fits here. If you watched the series, you know there's nothing like it on TV: Genuine horror as the inevitable zombie apocalypse (yes, we're certainly headed there) strikes (and in Atlanta no less, kudos), but also plenty of humanity since this comes from the mind of Frank Darabont.

Things don't bear terribly well for season two with the word that all the writers were let go and replaced by freelancers (except for Darabont, of course), but I suppose that's the way of the world. In case you missed the show and doubt just how gruesome it could get, enjoy the video below, but be warned: The title tells you exactly what you get, "every zombie killing in 'The Walking Dead'."



You know, with "Black Swan" finally opening in Macon and "The Fighter" here too - and then hopefully the Coen brothers' "True Grit" (which mi hermano and his Minneapolis-St. Paul homies have apparently already seen - jealous) opening here Wednesday, when I have the day off, this is indeed the best movie week of the entire year for me. There's also apparently a "Yogi Bear" movie opening this weekend too, but as close as you'll see me coming to that is this fantastic clip of what you'd have to call "The Assassination of Yogi Bear By the Coward Boo Boo." Again, the title really says it all, and this is plain brilliant. Enjoy.



OK, enough with the bloodshed, cartoon or otherwise. Nothing but good holiday cheer from here on out, I promise. Though I'm rarely up late enough to see his show live, I often DVR it, and I'm definitely a member of Team CoCo. And it's videos like the backstage clip below that show exactly why Conan O'Brien is so good. If you've never heard what Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward are doing as She & Him, definitely check it out. The closest thing I'd compare it to is Dusty Springfield, but they really just make dreamy sweet pop songs. Enjoy this clip of them getting in the holiday spirit with Conan.



And finally, after watching the clip below, I think Funny or Die needs to add a third option, because this clip featuring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as, respectively, David Bowie and Bing Crosby, is - at least until the very funny ending - simply sweet. And with that, I'm off, because I had to get up at 6 a.m. and make a shrimp and grits casserole (office holiday feast day, huzzah!), so I'm already running behind. Enjoy this clip, and have a perfectly passable - if not downright festive - Wednesday. Peace out.

Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy with Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly from Will Ferrell

Get a first look at Duncan Jones' "Source Code"

If you've ever heard the soundtrack for "Crazy Heart" or just seen the movie (which I already have a rather ridiculous three times), you know that among the many things Jeff Bridges does amazingly well is singing real country music.

And so it's not terribly surprising news but good all the same that The Dude is reuniting with producer T-Bone Burnett to record an album. Here's what he said to say about it:

“I’m making an album with T-Bone Burnett right now. After I leave here I’m goin’ to the studio and we’re cutting some more tracks with this band that’s just phenomenal.”

Nothing but goofy awesome there, but it keeps getting better. The band will be called the Royal We (yes, really), and after the album is released "sometime next year," the band will be going on tour. Yes, that's something I'll gladly drive to Atlanta and pay a whole lot of money to see.

And in other news, while here on vacation in New Orleans, and perhaps thanks to some kind of voodoo curse, I seem to have developed the ability to see the future, and here it is: In late January or so of 2013, Daniel Day-Lewis and Steven Spielberg will be taking home at least 10 Oscars.

Yes, the awards show is entirely predictable, even that far in advance, when you know this: DreamWorks Studios just announced that Day-Lewis will take on the role of President Abraham Lincoln in the biopic to be directed by Spielberg.

Not enough prestige for you? The script for this has been penned by playwright Tony Kushner, from the Lincoln biography by presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. All kidding aside, this does indeed sound pretty amazing, and shooting is set to begin in fall of next year (nothing like planning ahead), with an eye on a fall 2012 release.

And after that, all I have today is a trio of clips, but just trust me and stick around until the end for something that may just truly blow your mind (so, I guess it might be a good idea to put some towels on the floor at least to sop up the mess.)

Before that, however, I'll start with the first trailer I know of for Duncan Jones' "Source Code." If you haven't seen Jones' debut film, "Moon," there really are very few rental ideas I could recommend higher. It's just first-rate sci-fi allegory of the kind we rarely see anymore, and Sam Rockwell, who is all alone in just about very frame of this, is astonishingly good (and living proof again that the Oscars are often just all wet.) For his followup, as you'll see from the trailer below, David Bowie's son (yes, really) has recruited Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monagahan to star in some kind of time-clock thriller about a man who briefly inhabits the body of a soldier to stop a massive train bombing. Not exactly my favorite kind of thing, but I'm still confident Jones will come up with something worth watching when this comes out April 15. Enjoy the trailer.



OK, next up comes a clip from a flick I'm really looking forward to, and which I'd imagine should get a bit of a boost from the fact that it stars perhaps the world's two biggest movie stars in Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. "The Tourist," directed by "The Lives of Others" helmer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (try saying that five times fast) with a script by he and Christoper McQuarrie, is set to come out Dec. 10, and should really be a lot of fun. Enjoy this clip, and like I said, definitely stick around for one more for which the word amazing really does no justice.


'The Tourist' Exclusive Clip

Trailer Park Movies | Myspace Video

Now, I'm well aware that Luc Besson's "The Fifth Element" is just one big mess of a movie, but that's one of the main reasons I adore it and always will. Well, thankfully, so apparently does a singer named Laura Workman McMurtrey, so much that she actually tried to re-create the "Diva Dance" song by Diva Plavalaguna for Leeloo's fight with the Mangalores (did I not say this movie is crazy?) And, even more thankfully, she has the rather remarkable pipes to pull this off. Any more words from me would be a waste of time, so, via badassdigest.com, enjoy this superfantastic clip, and have a great weekend. Peace out.

OK, this is late, but for me QT is the king of summer

As I was wondering how in the world to finally write something about Quentin Tarantino's simply insane "Inglourious Basterds," my easily distracted mind moved to thinking about the possible standards by which you can judge movies.

There are certainly many more than one that are valid, but for me it's always come down to simply this: Is this flick entertaining or not? And by that simple standard, QT's latest, and I think best, movie is wildly and often maddeningly so, and is therefore my favorite movie of 2009 so far.

Much of the praise I've seen for "Inglourious Basterds" (and except for the incredibly arrogant and equally vapid David Denby pretty much calling QT a retard, I haven't seen a lot of criticism) has centered on Christoph Waltz and the opening sequence, and with good reason.

Waltz just approaches his role as Hans Landa, aka "The Jew Hunter," with the most disturbing glee, and the opening gambit, set at a farmhouse in occupied France, is a model of what has always been QT's greatest strength, the ability to write extremely wordy scenes that never feel too wordy, since those words are turned into weapons that slowly and constantly raise the tension. Tarantino clearly knew he had a winner with this scene, since he released the script for it well in advance of the actual movie.

I can't take credit for this myself, but as my Facebook friend and devoted movie fan Ashok pointed out, many of the best scenes in "Inglourious Basterds" take place around tables, the real arena of action here.

And one such scene that I found even more dynamic than the opener comes when the titular Basterds are sent to pick up a German-actress-turned-counter-spy, played by Diane Kruger, at a French bar. The tension is both alleviated and sustained here by a sublimely silly game of celebrity Indian head poker so perfectly that when it all inevitably falls apart it just hits that much harder.

But as great as these and other set pieces are, they would all be wasted if they weren't used in the service of some truly inventive storytelling. I'm gonna have to assume from here on out that almost anyone who wants to see this has done so already (I was positively giddy to see that it came within a whisker of knocking "The Final Destination" from the top spot in week three.)

If you have, you know that what QT has unleashed here is nothing less grand than a revenge fantasy about taking down the Third Reich, and the chapters of "Inglourious Basterds" build as flawlessly as did those of "Pulp Fiction" (yes, I went there) to a grand finale that I guarantee will just be seared onto your eyeballs. I know it makes me more than a little sick, but both times I watched this, I started grinning as soon as I heard the first strains of David Bowie's "Cat People" ("putting out the fire with gasoline") and didn't stop until Shoshanna's face was being projected in smoke over all the carnage like the Wizard of Oz.

Now, all that said, "Inglourious Basterds" is far too ambitious to be perfect, and it certainly has its faults. The titular "Basterds" are just far too cartoonish for even a tale as crazy as this one, so thankfully they get the shortest chapter. Though I normally love Brad Pitt as a comedic actor, his Aldo Rayne just constantly grates as he seems to be channeling Karl Childers through the spirit of John Wayne.

And be warned: As with any QT movie, the violence here is just often way over the top. Even more than the finale, the scalping and, well, let's just say engraving of Nazi soldiers is more than enough to make even the most hardened person squirm.

But none of that was nearly enough to spoil the fun of this one for me. Even more than the dynamic set pieces or wild storytelling, it's just the spirit of this flick that sets it apart from anything else I've seen this summer. As my friend Randy Waters remarked as we were leaving the theater the first time I saw this, why stick to the facts for something as conventional and simply tame as "Valkyrie" when you can use your vivid imagination to twist history to your own ends?

I almost never clap at the end of movies unless the director is somehow in attendance, but I have to admit I did a little each time I heard Pitt utter that "masterpiece" remark, mostly because in spite of the hubris of it, I have to admit he's right: This is indeed Tarantino's masterpiece (at least so far) and thus my favorite movie of 2009 so far. Peace out.

P.S.: As part of my ongoing bid to do my minuscule part to promote glorious, traditional animation, here's the second trailer for "The Princess and the Frog," which just looks more and more like its gonna be a real winner.

Minority report: A slightly dissenting view of "Up"

Before I get into anything about Pixar's "Up," there's great news out there today about Duncan Jones, a k a David Bowie's son and the man who directed the best slice of old-fashioned sci fi I've seen this year, "Moon."

For his next project, Jones will direct "Escape From The Deep," the story of a World War II U.S. navy submarine that sank after a torpedo malfunction, leaving the crew stranded on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Faced with drowning, nine men made it out alive after swimming the 180 feet to the surface without getting the bends.

I love submarine movies, so that all sounds great to me, but I'm still more than a little peeved that "Moon," featuring a top-notch performance by Sam Rockwell, never got any proper distribution in the U.S. - definitely catch it on DVD as soon as it hits there.

But, getting back to "Up," I should probably just keep this to myself, because for the most part I enjoyed Pixar's latest offering almost as much as everyone else in the world has seemed to. However, I didn't find it to be top-shelf Pixar, which for me includes "Ratatouille," "The Incredibles," "Wall-E" and "Toy Story."

So then, what kept me from loving "Up" unconditionally, which I certainly wanted to do going in? Well, from the outset it's a much more somber affair than I had been led to believe, but that certainly wasn't the problem. In fact, it turned what could have been the most mediocre of montages into perfectly concise storytelling as it opened by telling the life story of Carl Fredricksen (a seriously curmudgeonly Ed Asner) in heartbreaking fashion (and I'm not afraid to admit it was the first, but not the last, time that "Up" had this grownass man on the verge of bawling.)

And if I can skip ahead to the big action climax, it's a set piece that has Carl and young Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai, who gets the movie's best line with his enthusiastic "But it's a talking dog!") battling the movie's big bad in an aerial encounter that finally delivers on the full promise of 3-D. It had me holding my breath and experiencing a serious fear of heights, and I'd imagine the real peril it puts our heroes in might be a bit much for the kiddies, but it's also just tons of fun.

So then, where's the beef? Well, to paraphrase Russell in talking about the middle of "Up," "But it's a flying house!" Watching it take off is indeed as remarkable as I could have expected, so I was just amazed at how little time they spent in the air before reaching their South American destination. I mean (AND THIS IS A BIG SPOILER, SO READ ON IF YOU DON'T WANT TO FIND OUT) really, having Russell almost instantly find it with his GPS device? Where's the adventure in that?

And once they're - sort of - tethered to the ground again, I was hoping for much more of a B-movie, Indy Jones sort of tale, but this part just never really got going, in large part because the big bad Charles Muntz, voiced by Christopher Plummer, was just one of the worst Pixar characters I've ever encountered. By having him stop well short of total madness, they also rob him of any real motivation and make this portion of the tale - in my opinion - just much less compelling.

Perhaps I'm being too hard on what is, after all, a kid's movie and a moving tale about one man reaching his life's aspirations. But this is Pixar, after all, and I've come to expect nothing short of perfection. And besides, like Carl Fredricksen, I guess I just like to complain, so please feel free to let me know all the ways I'm just off base on this one. Peace out.

A visit to the "Moon" with Sam Rockwell

Is there really any chance that "Chuck" is on the cancellation bubble? Even if one of every four or five people in the world (or at least California) is a Fulcrum agent, it's still just about the funniest and smartest thing on TV now, so here's hoping the Hollywood Reporter story listing it as only 50-50 to return isn't the beginning of the end. ("Dollhouse" is on the list too, but even though that show has gotten remarkably better through the weeks, it wouldn't surprise me to see it end.)

The thing that would really kill me is that if "Chuck" does die, it will be at the hands of that dastardly Jay Leno (no, I'm not a fan), who is getting five hours of primetime space a week and taking it directly from both more and less worthy shows.

Oh well. I don't really have any power over that, so instead I'd like to talk about some things I saw at the Atlanta Film Festival 365, which is continuing through Saturday at the fabulous Landmark Midtown Art Cinema in, of course, Atlanta. For the schedule and how to get tickets for movies (including "500 Days of Summer" tomorrow night), click here.

I saw seven movies in three days (well, eight, but I paid for the first one, "Sin Nombre," because I was just dying to see that ... yes it's a disease), and I'd like to start today with Duncan Jones' "Moon," the one most likely to play anywhere near people who might read this site when it opens in limited release June 12.

First, I suppose, a bit about what it's about. Sam Rockwell (and you'll see A WHOLE LOT of him) stars as a man who lives alone on a remote lunar outpost where he harvests helium, which has become our primary energy source.

And before I get to the good stuff, of which there's quite a bit, a word about the movie's limitations is in order. First, the plot is simply wafer thin. You won't hear any more about it from me, but you'll probably figure it out extremely early, and if not it's revealed about halfway in anyway.

But like any great science fiction, which Duncan Jones' film almost manages to be, it's much more about the allegory than the principal story, and in that department it's the best example yet of capturing the "zeitgeist" (man, do I hate that word, so I apologize) of our troubled times. I'll just say that for anyone (like me) who toils in an industry in which uncertainly looms everyday, what the story by Jones and screenwriter Nathan Parker has to say about the expendability of human life will definitely hit home.

Now, I didn't bother to see "Castaway" because I was just certain I couldn't take that much Tom Hanks (and I've never had any regrets about missing it), so I really have nothing to compare to exactly how well Sam Rockwell carried this movie. As you can probably tell from the storyline, he's in just about every frame of this movie, with only brief interruptions from his wife via satellite and the input of his helpful station computer Gerty, voiced in comforting monotone by Kevin Spacey (and yes, it bothered me at first that this was a direct ripoff of Hal, but two thoughts: First, who the heck else was he supposed to talk to out there, and second, the way the computer plays into the story just gives it more power.)

But back to Mr. Rockwell. I've always liked him quite a bit, but worried that seeing that much of him would grow old pretty quickly. Wrong. As he slowly deteriorates both mentally and physically, I can guarantee you will be riveted, and his reaction to everything that happens is natural and believable in what turns into a pretty intense psychological profile.

The remote moonscape is also beautifully filmed and plays into the theme of isolation perfectly. And if you'll excuse me, I have to cut this off rather abruptly and get ready for work, so I'll leave you with just one more odd thought: Duncan Jones is the son of David Bowie. Hopefully that and the fact that this is being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics will get it a pretty wide run in June, because I certainly wouldn't mind seeing it again. Peace out.