Cinematical

Leaving an early screening of Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant this week, I heard an amazed teenage girl say to her companions, "It's, like, a vampire movie, but it's funny!" As if such a thing weren't possible. But then, the average teen was in kindergarten when Buffy was in its prime, and 80's movies like Fright Night and Once Bitten are ancient history. Funny vampires?! Who knew?

As Peter Hall says in his excellent Cinematical review of Cirque, it's a shame that this particular movie feels as if it were rushed out to take advantage of the current Twilight and True Blood fueled vamp renaissance. Based on the first three volumes of the popular kid-lit series by Darren Shan, the film bumps the twelve-year-old hero's age to 16 -- the better, one supposes, to promote the flick to the Twilight crowd, despite it being a piece with a completely different flavor, based on books for kids between the ages of 10 and 12.

If you think it's a stretch that Cirque's being marketed to the sparkly-vampire crowd, check out the design of one of the posters (above). Wow ... it's totally Robert Pattinson! Except that it's not. Take a look below, to see what actor Chris Massoglia really looks like in the movie.

A good villain is memorable, and impressive, and scary as hell. But bring back the same villain over and over, give him lousy dialogue and have him repeatedly defeated by worthless opponents, and that villain becomes nothing more than an ineffectual bully who doesn't know when to give up. He's like that big, hairy guy down the street who scared the crap out of you when you were a kid, but who now has a pot belly, three obnoxious kids, and a Trans Am on blocks in his front yard. It makes it hard to remember why you ever found him frightening in the first place -- you'd feel sorry for him, but you just don't care enough to bother. Like these five:

Dr. Evil
Remember how cool Dr. Evil was in the first Austin Powers movie? Very few villains have fallen as far or as fast as Mike Myers' homage to Bondian baddies. Sure, he was a little out of touch with the current global economy, and his relationship with his son, Scott, was a tad strained, but he had a super-cool secret lair inside a volcano island, and a spaceship, and a clone sidekick, and lasers. Despite his flaws, Dr. Evil had all the earmarks of a world-class villain.

But by Myers' third, tired outing, Dr. Evil (along with every other joke in Myers' playbook) was used up -- so much so, that Myers brought in yet another villain, Goldmember, and he played that guy, too. It takes a lot of talent to stretch yourself that thin and get away with it -- I mean, sure, Alec Guinness played eight characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets, but he's freakin' Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Force is considerably weaker in Myers, and maybe if he'd been happy playing a few less characters, he'd have been able to come up with a better script ... one that didn't require the once-impressive Dr. Evil to spell his name "D to the rizzo, E to the vizzo, I to the lizzo." Bleh.

"Like many of you, I was stuck," narrates Guardian writer Paul MacInnes in his best Chuck Palahniuk-style monotone. "I looked at blog after blog, trying to find some Star Wars fan site that would justify my existence. This was my life, and it was ending one minute at a time." In a very funny take on Fight Club, MacInnes' short video has the frustrated blogger receiving an e-mail that invites him to a "dodgy warehouse," and finds him taking part in a stage-fighting workshop where he gets the chance to beat up a writer from Men's Fitness magazine.

The workshop, it turns out, was a publicity event put on by Jameson's Irish Whiskey's Cult Film Club, a London film series that features movies like Trainspotting, This is Spinal Tap and, of course, Fight Club. The movies are all free, and the website promises a complimentary glass of Jameson's, as well.

For those of us who blog for a living, the intro to MacInnes' video holds an additional bit of entertainment. An e-mail he receives from his editor contains the subject line "FWD: RICKY GERVAIS DOESN'T LIKE AUBERGINES" (aubergine being the proper European word for eggplant) followed by the note, "Paul - great story. Give me 900 words in 20 mins. And make it good." Indeed. Thankfully, the Cinematical editors would never make us blog about celebrity vegetable preferences.

It's a clever take on an equally clever PR stunt, and a fun few minutes to watch. You can check it out here.

One of the silliest pleasures of revisiting older films is seeing actors in small roles, back before you had any idea who they were. Sometimes it's the only reason to watch something over again -- after all, why else would you rent 1990's Tales From the Darkside: The Movie if not to giggle at Julianne Moore being terrorized by a mummy controlled by Steve Buscemi, or pick up Leprechaun other than to mock the performance of the young Jennifer Aniston?

Sometimes the now-familiar faces pop up in stuff that's still worth watching, as with Laurence Fishburne as Cowboy Curtis on TV's Pee-Wee's Playhouse, or Johnny Depp in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. That's a bonanza. And when the earlier role is vastly different from the sort of thing they've settled in to playing now, it's all the more delightful.

Take, for example, Alexander Skarsgard, who sets hearts a-flutter on HBO's campy vampire series True Blood. As Eric, the 1,000 year old, once-Viking "sheriff" who bosses around the show's regional office of the undead, Skarsgard was called Vampire McSteamy and "TV's hottest set of fangs" by Newsweek. The son of actor Stellan Skarsgard, he'll also be seen in Rod Lurie's remake of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, and alongside Jason Statham, Ray Liotta and Mickey Rourke in 13, director Géla Babluani's reworking of his 2006 crime thriller 13 Tzameti. He also showed up the music video for Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi."

After the cut: A surprising early performance by everyone's favorite Norse bloodsucker.

An IMDB search for "therapy" as a plot device in movies will turn up hundreds of titles -- the Woody Allen catalog alone would take weeks to wade through. For some reason, psychological counseling is a well that screenwriters never tire of dipping into, with wildly mixed results. This week's addition to the oeuvre is the Jon Favreau penned Couples Retreat, in which he, Vince Vaughn and their wives take part in a week's vacation that involves time on the couch ... because nothing's funnier than watching bitter, middle-aged people kvetch about how much sex they're not having anymore.

The arguable quality of Couple's Retreat aside, therapy is, when done well, a potentially fascinating hook on which to hang a plot. From asylum-based films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Girl, Interrupted to stories about the unhinged like What About Bob? and Don Juan DeMarco, there's a daunting list of movies that take on the releationship between patient and shrink. The following are merely a drop in that vast bucket.

Agnes of God (1985)
Jane Fonda is the court-appointed psychiatrist sent to a convent to investigate the case of a young novitiate (Meg Tilly, seen above) who appears to have murdered a newborn baby. Based on the successful stage play, Agnes of God is either, depending on who you ask, a provocative look at the battle between faith and reason, or a turgid melodrama that coasts on its sensational premise. Either way, the performances -- which include Anne Bancroft as the Mother Superior, who believes Agnes to be "touched by God" -- are powerful.

Of the many things we've learned from television pundit Stephen Colbert, one of the most important is the danger of bears. On Colbert's online resource Wikiality, the Truthiness Encyclopedia, the entry on bears tells us that "Bears' strong vitality and resilience makes them one of mother nature's nearly unkillable animals. A bear has never been downed by any less than five gunshots. Combinations of high explosives, assault weapons, and trebuchets have been known to only piss the bear off."

But, you may ask, do they count as villains? Aren't scary bears in movies merely monsters, without the intellectual capacity to plot and scheme? I say bears are definitely villains, and as proof I offer three movies that feature relentless bears with more on their minds than just eating berries and looking for places to poop in the woods. Bears with purpose, with vicious intent. Bears who are, again in Mr. Colbert's words, "Godless killing machines."


Grizzly (1976)
The posters promised "18 feet of gut-crunching, man-eating terror!" (alternately, some ads also promoted "18 feet of towering fury") and indeed, Grizzly featured one large, nasty ursine villain. Sure, the whole movie was a cheesy rip-off of Jaws, which had been a phenomenal mega-blockbuster the previous year. But as cheesy rip-offs go, Grizzly is one of the best. The flick features a laundry list of 1970's B-listers like Christopher George, Richard Jaeckel and Andrew Prine, but the true star is the grizzly bear, chomping and mauling his way through a buffet of idiot campers at a state park.During the course of the film, hikers are torn asunder, cabins are smashed to bits, and the occasional deer gets dragged off to serve as a snack.

The 2007 movie Evening received bad reviews and was seen by about eight people, but it appears that one good thing came from the production. AP reports that beautiful actress Claire Danes has married her co-star from that film, equally beautiful actor Hugh Dancy. Combined, the pair are so pretty that if you look directly at them, you'll permanently scar your corneas.

For those of you who enjoy a whiff of scandal with your celebrity news, the Claire/Dancy (should we call them "Clancy?") romance began amid rumors that Danes entered the liaison while still involved with boyfriend Billy Crudup. This was only interesting because when Danes and Crudup began dating, there were rumors that she'd broken up Crudup's relationship with a then-pregnant Mary-Louise Parker. Whether any of this is true is anyone's guess, but when exceptionally lovely people break up and then start sleeping with other lovely people, the tabloids start sharpening their sticks. So ... congrats on the nuptials, kids!

Both actors have projects in the pipe -- Danes will next be seen in Temple Grandin, thrillingly described as a biopic about "an autistic woman who has become one of top scientists in humane livestock handling" (let's hope it's in 3-D!) and Dancy has sizable roles in Coach, directed by Stephen Frears son, Will, and in Down and Dirty Pictures, based on Peter Biskind's non-fiction book about the independent film industry.

When I feel a little blue, there are a few movie moments that are guaranteed to lift my spirits with a straight shot to the serotonin. At the top of the list is the "Do-Mi-Do Duds" song from the bizarro kids' flick The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (video after the jump).

I first saw this 1953 film on TV as a small child, and I was utterly freaked out by it. For years I didn't know the name -- I'd ask random people if they remembered a movie with a kid playing the piano while wearing a rubber hand on his head, and I'd get blank, puzzled stares. Eventually, it was released on home video, and I discovered that there's something of a cult following for 5,000 Fingers among folks like me who had their brains bent by it at an early age.

If you've never seen the movie, you've missed out on one of the great pieces of American surrealist cinema. The screenplay and songs were written by Theodore Geisel, best known as Dr. Seuss, and originally released under the title Crazy Music. Geisel later denounced the movie, calling it a "debaculous fiasco," and even insisted that mention of it be excised from his official biography. Lore has it that some audience members at the film's premiere were so weirded out that they walked out after just 15 minutes.

The story's a dream-tale that takes place in the mind of a boy named Bart (Tommy Rettig, who played Timmy on TV's Lassie), who falls asleep during his piano lesson. In his dream, he's a captive at the Terwilliker Institute, a musical asylum run by his evil music teacher (Hans Conreid). He gets a plumber, Mr. Zabladowski (Peter Lind Hayes) to help save his enslaved mother and sabotage Dr. Terwilliker's plan to force 500 boys to play his new concerto on a massive, specially-constructed piano. All of this takes place amid freakish, Seussian sets, with lots of songs and a few hilariously uncomfortable, intimate moments between Mr. Zabladowski and the father-figure-hungry Bart.

The casting call will be very specific: "Seeking young blonde woman, 6' tall, measurements 39-19-33. Must wear high heels and be able to drive sports car. Math skills not necessary."

Variety reports that Universal, emerging triumphant after months of negotiations, has wrangled the rights to make a live-action Barbie movie. Mattel has a long history of holding a very tight rein on the image of their premier money-earner, so you can bet that there's enough clauses and caveats attached to keep a dozen lawyers in custom suits.

"Barbie is the most famous doll in history, a unique cultural icon in the world of brands," Universal Pictures chairman Marc Shmuger told Variety, and Mattel claims the doll has a staggering 99 percent brand awareness. The audience for a Barbie movie is as established as that of, well, the enormously successful Disney princesses. As Mattel licenses the rights from Disney to make the princess dolls and accessories, it can't have escaped their notice that there's big bucks to be earned by tying products to movies that little girls love.

I'm sure it's been very frustrating for Twilight fans who own iPhones, the lack of a Twilight-based app that offers endless connectivity to their favorite sparkly vampire lore. After all, there are apps that pick lottery numbers, flick virtual boogers, give you the real-time NSA threat level, and allow you to pop fake bubble wrap. But what if you need to know how many days, minutes and seconds it is until The Twilight Saga: New Moon officially opens? What if you're at school or at work, and there's a new shirtless photo of Robert Pattinson released to the Internet? Whatever are you supposed to do then???

Thankfully, that problem is now solved! Summit Entertainment has announced their official "Twilight Tracker" phone app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, featuring custom avatars, the ability to chat with other Twilight fans via message boards (sample post: "OMG11!!! Edward is so super broody and hawt!!!"), and access to videos and Twilight news. No longer will you be stuck somewhere like the bus, the laundromat, or algebra class without instant access to Twilight crack.

And before you ask, yes, you can connect the Twilight Tracker to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, so even if you're busy putting out hits in Mafia Wars, you'll be alerted immediately with any red-hot, up-to-the-minute Twilight developments. If Peter Facinelli sprains his ankle ... you'll know! If Cam Gigandet adopts a ferret as a pet ... you'll get the update! If Kristin Stewart's photographed on her front porch getting high again ... well, you probably won't hear about that, since that's not especially good publicity. But someone will probably mention it on the message boards, and you can Google it later.

All this, for just $2.99. A steal, really. You can get it at www.itunes.com/appstore/ .