Put Down These Old Dogs

Fresh off the "success" of Wild Hogs (which inexplicably made over $250 million worldwide), director Walt Becker must have decided to undergo an experiment. After making a large sum of cash with a fairly awful movie, how low could he go and have the same success? How else could he justify the stinking filth that is Old Dogs? Not content with simply titling his new movie similarly to Wild Hogs (even going so far as to have it rhyme), he has used the same formula, hoping to appeal to that same demographic that made his previous movie such a success. It's shameful and his movie is even worse.

Old Dogs stars John Travolta as Charlie and Robin Williams as Dan, who has, for the first time in many years, been contacted by his previous lover. After a drunken evening in Miami, he hooked up with her, but never heard from her again. Well, it turns out she got pregnant and had twins, a boy and a girl. Dan is a father! Hooray! Except Dan has no idea what to do and he ends up going through the typical father-realizes-he-wasn't-there-for-his-kids-and-tries-to-rectify-the-situation-by-coming-to-a-self-realization-that-his-job-doesn't-matter-anymore-and-they-are-all-that-matters-to-him story arc. Yawn.

Forgive my haste. I've been typing here for only a couple of minutes, not really paying attention to what I'm writing. It's the day after Thanksgiving and after leaving my family yesterday to see this turd, I find it hard to justify giving it any more exposure than it already has. Therefore, I'm doing this quick so I can post it up and wipe my memory clean of anything and everything relating to it.

Here's the thing about these live action PG rated Disney movies. They are all fairly stupid. However, they are also pretty harmless. Most are merely time wasters that don't deserve to see the light of day, but are enjoyed by families nonetheless. Fine, but Old Dogs is not one of those movies. Believe it or not, it's actually kind of offensive. With racist stereotypes, homophobic jokes and one very subtle black face reference that may pass over some people's heads, Old Dogs is a testament to vile hatred disguised as humor.

Another example of this movie's offensive "comedy" can be seen in its mockery of death and grieving family members. One scene shows Charlie sitting in a circle with a group of people discussing their loved ones' final moments. One girl in particular explains how someone she loved very much battled cancer for months before she passed. Prior to this scene, Charlie takes a wrong pill and his face muscles spasm, forcing his mouth into a wide laughing smile. The scene is played for laughs because, yeah, cancer is hilarious.

Any humor that isn't offensive in the traditional sense is offensive in its juvenile humor. Slapstick and pee and poo jokes abound in this wretched farce. Old Dogs takes the low road by trying to appeal to families, but then when it senses its losing the audience, it throws in a sight gag of someone getting hit in the crotch because, for some reason, people still find this funny. If you could base the nation's intelligence off the laughter in this theater, we'd be doomed.

Outside of the racist, homophobic, unfunny humor, the most egregious offense in Old Dogs is its poor narrative, which relies largely on contrivances to keep it going. Since the kids aren't Charlie's, why is he in the mix? Because Dan forces him to be their uncle. Eventually, they move into Charlie's house. Why? Because Dan's apartment complex doesn't allow children (which could be the dumbest thing I've ever heard). Dan and Charlie run a sports marketing firm and need to get their work done, but can't. It turns out the kids are in some wilderness group and they have to accompany them on a scheduled weekend camping trip instead. After the inevitable break-up between Dan and Charlie, a sudden death causes Charlie to realize how important Dan is to him. Did I mention the death is of his dog? The list goes on and on.

I hated Wild Hogs, but it wasn't this bad. To be fair, I had a chuckle here and there and I felt that John Travolta and Robin Williams were competent in their roles. They are both great actors and brought what little charisma they could to these one-dimensional characters, but does that really excuse this film's insensitivity and bad taste? Absolutely not. Just like an old dog, this one should be put out of its misery.

Old Dogs receives 1/5

Fantastic Mr. Fox Not So Fantastic

I'm a man who generally tends to agree with the majority. If a movie is widely panned, I tend to hate it too. If a movie is widely loved, I sing its praises to anyone who will listen. But sometimes, a movie comes along where I'm absolutely baffled as to why it is so exalted. As of this writing, Fantastic Mr. Fox rests at an impressive 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics across the country are giving it widespread acclaim for its animation, humor and direction. Allow me to offer a dissenting opinion.

Put simply, Fantastic Mr. Fox sucks. The more I think about it, the less I like it. It's like an annoying leech of a person who won't leave you alone and begs for your approval. It plays like a desperate attempt to set itself apart from other stop motion animated films, but ends up creating a product that doesn't even come close to stacking up to the best in the genre.

The movie stars George Clooney and Meryl Streep as Mr. and Mrs. Fox, a couple who used to steal birds from the local farms for food. Now, because of the danger of his previous job, Mr. Fox writes for the local paper, the Gazette. Where this paper originates from I don't know. Mr. Fox never goes to work and his occupation is only fleetingly mentioned. Anyway, he misses his days of stealing birds, so he goes back to the dangerous job which nets him a lot of trouble with the three local farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean, voiced by Robin Hurlstone, Hugo Guinness and Michael Gambon, respectively. The three become determined to stop Mr. Fox, so they destroy his home, blowing up the ground it rests on into a smoldering crater, and position snipers around the perimeter. A bit excessive if you ask me. Eventually, Mr. Fox's nephew is kidnapped by the three and a rescue mission is underway.

Wes Anderson seems like a love him or hate him type of director. Some love his bizarre sense of humor and his idiosyncratic way of storytelling while others loathe it. There is no middle ground. Although I have not seen all of his movies, the one I remember best is Rushmore and based on that, I must say I'm with the loathers. Anderson always feels like he's trying too hard to be quirky, particularly in Fantastic Mr. Fox. It had such a strong desire to be unique that it ended up being nothing more than an ephemeral 87 minutes that I've already begun to forget.

Examples of its pretentious humor can be seen in its smug, cutesy title cards that say "One Fox Hour Later" or "2 Years Later (12 Fox Years)." I'm sorry, explain to me why that's funny again? In fact, very little of this movie is funny. The trailers do a better job of delivering the jokes than the actual final product. It's edited better and the music knows when to cut out to help deliver that comedic punch. Jokes that were funny in the trailer are not in the movie.

As for the animation, some will argue it's just Wes Anderson's own way of being different and the choppy look of the character movements was a stylistic choice. Well, la dee da. That doesn't mean it works. Compared to visual wonders like this year's Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox doesn't hold up. It felt like my brain was constantly switching on and off for an hour and a half because the animation felt so incomplete.

This is one bad movie. Never before have I felt so negative towards something with such high critical praise. I simply couldn't get around its boring visuals, uninteresting story and its repeated use of the same jokes over and over again. It barely reaches a feature length runtime, but I felt like I was sitting there for three hours. It lacks the inventiveness, emotional integrity and heart that brilliant stop motion animated films like the aforementioned Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas possess.

Why are critics enjoying it so much? It's tough to say. Maybe it's the holiday cheer floating through the air. Maybe it's the family togetherness that is so integral to Thanksgiving that this movie upholds. Or maybe someone spiked their drinks. How else could it be explained? I'm in the minority on this one, but I stand by my criticisms. Fantastic Mr. Fox is a failure.

Fantastic Mr. Fox receives 1/5

The Road a Gripping Drama

There have been a lot of movies lately that have dealt with the dark and foreboding, detailing their characters' pain, misery and sometimes death. These are topics we try not to think about, but they are vital to our existence and we must face them to truly understand them. Well, you can now place The Road up there with the multitudinous amount of similar films that weave an interesting, dark story that effectively explores these unspoken taboos. It is an excellent film guaranteed to make you ponder over your existence and realize how fragile it really is.

The Road is based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, the same author who penned No Country for Old Men, which was adapted into a terrific movie a couple years back. Much like that Oscar winning film, The Road is a superbly crafted narrative that has an eye for the dark and depressing, a story that explores a world where evil plays a major part. The film opens with a beautiful post-apocalyptic setting where nothing but ruins stretch as far as the eye can see. Something has caused all life on the planet to be wiped out, sans a select number of human beings and a handful of domesticated animals, and it has been this way for months. All vegetation is gone and even the tiniest bug has been unable to survive. The film follows a father and a son, played by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee, respectively, as they venture down south hoping to find a better place to live while still avoiding the cannibals roaming the wasteland.

The Road is haunting, with a bleak, dreary landscape and beautiful cinematography that creates an alive, distinctive world. Much like the recent Antichrist, shot after shot is wonderful to look at, a dazzling tour de force of direction. The difference between this and Antichrist, however, is that this movie actually has a story, one that isn't a convoluted mess.

In fact, on the surface, it looks rather simple, but that would be missing the point entirely. Throughout the course of the film, not much happens in regards to a traditional narrative. You merely watch two people trek from point A to point B while running into a few obstacles in between, but The Road is much deeper than that. By the end of their journey, they will face multiple fears, especially the boy, and learn to deal with the harshness that is life and death, to the point where that line is blurred. Sometimes, death seems like a comfort when compared to the world falling apart around them.

Why is the world falling apart, you ask? It never really explains, but I don't suppose it means to. Why it happened in the movie isn't as important as the idea that it could happen and one day might. With multiple wars waging on, the unequal balance of dwindling resources with a growing population, and the threat of a nuclear holocaust from ever expanding technology, this film doesn't try to pinpoint one clear reason as to the destruction of mankind. It's merely a warning that we should take heed, or else we, the human race, might find ourselves in a similar predicament.

If nothing else, the film is about the father/son relationship and the stark contrast between the two. Though both share the same DNA, they couldn't be more different. The father loves his son and will sacrifice anything to ensure his safety, but has a mean side to him where he refuses to help others in need. He tells the kid to look for the "good guys," but even when they find one, like an old man who is starving and nearly blind, he is reluctant to help and only does because his son pleads him to. The movie tells two stories simultaneously. Through the father, it shows how quickly a man can turn from a good, moral person into a savage beast, and through the boy, it shows that compassion can still exist even in the wake of despair.

The Road is a greatly well rounded movie. It takes every important aspect of filmmaking and flawlessly combines them into an unforgettable experience. The direction is lush, the performances are fantastic, the story is gripping, the dialogue is well written and the musical score is beautiful, perfectly complementing the overall picture. It all comes together into a movie many will find ordinary at first, but extraordinary upon reflection. By the end, don't be surprised if you find yourself shedding a tear for humanity and the good that can prevail even when facing extinction. The Road is a remarkable film.

The Road receives 5/5

Annoying Teenage Angst Abound in New Moon

It's been one year since Twilight was released to the world and I think it's safe to say it was a hit. Not unlike the never ending Saw franchise, Twilight is looking to capitalize on its present popularity by pumping out as many sequels as quickly as it possibly can (the third film is set to release in only seven months). Hopefully we won't get to the sixth installment in this one.

For now, though, we have to contend with New Moon (which is stupidly preceded by The Twilight Saga, as if we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into), and it is wretched. It is nothing more than 130 minutes of swooning, longing, lustful desire that should be laughable to anybody already out of high school, but for some reason is not. Hordes of women across the country have latched onto this tedious series that I'm comfortable ranking as one of the worst cultural phenomenons of all time.

New Moon begins with a dream sequence where we learn that Bella (Kristen Stewart) is afraid of getting old because her newfound love Edward (Robert Pattinson), being a vampire and all, will stay forever young. She fears that he won't love her when she is old and wrinkly. This becomes an overarching motif throughout the movie because she wants to be turned into a vampire, though Edward refuses because he is afraid her soul will be damned to hell for all eternity (or some nonsense like that). It is Bella's birthday and she is over at Edward's house celebrating. While there, she cuts herself and starts to bleed. One of Edward's family members attacks her, but Edward thinks quick and saves her. Fearful of what could have happened, he leaves the area and Bella behind, telling her that she will never see him again. It will be as if he never existed.

Meanwhile, she kindles a relationship with Jacob (Taylor Lautner), but she is seeing apparitions of Edward. Before he left, he made her promise that she wouldn't do anything reckless, so every time she is faced with danger, he appears and tells her what to do. How he's doing this is never explained, but isn't it just so adorable how he can inexplicably manipulate space and time to emotionally control Bella? Aww, how sweet.

The thing about last year's Twilight was that it was bad, but it wasn't a disaster. At least it was competent enough to stand on its own two feet. New Moon, on the other hand, is not. This is an awful angst ridden "pity me" film where the characters egocentrically sulk over their problems as if nothing bad has ever happened to anyone. So Bella and her boyfriend broke up. Boo hoo.

That said, I know I'm not in the demographic for this film. This one is definitely for the ladies. You wouldn't believe the shrieks that came from the audience when Jacob first walked onscreen. I'm pretty sure I missed dialogue due to the fits of uncontrollable adoration.

This didn't bother me, though, because I've said many times that women should be allowed to stare all googly eyed at men in movies. We males get to all the time because women always seem to be taking their clothes off in Hollywood. They bare it all. Men hardly do and you know what? They should. It's not fair. New Moon more than delivers on this unfairness. It doesn't go the full nudity route (damn PG-13 rating!), but it gives the ladies an ample amount of ripped ads (and one very weird looking nipple) to weaken over.

However, the bareness that the characters expose in this movie doesn't happen for any reason other than to please the ladies. It becomes a distraction and that is unacceptable. One early scene shows Bella falling off a motorcycle and cutting her head. At this point, a rotating disco ball may as well have dropped from the sky and bumping techno should have blasted through the speakers because Jacob walks up to her and rips his shirt off to tend to her wound because, naturally, an entire shirt is the only way to cover a minor injury.

The gratuitous skin showing was enough to tip my opinion negative, but when you have dialogue that sounds like it was ripped directly from a daytime soap opera (and yes ladies, that is a bad thing), you have an irredeemable movie. To borrow a quote from my critic friend Brandon Fibbs on his feelings after walking out of New Moon, "I was struck by the odd sensation that I was suddenly living in an alternate universe where the world was peopled by vampires and the movie we'd just seen was their version of Days of our Lives." Oh yes, Mr. Fibbs was not exaggerating. With lines like, "The only thing that can hurt me is you," New Moon shoots lower than low. It takes an already insipid story and creates an even more insipid screenplay out of it.

My buddy, who I somehow convinced into going to this movie with me, had not seen the first film and asked me a few questions in preparation. When I explained to him that these vampires don't die in sunlight, but only sparkle and that Edward only goes to school during overcasts, he gave me a look of abhorrence, as if a light went off in his brain and he realized that he was about to sit through what could be one of the dumbest movies of the year, and he responded with only a cockeyed, "Really?" I could only smile knowing that I had suckered my friend into wasting his night away with me. I almost feel bad.

But then I think of all the laughs we got from it and my conscience gets wiped clean. This movie features endless unintentional humor in the form of the characters lovingly staring into each others' eyes and saying authoritatively, "Kiss me," which elicited tears from the easily amused fans, but guffaws from the people who could separate quality from garbage like this.

With poor acting, a stupid werewolf/vampire/human love triangle and chemistry that's as authentic as a Sean Hannity newscast, New Moon is about as fun as chewing on razorblades.

New Moon receives 1/5

Ten9Eight Shoots Lower Than the Numbers In Its Title

Upon arrival at the official website for the new documentary, Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon, the first thing to catch the eye is a quote praising the film. The quote comes from the US Secretary of Education. Clicking further through, quotes from the Chancellor of New York City Schools and the Executive Director of the Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore are highlighted. The one thing all of these people have in common is their affinity for learning and watching students succeed. Though their intentions are noble, they, by all accounts, really have no idea what constitutes a good or bad movie. They merely see the message, an admittedly good one, but fail to recognize the film’s importance, or in this case unimportance. While certainly not a terrible documentary, it is not something I can see garnering much praise upon its release.

Ten9Eight follows a select group of inner city teenagers as they compete on a national scale in the National Youth Entrepreneurship contest where they create their own products and businesses and pitch them to a group of judges who decide which entrepreneur has the most viable business model.

By plucking kids out of inner city areas, the film’s main goal is to show how tough their lives have been and how uplifting it is to see them overcome their hardships and make something of themselves. Some of the teens have dealt with poverty, others with sexual abuse and others with drugs. These stories, however common they may be, are touching and meaningful.

But then comes the story of a girl who created a special kind of dog treat, one that did not contain material known to cause cancer because, whaddya know, her dog died of the disease. Well, boo hoo. It’s a dog. The fact that comparisons are made between this paltry, unimportant “disaster” and afflictions of real life consequence is insulting.

This film feels like it should be an hour long Dateline special, which would boil down to about 42 minutes with commercials, because that’s about as much content as it contains. To make up for the extra time needed to justify its existence as a motion picture, the filmmakers highlight people inconsequential to the entrepreneurship competition, like one teen who didn’t even make the cut to get into the finals, a deaf kid who is in the picture only as a means to manipulatively tug at our heartstrings, and not one, but two former contestants in past competitions, neither of which have any real bearing on the rest of the film. These sections were little more than an artificial lengthening of an already exasperated picture.

Though it is inspiring at times to see underprivileged teens refuse to go down a path of destruction and pursue their own business endeavors, this film simply does not give me much reason to care because it does nothing that countless others haven’t done better.

There are lots of documentaries that detail kids overcoming their hardships that don’t force you to sit through a myriad of sob stories and boring business presentations. I implore you to seek one of those out instead.

Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon receives 1.5/5

Planet 51 One of the Worst Animated Movies of the Year

The other day, I was discussing the world of animation with a colleague of mine. I expressed my admiration for the art form, attempting to go into why I think it can be so powerful when he dropped a bomb on me. He said he thought animation was "only for kids." I've heard it a thousand times, so I've come to expect it, but some people's ignorance amazes me. Let me set the record straight. Animation is not just for children.

In fact, some animated movies aren't for kids at all, like 9, for example. Just because a kid is able to watch it doesn't necessarily mean it is theirs. Look at this year's Up or Ponyo. The little ones will adore those films, but so will adults. The kids will love the bright colors and playful humor, but the older ones in the crowd will admire their artistry and their themes and their emotional meaning. Most computer animated movies, though appropriate for children, are not "kids movies." With that said, Planet 51 is an exception. This one is solely for children eight and under because, frankly, I don't see anybody above that age getting much out of it.

Planet 51 is a film that thinks it's being clever by flipping the standard "aliens invade us" story into "we are the invading aliens," despite that idea being done a number of times already (including earlier this year with Battle for Terra). In the movie, an astronaut named Charles T. Baker (voiced by Dwayne "Can You Smell What the Rock is Cookin'?" Johnson) lands on an alien planet billions of miles from Earth, only that planet is inhabited by a population not unlike our own. They eat, they drink, they sleep, they go to work and they even watch movies, only these guys are green. Totally different. Anyway, Baker freaks out after seeing the citizens while the military, also in a state of panic, goes on the hunt for him. He ends up taking refuge with Lem (voiced by Justin "I Give Very Little Effort When Voice Acting" Long) who tries to help him get back to his spaceship. If he doesn't get there within a certain timeframe, it heads back to Earth and Baker will be stuck on the planet forever.

This film is brought to us by Ilion Animation Studios. If you can name me one other film by this company, I'll fork over every penny in my bank account (don't get too giddy, it's not much). You can't do it, can you? I couldn't either, that is until I did a little research and found out that this is their very first movie. It shows. Based on this initial outing, I wouldn't expect them to make it to their third.

Like I said, this is a film directed squarely at the kids in the audience. Unlike most modern animated movies that try to entertain the whole family equally, this one metaphorically flips off the adults and mockingly thanks them for dishing out their hard earned money so their children could have an hour and a half of mild amusement that will be forgotten immediately upon exiting the theater. As it is aimed at children, you can expect a myriad of slapstick, excretory jokes and pretty much just dumb kid humor all around.

When it does attempt to please the adults, it usually fails and does nothing more than make references to older movies like E.T., The Terminator, Singin' in the Rain and more, but the only ones that work are the ones that reference Ridley Scott's Alien. On this planet, the alien creatures from that classic film are pets and carry the same attributes, like their insides being composed of acid. However, they don't bleed out the acid like in they do in Alien. It comes out in a decidedly different way, of which I'll leave to your imagination. The subtle nametag above the dog (alien?) house that says "Ripley," a reference to the main character in Alien, was also a nice touch.

Of course, I hated this movie, so that nice touch did very little to keep me invested in it. If you couldn't tell by my smarmy quotation insert in Long's name, I hated his voice performance here. Although Johnson shows some enthusiasm with his character, Long is bland and boring, hitting a range of emotions from "anxious" to "nervous." And yes, I'm aware those are synonyms.

In a year where most animated movies have been pretty good (Up, Ponyo, Monsters Vs. Aliens, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), Planet 51 deserves no recognition. It can't even hit mediocrity the way Astro Boy did. It merely sits there and shows no respect for the art of filmmaking. I went out of my way to see this movie. You should go out of yours to avoid it.

Planet 51 receives 0.5/5

The Blind Side a Huge Surprise

If you ask me, most theatrical trailers do a decent job of nailing the quality of their respective movies because no matter how good your editor is, he or she cannot make an amazing trailer out of bad material. If the movie is garbage, the trailer generally is too, but on rare occasions, you'll see a trailer so awful that you'll laugh at every line of dialogue, notice every cliché and write the movie off before seeing it, but it will actually turn out to be pretty good. The Blind Side is one of those movies. I had zero expectations going into this typical black-teenager-overcomes-difficulties-to-make-something-of-himself picture, but I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. It may be typical, but its message is heartfelt and its story is as uplifting and inspiring as any you'll see this year.

The Blind Side is based on the true story of a Christian family who took in a young African American teenager that went from being a nobody to playing on the Baltimore Ravens. Quinton Aaron plays Michael Oher, the young lad drafted this year into the NFL. Michael is a timid character, a kid who has never truly been loved and has never fit in with any particular crowd. He was taken away from his drug addicted mother when he was young and only God knows where his father is. His brother has become a part of the wrong crowd and on top of all this, he lacks a good education. He has an IQ of only 80 and a GPA of 0.6. Late one night, Leigh Anne Touhy, played by Sandra Bullock, spots Michael walking along the side of the road and offers him a place to stay. He apprehensively accepts, but as time goes on, he and the Touhy family begin to become one.

Leigh Anne and her husband, Sean, played by Tim McGraw (who is quite good, surprisingly enough), are conservative Christians. They are people who hold the word of God above everything else. Now, some people hear the term "Christian" and roll their eyes, including myself at times, because most so called Christians are anything but. They don't help others. They care only about themselves. They're greedy, they're lustful, they're hateful, but the Touhy family are true Christians, people who are Christ-like and live to help others. The Touhys are people that all "Christians" should strive to be like.

As time goes on, Michael opens up. He used to be very quiet. Now he is outgoing. He used to always carry a frown. Now he smiles and laughs and enjoys life. He grows as a person throughout the movie because it is the first time in his life that he has every truly felt accepted. This is a beautiful story of triumph, love and overcoming adversity. It is also a story of emotional significance and a great testament to humanity, even in these times when it seems like none exists anymore. This is a good movie that made me shed a few tears in happiness after seeing the true kindness the Touhy family bestowed on Michael.

However, it's a bit uneven. Its heart is in the right place, but its execution is lacking at times. One scene midway through the movie has Michael and the little Touhy child named S.J., played by Jae Head, driving down the road, bonding over some music playing on the radio. Unfortunately, Michael isn't paying much attention and gets into a wreck. Knowing that the airbag in the front seat could kill the little guy, he sacrifices his arm to stop it from inflating too quickly into S.J. This scene is inconsequential to the narrative and serves no purpose other than as a way for Michael to better his football skills. Just as he protected S.J., he is told similarly to protect the quarterback. These two scenes directly follow one another, each sporting different tones with no consequences ever emerging from the car wreck.

It also begins to sag near the end due to what seems like an over dramatization of actual events. Though I have no doubt most of this really happened, I find it hard to believe emotions were flying this high in actuality. A late scene with an NCAA representative investigating the Touhy's intentions with Michael plays like a bad scene from a crime drama. She interrogates him like they just found him standing over a dead, bloody body with a knife. From here on out, the movie takes a turn for the worse and only redeems itself at the last possible second where pictures of Michael and the actual Touhy family are shown, marking one final emotional payoff that works.

Other than an overly dramatic, schmaltzy back portion, The Blind Side handles its content well, even going so far as to include some honest to God uproarious jokes that had me laughing harder than many comedies this year. When you're able to wrap more than a handful of hilarious jokes around such an inspiring story, you've succeeded on more levels than you can imagine. It's a hard thing to do, but this film does it.

Like I said, this movie had one of the most awful trailers I've seen all year. Every time I saw it, I cringed at the thought of sitting through it, mainly due to the dialogue. But that trailer lacked context. Every stupid line in the trailer that I snickered at works in the movie because they fit into what is going on. They are said with a purpose and aren't just lines of dialogue randomly assembled in an attempt to convey the emotion in the overall movie.

It's nearly impossible to not compare this to Precious, the other similar movie that was released recently. Although this isn't as good as Precious, it's also not as difficult to watch. That movie with dealt with some incredibly dark material, to the point where you started to feel physically nauseous and degraded from having to witness the lifestyle that poor girl was forced to live through. The Blind Side is happier and more encouraging than Precious. That isn't the mark of a better film, only of a more marketable one (which is perhaps why Precious is in limited release while The Blind Side is wide). Regardless of its shortcomings, this is a movie that will make you smile and appreciate the good people out there that give an otherwise doomed person another chance at life. Don't let the trailers fool you. The Blind Side is a keeper.

The Blind Side receives 3.5/5

Boondock Saints II Better Than Original

Ten years ago, a tragedy struck in Colorado at Columbine High School. The story is well known by now, but to sum it up, two whacked out teenagers went into school one day armed to the teeth and murdered 12 of their fellow students and one teacher. This was around the same time The Boondock Saints was prepping for a theatrical run, but due to these events, it was only shown on a very limited number of screens and was therefore thought to be dead. However, the film went on to rake in an impressive number of DVD sales and created a massive cult following that cherished it, but I do not know why. The Boondock Saints is a sloppy film all around and here we are 10 years later with a better, slightly less sloppy sequel that does just enough to be enjoyable. Whereas I wouldn't recommend the original, I feel comfortable expressing my approval for The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, though I'm not without my reservations.

The movie takes place years after the first film and the Saints, played by Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus, are living in Ireland away from civilization with their father, played by Billy Connolly. Back in their old hometown of Boston, a priest has been murdered using the Saints' trademark method—two shots to the back of the head and coins placed over the victim's eyes—which pulls the boys out of retirement to track down this killer. In the original, they think they are being called by God to kill evil men, but this copycat killer has killed a good man, a priest, and they want to clear their names and catch the murderer, so they strap up their guns and head back home.

I think there's a stark contrast between the original film and this sequel. The original tried far too hard to be cool. Its hipster attitude and profanity-laden lingo grated on the nerves. The sequel tries less hard and is consequently way cooler. It seems that most of what I hated in the first movie is rectified here, but it still suffers from a poor narrative and a lack of a strong emotional connection.

Everyone you can possibly imagine reprises their roles from the original movie, even the bar owner with Tourette syndrome, and I'm of the belief that the acting in that flick was fairly bad. Thankfully, the passage of time has added some much needed finesse to the the two lead actors' abilities. They are much better here (sans a late emotional scene where they are laughably awful). The only difference in casting that I could spot is that Willem Dafoe, who overacted his part in the original, is replaced with Julie Benz. She plays essentially the same character Dafoe did, an FBI investigator who studies crime scenes and can tell you exactly what went down, but she is absolutely atrocious. She can't even chew gum convincingly. She becomes so distracting that every scene she is in detracts from the experience. Every time I thought the movie was finally starting to get good, she would appear onscreen and crush those thoughts.

The director, Troy Duffy, also shows a considerable amount more polish here than he did in the amateurly handled original. Although he has only directed two movies (both being The Boondock Saints films), he must have been studying for the last 10 years because he flexes his directorial muscles a little better here, which includes establishing a constant tone that fits the film. This movie does a better job of mixing its lively humor with intense violence and a large part of that is thanks to Duffy's evolution as a director.

Although The Boondock Saints II lacks what I would call a "story" (it's more like loosely connected plot points that get the Saints from place to place to set up action scenes), the characters in the movie are more fleshed out. In the original film, the cops were relegated to props. They were nothing more than idiotic comic relief characters that would pop up solely for the purpose of being humiliated. In the sequel, they are side characters no longer. They are drawn out and have actual personalities. Just as much time is spent with them as the Saints and I enjoyed that.

Even the humor is better. Both films are filled to the brim with comedic moments, this one even more so than the original, but more of it works here because it's smarter and more subtle. The original's humor was too sudden, violent and in your face, like the fan favorite scene where a cat is accidentally shot and its innards splatter all over the wall. In this movie, jokes were common, but they weren't forcefully thrown at you. They casually slipped in when appropriate and it worked much better.

Of course, this is most definitely not a perfect film. It may be better than the original, but only slightly so and that film was no masterpiece. Much of it is in bad taste, which includes racial remarks, stereotypes and rape jokes, some of which are funny, but most of which are not. It's also incredibly immature, shown most evidently by a slow motion nose pick that is revolting and completely unnecessary. The list goes on.

I know I've spent the majority of this review comparing the two movies in the franchise, but that's only because so much of this one hinges on its predecessor. It's unavoidable. The jokes, the situations, pretty much everything is a wink and a nod to the original film and unless you are familiar with it, you won't get as much out of this one as you could otherwise. This is a film made for the fans and it shows. Although I wouldn't recommend the first movie, I liked The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day and the myriad of references to the original almost makes me want to go back and revisit it...almost.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day receives 3/5

2012 Fun, But Incredibly Stupid

Few directors in Hollywood have me torn the way Roland Emmerich does. He's a person I like to call an "every other" director because every other one of his movies I enjoy. I love Independence Day, but I hate The Day After Tomorrow. I love The Patriot, but I hate Godzilla. I love Universal Soldier, but I loathe 10,000 B.C. In his canon of films, 2012 is an anomaly, falling smack dab in the middle. I neither loved nor hated his newest film. I was just kind of annoyed by it.

It all begins in a mine in India where geologists have just discovered an abnormality never seen before. It is here that they figure out the world is quickly dying. Apparently, neutrinos from the sun are causing some type of physical reaction that is going to destroy the world. Meanwhile, author Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) is picking up his kids from his ex-wife's house. He takes them on a camping trip to Yellowstone National park where he meets a crazy radio personality named Charlie (Woody Harrelson) and learns of the well kept secret that the world is ending. He also finds out that somewhere in China ships are being built to save a certain amount of the population, but the highest bidders and smartest of the bunch are taking precedent over everybody else. Jackson is neither, but is determined to get him and his family onboard one of those ships anyway.

As with all of these end-of-the-world pictures, the story in 2012 is absolutely ridiculous. The idea that any of this would ever happen, much less in one day, is preposterous. Unfortunately, it's based on a somewhat common belief that on December 21, 2012, the world will end, which is evidently what the Mayans concluded hundreds of years ago. I hate to break it to you folks, but we'll still be here come 2013. People have been predicting the end of the world for centuries and guess what? None have been right. Shocker. Recently, NASA debunked this loony theory with a great Q&A detailing just why the world will not end. So no, this is not real.

But I'll be damned if it isn't great fiction. This theory so many are up in hysteria about is a great idea for a movie, but Emmerich simply didn't know what to do with it. He has an eye for destruction and it's about as good a movie as you can make about the end of the world, but it's everything surrounding that destruction that's the problem.

The acting is merely adequate and it isn't even written particularly well. It telegraphs everything ahead of time. For instance, Jackson is an author who wrote a book about people who act selfless even when their own lives are at stake, which is an obvious instant of foreshadowing if there ever was one. There are zero narrative surprises in this entire disaster movie.

But if you're a fan of watching stuff blow up real good, this is the movie for you. You get to see the Vatican crumble, the White House get smashed by a giant wave carrying an aircraft carrier and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil shatter to pieces. Oh, and that plane that tips off the edge of a cliff and plummets its passengers to a fiery death? That one's a freebie.

It all boils down to this. 2012 is beyond stupid. I'm scientifically challenged and when it comes to science, you might as well throw a giant dunce cap on me because I can't separate an ocean from a stream, but I'm still one hundred percent sure none of this could ever happen. But Emmerich knows what he's doing and the film delivers on what the trailers promise: widespread chaos and destruction. There's nary a moment of downtime and if this is your cup of tea, have at it.

Although I had a good amount of fun with the film, I cannot in all good conscience recommend it, but if you want to see something outlandishly absurd and hilariously dopey, you could do a whole lot worse than 2012.

2012 receives 2/5

Precious a Stunning Success

Some movies have me at odds. While most people go to the movies to have fun, some are simply not fun to watch. They may be technically well done, but I ask myself, do I really need to tell people to go see something so difficult to sit through? It depends what movie it is really. Ask me my opinion on this year's Last House on the Left, which was anything but fun to sit through, and I'll tell you no, you absolutely do not need to see it. It's dark, depressing and gives off the impression that violence is the only means to an end. It's a vile, evil film that nobody should ever see. But the new drama, Precious is absolutely worth seeing. Though the two are vastly different films, both have similar tones. Both are hard to sit through and both show evil in their purest form. The difference is that Precious ends on an uplifting note, a note so inspiring and wonderful that you walk out of the theater feeling great about life, knowing that good still exists in the world.

The movie takes place in Harlem in 1987 and it follows Precious, played by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe in a breakthrough role, a 16 year old girl in junior high who can't separate letters apart from each other, much less read and is pregnant with her second child, both conceived with her father who brutally raped her. Her father is long gone and she is now living with her mother, played by Mo'Nique, a woman who physically, sexually, and verbally abuses Precious to make up for her own inadequacies. She fantasizes about a different life where she is married to a nice white man and her mother loves her. In fact, she desires the love of her mother so much that she looks at old pictures and pretends they speak to her, offering words of adulation and encouragement. Eventually, Precious is expelled from school, but she is taken in by an alternative school called Each One Teach One where, thanks to her teacher, played by Paula Patton, she finally begins to recognize her own potential.

Precious's mother is lowlife scum, a woman as evil as any I've seen this year. She yells and curses at Precious, telling her she's fat, worthless and stupid and will never make anything of herself. She tells her that nobody loves her and that her birth ruined her life. She even blames Precious for being raped. She's a terrible woman that is played magnificently by Mo'Nique who perfectly embodies every abusive parent out there, which makes her performance that much more impressive. She is terrifying and works as the perfect antithesis to Precious.

You see, Precious is completely unlike her mother and is an admirable girl who loves her children, wants to be with them and wants to give them everything in the world. She's standoffish, but only because she feels like nobody cares about her. It's been ingrained in her head for so long that she is worthless that she believes it to be true.

This feeling of hopelessness is conveyed perfectly in an early scene where the viewer is put directly into Precious's shoes. It's a point of view shot of Precious looking at her mother who is staring and yelling at her, saying all of the things I've detailed above. It gives you a sense of what it feels like to be abused and it's degrading. For this brief moment, I felt abandoned, emotionally lost in a sea of sadness, but thankfully I was only watching a movie. To truly know what it feels like to actually live in a household such as hers is unfathomable to me.

Precious is not a fun movie. It's challenging. It's difficult. It's hard to watch at times, but it is also touching because Precious comes to a revelation and realizes that she isn't worthless. She is wonderful. She realizes that she isn't fat. She is beautiful. She realizes that she isn't stupid. She is smart and can do anything when she puts her mind to it.

If there's one thing I didn't like in the film, it's the overdone dream sequences where Precious daydreams to get away from reality. Sometimes she dreams she is a movie star, others a singer and others a model, but these occurred too many times and it became overkill. I didn't need these moments to realize she didn't like her life. I wanted to see it in her emotion. Seeing the sadness on her face and hearing the pain in her voice is more effective, but some of the daydreams killed that effect.

Nevertheless, that's one relatively unimportant quibble in an otherwise spectacular film. When Oscar season roles around, expect this one to be up for some awards, particularly Mo'Nique who, again, is remarkable in her role.

There have been lots of great movies this year, but few have come close to what Precious accomplishes. Only those without moral, upstanding hearts will find themselves unaffected. This is a must see film.

Precious receives 4.5/5

Pirate Radio Not All It Could Have Been

Back in the 60's, rock 'n roll blasted into the mainstream. A new generation was being formed based off of this new type of music, a music deemed unruly by the establishment. While this generation was carving lasting memories with the music, the old generation was trying stop it.

Based off of the amazing true story, Pirate Radio follows a ragtag group of disc jockeys who anchor their boat off the coast of Britain and broadcast rock music 24 hours a day over the airwaves. Since they are not in the country, they technically aren't breaking any laws, but the British government is still determined to find a loophole in the rules and bring them down.

Yes, Pirate Radio (known over in England as The Boat That Rocked) is a true story and it's a remarkable one at that. This wonderful tale is one that needs to be told and this is a good telling of it. Nevertheless, I feel like it doesn't lend itself well to a traditional narrative because not every piece seems to fit in the right place. It is a good movie, but the story is muddled and its relevance, outside of its obvious historical significance, is nebulous.

What is it trying to do? Is it trying to show the power of rock 'n roll? Is it an anti-establishment film? Or is it simply a feel good movie? I say it's the latter. Rock is a great genre of music, which is a true statement if I've ever heard one, but that meaning is the only one conveyed in the picture. Outside of its desire to hold the rock genre up on a pedestal, Pirate Radio does very little.

Though not bereft of a number of headaches, the biggest problem in Pirate Radio is that you never feel like a real conflict is brewing. Even the main fight between the DJ's and the British government feels almost non-existent. Seeing as how the DJ's are always on that boat, the feuding groups have no scenes together and you never see them at odds. It merely jumps back and forth from scenes on the boat to scenes on land and no real conflict is ever established. It didn't feel like the men on the boat were playing the music to fight "the man" and show them that they won't abide by their limey laws. It felt like they were playing it simply because they could.

Then there are the conflicts that arise between the men on the boat, most of which are unwisely played for laughs when real emotion could have been drawn from them. Midway through the film, one of the DJ's gets married (did I mention women are only allowed on the boat if they are wed to one of the men?), but it is quickly found out that she only wed this man to get closer to another DJ who doesn't believe in the sanctity of marriage. You can see his heart breaking onscreen, but instead of pulling something from that, the film plays it for laughs and the conflict is resolved rather quickly. No connection is ever made between the characters and the audience.

All I've really done is criticize Pirate Radio, but make no mistake, this is a feel good movie and you will find yourself gushing at the events that take place. The men on the boat are fun, reckless and a blast to watch. It has a few eye rolling moments, like a scene late in the movie that is the equivalent to those tired war movie scenes where a platoon of soldiers step forward and voluntarily prepare for battle despite the odds against them, but Pirate Radio is still a good watch.

Pirate Radio receives 3/5

Interview with Cameron Diaz, James Marsden and Richard Kelly from The Box

(This interview was originally published in the November 9, 2009 issue of Broadside, though most of it had to be cut due to space constraints. This is the unedited interview.)

Based on the short story by Richard Matheson, The Box is a new psychological thriller directed by Richard Kelly and starring James Marsden and Cameron Diaz that depicts a financially unstable 1970’s couple who one day receive a mysterious box with a button inside. They are told that if they push the button, they will receive one million dollars, but someone, somewhere in the world will die. Broadside recently had the chance to sit down with Diaz, Marsden and Kelly to talk about their experiences on making the film.

Have any of you read the short story or seen the Twilight Zone episode this movie is based on?

James: Embarrassingly, I never read the short story, not out of laziness, but because we just wanted to focus on our version of what we were doing. I did see the Twilight Zone episode which—Richard where are we with that whole mentioning the Twilight Zone episode?

Richard: I’m under the impression that I’m not allowed to mention those words legally. [Laughs] But the short story was something I read when I was young and it had a huge impression on me, obviously, and I optioned it from Richard Matheson and I spent many years trying to figure out how to expand it into a feature film and you know, here we are. It was a long journey to get here, but the concept of the story was something I felt left a strong footprint in my mind, so to speak.

Cameron: My answer’s the same as Jimmy’s. I didn’t read the short story because it was something that I wanted to sort of have, you know, to focus on our script, the sort of concept that Richard—or how Richard expanded on that concept.

How do you keep such a positive presence in the media and paparazzi with your social and personal life?

Cameron: You know, life is what you make of it and if you’re angry or upset about things that you can’t control, then you pretty much spend your life being angry and upset about things you can’t control, so I found that it’s just easier to enjoy life and embrace and be appreciative of the things that I do have in my life that I can control and also appreciate the things that I can’t control and make those things not so terrible in my life and just decide to be happy and bring on good positive things in my life. That’s worked for me so far. I have a pretty good life. I think it’s what you make of it and it’s how you absorb it and what you do with it. It’s a little thing that you learn as you get older. You’ll figure it out as you go.

Do you have any advice for somebody who wants to be an actor on how to make it and keep your integrity?

James: I would just say you just have to go for it. You have to be honest with yourself and you know, it takes a lot of courage, it takes a lot of confidence and I would say just doing it in any form, an acting class or community theater or whatever you’re available to do, the more you do it the more you want to do it and the better you get. It’s a tough business to get into, but if your heart’s there and you believe in yourself—I know that sounds really corny, but it is true—you can just stay with it and be persistent and patient and don’t lose your confidence.

Cameron: Can I add something to that?

James: Yes please, add something more.

Cameron: I think it’s also the—don’t let other people’s success be what you set as your own success. Make your own success like what [James] was saying, doing community theater or doing whatever—that could be success for you if you want that. If your goal is to just do those things, then you’re successful. Define your own success. Don’t try to make other people’s success your standard.

What was your initial reaction when you first read the script?

Cameron: I was a huge fan of Richard from Donnie Darko and Southland Tales and I just really wanted to work with him, so when I read the script, I felt that it was very authentic to the stories that he tells. There is sort of this existential quandary and I just knew that Richard would tell the story as uniquely as he does and I wanted to be a part of that.

How much of your own personality would you say you put into the characters? How much of you goes into who you’re playing?

Cameron: All I have is me. [Laughs] James would agree that you really have to use—you try to understand what other people are going through even if you haven’t gone through it yourself. You just try to get to the feeling of what you think it would feel like to be in that position, but you never really know. As much as you want to feel that you’re being somebody else, you’re only working from your own toolbox and experience, so I would like to think that there’s nothing of me in there, but really I can only contribute with what I have.

James: For me, you wouldn’t be responding to the material and to the story and to the character if there wasn’t a part of you in that, so there’s always going to be a piece of you that is going to be inherent to your performance, or my performance anyway.

How is this 1970’s set film relevant to our society today?

Richard: Well I think that this film kind of puts in the crosshairs the idea of the nuclear family. In our film, it’s a married couple under the age of 40 with a single child and they have a lifestyle that they really can’t afford and they’re sort of living on credit and they have a mortgage that’s beyond their means and they’re driving a car—Arthur is driving a car—and it’s a little bit too expensive. They have a son in private school with tuition that’s a little too much for them to handle. I think looking at our economic crisis right now, the film I hope resonates with the audience of today despite the fact that it’s set in 1976 because these are things that we can identify with and we can see and realize that we all are trying to live a better life and achieve a better life, but it’s ultimately about the things that we strive to possess in this lifestyle that we want to achieve. Hopefully, that’s something that resonates with modern audiences.

How do you select music for your films? Because music played a really big role in Donnie Darko and Southland Tales. I was wondering how you selected what role music plays in this one.

Richard: Well it comes from an emotional place. It’s a big kind of emotional strings and brass and percussion in the spirit of kind of Bernard Herrmann. The pop music in The Box is much more source music in the sense that there’s kind of a wedding/rehearsal dinner sequence towards the middle of the film. We were very specific about trying to pick songs that were kind of southern in quality because the movie takes place in Virginia and it has a southern rock believability, but also they were very iconic bands so we were very lucky enough to get The Grateful Dead and Scott Walker and The Marshall Tucker Band and all these bands that flow together. The biggest pop music in the moment is a Derek and the Dominos song called “Bell Bottom Blues” that I actually heard on the radio while driving to set and I remember I called Cameron up and I said, “Download this song from iTunes. Download “Bell Bottom Blues” and memorize the lyrics because we’re going to have you listening to it on the dance floor and it’s going to be this big romantic moment between you and James and we’re going to try to get the song.” It’s kind of an act of faith, when you just feel in your gut that this song is the right one. We ended up getting it, of course, luckily.

The story was written in the 1970’s, but it sounds so much like today. I was wondering why you set it in ‘76 instead of the present.

Richard: Well, I guess speaking from my point of view, it became a huge decision for me or a necessary decision to set it in the 70’s because the concept of someone you don’t know, which is inherent to the premise, doesn’t really exist anymore with modern social networking sites and Google satellite maps and all the surveillance technology we have today. I realized that if I set it in present day I was going to have to write that scene where [Cameron] sits down and Google’s the name Arlington Steward, you know, she’s just sitting in front of her laptop for half of the movie. It just didn’t feel as resonant. Obviously, the themes are resonant with present day, but the execution of the story only held onto its plausibility by maintaining the 1970’s era in which it was written. At the end of the day, it’s kind of an old fashioned concept and there’s something a bit more frightening about—people felt more vulnerable, I think, in the 70’s because we didn’t have all these technologies that allowed us to spy on each other.

This movie poses a big moral question about our human nature. In your opinions, do you think that the majority of people would push this button given the opportunity?

James: Probably.

Cameron: In today’s society, I think we’re already proving that we’re pushing the button more than ever by, you know, taking out credit cards and mortgages and dumping stuff into the ocean, doing all these things that we think we aren’t going to have to take responsibility for, but ultimately it does have an effect and we do have to suffer the consequences of that, like our economy, and we are doing so right now based on all the buttons that were pushed over the last few years. So I think it’s very relevant. I think it’s obvious that people do put forth the idea of having monetary wealth over any other wealth, especially in our culture and society.

What would you say was one of the funniest things that happened on set?

James: I remember lying in bed, having a heart to heart scene with Cameron, and then getting up and vomiting in the bathroom and then washing my mouth out with soap and then coming back and asking if it was ok if we finished the scene. Cameron, being really gracious and sweet, said it was totally fine. It’s kind of funny now more than it was then and they were able to fix my green face in post [production].

Cameron: We laughed a lot, but if there was anything in particular that we laughed about, it would probably be the day that we got to have water dumped on us, hundreds of gallons of water, maybe thousands of gallons, that was a day we were, as you would say, tickled because it was so much fun.

Richard: I remember when we did that, we did two takes when we dunked hundreds of gallons, probably 400, maybe it was a thousand gallons, I don’t remember the amount, but there was so much water that it literally knocked Cameron off the bed. Obviously, Cameron is an amazing athlete so this was not a problem with her.

Cameron: My hair was standing straight up, remember?

Richard: [Laughs] That’s right. She jumped up and her hair was sticking up in the most crazy direction.

Cameron: It looked like I was an alien.

Richard: Yeah, but we did a second take and your hair looked perfect so it all worked out.

Cameron: You know what’s really funny is that we’re laughing about it now still. [Laughs]

James: I remember in the first take, Richard pulled that practical joke and you dumped 10,000 gallons of cat urine on us. Remember that? That was the most fun. [Laughs]

Richard: I know, I know. [Laughs]

James: You got us.

Cameron: [Laughs]

The story in the movie is obviously a little bit more complex than the original short story. How did you go about elaborating the original premise and what kind of inspiration did you have?

Richard: Well, the short story was almost like a great set-up for act one of a movie and there was one line of the short story that just sent my mind racing and it was when they asked who Mr. Steward worked for and he said, “I can assure you that the organization is large and international in scope,” and that to me was just so fascinating because it had all these questions. I wanted to know, who did Mr. Steward work for? Why did they build the button unit? What are their intentions? Why are they kind of approaching these married couples? What’s the point of it all? What’s the agenda at work? And I thought those were such amazing questions and to be able to kind of explore all those answers in act two and act three and make it a story of redemption was really exciting so we really spent a lot of time to get it right and figure out what act two and act three were going to be.

With The Box and Rod Lurie’s upcoming Straw Dogs, [James], you’ve undertaken more intense roles and characters who grew up in violent areas. Did you find these roles to be more challenging than your previous work?

James: I find all were challenging, but yes, these were more challenging in that they are characters that are more different than myself on a normal day to day basis. The Straw Dogs role is what’s really intense and borderlining on a sociopath actually, so I don’t really see myself as that kind of guy. The further it is from you, the more difficult it is to get there, but it was great to creatively go there because that’s what we get to do as actors and I will say that after The Box and after Straw Dogs, I’m going to be looking for something light and fluffy. [Laughs] Something fun where I can change it all up.

Robert Zemeckis Chats About A Christmas Carol

(This interview was originally published in the November 9, 2009 issue of Broadside, though most of it had to be cut due to space constraints. This is the unedited interview.)

Beginning with The Polar Express and Beowulf, award winning director Robert Zemeckis has become the pioneer for motion capture technology, a technology that allows the performers’ movements to be captured and reproduced digitally, and his latest visual darling is the Jim Carrey starring A Christmas Carol. Broadside recently chatted with Zemeckis on the look and feel of his new film, the challenges of getting it done, and what new elements he hopes to bring to the timeless story.

What inspired you to follow-up Beowulf with A Christmas Carol? Why Dickens’ Christmas Carol and not another story?

When I was doing Beowulf, I realized that this is a great form to reintroduce classic stories in a new way to a new generation of movie-goers because what you can do is you can create a version of the story which is visually modern and separate it out from what would have to be, and many of these classic stories have great spectacle in them which makes them, in a strange way, makes them difficult to do for the big screen so they are sort of relegated to masterpiece theater and that sort of thing. So you get a chance to really, in the case of A Christmas Carol, get a chance to realize the story in a very spectacular and surreal way that Dickens wrote it. So anyway, obviously it’s a very familiar title and it’s a great story to be told in cinema and all those things sort of added up and the idea came, so I thought, why not give this a try?

A Christmas Carol is a timeless story. How do you balance the dual problem of adhering to a very traditional story, but also creating a piece that is fresh, new and exciting?

Well, of course, that was a challenge and that was the reason that we did it, which is to attack that problem head on and say, okay we are going to be extremely true to the underlying material and we aren’t going to tinker with it too much, although we do a little bit. We provide some action at the end to get Scrooge from place to place. But we really are going to distill this down to making sure that all the elements, the fact that it’s a timeless story, is rooted in Scrooge’s character and his character change and character development and his story of redemption. We have to be true to that. The other thing, of course, that I did which made everyone very nervous at the studio, but I don’t think it could work in any other possible way, is that I had everyone speaking in the language of the time, the way Dickens wrote it, which I think is beautiful. So we kept all that and we basically kept the tone that Dickens wrote in the original piece.

Do you want to explain how Jim Carrey uses different dialects for his different characters?

When I said the language, I meant the way in the old English, Victorian English that the novel was written in, but yes, Jim also, for each of the ghosts that he portrays, he came up with a different dialect. The ghost of Christmas past is Irish and the ghost of Christmas present is sort of Scottish and Scrooge is, you know, the Queen’s English.

Is there anything in the Dickens story that you feel has been overlooked by past filmmakers that you highlight in your version of the story?

For some reason, you know, for some reason, past versions of the story have not delved into the idea that Dickens had great tension and great suspense in the story, the way he wrote it, and that seems to have been watered down in all these other versions. That feeling of foreboding and that feeling of dread that you have in the first half of that story I think has been missing a lot, so I thought that was really important because you have to understand that Scrooge basically has this wild nightmare. I really feel very strongly that you have to have the dark before you can have the light. That was something that I really wanted to present in the way that I think Dickens wrote it. And the other thing that is amazing that I realized about Dickens that I hadn’t realized before I started adapting this was how cinematic he wrote. He wrote very filmically 100 years before the invention of movies. It’s really amazing when you read his work. He writes in scenes.

Regarding the character of Scrooge, how do you view him? Is he a good man who needs to discover his past humanity or is he fundamentally a bad natured man who needs to learn to be decent?

Well that’s a great question. Of course, he’s a man who has been…he was abused and he is filled with fear and the way he protects himself from having to feel that fear is misguidedly feeling that he needs to collect material things to guard against. And there’s a line in the novel, we have it in the movie, where Bell says, “You fear the world too much Ebenezer.” And that I think is key to his character when he goes back in time, so what he needs to do is he needs to have a sort of, I’m going to use this term very loosely, a spiritual awakening, which is to understand that those childhood fears which have been basically pounded into him, he can deal with and he can go on and he can alter the course of his life. That’s a universal story, so to answer your question specifically, he’s not a bad man. He’s just a man who doesn’t know what to do with his, how should I say this, his scarred past. And I think that’s why it’s a timeless story and that’s why it’s such a great story and why we can all relate to that story so well.

How do you see the 3D aspects of the movie as aiding in the telling of the story?

Well, it aides in telling of the story in the intellectual sense. Obviously, the images don’t do that, even an old black and white movie isn’t going to do that. But aiding in telling the story from an emotional standpoint, the 3D is a storytelling element just like the music is. You have the underlying intellectual material that is what Mr. Dickens wrote and then you embellish it with performance and you embellish it with color and you embellish it now with immersive 3D image. So what that does for the audience is it gives them another emotional handle on the story. It presents it in an emotional way. So what we’ve been able to do is we’ve been able to immerse the audience in Dicksonian London.

How involved were you in the casting process? Was Jim Carrey someone who was always high on the list?

Well, obviously I cast every single actor in the movie and when I write, I try very hard not to think of an actor because I don’t want to start writing in the voice of a specific actor so I just think of characters as shadows when I’m writing. But when I finished, Jim was my first and only choice because I knew that you needed someone who needed a magnificent sense of humor and a great ability to do drama to really make Scrooge as mean as Dickens actually wrote him and as we adapted him in the screenplay. And then I felt that I got a great actor who can do any kind of character, so it was the logical extension in my mind that let’s say, Scrooge is having this nightmare, these ghosts would be an extension of his alter ego. They would be his alter ego. So there could be some of Scrooge in each of the ghosts so I said to Jim, “Hey, why don’t you also do all the ghosts?” and he said, “Oh man I love that idea.” And the challenge there of course was that he had to do scenes with himself, but he’s such a great actor it wasn’t really a problem. So that was the casting process.

What was the process like when Jim had to play a scene against himself?

Well, what you do is you put in a stand-in actor. Cary Elwes, who is a great actor in his own right, was gracious enough to volunteer to be on the receiving end of Jim when we did all the scenes so when Jim was Scrooge, Cary would do a ghost and when Jim was a ghost, Cary would do Scrooge. Having a really great actor who was able to watch Jim and basically memorize the way he was doing one or the other side of a character and bringing back in the timing that we needed was really crucial, so that’s basically how we did it. And it was great because Jim when he was playing Scrooge would say, “Now listen, when I’m the ghost, I’m thinking I want to do this, this, this, this and this,” and Cary would do his version of it and Jim would react as Scrooge, then Jim would go back and do the ghost and Cary would do that reaction as Scrooge and it turned out to be, in my opinion, a tour de force performance.

Jim Carrey is known to improv a lot. With a traditional storyline like A Christmas Carol, was that ever an issue in the process?

Well, Jim can do anything. He can do improv and he can do stand up and he can do anything. This role called for it to be very much a straight forward dramatic performance and nobody was going to tamper with Mr. Dickens. You’re not going to improv Dickens. Jim would come up with slang terms that he would research. He would come up with little things that are in between the lines a little bit, like exclamations and things like that that he would come up with. Where most of his improv came was by doing physical things, doing things that just gave Scrooge this magnificent characterization. The thing that is amazing about Jim is that when he acts, he acts with every muscle in his body. His whole body transforms into Scrooge; his movement, his fingertips, everything becomes Scrooge. Yes, there was some improv, but I would say mostly it would be in the way he would use his physicality and body language to present Scrooge rather than to change any of the dialogue.

As a director, when you’re working with your actors, how do you get them comfortable working with the technology necessary to make a film like A Christmas Carol?

Well, first of all, you walk them through it very thoroughly and you walk them through it very, very extensively, you know, slowly and thoroughly and you explain it as much as you can. It’s really interesting, no matter how much I try to explain to them what the experience is going to be like, it’s impossible to imagine until they do it. The thing that weirds them out the most is having to put the leotard on, but then what happens, and this has happened, you can look at the list of actors that I’ve worked with in this process—Tom Hanks, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Gary Oldman, Jim Carrey, I mean, great actors—what happens and why they all immediately fall in love with it after the first hour of working in this process is they very quickly understand it’s all about performance. You get to see this wonderful revelation that happens. It’s like, “Oh man, this is just about my performance. My performance is everything here. I don’t have to fumble with a costume. I don’t hide behind a costume. I don’t hide behind a beard. I don’t have make-up.” It’s all pure. It becomes this amazingly exciting thing that happens because it’s just about the way they—it’s like doing black box theater, where you have minimal props, no sets, no lighting, no costume and you create scenes and that’s what we do. It’s really powerful and it’s a lot of fun. The other thing that they love about working in the process is that they get to act all day long and it’s not chopped up into traditional movie coverage. On a typical movie, an actor, in the 12 hours that he’s on the set, works maybe 20 minutes. In this process, they work all day long and they act all day, so they love it.

Do you want to explain a little bit about how there’s literally no camera in the space?

Right, there’s no cameras in the space. This is difficult to describe in any circumstances. It’s going to be really difficult on the phone. The actors work in a volume of infrared light and they are surrounded by receptors which, for lack of a better word, are cameras that record digital information that comes off their sensors which we strategically place where all their joints are in their body and of course we have a new rig of cameras that capture their facial movement. Those are actually hi-def cameras that run at 60 frames a second. So every pore, every crease, their tongue, their retina, their eyelids, everything becomes a marker. So every pore in their face becomes a marker and these cameras record everything their face does. So there are no cameras in the traditional sense. All of the cameras are virtual. So what happens is that the actor steps in this volume and his entire body, face, everything that he does, is recorded in three dimensions all the time. Of course, the sound is perfect because the microphone is put right where you need it because that is invisible because it has no marker on it. And so the actors perform in this volume and it’s the size of a theatrical stage and they do a scene from beginning to end. The actors interact with each other, they pace the scene, they don’t worry about camera marks, lighting marks, anything like that. They just do the scene. When we’re done with that and we all feel like we’ve got the scene, we move on. So what we do is we take that information, that digital performance that’s been burned into the hard drive, and we basically then wrap a digital skin, digital hair, digital costume around that performance and then we take that character and put him into a virtual environment. And then the last thing we do is we put our virtual cameras in and those create ultimately what is your traditional shot from a movie. Does that make any sense?

You have mentioned that A Christmas Carol is possibly one of the greatest time travel stories ever. My generation considers Back to the Future one of the greatest time travel stories ever. What is it about time travel that appeals to you in the stories that you tell?

You’ll notice that in the three Back to the Futures, there’s a lot of influence from A Christmas Carol when you look at them. I think I actually have scenes, I think they’re in the second one, and there’s a little bit of it in the third one too, where characters actually confront their grave stones and things like that. When they see what could happen in the future—I think Back to the Future 2 has got a lot of Christmas Carol in it which is one of my most interesting movies. So yes, I know that Christmas Carol is the first time travel story I ever read when I was about seven or eight years old I think. So Christmas Carol very heavily influenced the Back to the Future movies, as did The Time Machine. Back to the Future uses the HG Wells theory of time travel which is you travel through time, not through space. But A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life and all those time travel movies were a big influence on Back to the Future.

Are you a fan of other Charles Dickens books? Do you have any favorite novel?

Well I love A Tale of Two Cities, I love Great Expectations, I love Oliver Twist. Dickens is the greatest writer in the English language, so you know, his stuff is great.

What is the musical score like for this film? Is it anything like The Polar Express?

Similar only that it’s my long time composer, Alan Silvestri who’s doing it. I don’t know, you know, I can always hear—every composer always has his favorite phrases that he always has, he has his favorite orchestration that he always uses. I hear that all the time, but I think A Christmas Carol is one of the greatest scores, most beautiful scores, that Alan did. We do weave a lot of traditional Christmas music in and out of the score as well, a lot of Christmas medlies. And he wrote a beautiful, original song based on the score that Andrea Bocelli sings. So yes, it’s a great score and it’s very unique nowadays because it’s played with a 102 piece orchestra and a 50 person orchestra. You don’t get that much these days anymore. Everything’s digital [laughs].
What do you want people to take away from your new take on a family holiday classic?

If they can just be reintroduced to this fantastic story. You know, it’s interesting that people we’ve been showing the movie to in the test audience, people think they know the story, but they really don’t. Unless you’re a scholar or a real cinephile and you’ve watched every single version of A Christmas Carol, people think they know the story and they see the movie and they go, “Oh I didn’t know it has all this in there.” So that would be what I would like people to take away. It’s really one of the greatest stories ever written and maybe you might want to go back and read it after you see the movie.

A Christmas Carol seems to wrap up a trilogy of you adapting some of the greatest classic books of all time. Do you have other books in mind that you’d like to bring to the big screen?

Not off the top of my head, but you know, the way I like to define A Christmas Carol, I think A Christmas Carol is one of the classic books that has such scale and such scope and because it’s so fantastic and it deals in the realms of time travel and ghosts and supernatural and all this great stuff that we never had the cinematic tools to ever present it really as spectacularly as it was written. And I think there are a lot of books out there that were written even before the invention of cinema that are so huge in their scale, they’re such giant sagas, they have giant battles, like Moby Dick with whales or whatever you can imagine. They’ve always been sort of adapted to the screen with limitations and now with the birth of the digital cinema—the thing that I think is one of the most spectactular things that we do in A Christmas Carol is we create London in the 1840’s, but not just a 100 yard façade of sets with wagons going by in the foreground. I mean, you can do anything. It’s painted. It’s digitally painted. And so we no longer have any technical limitations so we can present some of these classic stories in this new breathtaking way.

What were your biggest challenges in making A Christmas Carol?

Well, when we started the movie, we started our own company so we didn’t go to outside vendors to render any of the images, so the biggest challenge, which is basically technical and not that exciting from a filmmaker point of view, was that we had to hire all the artists, we had to build the facility, we had to write our software, we had to stock the place with all our mainframe computers and all that stuff. At the same time we were making the movie. So a lot of people worked a lot of really long hours. That was the biggest challenge, to do both of those things simultaneously.

What advice would you have for aspiring filmmakers?

Write. That’s the advice I give all my inspiring filmmakers. I went to film school at USC and so I’m very connected there and I mentor films there and by the way, USC has the first performance capture curriculum in the world there now. I’ve been asked this question my entire life and that’s the same answer that I give everyone. Write because A) to be a really great filmmaker, you have to know how to do that anyway and B) it really is the ticket in because everyone will be receptive to a great idea and other than that, there’s no pattern. Everybody has their own success story, but the only real thing that is a commonality is to write your way in. That’s the advice that I give to everyone.

A Christmas Carol Gets a New Coat of Paint

(This review was originally published in the November 9, 2009 issue of Broadside. This is the original draft. The score at the end is new.)

And the onslaught begins.

Here we are, not even 10 days into November and the Christmas spirit has already begun to seep through the cracks of the nation. Christmas commercials are popping up on television, retail stores are preparing for the onslaught of holiday shoppers and Christmas music has already begun to ring in our ears. America has a strange fascination with the holiday and Hollywood is happy to oblige, this time in the form of yet another version of the timeless classic, A Christmas Carol.

A quick Internet Movie Database search of “A Christmas Carol” pops up 26 exact matches of the title, with an extra 12 partial matches that include adaptations of the story from the Muppets, Sesame Street, the Flintstones and, evidently, Barbie. There are, quite literally, dozens of versions of this story and although director Robert Zemeckis’ newest iteration is far from a bad film, it is this overabundance of adaptations that really holds it back.

By now, you know the story. Scrooge, a greedy, curmudgeonly old money-grubber, hates Christmas. He treats his employee, Bob Cratchit, like scum and he thinks of nobody but himself. Little does he know, though, his whole mindset is about to change because three ghosts are coming to visit to show him past, present and future Christmases, not all of which will be merry.

I haven’t been so unequivocally torn from a movie in quite some time. Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol is a sight to behold, a visual masterpiece. Never before have I seen motion capture technology used so superbly. Furthermore, the 3D is exquisite with a depth of field that ranks among the best I have ever seen. The foreground takes no precedent over the background because each is as lushly vibrant as the other.

However, I found it hard to care about Scrooge and his journey, not because it’s a bad story—on the contrary, it’s among the best ever told—but because I’ve seen it so many times. I knew exactly where it was heading from the get go and it only sets itself apart from the cavalcade of other adaptations through its visuals. Narratively, it is precisely the same, never taking any liberties with the material.

What little new this movie does bring to the story is not enough to salvage it. In fact, it detracts from the experience. The action scenes, like late in the movie where Scrooge is chased, shrunk to the size of a bug, hurled through a slide of drainage pipes and tossed down the city streets surfing on an icicle, feel pretentious in a way that makes you feel like the filmmakers wanted only to show how amazing their new technology was instead of giving us a new emotional experience. What does that have to do with the messages of redemption and kindness the movie so fervently displays?

Despite these quibbles, you will still find yourself smiling at the end because you can’t help but feel good for the old coot, though you will still feel puzzlingly empty inside.

As far as adaptations of this beloved story go, Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol is somewhere in the middle and although I do think it is worth seeing, I cannot stress enough how much more beneficial it would be for you to stay in and rent a different version instead.

A Christmas Carol receives 3/5