TenCommandments Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Review: The Ten
Filed under: Comedy », ThinkFilm », Theatrical Reviews », Religious », Cinematical Indie »
Maybe the best thing about The Ten -- a new anthology comedy assembling ten short vignettes, each based on one of the ten commandments -- is how it starts with that premise (famously used by Krysztof Kieslowski in The Decalogue) and immediately, casually, chucks it in the dustbin. "Honor thy mother and father" leads to a vignette where a mother (Kerri Kenney-Silver) explains to her two African-American sons that their father's never been part of their lives because they were conceived during the '80s, when she was having lots and lots of sex with celebrities. Their father is, in fact, Arnold Schwarzenegger; since having their real father bond with them would be impossible, she's hired a local Arnold impersonator (Oliver Platt) to come hang out with the boys. ...
No, the scene's focus isn't parent-and-child interaction and the currency of respect that should flow through that relationship; the scene's focus is Oliver Platt in a leather jacket and wraparound shades, playing football with his two long-lost not-sons, murmuring fatherly endearments in the strangulated Teutonic tones of a bad Arnold imitation. That, to me, is funny; who cares if it really explores the ideas in the correlating commandment?
Interview: David Wain and Ken Marino of 'The Ten'
Filed under: Comedy », Independent », ThinkFilm », Interviews », Religious », Cinematical Indie »
The Ten, an anthology comedy comprised of ten vignettes inspired by the ten commandments, is a bit of a throwback to scatter-shot comedies of the past like The Groove Tube and Amazon Women on the Moon; at the same time, it's possessed of an ultra-modern deadpan sensibility, with highbrow ideas sharing screen time with lowbrow cheap laughs. The Ten was co-written by Ken Marino and David Wain; Wain was also the director. The two have collaborated on other films (most notably Wet Hot American Summer) and also worked together in the comedy collaborative "The State." Wain and Marino spoke with Cinematical via telephone about the challenges of making The Ten, how you fake 40 CAT scan machines on a low budget, method mustache acting and cute-yet-terrifying animated animal orgies.
Ken Marino: (Singing) "... Band on the run! Band on the run!"
Cinematical: Is there nothing like Wings to cut the strain of the all-day, conducted-by-telephone promotional tour?
KM: You took the words right out of my mouth.
Cinematical: So let's start by just getting our praise of Krzysztof Kieslowski and his hard-to-pronounce name out of the way. Was The Decalogue really an inspiration for The Ten?
David Wain: Well, insomuch as it's exactly the same premise, yes.
Cinematical: But you guys didn't actually think ... Was the actual starting point "Let's do the Ten Commandments ..."?
KM: The starting point was 'Let's steal Kieslowski's idea and do our own funny version of it. ..."
Cinematical: Which you certainly succeeded in doing, but: Do you feel like maybe he's stolen the ten commandments and no one else can do them?
KM : I feel like he stole the ten commandments from some other book -- some other, dare I say, good book. ...
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