How many soundtracks will this film sell?

Hitting the ground running, Juno, seems a dark yet screwball comedy. With the sort of ambiguous humor and extra-teen sensibility of Election or Ghost World. There's some uneasiness to confronting something like teen pregnancy with the callous laugh and a shrug the writing seems to call for. The script could easily slide by as jaded and/or irresponsible. Much like the main character.

Instead what happens is a kind of unraveling: Juno, expertly played by this new Ellen Page person, is continuously forced to take her situation more and more seriously. To match this development, the whole tone of the movie sheds its surreality, and suddenly we're not laughing from the outside at a farce. By unorthodox means we've come to care deeply about the characters and the world they inhabit.

Many movies try to snatch a serious message from the jaws of comedy. Few can do it without tacking it on or oblivious melodrama. Juno does it with care and grace. And from today's all-stars of comedy, who woulda thunk it?

The Fresh Prince of Legend

I left the theater with three letters in my head: W-T-F.

Here's the new idea to solve the third act dilemma: Don't have one. Just as the plot got problematized the movie was wrapped and handed to you like a Christmas gift as thoughtless as it was last-minute. Will Smith never uttered any catch phrases such as "don't make me put my foot up yo' zombie ass!" so I was wrong about that, and some credit is due, but in the instances where he doesn't get the luxury of having no other actors present (he is, after all, the last man on earth), his middle-aged pleas to be taken seriously are pretty pathetic. Let's see what else sucked...oh yeah, how about the cookie-cutter Gumby-looking zombie cartoons who all looked 100% identical? I know what happened, something like this. Director: "Well, I'm two thirds done, fellas. Now I need just $70M to do the last bit." Producers: "Are you kidding, that money is all gone. We used it in our hemmorage-assests-into-billboard-splashes-to-saturate-lowest-possible-
denominator-public-consciousness campaign!" Writers: "Well what little integrity we may have once had is long gone, so we could finish it up right now by shitting all over the original novel's intricate twist finale, which was way too much of a frown fest anyway. In the post-post 9/11 cinema, we need let America smile again, right? We'll have the rewrites for you in the morning."

Even brown-bagging this movie, I came out sober. And I resent that.

...

In the TV Realm, I'm deep into Heroes: Season 1. My first thought was "stooooopid" after I'd gotten through the first episode. We decided to give it a couple more and now I'm hooked. Good lord the writing/directing is bad, it's politically vapid, and totally escapist, but sucks, it's neat, and TV like this is a better alternative than opium, right?

My theory goes like this: some comic fans were so let down by the third X-Men movie that they decided to just reimagine the X-Men (yet again), therby keeping Bryan Singer's dream of X-perfection alive. I mean, it's hardly even concealed: Wolverine, Rogue, Sabertooth, Prof. X, the boy who cancels the mutant gene, The Human Torch and Invisible Woman (oops), Kitty Pride/Shadowcat, plus a few other bonuses from Back to the Future and The Incredibles - they're all there in different forms. Season 1 reads like an extended narrative of the first X-Men film's opening 30 minutes. It's just as dumb as Lost (and it has to be the same producers, right??? I mean the non-credits opening splash gimmick...), but it doesn't take itself quite so seriously, and we don't have to deal with the onion-peeling narration that never ends. In Heroes answers come quick. The question is: will they be able to keep it interesting after the first arc? I doubt it, but here's to the ride.

The Denzel you know is at least as bad as the Denzel you don't.

I suppose that's a few too few posts and a few to many years to even call this a revival. But here goes.

What kind of deal with the devil did Denzel Washington make in order to get the rights to play every famous black man in history?

Shall we verify this?

Steve Biko
Malcolm X
The Hurricane
Mel Tolson (coming soon)

and here, the infamous Frank Lucas, who had the dubious honor of being the first American black man to rise to the level of the Cosa Nostra.

I swear to dog if I hear the words "based on a true story..." and "starring Denzel Washington" in the same trailer again, it will be reason enough to never see another one of his movies again. Don't get me wrong, he's pretty good (not great), but I can't help hating him, since he falls into that ever expanding sphere of actors who whose narcissism infects their entire performance, home to such critical darlings as Pierce Brosnan, George Clooney, and as luck would have it Russel Crowe.

So yeah I'm stuck with the latter and big D for this ridiculously overlong death rattle from the once-great Ridley Scott. The movie goes several different directions in the first act, and confuses the audience by leaving all kinds of loose threads, but it's not even good enough to care much. We get the exceedingly tiresome Russel Crowe droopy-dog-eyed-I'm-just-a-big-lovably-lumbering-benevolent-man routine beside the main character who's about as one-dimensional as they come. Ooh wow, how ruthless! As an audience we can't help coming away with nothing except that lingering feeling of: gee whiz the 1970s really did blow, no pun intended.

If you're a fan of HBO, this is like The Wire lite, a show that not only tops this film weekly, but also could have lent even more talented black actors to play the lead roles instead of merely the sacrificial pimp.

...

Elsewhere I am destined for a late showing of I, Legend, err, I am Robot, or whatever it's called, this weekend. I heard it's not a zombie movie, but a zombie-vampires movie. Maybe there's hope after all, but how can Will Smith not ruin it? If you were wondering, yes, I do consider him in the above category as well. Squarely.

Via Sam I have just heard that we can expect a Ghostbusters 3, with the entire original cast and helmed by the original director, Ivan Reitman. Not enough to excite you? Ghostbusters 3 is a video game!

On the 'Flix front: thumbs down for:

The Island (I'm starting to feel sorry for Sean Bean, whose talent now seems to always be wasted.)
The Da Vinci Code

Thumbs up for:

The Lives of Others
Transformers (Michael Bay straddles the fence today, this shit was awesome.)
The Last Mimzy (We are closer to the spirit of the 80s kids films, but not there yet)