cinemtical Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In the '90s, I adored exactly three parts of Hollywood: alternative music flicks like Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records, Gregg Araki, and David Lynch. The first always bled into the other two, Araki partaking in the musical joys of bands like The Jesus & Mary Chain and New Order, and Badalamenti creating his own unique world of music. But now the other two are combining. Sort of.

Remember how I posted a month ago about Araki's new film, Kaboom? Well, some images have finally popped up over at Quiet Earth, including the confused-faced Thomas Dekker above. There are also shots of Dekker in bed, and some looks of exasperation, but that's not the kicker -- it's the synopsis, which kicks off with "A hyper-stylized TWIN PEAKS for the Coachella Generation..." Yes, Araki's getting into a little small-town quirk.

Building on that whole all-too-brief sexual awakening description from last month, the movie is "a wild and sex-drenched horror-comedy thriller" about an ambisexual college freshman who trips on "some hallucinogenic cookies" and is "convinced he's witnessed the gruesome murder of an enigmatic Red Haired Girl who has been haunting his dreams." Is the girl in a room with a black and white floor and thick, red curtains?

What do you think about the idea of Araki getting a little Lynchian?

My pulse rate immediately jumped during the first scene of Curt Johnson's documentary Your Mommy Kills Animals. A woman wearing a fur coat is brutally assaulted. I breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was "only" a commercial, but before my blood could settle, the next scene shows a dog being even more brutally assaulted. That footage, sadly, is real, allowing no lowering of the blood pressure.

And so it goes throughout the film. If, like me, you didn't know beforehand the difference between animal rights, animal liberation, and animal welfare, you certainly will by the time the end credits roll. Far beyond a simple educational primer, though, the doc drops you in the middle of a very contentious issue and pushes every hot button imaginable. You're simply not allowed to not react. I found my emotions rolling between heated anger and utter disgust, yet never felt manipulated by the film itself. Instead, director Johnson presents opposing viewpoints in a fairly evenhanded fashion. The film is not entirely without its own bias -- which becomes more apparent upon a second viewing -- but you're allowed to draw your own conclusions without feeling like the filmmakers are shoving you into a predetermined corner.

The basic framing device is the trial of the so-called "SHAC 7," a group of six animal rights activists accused of violating federal anti-terrorism laws by encouraging direct action protests on their web site. The group was formed as part of a worldwide campaign to stop animal testing at the Huntingdon Life Sciences laboratory -- really, to shut down the company. Two members are interviewed, and in their appearances, interspersed throughout the film, they appear calm, kind, peaceful and entirely reasonable. How could they pose any kind of threat?

We all knew it would happen. The only real question was whether or not it would happen with Pixar's involvement. And since that mega-expensive Disney/Pixar hook-up last year, the only remaining question was: When?

I'm talking, of course, about Toy Story 3.

The early naysayers were worried that without the involvement of Pixar and/or the return of the original voice cast, Toy Story 3 would pretty much ... stink. And since Disney has long since proven how they like to treat their sequels, the Toy fans were justifiably thrilled when the Pixar deal went through. Plus, now comes a little extra piece of potentially good news: Tim Allen recently told The National Ledger he's on board for TS3 and that he "believes" Tom Hanks will be returning as well. Apparently the former sitcom star who now spends his days making truly awful movies is pretty excited about the new Toy story that John Lasseter & Co. have cooked up.

Don't screw this one up, fellas.

Okay, so maybe not everywhere ... but in Tasmania, at least. Do you remember when the Looney Toons experienced that odd revival in the nineties mostly on the back of the Tasmanian Devil (lovingly called "Taz") and Marvin the Martian? For awhile there, Taz even had his own cartoon, which I loyally watched as a youth. The property is still a money maker for the media giant Warner Brothers, and this odd connection may prove to be salvation for the mammal. The Tasmanian Devil, already an endangered species, is currently fighting with an outbreak of a facial tumor disease which apparently threatens their very survival. Learning of this plight, the execs over at Warner Brothers entered "lengthy" talks with the Tasmanian government and will now be joining the fight to save the creatures. Warner Brothers has promised to "look into substantial funding" for the Tasmanian Devil protection efforts. I don't know yet if they plan to use this as any sort of marketing tool, but it seems like too good of a story for them to pass up. And really, it's a cool thing for them to do, even if they've got ulterior motives. Now if someone would just make them aware of the horrible disease plaguing the Martians ...

Open Roads is an all-too-brief survey of new Italian cinema presented annually by New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center. Now in it sixth year, the series offers a wide selection of films, most of which will never see distribution in the US; this year's festival runs from May 31 until June 9, and further details (including ticket information) can be found on the Open Roads website.

Quo Vadis, Baby? opens promisingly enough, with a female photographer spying on a trysting couple in a hotel room from a lofty perch in what appears to be a skyscraper in mid-construction. The woman mutters angrily at the far-away couple to position themselves better for her lens, and complains to herself about the freezing weather. She is Giorgia (Angela Baraldi), a private investigator who appears to make her living entirely from tracking down and exposing cheating spouses, and has successfully made herself invulnerable to the feelings of her often broken-hearted clients. That evening, a box of tapes arrives at Giorgia's flat, sent by a friend of Ada (Claudia Zanella), her late sister who shocked everyone by committing suicide sixteen years earlier. The tapes are revealed to be video diaries kept by Ada during the final year of her life, a year she spent living in Rome, pursing her dream of being an actress; with the aid of strong liquor and hand-rolled cigarettes, Giorgia immerses herself in them, and in her sister's secret life.

Despite that tantalizing opening, however, the movie dissolves into a mass of stereotypes and missed opportunities. Its clumsy plotting and even more awkward characterizations are surprising and, coming from director Gabriele Salvatores -- the man who gave us the gracious, charming Mediterraneo -- deeply disappointing.

Crazy, crazy Frank Spotnitz is putting his brilliant mind to work again, once more setting his pen to the X-Files universe. According to Spotnitz, who has done rather extensive work with the Files, plans are indeed in place for a new X-Files film. Should this sucker ever get off the ground, it would not focus on the massive alien cover-up story, but would rather act as something akin to an extra-long stand-alone episode. Spotnitz says the people over at Fox are interested in the idea, as are the principle cast members and creator Chris Carter -- but currently some sort of "legal issues" have the project on hold. Spotnitz hopes to see these issues resolve soon, however.

So, X-Files fans, what do you think of this? Is a potential return to the universe exciting, or would you rather it just be left as it is at this point? I think the concept of keeping a new movie separate from any major theme of the show could allow for non-regular viewers such as myself to catch the flick and enjoy it without feeling like we were missing too much because of ignorance of things past. So long as they've got all the necessary people involved, it seems to me it could be a rather decent idea.

You would not BELIEVE all the stuff that Pixar has been doing to promote Cars -- animation and Pixar blogs have new lists of advertising material, web features, and pre-release events virtually every day, and the movie doesn't even come out until June! (Despite the fact that the previews make it looks frighteningly bad, an animator friend of mine has seen the movie and swears that it's just as mind-blowing as Pixar productions are supposed to be. I'm trying hard to take him at his word.)

The latest bit of promotion comes in a form that you get to buy. Yay! Entitled The Art of Cars cost $40, and is a hard-backed book full of "sketches, storyboards, photographs and paintings" that were instrumental in the development of the film. While on one hand this is just a shameless way to take money out of the wallets of Pixar addicts, the Pixar show at MoMA was so visually stunning that I gotta say there are worse things you could have on your shelf than160 pages of animated loveliness.

Just yesterday, New Line bought the rights to a pitch entitled Me, Me, Me, the subject of which I'm sure will absolutely shock you: a guy who thinks he's what my grandmother would have called "the bee's knees." More specifically, the man is "the world's most obnoxious narcissist, who wishes people could be more like him and then enters a living hell when his dream becomes a reality." Depending on the casting, it could actually be pretty funny -- or at least it could have been, if New Line hadn't handed it over to Shawn Levy, the human engine of suck. There is hope, however, because right now Levy and his partner Tom McNulty are producing the film, but it's not 100% sure that Levy will direct. If they can just keep it out of his hands, this thing has potential.

If that one doesn't work out, however, there's always Columbia's Moi which, scandalously, is pretty much the same movie. When that pitch was picked up last November, Variety described the story as being about "a man who is convinced that the world would be a better place if everybody acted just like him," and added "it doesn't turn out that way." Hmm.

You know, it's been a while since we had a good race-to-the-screen battle in Hollywood. I don't know about you, but I welcome this development. After all, who doesn't miss the days when we could see two bad movies about Columbus in one trip to the megaplex?